By Lisa Robinson
One of the beautiful panels that make up of the mural on the side of Johnnie’s Super, created by artist Yeshe Jackson, is of the Sempervirens Falls. There is an important link between the two locations.
Sempervirens Falls is so named for the camp that the Sempervirens Club used in their early trips to the Big Basin. The camp was at the base of slippery rock on the Sequoia Trail.
The Sempervirens club was formed on May 15, 1900 by a group of eight preservationists; six men and two women.
San Jose lawyer William W. Richards described the party as consisting of himself [and his dog King Richards], Mrs. Carrie Stephens Walters and Mrs. Louise Jones both of the San Jose Woman’s Club, artist/photographer Andrew Putnam Hill representing the San Jose Board of Trade along with Roley Kooser. Also accompanying them was Charles Reed from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. They were met at the Boulder Creek depot by John Coope and John Packard from the Santa Cruz Board of Trade.
Lumber baron Henry Lewis Middleton was a gracious host to the party. He was often referred to as the Mayor of Boulder Creek. He also owned the Middleton Store where Boulder Creek Pizza and Pub is today and the Commercial Hotel where Johnnies Super now stands.
Middleton recognized the importance of his first growth redwood holdings in the Big Basin and it was the state purchase of his land that resulted in California’s first Redwood State Park in 1902. Middleton entertained dignitaries at the hotel and on his Big Basin holding in order to promote the formation of the park. They camped close to the Sempervirens Falls at the foot of Slippery Rock on the Sequoia Trail. A plaque, which was dedicated in September 1968, commemorating the event is located at the spot on the trail [see image].
Sequoia Trail was formerly known as Rodgers Trail after Charles Campbell Rodgers, founder of the Mountain Echo newspaper which was published in Boulder Creek. In 1877, he had an encounter with a mother grizzly and her two cubs while living on his homestead at the source of Boulder Creek at Bull’s Spring (also known as Bull Springs). Bull’s Spring is close to Slippery Rock.
Charles had not yet built his cabin on the land and so slept on the ground under the stars. Around sunrise one morning he awoke to find a large female grizzly eating his discarded bacon rinds just a few feet from the end of his bed, with two cubs a little further away. Rodgers and the bear looked at each other for a brief time – that seemed like an eternity to the former. He then sprung to his feet and without stopping to dress he “clasped the nearest tan-oak in a loving embrace” and made a desperate attempt to climb it. Fortunately, for Rodgers, the bear gave a disgruntled growl and sidled slowly off into the nearby brush.
That very same day Rodgers constructed a scaffold, in a “bunch of redwoods” well up from the ground, and used it to sleep on until he had completed his cabin. He bored holes in a redwood into which he drove wooden pins so as to make a ladder up which he could climb to the scaffold high in the tree.
Slippery Rock is so named because it is slippery. Water flows over and through the rock. There are many geologic hollows in the sandstone created by the water flow. There are also clusters of bedrock mortars used by the native peoples to grind acorns. An interpretive panel close by explains their significance. The area used to have many more tanoaks than today, these stands were decimated by the tanbark industry.
Please respect the California State Parks physical/social distancing requirement of six feet or more when out hiking during the COVID-19 pandemic and note that Big Basin Redwoods State Park is temporarily closed to the public. .