Pinnacles National Monument turns 100 to fanfare
Ernie Prewett has lived his long life in the shadow of the
dramatic spires of Pinnacles National Monument.
Prewett Ranch is 517 acres nestled in the hills south of
Paicines, just a few miles from the mouth of Pinnacles.
Pinnacles National Monument turns 100 to fanfare
Ernie Prewett has lived his long life in the shadow of the dramatic spires of Pinnacles National Monument.
Prewett Ranch is 517 acres nestled in the hills south of Paicines, just a few miles from the mouth of Pinnacles.
“This side of the road has been the same for over 100 years,” Ernie, 95, said.
His wife, Rose, agreed.
“There’s a lot of families that lived here then that are still here,” she said. “Quite a few of them are third, fourth, fifth generation.”
Ernie is third generation South County resident. He and his wife run the ranch with their daughter.
Pinnacles National Monument was 5 years old when Ernie Prewett was born. When the monument turned 100, he was there.
To mark the monument’s centennial, staff and members of the public held a rededication ceremony on Jan. 16.
President Theodore Roosevelt designated Pinnacles a National Monument on Jan. 16, 1908, according to Pinnacles’ staff.
The park was America’s 11th national monument. Roosevelt recognized its uniqueness. Pinnacles is marked by the lichen-encrusted igneous crags that give it its name. The stark, beautiful landscape is home to the nation’s premier tallus caves.
Tallus caves are enormous piles of loose rocks, knocked loose over the millennia to form twisting tunnels and cracks. Geologists eventually determined that the Pinnacles formation is half of an enormous volcano.
Thanks to the persistent creep of the San Andreas Fault, the other half of the volcano, located east of the fault, is today hundreds of miles to the south.
A popular rock climbing and hiking destination, Pinnacles is home to 27 sensitive species. Townsend’s big-eared bats nest in the caves. Red-legged frogs wiggle in its reservoir. The monument is an active player in efforts to re-establish a wild population of California condors. It also is believed to have more bee species – nearly 400 – than any other place on earth.
Ernie has been visiting the monument since he was a child.
“When I was in grammar school, we’d go down,” he said. “We’d take visitors and drive them to the caves.”
He also led visitors during the weekend.
“We would, on our Sundays, tour people through the caves,” he said. “You’d have weekends where you’d have maybe 100 people. Course, they weren’t set up then like they are now.”
At that time, there was no way to get from the lower caves to the upper caves, except on foot, Ernie said.
Today, there is a staircase from the lower caves to the upper caves that was carved through solid rock. Ernie helped build that staircase.
From 1929-1931, when he was a teenager, Ernie worked at the park on his vacations from school, he said.
It took a half an hour to travel from the mouth of Pinnacles up to the caves, Ernie said.
“Everyone had a saddle horse and would ride up there,” he said, “so that when you got up there you were ready to work and not have to rest.
To blast through solid rock, workers used a compressor, he said.
“I moved the compressor when it needed to be moved,” Ernie said. “You knew you’d done a day’s work.”
Ernie also helped expand the road that leads into Pinnacles, he said. At that time, the road was only one way.
“The grade going up to Pinnacles, you’d go up on the hour and go back on the half hour,” he said.
There are fewer deer at Pinnacles than there were when Ernie was young, he said. From the mouth of the monument to the caves, it was not unusual to count between 125 and 130 deer, and 25 to 30 “nice bucks,” Ernie said.
“That’s all disappeared,” he said.
Rose agreed.
“Might see two or three,” she said.
There are a lot more employees at Pinnacles now than there were when Ernie was young, he said.
“One thing about it though, there’s still a lot of local people that work there,” Rose said, “because they like the county and they don’t want to go too far from home.”
Ernie never thought he’d live long enough to see Pinnacles turn 100.
“Some of the problems I’ve had, I’d think I’d be pushing up daisies,” he said.
Rose disagreed.
“As long as that old pacemaker keeps ticking, he’s doing good,” she said.
While Rose said she was looking forward to the event a few days before the ceremony Ernie said he was happy to go “as long as they don’t want me to say something,” not knowing he was slated to be recognized.
“This is our official birthday, as we’re calling it,” said Michael Rupp, a park ranger at Pinnacles. “It’s kicking off a yearlong celebration.”
Representatives for Senator Barbara Boxer, and Congress member Sam Farr, a representative from California, are scheduled to appear at the ceremony, Rupp said before the event.
Other visitors included students from Jefferson School, a K-8 school a few miles from the monument.
A lot of the kids have parents who work at the park, said Tina Plunkett, the school’s principal and teacher.
The students from Jefferson planned to perform at the ceremony.
“Some of the students have written poetry for the occasion that they are going to read,” Plunkett said. “Everyone will do a class poem about condors.”
The kids are excited to be performing at the ceremony and just to be at the familiar landmark, she said.
“Anytime we go to Pinnacles, the kids are excited,” Plunkett said.
Pinnacles has been an attraction for local ranchers since the 1860s, according to Pinnacles staff. Families would gather for picnics in the valley at the eastern foot of the Balconies Caves.
They thought it was nothing more than a local attraction until a professor from Stanford University visited the park in 1893, according to staff.
A world traveler, he proclaimed the rock formation, “the finest example of its type of scenery he had ever seen,” according to staff.
The comment prompted a local rancher, Schuyler Hain, to wonder if the site deserved greater recognition, according to staff. Hain’s descendants remain in the area, and some attended Wednesday’s ceremony.
In towns and cities around the Bay Area, Hain presented a magic lantern show using 50 hand-painted glass slides that he had prepared.
Because of his efforts, and those of the president of Stanford University, David Jordan, Pinnacles was declared first a national forest and finally a national monument, according to the documents.
For the next 10 years, Hain continued to promote the monument by giving talks and showing his magic lantern slides.
Events on March 28, 29 and 30 will celebrate past conservation, he said. Homestead Weekend is planned for May 24, 25 and 26, he said.
On June 7, a climbing event, the Rockpile Rendezvous, will be held at the west side of the park near Soledad, Rupp said.
