Coke Hallowell interview
Item
Title
eng
Coke Hallowell interview
Description
eng
About the challenges of establishing the San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust, as well as the San Joaquin River Restoration agreement.
Creator
eng
Hallowell, Coke
eng
Holyoke, Thomas
Relation
eng
Water Archive Oral Histories
Coverage
eng
California State University, Fresno
Date
eng
4/5/2013
Format
eng
Microsoft Word 2013 document, 13 pages
Identifier
eng
SCMS_waoh_00033
extracted text
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, today we are interviewing Coke Hallowell, about
the San Joaquin River and whatever else she may wish to talk about. Let's
just start off with a little bit of personal history. Where are you from
and how have you gotten to be where you are now?
>> Coke Hallowell: [Laughter] Well, I was -- I'm a valley girl. I was
born in Bakersfield, but my family moved here when I was very young, and
I grew up in Clovis, with 4-H animals and horses, and I didn't get very
far away from Clovis before I came to Fresno State as a student. And
actually I had no knowledge of the San Joaquin River, I hadn't ever given
it any thought. Then, my boyfriend, soon to become my husband, now my
husband, his aunt lived on the river near Kerman, and we would go over
there and later took our children and we'd, we’d walk down to the river
from their house and, and swim in it, but even then I certainly did not
know anything about the river, where it went, [laughter] what problems it
may have been facing. So I learned that later. I was inspired by a, a oped article in the Fresno Bee; and I was then teaching in the town of Del
Rey and I read this article that just touched me so, it was about the
possibility of, of preserving the river and the river lands, and about
making a parkway, and it was very inspiring to me. I cut out the article,
Richard -- I know, Tatarian was his name, he was a journalist for, I
think, UPI for many years, and when he retired he came back home to
Fresno and he taught here at Fresno State in the journalism department.
Roger Tatarian, that's it, and he was very well-respected person and he
served on the McClatchy board of directors, I think clear until his
death, and he had heard about the Sacramento Parkway and he knew there
were some people here in town talking about river preservation, and so he
wrote this inspiring article. I cut it out of the paper, laid it on the
kitchen counter and re-read it several times, and finally made the phone
call that we got -- got me into this.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And when, when are we talking about? What, what year
is this, more or less?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, that would have been about 1985, 1985 I think. It
was when the river committee was beginning to form, and that was a group
of people around Fresno who cared a lot about the river, and knew that it
was facing some troubles, which by that I mean some big subdivisions that
were trying to get permission from the county, you know, to build
thousands of houses in the river bottom, therefore taking out hundreds of
acres of riparian habitat and oak -- giant oak trees. And so that river
committee was already formed by the time Roger Tatarian wrote that
article, and that's when I jumped in and got involved.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually, something you said earlier kind of intrigued
me. Just going back much earlier to your memories of going down to swim
in the river, I believe you said, was there a lot of recreation in, in
and around the river back when...
>> Coke Hallowell: Not that I know of. My husband, who grew up in Clov-,
in Clovis, he and his family would go down by some bridge, I don't even
know which bridge, and they'd have weenie roasts and picnics and they'd
swim, but there was no organized way to recreate. I suppose some people
were canoeing or kayaking at that time, and other people were picnicking
but I don't think he had ever paid much attention to the river.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Now, I presume that was after the building and
operation of Friant Dam. Was that a point in time when the river wasn't
even always flowing year-round?
>> Coke Hallowell: That's true. After 1947, then the river dried up down
at Gravelly Ford, and that's when the salmon no longer could come up.
Some of the interviews I've done were with salmon fishers who had, you
know, they had speared salmon in the river, and one of them was, I think
she said it was 1947, she and her husband and some relatives went down on
the last day that Fish, Fish and Game was going to allow salmon spearing.
There weren't going to be any more salmon coming anyway, but they were
not allowed to, and everybody could get two fish, and she tells a cute
story about going down and she didn't like fish and she didn't like the
water, but her husband said, "Oh, you've got to do this, we each can have
two," and so that was kind of the end, and I've been to Gravelly For-Ford, not many of my friends, even, on the board of the Parkway Trust, I
don't think that many of them have ever been to Gravelly Ford, and I was
doing an interview with a man who had owned some property right at
Gravelly Ford, and after the interview he said, "Would you like to go
down and see?" And we went down, my daughter and I were doing the
interview, and it was pretty pitiful. [Laughter]I mean, it was just a
little trickle and lots of sand, and there was a monitor there. I think
it's the Bureau of Reclamation has a monitoring system there, and even it
was pretty pitiful, it was just a little shack with a pipe [laughter].
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually, where is Gravelly Ford, more or less?
>> Coke Hallowell: It's west of the 99, I'm not sure how many miles
because we had driven to this ranch for the interview and then he took us
in his pickup and we drove a few more miles below his ranch to see the
Gravelly Ford. I would guess seven miles west of the 99? From his ra-his ranch we could look across, and he pointed out where the, the fi-the ship, you know, there used to be a ship that came with the -- to pick
up loads of grain from Madera and Fresno County and, in fact I have a -there's a picture of it in the book Take Me to the River, and it -- I
don't know how often it came, came up to get their, their load, you know,
and, and he showed us that place. I believe it was called Sycamore Point,
and that was as far up as the boat could come. It was a big ship and it
couldn't go any farther.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay then, so, returning back to the 1980's, you've
seen this article, you've been inspired by this article, and do you seek
out this committee of people who are concerned about the fate of the
river. Do you happen to remember any of the names of the people on the
committee?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh of course, I could remember all of them. The river
committee grew and grew, they were very successful, they raised money and
they went to all the hearings, the pla-- the planning commission
hearings, and they'd wear little green bows, we'd pass out little green
bows so everybody would know who was in the audience, you know, of the
planning commission or the board of supervisors. This was when the, the
ranch -- the Ball Ranch was -- some people were applying for permission
to build their subdivision, and the main -- the three main names I would
remember would be Mary Savala, she's still very active in planning and
environmental protection, Pae Smith [assumed spelling], who is also still
active, and Clarie Craiger [assumed spelling], and Clarie Craiger is
still giving nature -- guided nature walks on the river, oh, many times a
week I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you know about when they started becoming
involved...
>> Coke Hallowell: It was about 1985. It was very close to the time I got
involved.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Ok, and was most of the inspiration come from the
concern about you know, Fresno County trying to build subdivisions out
there?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes, that's exactly what happened, and now the
Ball Ranch belongs to the State of California, the conservancy, and you
can go fishing there on the weekends, there's some good fish there they
tell me, in the big ponds.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So how did this -- all this work get started? What
happened from 1985 sort of to where we are now?
>> Coke Hallowell: Right, right. Those three women whose names I just
gave you, they had, had some success and they were feeling good about the
future possibilities. They heard about the Land Trust Alliance, it's a
national organization with, I think, thousands of land trusts such as
ours. Some of them don't have any staff and they're very small, and some
of them are very big, and I think we're among the bigger ones now, and
they, they went to Asilomar, to a conference of that group, and really
got inspired about forming a land trust, and then that was formed 25
years ago. It -- we, our first meeting was in April of 1988. That was the
beginning of our land trust, and so we, we -- one of the first big steps
that we made as an organization was to, to make a conceptual plan of what
a parkway could be, and so there was a very large assemblage committee of
many, many people with expertise, people from the -- the Department of
Water Resources, for instance. There was staff people from agencies and
private people who made up this big committee, and they met for at least
a couple of years, talking about what a parkway could be, and then Jim
Costa, who was then Assemblyman Jim Costa, he put forward a bill in the
assembly to say, "Let's have a parkway in Fresno, you know, on the San
Joaquin River."
>> Thomas Holyoke: Why is that necessary, you to do something like that?
>> Coke Hallowell: To get it in law?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yes.
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, for instance there are park bonds that come
along that we could make use of the money to buy land along the river,
or, or make trails along the river, and to be eligible for those bond
monies you really need to have a legitimate, legalized, official,
organization. That's the way I see it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is originally conceived, was the parkway going to be
on both the Fresno and the Madera sides of the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, absolutely, and it is, now. We probably are much
heavier on the Fresno side as far as ownership of land, but there are
Madera-side properties too, which look very promising for trails.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And back in the 1980's when these plans were just
being formed and put forward, how receptive was Fresno County and Madera
County to the idea?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think they didn't pay much attention to what was
going on. I, I doubt if any of the supervisors at that time really were
aware or were giving it much attention, that's, that’s what I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When Assemblyman Costa started moving legislation on
this, I presume at that point they might have started to realize it was
happening. I mean is there -- more generally has there been a good
relationship with the county board of supervisors of either county, or
have they resisted this at times?
>> Coke Hallowell: That's – I, I see it as mixed. They're not always
greatly supportive, I think they don't pay much attention to it, but
recently, Madera County planning came up with a fabulous work of art
about what the Madera side of river west could be. They did an excellent
job, and now we're getting a little resistance from some homeowners on
the Fresno side, and that's unfortunate because it just slows our work
down and makes our progress slower, you know.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Again, back in 1980's when this was getting started,
was there any awareness that there might -- there was also efforts
underway to actually start restoring the full flow of the San Joaquin
River?
>> Coke Hallowell: That was hardly ever spoken of. I went to a meeting on
a Saturday once with representatives of the NRDC, the Natural Resources
Defense Council, and some members of our board. It was on a Saturday
morning in a business office, and I'll never forget he started talking
about salmon. That was the first time it occurred to me that there was
ever a possibility of restoring the river, and I think our trust could
have been pretty young at that time, a year or two, and I don't know
where I had been not to realize that it was in the works, and I remember
when we left the meeting that the chairman of that meeting said, "No,
we're not really gonna go out in the community and talk about this,"
because there was such resistance to it, we, we knew that. Especially in
the farming community, the ag community. And so we all went out with, you
know, determined not to talk about it [laughter], and then as the years
flowed by it became, you know, more possible that it might happen, and of
course then when they won the lawsuit or there was a settlement, that was
a very happy day.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So at this point most of the parkway's planning is
about having a much larger, much more -- [laughter] a lot more river,
river to be enjoyed by people.
>> Coke Hallowell: Right. Now, the legislation that, that was passed to
help promote the parkway, it limits us to 22 miles from Millerton State
Park to the 99 Highway. So there is no money that can come through state
or anything for any property beyond that. I've never said this to anybody
and I probably shouldn't be saying it now, but I hope in the future that
will change, and that -- well, right now we are talking about the whole
river, we're talking about the whole river, but, but the state would not
back any land acquisition beyond the 99 at this point.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I guess maybe need a little bit more about sort of how
a land trust like this works. I mean, how – what does-- what happens with
this money and what -- how is this property acquired?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, it has to be a willing seller, of course. We
don't go out and tap people on the shoulder and say, "We'd like your
land," that isn't the way it works. I remember there was an article in
the paper about a conservation easement, and a landowner near the San
Joaquin Golf Club, he called our office and said, "You know, I could be
interested in doing a conservation easement on my walnut orchard," and so
then it progressed and the conservancy did buy a conservation easement
there.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah, what does that mean, "conservation easement"?
>> Coke Hallowell: That means that the land is protected in perpetuity
and cannot be changed from what it is. So his walnut orchard will always
be a walnut orchard; no housing, no -- I think if you wanted to build a
woodshed you'd have to get some kind of official permission, and I don't
even -- don't know if that could happen. My husband and I have a cattle
ranch in Madera County and it's in a conservation easement, and that
means we can't build another house on the property, we can't plant cotton
[Laughter] or anything else, it has to remain grazing land, as it is now.
We did that, I think, about 12 years ago, and we did it on our own, I
mean, we wanted it. There's so much wildlife, we wanted to protect the
land and the wildlife.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does that -- does this conser-- conservation easement
then, also restrict recreational use?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think it has to be written into it originally. Our
land doesn't restrict it but it doesn't allow it either, you know. So
people aren't walking across our land or anything. In the future, if the
holder of the easement -- there has to be an official holder of the
easement. In the case of our ranch, it is the Parkway Trust, because
there's a creek that goes through our ranch that is a tributary to the
San Joaquin, so it makes it kind of logical.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Again, back in 1980 when most of this was just
beginning, was most of the land along the river privately owned?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, there was very little. Lost Lake Park is a county
park, so I don't know if you've been there, it's beautiful. Have you?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Oh, yeah.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yeah, it's really nice, and of course Woodward Park,
that's right up to the river bottom, and the Parkway Trust and the
conservancy bought the land below the bluff and I don't know if you've
walked on that yet, but it is gorgeous. It's called the Jensen Ranch, and
it was cattle, and before that it was a pig ranch, and now it's all
planted with native trees and bushes and shrubs, and we have been doing
that planting and irrigating for probably five or six years now. And we
have staff that actually goes down there and plants and weeds and takes
care of the drip system, and there's a trail about a mile and a half
trail that loops through that property, connected to Woodward Park.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So, part of the organization's purpose is not just to
you know, arrange conservation easements, but also the actual purchasing
of land.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes. And we have about 4,000 acres now that we
have purchased.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And is most of that purchasing done with state bond
money or some private money?
>> Coke Hallowell: State, state bond money, that's right, and sometimes
private. The land that we call "River West" which used to belong to the
Spano family, we got a grant from the Packard Corporation for part of,
part of that purchase, and part was state bonds, I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And so those are just out and out purchases, that
property is now owned by the...
>> Coke Hallowell: That's right.
>> Thomas Holyoke: By the conservancy or the Parkway Trust?
>> Coke Hallowell: The conservancy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, actually, maybe this would be a good time to
sort of explain what the difference between the two is. You said before
the interview, "I get confused about them too."
>> Coke Hallowell: Right, right, everyone does. The conservancy is a
state agency, and the Parkway Trust is a private nonprofit supported by
donors who, who join with a $50 membership or more, and so we're always
out there knocking on doors, trying to raise funds because we are, just
like every nonprofit, whether it be a museum or...
>> Thomas Holyoke: Are the two organizations at all connected?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, we -- I like to think of us as being right on
the same track, looking to do and accomplish the same thing, which would
be a successful, well managed public park, and because they're a state
agency, they have certain constrictions and they have to do -- there are
quite a few conservancies now in the state of California: the Tahoe
Conservancy and the Santa Monica Hills Conservancy, and I think the -along the coast there are quite a few as well.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is that also similar to the Sierra Foothills
Conservancy?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes! Very similar, but no, they are not a state
agency, and the word "conservancy" gets confusing there; they are a
private nonprofit such as the Parkway Trust. They are supported by people
who join them, give membership dues, and they get state bond money as
well, and they have done a wonderful job. They have tens of thousands of
acres under conservation easements and outright purchase as well.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Looking back over the history of the, the Parkway
Trust, I get the impression that one of the first great successes was the
opening of the Lewis S. Eaton Trail.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, it was.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Tell a little bit about the trail; let's do history
and Lewis S. Eaton.
>> Coke Hallowell: Right. Lewis S. Eaton was on our board as an original
board member in 1988, and he was a very fine person and he cared a lot
about nature and the outdoors. He was a big hiker and lover of nature,
and he was on our board until he died, and so when he died we decided to
go to some of his friends. He had many, many business-owner friends in
Fresno, and he had a savings and loan company, you may know, and we asked
them if they would help us to establish a trail in his honor, and so I
think about 12 or 14 of his friends gave very generous contributions to
kick that -- kick-start that off, you know? And then after that, lots,
lots, and lots of smaller -- smaller donations.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When did the trail open up?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, I don't know! I'm sorry; I really don't have a
date in my mind.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I think, note, just a note to myself here that maybe
the first part opened in 1994, around then.
>> Coke Hallowell: That sounds about right, the river center opened in
2012 -- no, 2002, and it would have been about that time, I think you're
close.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So the trail has then grown over time...
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In fact, is it complete now?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, no, no, it's -- we hope very soon to build a trail
on the River West property which would connect, if you go to the -- to
the end of Woodward Park, there's one mile of trail that goes west
towards the 41, and we hope that the Lew Eaton Trail can continue from
that end of that place, go under the 41 bridge and join the property on
the west side, which is the, what we call River West.
>> Thomas Holyoke: How far up into the foothills, ultimately, does the -the conservancy extending?
>> Coke Hallowell: I, I don't think we have any plans to go above
Millerton Park…
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Coke Hallowell: But there are organizations who are working on trails
that come clear down from the crest of the Sierra, there -- some very
ambitious people, have been working a long time building those trails,
which will follow the river all the way down from the crest to Millerton
Park.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Wow [laughter] that is ambitious.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yeah, that'd be wonderful, that’d be wonderful, yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So at some point, I don't know if in the 1980's, the
1990's, you become chairman of the board of the -- oh no, sorry,
president of the Parkway Trust.
>> Coke Hallowell: I was president of the board from the first meeting 25
years ago, for 20 years, and then I got to thinking, "You know, somebody
else could probably do better than me, [laughter] and I should step
aside, let, let another person take a turn," and so now our president is
George Folsom, he's been president for five years, and this, this month
we will celebrate our 25th year, and so I was named then chairman of the
board, but they didn't give me a definition of that, and so I just keep
plugging away doing committee work and other things that I think will
help with the parkway forward. But nobody tells me what to do, if they
tell me I'll do it [Laughter}.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Any particularly great or interesting stories that
happened to stand out during your years as president of the organization?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, every time we finish negotiating for a property,
that's time for a celebration, and that's always tense, as you get
towards the culmination of the deal, and so I've had many of those
particular joys, but -- and maybe one will come to me before we finish
here, right now I can't think of an outstanding thing.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Have you found a lot of private property owners along
the river willing to negotiate, willing to consider selling the land, or
at least have a conservation easement?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, you know, we don't go out and seek them, as I
mentioned a minute ago. We kind of wait for them to come to us. In the
very beginning, in 1985 and 1988, there was lots of fear and apprehension
from landowners; they didn't know what the parkway meant to do, were we
gonna come in and condemn their property or try to or something like
that? So that's why we've always been very careful just to let people
come to us if they wanted to sell. I, I have a neighbor who owned
riverside property, who called me one day and said he'd like to talk to
me about selling a piece, and that's the only time I think anyone ever
called me to talk about it, and as it turned out we did -- the
conservancy did buy his land, and he still lives in the foothills and is
really happy that he was able to, to do that. It was an old, old family,
the Wagner family, and the Wagner family still owns a lot of property in
the hills.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I understand that there's educational components to…
[inaudible] on the river.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, that's very exciting and from almost the
beginning we have had a mission and goals about education, because the
kids, after all, are the ones that are gonna take it over and take it
into the future, so we wanted -- we want their knowledge about the river
and their enthusiasm about the river. So we have a river camp, which is a
day camp for kids from four years old clear through to, to high school,
and then in high school we have a program for, for counselor -- junior
counselors and junior counselors, and sometimes they've had a program for
high school kids that, that -- where they teach survival skills and, and
they do canoeing and they talk about how to -- canoe safety and river
swimming safety and all that. So we're teaching those older teenagers
some new things that will be good for them.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In and around Fresno County, Madera County, you said
you've spent your life living here and knowing the people around here, do
you find that there's a lot of people are even familiar with or aware of
the river and the opportunities in and around the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: I'm glad you asked that. Every year for 20-some years,
a board member and I have gone to the Valley Women's Conference, which
attracts thousands of women, mostly professional woman. They all come to
the convention center and they're beautifully dressed in suits and
they're very business-like, they took the day off of work to come to this
conference, and we always have a table with information and some really
pretty backdrop pictures of the river, and over and over again, in spite
of the fact that we go there all the time, they'll say, "Where is that
river?" [Laughter] And we just try to smile and say, "Well, it's right
here, it's right across from Riverpark," and there's just a lot of people
that don't know about the river and, and we've been working on getting
the word out for a long time, so I don't know what else we could do
[laughter]. Lot of our board members are on Facebook, and they're charged
with putting the word out, so we'll hope that helps.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you think people need to learn to, let’s put this
kind of, respect the river? And I guess I say that in a sense, I, last
year I went out and did one of the river cleanups.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, good.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And it was appalling the stuff thrown in and on the
bank.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, it is appalling, I agree. I just don't know why
people do that, but it is lack of respect, of course. It's, it’s a
carryover from the old days, you know? People used to always dump stuff
in the rivers to get rid of it [laughter], so we just have to keep
educating those kids and everyone else.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you think the community has grown more respectful
of –spectful of its river rather than a dumping ground or simply just a
source of water for agriculture?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think people are still throwing tires in the river,
and re-- old refrigerators.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah, we saw those.
>> Coke Hallowell: I mean, there's a lot of stuff there, so I don't -- I
can't measure [laughter] if it's better or not.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Any thoughts about the organization naming their -- I
guess one of their principle buildings after you? After all now we have
the Coke Hallowell Center for River Studies.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yes, yes. Well, sometimes it's a little
embarrassing but I was very honored that they did that, and hardly anyone
ever asks me, "Why did they do that?" But if you were to ask me why
[laughter]…
>> Thomas Holyoke: Why would they do that [laughter]?
>> Coke Hallowell: It's because it was kind of my idea that we should
have an education center. That old house was sitting there vacant, it was
owned by the Sand and Gravel Company, and it seemed to be kind of in the
center of the 22-mile thing that we're responsible for. It just seemed
like that would be a good place for an education center, so we talked to
the Sand and Gravel Company about it. Their plan, the company's plan, was
to tear it down, because there's a lot of valuable sand and gravel under
that house, and the barn, and in that whole area, and yet the regional
director, I think that's his title, of the Calmat, which is now Vulcan
Company, he didn't want to tear the house down. He loved the old house.
So when we approached him with our idea, he was responsible for going to
the corporation and getting them to say, "Yes, we will donate that," and
they donated five acres and the that includes the house and the big old
barn, and then later they, they donated the whole 20 acres because the
zoning in the river bottom is 20 acres and you can't divide it up, so
that's why they ended up donating all of it to us. And so then it was a
big wreck of a house, you know. It needed new foundation, it needed a new
roof and it needed a lot of other things, so the East Fresno Rotary
adopted that house as their project, and they came out time after time
again and did work tearing out the inner walls, which had to be torn out
so they could put insulation and electricity and everything. The house
was built in 1890, and had been lived in by many different families over
the years, and so it, with a lot of work and a lot of donations from the
community, we raised the money necessary to build a new roof and the new
foundation and fix it up. Have you visited it?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Oh yeah, several times actually.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh good, good, I'm glad. We're very proud of it and
what goes on there. We have a lot of kids from preschool on up that come
out all the time.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Vulcan Mining Company does a big operation along the
river. How does the parkway get along with them? I mean, you just
mentioned one thing that sounds very good.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes well we do get along with them very well.
They're extremely cooperative with us. For instance, if some of the
gravel gets kind of bare in spots, they'll come and bring some more
gravel for us and spread it out. So they do kind little things along the
way. We also hope in the very near future to buy some more land from
them. We had it appraised maybe five, six years ago, hoping to buy it
then, and then problems kept coming up such as the freezing of the state
bonds, so then there was no bond money for us to buy it from them, and so
that caused a delay, and then their own company had some internal
problems which I think are being resolved or have been resolved, such as
a, a corporate takeover which was threatening Vulcan, and I think that's
behind us now, and now it's been so long we'll probably have to have new
appraisals. When the time comes if they will pick up the phone, call us
and say, "We're ready to sell," I think there's Parcel A, Parcel B and
it's a matter of them finishing their mining. They have to be out of
there, of course. There's some beautiful ponds in the back towards the
river, I don't know if you've seen those, they're big, they're like a
lake, and we can use those as fishing places for the public.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I have been there, in fact. Toured there with someone
from Vulcan who was talking about how they have restored a lot of that
property back there.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, they've done wonderful plantings of native,
native trees and shrubs and it looks great. They are required by law to
do some of that reclamation, but they go beyond, they do really excellent
work.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Good, good, good, good. Do you’ve sense that there's - you've been involved with this a long time. Is there a sense that
there's sort of you know, new, younger generations coming up who have the
same level of commitment to the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, I hope so. On all of our committees and on our
board we try to include people and younger generations, you know. It's a
little hard because younger people are busy working and raising their
families, don't really have the time to give, but we are making some
headway on that.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. Any thoughts about what the river's future is?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, I don't know if you've heard of the something
called the Blue Way? It's actually connected with the national parks, and
there are rivers all over the country who are applying to be called a
Blue Way, and what that means is there would be maps and brochures and it
would be on the web about how you could go all the way to the bay on the
San Joaquin River, and it would show you where you can camp, where you
can park your car, where you can put in your canoe, where you can take
out your canoe or whatever, and this would be called the Blue Way, and we
are in the process -- I know that Secretary of the Interior is in favor
of it, I've seen his letters of, of backing for that Blue Way. In fact
the former Secretary of the Interior who had just resigned, he, he
visited the San Joaquin, we gave him a canoe trip, which was nice, so he
knows who we are and hopefully his successor will come, come and visit
us, too.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Has the parkway had a generally good relationship with
the various government agencies out there, the Bureau of Reclamation and
[inaudible].
>> Coke Hallowell: I think we do, I, I think we do, yes. The Bureau of
Reclamation and the Department of Water Resources and the Fish and Game
make up the leadership team for the salmon restoration, and they-they're working on all of the details of getting those salmon to come up
the river and spawn, and we're working with them when, in whatever way we
can to assist.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, that comes to the -- oh actually, no, one more,
one more question, based on something you said much earlier. Can you tell
us a little bit about your Take Me to the River project, your book?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yes, thank you. My daughter is a filmmaker and a
writer and a professional editor as well, and she and I did these
interviews starting about 12 years ago. We, we got started in a way which
I won't go into right now, it was just kind of an accidental start, and
after the first interview, we got to talking. There must be a lot of
people who have memories of the river in whatever way, whether they're
fishermen, farmers, environmentalists, you know, all kinds of people.
People who just grew up next to the river. So we started putting the word
out that we'd like to meet some of these people and see if they would do
an interview with us. She did the filming, I did the questioning, and we
have done more than 70, maybe 75 interviews, but it's taken a long time.
She lives in San Francisco and so she couldn't just pop in here every day
to help me do that, so we had to schedule well in advance, you know,
around her other busy schedule, and we had a wonderful time, but it
really -- when I look back on it, it really was a lot of work, a lot of
time, and we met the most wonderful people, and most of them were older,
which, you know, that means they had even more of a story to tell than
the younger, and it was so easy because I would usually start out by
saying, "Now, tell me, Azalea, what was it like to grow up next to the
river?' And then she got started and then the words just kept rolling
out, the stories kept coming, and I hardly ever had to ask another
question except if it kind of got off subject you know, bring her, try to
bring her back a little, and that's the way all of them were. We
interviewed a, a botanist who was a teacher at Fresno City College at the
time, we interviewed him and he told such wonderful stories about the
flora and fauna along the river. A month went by and I saw him somewhere
out in the city, and he said, "Coke, I thought of a lot of things I
didn't tell you, can we do another interview? [Laughter] so we have two
interviews of Bob Winter, I don't know if you've ever heard that name,
but he, he was very well known as a good teacher.
>> Thomas Holyoke: What's sort of the output of all of this? You have a
book, I understand.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, it's a great book called Take Me to the River,
there are 33 stories in there. The publisher couldn't publish all 70
stories, that would be a book that thick, and so he, he gave us the
number 33. It was very difficult to choose 33 out of those 70, but we
tried to do a balance of, of subject matter, so they weren't all about
the very same thing.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is there any other products that are going to come
from this, were these videotaped?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, they're on DVDs, and you can see them, just go
out to the River Center house, upstairs in the back room there is a DVD
player and all of them are in the top drawer, and you can just go through
the album and pick out any one you want and watch it. They're nice,
they're really nice.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, that's the end of my questions! Anything else
you would like to add?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well no, except that we will continue to reach out to
the public and try to get them involved in the concept of saving the
river.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Coke Hallowell: Okay.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Thank you very much.
>> Coke Hallowell: Thank you very much; it's been fun.
[ Silence ]
the San Joaquin River and whatever else she may wish to talk about. Let's
just start off with a little bit of personal history. Where are you from
and how have you gotten to be where you are now?
>> Coke Hallowell: [Laughter] Well, I was -- I'm a valley girl. I was
born in Bakersfield, but my family moved here when I was very young, and
I grew up in Clovis, with 4-H animals and horses, and I didn't get very
far away from Clovis before I came to Fresno State as a student. And
actually I had no knowledge of the San Joaquin River, I hadn't ever given
it any thought. Then, my boyfriend, soon to become my husband, now my
husband, his aunt lived on the river near Kerman, and we would go over
there and later took our children and we'd, we’d walk down to the river
from their house and, and swim in it, but even then I certainly did not
know anything about the river, where it went, [laughter] what problems it
may have been facing. So I learned that later. I was inspired by a, a oped article in the Fresno Bee; and I was then teaching in the town of Del
Rey and I read this article that just touched me so, it was about the
possibility of, of preserving the river and the river lands, and about
making a parkway, and it was very inspiring to me. I cut out the article,
Richard -- I know, Tatarian was his name, he was a journalist for, I
think, UPI for many years, and when he retired he came back home to
Fresno and he taught here at Fresno State in the journalism department.
Roger Tatarian, that's it, and he was very well-respected person and he
served on the McClatchy board of directors, I think clear until his
death, and he had heard about the Sacramento Parkway and he knew there
were some people here in town talking about river preservation, and so he
wrote this inspiring article. I cut it out of the paper, laid it on the
kitchen counter and re-read it several times, and finally made the phone
call that we got -- got me into this.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And when, when are we talking about? What, what year
is this, more or less?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, that would have been about 1985, 1985 I think. It
was when the river committee was beginning to form, and that was a group
of people around Fresno who cared a lot about the river, and knew that it
was facing some troubles, which by that I mean some big subdivisions that
were trying to get permission from the county, you know, to build
thousands of houses in the river bottom, therefore taking out hundreds of
acres of riparian habitat and oak -- giant oak trees. And so that river
committee was already formed by the time Roger Tatarian wrote that
article, and that's when I jumped in and got involved.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually, something you said earlier kind of intrigued
me. Just going back much earlier to your memories of going down to swim
in the river, I believe you said, was there a lot of recreation in, in
and around the river back when...
>> Coke Hallowell: Not that I know of. My husband, who grew up in Clov-,
in Clovis, he and his family would go down by some bridge, I don't even
know which bridge, and they'd have weenie roasts and picnics and they'd
swim, but there was no organized way to recreate. I suppose some people
were canoeing or kayaking at that time, and other people were picnicking
but I don't think he had ever paid much attention to the river.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Now, I presume that was after the building and
operation of Friant Dam. Was that a point in time when the river wasn't
even always flowing year-round?
>> Coke Hallowell: That's true. After 1947, then the river dried up down
at Gravelly Ford, and that's when the salmon no longer could come up.
Some of the interviews I've done were with salmon fishers who had, you
know, they had speared salmon in the river, and one of them was, I think
she said it was 1947, she and her husband and some relatives went down on
the last day that Fish, Fish and Game was going to allow salmon spearing.
There weren't going to be any more salmon coming anyway, but they were
not allowed to, and everybody could get two fish, and she tells a cute
story about going down and she didn't like fish and she didn't like the
water, but her husband said, "Oh, you've got to do this, we each can have
two," and so that was kind of the end, and I've been to Gravelly For-Ford, not many of my friends, even, on the board of the Parkway Trust, I
don't think that many of them have ever been to Gravelly Ford, and I was
doing an interview with a man who had owned some property right at
Gravelly Ford, and after the interview he said, "Would you like to go
down and see?" And we went down, my daughter and I were doing the
interview, and it was pretty pitiful. [Laughter]I mean, it was just a
little trickle and lots of sand, and there was a monitor there. I think
it's the Bureau of Reclamation has a monitoring system there, and even it
was pretty pitiful, it was just a little shack with a pipe [laughter].
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually, where is Gravelly Ford, more or less?
>> Coke Hallowell: It's west of the 99, I'm not sure how many miles
because we had driven to this ranch for the interview and then he took us
in his pickup and we drove a few more miles below his ranch to see the
Gravelly Ford. I would guess seven miles west of the 99? From his ra-his ranch we could look across, and he pointed out where the, the fi-the ship, you know, there used to be a ship that came with the -- to pick
up loads of grain from Madera and Fresno County and, in fact I have a -there's a picture of it in the book Take Me to the River, and it -- I
don't know how often it came, came up to get their, their load, you know,
and, and he showed us that place. I believe it was called Sycamore Point,
and that was as far up as the boat could come. It was a big ship and it
couldn't go any farther.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay then, so, returning back to the 1980's, you've
seen this article, you've been inspired by this article, and do you seek
out this committee of people who are concerned about the fate of the
river. Do you happen to remember any of the names of the people on the
committee?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh of course, I could remember all of them. The river
committee grew and grew, they were very successful, they raised money and
they went to all the hearings, the pla-- the planning commission
hearings, and they'd wear little green bows, we'd pass out little green
bows so everybody would know who was in the audience, you know, of the
planning commission or the board of supervisors. This was when the, the
ranch -- the Ball Ranch was -- some people were applying for permission
to build their subdivision, and the main -- the three main names I would
remember would be Mary Savala, she's still very active in planning and
environmental protection, Pae Smith [assumed spelling], who is also still
active, and Clarie Craiger [assumed spelling], and Clarie Craiger is
still giving nature -- guided nature walks on the river, oh, many times a
week I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you know about when they started becoming
involved...
>> Coke Hallowell: It was about 1985. It was very close to the time I got
involved.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Ok, and was most of the inspiration come from the
concern about you know, Fresno County trying to build subdivisions out
there?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes, that's exactly what happened, and now the
Ball Ranch belongs to the State of California, the conservancy, and you
can go fishing there on the weekends, there's some good fish there they
tell me, in the big ponds.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So how did this -- all this work get started? What
happened from 1985 sort of to where we are now?
>> Coke Hallowell: Right, right. Those three women whose names I just
gave you, they had, had some success and they were feeling good about the
future possibilities. They heard about the Land Trust Alliance, it's a
national organization with, I think, thousands of land trusts such as
ours. Some of them don't have any staff and they're very small, and some
of them are very big, and I think we're among the bigger ones now, and
they, they went to Asilomar, to a conference of that group, and really
got inspired about forming a land trust, and then that was formed 25
years ago. It -- we, our first meeting was in April of 1988. That was the
beginning of our land trust, and so we, we -- one of the first big steps
that we made as an organization was to, to make a conceptual plan of what
a parkway could be, and so there was a very large assemblage committee of
many, many people with expertise, people from the -- the Department of
Water Resources, for instance. There was staff people from agencies and
private people who made up this big committee, and they met for at least
a couple of years, talking about what a parkway could be, and then Jim
Costa, who was then Assemblyman Jim Costa, he put forward a bill in the
assembly to say, "Let's have a parkway in Fresno, you know, on the San
Joaquin River."
>> Thomas Holyoke: Why is that necessary, you to do something like that?
>> Coke Hallowell: To get it in law?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yes.
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, for instance there are park bonds that come
along that we could make use of the money to buy land along the river,
or, or make trails along the river, and to be eligible for those bond
monies you really need to have a legitimate, legalized, official,
organization. That's the way I see it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is originally conceived, was the parkway going to be
on both the Fresno and the Madera sides of the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, absolutely, and it is, now. We probably are much
heavier on the Fresno side as far as ownership of land, but there are
Madera-side properties too, which look very promising for trails.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And back in the 1980's when these plans were just
being formed and put forward, how receptive was Fresno County and Madera
County to the idea?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think they didn't pay much attention to what was
going on. I, I doubt if any of the supervisors at that time really were
aware or were giving it much attention, that's, that’s what I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When Assemblyman Costa started moving legislation on
this, I presume at that point they might have started to realize it was
happening. I mean is there -- more generally has there been a good
relationship with the county board of supervisors of either county, or
have they resisted this at times?
>> Coke Hallowell: That's – I, I see it as mixed. They're not always
greatly supportive, I think they don't pay much attention to it, but
recently, Madera County planning came up with a fabulous work of art
about what the Madera side of river west could be. They did an excellent
job, and now we're getting a little resistance from some homeowners on
the Fresno side, and that's unfortunate because it just slows our work
down and makes our progress slower, you know.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Again, back in 1980's when this was getting started,
was there any awareness that there might -- there was also efforts
underway to actually start restoring the full flow of the San Joaquin
River?
>> Coke Hallowell: That was hardly ever spoken of. I went to a meeting on
a Saturday once with representatives of the NRDC, the Natural Resources
Defense Council, and some members of our board. It was on a Saturday
morning in a business office, and I'll never forget he started talking
about salmon. That was the first time it occurred to me that there was
ever a possibility of restoring the river, and I think our trust could
have been pretty young at that time, a year or two, and I don't know
where I had been not to realize that it was in the works, and I remember
when we left the meeting that the chairman of that meeting said, "No,
we're not really gonna go out in the community and talk about this,"
because there was such resistance to it, we, we knew that. Especially in
the farming community, the ag community. And so we all went out with, you
know, determined not to talk about it [laughter], and then as the years
flowed by it became, you know, more possible that it might happen, and of
course then when they won the lawsuit or there was a settlement, that was
a very happy day.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So at this point most of the parkway's planning is
about having a much larger, much more -- [laughter] a lot more river,
river to be enjoyed by people.
>> Coke Hallowell: Right. Now, the legislation that, that was passed to
help promote the parkway, it limits us to 22 miles from Millerton State
Park to the 99 Highway. So there is no money that can come through state
or anything for any property beyond that. I've never said this to anybody
and I probably shouldn't be saying it now, but I hope in the future that
will change, and that -- well, right now we are talking about the whole
river, we're talking about the whole river, but, but the state would not
back any land acquisition beyond the 99 at this point.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I guess maybe need a little bit more about sort of how
a land trust like this works. I mean, how – what does-- what happens with
this money and what -- how is this property acquired?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, it has to be a willing seller, of course. We
don't go out and tap people on the shoulder and say, "We'd like your
land," that isn't the way it works. I remember there was an article in
the paper about a conservation easement, and a landowner near the San
Joaquin Golf Club, he called our office and said, "You know, I could be
interested in doing a conservation easement on my walnut orchard," and so
then it progressed and the conservancy did buy a conservation easement
there.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah, what does that mean, "conservation easement"?
>> Coke Hallowell: That means that the land is protected in perpetuity
and cannot be changed from what it is. So his walnut orchard will always
be a walnut orchard; no housing, no -- I think if you wanted to build a
woodshed you'd have to get some kind of official permission, and I don't
even -- don't know if that could happen. My husband and I have a cattle
ranch in Madera County and it's in a conservation easement, and that
means we can't build another house on the property, we can't plant cotton
[Laughter] or anything else, it has to remain grazing land, as it is now.
We did that, I think, about 12 years ago, and we did it on our own, I
mean, we wanted it. There's so much wildlife, we wanted to protect the
land and the wildlife.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does that -- does this conser-- conservation easement
then, also restrict recreational use?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think it has to be written into it originally. Our
land doesn't restrict it but it doesn't allow it either, you know. So
people aren't walking across our land or anything. In the future, if the
holder of the easement -- there has to be an official holder of the
easement. In the case of our ranch, it is the Parkway Trust, because
there's a creek that goes through our ranch that is a tributary to the
San Joaquin, so it makes it kind of logical.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Again, back in 1980 when most of this was just
beginning, was most of the land along the river privately owned?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, there was very little. Lost Lake Park is a county
park, so I don't know if you've been there, it's beautiful. Have you?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Oh, yeah.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yeah, it's really nice, and of course Woodward Park,
that's right up to the river bottom, and the Parkway Trust and the
conservancy bought the land below the bluff and I don't know if you've
walked on that yet, but it is gorgeous. It's called the Jensen Ranch, and
it was cattle, and before that it was a pig ranch, and now it's all
planted with native trees and bushes and shrubs, and we have been doing
that planting and irrigating for probably five or six years now. And we
have staff that actually goes down there and plants and weeds and takes
care of the drip system, and there's a trail about a mile and a half
trail that loops through that property, connected to Woodward Park.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So, part of the organization's purpose is not just to
you know, arrange conservation easements, but also the actual purchasing
of land.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes. And we have about 4,000 acres now that we
have purchased.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And is most of that purchasing done with state bond
money or some private money?
>> Coke Hallowell: State, state bond money, that's right, and sometimes
private. The land that we call "River West" which used to belong to the
Spano family, we got a grant from the Packard Corporation for part of,
part of that purchase, and part was state bonds, I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And so those are just out and out purchases, that
property is now owned by the...
>> Coke Hallowell: That's right.
>> Thomas Holyoke: By the conservancy or the Parkway Trust?
>> Coke Hallowell: The conservancy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, actually, maybe this would be a good time to
sort of explain what the difference between the two is. You said before
the interview, "I get confused about them too."
>> Coke Hallowell: Right, right, everyone does. The conservancy is a
state agency, and the Parkway Trust is a private nonprofit supported by
donors who, who join with a $50 membership or more, and so we're always
out there knocking on doors, trying to raise funds because we are, just
like every nonprofit, whether it be a museum or...
>> Thomas Holyoke: Are the two organizations at all connected?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, we -- I like to think of us as being right on
the same track, looking to do and accomplish the same thing, which would
be a successful, well managed public park, and because they're a state
agency, they have certain constrictions and they have to do -- there are
quite a few conservancies now in the state of California: the Tahoe
Conservancy and the Santa Monica Hills Conservancy, and I think the -along the coast there are quite a few as well.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is that also similar to the Sierra Foothills
Conservancy?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes! Very similar, but no, they are not a state
agency, and the word "conservancy" gets confusing there; they are a
private nonprofit such as the Parkway Trust. They are supported by people
who join them, give membership dues, and they get state bond money as
well, and they have done a wonderful job. They have tens of thousands of
acres under conservation easements and outright purchase as well.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Looking back over the history of the, the Parkway
Trust, I get the impression that one of the first great successes was the
opening of the Lewis S. Eaton Trail.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, it was.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Tell a little bit about the trail; let's do history
and Lewis S. Eaton.
>> Coke Hallowell: Right. Lewis S. Eaton was on our board as an original
board member in 1988, and he was a very fine person and he cared a lot
about nature and the outdoors. He was a big hiker and lover of nature,
and he was on our board until he died, and so when he died we decided to
go to some of his friends. He had many, many business-owner friends in
Fresno, and he had a savings and loan company, you may know, and we asked
them if they would help us to establish a trail in his honor, and so I
think about 12 or 14 of his friends gave very generous contributions to
kick that -- kick-start that off, you know? And then after that, lots,
lots, and lots of smaller -- smaller donations.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When did the trail open up?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, I don't know! I'm sorry; I really don't have a
date in my mind.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I think, note, just a note to myself here that maybe
the first part opened in 1994, around then.
>> Coke Hallowell: That sounds about right, the river center opened in
2012 -- no, 2002, and it would have been about that time, I think you're
close.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So the trail has then grown over time...
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In fact, is it complete now?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, no, no, it's -- we hope very soon to build a trail
on the River West property which would connect, if you go to the -- to
the end of Woodward Park, there's one mile of trail that goes west
towards the 41, and we hope that the Lew Eaton Trail can continue from
that end of that place, go under the 41 bridge and join the property on
the west side, which is the, what we call River West.
>> Thomas Holyoke: How far up into the foothills, ultimately, does the -the conservancy extending?
>> Coke Hallowell: I, I don't think we have any plans to go above
Millerton Park…
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Coke Hallowell: But there are organizations who are working on trails
that come clear down from the crest of the Sierra, there -- some very
ambitious people, have been working a long time building those trails,
which will follow the river all the way down from the crest to Millerton
Park.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Wow [laughter] that is ambitious.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yeah, that'd be wonderful, that’d be wonderful, yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So at some point, I don't know if in the 1980's, the
1990's, you become chairman of the board of the -- oh no, sorry,
president of the Parkway Trust.
>> Coke Hallowell: I was president of the board from the first meeting 25
years ago, for 20 years, and then I got to thinking, "You know, somebody
else could probably do better than me, [laughter] and I should step
aside, let, let another person take a turn," and so now our president is
George Folsom, he's been president for five years, and this, this month
we will celebrate our 25th year, and so I was named then chairman of the
board, but they didn't give me a definition of that, and so I just keep
plugging away doing committee work and other things that I think will
help with the parkway forward. But nobody tells me what to do, if they
tell me I'll do it [Laughter}.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Any particularly great or interesting stories that
happened to stand out during your years as president of the organization?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, every time we finish negotiating for a property,
that's time for a celebration, and that's always tense, as you get
towards the culmination of the deal, and so I've had many of those
particular joys, but -- and maybe one will come to me before we finish
here, right now I can't think of an outstanding thing.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Have you found a lot of private property owners along
the river willing to negotiate, willing to consider selling the land, or
at least have a conservation easement?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, you know, we don't go out and seek them, as I
mentioned a minute ago. We kind of wait for them to come to us. In the
very beginning, in 1985 and 1988, there was lots of fear and apprehension
from landowners; they didn't know what the parkway meant to do, were we
gonna come in and condemn their property or try to or something like
that? So that's why we've always been very careful just to let people
come to us if they wanted to sell. I, I have a neighbor who owned
riverside property, who called me one day and said he'd like to talk to
me about selling a piece, and that's the only time I think anyone ever
called me to talk about it, and as it turned out we did -- the
conservancy did buy his land, and he still lives in the foothills and is
really happy that he was able to, to do that. It was an old, old family,
the Wagner family, and the Wagner family still owns a lot of property in
the hills.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I understand that there's educational components to…
[inaudible] on the river.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, that's very exciting and from almost the
beginning we have had a mission and goals about education, because the
kids, after all, are the ones that are gonna take it over and take it
into the future, so we wanted -- we want their knowledge about the river
and their enthusiasm about the river. So we have a river camp, which is a
day camp for kids from four years old clear through to, to high school,
and then in high school we have a program for, for counselor -- junior
counselors and junior counselors, and sometimes they've had a program for
high school kids that, that -- where they teach survival skills and, and
they do canoeing and they talk about how to -- canoe safety and river
swimming safety and all that. So we're teaching those older teenagers
some new things that will be good for them.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In and around Fresno County, Madera County, you said
you've spent your life living here and knowing the people around here, do
you find that there's a lot of people are even familiar with or aware of
the river and the opportunities in and around the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: I'm glad you asked that. Every year for 20-some years,
a board member and I have gone to the Valley Women's Conference, which
attracts thousands of women, mostly professional woman. They all come to
the convention center and they're beautifully dressed in suits and
they're very business-like, they took the day off of work to come to this
conference, and we always have a table with information and some really
pretty backdrop pictures of the river, and over and over again, in spite
of the fact that we go there all the time, they'll say, "Where is that
river?" [Laughter] And we just try to smile and say, "Well, it's right
here, it's right across from Riverpark," and there's just a lot of people
that don't know about the river and, and we've been working on getting
the word out for a long time, so I don't know what else we could do
[laughter]. Lot of our board members are on Facebook, and they're charged
with putting the word out, so we'll hope that helps.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you think people need to learn to, let’s put this
kind of, respect the river? And I guess I say that in a sense, I, last
year I went out and did one of the river cleanups.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, good.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And it was appalling the stuff thrown in and on the
bank.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, it is appalling, I agree. I just don't know why
people do that, but it is lack of respect, of course. It's, it’s a
carryover from the old days, you know? People used to always dump stuff
in the rivers to get rid of it [laughter], so we just have to keep
educating those kids and everyone else.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you think the community has grown more respectful
of –spectful of its river rather than a dumping ground or simply just a
source of water for agriculture?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think people are still throwing tires in the river,
and re-- old refrigerators.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah, we saw those.
>> Coke Hallowell: I mean, there's a lot of stuff there, so I don't -- I
can't measure [laughter] if it's better or not.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Any thoughts about the organization naming their -- I
guess one of their principle buildings after you? After all now we have
the Coke Hallowell Center for River Studies.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yes, yes. Well, sometimes it's a little
embarrassing but I was very honored that they did that, and hardly anyone
ever asks me, "Why did they do that?" But if you were to ask me why
[laughter]…
>> Thomas Holyoke: Why would they do that [laughter]?
>> Coke Hallowell: It's because it was kind of my idea that we should
have an education center. That old house was sitting there vacant, it was
owned by the Sand and Gravel Company, and it seemed to be kind of in the
center of the 22-mile thing that we're responsible for. It just seemed
like that would be a good place for an education center, so we talked to
the Sand and Gravel Company about it. Their plan, the company's plan, was
to tear it down, because there's a lot of valuable sand and gravel under
that house, and the barn, and in that whole area, and yet the regional
director, I think that's his title, of the Calmat, which is now Vulcan
Company, he didn't want to tear the house down. He loved the old house.
So when we approached him with our idea, he was responsible for going to
the corporation and getting them to say, "Yes, we will donate that," and
they donated five acres and the that includes the house and the big old
barn, and then later they, they donated the whole 20 acres because the
zoning in the river bottom is 20 acres and you can't divide it up, so
that's why they ended up donating all of it to us. And so then it was a
big wreck of a house, you know. It needed new foundation, it needed a new
roof and it needed a lot of other things, so the East Fresno Rotary
adopted that house as their project, and they came out time after time
again and did work tearing out the inner walls, which had to be torn out
so they could put insulation and electricity and everything. The house
was built in 1890, and had been lived in by many different families over
the years, and so it, with a lot of work and a lot of donations from the
community, we raised the money necessary to build a new roof and the new
foundation and fix it up. Have you visited it?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Oh yeah, several times actually.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh good, good, I'm glad. We're very proud of it and
what goes on there. We have a lot of kids from preschool on up that come
out all the time.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Vulcan Mining Company does a big operation along the
river. How does the parkway get along with them? I mean, you just
mentioned one thing that sounds very good.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes well we do get along with them very well.
They're extremely cooperative with us. For instance, if some of the
gravel gets kind of bare in spots, they'll come and bring some more
gravel for us and spread it out. So they do kind little things along the
way. We also hope in the very near future to buy some more land from
them. We had it appraised maybe five, six years ago, hoping to buy it
then, and then problems kept coming up such as the freezing of the state
bonds, so then there was no bond money for us to buy it from them, and so
that caused a delay, and then their own company had some internal
problems which I think are being resolved or have been resolved, such as
a, a corporate takeover which was threatening Vulcan, and I think that's
behind us now, and now it's been so long we'll probably have to have new
appraisals. When the time comes if they will pick up the phone, call us
and say, "We're ready to sell," I think there's Parcel A, Parcel B and
it's a matter of them finishing their mining. They have to be out of
there, of course. There's some beautiful ponds in the back towards the
river, I don't know if you've seen those, they're big, they're like a
lake, and we can use those as fishing places for the public.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I have been there, in fact. Toured there with someone
from Vulcan who was talking about how they have restored a lot of that
property back there.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, they've done wonderful plantings of native,
native trees and shrubs and it looks great. They are required by law to
do some of that reclamation, but they go beyond, they do really excellent
work.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Good, good, good, good. Do you’ve sense that there's - you've been involved with this a long time. Is there a sense that
there's sort of you know, new, younger generations coming up who have the
same level of commitment to the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, I hope so. On all of our committees and on our
board we try to include people and younger generations, you know. It's a
little hard because younger people are busy working and raising their
families, don't really have the time to give, but we are making some
headway on that.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. Any thoughts about what the river's future is?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, I don't know if you've heard of the something
called the Blue Way? It's actually connected with the national parks, and
there are rivers all over the country who are applying to be called a
Blue Way, and what that means is there would be maps and brochures and it
would be on the web about how you could go all the way to the bay on the
San Joaquin River, and it would show you where you can camp, where you
can park your car, where you can put in your canoe, where you can take
out your canoe or whatever, and this would be called the Blue Way, and we
are in the process -- I know that Secretary of the Interior is in favor
of it, I've seen his letters of, of backing for that Blue Way. In fact
the former Secretary of the Interior who had just resigned, he, he
visited the San Joaquin, we gave him a canoe trip, which was nice, so he
knows who we are and hopefully his successor will come, come and visit
us, too.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Has the parkway had a generally good relationship with
the various government agencies out there, the Bureau of Reclamation and
[inaudible].
>> Coke Hallowell: I think we do, I, I think we do, yes. The Bureau of
Reclamation and the Department of Water Resources and the Fish and Game
make up the leadership team for the salmon restoration, and they-they're working on all of the details of getting those salmon to come up
the river and spawn, and we're working with them when, in whatever way we
can to assist.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, that comes to the -- oh actually, no, one more,
one more question, based on something you said much earlier. Can you tell
us a little bit about your Take Me to the River project, your book?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yes, thank you. My daughter is a filmmaker and a
writer and a professional editor as well, and she and I did these
interviews starting about 12 years ago. We, we got started in a way which
I won't go into right now, it was just kind of an accidental start, and
after the first interview, we got to talking. There must be a lot of
people who have memories of the river in whatever way, whether they're
fishermen, farmers, environmentalists, you know, all kinds of people.
People who just grew up next to the river. So we started putting the word
out that we'd like to meet some of these people and see if they would do
an interview with us. She did the filming, I did the questioning, and we
have done more than 70, maybe 75 interviews, but it's taken a long time.
She lives in San Francisco and so she couldn't just pop in here every day
to help me do that, so we had to schedule well in advance, you know,
around her other busy schedule, and we had a wonderful time, but it
really -- when I look back on it, it really was a lot of work, a lot of
time, and we met the most wonderful people, and most of them were older,
which, you know, that means they had even more of a story to tell than
the younger, and it was so easy because I would usually start out by
saying, "Now, tell me, Azalea, what was it like to grow up next to the
river?' And then she got started and then the words just kept rolling
out, the stories kept coming, and I hardly ever had to ask another
question except if it kind of got off subject you know, bring her, try to
bring her back a little, and that's the way all of them were. We
interviewed a, a botanist who was a teacher at Fresno City College at the
time, we interviewed him and he told such wonderful stories about the
flora and fauna along the river. A month went by and I saw him somewhere
out in the city, and he said, "Coke, I thought of a lot of things I
didn't tell you, can we do another interview? [Laughter] so we have two
interviews of Bob Winter, I don't know if you've ever heard that name,
but he, he was very well known as a good teacher.
>> Thomas Holyoke: What's sort of the output of all of this? You have a
book, I understand.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, it's a great book called Take Me to the River,
there are 33 stories in there. The publisher couldn't publish all 70
stories, that would be a book that thick, and so he, he gave us the
number 33. It was very difficult to choose 33 out of those 70, but we
tried to do a balance of, of subject matter, so they weren't all about
the very same thing.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is there any other products that are going to come
from this, were these videotaped?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, they're on DVDs, and you can see them, just go
out to the River Center house, upstairs in the back room there is a DVD
player and all of them are in the top drawer, and you can just go through
the album and pick out any one you want and watch it. They're nice,
they're really nice.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, that's the end of my questions! Anything else
you would like to add?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well no, except that we will continue to reach out to
the public and try to get them involved in the concept of saving the
river.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Coke Hallowell: Okay.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Thank you very much.
>> Coke Hallowell: Thank you very much; it's been fun.
[ Silence ]
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, today we are interviewing Coke Hallowell, about
the San Joaquin River and whatever else she may wish to talk about. Let's
just start off with a little bit of personal history. Where are you from
and how have you gotten to be where you are now?
>> Coke Hallowell: [Laughter] Well, I was -- I'm a valley girl. I was
born in Bakersfield, but my family moved here when I was very young, and
I grew up in Clovis, with 4-H animals and horses, and I didn't get very
far away from Clovis before I came to Fresno State as a student. And
actually I had no knowledge of the San Joaquin River, I hadn't ever given
it any thought. Then, my boyfriend, soon to become my husband, now my
husband, his aunt lived on the river near Kerman, and we would go over
there and later took our children and we'd, we’d walk down to the river
from their house and, and swim in it, but even then I certainly did not
know anything about the river, where it went, [laughter] what problems it
may have been facing. So I learned that later. I was inspired by a, a oped article in the Fresno Bee; and I was then teaching in the town of Del
Rey and I read this article that just touched me so, it was about the
possibility of, of preserving the river and the river lands, and about
making a parkway, and it was very inspiring to me. I cut out the article,
Richard -- I know, Tatarian was his name, he was a journalist for, I
think, UPI for many years, and when he retired he came back home to
Fresno and he taught here at Fresno State in the journalism department.
Roger Tatarian, that's it, and he was very well-respected person and he
served on the McClatchy board of directors, I think clear until his
death, and he had heard about the Sacramento Parkway and he knew there
were some people here in town talking about river preservation, and so he
wrote this inspiring article. I cut it out of the paper, laid it on the
kitchen counter and re-read it several times, and finally made the phone
call that we got -- got me into this.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And when, when are we talking about? What, what year
is this, more or less?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, that would have been about 1985, 1985 I think. It
was when the river committee was beginning to form, and that was a group
of people around Fresno who cared a lot about the river, and knew that it
was facing some troubles, which by that I mean some big subdivisions that
were trying to get permission from the county, you know, to build
thousands of houses in the river bottom, therefore taking out hundreds of
acres of riparian habitat and oak -- giant oak trees. And so that river
committee was already formed by the time Roger Tatarian wrote that
article, and that's when I jumped in and got involved.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually, something you said earlier kind of intrigued
me. Just going back much earlier to your memories of going down to swim
in the river, I believe you said, was there a lot of recreation in, in
and around the river back when...
>> Coke Hallowell: Not that I know of. My husband, who grew up in Clov-,
in Clovis, he and his family would go down by some bridge, I don't even
know which bridge, and they'd have weenie roasts and picnics and they'd
swim, but there was no organized way to recreate. I suppose some people
were canoeing or kayaking at that time, and other people were picnicking
but I don't think he had ever paid much attention to the river.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Now, I presume that was after the building and
operation of Friant Dam. Was that a point in time when the river wasn't
even always flowing year-round?
>> Coke Hallowell: That's true. After 1947, then the river dried up down
at Gravelly Ford, and that's when the salmon no longer could come up.
Some of the interviews I've done were with salmon fishers who had, you
know, they had speared salmon in the river, and one of them was, I think
she said it was 1947, she and her husband and some relatives went down on
the last day that Fish, Fish and Game was going to allow salmon spearing.
There weren't going to be any more salmon coming anyway, but they were
not allowed to, and everybody could get two fish, and she tells a cute
story about going down and she didn't like fish and she didn't like the
water, but her husband said, "Oh, you've got to do this, we each can have
two," and so that was kind of the end, and I've been to Gravelly For-Ford, not many of my friends, even, on the board of the Parkway Trust, I
don't think that many of them have ever been to Gravelly Ford, and I was
doing an interview with a man who had owned some property right at
Gravelly Ford, and after the interview he said, "Would you like to go
down and see?" And we went down, my daughter and I were doing the
interview, and it was pretty pitiful. [Laughter]I mean, it was just a
little trickle and lots of sand, and there was a monitor there. I think
it's the Bureau of Reclamation has a monitoring system there, and even it
was pretty pitiful, it was just a little shack with a pipe [laughter].
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually, where is Gravelly Ford, more or less?
>> Coke Hallowell: It's west of the 99, I'm not sure how many miles
because we had driven to this ranch for the interview and then he took us
in his pickup and we drove a few more miles below his ranch to see the
Gravelly Ford. I would guess seven miles west of the 99? From his ra-his ranch we could look across, and he pointed out where the, the fi-the ship, you know, there used to be a ship that came with the -- to pick
up loads of grain from Madera and Fresno County and, in fact I have a -there's a picture of it in the book Take Me to the River, and it -- I
don't know how often it came, came up to get their, their load, you know,
and, and he showed us that place. I believe it was called Sycamore Point,
and that was as far up as the boat could come. It was a big ship and it
couldn't go any farther.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay then, so, returning back to the 1980's, you've
seen this article, you've been inspired by this article, and do you seek
out this committee of people who are concerned about the fate of the
river. Do you happen to remember any of the names of the people on the
committee?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh of course, I could remember all of them. The river
committee grew and grew, they were very successful, they raised money and
they went to all the hearings, the pla-- the planning commission
hearings, and they'd wear little green bows, we'd pass out little green
bows so everybody would know who was in the audience, you know, of the
planning commission or the board of supervisors. This was when the, the
ranch -- the Ball Ranch was -- some people were applying for permission
to build their subdivision, and the main -- the three main names I would
remember would be Mary Savala, she's still very active in planning and
environmental protection, Pae Smith [assumed spelling], who is also still
active, and Clarie Craiger [assumed spelling], and Clarie Craiger is
still giving nature -- guided nature walks on the river, oh, many times a
week I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you know about when they started becoming
involved...
>> Coke Hallowell: It was about 1985. It was very close to the time I got
involved.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Ok, and was most of the inspiration come from the
concern about you know, Fresno County trying to build subdivisions out
there?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes, that's exactly what happened, and now the
Ball Ranch belongs to the State of California, the conservancy, and you
can go fishing there on the weekends, there's some good fish there they
tell me, in the big ponds.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So how did this -- all this work get started? What
happened from 1985 sort of to where we are now?
>> Coke Hallowell: Right, right. Those three women whose names I just
gave you, they had, had some success and they were feeling good about the
future possibilities. They heard about the Land Trust Alliance, it's a
national organization with, I think, thousands of land trusts such as
ours. Some of them don't have any staff and they're very small, and some
of them are very big, and I think we're among the bigger ones now, and
they, they went to Asilomar, to a conference of that group, and really
got inspired about forming a land trust, and then that was formed 25
years ago. It -- we, our first meeting was in April of 1988. That was the
beginning of our land trust, and so we, we -- one of the first big steps
that we made as an organization was to, to make a conceptual plan of what
a parkway could be, and so there was a very large assemblage committee of
many, many people with expertise, people from the -- the Department of
Water Resources, for instance. There was staff people from agencies and
private people who made up this big committee, and they met for at least
a couple of years, talking about what a parkway could be, and then Jim
Costa, who was then Assemblyman Jim Costa, he put forward a bill in the
assembly to say, "Let's have a parkway in Fresno, you know, on the San
Joaquin River."
>> Thomas Holyoke: Why is that necessary, you to do something like that?
>> Coke Hallowell: To get it in law?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yes.
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, for instance there are park bonds that come
along that we could make use of the money to buy land along the river,
or, or make trails along the river, and to be eligible for those bond
monies you really need to have a legitimate, legalized, official,
organization. That's the way I see it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is originally conceived, was the parkway going to be
on both the Fresno and the Madera sides of the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, absolutely, and it is, now. We probably are much
heavier on the Fresno side as far as ownership of land, but there are
Madera-side properties too, which look very promising for trails.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And back in the 1980's when these plans were just
being formed and put forward, how receptive was Fresno County and Madera
County to the idea?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think they didn't pay much attention to what was
going on. I, I doubt if any of the supervisors at that time really were
aware or were giving it much attention, that's, that’s what I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When Assemblyman Costa started moving legislation on
this, I presume at that point they might have started to realize it was
happening. I mean is there -- more generally has there been a good
relationship with the county board of supervisors of either county, or
have they resisted this at times?
>> Coke Hallowell: That's – I, I see it as mixed. They're not always
greatly supportive, I think they don't pay much attention to it, but
recently, Madera County planning came up with a fabulous work of art
about what the Madera side of river west could be. They did an excellent
job, and now we're getting a little resistance from some homeowners on
the Fresno side, and that's unfortunate because it just slows our work
down and makes our progress slower, you know.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Again, back in 1980's when this was getting started,
was there any awareness that there might -- there was also efforts
underway to actually start restoring the full flow of the San Joaquin
River?
>> Coke Hallowell: That was hardly ever spoken of. I went to a meeting on
a Saturday once with representatives of the NRDC, the Natural Resources
Defense Council, and some members of our board. It was on a Saturday
morning in a business office, and I'll never forget he started talking
about salmon. That was the first time it occurred to me that there was
ever a possibility of restoring the river, and I think our trust could
have been pretty young at that time, a year or two, and I don't know
where I had been not to realize that it was in the works, and I remember
when we left the meeting that the chairman of that meeting said, "No,
we're not really gonna go out in the community and talk about this,"
because there was such resistance to it, we, we knew that. Especially in
the farming community, the ag community. And so we all went out with, you
know, determined not to talk about it [laughter], and then as the years
flowed by it became, you know, more possible that it might happen, and of
course then when they won the lawsuit or there was a settlement, that was
a very happy day.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So at this point most of the parkway's planning is
about having a much larger, much more -- [laughter] a lot more river,
river to be enjoyed by people.
>> Coke Hallowell: Right. Now, the legislation that, that was passed to
help promote the parkway, it limits us to 22 miles from Millerton State
Park to the 99 Highway. So there is no money that can come through state
or anything for any property beyond that. I've never said this to anybody
and I probably shouldn't be saying it now, but I hope in the future that
will change, and that -- well, right now we are talking about the whole
river, we're talking about the whole river, but, but the state would not
back any land acquisition beyond the 99 at this point.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I guess maybe need a little bit more about sort of how
a land trust like this works. I mean, how – what does-- what happens with
this money and what -- how is this property acquired?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, it has to be a willing seller, of course. We
don't go out and tap people on the shoulder and say, "We'd like your
land," that isn't the way it works. I remember there was an article in
the paper about a conservation easement, and a landowner near the San
Joaquin Golf Club, he called our office and said, "You know, I could be
interested in doing a conservation easement on my walnut orchard," and so
then it progressed and the conservancy did buy a conservation easement
there.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah, what does that mean, "conservation easement"?
>> Coke Hallowell: That means that the land is protected in perpetuity
and cannot be changed from what it is. So his walnut orchard will always
be a walnut orchard; no housing, no -- I think if you wanted to build a
woodshed you'd have to get some kind of official permission, and I don't
even -- don't know if that could happen. My husband and I have a cattle
ranch in Madera County and it's in a conservation easement, and that
means we can't build another house on the property, we can't plant cotton
[Laughter] or anything else, it has to remain grazing land, as it is now.
We did that, I think, about 12 years ago, and we did it on our own, I
mean, we wanted it. There's so much wildlife, we wanted to protect the
land and the wildlife.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does that -- does this conser-- conservation easement
then, also restrict recreational use?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think it has to be written into it originally. Our
land doesn't restrict it but it doesn't allow it either, you know. So
people aren't walking across our land or anything. In the future, if the
holder of the easement -- there has to be an official holder of the
easement. In the case of our ranch, it is the Parkway Trust, because
there's a creek that goes through our ranch that is a tributary to the
San Joaquin, so it makes it kind of logical.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Again, back in 1980 when most of this was just
beginning, was most of the land along the river privately owned?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, there was very little. Lost Lake Park is a county
park, so I don't know if you've been there, it's beautiful. Have you?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Oh, yeah.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yeah, it's really nice, and of course Woodward Park,
that's right up to the river bottom, and the Parkway Trust and the
conservancy bought the land below the bluff and I don't know if you've
walked on that yet, but it is gorgeous. It's called the Jensen Ranch, and
it was cattle, and before that it was a pig ranch, and now it's all
planted with native trees and bushes and shrubs, and we have been doing
that planting and irrigating for probably five or six years now. And we
have staff that actually goes down there and plants and weeds and takes
care of the drip system, and there's a trail about a mile and a half
trail that loops through that property, connected to Woodward Park.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So, part of the organization's purpose is not just to
you know, arrange conservation easements, but also the actual purchasing
of land.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes. And we have about 4,000 acres now that we
have purchased.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And is most of that purchasing done with state bond
money or some private money?
>> Coke Hallowell: State, state bond money, that's right, and sometimes
private. The land that we call "River West" which used to belong to the
Spano family, we got a grant from the Packard Corporation for part of,
part of that purchase, and part was state bonds, I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And so those are just out and out purchases, that
property is now owned by the...
>> Coke Hallowell: That's right.
>> Thomas Holyoke: By the conservancy or the Parkway Trust?
>> Coke Hallowell: The conservancy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, actually, maybe this would be a good time to
sort of explain what the difference between the two is. You said before
the interview, "I get confused about them too."
>> Coke Hallowell: Right, right, everyone does. The conservancy is a
state agency, and the Parkway Trust is a private nonprofit supported by
donors who, who join with a $50 membership or more, and so we're always
out there knocking on doors, trying to raise funds because we are, just
like every nonprofit, whether it be a museum or...
>> Thomas Holyoke: Are the two organizations at all connected?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, we -- I like to think of us as being right on
the same track, looking to do and accomplish the same thing, which would
be a successful, well managed public park, and because they're a state
agency, they have certain constrictions and they have to do -- there are
quite a few conservancies now in the state of California: the Tahoe
Conservancy and the Santa Monica Hills Conservancy, and I think the -along the coast there are quite a few as well.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is that also similar to the Sierra Foothills
Conservancy?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes! Very similar, but no, they are not a state
agency, and the word "conservancy" gets confusing there; they are a
private nonprofit such as the Parkway Trust. They are supported by people
who join them, give membership dues, and they get state bond money as
well, and they have done a wonderful job. They have tens of thousands of
acres under conservation easements and outright purchase as well.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Looking back over the history of the, the Parkway
Trust, I get the impression that one of the first great successes was the
opening of the Lewis S. Eaton Trail.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, it was.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Tell a little bit about the trail; let's do history
and Lewis S. Eaton.
>> Coke Hallowell: Right. Lewis S. Eaton was on our board as an original
board member in 1988, and he was a very fine person and he cared a lot
about nature and the outdoors. He was a big hiker and lover of nature,
and he was on our board until he died, and so when he died we decided to
go to some of his friends. He had many, many business-owner friends in
Fresno, and he had a savings and loan company, you may know, and we asked
them if they would help us to establish a trail in his honor, and so I
think about 12 or 14 of his friends gave very generous contributions to
kick that -- kick-start that off, you know? And then after that, lots,
lots, and lots of smaller -- smaller donations.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When did the trail open up?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, I don't know! I'm sorry; I really don't have a
date in my mind.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I think, note, just a note to myself here that maybe
the first part opened in 1994, around then.
>> Coke Hallowell: That sounds about right, the river center opened in
2012 -- no, 2002, and it would have been about that time, I think you're
close.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So the trail has then grown over time...
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In fact, is it complete now?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, no, no, it's -- we hope very soon to build a trail
on the River West property which would connect, if you go to the -- to
the end of Woodward Park, there's one mile of trail that goes west
towards the 41, and we hope that the Lew Eaton Trail can continue from
that end of that place, go under the 41 bridge and join the property on
the west side, which is the, what we call River West.
>> Thomas Holyoke: How far up into the foothills, ultimately, does the -the conservancy extending?
>> Coke Hallowell: I, I don't think we have any plans to go above
Millerton Park…
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Coke Hallowell: But there are organizations who are working on trails
that come clear down from the crest of the Sierra, there -- some very
ambitious people, have been working a long time building those trails,
which will follow the river all the way down from the crest to Millerton
Park.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Wow [laughter] that is ambitious.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yeah, that'd be wonderful, that’d be wonderful, yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So at some point, I don't know if in the 1980's, the
1990's, you become chairman of the board of the -- oh no, sorry,
president of the Parkway Trust.
>> Coke Hallowell: I was president of the board from the first meeting 25
years ago, for 20 years, and then I got to thinking, "You know, somebody
else could probably do better than me, [laughter] and I should step
aside, let, let another person take a turn," and so now our president is
George Folsom, he's been president for five years, and this, this month
we will celebrate our 25th year, and so I was named then chairman of the
board, but they didn't give me a definition of that, and so I just keep
plugging away doing committee work and other things that I think will
help with the parkway forward. But nobody tells me what to do, if they
tell me I'll do it [Laughter}.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Any particularly great or interesting stories that
happened to stand out during your years as president of the organization?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, every time we finish negotiating for a property,
that's time for a celebration, and that's always tense, as you get
towards the culmination of the deal, and so I've had many of those
particular joys, but -- and maybe one will come to me before we finish
here, right now I can't think of an outstanding thing.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Have you found a lot of private property owners along
the river willing to negotiate, willing to consider selling the land, or
at least have a conservation easement?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, you know, we don't go out and seek them, as I
mentioned a minute ago. We kind of wait for them to come to us. In the
very beginning, in 1985 and 1988, there was lots of fear and apprehension
from landowners; they didn't know what the parkway meant to do, were we
gonna come in and condemn their property or try to or something like
that? So that's why we've always been very careful just to let people
come to us if they wanted to sell. I, I have a neighbor who owned
riverside property, who called me one day and said he'd like to talk to
me about selling a piece, and that's the only time I think anyone ever
called me to talk about it, and as it turned out we did -- the
conservancy did buy his land, and he still lives in the foothills and is
really happy that he was able to, to do that. It was an old, old family,
the Wagner family, and the Wagner family still owns a lot of property in
the hills.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I understand that there's educational components to…
[inaudible] on the river.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, that's very exciting and from almost the
beginning we have had a mission and goals about education, because the
kids, after all, are the ones that are gonna take it over and take it
into the future, so we wanted -- we want their knowledge about the river
and their enthusiasm about the river. So we have a river camp, which is a
day camp for kids from four years old clear through to, to high school,
and then in high school we have a program for, for counselor -- junior
counselors and junior counselors, and sometimes they've had a program for
high school kids that, that -- where they teach survival skills and, and
they do canoeing and they talk about how to -- canoe safety and river
swimming safety and all that. So we're teaching those older teenagers
some new things that will be good for them.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In and around Fresno County, Madera County, you said
you've spent your life living here and knowing the people around here, do
you find that there's a lot of people are even familiar with or aware of
the river and the opportunities in and around the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: I'm glad you asked that. Every year for 20-some years,
a board member and I have gone to the Valley Women's Conference, which
attracts thousands of women, mostly professional woman. They all come to
the convention center and they're beautifully dressed in suits and
they're very business-like, they took the day off of work to come to this
conference, and we always have a table with information and some really
pretty backdrop pictures of the river, and over and over again, in spite
of the fact that we go there all the time, they'll say, "Where is that
river?" [Laughter] And we just try to smile and say, "Well, it's right
here, it's right across from Riverpark," and there's just a lot of people
that don't know about the river and, and we've been working on getting
the word out for a long time, so I don't know what else we could do
[laughter]. Lot of our board members are on Facebook, and they're charged
with putting the word out, so we'll hope that helps.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you think people need to learn to, let’s put this
kind of, respect the river? And I guess I say that in a sense, I, last
year I went out and did one of the river cleanups.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, good.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And it was appalling the stuff thrown in and on the
bank.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, it is appalling, I agree. I just don't know why
people do that, but it is lack of respect, of course. It's, it’s a
carryover from the old days, you know? People used to always dump stuff
in the rivers to get rid of it [laughter], so we just have to keep
educating those kids and everyone else.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you think the community has grown more respectful
of –spectful of its river rather than a dumping ground or simply just a
source of water for agriculture?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think people are still throwing tires in the river,
and re-- old refrigerators.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah, we saw those.
>> Coke Hallowell: I mean, there's a lot of stuff there, so I don't -- I
can't measure [laughter] if it's better or not.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Any thoughts about the organization naming their -- I
guess one of their principle buildings after you? After all now we have
the Coke Hallowell Center for River Studies.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yes, yes. Well, sometimes it's a little
embarrassing but I was very honored that they did that, and hardly anyone
ever asks me, "Why did they do that?" But if you were to ask me why
[laughter]…
>> Thomas Holyoke: Why would they do that [laughter]?
>> Coke Hallowell: It's because it was kind of my idea that we should
have an education center. That old house was sitting there vacant, it was
owned by the Sand and Gravel Company, and it seemed to be kind of in the
center of the 22-mile thing that we're responsible for. It just seemed
like that would be a good place for an education center, so we talked to
the Sand and Gravel Company about it. Their plan, the company's plan, was
to tear it down, because there's a lot of valuable sand and gravel under
that house, and the barn, and in that whole area, and yet the regional
director, I think that's his title, of the Calmat, which is now Vulcan
Company, he didn't want to tear the house down. He loved the old house.
So when we approached him with our idea, he was responsible for going to
the corporation and getting them to say, "Yes, we will donate that," and
they donated five acres and the that includes the house and the big old
barn, and then later they, they donated the whole 20 acres because the
zoning in the river bottom is 20 acres and you can't divide it up, so
that's why they ended up donating all of it to us. And so then it was a
big wreck of a house, you know. It needed new foundation, it needed a new
roof and it needed a lot of other things, so the East Fresno Rotary
adopted that house as their project, and they came out time after time
again and did work tearing out the inner walls, which had to be torn out
so they could put insulation and electricity and everything. The house
was built in 1890, and had been lived in by many different families over
the years, and so it, with a lot of work and a lot of donations from the
community, we raised the money necessary to build a new roof and the new
foundation and fix it up. Have you visited it?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Oh yeah, several times actually.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh good, good, I'm glad. We're very proud of it and
what goes on there. We have a lot of kids from preschool on up that come
out all the time.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Vulcan Mining Company does a big operation along the
river. How does the parkway get along with them? I mean, you just
mentioned one thing that sounds very good.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes well we do get along with them very well.
They're extremely cooperative with us. For instance, if some of the
gravel gets kind of bare in spots, they'll come and bring some more
gravel for us and spread it out. So they do kind little things along the
way. We also hope in the very near future to buy some more land from
them. We had it appraised maybe five, six years ago, hoping to buy it
then, and then problems kept coming up such as the freezing of the state
bonds, so then there was no bond money for us to buy it from them, and so
that caused a delay, and then their own company had some internal
problems which I think are being resolved or have been resolved, such as
a, a corporate takeover which was threatening Vulcan, and I think that's
behind us now, and now it's been so long we'll probably have to have new
appraisals. When the time comes if they will pick up the phone, call us
and say, "We're ready to sell," I think there's Parcel A, Parcel B and
it's a matter of them finishing their mining. They have to be out of
there, of course. There's some beautiful ponds in the back towards the
river, I don't know if you've seen those, they're big, they're like a
lake, and we can use those as fishing places for the public.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I have been there, in fact. Toured there with someone
from Vulcan who was talking about how they have restored a lot of that
property back there.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, they've done wonderful plantings of native,
native trees and shrubs and it looks great. They are required by law to
do some of that reclamation, but they go beyond, they do really excellent
work.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Good, good, good, good. Do you’ve sense that there's - you've been involved with this a long time. Is there a sense that
there's sort of you know, new, younger generations coming up who have the
same level of commitment to the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, I hope so. On all of our committees and on our
board we try to include people and younger generations, you know. It's a
little hard because younger people are busy working and raising their
families, don't really have the time to give, but we are making some
headway on that.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. Any thoughts about what the river's future is?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, I don't know if you've heard of the something
called the Blue Way? It's actually connected with the national parks, and
there are rivers all over the country who are applying to be called a
Blue Way, and what that means is there would be maps and brochures and it
would be on the web about how you could go all the way to the bay on the
San Joaquin River, and it would show you where you can camp, where you
can park your car, where you can put in your canoe, where you can take
out your canoe or whatever, and this would be called the Blue Way, and we
are in the process -- I know that Secretary of the Interior is in favor
of it, I've seen his letters of, of backing for that Blue Way. In fact
the former Secretary of the Interior who had just resigned, he, he
visited the San Joaquin, we gave him a canoe trip, which was nice, so he
knows who we are and hopefully his successor will come, come and visit
us, too.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Has the parkway had a generally good relationship with
the various government agencies out there, the Bureau of Reclamation and
[inaudible].
>> Coke Hallowell: I think we do, I, I think we do, yes. The Bureau of
Reclamation and the Department of Water Resources and the Fish and Game
make up the leadership team for the salmon restoration, and they-they're working on all of the details of getting those salmon to come up
the river and spawn, and we're working with them when, in whatever way we
can to assist.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, that comes to the -- oh actually, no, one more,
one more question, based on something you said much earlier. Can you tell
us a little bit about your Take Me to the River project, your book?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yes, thank you. My daughter is a filmmaker and a
writer and a professional editor as well, and she and I did these
interviews starting about 12 years ago. We, we got started in a way which
I won't go into right now, it was just kind of an accidental start, and
after the first interview, we got to talking. There must be a lot of
people who have memories of the river in whatever way, whether they're
fishermen, farmers, environmentalists, you know, all kinds of people.
People who just grew up next to the river. So we started putting the word
out that we'd like to meet some of these people and see if they would do
an interview with us. She did the filming, I did the questioning, and we
have done more than 70, maybe 75 interviews, but it's taken a long time.
She lives in San Francisco and so she couldn't just pop in here every day
to help me do that, so we had to schedule well in advance, you know,
around her other busy schedule, and we had a wonderful time, but it
really -- when I look back on it, it really was a lot of work, a lot of
time, and we met the most wonderful people, and most of them were older,
which, you know, that means they had even more of a story to tell than
the younger, and it was so easy because I would usually start out by
saying, "Now, tell me, Azalea, what was it like to grow up next to the
river?' And then she got started and then the words just kept rolling
out, the stories kept coming, and I hardly ever had to ask another
question except if it kind of got off subject you know, bring her, try to
bring her back a little, and that's the way all of them were. We
interviewed a, a botanist who was a teacher at Fresno City College at the
time, we interviewed him and he told such wonderful stories about the
flora and fauna along the river. A month went by and I saw him somewhere
out in the city, and he said, "Coke, I thought of a lot of things I
didn't tell you, can we do another interview? [Laughter] so we have two
interviews of Bob Winter, I don't know if you've ever heard that name,
but he, he was very well known as a good teacher.
>> Thomas Holyoke: What's sort of the output of all of this? You have a
book, I understand.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, it's a great book called Take Me to the River,
there are 33 stories in there. The publisher couldn't publish all 70
stories, that would be a book that thick, and so he, he gave us the
number 33. It was very difficult to choose 33 out of those 70, but we
tried to do a balance of, of subject matter, so they weren't all about
the very same thing.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is there any other products that are going to come
from this, were these videotaped?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, they're on DVDs, and you can see them, just go
out to the River Center house, upstairs in the back room there is a DVD
player and all of them are in the top drawer, and you can just go through
the album and pick out any one you want and watch it. They're nice,
they're really nice.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, that's the end of my questions! Anything else
you would like to add?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well no, except that we will continue to reach out to
the public and try to get them involved in the concept of saving the
river.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Coke Hallowell: Okay.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Thank you very much.
>> Coke Hallowell: Thank you very much; it's been fun.
[ Silence ]
the San Joaquin River and whatever else she may wish to talk about. Let's
just start off with a little bit of personal history. Where are you from
and how have you gotten to be where you are now?
>> Coke Hallowell: [Laughter] Well, I was -- I'm a valley girl. I was
born in Bakersfield, but my family moved here when I was very young, and
I grew up in Clovis, with 4-H animals and horses, and I didn't get very
far away from Clovis before I came to Fresno State as a student. And
actually I had no knowledge of the San Joaquin River, I hadn't ever given
it any thought. Then, my boyfriend, soon to become my husband, now my
husband, his aunt lived on the river near Kerman, and we would go over
there and later took our children and we'd, we’d walk down to the river
from their house and, and swim in it, but even then I certainly did not
know anything about the river, where it went, [laughter] what problems it
may have been facing. So I learned that later. I was inspired by a, a oped article in the Fresno Bee; and I was then teaching in the town of Del
Rey and I read this article that just touched me so, it was about the
possibility of, of preserving the river and the river lands, and about
making a parkway, and it was very inspiring to me. I cut out the article,
Richard -- I know, Tatarian was his name, he was a journalist for, I
think, UPI for many years, and when he retired he came back home to
Fresno and he taught here at Fresno State in the journalism department.
Roger Tatarian, that's it, and he was very well-respected person and he
served on the McClatchy board of directors, I think clear until his
death, and he had heard about the Sacramento Parkway and he knew there
were some people here in town talking about river preservation, and so he
wrote this inspiring article. I cut it out of the paper, laid it on the
kitchen counter and re-read it several times, and finally made the phone
call that we got -- got me into this.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And when, when are we talking about? What, what year
is this, more or less?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, that would have been about 1985, 1985 I think. It
was when the river committee was beginning to form, and that was a group
of people around Fresno who cared a lot about the river, and knew that it
was facing some troubles, which by that I mean some big subdivisions that
were trying to get permission from the county, you know, to build
thousands of houses in the river bottom, therefore taking out hundreds of
acres of riparian habitat and oak -- giant oak trees. And so that river
committee was already formed by the time Roger Tatarian wrote that
article, and that's when I jumped in and got involved.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually, something you said earlier kind of intrigued
me. Just going back much earlier to your memories of going down to swim
in the river, I believe you said, was there a lot of recreation in, in
and around the river back when...
>> Coke Hallowell: Not that I know of. My husband, who grew up in Clov-,
in Clovis, he and his family would go down by some bridge, I don't even
know which bridge, and they'd have weenie roasts and picnics and they'd
swim, but there was no organized way to recreate. I suppose some people
were canoeing or kayaking at that time, and other people were picnicking
but I don't think he had ever paid much attention to the river.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Now, I presume that was after the building and
operation of Friant Dam. Was that a point in time when the river wasn't
even always flowing year-round?
>> Coke Hallowell: That's true. After 1947, then the river dried up down
at Gravelly Ford, and that's when the salmon no longer could come up.
Some of the interviews I've done were with salmon fishers who had, you
know, they had speared salmon in the river, and one of them was, I think
she said it was 1947, she and her husband and some relatives went down on
the last day that Fish, Fish and Game was going to allow salmon spearing.
There weren't going to be any more salmon coming anyway, but they were
not allowed to, and everybody could get two fish, and she tells a cute
story about going down and she didn't like fish and she didn't like the
water, but her husband said, "Oh, you've got to do this, we each can have
two," and so that was kind of the end, and I've been to Gravelly For-Ford, not many of my friends, even, on the board of the Parkway Trust, I
don't think that many of them have ever been to Gravelly Ford, and I was
doing an interview with a man who had owned some property right at
Gravelly Ford, and after the interview he said, "Would you like to go
down and see?" And we went down, my daughter and I were doing the
interview, and it was pretty pitiful. [Laughter]I mean, it was just a
little trickle and lots of sand, and there was a monitor there. I think
it's the Bureau of Reclamation has a monitoring system there, and even it
was pretty pitiful, it was just a little shack with a pipe [laughter].
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually, where is Gravelly Ford, more or less?
>> Coke Hallowell: It's west of the 99, I'm not sure how many miles
because we had driven to this ranch for the interview and then he took us
in his pickup and we drove a few more miles below his ranch to see the
Gravelly Ford. I would guess seven miles west of the 99? From his ra-his ranch we could look across, and he pointed out where the, the fi-the ship, you know, there used to be a ship that came with the -- to pick
up loads of grain from Madera and Fresno County and, in fact I have a -there's a picture of it in the book Take Me to the River, and it -- I
don't know how often it came, came up to get their, their load, you know,
and, and he showed us that place. I believe it was called Sycamore Point,
and that was as far up as the boat could come. It was a big ship and it
couldn't go any farther.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay then, so, returning back to the 1980's, you've
seen this article, you've been inspired by this article, and do you seek
out this committee of people who are concerned about the fate of the
river. Do you happen to remember any of the names of the people on the
committee?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh of course, I could remember all of them. The river
committee grew and grew, they were very successful, they raised money and
they went to all the hearings, the pla-- the planning commission
hearings, and they'd wear little green bows, we'd pass out little green
bows so everybody would know who was in the audience, you know, of the
planning commission or the board of supervisors. This was when the, the
ranch -- the Ball Ranch was -- some people were applying for permission
to build their subdivision, and the main -- the three main names I would
remember would be Mary Savala, she's still very active in planning and
environmental protection, Pae Smith [assumed spelling], who is also still
active, and Clarie Craiger [assumed spelling], and Clarie Craiger is
still giving nature -- guided nature walks on the river, oh, many times a
week I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you know about when they started becoming
involved...
>> Coke Hallowell: It was about 1985. It was very close to the time I got
involved.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Ok, and was most of the inspiration come from the
concern about you know, Fresno County trying to build subdivisions out
there?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes, that's exactly what happened, and now the
Ball Ranch belongs to the State of California, the conservancy, and you
can go fishing there on the weekends, there's some good fish there they
tell me, in the big ponds.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So how did this -- all this work get started? What
happened from 1985 sort of to where we are now?
>> Coke Hallowell: Right, right. Those three women whose names I just
gave you, they had, had some success and they were feeling good about the
future possibilities. They heard about the Land Trust Alliance, it's a
national organization with, I think, thousands of land trusts such as
ours. Some of them don't have any staff and they're very small, and some
of them are very big, and I think we're among the bigger ones now, and
they, they went to Asilomar, to a conference of that group, and really
got inspired about forming a land trust, and then that was formed 25
years ago. It -- we, our first meeting was in April of 1988. That was the
beginning of our land trust, and so we, we -- one of the first big steps
that we made as an organization was to, to make a conceptual plan of what
a parkway could be, and so there was a very large assemblage committee of
many, many people with expertise, people from the -- the Department of
Water Resources, for instance. There was staff people from agencies and
private people who made up this big committee, and they met for at least
a couple of years, talking about what a parkway could be, and then Jim
Costa, who was then Assemblyman Jim Costa, he put forward a bill in the
assembly to say, "Let's have a parkway in Fresno, you know, on the San
Joaquin River."
>> Thomas Holyoke: Why is that necessary, you to do something like that?
>> Coke Hallowell: To get it in law?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yes.
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, for instance there are park bonds that come
along that we could make use of the money to buy land along the river,
or, or make trails along the river, and to be eligible for those bond
monies you really need to have a legitimate, legalized, official,
organization. That's the way I see it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is originally conceived, was the parkway going to be
on both the Fresno and the Madera sides of the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, absolutely, and it is, now. We probably are much
heavier on the Fresno side as far as ownership of land, but there are
Madera-side properties too, which look very promising for trails.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And back in the 1980's when these plans were just
being formed and put forward, how receptive was Fresno County and Madera
County to the idea?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think they didn't pay much attention to what was
going on. I, I doubt if any of the supervisors at that time really were
aware or were giving it much attention, that's, that’s what I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When Assemblyman Costa started moving legislation on
this, I presume at that point they might have started to realize it was
happening. I mean is there -- more generally has there been a good
relationship with the county board of supervisors of either county, or
have they resisted this at times?
>> Coke Hallowell: That's – I, I see it as mixed. They're not always
greatly supportive, I think they don't pay much attention to it, but
recently, Madera County planning came up with a fabulous work of art
about what the Madera side of river west could be. They did an excellent
job, and now we're getting a little resistance from some homeowners on
the Fresno side, and that's unfortunate because it just slows our work
down and makes our progress slower, you know.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Again, back in 1980's when this was getting started,
was there any awareness that there might -- there was also efforts
underway to actually start restoring the full flow of the San Joaquin
River?
>> Coke Hallowell: That was hardly ever spoken of. I went to a meeting on
a Saturday once with representatives of the NRDC, the Natural Resources
Defense Council, and some members of our board. It was on a Saturday
morning in a business office, and I'll never forget he started talking
about salmon. That was the first time it occurred to me that there was
ever a possibility of restoring the river, and I think our trust could
have been pretty young at that time, a year or two, and I don't know
where I had been not to realize that it was in the works, and I remember
when we left the meeting that the chairman of that meeting said, "No,
we're not really gonna go out in the community and talk about this,"
because there was such resistance to it, we, we knew that. Especially in
the farming community, the ag community. And so we all went out with, you
know, determined not to talk about it [laughter], and then as the years
flowed by it became, you know, more possible that it might happen, and of
course then when they won the lawsuit or there was a settlement, that was
a very happy day.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So at this point most of the parkway's planning is
about having a much larger, much more -- [laughter] a lot more river,
river to be enjoyed by people.
>> Coke Hallowell: Right. Now, the legislation that, that was passed to
help promote the parkway, it limits us to 22 miles from Millerton State
Park to the 99 Highway. So there is no money that can come through state
or anything for any property beyond that. I've never said this to anybody
and I probably shouldn't be saying it now, but I hope in the future that
will change, and that -- well, right now we are talking about the whole
river, we're talking about the whole river, but, but the state would not
back any land acquisition beyond the 99 at this point.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I guess maybe need a little bit more about sort of how
a land trust like this works. I mean, how – what does-- what happens with
this money and what -- how is this property acquired?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, it has to be a willing seller, of course. We
don't go out and tap people on the shoulder and say, "We'd like your
land," that isn't the way it works. I remember there was an article in
the paper about a conservation easement, and a landowner near the San
Joaquin Golf Club, he called our office and said, "You know, I could be
interested in doing a conservation easement on my walnut orchard," and so
then it progressed and the conservancy did buy a conservation easement
there.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah, what does that mean, "conservation easement"?
>> Coke Hallowell: That means that the land is protected in perpetuity
and cannot be changed from what it is. So his walnut orchard will always
be a walnut orchard; no housing, no -- I think if you wanted to build a
woodshed you'd have to get some kind of official permission, and I don't
even -- don't know if that could happen. My husband and I have a cattle
ranch in Madera County and it's in a conservation easement, and that
means we can't build another house on the property, we can't plant cotton
[Laughter] or anything else, it has to remain grazing land, as it is now.
We did that, I think, about 12 years ago, and we did it on our own, I
mean, we wanted it. There's so much wildlife, we wanted to protect the
land and the wildlife.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does that -- does this conser-- conservation easement
then, also restrict recreational use?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think it has to be written into it originally. Our
land doesn't restrict it but it doesn't allow it either, you know. So
people aren't walking across our land or anything. In the future, if the
holder of the easement -- there has to be an official holder of the
easement. In the case of our ranch, it is the Parkway Trust, because
there's a creek that goes through our ranch that is a tributary to the
San Joaquin, so it makes it kind of logical.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Again, back in 1980 when most of this was just
beginning, was most of the land along the river privately owned?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, there was very little. Lost Lake Park is a county
park, so I don't know if you've been there, it's beautiful. Have you?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Oh, yeah.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yeah, it's really nice, and of course Woodward Park,
that's right up to the river bottom, and the Parkway Trust and the
conservancy bought the land below the bluff and I don't know if you've
walked on that yet, but it is gorgeous. It's called the Jensen Ranch, and
it was cattle, and before that it was a pig ranch, and now it's all
planted with native trees and bushes and shrubs, and we have been doing
that planting and irrigating for probably five or six years now. And we
have staff that actually goes down there and plants and weeds and takes
care of the drip system, and there's a trail about a mile and a half
trail that loops through that property, connected to Woodward Park.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So, part of the organization's purpose is not just to
you know, arrange conservation easements, but also the actual purchasing
of land.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes. And we have about 4,000 acres now that we
have purchased.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And is most of that purchasing done with state bond
money or some private money?
>> Coke Hallowell: State, state bond money, that's right, and sometimes
private. The land that we call "River West" which used to belong to the
Spano family, we got a grant from the Packard Corporation for part of,
part of that purchase, and part was state bonds, I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And so those are just out and out purchases, that
property is now owned by the...
>> Coke Hallowell: That's right.
>> Thomas Holyoke: By the conservancy or the Parkway Trust?
>> Coke Hallowell: The conservancy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, actually, maybe this would be a good time to
sort of explain what the difference between the two is. You said before
the interview, "I get confused about them too."
>> Coke Hallowell: Right, right, everyone does. The conservancy is a
state agency, and the Parkway Trust is a private nonprofit supported by
donors who, who join with a $50 membership or more, and so we're always
out there knocking on doors, trying to raise funds because we are, just
like every nonprofit, whether it be a museum or...
>> Thomas Holyoke: Are the two organizations at all connected?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, we -- I like to think of us as being right on
the same track, looking to do and accomplish the same thing, which would
be a successful, well managed public park, and because they're a state
agency, they have certain constrictions and they have to do -- there are
quite a few conservancies now in the state of California: the Tahoe
Conservancy and the Santa Monica Hills Conservancy, and I think the -along the coast there are quite a few as well.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is that also similar to the Sierra Foothills
Conservancy?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes! Very similar, but no, they are not a state
agency, and the word "conservancy" gets confusing there; they are a
private nonprofit such as the Parkway Trust. They are supported by people
who join them, give membership dues, and they get state bond money as
well, and they have done a wonderful job. They have tens of thousands of
acres under conservation easements and outright purchase as well.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Looking back over the history of the, the Parkway
Trust, I get the impression that one of the first great successes was the
opening of the Lewis S. Eaton Trail.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, it was.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Tell a little bit about the trail; let's do history
and Lewis S. Eaton.
>> Coke Hallowell: Right. Lewis S. Eaton was on our board as an original
board member in 1988, and he was a very fine person and he cared a lot
about nature and the outdoors. He was a big hiker and lover of nature,
and he was on our board until he died, and so when he died we decided to
go to some of his friends. He had many, many business-owner friends in
Fresno, and he had a savings and loan company, you may know, and we asked
them if they would help us to establish a trail in his honor, and so I
think about 12 or 14 of his friends gave very generous contributions to
kick that -- kick-start that off, you know? And then after that, lots,
lots, and lots of smaller -- smaller donations.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When did the trail open up?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, I don't know! I'm sorry; I really don't have a
date in my mind.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I think, note, just a note to myself here that maybe
the first part opened in 1994, around then.
>> Coke Hallowell: That sounds about right, the river center opened in
2012 -- no, 2002, and it would have been about that time, I think you're
close.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So the trail has then grown over time...
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In fact, is it complete now?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, no, no, it's -- we hope very soon to build a trail
on the River West property which would connect, if you go to the -- to
the end of Woodward Park, there's one mile of trail that goes west
towards the 41, and we hope that the Lew Eaton Trail can continue from
that end of that place, go under the 41 bridge and join the property on
the west side, which is the, what we call River West.
>> Thomas Holyoke: How far up into the foothills, ultimately, does the -the conservancy extending?
>> Coke Hallowell: I, I don't think we have any plans to go above
Millerton Park…
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Coke Hallowell: But there are organizations who are working on trails
that come clear down from the crest of the Sierra, there -- some very
ambitious people, have been working a long time building those trails,
which will follow the river all the way down from the crest to Millerton
Park.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Wow [laughter] that is ambitious.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yeah, that'd be wonderful, that’d be wonderful, yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So at some point, I don't know if in the 1980's, the
1990's, you become chairman of the board of the -- oh no, sorry,
president of the Parkway Trust.
>> Coke Hallowell: I was president of the board from the first meeting 25
years ago, for 20 years, and then I got to thinking, "You know, somebody
else could probably do better than me, [laughter] and I should step
aside, let, let another person take a turn," and so now our president is
George Folsom, he's been president for five years, and this, this month
we will celebrate our 25th year, and so I was named then chairman of the
board, but they didn't give me a definition of that, and so I just keep
plugging away doing committee work and other things that I think will
help with the parkway forward. But nobody tells me what to do, if they
tell me I'll do it [Laughter}.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Any particularly great or interesting stories that
happened to stand out during your years as president of the organization?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, every time we finish negotiating for a property,
that's time for a celebration, and that's always tense, as you get
towards the culmination of the deal, and so I've had many of those
particular joys, but -- and maybe one will come to me before we finish
here, right now I can't think of an outstanding thing.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Have you found a lot of private property owners along
the river willing to negotiate, willing to consider selling the land, or
at least have a conservation easement?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, you know, we don't go out and seek them, as I
mentioned a minute ago. We kind of wait for them to come to us. In the
very beginning, in 1985 and 1988, there was lots of fear and apprehension
from landowners; they didn't know what the parkway meant to do, were we
gonna come in and condemn their property or try to or something like
that? So that's why we've always been very careful just to let people
come to us if they wanted to sell. I, I have a neighbor who owned
riverside property, who called me one day and said he'd like to talk to
me about selling a piece, and that's the only time I think anyone ever
called me to talk about it, and as it turned out we did -- the
conservancy did buy his land, and he still lives in the foothills and is
really happy that he was able to, to do that. It was an old, old family,
the Wagner family, and the Wagner family still owns a lot of property in
the hills.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I understand that there's educational components to…
[inaudible] on the river.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, that's very exciting and from almost the
beginning we have had a mission and goals about education, because the
kids, after all, are the ones that are gonna take it over and take it
into the future, so we wanted -- we want their knowledge about the river
and their enthusiasm about the river. So we have a river camp, which is a
day camp for kids from four years old clear through to, to high school,
and then in high school we have a program for, for counselor -- junior
counselors and junior counselors, and sometimes they've had a program for
high school kids that, that -- where they teach survival skills and, and
they do canoeing and they talk about how to -- canoe safety and river
swimming safety and all that. So we're teaching those older teenagers
some new things that will be good for them.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In and around Fresno County, Madera County, you said
you've spent your life living here and knowing the people around here, do
you find that there's a lot of people are even familiar with or aware of
the river and the opportunities in and around the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: I'm glad you asked that. Every year for 20-some years,
a board member and I have gone to the Valley Women's Conference, which
attracts thousands of women, mostly professional woman. They all come to
the convention center and they're beautifully dressed in suits and
they're very business-like, they took the day off of work to come to this
conference, and we always have a table with information and some really
pretty backdrop pictures of the river, and over and over again, in spite
of the fact that we go there all the time, they'll say, "Where is that
river?" [Laughter] And we just try to smile and say, "Well, it's right
here, it's right across from Riverpark," and there's just a lot of people
that don't know about the river and, and we've been working on getting
the word out for a long time, so I don't know what else we could do
[laughter]. Lot of our board members are on Facebook, and they're charged
with putting the word out, so we'll hope that helps.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you think people need to learn to, let’s put this
kind of, respect the river? And I guess I say that in a sense, I, last
year I went out and did one of the river cleanups.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, good.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And it was appalling the stuff thrown in and on the
bank.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, it is appalling, I agree. I just don't know why
people do that, but it is lack of respect, of course. It's, it’s a
carryover from the old days, you know? People used to always dump stuff
in the rivers to get rid of it [laughter], so we just have to keep
educating those kids and everyone else.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you think the community has grown more respectful
of –spectful of its river rather than a dumping ground or simply just a
source of water for agriculture?
>> Coke Hallowell: I think people are still throwing tires in the river,
and re-- old refrigerators.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah, we saw those.
>> Coke Hallowell: I mean, there's a lot of stuff there, so I don't -- I
can't measure [laughter] if it's better or not.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Any thoughts about the organization naming their -- I
guess one of their principle buildings after you? After all now we have
the Coke Hallowell Center for River Studies.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yes, yes. Well, sometimes it's a little
embarrassing but I was very honored that they did that, and hardly anyone
ever asks me, "Why did they do that?" But if you were to ask me why
[laughter]…
>> Thomas Holyoke: Why would they do that [laughter]?
>> Coke Hallowell: It's because it was kind of my idea that we should
have an education center. That old house was sitting there vacant, it was
owned by the Sand and Gravel Company, and it seemed to be kind of in the
center of the 22-mile thing that we're responsible for. It just seemed
like that would be a good place for an education center, so we talked to
the Sand and Gravel Company about it. Their plan, the company's plan, was
to tear it down, because there's a lot of valuable sand and gravel under
that house, and the barn, and in that whole area, and yet the regional
director, I think that's his title, of the Calmat, which is now Vulcan
Company, he didn't want to tear the house down. He loved the old house.
So when we approached him with our idea, he was responsible for going to
the corporation and getting them to say, "Yes, we will donate that," and
they donated five acres and the that includes the house and the big old
barn, and then later they, they donated the whole 20 acres because the
zoning in the river bottom is 20 acres and you can't divide it up, so
that's why they ended up donating all of it to us. And so then it was a
big wreck of a house, you know. It needed new foundation, it needed a new
roof and it needed a lot of other things, so the East Fresno Rotary
adopted that house as their project, and they came out time after time
again and did work tearing out the inner walls, which had to be torn out
so they could put insulation and electricity and everything. The house
was built in 1890, and had been lived in by many different families over
the years, and so it, with a lot of work and a lot of donations from the
community, we raised the money necessary to build a new roof and the new
foundation and fix it up. Have you visited it?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Oh yeah, several times actually.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh good, good, I'm glad. We're very proud of it and
what goes on there. We have a lot of kids from preschool on up that come
out all the time.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Vulcan Mining Company does a big operation along the
river. How does the parkway get along with them? I mean, you just
mentioned one thing that sounds very good.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, yes well we do get along with them very well.
They're extremely cooperative with us. For instance, if some of the
gravel gets kind of bare in spots, they'll come and bring some more
gravel for us and spread it out. So they do kind little things along the
way. We also hope in the very near future to buy some more land from
them. We had it appraised maybe five, six years ago, hoping to buy it
then, and then problems kept coming up such as the freezing of the state
bonds, so then there was no bond money for us to buy it from them, and so
that caused a delay, and then their own company had some internal
problems which I think are being resolved or have been resolved, such as
a, a corporate takeover which was threatening Vulcan, and I think that's
behind us now, and now it's been so long we'll probably have to have new
appraisals. When the time comes if they will pick up the phone, call us
and say, "We're ready to sell," I think there's Parcel A, Parcel B and
it's a matter of them finishing their mining. They have to be out of
there, of course. There's some beautiful ponds in the back towards the
river, I don't know if you've seen those, they're big, they're like a
lake, and we can use those as fishing places for the public.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I have been there, in fact. Toured there with someone
from Vulcan who was talking about how they have restored a lot of that
property back there.
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh yes, they've done wonderful plantings of native,
native trees and shrubs and it looks great. They are required by law to
do some of that reclamation, but they go beyond, they do really excellent
work.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Good, good, good, good. Do you’ve sense that there's - you've been involved with this a long time. Is there a sense that
there's sort of you know, new, younger generations coming up who have the
same level of commitment to the river?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well, I hope so. On all of our committees and on our
board we try to include people and younger generations, you know. It's a
little hard because younger people are busy working and raising their
families, don't really have the time to give, but we are making some
headway on that.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. Any thoughts about what the river's future is?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, I don't know if you've heard of the something
called the Blue Way? It's actually connected with the national parks, and
there are rivers all over the country who are applying to be called a
Blue Way, and what that means is there would be maps and brochures and it
would be on the web about how you could go all the way to the bay on the
San Joaquin River, and it would show you where you can camp, where you
can park your car, where you can put in your canoe, where you can take
out your canoe or whatever, and this would be called the Blue Way, and we
are in the process -- I know that Secretary of the Interior is in favor
of it, I've seen his letters of, of backing for that Blue Way. In fact
the former Secretary of the Interior who had just resigned, he, he
visited the San Joaquin, we gave him a canoe trip, which was nice, so he
knows who we are and hopefully his successor will come, come and visit
us, too.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Has the parkway had a generally good relationship with
the various government agencies out there, the Bureau of Reclamation and
[inaudible].
>> Coke Hallowell: I think we do, I, I think we do, yes. The Bureau of
Reclamation and the Department of Water Resources and the Fish and Game
make up the leadership team for the salmon restoration, and they-they're working on all of the details of getting those salmon to come up
the river and spawn, and we're working with them when, in whatever way we
can to assist.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, that comes to the -- oh actually, no, one more,
one more question, based on something you said much earlier. Can you tell
us a little bit about your Take Me to the River project, your book?
>> Coke Hallowell: Oh, yes, thank you. My daughter is a filmmaker and a
writer and a professional editor as well, and she and I did these
interviews starting about 12 years ago. We, we got started in a way which
I won't go into right now, it was just kind of an accidental start, and
after the first interview, we got to talking. There must be a lot of
people who have memories of the river in whatever way, whether they're
fishermen, farmers, environmentalists, you know, all kinds of people.
People who just grew up next to the river. So we started putting the word
out that we'd like to meet some of these people and see if they would do
an interview with us. She did the filming, I did the questioning, and we
have done more than 70, maybe 75 interviews, but it's taken a long time.
She lives in San Francisco and so she couldn't just pop in here every day
to help me do that, so we had to schedule well in advance, you know,
around her other busy schedule, and we had a wonderful time, but it
really -- when I look back on it, it really was a lot of work, a lot of
time, and we met the most wonderful people, and most of them were older,
which, you know, that means they had even more of a story to tell than
the younger, and it was so easy because I would usually start out by
saying, "Now, tell me, Azalea, what was it like to grow up next to the
river?' And then she got started and then the words just kept rolling
out, the stories kept coming, and I hardly ever had to ask another
question except if it kind of got off subject you know, bring her, try to
bring her back a little, and that's the way all of them were. We
interviewed a, a botanist who was a teacher at Fresno City College at the
time, we interviewed him and he told such wonderful stories about the
flora and fauna along the river. A month went by and I saw him somewhere
out in the city, and he said, "Coke, I thought of a lot of things I
didn't tell you, can we do another interview? [Laughter] so we have two
interviews of Bob Winter, I don't know if you've ever heard that name,
but he, he was very well known as a good teacher.
>> Thomas Holyoke: What's sort of the output of all of this? You have a
book, I understand.
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, it's a great book called Take Me to the River,
there are 33 stories in there. The publisher couldn't publish all 70
stories, that would be a book that thick, and so he, he gave us the
number 33. It was very difficult to choose 33 out of those 70, but we
tried to do a balance of, of subject matter, so they weren't all about
the very same thing.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is there any other products that are going to come
from this, were these videotaped?
>> Coke Hallowell: Yes, they're on DVDs, and you can see them, just go
out to the River Center house, upstairs in the back room there is a DVD
player and all of them are in the top drawer, and you can just go through
the album and pick out any one you want and watch it. They're nice,
they're really nice.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, that's the end of my questions! Anything else
you would like to add?
>> Coke Hallowell: Well no, except that we will continue to reach out to
the public and try to get them involved in the concept of saving the
river.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Coke Hallowell: Okay.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Thank you very much.
>> Coke Hallowell: Thank you very much; it's been fun.
[ Silence ]