The Paradox of Preservation by Laura Alice Watt

Author:Laura Alice Watt
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520277076
Publisher: University of California Press

CHAPTER 7

The Politics of Preservation

FIGURE 17. Boat at Drakes Bay Oyster Company dock, Point Reyes National Seashore, 2013. Photograph by author.

This book opened with the question of why was there an oyster farm in a national park, and what its closure might mean for understanding these kinds of protected places. The answer to the first part of the question is easy; the second is more complicated. The oyster farm pre-dated the Seashore, and fit well with its original purposes as a recreational facility, a place for visitors to learn about shellfish and enjoy a picnic by the shore. Commercial oyster beds were first established in nearby Tomales Bay as far back as 1911; in the San Francisco Bay, they appeared even earlier, in the 1800s.1 Drakes Estero was planted with oyster seed imported from Japan in the early 1930s, as were several other tidelands areas up and down the California coast, including Morro Bay and Elkhorn Slough.2 In 1935, David C. Dreiser obtained shellfish leases from the State of California for both Drakes and Limantour Esteros—the first incarnation of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company (DBOC). After the allotments changed hands several times, Charles Johnson purchased the rights in 1960, two years before the Seashore was established, and called his business Johnson’s Oyster Company. In 1965, the State of California transferred ownership of the esteros to the federal government, but retained mineral and fishing rights; the same year, Johnson negotiated a “trade” with the NPS, giving up access to 344 acres in Limantour Estero in exchange for 70 acres adjoining his existing oyster beds in Schooner Bay.3 He additionally owned five acres on shore, carved out of the old N Ranch, that housed the oyster processing facilities. The NPS acquired this parcel in 1972, but Johnson retained a forty-year RUO, one of the longest in the Seashore, set to run out in 2012.

Early NPS planners saw the oyster farm as an asset to the proposed Seashore. At the first public hearings in 1960, George Collins, NPS regional chief of recreation and planning, specified that “existing commercial oyster beds—which we saw yesterday as we flew around there, a very important activity—and the cannery at Drakes Estero, plus three existing commercial fisheries, would continue under national seashore status because of their public values.”4 The NPS’s 1961 Land Use Study and Economic Feasibility Report similarly stated that “the culture of oysters is an interesting industry which presents exceptional educational opportunities for introducing students to the field of marine biology,” and suggested that adding a restaurant specializing in fresh oysters would be “another recreation attraction [in] the proposed seashore.”5 When the California State Assembly passed a joint resolution that same year supporting the park proposal, they specified that the bill should contain “provisions safeguarding the legitimate interests of residents, ranchers, and fishermen in the proposed park area.”6 Commercial fishing and oystering seemed fundamentally compatible with the national seashore concept.7

Throughout the wilderness hearings and discussions of the mid-1970s, most participants in the debate considered the oyster farm a land use that could coexist within wilderness.

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