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Musings on Taylor Mountain

Here are a few accounts of Taylor Mountain's history and personal connections with the mountain.  Thanks to all of our contributors!  Please contact us if you have more to share!

Photo by John Burgess

 

 

 

SR'S JOHN TAYLOR MADE THE MOST OUT OF HIS MOUNTAIN

by Gaye LeBaron, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 28, 2005

The news from the Open Space District is good news. The county will buy 823 acres on Taylor Mountain, open country on Santa Rosa's southern border that will eventually become a regional park.

This is good news for several reasons. First, it accomplishes what the winning combo of city, county and state has done on the eastern edge of town with the line-up of Howarth, Spring Lake and Annadel parks to assure that the hills dividing our valleys remain inviolate.

Second, it is a bow to our history, making certain that what remains of the vision of the Gold Rush pioneer John Shackelford Taylor is not lost in a forest of condos and McMansions like the hills of Fountaingrove at the other end of town.

Third, it will give us a new place to play. It is a decision, like the acquisition of the Cardoza Ranch on Lakeville Highway, that indicates the intention of the Open Space District to acquire not only the distant vistas, but closer land that can be accessed by the public.

And finally, it's good news because John Shackelford Taylor would be so pleased.

I'VE ALWAYS had a soft spot for old John Taylor. I can call him ``old John'' without fear of being politically incorrect, I think, because he lived to be 99 years old, having watched Santa Rosa grow from a dusty little village to a bustling farm market town.

For one thing, I might just owe him my career. The story, as Taylor told it, was that he stopped by the saloon (or maybe it was John Walker's barber shop) in the Santa Rosa House stage stop one day in 1857 -- four years after he came from the gold mines of Downieville to his mountain ranch -- and he met a young man named Alpheus Russell, who came to town to open a general store. Russell said he had been thinking that Santa Rosa needed a newspaper.

Taylor gave Russell a $5 gold piece and said to consider him his first subscriber. That was, apparently, all the incentive Russell needed. The Sonoma Democrat made its debut in October of that year, became The Press Democrat 40 years later and, well, you know the rest.

Another reason I've always been interested in Taylor and his mountain is that he embodied so many of the essential elements of the town's history. He was a '49er who left his home in Virginia at age 21 to seek his fortune and, like so many, made a little money in the mines, but not a lot.

He came to Santa Rosa in 1853, before there was a town here, and settled, as he liked to put it, on ``government land.'' It's possible that Taylor was actually a squatter, taking a chance on a claim of what had been a Mexican land grant. Most of the adventurous young men who settled here in those years were squatters.

If so, Taylor was one of the successful ones. By the time he had seen the town established in the valley below him, he had title to 1,400 acres, had a herd of dairy cows, had planted one of the first vineyards (60 acres of mission grapes, but also zinfandel) was making wine and had found a small coal deposit up the mountain, which he was mining and selling.

His interest in trotters settled him squarely in horse-crazy early Santa Rosa society. He built the first race track, called Taylor's Racing Oval, and it was there the earliest county fairs were held.

In 1862, with the population around San Francisco Bay increasing and the steamer and stage routes well-established, the first wave of tourists found Sonoma County's mineral springs. They came to the Sonoma Valley, to Skaggs Springs, Lytton Springs and Mark West Springs.

John Taylor, with a bubbling hot spring on his land, saw opportunity. He built a small resort he called White Sulphur Springs. When the first building burned in 1870, Taylor replaced it with a charming, two-story hotel with a wide veranda, a bathhouse, gazebo and landscaped grounds.

It was completed just in time to welcome travelers on the San Francisco and North Pacific, the first railroad to Santa Rosa, which began passenger service on the last day of 1870.

Taylor married Nannie Clark in 1876 and they had a son and a daughter. The resort business was booming. The ranch was making money. And Santa Rosa was becoming an important business community. Taylor's entrepreneurial fires burned brightly. He hired managers for his ranch and resort and moved into town, to a big house on Mendocino Avenue near Seventh Street and became vice president of the Santa Rosa Bank (later Bank of Italy and ultimately Bank of America). He also became a force in Democratic politics and was once a candidate for sheriff.

Then, in 1906, the killer earthquake left San Francisco in ruins and did even more damage, per capita, in Santa Rosa, including 100 dead in a population of 8,800.

The Taylor family escaped injury, but the earthquake shut off their mineral spring.

Taylor leased the hotel, the name was changed to Kawana Springs, reputedly suggested by Luther Burbank, and it was converted to one of the new resorts that catered to the automobile trade -- known as roadhouses.

THERE'S NO question that Taylor Mountain, like it's namesake, has a history that reaches out and grabs you. Take, for example, what happened there during Prohibition.

When the manufacture, sale and possession of alcoholic beverages became illegal in the United States in 1919, bootleggers became astonishingly resourceful.

The San Francisco men who leased Kawana Springs were relatively bold about their venture. Neighbor Roy Michie would later recall the five-ton trucks loaded with sugar (a main ingredient in the manufacture of whiskey) that rumbled up Kawana Springs Road and the odd comings-and-goings, sometimes late at night.

When federal agents raided the old resort in 1927 -- the same year old John died -- they found that the building had been gutted and contained a two-story distillery.

The ``still,'' in the vernacular, was producing a significant amount of San Francisco's illegal liquor supply. The feds estimated production at 1,400 gallons per day.

The man they arrested on the site was a steamfitter who claimed to be dismantling the two story still, but they arrested him anyway.

The Taylors' daughter, Zana, who was married to Eugene Weaver, was living on their prune ranch in the Dry Creek Valley. Entrusted with management of the Taylor Mountain property, she was horrified to learn what the lessees had done to the gracious old hotel and she ordered it torn down. It was never rebuilt.

Late, after Eugene Weaver died, Zana Weaver moved back to the resort, remodeling the bathhouse into an attractive home where she lived for the rest of her life.

IN 1969, the year before she died, there was another significant earthquake in Santa Rosa -- two of them, in fact, about two hours apart, and, lo and behold, Kawana-White Sulphur spring began to flow again.

For a time, a revival of the historic resort seemed possible. But the spring lasted less than a year and diminished to a trickle.

Will it come back again? Who can say. We know that the days when San Franciscans arrived at the railroad depot with their trunks to spend two weeks or a month of their summer at White Sulphur Springs, sitting on the shaded porch, wandering in the acres of flower gardens, ``taking'' the waters, are gone forever.

But there will be a park. Public tours could begin as soon as the transaction is completed. People can visit the gazebo, see where the spring used to be, wander the remnants of the garden.

And the Taylor name, like McCord and McCormick and so many of the pioneer names that the Open Space program has kept in our minds, will be preserved.

Unless (she said wickedly) it isn't. The news stories about the purchase have already pointed out that development of the park must await financing by, as the writer put it, ``cash-strapped local government.''

Does this mean we could see a Costco Mountain, or a Wal-Mart Park?

 

 

TAYLOR MOUNTAIN HAIKU
by Charles Pengra

The Climb

Painful, the struggle,
Getting old body up here,
So Spirit can soar.

Spring Sprung

While we were't watching,
Butterflies float on small breeze,
Wildfower meadow.

Fall Fell

Wildflower meadow,
Dead now. Dry seed pods, brown stalks,
Every Thing passes.

Stonewalling

Stone wall through meadow.
A man said:"This is what's mine".
Time passed, gaps appear.

Like A Lichen Koan

Does Lichen
Like Rock?
Like? Dislike? No Difference!
Rock and Lichen One.

Taylor Mountain Top

Down there, people race,
Caught in illusion--Me too.
Remember up here.

 

HIKING ON TAYLOR MOUNTAIN 68 YEARS AGO

by John Crevelli 

As a life long resident of Sonoma County, and soon to be 79 years old, I can speak with some authority about changes in the county. My family moved from Windsor to Santa Rosa when I was 7 and the population was under 12,000. It is now almost 162,000. That is change, but one thing remains constant for Santa Rosa, the open space backdrop on the southern boundaries of the city. Taylor Mountain is to Santa Rosa what Fitch Mountain is to Healdsburg. Both define the setting so much that people think of each one as "their" mountain.

I took my first hike on Taylor Mountain with a grownup when I was 11 years old. The view of Santa Rosa Valley was of a great plain still dominated by open space with occasional clumps of oak trees and a few scattered farm houses. We were still an agricultural county in 1942. There was no Rohnert Park, only a giant seed farm without one structure. Cotati was so small that it was distinguished only by the trees planted near its plaza. The urban development along the highway 101, now Santa Rosa Ave., had not yet begun. The city did not reach into Bennett Valley or Rincon Valley. There was no Montgomery Village, only the largest walnut orchard in the state. North and west of the city were small agricultural parcels with only occasional farm homes and buildings. The only harbinger of the future was an army airfield being constructed (the county Charles Shultz Airfield today), which was actually too far to see clearly from the top of Taylor Mt. anyway. Any direction you looked was a lot of open natural terrain. The hills around Santa Rosa had no homes on them. Santa Rosa was a little town nestled in a corner of the plain where Santa Rosa Creek flowed from the Mayacamas. In my memory, it was all idyllic.

In my teen years I climbed Taylor Mountain many times, sometimes alone. In those days landowners were a bit more tolerant of trespassers, especially kids. I would ride my bike out Bennett Valley Road to the old Bennett Valley School and start the hike from there. Each time I went up I began to notice small changes in the valley view. By 1944 another airfield west of town was built for the U.S. Navy. That was plainly visible. That year too, a scar was plainly visible on Taylor Mountain, a large quarry on Petaluma Hill Road from which rock was obtained to lay the foundation base for the runways. The scar was very visible from Santa Rosa Avenue and was disturbing to me, even as a kid. Fortunately, from the top of Taylor Mountain that first violation of its flanks was not visible. The view was still one of openness and uninterrupted space. The view inspired a young teenager to reach other heights so visible from Taylor Mt. I soon climbed Bennett Valley Peak, Hood Mountain, the ridges of Fountain Grove, Mt..St Helena, Geyser Peak, Fitch Mt. but never quite made it to Sonoma Mountain. That I finally did some 50 years later.

Even as a youth I was so enamored with the beauty of Sonoma County that I knew I would never want to live elsewhere. When I left for college at UC Berkeley, I never really left the county as I returned every weekend to work on a chicken ranch west of Santa Rosa. I returned after college to spend my teaching career and retirement here. While I have travelled to many places, I have never found a place to equal Sonoma County. It was on Taylor Mountain that my earliest convictions and decision for life choices were made.

So, what is the meaning of Taylor Mountain to me? It is a view that helped define the city I lived in then. It was one of many special Sonoma County views that would indelibly imprint on memory and be recalled again and again. It still represents the idyllic past as the mountain has not been desecrated by homes or subdivisions and looks pretty much as it was 68 years ago. But a lot has happened in 68 years to the valleys and some of the elevations around Santa Rosa.

I remember taking two of my children up to the summit of Taylor Mountain when they were about my age when I first went up. They had started to build Rohnert Park by then but it was still an unfinished work in progress. I told my kids to look carefully at the whole valley as when they next came up the mountain it would all be different. I am sure that has happened because that is inevitable progress. Someday soon I hope to take that hike again, thanks to LandPaths and the Open Space District.
And when I look at the valleys I probably will feel old as I will be able to say, "I remember when...". But I will also feel good about some things, all the protected open spaces in the county, and Taylor Mountain is one of them

In my lifetime I have witnessed change, but the greatest change is in the public which have come to appreciate the beauty of this county and its open spaces with the same passion as I have. How else to explain the remarkable decision to tax themselves to protect some unique open spaces. So, I feel young in spirit as my children and their children will be able to enjoy the benefits of a small tax burden this generation has undertaken. We really do live in a remarkable county, don't we?

 

A SPECIAL PLACE

by Bill and Flora Haluzak

Taylor Mountain holds a special place in our hearts. It's only about 10 minutes from our house. We have explored every trail as well as many cow paths. We figured that if someone was going to trash, illegally camp, grow marijuana, trespass, etc. on "our" mountain we wouldn't find evidence on the main trails. So off we went.....

We have favorite cow trails that we have named. Meadow Trail and Hounds-tongue Trails parallel each other on the north-ish side. We've hiked Howard's Trail over near the landslide area. Lower Cow Paddy Trail gives us access to the south part of the mountain. And more. We have bushwhacked, explored, mucked, gawked and tasted (miner's lettuce & blackberries) Taylor Mountain in all seasons. The glorious flowers of spring are an exquisite delight, the vistas an emotional "high", dancing brooks giggle over the stony stream beds bring smiles, shady hidden glens sprout springs with ferns, monkey flower and more. Even the poison oak has a beauty of its own, a brilliant shiny green in spring, a softer dusty green in summer and bright, orange and red in the fall.

We have seen birds galore, to the delight of Bill who is a budding birder. Twice we have seen coyotes. We have gathered a tick or two on our clothing, seen western fence lizards, watched rabbits nibbling on grass, and cows watching us. Once in a while we would even run into the 2 legged animals with big grins and tales to tell of their own. But, mostly we have had the place to ourselves, to relish in our own quiet explorations.

Once we were hiking just south of the pond and could see a rain squall off to the north west. I knew it was coming our way, Bill scoffed, saying it will pass to the north of us. I dug out my poncho and pulled it on, Bill just smiled at me. As the squall came at us Bill scrambled with his pack to access his poncho. We scrambled up hill to a clump of densely leafed live oak trees and sat, quietly, side by side on a big mossy rock to experience Taylor Mountain in the rain.

We haven't hiked there since we got our dog and cannot take her to "our" mountain, but, we have experienced Taylor Mountain in every way, and it is stuck in our hearts forever.

 

TAYLOR MOUNTAIN

by Kay Clegg

Taylor Mountain remained pretty static in my day. As far as I knew it was leased to dairy cow grazing. As children my mother took us up the mountain to play cowboys and Indians at "the rocks" while she plunked herself down on a gopher pile strewn sunny opposite hillside to comb the gopher tailings for clam shells and arrowheads we called "Indian artifacts". On the way back to "the farm" which was the 15 acre parcel just to the west of the open Space preserve, we would check out the manmade cement cow troughs for poly wogs or roll down the grassy slopes or gather smooth round buckeye seeds. In later years we used the place for mushroom hunting and a place to launch model gliders my father built for fun.

We never went past the cattleguard and the "no trespassing" sign at the end of the road where Mrs. Weaver and hr caretaker were likely to be encountered. The "T".in Zana T. Weaver stood for Taylor.

I did hear that early Geographic Survey maps indicated an old coal mine was on Taylor Mountain but our early years perusals didn't include venturing the east side of the property we knew as the Dr. Frances property. And later it was the Haas-Russell place. The first time I ever set food in Mrs. Weaver's house was when the Haas-Russell caretaker and his wife lived there. The kept their shire horses on my property but their house had been the bath house for the hotel whose manicured lawn and palm trees were still evident into the nineteen seventies as was of course the gazebo for the spring water that supported the old hotel. From the Press Democrat article you can deduce that in this case "old" dates back to the horse and buggy days of the 1880's when the water from the springs made it a destination vacation spot.

I always look at old acreage in terms of the things man has put up. Old barns and dwellings and spring houses. That is another thing about this area. The abundance of water coming off that hillside. Springs all over the place I thought. A contemporary of mine who was raised nearby remembers remnants of wood cutters' shacks to be found on the mountain and we did find an old ax head. And there were split rail fences and Portugee gates and remnants of dumps on the edge of the creek. All things to capture the imagination.

But of course the main thing even sixty years ago was how far away from city life you seemed when roaming over the hillsides imagining a time when only Native Americans and wildlife roamed the Mountain. That sense is still possible in the preserve today.

In my day, the people who lived around here had been here a long time. Descendants whose ancestors had homesteaded here were still residents. So there were stories of bootlegging, prostitution, and elicit burials all of which from what I observed, could well have taken place. And salmon was supposed to have spawned up Colgan Creek and then there was the year of the snow when kids [who now would be in their mid seventies] cut school and came out to try their hand at tobogganing.

And there was the sound of ATV's gong up the way to gather cows for morning and evening milking. Something like 150 cows went through a tiny cement block milking shed on land now occupied by the children's village. And up would back this huge "got milk" sized tanker to pump the milk and take it away.

I'm not overly observant about nature and how it may have changed over the years but there's good moon gazing and star gazing on Taylor and I've observed a snake flying through the treetops on the talons of some sort of raptor. You never know. Wouldn't Mrs. Weaver, for instance, have been surprised to know that one of the subsequent tenants of her house had set up an observation honeybee hive right in her living room. A glass window through which the doings of a beehive were carefully scrutinized. And the grounds where the hotel stood were rented for weddings at one time. Like I said. You never know.

 

A NEW LOVE

by Cindy Duim

I first arrived in Northern California to start in a new job, teaching at Sonoma Academy, in the fall of 2006. We were then at the Wells Fargo Center, teaching in rented space. From the beginning, however, there was talk of our permanent campus at the base of Taylor Mountain. So I went out to a volunteer training session for Taylor Mountain. I met lots of great people and began to learn about this county full of vibrant and active people. Once a month I began to patrol, learning about the mountain, and the cows, the endlessly changing vistas, and the weather changes of Taylor Mountain.

As time passed, I spent lots of time on Landpaths hikes and eventually got to be "sweep" on some outings. My life expanded and enriched along with my views of this mountain. As I looked down from path I could see my new school campus grow from old cow pastures. With pride I pointed out the new buildings to all who were on the mountain with me.

One day as sweep on a Taylor Mountain hike, I met a photographer who kept getting behind the group in his desire to take the perfect photos of our day. He was a very nice man, Patrick Kincaid, and we became friends. (He does take marvelous photos and has shared many with all of us on the Pandpath's site.)

Plans for Taylor Mountain soon began to be discussed publically and Sonoma Academy moved into its new home. I now sit in my amazing classroom gazing at the mountain every day. It brings a smile to my face for it enriches my life each time I hike its slopes. And more, it brought me love. My friend, Patrick Kincaid, and I have just become engaged and plan to spend the rest of our lives together. Our life together started on the slopes of a very special place, Taylor Mountain.

 

TAYLOR MOUNTAIN WAS MY PLAYGROUND

by Yvonne Michie Horn

In spring, the view from the "first rise of Taylor Mountain," as my mother always described where we lived, was a froth of prune trees in bloom. My father grew prunes, as did my grandfather who owned property adjoining ours, land that now borders Taylor Mountain Open Space.

Taylor Mountain was my playground. With my older sister, Corrine, and her friend, Jean Henderson, who lived across the fields on a hillside that now overlooks Sonoma Academy, we covered every inch of Taylor Mountain. We'd cut across our prune dry yard, climb through the barbed-wire fence into my grandfather's dry yard - always stopping to look into the depths of the wire-enclosed and roofed spring on the dry yard's far side - and clamber through a second barbed-wire fence that marked the edge of my grandparent's property.

More often than not we were on collecting missions - butterfly nets in hand, collecting jars at the ready - keeping our eyes open for any insects, amphibians, skeletal remains we might come across. We considered ourselves great naturalists, packing home whatever might be found to our laboratory/museum set up in a corner of our barn.

Other days we'd ride our bikes to the end of Kawana Springs Road - as the entire road from Santa Rosa Avenue to the road's end was then called (and still should be!) into what was once the turn-of-the-century White Sulphur Springs Kawana Springs Resort. The resort's popularity came to an end when the 1906 earthquake shut off the mineral springs, although my father told tales of nefarious goings on during Prohibition years. We'd knock on the door of the remodeled bathhouse, where lived Mrs. Weaver, daughter of Samuel Taylor who founded the resort, to ask permission to wander about the property. A magical place it was, with well-tended gardens, building ruins, and an ornate gazebo in which we'd lift covers off the benches to smell the mineral water underneath and wonder why anyone would ever drink such awful stuff.

Most importantly, the resort at the end of the road gave us other ways of accessing Taylor Mountain. Either way, we wandered freely; always avoiding grazing bulls, to investigate shady creeks, open fields and occasionally hiking all the way to its oak-capped top.

Later, my much younger brother, Barry, also explored Taylor Mountain, often camping out overnight in his Boy Scout tent and always taking his bagpipes along. A haunting sound it was, floating down from the mountain - especially so, since our grandparents had emigrated from Scotland.

Later still, my own three children wandered about Taylor Mountain, with son Jonathon, even as a little tyke, having the uncanny ability to find Indian arrowheads, a new supply for his collection revealed after every heavy rainfall. It was Jon, out on forays with his cousin Jeff, who identified two Indian campgrounds - grinding stones, mounds of shells and, yes, arrowheads - on the lower reaches of Taylor Mountain. Today, Jon credits his forays on Taylor Mountain as the spark that ignited his desire to become the archaeologist he is today.

As the years went on, my children brought their children to "the first rise of Taylor Mountain." We hiked the mountain together - through the now abandoned prune dry yards, over the barbed-wire fences and up to its oak-capped topped. From my grandparents to my grandchildren - five generations enjoying a love affair with the mountain. Open Space District it may be, but to us it will forever be ours.