The Journal of 2020 Foresight

Reports from the Knowledge Labs about our recent findings, research topics, and interviews with lifestyle leaders who are creating their own futures.

How to stimulate your own powers of foresight. Consider the following thought provokers. Ask yourself, in these categories what are the brand new trends and forces? Which are the ones growing in importance? Which current forces are loosing their steam? Which have peaked or are reversing themselves? Which are the "wildcards" about to disrupt us in the future? POLITICAL AND TECHNICAL thought for food: Electronics, Materials, Energy, Fossil, Nuclear, Alternative, Other, Manufacturing (techniques), Agriculture, Machinery and Equipment, Distribution, Transportation (Urban, Mass, Personal, Surface, Sea, Subsurface, Space), Communication (Printed, Spoken, Interactive, Media), Computers (Information, Knowledge, Storage & Retrieval, Design, Network Resources), Post-Cold War, Third World, Conflict (Local, Regional, Global), Arms Limitation, Undeclared Wars, Terrorism, Nuclear Proliferation, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Governments (More/Less Power and Larger or Smaller Scale), Taxes, Isms: Nationalism, Regionalism, Protectionism, Populism, Cartels, Multinational Corporations, Balance of Trade, Third Party Payments, Regulations (OSHA, etc.) Environmental Impact, U.S. Prestige Abroad. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC Food for thought: Labor Movements, Unemployment / Employment Cycles, Recession, Employment Patterns, Work Hours / Schedules, Fringe Benefits, Management Approaches, Accounting Policies, Productivity, Energy Costs, Balance of Payments, Inflation, Taxes, Rates of Real Growth, Distribution of Wealth, Capital Availability and Costs, Reliability of Forecasts, Raw Materials, Availability and Costs, Global versus National Economy, Market versus Planned Economies, Generations: Y, X, Boomers, Elderly, Urban vs. Rural Lifestyles, Affluent vs. Poor, Neighborhoods and Communities, Planned or Organic Growth. Got Knowledge?

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Thursday, March 17, 2005

McCoy’s Model-A-Ford-Rope-Tow, Fools and Compassionate Conservationists

Chapter Three: The Outpost

By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs

Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories

“In describing the world in which Clark was born and raised, Jones presents us with a rich and often strange glimpse of "America's First West," as he calls it. Native Americans, for example, came to know when white settlers were approaching their tribal grounds by the appearance of what they called "white man's fly" — that is, the honeybees that were driven westward as the newcomers cleared the old-growth forests to make room for farms and towns. ‘The honeybees were thought to keep about a hundred miles in advance of white migration all the way across North America,’ explains Jones.”

Jonathan Kirsch

MAMMOTH MOUNTAIN, California. He doesn’t suffer fools well. At least that’s what they told me the first time I spent any time with him in this area. Looking back now, he had plenty of opportunities not to suffer me – I mistook the region as part of the Rocky Mountains, instead of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. As hard as it was to pull ourselves away from the exotic beauty of Mono Lake, we needed to complete our rendezvous with Trailblazer.

Journal of 2020 Foresight: If you haven’t been to the Mammoth Lakes resort area for some time, you might not recognize it. While the mountain, itself, hasn’t changed, the town and the new developments have changed since Dave McCoy’s founding days. It’s enough to disorient someone who navigates by familiar landmarks.

Pathfinder: Remember Twain’s tale about trailing Whiteman in the night to discover the Lost Cement Mine?

Explorer: Of course.

Pathfinder: Well, four other prospectors hunting for the same mine “organized the Lakes Mining District on Mineral Hill near Lake Mary in 1877. The following year, General George Dodge of Civil War and Union Pacific fame bought the group of claims and organized the Mammoth Mining Co.”

J2020F: Did they strike it rich?

Pathfinder: Rumors about a strike – the largest outside of Virginia City, known for the Comstock Lode – and made famous years later by Mark Twain – drew a stampede of miners in 1877.

Eagle: I see here, according to Mammoth Properties Guest Services Directory. for two decades gold and silver fever fueled get rich dreams as silver discoveries at Aurora and Bodie led to ever more prospecting.

Pathfinder: The hype of working the “largest bonanza outside of Virginia City” sparked a two-year long gold rush stampede of roughly 2500 miners to Mammoth.

Eagle: The directory says that by 1880 the mines were shut down when reality failed to live up to the propaganda.

Explorer: Look, it says two decades later Old Mammoth Village formed to accommodate the pioneers drawn to the area to enjoy fishing, hunting, photography, camping, hiking, and horseback riding.

J2020F: That’s the story that repeated itself across the West. Most miners remained flat broke while the real money flowed to the merchants, tools and transportation providers. Even Twain gave up to write and soak up the scenic wonders on vacations in his spare time.

Pathfinder: After a highway connected Mammoth to nearby Bishop and ultimately Los Angeles, summer vacationers began to make room for winter ski enthusiasts.

Eagle: Here it says that in the 1930s the first ski lift was built at McGee Mountain near Highway 395. While other areas outside of Independence and Bridgeport sported rope tows as well, the McGee Mountain was the most popular.

Explorer: Isn’t that when Dave McCoy comes into the picture?

Pathfinder: Yeah. He’s the local “modern hero” in the town and on the mountain at Mammoth.

Eagle: How so?

Explorer: He started out as a snow surveyor for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, helped build the first portable rope tow as a member of the Eastern Sierra Ski Club.

Eagle: Oh yeah, Here in the Directory, it says at age 22 Dave was California State Champion for ski racing. In 1938 he purchased the right to operate McGee Mountain and purchased the Ski Club’s lifts for under $100.

Pathfinder: But, it was in the winter of 1941 that McCoy got the rights to take his portable rope tow to where the snow was best – Mammoth Mountain.

Eagle: Portable rope tow?

Pathfinder: He parked his Model A Ford on a slope where snow fell early and hard on Mammoth Mountain, jacked up the rear and tied one end of a rope to the back wheel and the other to a tree.

Explorer: He charged 50 cents a person for what became the mountain's first rope tow.

Eagle: There were only half a dozen people residing in Mammoth when McCoy bought a snowplow to allow year-round access. It says that right after World War II, he established the first permanent rope tow on Mammoth and began building out the ski destination with surplus snow equipment.

Pathfinder: Right. And in 1947 the Main Lodge was built primarily as a small warming hut. After building the first chairlift in 1955 McCoy completed the foundation for a ski area that grew beyond his wildest imagination. He purchased nearby June Mountain in 1986.

Eagle: I’ve got to believe that Mammoth didn’t mushroom into what it is today overnight.

Pathfinder. That’s right. Over the ensuing decades, McCoy and his staff launched the area's first water district, volunteer fire department, regional hospital, high school and college.

Explorer: Now Mammoth combines the summer Mountain Bike park with the winter recreation area for a year – round resort. There are more than 50 miles of mountain bike trails all over the mountain.

J2020F: Talking about mountain trails, knowing Trailblazer, I’m surprised we’re not meeting at Devil’s Postpile. Where did he want us to find him?

Eagle: He sent us a link and told us to look on the left hand corner of either the interactive or static trail map. What’s it called again?

Explorer: Your lodge, next to Juniper Springs Properties.

Eagle: Your lodge?

Explorer: Well your son’s. Little Eagle Lodge at the bottom of Eagle Express run. He says to look for him waving between the two webcams in the left hand corner on the interactive map.

J2020F: As predicted, the first words out of his mouth when we found him at the Starbucks-like counter in Little Eagle Lodge, “Where have you been?”

Pathfinder: Fine, thank you. How are you?

Trailblazer: No, I meant you were forced to take a few detours just to get this far after you left Sacramento.

Explorer: Pathfinder joined us in Bass Lake, outside of Oakhurst and North Fork on the outskirts of Yosemite.

Eagle: We tried to cut across the mountains over Tioga Pass, but that closed before we could get out of the park. So, we back tracked west and north up 49 and made it barely through Sonora Pass, before they closed that route.

Trailblazer: I thought you went to Carson City. Wasn’t that your plan? And, then straight down 395 to Mammoth?

J2020F: Don’t even go there! We got as far as Lake Tahoe, but reversed ourselves back to Placerville to pick up that hitchhiker.

Pathfinder: Yeah, but you would have missed my sparkling conversation.

Trailblazer: Tahoe, huh? Not too long ago they made the news here. So did Yosemite, come to think of it.

Pathfinder: Not too long ago? Well, twenty-two central Sierra Nevada hikers were rescued in the first early season blizzard.

Explorer: And, that storm killed two climbers while five others were airlifted out by helicopter from the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

J2020F: Wasn’t there something more recently that pitted the “Governator,” San Francisco residents, the National Park Service, farmers, visitors and a few others against each other?

Trailblazer: You’re thinking about the controversial proposal to remove a Yosemite dam to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley to the way it was in 1922.

Explorer: Yeah. I heard about that. Isn’t it currently under 300 or 400 feet of water?

Pathfinder: Oh, yeah, I remember reading about recent UC Davis study that concluded the dam no longer needed for water storage in a drought-ridden state – like other western states -- since there are other reservoirs now available down stream.

J2020F: So what are they going to do, blow up the dam or something?

Trailblazer: I know you’re kidding, but the future scenario involves several competing forces – urban drinking water needs, hydraulic power alternatives, local and state economic factors, ecosystem preservation, tourist capacity planning, and competing government agencies – at the local, regional, and federal levels.

Eagle: I make no bones about my love of the natural world. It just seems to me that from a federal political and economic perspective the change in political parties running the federal government has been devastating to this region.

Pathfinder: You must be referring to the Sierra Nevada Framework to protect wilderness and old growth on the million acres of national forestland.

Eagle. You bet. I think it took eight years to hammer out an agreement among the special interests.

Trailblazer: You’re right. That compromise took almost a decade to hammer out between the timber industry, environmentalists and other stakeholders, including the public and the scientific community. The Federal Forest Service now has discarded the framework.

Explorer: Discarded? In what way?

Trailblazer: There’s a new plan that permits the tripling of logging and the consumption of that last stands or old growth trees in the Sierras.

J2020F: What? Where?

Trailblazer: They’ve begun clear cutting among the giant sequoia groves near here in the Sequoia National Forest.

Eagle: Many “compassionate conservationists” feel betrayed by the Forest Service.

Pathfinder: Part of the department’s bias toward timber and logging versus the health of the forest stems from their budgeting incentives and from their professional blindness.

Explorer: What do you mean?

Pathfinder: Forest professionals are taught that the growing of wood fiber is the highest and best use for timberland.

Explorer: Well, even Mark Twain envisioned profits from Tahoe timber ranches during the region’s mining heydays.

Pathfinder: Whether or not a timber sale turns a profit, the agency gets to keep a share of gross receipts, a funding quirk that encourages logging and, some would say, over-logging – to make up operating budget deficits.

J2020F: I guess you’d point to a shift in political forces as an indicator that a contingency plan might be activated, if the stakeholders who hammered out the plan had followed your scenario-methodology.

Trailblazer: Good point. Sometimes those forces outside of your immediate focus end up becoming major disruptions. Even though we may know on some level that they may operate against us, it’s as if we’re lulled to sleep over time.

J2020F: Like snowboarding or skiing on a Mountain volcano?

Trailblazer: Touché. You’ve been doing your homework.
Mammoth Mountain. lies in the southwestern edge of Long Valley Caldera in Inyo National Forest and Mono County.

J2020F: Seems pretty risky to invest in real estate in this region. Until you pointed out the mountain was a volcano, it didn’t register until I paid attention to the landscape on the trip southwest on 395.

Explorer: Speaking of which, isn’t time we hit the road on 395 to hit Bishop for gas and something to eat in an hour or so?

Trailblazer: Sure. Let me get my things and I’ll show you my newest hobby, geocaching.

Got Knowledge?
Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.

7:13 AM

Friday, March 04, 2005

Near Fatal Curiosity, Camping Angels and Penniless Wanderings

Chapter Three: The Outpost

By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs

Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories

“The Native Americans too were driven out. Much of the narrative, in fact, focuses on the bitter, sustained conflict between native dwellers and the practitioners of what would soon be known as Manifest Destiny. And it is here that Clark makes his first appearance in the annals of American history.”

Jonathan Kirsch

MONO LAKE, CA. Get rich schemes and tall tales – both consumed and sustained Mark Twain. Shuttling as much as he did between Carson City and Virginia City, it was San Francisco that captured his imagination – but it was Mono Lake that almost killed him – and his curiosity.

J2020F: Well it’s no secret that the investments made in mining on the Comstock in the 1860's, 1870's and 1880's fueled the building of San Francisco. Legendary names in California’s history -- William Ralston and Charles Crocker, founders of the Bank of California made their money in Virginia City. Others, like Leland Stanford, George Hearst, John Mackay, William Flood and many others made their fortunes building the railroad and supply chain required to support Comstock mining operations.

Eagle: Virginia City became the most important town in the West, certainly between Denver and San Francisco. As the ragged prospectors became rich they built mansions, imported furniture and fashions from Europe and the Orient.

J2020F: And with the riches came the need to ship the ore more efficiently stimulated the demand for the railroad. The Virginia & Truckee Railroad ran from Reno to Carson City to Virginia City and later to Minden.

Explorer: Like those other emigrants from the east and immigrants from the Far East, dreams of striking it rich and figuring out how he’d spend the money filled in the time. For Twain, it was building a house in San Francisco on Russian Hill.

Eagle: What doe Mono Lake have to do with those schemes and tall tales?

Explorer: According to Twain, three German brothers survived Indian attacks on the Plains and as they dragged themselves step-by-step towards the West they accidentally discovered a vein of cement with gold chunks floating in it.

J2020F: A vein of cement?

Explorer: Yup. Twain described it as being about as wide as a curbstone “and fully two-thirds of it was pure gold. Every pound of the wonderful cement was worth well-nigh $200.”

Pathfinder: How did they capitalize on it?

Explorer: At first they loaded up 25 lbs of it to carry to civilization after they hid all traces of it and drew a crude map to its location.

Eagle: Don’t tell me.

Explorer: As you might have guessed. One brother broke his leg and was left in the wilderness by the other.

Eagle: And what happened to the other two.

Pathfinder: Hardships and mishaps, right?

Explorer: One gave up and laid down to die he was so hungry and bone tired. But, the third reached the mining settlements in California.

J2020F: So he staked his claim and lived the high life?

Explorer: Not exactly. Twain says he was so deranged and so sick in the head that he didn’t want anything to do with the claim – even though he set the settlement on fire with gold fever.

Eagle: Well that was all a backdrop to Twain’s adventure, right?

Pathfinder: What do you mean?

Explorer: He means that when the sole surviving German brother decided to pursue farming, he handed the map over to the mysterious Whiteman. And Whiteman only appeared at night before returning to the Esmeralda Area in search of his cement mine.

Eagle: So, Twain accompanied Whiteman to Mono Lake?

Explorer: Nobody accompanied Whiteman, ever. But, Twain and Higbie decided to follow him to his cement mine without arousing the other gold fever-infected miners. They met at the divide overlooking the Mono Lake Basin -- Dead Sea of California.

Pathfinder: So the two followed the mystery man. And, he wandered around trying to find the “X” on the map.

Explorer: When they failed in their scheme, Higby and Twain decided to explore the area in and around Mono Lake. They decide to take and its wonders
a small boat, just as a storm is brewing to explore the lake.

Eagle: Let me guess. Things go from bad to worse.

Explorer: As Twain tells us they go from worse to a near fatal accident.

Pathfinder: But even today, you can see why their curiosity very nearly killed the cat.

Explorer: In other sections of ”Roughing It” Twain describes leaving for his mining adventures on horseback to Esmeralda County

J2020F: I’m a little disoriented. Just where is Mono Lake, California in relation to Experalda, Nevada?

Explorer: Here is a slice of the1895 Nevada map that shows the Esmeralda area – see Walker Lake in the north? The pinkish border to the left separates Nevada from California. Mono Lake is to the east.

Pathfinder: Here’s another map. This one shows why Esmeralda attracted Higbie, Twain, and all the rest of the miners. Check out all the locations of the mines in Esmeralda area.

Eagle: I can see why you’re confused. Check this out. Aurora was claimed by both California and Nevada. The Mono County seat had to be moved when Nevada reclaimed the camp in 1863.

Pathfinder: According to Bugs Bunny, it looks like the whole region was strewn with rags-to-riches boomtowns – and then riches-to-rags bust towns.

J2020F: You can get a sense of Aurora in its hey day, why for instance Twain would have ventured there with high hopes.

Explorer: It was during his stay at
Aurora that Samuel Clemens started writing articles for the Territorial Enterprise Newspaper. At a career crossroads, he came to grips with his ”Trapped and Permanently Temporary” situation after listed mining as one more on a long list of failed occupations.

J2020F: But, at last he found his calling and a way out of his hopeless mess.

Pathfinder: True, he was offered a job with the newspaper at $25.00 a week, but like many other times, he left Aurora pennyless and had to walk all the way from Aurora to Virginia City.

Explorer: Turning to journalism as an occupation seemed to suit him, once he got the hang of it working for the “Enterprise.”

Pathfinder: Twain spun a lot of myths and tall tales, but according to Nevada State Archivist, Guy Rocha, when tourists visit the Enterprise building in downtown Virginia City on South C Street between Union and Taylor the city has spun a tall tale of its own.

Explorer: When Twain wasn’t mining or reporting he wrote about vacation trips to Lake Tahoe and Yosemite. The Tahoe tripped turned into a new entrepreneurial scheme, though.

Eagle: Mining again?

Explorer: No, harvesting timber. He found himself: “Hiking for hours to view Lake Tahoe and its timberlands ” … to take up a wood ranch or so for ourselves and become wealthy…. As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.”

Pathfinder: The man seemed possessed.

Explorer: Even camping and boating on Lake Tahoe turned into marking timber claims.

J2020F: Doesn’t Twain tell a story about a boulder or something in Tuolumne – a hard luck story with a surprise twist?

Explorer: Hmm. Well there’s this passage about the lifecycle of the Tuolumne mining community: "By and by, an old friend of mine, a miner, came down from one of the decayed mining camps of Tuolumne, California, and I went back with him. We lived in a small cabin on a verdant hillside, and there were not five other cabins in view over the wide expanse of hill and forest.”

J2020F: Maybe.

Explorer: He continues, “Yet a flourishing city of two or three thousand population had occupied this grassy dead solitude during the flush times of twelve or fifteen years before, and where our cabin stood had once been the heart of the teeming hive, the center of the city. When the mines gave out the town fell into decay, and in a few years wholly disappeared -- streets, dwellings, shops, everything -- and left no sign. The grassy slopes were as green and smooth and desolate of life as if they had never been disturbed."

J2020F: No. If I recall correctly, he describes the pocket-mining technique. What I’m trying to recall is the incident about a good-for-nothing resting place on the trail into town for supplies.

Explorer: Oh, yeah. Here it is: "In Tuolumne lived two miners who used to go to the neighboring village in the afternoon and return every night with household supplies. Part of the distance they traversed a trail, and nearly always sat down to rest on a great boulder that lay beside the path. In the course of thirteen years they had worn that boulder tolerably smooth, sitting on it.”

J2020F: That’s it.

Explorer: “By and by two vagrant Mexicans came along and occupied the seat. They began to amuse themselves by chipping off flakes from the bolder with a sledgehammer. They examined one of these flakes and found it rich with gold. That boulder paid them eight hundred dollars afterward.”

Eagle: Now, that would be my luck.

Explorer: Wait, there’s more. “But the aggravating circumstance was that these 'greasers' knew that there must be more gold where that boulder came from, and so they went panning up the hill and found what was probably the richest pocket that region has yet produced."

Pathfinder: So Twain roamed Esmeralda County in Nevada and camped for a time in Lake Tahoe and Tuolumne, but wasn’t there another mining community made famous by his writings? Starting with the letter “A,” not Aurora?

Explorer: You’re probably thinking about Angels Camp and the jumping frog incident: We prospected around Angel's Camp in Calaveras County, during three weeks, but had no success. Then we wandered on foot among the mountains, sleeping under the trees at night, for the weather was mild, but still we remained as centless as the last rose of summer."

Pathfinder: Angel’s Camp. That’s it.

Explorer: What I like about this passage is his description of shared hospitality among miners: "In accordance with the custom of the country, our door had always stood open and our board welcomed to tramping miners -- they drifted along nearly every day, dumped their paust shovels by the threshold, and took 'potluck' with us -- and now on our own tramp we never found cold hospitality.

J2020F: Isn’t it in this section where he touches on his trips to back to Yosemite, almost due east from Mammoth Lakes and south to Kings Canyon?

Explorer: He sure does. “Our wanderings were wide and in many directions; and now I could give the reader a vivid description of the Big Trees and the marvels of the Yosemite -- but what has this reader done to me that I should persecute him? I will deliver him into the hands of less conscientious tourists and take his blessing."

Eagle: Speaking of Mammoth, shouldn’t we leave Mono Lake and hit 395 south?

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Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.

6:51 AM