Wilson family settled Eastside Road property 150 years
ago, now it’s slated for a park
by BERT WILLIAMS, Staff Writer
Nineteen-year-old Matthew Alexander Wilson arrived in Windsor on
a horse. Orphaned since he was 12, the Tennessee native had little
money, but he understood work and signed on with a cattle drive
heading west. His journey to Sonoma County, California took seven
months.
One hundred fifty years later the land that Wilson bought and
developed — the land upon which generations of Wilson descendants
lived until the 1970s — is slated for development by the Sonoma
County Regional Parks Department.
Projected to attract hundreds of picnickers, canoeists and
anglers on busy days, Riverfront Regional Park will bare little
similarity to the family farm of the 1800s.
Given what is known of Matthew Alexander Wilson, however, it’s
not hard to imagine that he would enjoy what his old place is soon
to become.
Or maybe he wouldn’t. Not everyone is thrilled with this new
park idea. Included among the not-thrilled is the family that now
lives in the farmhouse Wilson built in 1872.
“Our greatest concerns are related to views, noise and site
security,” wrote Therese Shere in a letter to Sonoma County
Regional Park Planning and Design Administrator Philip Sales. Shere
lives with her husband, Eric Monrad, and teen-age children directly
across Eastside Road from the proposed park. The old farmhouse is
less than 250 feet from the redwood grove that will become the new
park’s primary picnic area.
The neighbors worry about traffic, vandalism and partyers —
real concerns — but probably not things that “Alex” Wilson worried
about much. Life’s difficulties took different forms back then.
Wilson married Missouri Frances Thomas Skaggs on January 2,
1862. Alex was 28. Missouri was 18, but at her tender age she had
already suffered tragedy. In January of the previous year she had
lost her first child, 19-month-old Elizabeth Ann.
Two months later her husband, Elijah Skaggs, died. The second
child of Missouri and Elijah, Emma Leanore, was born 22 days after
Elijah died.
After Alex Wilson married Fannie, as Missouri came to be known,
they took up residence in the house that Alex had built sometime
after he bought the land in 1855. During the next several years
they had six children, only two of whom — Charles Walter and
George Dennis — survived to adulthood.
Despite the early passing of most of their own children, Alex
and Fannie made good use of the six-bedroom farmhouse they built in
1872.
Including Fannie’s daughter Emma, the Wilsons had a family of
five. Then in 1884 Alex’s sister-in-law died leaving a
seven-month-old daughter, Olive Elizabeth. Alex and Fannie took her
in.
In 1893 Fannie’s daughter Emma died, leaving her son,
12-year-old George Marshall. The obvious thing, it seemed to Alex
and Fannie, was to raise grandson George.
Alex developed a thriving farm over the years. “It was really
quite something in his day,” said Willie McDowell, Alex and
Fannie’s great-great-grandson and the Wilson family historian.
“There was a horse barn, a cow barn and a sheep barn.” Alex also
put in an orchard, a vineyard and numerous field crops.
After all that, and raising multiple generations of children,
Alex and Fannie were tired by 1905, so they moved to a house in
Windsor, leaving their son, Charles Walter, and his wife, Sarah
Catherine, to run the farm.
A lane cut through the Wilson farm, roughly paralleling the
river. It got busier over the years. In the 1970s the Wilson family
sold the land, bisected by the busy Eastside Road. The portion
between the road and the Russian River was purchased by Kaiser Sand
& Gravel.
Kaiser mined for a few years, then sold the land to Syar
Industries who dug up more gravel, then sold the land to Hanson
Aggregates, who had bought out Kaiser in the interim. Hanson mined
more gravel. Over the course of three decades, three large pits
were opened up.
In May of 2002 the Sonoma County Water Agency and the Sonoma
County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District purchased
the property under a cooperative agreement.
The Water Agency now owns the land and the Open Space District
holds a conservation easement that allows recreation, habitat and
resource enhancement, and the possible development of a water
supply and water education activities.
The Sonoma County Regional Parks Department is working to
develop the park. The gravel pits have come to be known as Lake
McLaughlin, Lake Wilson and Lake Benoist. The chain of small lakes
spreads across 132 acres of the 305 acre property. They will be the
primary attraction for many park visitors.
To the Wilson family, however, the centerpiece of the old farm
has always been the redwood grove just across Eastside Road from
the farmhouse.
McDowell remembers many family gatherings in the grove. The most
recent family event was a 1999 reunion of more than 100 descendants
of Matthew Alexander Wilson.
McDowell’s memories stretch back over decades. He recalls
childhood pilgrimages from the grove up a hill to Shell Rock, a
large outcropping embedded with sea shells — evidence that, before
seismic upthrusts raised it to its current elevation, the land was
inundated by the ocean.
Jerry Miller of Santa Rosa, another of Wilson’s
great-great-grandsons, remembers piling into the back of a pickup
at the farmhouse and heading past the grove, upstream to the kids’
favorite swimming hole. “The river changed every year,” said
Miller, so with each new summer they had to figure out where the
best swimming would be that year. That was in the 1950s.
Miller’s mother, Lois Miller, remembers attending a church camp
in the grove in the 1930s, when she was 8 years old. She was
frustrated with camp directors because they insisted she must stay
with the other children when she wanted to run across the road to
visit her grandma.
Allowing the Methodist Episcopal church to use the grove for its
camp was typical of the Wilson family. “They didn’t hold it unto
themselves,” said McDowell. “They shared what they had.”
According to Doris McDowell Evans, who grew up in the Wilson
farmhouse, living with her grandmother Sarah Catherine Wilson, the
redwood grove was the site of many Sunday School picnics, Boy Scout
campouts and service club events. Itinerant prune and hop pickers
often made the grove their summer home.
But that was then and this is now. The Preliminary Concept
Master Plan for the park envisions a four-phase development of the
property.
During Phase 1 — already funded by a $459,000 matching grant
from the Open Space District — the picnic site and trails around
the lakes will be developed.
Improvements to the Eastside Road entrance and parking will be
included in the initial phase.
Subsequent development will include a floating dock for anglers
and non-motorized boaters, further development of picnic areas,
rest rooms, trails, parking and a river boat launch site. The whole
project is expected to cost $1.5 million.
Charles and Lindsey Shere, Therese Shere’s parents, built their
home on the hill above the old Wilson farmhouse 20 years ago.
They had been assured that the gravel companies were required to
restore the land across the road to its original state, as required
by the county’s Aggregate Resources Management Plan.
They are not entirely pleased, then, that the gravel pits have
been renamed as lakes and are being incorporated into what is now
to become a busy park.
“I’m in favor of parks,” said Charles Shere, “But who needs
parks? People with horse trailers, or people who live in
apartments?” Shere believes if the land is to be developed it
should become a wild park emphasizing native plant communities,
wildlife habitat and hiking trails. He worries about traffic
congestion and possible mercury contamination in the gravel pits —
though park planners are sure that documented problems with mercury
have been mitigated. Shere also wonders what development in the
surrounding area may be fostered by a new park.
A Public Scoping Meeting for the park plan took place on January
29. Environmental Specialist Michelle Julene said the Regional
Parks Department encourages ongoing public comment. Questions and
concerns should be directed to Park Planner Joe Kase at
565-6032.
The study now being prepared by the Parks Department will go to
a county Environmental Review Committee sometime later this
year.
To get on the mailing list for notification about that meeting
and other park planning developments, call the county Regional
Parks office at 565-2041
Julene said the Parks Department hopes to begin construction
next spring, with a projected opening by the end of 2004.
