Guadalupe and Dune Lakes by Santa Barbara Historical Museum

Occasional Papers Number 6 1966

Guadalupe and

Dune Lakes BY

Harold Chase and Selden Spaulding

Guadalupe Lake at the extreme northwest corner of Santa Barbara County, iiad the unusual shape of a huge “A’’, with the apex, or top, lying to the west, in the direction of the ocean, and the two mile-long legs extending more or less in an easterly direction. At the foot of the so-called north leg was the Betaravia Sugar Factory, and so we usually spoke of this leg as “Sugar Factory Lake”, or merely as “Sugar Lake”. About at the middle of the south leg was the club house of the Guadalupe Gun Club, an organization of sportsmen that had on its roster many of tlie most widely known names in Santa Barbara — Clinton Hale, Sam Dabney, Alfred Rcdington, Reg Fernald, Winsor Soule, John tidwards, and many others. Billy Bastion, an old market hunter now afflicted with rheumatism, was the Keeper: and his wife, Eva, was the cook and housekeeper. In the days about the turn of the century, this lake lay a long distance from Santa Barbara — a two day dri\c in a wagon behind horses — and the members, when they went to the Club, usually spent at least two or three days there before setting off on the return trip. Later, when the railroad made a flag stop on its right-of-way within a half mile of the Club, the time needed to make the journey was much reduced: but we still considered it a long trip. From the point of view of the j^resent day, when the journey by automobile is less than a two hour one, the former remoteness of the Club seems to have been a great incon\-enience; but, in those early, easy-going days, there was much to be said in fa\'or of it: as the members sat in front of the fire in the big, opeii firejilace, it was \-ery pleasant to discuss \vith friends of long standing and similar tastes the events of the day on the Lake just jiassed, as well as memorable incidents of former years. There was the ^\●ell remembered day, for example, when tlie wind was blowing hard and when a great flight of widgeon was on. John, in a tule blind at the ujiper end of Sugar Lake, killed and retrie\'ccl thirt)-three birds in an hour and a half. And lliere was that extraordinary morning when the fog was so very dense that onl\- one man managed to reach his blind, for this man alone liad had the foresight to carry a compass in a pocket of his hunting coat. .\nd there was that other 1

CANVASBACKS By HUGH MONAHAN

TWIN LAKE

day when the waves were running so high and strong that Earl Grahanvs boat filled and settled under him in about four feet of water. Earl was forced to w ●alk back to the club house along the outer edge of the tides for half the length of Club House Lake. The astonishing sight of him a|)proaching the landing with only hi.s head and shoulders visible above the water and with the boat, with gunwhalc awash, being dragged by its painter behind him, was discussed for many years. It was, indeed, a memorable sight! And so the evenings, spent in comfortable chairs in front of the big, cheery fire, ^^'ere almost as gratifying as were those sjjent in our blinds in the cold, early mornings a long hour before sunrise, when the thrilling ‘■whee-wheew\'hee” of unseen wings was heard intermiltantly overhead. Our boats were ‘'iule-s|)litters'’. flat-bottomed, sheet metal craft jjcrhaps twentv feet long and twenty-four inches in beam. The bows and sterns, we said, were needle sharp (so that they could be forced into the tides) and had built into them small, airtight compartments to give to the boats greater buoyancy. Thev were eciuii:)ped, also, with “bo\v-facing ' oars — that is, there was a double elbow in eacli oar. winch made it possible for the hunter to row fonvard when using the usual back stroke. 'When loaded with four boxes of twelve guagc cartridges, a \\'inchestcr pump gun, and a heavv man swathed against the cold in thick clothing, these boats rode low in the water and were so tippy that it was wise to carry the oars weW extended on both sides at all times. There was a morning, for example, when Afr. Church came as George Kaiine's guest to the Lake. It chanced to be an unusually cold morning, and so there was a fi lm of ice on the water along the shore ^\hen the hunters left the warm club house and, in the darkness, approached the landing. When they arrived at the clump of tides that was to be their blind for that morning, Mr. Kaime demonstrated to his friend how a boat could be worked into the tides. He drove hard into the clump and then, on his knees, with his oars 3

shijjjjed inside the splitter, he seized the heavy stems in his hands and pulled the craft forward until the tides closed together behind the stern. Then he wrapjied a half dozen reeds around cacli oarlock and stood up. “Can you really stand up in one of these things?” asked Mr. Church in some astonishment as from the open water he watched this operation. “Certainly,” said George Kaime. “Look at me!” In tlie half-light of the early morning, a small flock of Pintails came flying down the Lake. Mr. Church sprang to his feet, swung widely and expertly, and fired at right angles with the long axis of his splitter. The boat, of course, shot out from under him and he went head first into the water. This epi.sode, when George Kaime was not ])rescnt, was recalled with pleasure many times in after years. Robert Cameron Rogers also succeeded in immersing himself, but he accomplished this in a little different way because, though he was a gifted poet of nationwide fame, he was a clumsy, thoughtless boatman. As he sat in the bottom of his splitter, he reached far out to the side to retrieve a dead duck that lay floating on the water and, of course, over he went. It was characteristic of him that, w’hen he came to the surface and, “with a storm of darkness on his face”, he ejected some of the water he had swallowed, he still clung tenaciously to the long neck of the duck. “I'he hours 1 s])ent with thee. Dear PIcart ” Across the south leg of the Lake from the club house was a small island. The narrow passageway that Billy Bastion cut each summer with a sickle through the considerable tule bed to the east of it (this was the crossbar of the “A”) ^\●as called “the Canal”; and it was used, though it was too narrow for rowing and so we used j^addles, as a sort of shortcut from one lake leg to the other. The shallow, open water at the aj)ex of the “A” was known as “The Pasture”. 'Phis was a famous resort of Mallards and Teal. On the open ivatcr of the center of Club Lake tliere were large flocks of Ruddy Ducks, which we called “Spats”; and it was here, also, that

DUNES AND ROAD

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9 OPEN WATERS AND TULES

liie Hocks of Canvashacks landed when they first came in from tiie ocean. Usually, these fi ne, big birds kept well out of the longest gunshot range of the tides that lined the margins and that grew in immense clumps at each end of the Lake: but. if a man in a blind kept himself well hidden, it was likely that some of them would swim in to his decoys. 1 remember \'ery well the morning that I watched such a small flock as the birds swam slowlv clo.ser and closer to niv decovs. Wishino- to see how close the handsome birds would come. I lay flat In my splitter, ^\●ith only mv eyes and the top of my head above the gunwale. At long last, the wild birds actually came into my decoy fleet and began to examine, with real curiosity 1 thought, the wooden replicas of themselves. The shining glass eyes of the decoys puzzled them, and they nibbled fi rst at one and then at another of them. Mr. Ira liaxlcv, udiose duck it was that Mr. Rogers had retric\-ed with such unhappy (for him) consequences, was perhaps the oldest and certainly the most a\'id and persistant hunter of the group. Each dav that he came in from the Lake, he entered in a little book the number of birds he had bagged that day: and, at the end of each season, he totalled up his score and compared it with those he had made on preceding years. One year, he told us with much pride, his score stood at 1.023 — a ))rodigious number of thicks for one man to kill, certainly! How he disposed of so many birds in those days before the invention of the deep freeze locker I can not imagine. Mr. Baxley hunted at both clubs, the Guadalujxi Gun Club and the Santa Maria Rod and Gun Club, which had its hunling water a few miles to the west of us. He tvas not happy at the latter club, however, because, as he told me one day, he never knew how many other hunters would end up in his bed. Why,” said he, “1 get nicely settled and asleep in a bed by myself and then, suddenly, there is a ‘whisk’ and under the covers there will be another man. And then, when J have gotten to sleep again, there \\’ill be

SPRIG PAINTING By HUGH MONAHAN

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anothei' ‘whisk’ and there will be a third hunter in the bed. lhat s right a third man! After that, there is no getting to sleep again for any of us. And they keep coming in all night long! Some of them sleep in the hay in the barn. Some of them sit up and play poker in the dining room until It IS time to go out on the lakes. But the hunting up there is wonderful!” The hunting on Guadalupe Lake was wonderful, too, in the early days; but, as the total duck population of the continent shrank under the heavy shooting, necessarily the numbers on our lake diminished steadily and ^noticeably. In the end, they almost reached the vanishing point. During the good years, however, one of the interesting features of our club life was that there were seventeen or eighteen dilTerent species of edible ducks that were to be seen at one time or another. One or two of them, of course, were strays and so were recorded only once or twice. The Wood Duck, the European Widgeon, the Goldeneye, and the Ftilvus Tree Duck were among those least often seen; while other varieties — Teal, Pintail, and Spoonbill — were there at almost all times of the Fall and Winter in great numbers. Some of the Teal may have nested there. Many of the field names (so-called) that we used commonly are of interest today. The Mallards, of course, were “Greenheads”; the Pintails were “Sprigs” and, for some reason unknown to me, the drakes were “Bull Sprigs”; the S]:)Oonbills, or Shovellers, were “Irish Mallards”; and the Buffleheads were “Butterballs”. The three varieties of Scaup were luin]3ed together as “Black jacks”, though an occasional visitor from the East called them “Blucbills”. My first trip to Guadalupe Lake by automobile in retrospect is amusing, but, at the time that it was made, it was frustrating to a degree. Edward Howard and I left Santa Barbara after dark had fallen one evening in

the cx])ectation tliat we would arrive at tlic club house before midnight; but it did not ha]:)j)en in that way. At hrstj we did very well because we travelled over roads that were known to us. d'hen we came to a rctrion without road signs of any kind. The land was more or less flat and it seemed to us to be cut into sc[uares with sides of l\vo or three miles. Tall eucalyptus trees lined both sides of all these I'oads. and so. in the darkness, each intersection that we came to looked exacth- like all the others that we passed. I do not yet know where we were when we ])assed through a tiny community in which an "oiJen-all-night“ stand was lighted up and seemed to olTer an opportunit\- to locale ourselves. \Ve stopj^ed and, after a quick snack, intiuired ol the jerk behind the counti'r the way to Guadalupe Lake. The instructions that he ga\'o us I am sun- he considered to be entirelv adequate: "Go u]) to the next intersection l)ut one. Turn to the right there and then turn to the right again: and then go on straight awav.” \\’e were careful to do as we had been told to do until, after we had made the second turn to the right, we came to a ‘'d'“ intersection. There ^\●as no going on straight away here! We decided tliat the logical turn was to the left, so we went in that direction. Soon, we decided that we were going in the wrong direction: so we turned to the right at the next intersection. After that. I do not know \vhere we went. E\-entual!y, when ever we came to an intersection. 1 got out of the car and marked it with a number. .A.t last we saw a light in front of us and, when we came up along side of it. lo, it was the ‘'Oixm-all-night'’ stand. It was, indeed! The counter jerk was as suiprised to see us again as we were to see him, and he said so. “What about that “T’ intersection beyond the two turns to the right?” T demanded of him. “Oh, that one!” he said cheerfully. “Oh, yes, that one! I forgot all about that one.” As we stood beside the track at the flag sto]) on the high ground

DUNES

behind tiic club house and waited for the train to arrive that would carry vrs back to Santa Barbara after a weekend of hunting on the Lake, often we looked down the little \’aliey to the horizon, where was rejtuted to be the finest snipe marsh in Southern California. Tliis horizon seemed to be a line of low hills and of Iiigli dunes that lay a siiort distance to the south of the hunting grounds of the Santa Maria Rod and Gun Club. This vaguely seen area we know to be a part of the coast line that was of unusual interest to out-of-doorsmen, and so it was customary for us, as we looked in that direction, to give our imaginations free rein. The region was of so much interest not only because of the numbers and the \-arieties of the waterfowl that passed through it during times of migration, but also because of the natural forces tliat had made it througli the milleniunis the extraordinary ])lace tliat it was. First of all. the drainage of the wliole area was from east to west, tliat is, toward the ocean shore, which here ran as a generality almost duo north and soutli. The prevailing winds, however, which commonly were said to blow in the same, single direction without cliange or pause for three hundred and sixty-five days during ordinary years, and for tliree hundred and sixty-six days every leap year, moved in the oi^posile direction to that of the water, that is, from the sea to the land. These steady winds had piled tlie fine sand of the beach into enormous dunes, arms of which moved slowl\- and inexoribly inland. On their western sides, these dunes invariably slojK'd upward very gently; but, on their eastern sides, the slopes were so steep that it was difficult for a man to climb up them. The great mass of fine sand acted as an immense dike, or dam. behind which the subterranean flow of sweet water was stop])ed and forced to the surface. The result was numerous, permanent ponds and lakes of all shapes that lay between the dunes that stretched like gigantic fingi-rs from the seashore toward th(; Niporno Mesa that paralleled the shore. Weil to the south lay the famous Conception.\rguella Headland, the natural boundary between Northern and Southern 9

MALLARDS

HUGH MONAHAN

California for all seafaring men; and to the north stretched the great arc of sand that was kno\en as Pismo Beaoli. It was, indeed, an area ot many interests, among ^\-hich was the Nipomo Mesa Eucalyptus j^lanting. Early in the 20th Century, under I>epartment of Agricultui'e recom mendation, the rolling upland country (the Nipomo Mesa) back of the sand dunes and the lakes, was planted in close rows to Eucalyptus trees, known to bo of rapid growth under certain soil and moisture conditions. It was anticipated the forestation would prove to be a profitable source for piling, railroad ties, power poles and even furniture. liowever, Ix'cause of the exceedingly slow growth made, this hope proved to be illusory so there were almost numberless starveling, uncared-for, unusable Eucalyptus trees left on the mesa area. It was not until late during World War II that pressing demand and technological inventive progress resulted in the development of a process \\ ●hereby the dwarf Eucalypti could economically bo harvested for paper pul]). I’hcn hundreds of acres were cut but not stumped. Even a small Eucaly])tus oil refinery (again at Government suggestion) was o])eraled for a short time at Arroyo Grande, both operations sul)sequently were abandoned. Now, after several decades, with the discovery of deep well water sui)])lies, the thousands of acres of first and cut-over second-growth Eucalypti on the mesa arc gradually giving way to various types of domestic, farming, sport and manufacturing develo])ment. As I look back on my first \'isit to these sand-rimmed lakes, it ap])ears as a part of the most memorable hunting excursion on which I ever went. John Edwards and I rode on the train to the Calendar fiag-sto]) on Nipomo .Mesa and from this ])lace, located some dozen miles west of the Guadalupe Gun Club, arri\-ed late at night and were driven in a large ^vagon through a forest of Eucalyptus to the club house of the Santa Maria Gun Club. John had been successful in securing a bed for us, a three-quarter bed as I remember it: but, as soon as we entered the bedroom, which contained four beds, we were introduced to a man by the name of “Doc”, and ^vc

PONDS, DUNES AND LAKES

WHITE LAKE

\\ere told that he, too, would occupy a place in the bed. We drew for places. John drew liic inside and Doc the center. As I look back on it, tills was one of my luckiest draws, for it allowed me to lie with my head on the sill of the open window. Out-of-doors, it was a warm, moonlit night. Indoors, it was hot and stufTy, not unlike the air in an old fashioned Pullman car crossing Arizona in the middle of summer. Though the eleven men in our room (one of the beds was a “single'’, and so it would accommodate only two men) lay in wide awake discomfort, there was so sound whatever e.xcept an occasional muttered curse directed at the half dozen dogs in the yard that, all night long, bayed at the moon. Rut it was a good natured group — not a single man did I hear complain to the man next to him. .As for Doc, the middle man in our bed, it must ha\'0 been a sweltcringh' long night for him. d’he next morning, when daylight came to John and me in our blind, I saw more ducks in the air by many times than I ever before had seen in one ])lace. The sky lileralK- was filled with them. 'Phere were so very matiy that it was not possible to mark and to shoot at all of them that came \vithin range of our guns. And so it happened that, at one time, T decided to try a shot that I had read about in some book on duck hunting: it was to make a double with a single cartridge oti birds that were flying in separate flocks and in dillerent directions. I mentioned this foolishness to Jolm, and I recei\-ed no encouragement whaies’er from that hunter of a practical turn of mind, “It can’t be done,” he stated positively. “Rut I read about it in a book.” “Oh, sure! It s easy to do it in a book. Any fool can do it that way. Rut you can’t do it here in this blind!” Present!)', T saw a trio of bull Sprigs coining toward us high from the right. At the same lime, there was a small Hock of Greenwing Teal coming in fast (as Teal always fly) and much lower from the left. I judged that 12

the two lines of fliglit would cross at about a sixty degree angle. There was no time to make a nice calculation, of course; but, almost snap shooting, at the right instant, I fired my single cartridge. I was on target as far as the big, relatively slow-flying Sprig was concerned but I missed the Teal completely. It went jazzing off at seemingly a hundred miles an hour”. “You were lucky to get one of them on such a damn fool experiment,” was all that John said. “Don’t push your luck too far!” Though the limit in those days was twenty-five birds of all species, most of the thirty-three hunters filled out their strings long before noon. When we arrived back at the club house, we were told that there were as many hunters along the property line fences as there were on the ponds and lakes; and that these men had done almost as well as we had done, even though their shooting had averaged much higher than had ours. All that I could say to this bit of information was that it was I who had carried the gunny sack filled with ducks from our blind to the club house (John had carried the extra cartridges, the t\vo guns, and the rest of our equipment) most of the way over soft sand, that I hadn’t closed my eyes once during the previous night, and that I was tired. That afternoon, ^\●e went on the narrow gage to Los Alamos; the next morning we went quail hunting on a ranch wliose owner was known to John. In the half light of early dawn, we came on three coyotes at fairly close range; and then, a little later, we put up a flock of quail whose number I estimated at about 2.000 birds. And so we returned to Santa Barbara with fi fty ducks and with fifty quail. As I now look back on these two days of shooting, it does not seem to be surprising that there are so few ducks left on the marshes and so few Valley Quail left on our sage co\’ered hills. Before a great many years had passed after this record-breaking shoot of our-s, the tide beds on the Dune Lakes had increased so enormously in

DUCKS OVER THE LAKE

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size that they had taken o\-er almost the entire surface of the ponds and lakes. Faced with this situation, the Santa Maria Rod and Gun Club went out of existence. As a sort of epitaph. I state only tliat the annual dues for the Santa Maria Gun Club had been $25.00. DUNF LAKES, PAST AND PRESENT In 1929, years after the Santa Maria Gun Club members abandoned tlieir Club, because of the d'ule growth, the ])roperty, re-named Dune Lakes, was sold to Peter Cooper Bryce, William R. Dickinson and Flarold S. Chase, all three of Hope Ranch. Dune Lakes, now comprising some 1,800 acres and a dozen lakes or fresliwater ])onds of various sizes, remains in the Ciiasc-Dickinson families with limited shooting and intensi\'e conser\-ation ])ractices carried on. The lakes were reston-d to such open \vater as desired by the invention of a “tide cutter” scow lilted with a mower blade, adjustable as to depth, mounted in front, and side-])addle wheels driven by a Ford tractor. It was learned when the. Hope Ranch lake, “Laguna Blanca” was cleared of a neai'ly solid growth of tules in 1924-25 that if tlie tules were kept cut below the surface they would die out. There at “Laguna Blanca”, Southern Pacific railroad maintenance crews situated at adjoining Hope Station on Modoc Road a short distance west of the jjresent Boy Scout headcpiartcrs, were used on Sundays at a dollar or two a dav for the lake clearing, but cost and necessity at Dune Lakes residted in the tide cutter invention, still in use. The census of bird life at Dune Lakes remains fascinatingly high, combining as it docs habitat for marsh, lake, siiore birds and migratory wildfowl, among ^^●hich are: Duck — Bjirig (Pintail), Mallard, Widgeon, European Widgeon. Green-winged Teal, Cinnamon Teal, Blue-winged Teal, Shoveller. Gadwall, Redhead, Canvasback, Greater and Lesser Scaup, Ring Neck, Bufflehead, Ruddy, Golden Eye and Wood Duck. Geese — \Vhitefront, Greater and Lesser Canada, Snow and Ross. 14

PETE AND THE TULE CUTTER

Kveii a casual reference to Dune Lakes would not l)e complete without at least a mention of the largest and most spectacular a\‘ian visitors to fre quent these \vaters in autumn—the White Pelicans and the Whistling Swans. Records dating back to the early thirties reveal the Pelicans to be some what erratic in both yearly attendance and in numlx'rs. Soinctiincs they came in bands of as little as eight and in other years they congregated in flocks numbering \vell over one hundred. Still they came—early in Septem ber and remained to fish the fresh lake waters far into the winter. It is to be doubted if there is a more thrilling sight tiian the arrival of a great flock of these fantastic while birds fresh from their breeding grounds in Utah or Nevada. High in the sky they come. Flapping and gliding in orderly squadrons quite as precise as any formation of military aircraft—yet they are silent. The great flock spirals down, round and round, sweeping majestically and ever downward, until the crucial altitude over tlieir favorite sandspit is reached. Then, and only theti. do the squadrons break rank. Like a homing Ijomber, each bird peels off and with no false ])asses glides straight to its resting place, there to while away the sunny hours in much needed preening of feathers or dozing in the midday sun. But w ith tlie approach of evening there is great activity on the spit as the birds \vade into the water and form their far-reaching fishing line. I fere again the Pelican's militaristic mind manifests itself. For, swimming side by side, evenly spaced and in an in credibly straight line, they slowly paddle forward, alternately dipping their heads into the food-rich shallow waters to herd the fish, or thrusting great yellow jjouches sk\'\vard allowing scaly morsels to slide into cavernous craws. From the early thirties ancl for more than thrf*e decades the Pelicans came, albeit sometimes intermittently. But in 1962 they made their last jnlgrimage. ^Vhy, is a question, for the bountiful waters still remain and Pelicans continue to thrive in other climes. Perhaps they have just become fickle and another year will see their attendance on the coastal marshes once more. 15

Of Swans, the record is more concise. The first notation, made in 1929, reveals thirty-five of these most glamourous white avian beauties resting on the cool marsh waters. Therefore, and continuing for a decade, their numbers annually increased until flocks of uj) to three hundred arrived each fall to compete avidly and successfully with the ducks for a bounty of grain that was dispensed each day for the wild fowl. For this was in the day when out-of-the-bag feeding at a very substantial distance from any permitted shooting was the rule and considered beneficial. Of course. Pelicans and White Swans are never shot. Strangely enough, after the initial years, the Swans timed their arrival precisely, the advance guard alighting on the marsh without fail on Novem ber sixth. For a week after the advance birds arrived, the night sounds of the marsh increased sharply in tempo. Crisp moonlight nights were rent by great flappings of wings on the waters and the eerie cries of the early arrivals as they and newly arriving flights of migrating brethren exchanged voluble and enthusiastic greetings which grew into tumultuous welcome. Often the Swans ^^'ere accompanied by small flights of Canada geese whose vibrant honkings only added zest to the wild and discordant reunions. World VVar II halted feeding and even the upkeep of the marshes. The Swans no longer came. But in the late forties and early fifties a strictly controlled feeding jirogram was j^ermitted by laws and the Swans returned once more to claim their fair share of the grain. Never, however, in the ])rodigious numbers of pre-war years, fifty being the most observed on any single occasion. Then, in the middle fifties, heavy feeding restrictions were imposed and once again the Swans vanished. Gone forever? It is hoped not. Yet there is no great reason for hope in these days of diminishing wildlife. Still the records stand. These intriguing visitors once were at Dune Lakes. And the memory lingers.

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