Historic Lake County park’s past lives on
Find both history and wildlife at Anderson Marsh State Historic Park
Anderson Marsh’s easy-to-hike trails are a treat for the senses almost any time of the year, but perhaps especially now, months into the COVID-19 pandemic, when we are all feeling confined to our own backyards. Here is a birdwatcher’s paradise and a wide expanse in which to explore five lovely trails, all while being surrounded by history.
Anderson Marsh State Historic Park is located in Lake County, on Highway 53 between Lower Lake and Clearlake. With more than 1,000 acres of wetlands, oak woodlands and grasslands, it’s set on the largest lake situated entirely in California and the oldest lake in North America, Clear Lake.
The attraction goes beyond the natural setting. There’s a multilayered history here, of both European settlement and Native American inhabitants. The Grigsbys, pioneers from Tennessee, settled here in the 1850s to raise livestock for 15 years, then the Andersons from Scotland purchased the land in the 1880s and raised six children on their dairy and farmed wheat and hay.
But long before the Grigsbys and the Andersons arrived, the Koi people, a Southeastern Pomo Indian tribe, lived here. If you search, you might see the signs they left — there are more than 30 documented Koi Native American archaeological sites here, some of which are over 14,000 years old. Time has erased much of the evidence, but it’s easy to imagine their once-prolific fish camps, tule huts and obsidian toolmaking sites scattered about, since the Koi lived here for so long.
The historic and prehistoric elements of the park are tied in with its diverse ecosystems, and the descendants of the people who once thrived here are making it known that the past is not forgotten. In the region of this ancient lake lived seven groups of Pomo Indians, the Indigenous people of California: the Pomos of the Southeastern or Koi of Anderson Marsh, Eastern, Northeastern, Northern, Central, Southern and Kashaya Pomo. Today work is well underway to ensure the culture and artifacts of the ancient times are protected.
Two recent documentaries illuminate the intricate steps taken to ensure this preservation in Lake County. “A Walk Through Time,” which won an Emmy in 2015, records efforts to establish the state historic park and illustrates the vast cultural heritage of the Koi people, who still live there today. Dino Beltran, who sits on the tribal council of the Koi Nation of Northern California, narrates the film, which was a collaboration between the Koi Indian Tribe, California State University at Chico, the California Department of Parks and Recreation and Anderson Marsh State Historic Park Interpretive Association.
A second documentary, “Saving the Sacred: A Community and Its Tribes Unite to Preserve Their Past,” premiered in Lake County in September of 2019. Actor Peter Coyote narrates the film, made with the department of Visual Anthropology at Chico State University. “Saving the Sacred” discusses the problem of illegal looting of cultural sites and the creation of archaeological crimes classes co-sponsored by the Koi Nation and hosted by the Habematolel Pomo Indians in Lake County to help alleviate that problem with protection for sacred sites and artifacts.
Short, easy walks
Taking a walk in the park at Anderson Marsh is never the same twice. You have a choice of trails to explore, and each is unique as well as relatively short, easy and mostly level. The 1.6-mile Marsh trail gives you an all-encompassing vista of the park’s landscape. It lopes through the park’s predominant habitat: freshwater marsh of tule prairie and sedge-rush prairie. In the winter months, you might even see a bald eagle on this trail.
This jewel of a park protects an ecologically valuable tule marsh, which plays a significant role in the lives of birds, fish and mammals that make use of it for breeding, nesting and living among the tules. The tules here at Anderson Marsh are what remains (about 8%) of Clear Lake’s once-immense expanse of tule reed habitat. Tule reeds were carefully managed by Anderson Marsh’s original inhabitants, the Pomo Indians. They put the reeds to a variety of uses including tule huts, mats, baskets, clothing and even tule-reed boats. Native Americans were mindful of leaving enough of the plant to ensure plenty for future use.
Another trail, the 1.2-mile Cache Creek trail, encompasses a riparian environment with a valley oak forest and cottonwood-willow woodland. An 800-foot-long bridge and boardwalk, constructed in part by the volunteer organization Telephone Pioneers of America, takes you along Cache Creek to the edge of Clear Lake. Here, where the soil meets water, a wealth of plants and animals live out their day-to-day dramas. This habitat is attractive to great blue herons, wood ducks, various hawks, warblers, American robins and several types of hummingbirds. The assorted fish and bird species prosper by feeding on the rich insect life. Migratory birds find their way here to pause on their long journeys south for the winter, and you can see a host of other wildlife here, such as blacktail deer, raccoons and pond turtles.
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