Black History and fun
at California's Park Systems

California has some of the best parks in this nation. Many of them are a source of great pleasure, pride, and even lessons in Black history, to the surprise of many who travel within them. The Sequoia National Park and the Colonel Allensworth State Park are two examples.

The Sequoia National Park among the California Sierra Mountains is a vast system that hosts the largest living trees and things in the world. It was this park that was so greatly enhanced in the summer of 1903 by Acting Superintendent Colonel Charles Young, the first Black officer to oversee a national park system, and his Buffalo Soldiers. That of itself was not remarkable, but what he did when he was there is remarkable.

The park system had rotating superintendents that would come and serve their terms and move on. Colonel Young who along with the Buffalo Soldiers, were stationed in San Francisco's Presidio Station was ordered to oversee the park that Summer and attempt to clear a path so the nation could traverse the park and appreciate its beauty and its trees. The Sequoia was rugged and unprotected from poachers and cattle that would destroy the natural wild life.

Colonel Young and his 93 Buffalo Soldiers went to this park and built more roads than any army unit before it. They made the park so accessible that cars and bicycles could come and go in and appreciate the natural wonders of the park. And for having done so, they were so liked because of their industry, the locals and the government wanted to name a tree after Colonel Charles Young. Instead, Colonel Young asked that a tree be named after Booker T. Washington.

The town, however, at the end of their tour of duty in the park, had a grand party for Colonel Young and his men. More than any other military unit before him, Young made the park accessible to the public, he built protective fences around the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree and living thing in the world, he guarded against poachers, he purchased land within the park from private owners so that the park could be preserved for public use, and he enforced the codes of the park lands.

Many of the roads he built are stilled used today; many of the fences he built to preserve giant trees are still protecting those trees today. Colonel Young and his Buffalo Soldiers made a mark in this park system like no other unit before him. And each year, the parks hold a celebration of his contributions to the national park systems.

This year's celebration will be the Col. Charles Young and the Buffalo Soldiers Centennial Celebration, Saturday, August 23, 2003, in the Sequoia National Parks. For more information on this celebration, go to the Sequoia National Park web site. There is also more information on Colonel Young and the Buffalo Soldiers; the Sequoia Natural History Association has a small book on this remarkable man and his Buffalo Soldiers.

Many travelers to the park are amazed to see posters and pictures of one of the most outstanding conservationists of natural lands displayed so boldly high up in the Sierra Mountains of California, but his contributions carved out a place in the nation's parks history.
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Another park in California, but State administered instead of federally administered, is the Colonel Allenswoth State Historic Park in the Southern Joaquin Valley, near the cities of Delano and Earliment.

This park has one of the most interesting histories of Black achievement in the state. The Colonel Allensworth Park was, in fact, an actual Black township with 300+ Black families from all over the nation. Colonel Allensworth, who was an ex-slave, and four other Blacks started it in 1908.

The goal of this township was to be a haven for Blacks who wanted to live free of the prejudice and discriminatory treatment of white America. Those who came wanted to live in a place where race would not be an obsession or a problem.

They came in droves to Allensworth, and the town prospered for years until water became a problem. The wells were drying up, and when the township asked that their town be allocated its fair share of the water resources, it had to pursue a legal battle that went on for years and was not successful. Water was the key element of its demise, but not the only element. Colonel Allensworth had selected and purchased this vast land because the railroad stopped there.

The next element of the town's decline was that the railroad moved its stopping point to another town, Alpaugh, some 30 miles away. That hindered the farming base and export of the town. The township had a prosperous farm base of some 8,000 acres of farm land.

The final element of the town's decline was the death of Colonel Allensworth himself. While on a speaking trip in Monrovia, California, a motorcycle accidentally hit Colonel Allensworth and he died. With the founder and major political and religious voice gone, insufficient water for the town, the inability to get their crops to the market, there was no way to make a living and support their families, and with the economic slump that followed WWI, many men sought work elsewhere.

However, there was continued life in the town until in the 1960's, when arsenic was found in the water supply. By 1973, Allensworth fell from the California map.

Some years later when developers were about to buy the land and plough under this Black History, a Black state planner saw what was about to transpire, and knowing the history that would be lost, developed a plan for the State to buy the land and make a historic park. That plan was approved, and Allensworth was preserved as the only all-Black township in California.

This park is has some 70,000 visitors each year; it hosts a series of celebrations and festivals on Juneteenth and other days. In October there will be the largest of the various events that take place in this park:

The 27th Annual Rededication, will take place two days in October, with events from 10AM to 4 PM each day. This is an annual renewal of the commitment to the park and its symbolic representation of self-determination. There will be games and Bar- Be-Que, and something for everyone. For more details, contact the park at: (661) 89-3433.

Allensworth Park is an excellent overnight or day camping ground. The ground is level with RV hookups, and space for those who have tents and backpacking gear. This park is a year-round park with temperatures in the 90-degree ranges during the summer days, but it is an un-crowded and a camping-friendly park.

These two areas of California history and Black history will never get in students' textbooks. Both of these parks are children and family friendly; both are camping and hiking friendly; both will surprise you by their different kinds of beauty. Of course, Sequoia is grand in scope and awe inspiring in its depth.

Allensworth State Park is both heart-warming and tragic African American and American history. Heart-warming because a people were willing to do the hard work of development in an unyielding land until that land yielded to their hard work.

It is tragic because the dream the founders and citizens of that small township had was the original American dream. But having gone far from that dream, many, if not most Americans, persecuted its own Black citizens who helped build this nation in every aspect of its being, until those great Black contributors sought refuge from a majority who once dreamed of freedom from oppression for all, until they turned from that dream and became oppressors themselves.

Like Rosewood Township and a thousand other examples of efforts of Blacks to prosper in this nation, African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans have all sought refuge from the tolerated and perpetrated oppression of a majority that has no cause to oppress, other than the threat posed by the difference in color of skin that another person comes dressed in. []

Gibbs Staff