Many had to evacuate the Santa Cruz Mountains during the CZU Lightning Complex fires of August, 2020, including museums, visitor centers, and cultural heritage sites managed by California State Parks. Jenny Daly, museum curator for the Santa Cruz District of California State Parks, was part of a team that worked quickly to save artifacts from threatened State Parks, including Big Basin, Año Nuevo, and Wilder Ranch.
During this online event, learn about the immediate steps taken by State Parks to save our cultural history and the ongoing process of caring for objects impacted by the fires. Kathleen Aston, Collections Manager at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, will also share how the Museum approaches natural disasters and collections, from Loma Prieta to ongoing efforts with the CZU Lightning Complex.
Photo of Mark Hylkema by Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group.
About the Speaker
Jenny Daly, Museum Curator I for the California State Parks in the Santa Cruz District, grew up in Santa Cruz and is fortunate to live and work in her hometown. After transferring to UC Berkeley from Cabrillo College, Jenny received a double BA in Near Eastern Studies and Theater, Performance, and Dance Studies. The most valuable part of her time at Berkeley was the internship she had working with the Registrar at the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology where she became hooked on the idea of a career working in museums. Jenny then received a Master’s in Museum Studies from John F. Kennedy University and has worked in collections management at various institutions since then, including at the California Academy of Sciences, the Cantor Arts Center, and the Getty Center. Jenny was very excited to start working for the State Parks as a curator because it meant she could combine her love of Parks with her expertise in museum collections management.
Not all that glitters is gold — sometimes it’s benitoite! So discovered prospector James Couch, when in 1907 he encountered some sparkling specimens of what would one day become the California state gem. While gold looms large in the story of our state, the unique geology of California has gifted us many other magnificent rocks and minerals. From cinnabar to serpentinite, we are delighted to share these with the public once more in our classic California minerals exhibit. We are fortunate enough to have one specimen of rare benitoite on display, and for this month’s close-up, we’ll zoom in on our only other specimen, safely secured in storage.
Benitoite specimen from the Museum’s collections.
Our second benoite specimen is hosted by a chunk of blueschist that amounts to the size of a large hamburger. Brilliant blue sparkles alert us to the presence of benitoite, or barium titanium silicate (BaTiSi₃O₉). These are nestled alongside black sprinkles of neptunite in a white, almost fuzzy looking layer of natrolite. Blue, black, and white, each of these substances is its own mineral, a naturally occurring inorganic element or compound with a characteristic structure.
These minerals and their blueschist host rock come from the guts of the southern end of the Diablo Range. Millions of years ago, unusual combinations of hydrothermal fluids seeped into the cracks of the blueschist found within metamorphosed serpentinite, forming a variety of rare minerals including benitoite, neptunite, natrolite, joaquinite and others. And while benitoite is found in a few places around the world, this section of the California Coast Range geologic province in southeastern San Benito County is the only place in the world where gem quality benitoite crystals are found.
It’s also the first place where benitoite was found. There are some complex claims to the initial discovery, but the most widely accepted story begins with failed melon farmer James Couch prospecting outside Coalinga on behalf of investor R. W. Dallas. In December of 1907, Couch noticed some blue sparkling stones he thought to be sapphire. In the subsequent months, Dallas looped in a few dealers and gem cutters, who offered different identifications, including an expert in Los Angeles who thought it was volcanic glass (perhaps because of it’s conchoidal fractures). By the time a sample made its way to San Francisco, a lapidary who thought the stone was spinel showed it to a friend, who sent it to UC Berkeley mineralogist Dr. George Louderback.
Dr. Louderback investigated the sample, finding it too soft to be either spinel or sapphire. Upon examination, Louderback identified the specimen for what it was – a new substance to science, and named it Benitoite, after the San Benito river which ran through the area of the mining claim. He soon journeyed to the Dallas Mine, where operations had already started, to study benitoite’s geological context. The paper he published describing benitoite’s mode of occurrence also includes the first published photos of benitoite and early photos of the mine.
Benitoite Mineral Specimen and Gems (Louderback, 1909)
The paper describes a lot of the properties that make benitoite exciting – including the high refractive indices and strong dispersion that make it especially sparkly (although you have to go elsewhere to learn about benitoite’s stunning fluorescence). It is still described by many sources as one of the “finest” descriptions of a new mineral species to be written. It’s worth noting that benitoite, while new to science, was nonetheless the embodiment of a scientific prediction that had been made decades prior. It exhibits a ditrigonal-dipyramidal crystal habit, a shape that looks sort of like someone glued the bottoms of two triangular pyramids together, within the hexagonal crystal class. This was the first time such a form was found naturally occurring, one of only thirty-two possible classes of crystal shapes mathematically predicted by Leipzig crystallographer J.F.C. Hessel in 1830.
Open Cut Benioite Mine 1908 (Louderback, 1909)
Even as the true nature of benitoite was unfolding, commercial operations quickly emerged at what was first called the Dallas Mine. Over the decades the mine has seen varying techniques and levels of productivity. In the earliest years, folks were after the largest possible gems and they wanted them fast. This meant hacking off a lot of big knobs of crystal that were initially covered, due to the way the mineral veins had formed within the blueschist, in a fine layer of natrolite. Waiting to dissolve the natrolite in acid, which could happen with no harm to the benitoite, took too long. This meant that a lot of well crystalized mineral specimens within their original rock matrix were broken up and made into gems. Fortunately, some whole specimens remain, and the museum purchased the specimen featured in our Collections Close-Up from San Francisco based J. Gissler in the late 1930s.
Our display specimen was also purchased in the 1930s. This specimen has been exhibited since 1985, the very year that Californian’s made benitoite their state gem to celebrate its beauty and uniquely California story. And though the history of this mineral is part of it’s charm, mineral discovery is not a thing of the past. Scientists continue to discover new minerals as the result of current field work, or even through fresh understandings of preserved museum specimens.
For more on benitoite and it’s geological and cultural history, join our Collections Close-Up conversation with Professor Hilde Schwartz on June 10.
There are few things more Californian than benitoite, a mineral formed within the low temperature, high pressure environment of subduction zones and sparsely sprinkled throughout serpentinite landscapes. While the mineral exists in isolated locations globally, gemstone quality material has only been found in California — one of the reason’s it was named our State Gemstone in 1985.
Learn about the geologic and cultural history of this mineral with Museum Collections Manager Kathleen Aston and Dr. Hilde Schwartz, lecturer in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department at UC Santa Cruz, during this installment of our member-exclusive Collections Close-Up series.
Benitoite Mineral Specimen and Gems (Louderback, 1909)
Benitoite sample (Wikipedia)
Open Cut Benioite Mine 1908 (Louderback, 1909)
About the series
Zoom into the stories, secrets, and science of our collections during monthly webinars with Collections Manager Kathleen Aston. This live event is an extension of our monthly Collections Close-Up blog, with added insights and intrigue. Members are invited to participate in this program before it is made available to the general public as well as ask questions directly of Kathleen.
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There are few names in our local naturalist community that are as universally revered as that of Randall Morgan. Also known as Randy or R, Morgan was a pillar of the local natural history community.
Though he passed away a few years ago, his influence on the natural world and those who celebrate it in Santa Cruz is evident from the the Sandhills that his activism helped to save, to the local chapter of the California Native Plant Society that he helped found, to the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History where he worked as a taxidermist to pay for studying linguistics at UC Santa Cruz. His legacy also lives on in the collections of the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History.
Join Kathleen Aston, Collections Manager at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, and Chris Lay, Director of the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History, for an exploration of Randall Morgans life and legacy, including his collections, taxidermy, and conservation efforts.
This month’s Collections Close-Up is in sponsorship of the exhibit Look. Act. Inspire., celebrating the naturalists of Santa Cruz County. It is presented in partnership between the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History, the San Lorenzo Valley Museum, and the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History.
Late rain and sporadic sunshine are lighting up the local landscape with green growth and bright blooms, raising spirits for the oncoming spring. This month’s Close-Up highlights a slightly less vivid but no less delightful collection of plants – a collection of preserved grasses, complete with identifications by their collector, beloved naturalist and conservationist Randy Morgan.
At first glance, the graceful blades and intricate flowers are captivating for their beauty alone, as in specimens like this California Canary grass (Phalaris californica). After all, another specimen in this collection represents a plant that so charmed Californias that it was designated the state grass. Not only are they beautiful, they’re informative – each specimen is carefully arranged to make visible important features such as the roots, blades, and flowers. The subtle distinctions between grass species in a field might blend together, but laid out on the herbarium sheet (or for that matter, conveyed via botanical illustration) the various parts of the plants can be easier to see.
This arrangement of significant features is a critical component of a quality herbarium specimen. The scientists who use herbaria (the plural of herbarium, or collections of plants preserved and labeled for reference, a practice which is more than 700 years old) such as these need to be able to see as many diagnostic features and as much of the plant as possible for use in understanding the identities of specimens, their classification, and their relationships to one another. This is harder with some plants than others – while grasses aren’t as difficult to capture on the herbarium sheet as, say, rattan palms, – at 103 cm, the above specimen didn’t quite fit on the herbarium sheet. Although this sheet is a petite 8.5 by 11 inches, at 103 cm this specimen still wouldn’t have been close to fitting on today’s standard herbarium sheets of 11 by 16 inches.
Thankfully, Morgan noted the height of the specimen on the label. The more than seventy specimens also have, at least, the general location name of where they were collected, their common name, scientific name, and collector listed. Quality herbarium specimens are fixed to archival paper and accompanied by labels that include this key information. It is preferable to have any other associated information like collection number or i.d., description of the plant and any collecting notes. Specimens in herbaria that meet these qualifications are called voucher specimens.
Not only is this information important for science, it’s important for collections management as well. As we strive to enhance the accessibility of our collections, the level of data a specimen or set of specimens has helps us make decisions about what to prioritize for the time-consuming process of digitization. The time spent is well worth it – the enormous increase in access to specimens brought on by digitization has not only accelerated the current possibilities of plant science but also created new opportunities for how we think about pressing issues like the future of botanical biodiversity.
Of course, digitization efforts connect us to more than just the scientific value of pressed plants. Who can be surprised, when herbarium specimens readily embody the intersection of science and art cherished by nature enthusiasts everywhere. One such fan was the poet Emily Dickson, whose enchanting collection of preserved flora, collected during a period when the formal study of science was inaccessible to many women, can now be accessed by anyone with an internet connection.
This collection of grasses is also dear to us for a different kind of connection – that of our institution’s relationship with Randall Morgan. Often known as Randy or R, Morgan was a pillar of the local natural history community. And though he passed away a few years ago, his influence on the natural world and those who celebrate it in Santa Cruz is evident from the the Sandhills that his activism helped to save, to the local chapter of the California Native Plant Society that he helped found, to this very Museum where he worked as a taxidermist to pay for studying linguistics at UC Santa Cruz.
UCSC’s Norris Center for Natural History, the primary steward of Morgan’s collections, details in their vivid biographical rundown, Morgan’s love of nature began with birds and buoyed him through his life as a largely self taught naturalist. Even without formal training, his passionate observation of the world around led him to many achievements, including the discovery of new species, and his collection of plant voucher specimens that serves as the foundation of our understanding of plant biodiversity in the Santa Cruz Mountains. His story is inspiring in part because, like so many of those featured in the Norris Center-led exhibit Santa Cruz County Naturalists, it expands the notion of who can be a naturalist.
It’s inspiring to have this collection then, as a snapshot of the plant communities of California in the 1970s, but also as a window into Morgan’s dedicated observations of the natural world. As the Norris Center director Chris Lay mentions in the CNPS’s Randall Morgan memorial “When I look at plants I’ll be very satisfied if I can just tell you the species name. But Randy, he recognizes the diversity within the construct we call a species.”
For a deeper dive into the legacy of collector Randall Morgan, keep an eye on our April calendar for our next Collections Close-Up event.
A selection of native and non-native grasses collected by Randall Morgan in Soquel, CA.
From rediscovered family photos to contemporary takes on unprecedented times, pictures taken for all kinds of purposes illuminate our collective understanding of the changing world around us. This month we investigate and celebrate the capacity of photography to shape our relationship with nature, from our foundational collections to our current exhibits.
About the series: Zoom into the stories, secrets, and science of our collections during monthly webinars with Collections Manager Kathleen Aston. This live event is an extension of our monthly Collections Close-Up blog, with added insights and intrigue. Members are invited to participate in this program before it is made available to the general public as well as ask questions directly of Kathleen.
Laura Hecox: lighthouse keeper, collector, naturalist.
Photographer.
This January we piece together a richer picture of our founding collector by taking a new look at an old photograph. The image below depicts matriarch Margaret Hecox standing on the steps of the Santa Cruz Lighthouse in November 1887, accompanied by W.J. Morton and T.H. D’Estrella. We borrowed this picture from a descendent of Simon Hamer, Margaret Hecox’s nephew, who received it years after having spent time living with the Hecox family in Santa Cruz. It is similar to an image the Museum already has, except for one critical difference: it is captioned.
In addition to providing the exact date, and clearly identifying the individuals in the photo, including “Mother’, the final note of the caption, partially obscured by damage, reads “I took this photo”.
We celebrate Laura’s legacy and steward her personal collection, yet there is little documentary evidence of her life. Previous Collections projects have explored some of the precious few materials we have that were actually created by Laura – these include her catalog books and one of her scrapbooks. Our primary source of visual information about her life is a small collection of photographs.
Consisting of two sets of albums, these photographs depict various people and places around 1887 or 1888. These albums are where we derive most of our iconic images of Laura, tidepooling in petticoats beneath a natural bridge, or sitting on a cliff overlooking the ocean.
Image courtesy of Frank Folwell, relative of Margaret Hecox
One album is inscribed “with Christmas compliments” from Hecox family friend and photography enthusiast Theophilus Hope D’Estrella. D’Estrella was a teacher at the California School for the Deaf, where he got the nickname “Magic Lantern Man” for sharing magic lantern slides of his travels into the Sierras and along the California coast with his students. The D’Estrella album includes pictures of parks and buildings in the Monterey and San Francisco bay areas, as well as the sculpture studio of D’Estrella’s good friend and Laura’s nephew, Douglas Tilden.
The other album, contained within the same type of mass produced “Album of Photographs” folio, is more Santa Cruz focused. Its many images include rocky coast and crashing waves, the lighthouse, and local park scenes. Few images depict Laura herself. Some of the images are explicitly attributed to specific photographers, many are not. For the most part, they are all captioned in the same elegantly looped handwriting that we find in Laura’s catalog books and lighthouse paperwork. It also appears to be the same handwriting on the caption to Simon Hamer’s photograph. In this caption then, we find Laura not just collecting specimens, corresponding with scientists, and keeping up with the current events, but also engaging with emerging technologies.
The first modern photographic image was Joseph-Nicephore Niepce’s 1826 picture of a barn. Although the subsequent decades witnessed various innovations in the photographic process, it wasn’t until the 1888 release of the handheld Kodak camera that the process was simplified enough for photography to become a widespread hobby. So in this photograph we are seeing Laura use a camera during a time when most photography was still the province of professionals. Prior to the context provided by this caption, we had no way of knowing that any of the photographs might have been taken by Laura herself.
It is exciting to understand Laura’s active role in creating the materials we have in the collection, especially in light of the history of how her collection has been described. While today we often place her story front and center, historical accounts often attributed her collection to her father Adna, despite Laura herself deeding the collection to the city. Of course, we have many accounts of family collaboration – of Adna building cabinets and of Margaret organizing and sorting specimens – and we wouldn’t want to exclude them. Yet, as late as the 1930s we see reports of the relocation of the “Adna A. Hecox collection” to its new home in Seabright. Being able to attribute things like the taking of a photograph or the collecting of specimens to Laura herself allows us to participate in broader movements to recognize the role of women in the history of science and to celebrate diverse connections with nature.
The surfacing of this photograph enriches our understanding of Laura Hecox’s story, but anyone who has taken a closer look at the changing landscapes of the Monterey Bay knows that photographs have a lot to say about the story of the natural world around us. This is just as true in the 21st century as it was in the 19th, and you can see the evidence in our upcoming virtual exhibit 2020 Vision. For more on photographs as a tool for understanding of the world around us, and the interrelated worlds of photography and natural history, check out this month’s Collections Close-Up event: Picturing Natureon the January 14th at 5:30 p.m..
Since long before Laura Hecox hauled her petticoats across the rocky and rich worlds of West Cliff’s tide pools, the natural wonders of Monterey Bay have captivated all who encounter them. Pounded by the mighty surf and subject to the extremities of the changing tides, the plants and animals of the intertidal zone are especially intriguing. Efforts to get closer to these and other creatures held within the depths of the ocean gave rise to the modern practice of holding marine life in aquariums. This month we explore our interactive side by examining a special form of this phenomenon: the museum’s touch pool.
First touch pool with Charles Prentiss, Nikki Silva and John Anderson
To the outpouring of public delight, what was then the Santa Cruz City Museum poured gallons upon gallons of seawater into our first touch pool in 1977. Curator Charles Prentiss designed this pool, which was built with the assistance of Museum friends and local companies. It consisted of a circular fiberglass tub, collared by redwood boards. An educational structure from the start, the edges of the pool were inscribed with labels describing the life teaming within. A particular fan favorite, featured often in local news articles, was any kind of sea star.
Early on, the Museum hosted classes on marine life in tidepools and the broader ocean, both at this interior pool and along the local coast. Touchpools have long offered direct and accessible engagement with seldom-seen creatures from another world. From the outset, gentle engagements with the animals have been a must, as the modern use of aquaria and touchpools emphasize their function as tools for the empathy and conservation of wildlife – an especially tricky task for animals that aren’t typically seen as charismatic as big cats and beautiful birds, like prickly urchins and slimy sea slugs.
Sentinel article, 1977
The Museum’s original touchpool was brought into being during a boom in local marine science and conservation construction. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation formed in 1978, and successfully opened a world class aquarium showcasing the bay’s unique marine environment in 1984. UCSC’s Long Marine Lab was first opened in 1978, a research lab with early public facing components that ultimately developed into today’s incredible Seymour Marine Discovery Center.
The initial boom in the popularity of aquaria was driven by a sense of wonder, though with a greater focus on rampant collection rather than empathy and conservation. The first burst of aquarium popularity was inspired in the 1850s by Englishman Phillip Henry Gosses’s books on aquarium construction, specimen collection, and observation. Packed with stunning illustrations and spell binding descriptions, the coastal collecting mania Gosse’s work inspired overtook middle class Victorian fern fever and bolstered support for the creation of large public aquariums. Long before the institutions above created their own aquaria, a fascination for the “natural aquariums” of Seabright led local residents to bring bathtubs to the beach and fill them with tide pool creatures in the late 1800s. In her Reminiscences of Seabright, Elizabeth Forbes notes that despite the community’s best caretaking efforts, the creatures were unhappy, and they were returned to the sea before too long.
Today’s Seabright touch pool depends upon special permits and CA Fish and Wildlife Department regulations for the collection, care, and use of specific marine plants and animals. Rebuilt in 2016, the current pool provides enhanced physical accessibility through the use of low-slung walls and clear sides, while portraying a more realistic sense of the tidepool with its rocky border aesthetic. Housed within the SC Naturalist Exhibit, the pool pays homage to the life of our foundational collector Laura Hecox, whose story of being an untrained female nature observer at the turn of the 20th century illustrates how anyone, regardless of formal credentials, can be a naturalist.
Heather Moffat McCoy, former director, makes plans for a new pool in 2016
In 2020, we’re still appreciating algae and asking naturalists how best to start tidepooling – but we’re doing so at safe distances or masked. In the same way, Covid19 has implications for the care of our living collections. In general, the pandemic has been difficult for zoos and aquariums whose obligations to care for their animals and plants do not get any cheaper even as they lose funding from admission prices. The lack of admissions also means that animals are becoming shy of human guests – losing a level of comfort that is important for the well-being of the animals and the success of the exhibit.
While our living collections are small in scale compared to other institutions, they still take special consideration – like making sure we have lights on timers to extend the “daylight” our touch pool residents would have experienced during normal open hours. A return to open hours presents its own new problems – how might the delicate balance of water chemistry be changed by an influx of extra hand sanitizer?
For more about the nuts and bolts of what it takes to keep our touch pool running, in both ordinary and extraordinary times, as well as the educational and ethical dimensions of working with these plants and animals in our upcoming event, Tidepools and Touch: Care for Living Collections.
Take the plunge into the interactive world of our intertidal touch pool exhibit, which has provided visitors with an intimate look at the interior world of the sea outside our doors for decades.
Museum staff explore the history of these hands-on exhibits, from beachside Victorian tubs to today’s collecting permits. We further investigate the care of these seaworthy collections, including the practical challenges of creating intertidal conditions, and their special capacity to connect people to nature.
About the series: Zoom into the stories, secrets, and science of our collections during monthly webinars with Collections Manager Kathleen Aston. This live event is an extension of our monthly Collections Close-Up blog, with added insights and intrigue. Members are invited to participate in this program before it is made available to the general public as well as ask questions directly of Kathleen.
Spend an evening unraveling the complex ways in which consumer trends and museums influenced early 20th basketry collections and craft. Collections Manager Kathleen Aston will elaborate on these trends and how they relate to our collection. Joining us will be Julie Sidel, Interpreter 1 for Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park, to share how the intersection of museum artifacts and interpretation illuminates daily life at the Santa Cruz Mission.
About the series: Zoom into the stories, secrets, and science of our collections during monthly webinars with Collections Manager Kathleen Aston. This live event is an extension of our monthly Collections Close-Up blog, with added insights and intrigue. Members are invited to participate in this program before it is made available to the general public as well as ask questions directly of Kathleen.
