Sylvia McLaughlin, Kay Kerr and Esther Gulick
In January 1848, James W. Marshall discovered gold in Colona, California, at Sutter’s Mill. Soon people headed to the area to join in the search for riches. Called the forty-niners, they came by land and sea, about 300,000 in all. Journeying from the east by land involved putting up with the brutal cold of winter – thirty or forty below zero and colder – and scorching heat of summer, where it may have been one hundred degrees in the shade and 120 in the blazing sun. The gold seekers had to endure the dry desert and the rain, which soon turned everything to mud, as well as bears, wolves, buffalo herds and pesky mosquitoes. Saying it was a challenge was a huge understatement.
Arriving in California by sea meant either going around Cape Horn or saving a few miles by crossing Panama. There was still some concern with cold temperatures – for a while – but most of the other problems had to do with the heat gold seekers faced, as well as annoying creatures, especially the bugs, snakes and scorpions. I’m not sure which option was the better one in reaching the west coast of California, by land or by sea
They came from far and near: Hawaii and Latin America as well as the states. The venture lasted until 1855. In today’s evaluation, what was recovered totaled in the tens of billions of dollars, leading to the fabulous wealth of a few people. Most weren’t so fortunate, returning home with little if anything to show for their efforts. Opportunists may have made the most money. These were the leeches that overcharged the miners for basic necessities.
Because of the gold rush, within a few years the city of San Francisco expanded from 200 residents to 36,000. California became a state in 1850. Ranching grew throughout the state, as did farming. When the search for gold began, there was no law for staking a claim. There may have been something based on the work of the Founding Fathers, but it seemed as though not many were being followed. San Francisco was a town of brothels, saloons and gambling halls. Not only were guns allowed, they were a necessity. This was the Wild West.
The California of the mid 1850s wasn’t very kind to the environment or Native Americans. The latter were forced to move, with about 100,000 dieing in the process. In the twenty-year period starting with the discovery of gold, 4,500 were murdered. Bodies of water were ravaged because of the rush for riches. Mining caused great environmental harm to rivers and lakes.
Even with the beginning of the twentieth century, the bleeding of the city of San Francisco didn’t stop. Industry and technology does that to the land. Buildings soared to the sky and more followed. In the early 1960s, San Francisco Bay was used as a dumping ground for garbage, becoming a landfill. Because of this the bay was shrinking and stinking, emitting some very unpleasant aromas. The filling of the bay continued. One woman agreed that doing so was a great idea since the stench there was unbearable. This lack of concern for recycling, animals, sea life and the people in the area was a threat to the life of the city. Fortunately there were some people who were concerned.
On March 29, 1911, Esther Kaufmann was born in Oakland, California. She grew up in Fresno and in 1932, obtained a degree in economics from the University of California (UC) at Berkeley. Two years later she married Charles A. Gulick, who was an economics professor at UC. Esther drove a Navy bus on Treasure Island during the Second World War. She was a do-gooder who had great concern for the earth, even though many people thought she was an impractical idealist.
Catherine Kay Spalding, was born on March 22, 1911. A graduate of Stanford, Kay too was an environmentalist. She met Clark Kerr at a peace conference in 1934 that may have witnessed commies taking over the proceedings. Sitting on the stage next to him, she handed him a note asking if he was a communist. He replied that he wasn’t and she wrote back, nor am I. On Christmas Day they wed. Clark became a professor of industrial relations at UC at Berkeley in 1945. In 1952, he became the university’s first chancellor and six years later, its twelfth president.
Born in 1916, Sylvia McLaughlin spent her childhood in Denver, where she became a nature lover. She moved east to obtain a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College in 1939, and married Donald McLaughlin in 1948, settling in Berkeley on the other coast. Donald became the dean of Berkeley’s College of Mining and served on the Board of Regents for sixteen years at UC. Sylvia, Kay and Esther were housewives and idealist friends who witnessed the bay becoming a vast dump and knew that action had to be undertaken.
Not knowing where to start, the concerned San Francisco trio realized they had to stop the growth of Berkeley, which had plans for doubling in size. Something had to be done about the landfill concept for the bay as well. It may have seemed that they were just powerless environmentalists, but they each had husbands at UC who could help. In 1961, the San Francisco trio founded the Save San Francisco Bay Foundation, which is now known as Save the Bay. Charging one dollar for membership – cookies and milk came with that buck – they held meetings and faced some challenges, but their efforts resulted in the very first coast management agency in the world. Who said a few individuals couldn’t effect change? You might say that they had powerful help, but the three of them still had to take the initiative. Save the Bay began the environmental movement in the United States and is also a great example of using what resources you have and working together.
Kay was a friend of Senator Eugene McAteer, who had a great deal of power, and in 1964, she contacted him about protecting the bay. That same year the San Francisco Bay Conservation Study Commission was created to look into the issues, of which McAteer was chairman. Hearings were held and the press covered the matter. DJ Don Sherwood of KSFO had a huge following and he encouraged his audience to write their representatives. The people became involved and later a bill was proposed for the creation of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC). It would have the responsibility of coming up with a plan for the bay as well as being able to issue permits for all filling of the bay. The result was passage of the McAteer-Petris Act in June 1965. In 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan made the BCDC a permanent agency. The BCDC was established before the California Coastal Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency and now could regulate dumping into the bay.
Esther, Kay and Sylvia were instrumental in saving San Francisco Bay. Had they not done so, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated that by 2020, with 250 million tons of raw sewage regularly being dumped each year into the bay, it would be turned into a mere shipping channel. As it was ninety percent of the wetlands had been lost and in the mid 1960s, the bay encompassed 548 square miles, down from 787 square miles of a century before. It was a huge accomplishment, with executive director David Lewis proclaiming Save the Bay as the model for all the coastal protection agencies in this country and around the world. Thanks to the work of Sylvia’s group, shoreline access today is more than a 100 miles. In 1960, it was only six.
With these accomplishments, Silvia, Esther and Kay were just beginning. Because of the greed of governments and corporations, conservation efforts continue every day – just what the trio started and kept doing. Save the Bay and the BCDC have improved the economy in the region as well as the lives of the people and continues to do so. The health of the bay has improved along with more recreational activities. The organization began in the early 1960s and has kept going through all the decades that followed. It has been under the leadership of David Lewis since 1998. The group halted the paving of parts of the bay for runways at the San Francisco airport. It has taken on big corporations, including the American Chemistry Industry and Cargill, the latter on more than one occasion. Lewis testified before Congress on restoration of wetlands and ways to prevent oil spills. Save the Bay has been working for banning the use of plastic bags so they don’t wind up in the bay. They stopped the destruction of San Bruno Mountain, which would have become a landfill in San Mateo County. Without Save the Bay, there might not have been the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the Delta Stewardship Council and Earth Day.
Before 1960, grassroots organizations and environmental groups were around, but Save the Bay woke them up. They really got moving. Thanks to Sylvia, Esther and Kay, many new people became involved and new chapters came into existence. People came to respect the earth more with their rethinking, reducing, recycling and reusing. Community Supported Agriculture, rooftop gardens and Co-operatives are thriving, as is green building. People have become familiar with zero-sum living – citizens putting as much or more into the earth than they take out.
Whether it’s a local residence or a building for a business, construction and remediation can result in an edifice that utilizes much less energy than those in the past, resulting in helping to save the planet. A good example of this is the Bullitt Center in Seattle, which opened on Earth Day in 2013. Construction began in July 2011 on possibly the greenest commercial building on the planet. It cost $18 million and is said to have a lifespan of 250 years. It features net-zero energy construction, a geothermal heat system, composting toilets, a green roof, rainwater collection and natural lighting. The San Francisco trio would have been delighted and proud.
Save the Bay members and supporters number in the tens of thousands today. Volunteers keep the shoreline healthy, which McLaughlin describes as, a beautiful sight. I’m privileged to look out at it every day from my home half way up the hills. Their website is http://www.savesfbay.org.
Esther died on May 31, 1995 at the age of 84. On Friday, December 18, 2010, Kay died in El Cerrito at home with her family. She was 99. In a letter to the Board of Regents at UC, President Mark Yodof wrote:
Mrs. Kerr was an extraordinary woman, a devoted counselor and partner to her husband, Clark Kerr, and a dedicated environmentalist, who throughout her long life earned the deep respect and admiration of all who knew her or knew of her.
* McLaughlin Eastshore State Park, which stretches through five cities, including Berkeley, is named in Sylvia’s honor. Patricia Jones of East Shore Parks calls McLaughlin a force of nature. She has that very genteel, diplomatic, friendly exterior, but there are nerves of steel inside. When she met David Rockefeller, Sylvia recalled, he shook hands and said, ‘You won.’ I thought that was pretty nice. She and her friends had taken on the corporate giants who wanted to fill in the bay and were victorious. The Donald and Sylvia McLaughlin Natural Reserve can be found in Lake and Napa counties of California, encompassing over 7,000 acres. In 2006, the National Science Foundation gave the Reserve $65,000 for the building of a greenhouse in the UC reserve system.
* The 2009 documentary, Saving the Bay: The Story of San Francisco Bay traces the history of the bay back to the Ice Age and then discusses the industrial desecration of the land as well as the brave trio of women from the city by the bay. Presented by KQED, the four part series gives inspiration to what can be achieved when three people start out on a quest. As Susan Kusema pointed out: Self-reliance starts with yourself, by doing something for yourself and succeeding. Then your friend will come and ask you what you did and join you, and then another, and one day you have a movement.