Salt Point State Park PDF Download

In 1980 and 1981, the Cultural Resource Management Unit of the Department of Parks and Recreation undertook investigations of the cultural resources of the area northwest of Gerstle Cove. The research was part of the Department's planning for construction of a parking lot, fish cleaning station, and shower facility on a recorded Native American habitation site. Concern for the archeological, historical, and ethnographical resources of the affected area, and of the entire park unit, generated a multi-disciplinary study of those resources by state archeologists, a state historian, and a Native American consultant. Historical research began with review of earlier accounts of the history of Salt Point State Park. The present report elaborates on some topics introduced in the earlier works, without referring to others (e.g., shipwrecks). This report also expands coverage to the entire region of the north Sonoma coast. Salt Point and Fisk's Mill (both now included within Salt Point State Park) were not isolated, independent settlements, but were units of a larger north coast community that included the other coastal shipping points of Fort Ross, Timber Cove, and Stewart's Point, and the ridge settlements of Plantation and Seaview (Henry's Hotel). The people of the community were bound by ties of social, economic, and commercial interdependence that must be explained in any history of Salt Point State Park. An expanded history of the area should also be useful to the Department in case of future land acquisition. Although an arbitrary cut-off date, 1890 is a convenient stopping place for this report, since it is well past the most active period of Salt Point's history -- the years between 1853 and 1876 when the quarry and mills were active.--Paraphrased from Introduction.