Guide to the Annadel State Park Photographic Collection

California State Parks Photographic Archives interns and Sam Skow
California State Parks Photographic Archives
4940 Lang Avenue, Dock H
McClellan, CA 95652
Phone: (916) 263-0997
Fax: (916) 263-1007
URL: http://www.parks.ca.gov/
© 2016
California State Parks. All rights reserved.

Guide to the Annadel State Park Photographic Collection

Collection number: Consult repository

California State Parks Photographic Archives

McClellan, California 95652
Processed by:
California State Parks Photographic Archives interns and Sam Skow
Date Completed:
2016
Encoded by:
Sam Skow
© 2016 California State Parks. All rights reserved.

Descriptive Summary

Title: Annadel State Park Photographic Collection
Dates: 1971-2011
Bulk Dates: 1971-1983, 2011
Collection number: Consult repository
Creator: California State Parks
Collector: California State Parks
Collection Size: 131 images
Repository: Photographic Archives.

California State Parks
McClellan, CA 92262
Abstract: The Annadel State Park Photographic Collection contains 131 cataloged images that date from 1971 through 2011. Images depict the property as a state park.
Physical location: For current information on the physical location of these materials, please consult the Guide to the California State Parks Photographic Archives, available online.
Languages: Languages represented in the collection: English

Access

Collection is open for research by appointment.

Publication Rights

Property rights reside with the repository. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records. For permission to reproduce or to publish, please contact the Head Curator of the California State Parks Photographic Archives.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item including photographer and date when available], Annadel State Park Photographic Collection, [Catalog number], California State Parks Photographic Archives, McClellan, California

Acquisition Information

Images generated by California State Parks staff.

Accruals

Further accruals are expected.

Park History

Annadel State Park contains roughly 5,093 acres of natural, cultural, and historical resources. Located in Sonoma County, the park is bounded to the north by Los Guilicos Valley, to the west and south by Bennett Valley, and resides at the northern terminus of the Sonoma Mountains; it is roughly six miles east of the city of Santa Rosa. The park is accessible by car via Channel Drive.
Prior to European contact, the area known today as Annadel State Park served various southern Pomo tribes for thousands of years. Archaeological evidence suggests that, though never establishing village sites there, the Pomoan people extracted valuable resources from the area including quarry obsidian, chalcedony, paint pigments, andesite, quartzite, and chert cobbles. In the late-eighteenth century, the Spanish began raiding southern Pomo villages for converts whom they then sent to Mission San Francisco de Solano and San Rafael. After Mexican independence in 1822, Pomo territory was carved into land grants enforced by the Mexican army. Countless Pomo people were relocated, sold into indentured servitude, or killed off from warfare, exhaustion, or disease, a condition accelerated under the Euro Americans. Today, southern Pomo people live in nearby reservations, rancherias, and urban and rural environments in Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino counties.
In 1837, Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado granted the 18,833-acre La Guilicos Rancho—an area containing the present-day park—to John Wilson. In 1850, Wilson later sold the property to William Hood, Mount Hood’s namesake. Hood soon divided and sold off the properties, resulting in the 1871 sales of 2,738 acres to Irish immigrant Samuel Hutchinson, and 905 acres to Kentucky migrant Charles Wymore. Like Hood before them, Hutchinson and Wymore raised orchards and vineyards and grazed cattle and sheep, but beginning in the 1880s, they began commercial quarry mining as well. For the next few decades, the quarry mines in the area and surrounding Sonoma County produced thousands of tons of cobblestones for neighboring metropolises, even contributing to reconstruction efforts after the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake. But with the rise of automobiles, the cobblestone market all but disappeared by 1920.
In 1934, Joseph J. Coney and his wife Ilse purchased the Wymore property as well as Hutchinson’s land, then named “Annadel Farms” after Samuel Hutchinson’s daughter. In 1942, with the purchase of the 1,400-acre Barker Ledson parcel, Coney owned the majority of the area containing the present-day park. On his ranch (still called “Annadel Farms”) Coney raised hops, fruit crops, exotic birds, and grazed purebred shorthorns and black Angus beef cattle in addition to developing a new cement-mixing process, establishing two perlite quarry sites in Frey Canyon, and supplying sport for local hunters. Accompanying the Ledson’s man-made marsh, built in 1930 and called “Ledson Marsh,” Coney also constructed Lake Ilsanjo, named after his wife, in 1953. Coney began selling off the property in the 1960s and, in 1971, the State of California purchased 4,100 acres of the present-day park. California State Parks classified the acquisition a state park in 1974.
California State Parks, coordinating with the Valley of the Moon Natural History Association, maintains several natural resources at Annadel State Park. Containing meadows, grasslands, forests, a manmade marsh and lake, and multiple chaparral areas, the strictly day-use park offers over 40 miles of trails for visitors to enjoy a variety of plant and animal species, including redwood trees, threatened California red-legged frogs, and bluegill and largemouth bass. Although it has not yet offered serious interpretation for them, the park also houses numerous cultural and historical resources such as prehistoric obsidian flake and lithic scatters, special task sites, cupule boulder/bedrock milling stations, several prehistoric artifacts, as well as historic stone, composite, and post and wire fences, basaltic andesite quarry complexes, trash dumps, stone and rhyolite quarries, roads, a concrete weir, and an earth dam with associated marsh. California State Parks requests that all visitors show care and respect when encountering cultural and natural resources. Camping is prohibited in the park.

Scope and Content of Collection

The Annadel State Park Photographic Collection spans the years 1971-2011, with the bulk of the collection covering the years 1971-1983 and 2011. There is a total of 131 cataloged images including 68 photographic prints, scans, and negatives, 13 35mm slides, and 50 born-digital images. Photographs originated primarily from California State Parks staff.
The collection mainly depicts the park’s landscape. Imagery includes numerous ground and aerial views of Lake Ilsanjo, Ledson Marsh, Bennett Mountain, and the Eucalyptus Control Test Site featuring grasses, redwood and Douglas-fir trees, wild pig trails, deer, and trailside horse troughs. Also depicted are California State Parks rangers, other Department of Parks and Recreation employees, and activities related to the 1976 Dedication Day ceremony.
Although the Annadel State Park Photographic Collection illustrates the natural scenic qualities of the park, it does comparably less to catalog the cultural resources there. Aside from capturing Lake Ilsanjo and Ledson Marsh, two recently constructed water bodies, the collection fails to depict any of the area’s famous late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century quarries. It likewise offers no documentation of the prehistoric obsidian operations that occurred there for thousands of years.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Annadel State Park (Calif.)
California. Department of Parks and Recreation
Cobblestones
Cultural resources
Natural resources
Pomo Indians.
Sonoma County (Calif.)
Sonoma Mountains (Calif.)
Valley of the Moon (Sonoma County, Calif.)

Related Material at California State Parks

Annadel State Park Collection

Related Material at Other Repositories

Hood Family Papers, UCLA: Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library

Additional Information