Gulching

Gulches—deep, narrow ravines created by rainfall during the winter storms—provide a crude, natural pathway up and down the steep hillsides of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The term “gulching,” in reference to the transport of lumber via the gulches, seems to be a curiously Santa Cruz County term. The first references to the term gulching in the Santa Cruz Sentinel are found around 1870 when Mark McClennan describes a contract between himself and George and Henry Francis to gulch “powder wood” on the Zayante Creek.

Often the wood that was gulched was fallen timber that would otherwise become fuel for forest fires. It was collected in the late summer or early fall when the wood was drier and hence lighter. This gulched timber was generally sold for stove wood.

In 1898, a fire raged around Boulder Creek. So close were the flames that they threatened the schoolhouse and ignited the brush in the play-ground. The logging and gulching roads skirting the town helped to save it from destruction. Back fires were set with the gulching roads acting as fire breaks. The back fires met the approaching flames and with the help of a heavy fog and little wind the fires burned themselves out by the following morning.

Pictured here is a team of mules ready for gulching. They are wearing wooden sawbuck pack saddle trees on their backs with a two iron brackets slung over them, one on each side, to which the gathered split stuff is attached.

Mules, the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse, with their sure-footedness, were better suited to working on the steep slopes than horses. Males are called horse mules and females are called mare mules. In 1884, the Olive and Foster lumber company boasted four-, six-, and eight-horse [mule] teams gulching and hauling lumber to Santa Cruz. In 1895, Winfield Scott Rogers, editor of the Mountain Echo, operated a team of 13 pack mules and 25 men stripping tan oak bark and gulching it out of the Big Basin. The bark was destined for the tanneries of which there were then three: Kirby, Boston & Jones, and the Kron & Sons Tanneries. He gulched 825 cords of tan oak bark for which he was paid $8.50 per cord.

It could be dangerous work. Animals were lost as they fell to their death down the steep ravines. 

Santa Cruz Sentinel, August 17, 1896:

Wm. McKean, while gulching in the Little Basin, lost a valuable horse. It fell over the grade and was killed.

The Hihn Co. was gulching at Gold Gulch when a mule slipped away from the rest of the pack-train carrying half a cord of pine wood. It managed to safely cross a high railroad trestle. The Sentinel reported: “Had the exaggerated Belgian hare toppled over the edge, he would, at least, have had time to say his prayers before striking the bottom, as the trestle is 100 feet in height.”