Who Saved the Redwoods?
Presented by Laura and James Wasserman
Oct 1, 2019, 7:30pm
San Bernardino County Museum, 2014 Orange Tree Lane, Redlands
Please join us to learn the dramatic but forgotten story of the women and the men they worked with, the first group to preserve an important span of California’s coastal redwood forests. Our speakers, Laura and James Wasserman, earlier this year published Who Saved the Redwoods? The Unsung Heroines of the 1920s Who Fought for Our Redwood Forests.
No other book exclusively details the first campaigns to save the redwood forests of Humboldt County during the 1920s and 1930s. It highlights the significant role of women. By successfully fending off the logging industry, they paved the way for the modern environmental movement.
The Wassermans may not have copies to sell their book at the meeting. You may bring your own copy, however, and they will sign it. Find it at your local bookstore or buy it online from Amazon
Their book, incorporating archived material that highlights for the first time the prominent role of women, covers the early efforts to save the redwoods, the 21 years from 1913 through 1934. This was a colorful moment in history when a new generation of native Californians successfully faced down Eastern lumber interests over destruction of their beautiful, ancient forests.
The book follows a trajectory of initial failure and ridicule, then limited successes and the determination that overcame the entrenched intransigence of lumber interests. Finally, a historic rush of stunning preservation victories established Humboldt Redwoods State Park as the largest expanse of surviving old-growth redwoods on earth.
The big lesson of their book is that caring and committed citizens could protect a natural area when it was generally not considered possible for government to act against powerful economic interests such as the lumber industry.”
Their book grew out of a study of California’s state park system – Beyond Crisis: Recapturing Excellence in California’s State Park System – that James wrote for the California Little Hoover Commission in 2013
The Wassermans comment, “…we found to our great amazement a wonderful, inspirational story of a multitude of women, locally, statewide and nationally, who fought powerful lumber interests to save more than 30,000 acres of Northern California redwoods from 1913 through 1934.
“We made this lost history of women’s conservation efforts in the redwood forests the primary focus of our book, with the intention of restoring credit where it is due. Throughout this period that marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement, women and the men they worked with through the Save the Redwoods League and Sierra Club, held to a powerful ideal of civilization in which the wonders of nature are not destroyed but passed intact to future generations.”
Laura Wasserman is a long-time institutional researcher and research coordinator in the private and public sectors. Her professional experience includes extensive business market analysis and polling for national opinion research, political campaigns and environmental issues. She has experience in evaluation of local, state and federal government programs and comprehensive report writing in California and Alaska.
James Wasserman has worked 33 years as a newspaper and wire service reporter, columnist and television commentator in California and Alaska. His specialties include land use and environmental issues. He also worked as a California state government policy analyst, authoring investigative and environmental public policy reports.
The Wassermans lived in the San Gorgonio Chapter from 1983 to 1986, one year in Upland and two in Palm Springs when James was city editor of The Desert Sun. Since 2001 they have lived in the Sacramento area.
