Waiting for the Rain

Malibuites have watched storm clouds roll past all winter, bringing dramatic sunsets, but little measurable rain. This storm brought the first real rain of 2014. Photo © 2014 S. Guldimann

"California's very existence is premised on epic liberties taken with water..."

—Mark Reisner, Cadillac Desert

It rained last week. On Point Dume, we had a third of an inch. It’s not much, but it's enough to keep at least some seeds of hope alive. Back in January, I wrote a short article for the Malibu Surfside News on local drought history. Here’s a more in-depth look at the pattern of droughts and floods that has shaped the landscape of Malibu.

Until the recent rains in Northern California, the media had a field day with dire predictions that this will be the worst drought in California history, or at least the worst since the drought of 1977 or the dry spell that lasted from 1944-51. However, the historical record shows numerous severe drought periods in the 19th century, before “official” scientific records were kept. Drought impacted Southern California in 1863, 1871, 1877, and 1897, and those drought periods arguably changed the course of history in Malibu.

Malibu Rancho ranch hands brand cattle at Zuma in 1897, the year of a major Southern California drought that affected the Malibu Rancho and much of the West.

Frederick Hastings Rindge, who bought the entire Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit from the Keller family in 1892, provides a grim description of historic drought in his book Happy Days in Southern California, published in 1898:  

 “There was a dry time in 1863, another in 1877, and in 1897 there was a great drought. In November, 1863, there was a regular downpour, and it did not rain again until November, 1864 ; and in consequence, dead cattle covered the ground from Monterey to Southern California. Abel Stearns' losses in cattle were enormous. The year 1877 was very dry. In Santa Barbara County, hay was forty dollars a ton. I have heard men say, with a sigh, ‘It was the dry year of ’77 that broke me up. My sheep all died.’ Many a man grew gray that year, as he saw his living withering away.”

Raindrops from the first real rain of the year in Malibu collect on a yucca leaf. Even California's specialized, drought-adapted native plants are suffering from the extended lack of rain this year. Photo © 2014 S. Guldimann

The Report of the Agricultural Commissioner for the Year 1874 gives a less poetic but equally bleak account of the earlier 1871 drought:

“During the three years from 1868 to 1871, south of Monterey neither grass nor grain grew...Hundreds of farms were abandoned, and the stock-men were compelled to drive their cattle, horses, and sheep to the gulches of the mountains, not only for food, but for water. In February, 1870, not a blade of grass was to be seen over the extensive valley of the Santa Clara; and the broad plains of Los Angeles, covering over 1,000,000 acres of arable land, were nearly desolate, even to the borders of the streams...In March, 1871, the usual season when the crops should be luxuriant, not a blade of grass was to be seen over the great plains and through the valleys, which are richly covered after favorable rains. Hundreds of thousands of sheep, horses, and cattle were lost by starvation.”

Rindge also wrote of his own experiences with drought in 1897:

“Alas! Alas! The dry year is upon us. The very air seems oppressed and oppressing. The very air seems oppressed and oppressing. It is a battle to feel cheerful when Nature is sad. One's nervous system loses its elasticity, and it is hard to do vigorous work. Indeed, this may be the effect of the mind upon the body : the mind being burdened with distress, the body responds sympathetically. The sombre fields look sad and discouraged. The wild flowers are not "in tune," but lie late, sleeping silently in the seeds ; the poppy fields are silent and sad, though next year they will awake in their glory. The cows, with mournful pity, look upon their shrunken-sided calves ; the mothers eat even the leaves, but alas ! they make but little milk. The goats drop their young before time, in the foothills, for lack of nourishment to support their growth. Dejection is on every side. Even the good spirit of the blue jay seems lacking, under the relentless skies.

In this 'day of grief and desperate sorrow,' what shall we do but trust in God ? Our cattle and horses have death before them. The little lambs lie dead about the corral and on the hills, the ewes being milkless. To pay the pasturage on alfalfa farms would cost more than the stock is worth."

Rain from the recent storm system that brought a deluge to much of Northern and Central California failed to make landfall in the south, although there was rain out to sea off the coast of Malibu. Photo © 2014 S. Guldimann

Rindge gives an account of horrific loss of livestock:

 “Word came from Ventura today that a man up the valley had shot all his range horses rather than see them die, for he could not sell them. Another rancher, with a flock of seven thousand sheep, has found it necessary to kill two thousand young lambs, in order to save the lives of the mother sheep. They are taking horses to the soap-works, and selling them at two dollars and a half. The hide is worth a dollar and a half, the tail fifty cents, and the balance is valuable for soap and land dressing. Some cannot pay their interest, and the mortgage is foreclosed. Others, more prudent, rejoice that they had kept to the motto their parents taught them, ‘Out of debt, out of danger.’” 

“Happy and wise is the man who has settled by a water-course, who owns a never failing spring, or whose wind-mill is above real water-bearing ground. The streams never were so low. They sink before they reach the sea…”

Vegetation burned in the 2013 Spring Fire last year hasn't received enough rain yet to begin the process of recovery and regrowth. Photo © 2014 S. Guldimann

“The drought of 1898 was, if possible, more devastating in its effects than previous droughts except that of 1862-1864,” states an article entitled “California’s Cattle Range Industry: Decimation of the Herds, 1870-1912, published in the Journal of San Diego History in 1965. 

“Reports of county assessors indicate a reduction in number of cattle in the entire state from 487,742 in 1898 to 463,536 the next year,” the article states. “The president of the State Board of Agriculture, however, reported that actual losses were much greater than the assessor's reports revealed. A contemporary remarked that the drought of 1898 was ‘the means of crippling the cattle business greatly in California.’"

The 1877 drought reportedly drove the previous Malibu Rancho owner, Matthew Keller, to abandon plans to plant extensive vineyards and other crops. Keller bought the ranch in 1857 and spent the next 15 years fighting a legal battle for title to the land. He received the patent in 1872,  at the end of the devastating three-year drought.

 At his extensive farm acreage in Los Angeles, Keller experimented with cotton, castor beans, and citrus, in addition to raising grapes for his successful Rising Sun and Los Angeles Vineyard, which produced wine, sherry and brandy. Keller eventually planted a vineyard at Solstice Canyon, one of the few local canyons with reliable year-round water, but large-scale plans for Malibu never materialized and he leased most of the property to neighboring cattle and sheep ranchers for grazing range. Today, all that remains in Malibu of Keller's legacy is the Rising Sun Trail in Solstice Canyon, named for his 19th century vineyard.

Much of the livestock that grazed in Malibu belonged to ranchers on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains, including the areas that are now Newbury Park, Thousand Oaks and Westlake in the Conejo Valley. The 1877 drought decimated cattle and sheep population and left many ranchers bankrupt.

Egbert Starr Newbury purchased a portion of  the former Rancho El Conejo land grant in the early 1870s, but had to abandon his Newbury Park Ranch following the devastating 1877 drought. This is an archival photo of an old Newbury Park Ranch barn. While we have little information on the effect of drought on the Malibu Rancho in 1900s, accounts from Conejo Valley on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains, paint a grim picture of this period in local history.

 “Up until the drought years of 1876 and 1877, the Conejo [Valley] was covered in vegetation, feeding thousands of roaming sheep and livestock,” wrote Jeffrey Wayne Maulhardt in the introduction to his book Images of America: Conejo Valley. Maulhardt puts the pre-drought count at nearly 20,000 sheep. At the end of the drought period “a few thousand emaciated sheep worth 10 cents a head remained.”

The drought cost many Conejo Valley farmers their farms. Civil War veteran Egbert Starr Newbury, who homesteaded Newbury Park and built the first post office in the Conejo Valley, lost everything in the 1877 drought. He wasn’t alone. Howard Mills, one of the first land speculators in the area,  bought 20,000 acres in 1873, including  the 6000 acres that he named  Triunfo Ranch and that is now Westlake Village. The 1877 drought drove Mills to bankruptcy.

Mathew Keller died in 1881 and his family sold the entire Malibu Rancho to Rindge, who continued to run cattle, but as a hobby, not for a living. Later ranchers, including the Kincaid family in Trancas Canyon and the Roberts Ranch in Solstice Canyon also ran cattle, but on a more modest scale. Fire followed the 1897 drought in 1903, burning much of Malibu. The 1945-51 drought was followed by a catastrophic fire in 1956 that put an end to the last remnants of the Malibu ranch tradition. 

County water arrived throughout much of Malibu following World War II, bringing more intensive development, but the cycle of drought, and the wildfires that accompany it, still impact residents directly, and water remains a critical issue in the areas of Malibu that still depend on wells. Only a small fraction of Malibu's population would able to live in Malibu if the community depended on groundwater, and the current craze for vineyards combined with the lasting drought is reportedly already impacting areas of the Santa Monica Mountains where homeowners are increasingly finding themselves competing with viticulture for well water.

An aerial view of the eastern end of the 1956 fire, dated 1956-12-27, from the Los Angeles Examiner Negatives Collection at USC. The fire followed an extended period of drought from 1944-51. The 1978 fire took the same route to the sea and also followed a period of extreme drought.

The 2007 Corral Fire, sweeping down the canyon towards the sea on the same trajectory as the 1956 fire, above, and the 1978 fire. This photo was taken from Point Dume just before dawn on the first day of the fire. The white lights are homes, The red lights are the fire engines. Photo © 2014 S. Guldimann

This is an archival photo from the old Malibu Surfside News of Topanga Canyon during the floods of 1979-1980. The pattern of drought, fire and flood is familiar to anyone who has lived in Malibu for any length of time.

Predictions continue to indicate extended dry weather across Southern California this winter but longtime residents still recall that the 1977 drought was followed, first by the 25,000-acre 1978 Kanan Dume Fire and then by the floods of 1979-80 that damaged more than 100 homes, transformed dry creek beds into raging rivers, and buried a section of PCH under thousands of cubic feet of mud and rock.  It's a pattern that has repeated many times. In fact, the 1863 drought was preceded by the great flood of 1862, when it reportedly rained for 45 days in a row, flooding the entire West Coast, from the Columbia River in Oregon to Northern Mexico.

There's no surviving record of how the great flood of 1862 affected Malibu, but here's a charming litho of Sacramento, transformed into "a second Venice." The flood, also known as the Noachian Deluge, was no joke, it bankrupted the state. Almost the entire Central Valley was transformed into a temporary inland sea. In Southern California, the town of Ventura had to be abandoned, residents scrambled for high ground as the river rose and kept on rising. Los Angeles was hammered with 35 inches of rain. The L.A. River, reportedly clogged with debris that included entire houses and hundreds of drowned cows and sheep, turned much of the L.A. Basin into a vast, shallow lake. 

“No other city seems to excite such dark rapture,” wrote Mike Davis in The Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster, a 1998 chronicle of the numerous disasters, real and fictional, afflicting the Los Angeles area. The book includes Davis' infamous essay “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.” And yet, many who live here love this place fiercely and are willing to endure all of the extremes in exchange for a chance to experience what Frederick Hastings Rindge described as “very near terrestrial paradise,” even when that paradise is tempered by the extremes of flood, fire and drought.

"Old Growth," one of a series of paintings by the author inspired by California's turbulent,  disaster-prone—and often lunatic—history. Artwork © 2014 S. Guldimann

This was the summer when I came to know,

After long years,

My love for these brown hills,

And learned the peace

Their stony harshness brings,

And felt their beauty singing in my blood.

Now in October, warm and dusty-hazed,

“I wait serenely for the winter rains

To fill the parched and stony waterways,

Knowing that Spring will follow

In a blaze—

Green fire of grass,

Blue flame of lupin bloom,

And poppies burning on the bare hillsides.

—Madeleine Ruthven, 1934

Future Past

A Malibu family races to greet 2014 at sunset on Zuma Beach on the last day of the old year. © 2014 S. Guldimann

“I think Divination seems very woolly. A lot of guesswork, if you ask me.” 

—J.K. Rowling, Prisoner of Azkaban

What will 2014 bring Malibu? I’ve heard a lot of prognostication this week, ranging from the fate of the wildly unpopular development plans in the Civic Center area and at Trancas, to the upcoming city council election. The threat of wildfire continues to overshadow predictions for 2014. Some are expressing concerns that debris from the Japanese tsunami, including radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, will be impacting the coast this year, others say a crash in the sardine population will impact sea birds and marine mammals. But there are pleasant things, too: predictions that record numbers of gray whales will arrive this spring, and rumors of additional park acquisitions in the Santa Monica Mountains. However, the future inevitably takes one in unexpected directions, no matter how many tea leaves or crystal balls are consulted.

The fact that this community isn't named “Billowbay,” “Midocean,” “Happyland,” Hygenia Park,” “Puritan,” or “Zumaland” is a reminder of some of the near misses, the alternative futures, that Malibu has avoided.

Frederick Hastings Rindge, who purchased the entire Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit in 1892, gazed into the future with dreams of his own city. Equal parts poet, evangelist and real estate developer, Rindge called the process of inventing a “mental city” a “privilege peculiarly Californian,” and shared the list of heartfelt but truly dire names he dreamed up for Malibu. Here’s an excerpt from his 1898 book Happy Days in Southern California:

Did you ever, in your mind, build a town, or lay out a city site on land you owned? It is very interesting, — even if it should not come true. About the sitting-room table did your household ever consider that matter, and all agree that John should lead the Christian life of the place, and Douglas should be president of the bank, the best bank of course, and Ruth should teach the school, and every one should have a place ? Open sin would be kept out, and happiness would be found in ever so many places beside the dictionary; and lots would be worth so much, and so many at such a price would amount to — dear me, what a prodigious sum! What great good you could do with it! And then we discussed our city's name. What a task it was, to be sure; what merriment the various propositions caused! The business member of the group wished our city to be called Port Pasadena, Sunnyside, Summershore, Wonderland, Happyland, Safehaven, Glenhaven, Resthaven, Safeport, Seabright, Stillwater, Bestbay, Billowbay, Bluewavebay, or Stirling. " Take your choice," said he.

The poet wanted the name to be either Foothill Park, Mountainside Park or Canyonside Park, Runningbrook, Deerbrook, Seabrae or Braemar, Edgewood, Midocean, Contentment, Peacedale, Waverley, Serenity, Diadem, or Switzerland. I should have said we had two or three town-sites, in different localities ; hence the great variety of descriptive names. We had not decided which city we would build first, don't you see? The practical member said, " Oh, let us name it something that means something; let us call it Enterprise or Industry or Recreation." Hereupon the poet sighed. And he sighed again when the facetious member remarked, "Why don't you call it Sunshine or Seek-no-further, or best of all, Climate, and then you'll catch the Eastern crowd." To counteract the uncalled-for levity on the part of this last destroyer of sentiment the classical scholar then said, " Now to give it true dignity its cognomen should be Hygeia Park, Ozone, or Aristos." Then the member who had been studying Spanish upspoke and said, "It seems to me we should call it Gloriosa or Marina." The historian slowly said, "Would not history suggest the name Zumaland?" 

Cattle mill in corrals beneath a massive railroad trestle built as part of the Hueneme, Malibu and Port Los Angeles Railway, circa 1915. The railroad, one of many visions of Malibu that didn't come to pass, was never completed.

There was but one more to speak, and he was the student of truth. Said he, "Among so many it is hard to choose, but there are still some good ones left. Permit me to propose Christland, Palestine, Puritan, Archangel, Evangel, — and Hopehaven for my preference next to the first; since there is no hope for man save in Christ. Neither is there ultimate haven for man save in heaven. Thus the name Hopehaven stands for all that is dearest to mankind." 

If you have never laid out a town in your mind, begin now. You will never regret it. Even if the trolley never comes your way, you will say to yourself, "Well, how I did enjoy my mental city in anticipation; the realization could never have been so joyous, so it is all right that the plough still turns up my city's streets, and that those great, tall office buildings are still only castles in the air." By all means build a mental city. That is a privilege peculiarly Californian.”

After days of sun and Santa Ana winds, coastal fog returned during the first days of the new year, blanketing the coast and reminding residents that the weather, like the future, is difficult to predict. © 2014 S. Guldimann

In the end, the name Malibu, not Zumaland or any of Rindge’s other flights of fancy, stuck and became the name of the community.  The name, shortened from the title of the original Spanish land grant, is a Spanish version of a Chumash place name meaning “where the surf sounds.” 

Rindge wasn’t the only one with visions of what Malibu would become. In 1925, real estate promoter John Russell McCarthy, in his book “These Waiting Hills,” predicted:

 “Homes, of course, will rise here in the thousands. Many a peak, perhaps, will have its castle. Far back from every road, on crest, slope and canyon rim, homes will rise on green estates...Lawns will displace toyon and sumac. Cedar and pine and maple and pittosporum will send down tractable roots in appointed places. That mighty Australian family, the Eucalyptus, will bring forth their flowers nearly all the year round. Slopes that have known water only in the days of winter rains will find their thirst quenched.”

 “These changes the hand of man will effect in the Santa Monicas, but the essentials—height, outlook, sun and sea—will remain,” wrote McCarthy. “Wide slopes of chaparral will remain...gardens of sage will still invite bees. Deer will still feed...squirrel and coyote and hare will follow their ancient custom by day and night...Here in the midst of beauty old and new, people from all over the world will come to live, bringing with them the best thought and custom that their old communities provided. Is it altogether vain to think that, given such people and such a place, a new and better kind of community will arise?”

At that point, McCarthy’s prognostication takes wild flight:

 “The airplane will soon become common; may easily predominate within a few years.  Green landing fields will checker the summits. Hangers will hide under green vines and trees. Sedate business men will ride in five minutes from their hilltop homes to their city offices. Mother will take the kids for a spin before breakfast, out over Russell Valley and down by the sea at Malibu. The family blimp, even, will not be a stranger to these hills.” 

Later developers have dreamed of local lunacy that has included multiple marinas—one at the Malibu Lagoon, a second at Big Dume Cove; a super-highway; a nuclear power plant; multiple offshore oil rigs; and more recently, a giant, floating liquefied natural gas terminal.  People with a different vision of Malibu's future fought to make sure those things didn't happen. They wrote a vision statement for the city  that states: 

Malibu is a unique land and marine environment and residential community whose citizens have historically evidenced a commitment to sacrifice urban and suburban conveniences in order to protect that environment and lifestyle, and to preserve unaltered natural resources and rural characteristics. The people of Malibu are a responsible custodian of the area’s natural resources for present and future generations.

That fight continues.

I’m waiting for my personal dirigible, but the future could still turn out all right. We won’t know until we get there.

Happy 2014! May it bring happiness, peace and all good things.

One of the first sunsets of the new year sets the sky on fire. © 2014 S. Guldimann

Christmas in Malibu

 Wishing everyone, near and far, peace and joy at Christmas and throughout the New Year.

We have Santa Ana winds this Christmas Day, and the weather feels more like October than December. Whether you have snow or sun when you are reading this post, here are two written descriptions of Christmas in Malibu to celebrate the holiday.

Frederick Hastings Rindge, the man who owned the entire Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit in the late 19th century, wrote an account of Christmas at his Serra Retreat ranch house in his 1898 book Happy Days in Southern California:

It is Christmastide. The bearberry, our substitute for English holly, has been gathered in the hills, and the mantel is prettily trimmed, while a wreath of it hangs over the door. 

There are hurried footsteps in the morning, each hastening to be the first to bid "Merry Christmas" to others. There are interchanges of kind words and gifts, if the Christmas Eve tree has not done its duty the night before. There is the family worship and the singing of old Antioch and Hanover, those two old Christmas hymns so full of glory. Then there is the great Christmastide fire, in the broad and deep fireplace; a real Christmas fire, crackling and roaring in gladness as it offers its tribute of holiday cheer, around which we gather after a happy dinner off a home-fattened turkey, that had unconsciously been preparing himself for us during a fortnight, to keep company with the cranberries from Cape Cod. How proud a man is to dine off what he himself raises!

It has been a great day. There was the basket to fill and carry on horseback to the neighbor whose stores were scant. Then the dear flag of our beloved country to raise on its staff, and the boys saluted it with cheers and several tigers [sic] as it beautified the breeze which unfolded it. In the afternoon was a stroll, or boat-ride, or mountain climb, or agate search, or the delight of the gun.

Ah, Merry Christmas Day! Would that thy joy might be known the world around...

Members of the Rindge family—Frederick H. Rindge, Samuel Rindge, May Knight Rindge and little Rhoda Rindge pose for a photo during the kind of outing described in the quote, above. Patriarch Frederick Hastings Rindge is probably behind the camera. 

And here's an excerpt from writer and UCLA librarian Lawrence Clark Powell's book of Malibu essays, "Ocean in View,"  that describes Christmas in 1956, at Broad Beach:

Christmas Day was dry and clear. I ventured a shell-gathering walk at low tide. My naked body felt the sand like a whip, and at the fiercest, I had to brace myself to keep from being blown away.

Gulls were soaring and swooping, and cormorants rode the wind like jets, headed eastward to their feeding beds. A couple of the curlew-like birds known as marbled godwits took off ahead of me with foolish cries, their outspread wings changing their drab appearance while feeding to the black and white splendor which gives them their name. I took shelter behind a rock, directly behind the ruin halfway up the cliff of one of the "depots" on the Queen's railway. Still to be seen also were a couple of rails and redwood ties.

The wind was still savage when we went to bed at ten, the sky swept clear, aglitter with stars...

Broad Beach is considerably less broad than it was in Powell's day, but the marbled godwits, equipped with specialized beaks idea for spearing sand-dwelling invertebrates, are still seen along the shore at low tide, and are  regular winter residents at Zuma. © 2013 S. Guldimann

Santa Ana winds transform sand into a sort of ground fog at Little Dume on Christmas morning. By lunch time the winds had died down. The peace and tranquility of Powell's Christmas in 1956 was shattered by a destructive wildfire the next day. Malibu residents were out enjoying the beautiful weather today, but with the knowledge that it comes at the cost of heightened fire danger.    © 2013 S. Guldimann

Unlike Powell, I didn't see any cormorants on the wing today, but a host of double-crested cormorants and a few California brown pelicans were gathered on the rocks at Point Dume to weather the winds and prepare for a Christmas dinner of anchovies.   © 2013 S. Guldimann

A lone gull is blown across a windswept Point Dume sky against a backdrop of Downtown Los Angeles and the mountains beyond. Here's to blue skies and smooth sailing for everyone in 2014. © 2013 S. Guldimann