Diablo Watch Saving Thomas Home Ranch 145 Acre Gateway to Nortonville Canyon
Fall 2011 No. 52
Marsh Creek-V
Save Mount Diablo Protects a Volcanic Dome
Scott Hein
Mount Diablo continues to benefit from the recession and a Imagine what the biggest oaks at the Thomas “Home Ranch” buyer’s market. “Save Mount Diablo has just purchased 7.4 have witnessed over the past 200 years. The ranch is located acre ‘Marsh Creek-V’ for $125,000, our most recent purchase at the intersection of Kirker Pass and Nortonville Roads, just on Marsh Creek Road and crossed by Marsh Creek,” said Ron south of Pittsburg. Two hundred years ago the view down to Brown, SMD’s executive director. The property is located the waterfront included herds of pronghorn and tule elk and the east of Clayton and adjacent to the Marsh Creek Springs event occasional grizzly bear or Native American hunting them. As facility, just downstream Spanish missions expanded from our MC-II and – their influence, antelope IV properties. MC-V and elk were replaced by is especially rich in cattle and horses, then the biodiversity. Part of missions were succeeded the reason is that it’s by Mexican ranchos—but a volcanic dome with what would become the unusual geology. Thomas Ranch was left “We were able to alone up at the edge of the make a purchase deal at a Diablo foothills. A shortcut very low price and in near through the hills became record time,” said Brown. known as Kirker Pass then “This is the sixth 5 or 10 the gold rush started. In one acre parcel Save Mount 1849 account the landscape Diablo has acquired in the was “barren and desolate past year for $125,000 or enough to look upon, rising less.” in swells like the waves of the ocean, with Mount Marsh Creek Diablo towering far above While the Thomas Home Ranch, SMD’s latest acquisition, is being preserved for its At its simplest the strategic location, it includes a house built in the 1880s and a variety of historic structures. it, but without a house or property corner is crossed tent visible.” Coal was by Marsh Creek at the mouth of the Dark Canyon segment of discovered and a road constructed across the property, leading Marsh Creek Road. More importantly it is adjacent to a large from the boom bust town “New York of the Pacific” up to the box culvert where the creek crosses underneath the road, a key mining town of Nortonville. wildlife connection. One of a series of unusually steep knolls In 1869 the property was homesteaded by the Thomas near the northeast corner of Mount Diablo State Park, it’s one family, Welsh miners by way of Nortonville. Widow Margaret property away from two other SMD parcels and also rises to Thomas sold a strip of land for a railway up to the mines, another large property protected with a scenic easement. The dividing the ranch into two pieces. Then the county bought a property’s section of the creek is lined with mature sycamores, strip for a new road, north of Kirker Pass but named for it, and oaks and willows. It is habitat for the threatened California reddivided the property again. The growing family just wanted to legged frog and is also used by a wide array of wildlife. be left alone but the property was located too strategically at the All told, in the upper and middle stretches of Marsh Creek mouth of the canyon and the pass. “New York” became “Black (area upstream of Marsh Creek reservoir in Brentwood), SMD Diamond” then “Pittsburg.” Coal mining sputtered with fits and has recently protected more than a mile of creek in small parcels. starts and then sand mining took over. Meanwhile, Pittsburg (continued on page 6)
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