Why is the Northern Sierra less protected than the rest of the Sierra?
Lower in elevation and closer to the gold fields, the Northern Sierra drew more emigrants coming west to start a new life in California. In fact, private settlers started claiming mountain meadows and lakes in the Northern Sierra as early as the Gold Rush, and those lands have remained in private ownership ever since.
A decade or so later, right after the Civil War, Congress accelerated the transfer of public lands to private uses by making large land grants to the Transcontinental Railroad. The specifics are staggering: Congress gave the railroad every other square mile of land for twenty miles on either side of the tracks over Donner Summit. This created a checkerboard pattern of public-private ownership that has been problematic for land managers ever since.
Over the years, the railroad sold most of its land in the Sierra checkerboard to timber companies and individual buyers, vastly complicating the task of reassembling the public domain. As late as the 1970s, as shown on the above map, the Sierra checkerboard was so intact one could almost play chess on a map of the Tahoe National Forest!
It is important to note that these lands – all of these lands – are the homelands of the Washoe and Maidu people who lived here for centuries before immigrants started arriving and seizing their lands for private use. One of the important challenges before us today as a nation is to find meaningful ways to redress the unforgivable violence inflicted on Native people, including their forced removal from lands that had always been theirs. We hope that the return of Tásmam Kóyom, known by settlers as Humbug Valley, to the Mountain Maidu people in 2019, as well as the return of two properties in the Lake Almanor Basin in 2019 and 2020 are the first in a series of long overdue actions to return lands in the Northern Sierra to Native people.
Photo credit: Sierra Nevada Checkerboard Map © U.S. Forest Service | Transcontinental Railroad Worker © Donner Summit Historical Society | Washoe Woman With Seed Beater © Washoe Tribe