Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

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Title: Mount Shasta - A Question of Power Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection # of Pages: 4 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-09-03 15:08:55 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 03:38:07 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 03:38:07

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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MICHELLE ALVAREZ ount Shasta is still making headlines in northeastern California. The debate continues between native people who honor her as a sacred being, and those who want to develop her slopes for economic gain. This is not a new battle, it has been going on tor decades, and the local proponents of development have once again brought in state 3 A _fter the flood ‘people found that all fires were put out all-over the world: aia: Nothing could be cooked. After a while people began to be troubled about = it, so’they sent Owl to Mount Shasta to look all over the world and see ifhe could find any trace of fire... “4 Owl went, and reached the top at last, very tired, and wet with tp ml < a perspiration. He looked all about, and then he looked west twice. 3 “ay There he saw smoke coming from a house. He came back to the people . and told them he had seen fire in the west. Mount Shasta. A Question of Power officials to take their voice to the federal government. I think that the recent developments are best understood in their historical contexts, so I would like to first go back and show how this all came to be. At least four bills that would have created a national park at Mount Shasta have been defeated by Congress in the past. It t 2 Next morning all the people set out with cedar-bark torches, for the west, where the fire had been seen. Dog was along, and he carried some punk hidden in his ear. They arrived at the house where the fire was, late in the evening, and asked to be allowed to warm their hands. Dog held his ear down and the fire ignited the punk. Then, all the rest of the people thrust their torches into the fire, and ran out of the house. The people of the house were very angry, and they gaused rain to fall, so that it would extinguish the torches. Thus, when the people arrived home, their torches were allout. No one knew that Dog still had fire. They all sat around, looking very glum and troubled. Dog began to laugh, and said, “I am sweating.” Coyote got angry at this. “Hit him! Knock him out!” he said. Then Dog said to Fox, “Look in my ear.” When Fox did so, he saw the fire. He took out the punk and made fire from it. That is the way people got fire again. From “Dog Steals Fire,” as told by te Achumawi Indians of Shasta County, in Californian Indian Nights, compiled by Edward W. Gifford and Gwendoline Block, 1930, reprinted by University of Nevada Press in 1990. 4+ AW NEWS FROM NATIVE CALIFOR: IA wasn't until 1964 that the U.S. Forest Service was required by the Wilderness Act to inventory remaining roadless areas in the country in order to determine whether those areas should be included in the wilderness system. In 1978, the Forest Service recommended, in the RARE project (Roadless Area Review and Evaluation) that a 24,760-acre wilderness area be established on Mount Shasta’s upper elevations. After a dispute that brought Senator Alan Cranston to the region several times, a 38,200-acre State Wilderness Area was finally established in 1984. In 1957, the Shasta Ski Bowl was constructed on the mountain’s south slope. This area now lies within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the entire mountain area, except for the State Wilderness Area. Plagued by avalanche and “white out” conditions, in which wind and snow combine to make it virtually impossible to see, the Ski Bow] eventually closed in 1978. However, another smaller'ski area located nearby is still open for business. With the support of local private landowners and outside financiers, a man named Carl Martin proposed a new ski resort at the abandoned ski area in 1985. Martin, who grew up in Siskiyou County and used to ski at the Shasta Ski Bowl, has worked for the U.S. Forest Service and helped oversee the development of the Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort in the southern Sierra Nevada. Martin envisions a resort that would cost $20 million and cover 1,690 acres. It would include three lodges, seven chair lifts and 400 acres of