The Native Daughters of the Golden West Petition to Save the Big Basin

Transcribed here is the Native Daughters of the Golden West's petition to save the Big Basin. It is an example of how early women’s groups—despite being unable to vote—successfully organized and petitioned to establish the foundations of the California State Parks system. The resultant public pressure culminated in legislative action and the purchase by the state of land owned, and held in "trust" while the state stalled, by lumber baron Henry Lewis Middleton in anticipation of California's first redwood state park.

The Journal of the Senate During the Thirty-Fourth Session of the Legislature of the State of California, 1901 (Sacramento: A. J. Johnson, Superintendent State Printing, 1901), 272:

In the Senate Monday January 28, 1901.

To the Honorable the Legislature of California:

Honorable Sirs: We, the Native Daughters of the Golden West, do most earnestly and respectfully invite your acceptance and favorable consideration of this petition relative to the preservation of the forests of California. As native daughters, both as an order, through our grand officers, and as individuals (as witness the signatures to our petition), we indorse the work of the Sempervirens Club, and implore your aid to secure the preservation, in the form of a Government park, of the wonderful primeval forest of coast redwood known as the "Big Basin," and its immediate environments, located in the Santa Cruz Mountains; a solid body of magnificent redwood--the oldest specimens of plant life known.

We call upon you, our worthy and trusted representatives, to give your effective aid to this patriotic project, either by appropriating sufficient money from the State Treasury to purchase the land outright, or by instituting condemnation proceedings on the ground of public utility; in brief, to set in motion the machinery of the law immediately to save these forests from destruction.

The welfare of our entire State depends upon the prosperity of each and every section. The "Big Basin" lies in the counties of Santa Cruz and San Mateo. Its destruction means the lessening of the rainfall of Central California, and the loss of the water supply of Santa Cruz, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties, and of the City of San Francisco.  This would be a public calamity. We pray you to avert it by saving to us, to our beloved California, and to the generations yet to come, this magnificent forest--the growth of many centuries.

For the honor of California, we are

Yours respectfully,

Ema Gett, Grand President; Genevieve Baker, Grand Vice-President; Laura J. Frakes, Grand Secretary; Dora Zmudowski, Grand Treasurer; Harriett Stoddard Lee, Grand Trustee; Mamie A. Ryan, Grand Trustee; Emma G. Foley, Grand Trustee; Stella A. H. Finkeldey, Grand Trustee; Mary J. Langford, Grand Trustee; and 1,000 members of the order.

Commercial Hotel, Boulder Creek, Gateway to the Big Basin

Below is the Commercial Hotel which was built in 1897 by Middleton. 

Middleton, who was often referred to as the Mayor of Boulder Creek, recognized the importance of his first growth redwood holdings in the Big Basin and it was here at the hotel and on his Big Basin holding where he lavishly entertained dignitaries to promote the formation of the park.

Mayor Middleton

Article from Aug 9, 1902 Evening Sentinel (Santa Cruz, California)

 

The hotel was renamed Big Basin Hotel in 1914.