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Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley

Oral History Center University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

East Bay Regional Park District Oral History Project

Raymond Sullivan: East Bay Regional Park District Parkland Oral History Project

Interviews conducted by Shanna Farrell

in 2017

Copyright © 2019 by The Regents of the University of California

Interview sponsored by the East Bay Regional Park District

Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley ii

Since 1954 the Oral History Center of the Bancroft Library, formerly the Regional Oral History Office, has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.

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All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Raymond Sullivan dated October 31, 2017. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online at http://ucblib.link/OHC-rights.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

Raymond Sullivan, “Raymond Sullivan: East Bay Park District Parkland Oral History Project” conducted by Shanna Farrell in 2017, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2019.

Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley iii

Ray Sullivan, 2017

Photo by Shanna Farrell

Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Oral History Center would like to thank the East Bay Regional Park District for their generous support of this oral history project. The Parkland Oral History Project is funded by the Interpretive and Recreation Services Department of the East Bay Regional Park District, coordinated by Beverly R. Ortiz, Ph.D., EBRPD Cultural Services Coordinator, and supported by staff at all levels of the Park District.

Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley v

Raymond Sullivan is a geologist who led field trips with student on site in the East Bay Regional Park District. In this interview, he discusses his childhood in South Wales, developing an interest in geology, moving to San Francisco in 1962 to attend San Francisco State, working at Mount Diablo and Black Diamond, teaching, putting together field guides for the EBRPD, working with local miners and other groups, the scientific value of Black Diamond, and his reflections on working with the district.

Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley vi

Table of Contents— Raymond Sullivan

Interview 1: October 31, 2017

Hour 1 1

Born October 27, 1934 in Ebbw Vale, South Wales— Early interest in Geology— Graduated from the University of Sheffield— PhD at the University of Glasgow, 1960— Joined Oil Shell company— Move to San Francisco State, 1962— Family background as miners— “Adventures of a boy in the cool mines”— Uniqueness of geology in the Bay Area— Preference to sedimentary rocks— Working at Mount Diablo and Black Diamond— On mining sites around the Bay Area— Differences in types of coal— On Nortonville and Summersville mining sites— On acquiring mineral rights— Becoming involved with the East Bay Parks District— Putting together field guides with John Waters— Publishing a paper for California Geology in 1980— History of the Mont Diablo coalfield— On the Save Mount Diablo movement— Raymond Sullivan’s Contra Costa group— On working with Tracy Parent— Relationship with the miners of the coalfields— On the governance of the East Bay Parks District— Reflecting on current park tours and guides— On personal contributions— Scientific value of Black Diamond surface rocks— Importance of the Domengine— Significance of life’s geological work— On ability to work alongside son— Hopes for the field of geology

Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley vii

The East Bay Regional Park District Oral History Project

The East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) is a special regional district that stretches across both Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. First established in 1934 by Alameda County voters, the EBRPD slowly expanded to Contra Costa in 1964 and has continued to grow and preserve the East Bay’s most scenic and historically significant parklands. The EBRPD’s core mission is to acquire, develop, and maintain diverse and interconnected parklands in order to provide the public with usable natural spaces and to preserve the region’s natural and cultural resources.

This oral history project—The East Bay Regional Park District Oral History Project—records and preserves the voices and experiences of formative, retired EBRPD field staff, individuals associated with land use of EBRPD parklands prior to district acquisition, and individuals who continue to use parklands for agriculture and ranching.

The Oral History Center (OHC) of The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley first engaged in conversations with the EBRPD in the fall of 2016 about the possibility of restarting an oral history project on the parklands. The OHC, previously the Regional Oral History Office, had conducted interviews with EBPRD board members, supervisors and individuals historically associated with the parklands throughout the 1970s and early 2000s. After the completion of a successful pilot project in late 2016, the EBRPD and OHC began a more robust partnership in early 2017 that has resulted in an expansive collection of interviews.

The interviews in this collection reflect the diverse yet interconnected ecology of individuals and places that have helped shape and define the East Bay Regional Park District and East Bay local history.

Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley 1

Interview 1: October 31, 2017 01-00:00:13 Farrell: Okay, this is Shanna Farrell with Raymond Sullivan on Tuesday, October 31,

2017. We are in San Rafael, California, and this is an interview for the East Bay Regional Parks District Oral History Project. Ray, can you start by telling me where and when you were born and a little bit about your early life?

01-00:00:33 Sullivan: Okay, when I was born was October 27, 1934 in the town of Ebbw Vale,

which is located in what geologically is the South Wales coalfields. So basically that’s where my origins were. The people next door were miners on either side. It became in my lifetime a steel town, a very important steel town, as the coal began to decline.

I am one of ten children. I am fourth in the hierarchy there. My older brother and I were very close and we were very interested in hunting the hillsides, looking for Roman remains and looking for fossils of leaves in the coal deposits. I went to All Saints School. My father was Irish Catholic. My mother was Welsh. I went from the All Saints School at age twelve, you did the famous eleven plus exam and I went to Ebbw Vale Grammar School. My brother was also there. We were almost twins in size and in interest and we decided, when I was fourteen, that we would do geology. We had read a newspaper article in The Daily Express and it said this was the future employment and that young people should think about taking geology.

We decided, and from that moment onwards, all we thought about was geology. He went to the University of Sheffield to do geology, which was a department that was well known. Professor L.R. Moore was a coal geologist, so we sort of had that interest in mind. Then I followed him at the University of Sheffield and we both graduated. He stayed at the University of Sheffield and eventually became a professor there. I went to the University of Glasgow and my Ph.D. area was Pembrokeshire and I didn’t work the coal measures that had already been done. I worked the limestones below the coal measures in Pembrokeshire and I graduated in 1960. I was about twenty-five years old.

While I was at Glasgow, a professor from San Francisco State was in Europe looking for a young graduate student that would be interested in coming to San Francisco State. We talked about me coming over. He selected me for whatever reason. However, I told him I wanted to do a couple of years in the oil industry first and that’s what I did. I joined Shell Oil Company in 1960 and I came out to Canada, spent two wonderful years in Canada. I spent part of my first summer on horseback in British Columbia in the Rocky Mountains there, and the second summer I was in the Peace River country, not on horseback, but in helicopters, one of the early helicopter parties. The third summer, I was in the Yukon.


From there I resigned from Shell and I went and came to San Francisco State. I promised him that I would come for two years. I really didn’t have any ambition. I wanted to see the city, enjoy the city. I’d come down for an interview with him in the previous year and by then, I’d married my wife. And we came down. We had plans, however, we had a son the first year and we kind of liked the city of San Francisco. So that’s how I ended up here.

01-00:05:26 Farrell: Before we get too far into that, I want to back up a little bit. Can you tell me

what your parents did for work? Were they involved in the mining field?

01-00:005:35 Sullivan: Yes, my father, at the age of thirteen or so, fourteen, he went down the mines.

He told me many stories about the mines and his one advice to me was, don’t go down the mines. He was rescued from the mines, if you like, by the First World War. He served in the First World War. There was a long period of depression and he worked in and out of all kinds of things during that period. He ended up, in the early thirties, in Ebbw Vale. Ebbw Vale, at that time, was also in a severe depression. The coal industry was in decline and eventually brought in a major steel works, Richard Thomas and Baldwins, which was probably the largest steelworks in Europe. During the World War II period, he worked in the steelworks. In fact, he worked there until he died in the early sixties.

01-00:06:55 Farrell: Did you ever spend much time around the mines when you were growing up?

01-00:07:00 Sullivan: Yeah. Ebbw Vale is in what we call the north crop of the South Wales

coalfield and the coal is very shallow there, so it was easily accessible. That’s where the coal mining industry had started way back in then, oh, 1800s. By the time the 1900s came, the coal was pretty well worked out. What happened is that there were a lot of abandoned coalmines and a lot of abandoned shafts and we did lots of that. There were outcroppings of coal and we collected fossil plants and that kind of thing. We were very familiar with the coal mining operation.

01-00:07:56 Farrell: You mentioned that you had read an article at fourteen about geology. What

was it that resonated with you and made you start thinking about geology constantly after that?

01-00:08:06 Sullivan: Well, you know, in school you had to write papers and so one of my favorite

topics was always writing about coal and the adventures of a boy in the coalmines. My father would tell me stories of how the rats underground and how they had to eat bread and cheese and that kind of thing, so that resonated very much with me.


01-00:08:40 Farrell: What is your brother’s name and what is the age difference between you two?

01-00:08:44 Sullivan: We’re eighteen months difference, Herbert James Sullivan. He eventually

became a vice president with AMACO. I came out of Britain to Canada in 1960, he came out in about sixty-five. As I said, he was a lecturer at the University of Sheffield and he came out to join AMACO, and that’s where he was employed throughout that time. He became the chief geologist for Canada for AMACO and he had a very successful petroleum.

We would always run the hills together and we always had our adventures together. We were very close. That tradition has stayed in the family. My two sons did degrees in geology as well.

01-00:09:53 Farrell: So you came to the US in 1962?

01-00:09:59 Sullivan: I came to Canada. Oh, in sixty-two, yes.

01-00:10:03 Farrell: Okay, so yeah, Canada from 1960 to 1962 and then San Francisco State in

1962. Can you tell me a little bit about what your research was like leading up to that and then maybe some of your impressions, what the geologic differences between either Canada and the US, or Britain and the US?

01-00:10:22 Sullivan: Well, the work I did in Canada was frontier kind of geology. As a boy, I had

lived in museums and I memorized names of fossils. I did geology in the grammar school, which is the high school system. I just loved fossils. What I did with Shell is, I joined their paleontological group and my job was to—the geology of Western Canada was not well known, so I would go out in the field with the geologists and I would date the age of the rocks based upon the fossils. That was my main employment. That has always been the kind of thing that I did—I taught paleontology at San Francisco State. That was my beginnings. Then I spread out from that into other areas of geology.

01-00:11:31 Farrell: What was it about the fossils that resonated with you?

01-00:11:36 Sullivan: I have no idea. It turned out I had encyclopedic knowledge. For example, I

found the first Cambrian rocks in Alaska and I did it. I’m sure other people had examined these rocks, but myself and this geologist Bob Egbert landed on this outcrop in a remote part of Alaska. I hammered the rocks, and there were these beautiful trilobites. I immediately noticed that they were trilobites; I knew exactly it was Cambrian. I didn’t have to go and get a book, and probably other geologists would have landed there but didn’t realize the significance. It was something I was fascinated with.


01-00:12:28 Farrell: Can you tell me a little bit about the differences in geology between the Bay

Area that makes it unique compared to other parts of the world?

01-00:12:37 Sullivan: Yeah, well, what’s unique here is we’re on a plate boundary. One of the things

I got interested in is in earthquakes as well as the local geology. We’re on a plate boundary. The geology’s much more complicated than in most parts of the world. It also has a nice section of Tertiary rocks here in the Bay Area, and that’s where my interest was, not in the complicated geology. I tried to avoid it when the rocks become too complicated. I like them to dip gently and not be highly faulted. That’s what was ideal about Black Diamond and the flanks of Mount Diablo.

01-00:13:35 Farrell: Is there a specific type of rock that you work on?

01-00:13:41 Sullivan: No, I work sedimentary rocks. So sandstones, shales. There’s not many

limestones here. My specialty was limestones. The closest outcrop of limestones is up around Shasta Lake. That’s just too far. I also worked older rocks than we have here. I worked the Paleozoic. I was more familiar with Paleozoic fossils as well. Here we have what we call the tertiary rocks and they’re much younger. But, you know, you learn. Geology is geology everywhere

01-00:14:20 Farrell: Can you tell me a little bit about when you first started to work with Mount

Diablo or Black Rock?

01-00:14:30 Sullivan: Black Diamond, right. Well, it was my very first year at San Francisco State. I

heard about the coal mining history around Mount Diablo, which is now called I guess the Mount Diablo Coalfield. I went out and, being Welsh, of course, I was interested in the local Welsh history over there, the cemetery. I walked around the cemetery. This was the time when that area was not a park. It was an area of cattle grazing. It was an area where the kids from Antioch and Pittsburg came out to have fun and to just enjoy the hills.

When I came, I think it was owned by Ginochio, we used to have permission to come on to the property. I just wandered on the property. I brought my students and the students enjoyed it. I learned a little bit about the Welsh history. I immediately saw that the area was absolutely fantastic for geology. It was ideal. The rocks were not too complicated in terms of their structure and it was ideal for undergraduate fieldwork and a place where they could begin to learn mapping techniques.


01-00:16:17 Farrell: Did you, in part, find yourself going to mining sites because of where you

grew up, because there was an affinity for that?

01-00:16:28 Sullivan: Oh, absolutely, yes. That’s why the Welsh were in Black Diamond as well.

It’s in your blood, there’s no doubt about that. I understood quite a bit about how you mine. I understood the dangers involved. I took care. I remember my first field trip with my students, there were two nuns on the field trip. Now, they were dressed fully in their habit. There was only one nun in my class, but she could not come alone, so the second nun. I still have memories of taking these two nuns underground and helping them down. This was very dangerous because we had a few flashlights, no hardhats. I was aware of the danger of the gasses coming from the underground.

I guess we didn’t go too deep underground. I think the nuns enjoyed it tremendously. I’m sure they went back to the convent that night and told the stories of how they scrambled underground.

01-00:17:52 Farrell: Can you tell me a little bit about some of the mining sites that are around the

East Bay?

01-00:17:59 Sullivan: The East Bay? Yeah, coal is not extensively mined in California. Mount

Diablo coalfield I think had produced four million tons of coal, and so it is the most famous site. There are a couple of other sites. There’s one near Livermore that’s quite famous. But really, the coal is of poor quality. It’s young coal. It’s Tertiary coal. I mean, in South Wales, they would never touch this stuff. They wouldn’t even give it the time of day. It’s very poor quality coal.

01-00:18:41 Farrell: Can you describe the differences between high quality coal and poor quality

coal?

01-00:18:46 Sullivan: Yeah, it’s on the rank of the coal, what we call the rank of the coal. The coal

lowest of the rank is peat and that’s perhaps 50 percent carbon. Then it goes to bituminous/sub-bituminous and then anthracite is the highest rank. It’s a matter of time, of age of the coal. The older the coal, the deeper it’s been buried and the longer it’s been buried, the carbon is rich in the coal. As a result, this is young coal. It hasn’t been around very long. It hasn’t been buried deeply, so it really is poor quality compared to the Welsh coal, or even the coals that you get; the Cretaceous of Wyoming.

This is the only resource that San Francisco had for coal until they began to import the coal as ballast in the ships and began to see the decline of the Mount Diablo coal because of that.


01-00:20:09 Farrell: Does young coal burn faster than old coal?

01-00:20:13 Sullivan: No, it probably burns slower, a lot of smoke. It also doesn’t generate as much

heat. The best anthracite is smokeless coal. It burns with a high heat.

01-00:20:31 Farrell: Okay, that makes sense. There’s a couple mining town sites: Nortonville and

Somersville. Can you tell me a little bit about those two sites and maybe about what they were like when you first visited them?

01-00:20:46 Sullivan: Well, they didn’t really exist when I came, other than, we had old pictures and

we could reconstruct the location. Nortonville was the Welsh town and Somersville probably was more diverse. The Welsh therefore tend to live in a community and so they favored Nortonville. There were about five companies that mined the coal in the town, but basically there was nothing left other than the coal heaps, the coal tips, and the openings into the mountains that represented the location of the sites that they were exploring for the coal.

01-00:21:38 Farrell: Were those two of the sites that you first went to when you first got here?

01-00:21:43 Sullivan: Yes, those were, and then eventually there are other sites. There are five towns

altogether.

01-00:21:55 Farrell: What are the other three towns?

01-00:21:55 Sullivan: [Stewartville, Judson Ville and West Hartley]. Gee, I can’t remember.

01-00:22:00 Farrell: How did you first learn about Nortonville and Somersville?

01-00:22:03 Sullivan: Well, I had a colleague of mine that brought me over here, York Mandra, told

me about it and suggested it. I was looking for places to go on field trips. You must understand, I had no idea what was in California. I couldn’t even correctly say San Jose at the time. He took me under his wing and so in the first year or two, I went all over California—Death Valley, Yosemite—I had to learn the geology from scratch. However, you couldn’t take field trips all the time to Death Valley. A nice close place would be the Black Diamond area and Point Reyes and the beaches.

01-00:22:58 Farrell: You mentioned that they didn’t really exist—they weren’t really there—but

were there any structures that were intact when you first visited them?


01-00:23:06 Sullivan: No, there wasn’t anything.

01-00:23:10 Farrell: When did there start to become structures? Do you remember the chronology

of that?

01-00:23:15 Sullivan: Yeah, well they discovered coal I think about 1859 if I remember, off the top

of my head. They were digging into the sandstones. They were probably forming a pond or something, and they struck some coal seams close to the surface. So it’s been said that about the time of the actual gold discovery, the coal discovery, but it wasn’t until the late fifties that they saw the potential. They realized that they had a really large deposit of poor quality coal here, but there was no other resource of coal on the West Coast at that time so they began to mine the coal.

01-00:24:15 Farrell: You had also bought some property around there, is that correct?

01-00:24:19 Sullivan: No, but I did acquire the mineral rights.

01-00:24:28 Farrell: Can you tell me a little bit about how you acquired those?

01-00:24:31 Sullivan: Yeah, well in my first year of teaching, I took a class and there was a

gentleman called Ron Crandall. Now in those days, the students weren’t like today. They weren’t teenagers. Many of them had been in the forces or the presidio here and the Korean War and some of them were of that era, and so many of my students were in their thirties. Ron Crandall was a young fellow, but he, at the end of the class, told me that he had made $12,000 and that he had bought the mineral rights from I think it was Southern Pacific Land for Nortonville. And therefore in my mind—they might open cast that. My God, that’ll be horrible on destroying the heritage of the site.

I immediately started thinking about Somersville. I went to Southern Pacific and I said, “I’d like to have the minerals rights for the Somersville property.” They said, “Fine.” I signed the forms but I never paid. I couldn’t afford to pay them, but I bluffed my way for a year, hoping I could delay Owens Corning or whoever bought it from Ron Crandall from acquiring the property. It was an attempt to delay things really.

01-00:26:12 Farrell: What ended up happening with that?

01-00:26:15 Sullivan: I could have made some money. A building developer down in Pittsburg

wanted to buy the coal tips from me. He wanted to use it as a foundation for


the housing site, but of course I said, “No way.” I did prevent that happening. Eventually, what happened was that I guess Southern Pacific said either pay up or forget about it. I didn’t forget about it. But then, as soon as I dropped it, I began to hear rumors about Utah Mining wanting to come in and open cast it. But they must have picked up the mineral rights from Southern Pacific and I don’t know if they had the Nortonville site as well.

I was furious about that, that I’d actually given up those mineral rights. That’s led, of course, to the movement to save that area and led to the East Bay Regional Parks finally buying it, I think in about 1972, ’73, and opening it up as a park.

01-00:27:29 Farrell: Do you know a little bit about how East Bay Regional Parks were about to

buy it and open it up for a park?

01-00:27:35 Sullivan: Not really, no.

01-00:27:38 Farrell: On that note, can you tell me a little bit about how you became involved with

the parks district? I know you mentioned when we spoke on the phone that you were attracted to the area because the geology was unique.

01-00:27:51 Sullivan: Yes, it is. By 1973, it became a standard field trip with my classes. My major

classes, we would spend two or three weekends in the semesters and we were mapping the surface and having some access to the subsurface. Because in the subsurface, the rocks are fresh and they just have all the details that are often lacking at the surface. When East Bay Regional Parks acquired, I was delighted. I didn’t have to go to the ranchers. I didn’t have to worry about having access.

Immediately, I began to approach East Bay Regional Parks and at that time—I forget the name of the head ranger. It was a woman. I think it was JoAnn and John Waters was working at the site. He was building picnic tables and he was filling in some of the hazards at the site. I got to know them and they were very supportive of me bringing my students.

01-00:29:14 Farrell: When you were going on those field trips, what were you trying to impress

upon your students with the geology that was there?

01-00:29:21 Sullivan: Well, they had to start. These were sophomore students or juniors. My class

was their first real introduction to mapping, so we had to go through the basics, how to read a map and how to measure a section, how you would identify the different kinds of rocks, and how you’re able to trace them and to map them and to correlate them, and how to interpret the deposition of


environment and to reconstruct what the world was like fifty million years ago. It was a wonderful exercise.

01-00:30:08 Farrell: Were there a lot of maps that had been completed of that area at the time by

the parks district?

01-00:30:16 Sullivan: There were eventually, by 1980, the USGS had mapped the park. There was

no maps, really accurate maps at that time or just the state maps on very broad scale. Eventually, we had a thesis from Berkeley that came in. He didn’t map as much, but he actually did the kind of work that I did and helped getting some of the details as well. So by 1980, there had been some work done in the park.

01-00:31:01 Farrell: You became further involved with the parks district and with John Waters.

Can you tell me a little bit about how that evolved?

01-00:31:07 Sullivan: Yeah, well John was a very unique character and he was a fascinating

character. We just became good friends. I helped him. He would call me up and say, “I found this adit. Would you come and look at it to make sure before I fill it in, if there’s anything of geological interest in the park?” He didn’t have a degree in geology. How he got into the park is an amazing story, but he sort of was a jack-of-all-trades. He was a good draftsman. He was able to construct the roads and the trails; he was able to interpret the underground mining.

I think his origin was in Colorado, where his family was in mining, so he had a good mining background. His geology background wasn’t that strong so I basically provided that for him.

01-00:32:15 Farrell: You mentioned how he came to be involved was a fascinating story. Do you

mind sharing that?

01-00:32:22 Sullivan: It’s really amusing. Of course I wasn’t there, but what I heard—and he didn’t

elaborate too much on this—but basically what happened, they were advertising for a park ranger and he either didn’t apply or missed the deadline, but he heard about it. He went into the head office in the morning and he went and the secretary said, “Can I help you?” He says, “Well I’m here to be interviewed.” She says, “Well, when is your appointment?” He said, “I don’t have one.” He said, “I will sit here and if I have an opportunity, I’d like to be interviewed.”

He sat there all day. At the end of the day I guess, the secretary said, “Okay, let’s see if the interviewer will see you.” He did and so John sat down and the


interviewer said, “Well, you know, it’s very unusual. I don’t like doing this kind of thing, but let’s go ahead with it.” He kept asking John, he said, “Are you a draftsman?” Done that. He says, “Have you had construction?” “Yes, I’ve done that.” Everything he asked, John said, “I’ve done that.” The guy hired him on the spot.

01-00:33:59 Farrell: When you first met him, what were some of your first impressions of him?

01-00:34:03 Sullivan: Well, he was tall, lean, and he smoked cigarettes. He rolled his own cigarettes.

You know, he was very thoughtful and very, very quiet. He was not a very outgoing person. He had a wonderful sense of humor. He told wonderful stories. He was Irish so we had lots of stories to tell and lots of things in common. So, we got very, very close over the years.

01-00:34:46 Farrell: What were some of the rocks that he was calling you about that you

identified?

01-00:34:52 Sullivan: Well, the rocks weren’t that varied, but on the other hand, you have to know

what coal seam you’re in. What happens is that there was, in the coal mines, there’s called the Black Diamond coal, being the most famous, and why it got its name. There were other coal levels, so he would want to know at what level they were at and I would try and provide that information.

On the naming of coal, there’s a story there. In the adit, the Hazel-Atlas adit, there’s one unnamed coal seam. My students eventually, over the years, someone had the bright idea of calling it the Sully Vein. I was not too pleased with that. Anyhow, I guess John heard this so he started calling it the Sully Vein and some of the rangers, not all I suspect. Anyhow, would you believe but Stanford came in to do the study of the fractures and faulting in the rocks and John Waters said to them, well that’s the Sully Vein and now that’s published. I don’t have a hill. It’s not Sullivan, but it’s close.

01-00:36:43 Farrell: You also did a lot of the geology for the parks district?

01-00:36:48 Sullivan: Well, I never got paid. Yes, I hope to think I have attracted—it has become a

standard place for many of the universities and colleges to bring their students. I have provided the field guides and the mapping and the descriptions for them.

01-00:37:13 Farrell: Was that kind of in partnership with John Waters?

01-00:37:16 Sullivan: Absolutely.


01-00:37:19 Farrell: Can you tell me a little bit about your work on that and putting those field

guides together with him?

01-00:37:26 Sullivan: Yeah, well it started about in the 1980s when finally after a decade or so, the

mines were safe to go in. We published our 1980 paper in the California Geology. We began to get requests for field trips. Northern California Geological Society, which I eventually became a member, we led almost two field trips a year for almost a decade for them. Each time we filled them with people. The National Association of Geology teachers also had us run the field trip.

Then the Association of Engineering Geologists. Oil companies would want to come to do field trips, because when you have rocks exposed underground in a fairly long sequence, then it’s a wonderful place to see geology. The underground is so rare and when it’s a safe environment to go underground as well, it attracted an awful lot of people. We had people from Norway, from France, all over the world come and look at the section.

01-00:38:52 Farrell: These field trips that you did twice a year were for the general public?

01-00:38:56 Sullivan: No, I’ve never done it for the general public. I would be overwhelmed if I did.

Occasionally I’ve done it for Boy Scouts groups. For teachers, I made an exception for teachers.

01-00:39:11 Farrell: These field trips were for teachers?

01-00:39:13 Sullivan: Well, for geologists mainly.

01-00:39:16 Farrell: What were some of the things that you would make sure to point out to them

on the field trips?

01-00:30:22 Sullivan: What we would do basically is John would do the mining history and the

mining methods and I would do the geology interpretation. What you have is a sandstone, almost pure quartz sandstone, which came out of the Sierras at the same time that the gold deposits were, first time, being washed out of the Sierras. These same river systems brought the sands into Black Diamond. Basically, I would explain the geological environments. These rocks are also an important reservoir in the subsurface, so lots of oil companies would also come and they would have us take a trip and they would give a donation to the East Bay Regional Parks.


We had a great deal of people because you see everything, 100 percent exposure. I think we did a good interpretation of the rocks too, which was convincing. John was just an amazing guy underground. He told different stories every time. He never told the same story. People were just fascinated by him. It was sort of a duo and he did one thing and I did another. He was the funny man and I was the straight man.

01-00:40:59 Farrell: What was the interest of oil companies in the geology?

01-00:41:03 Sullivan: Well, the second oil well in the state of California is drilled in Black

Diamond. I think it was like 1862 or something. As I said, the Domengine sand, which is the sand that contains the coal deposit, is also an important reservoir in the subsurface. These rocks in Black Diamond go into the subsurface. From Black Diamond, they dip underneath of the Sacramento Valley. They’ve been drilled extensively. Part of my work in recent years is to get all of the well logs and to study the Domengine in the subsurface as well.

01-00:41:46 Farrell: From these tours, did the field guides grow out of that?

01-00:41:51 Sullivan: Yeah, we have multiple field guides.

01-00:41:55 Farrell: Do you remember which areas the field guides are about?

01-00:41:58 Sullivan: Well it’s all of the park, just of the park.

01-00:42:01 Farrell: I guess maybe specifically? Or just in general?

01-00:42:06 Sullivan: Well the early field guides were strictly on the Domengine sandstone. My son,

who eventually went to Santa Barbara and got a degree in geology, went to the University of Glasgow and got a Ph.D., and then he taught at Chico State for a while, he also joined us. We had a trio eventually. He was a lot smarter than I was, so it was nice to have that support.

01-00:42:39 Farrell: You had mentioned that in 1980, you wrote your first article with John for the

California Geology. What was the paper on?

01-00:42:47 Sullivan: It was on the mining methods and the interpretation of what the world was

like fifty million years ago.

01-00:42:58 Farrell: What was it like writing that paper with John?


01-00:43:01 Sullivan: Oh, it was great. In as much, he is an extremely meticulous person. He went

over it word for word. He provided most of the diagrams. He was a good artist, just a magnificent artist. It was just very easy, very simple. Now we are planning to rewrite that paper in the next year. We’re doing a volume on the geology of Mount Diablo. The present person who has John’s job, Pat Dedmon and I are going to rewrite that paper. I’m not sure if we can improve on it, but we’ll try and update it.

01-00:43:47 Farrell: What are some of the other co-authored papers that you wrote with John over

the years?

01-00:43:53 Sullivan: Oh, we’ve done a multitude of them. I can’t remember all, but we published

about a dozen field guides. I’m sure we’ve done about a dozen articles. I’ve given talks with John’s name all over. It’s been my bread and butter.

01-00:44:18 Farrell: I guess moving into the Mount Diablo coalfield, can you tell me a little bit

about the history of that area, that site?

01-00:44:28 Sullivan: Yeah, well as I said, four million tons of coal were extracted from it. It was a

very important mining operation. You must realize, San Francisco was an emerging city. The whole of the West Coast was emerging. They needed fuel. As I said, coal was extremely limited. Even though this was poor quality, it was the only coal available. What happened is that there were ups and downs in the coalfield because of the fact that the Central Valley was a major grain growing area and when they had abundant grain, they would export the grain overseas and ships would come in and would bring in coal as a ballast.

The coal therefore was much better quality of coal. They might have brought it in from Pennsylvania or from other parts of the world. Therefore, at the time when there was a rich harvest, there was a decline in the coal. Also, in addition to that, they found coal up in the Washington Territories in the 1880s, late 1880s, so that one of the major coal companies moved up there. It was an up and down operation, and I can imagine that there were good times and bad times.

It was very, very difficult living there. Children died very young. Women died in pregnancy. There were lots of accidents underground, and it was a hard life. What finally brought it to the end was the 1906 earthquake probably. It did some damage, but by then it was really just about over anyhow. What happened after that of course is that in the 1920s, they started mining sand. They ignored the coal because the sand was extremely pure sand. Eventually, during the Second World War, it was mined for sand and it continued up into the fifties probably.


01-00:47:06 Farrell: Since it closed and the mining of the sand happened, how has the usage of

Mount Diablo changed?

01-00:47:15 Sullivan: As an activity area?

01-00:47:19 Farrell: I mean, yeah, even if it’s just opened up to the public.

01-00:47:21 Sullivan: Yeah well, you know, with the decline of the sand operation—the sand

operation was very inefficient inasmuch, they actually did it through adits and they didn’t opencast it. They didn’t remove it from the surface with machinery. They went into the ground in the same ways they were mining the coal. So that was a very inefficient way. It’s a wonderful sand. It’s still mined today down at Byron. Much of your wine bottles that you have are produced from that glass.

It’s still economically feasible, but there is priority in the heritage and the history of the area that would prevent that.

01-00:48:22 Farrell: One of the movements that grew out of Mount Diablo was the Save Mount

Diablo Movement, because only half of the wild lands are preserved, so the other half are at risk for development. Can you tell me a little bit about the genesis of that movement and maybe what your involvement has been?

01-00:48:39 Sullivan: I can’t tell you other than it’s the most annoying, frustrating thing I’ve ever

had was getting access to property. They are providing that for me, I hope. They are gradually filling in, buying up the ranch land. I can tell you the experiences I’ve had—I won’t name names—but with some of the ranchers—well, one rancher particularly, and with one construction company. There is one rock, volcanic ash, the oldest volcanic ash that we have, and it needs to be dated. The construction company are playing games and will not allow me on their land.

What Save Mount Diablo is doing is really preserving it. There are some beautiful places around the flanks of Mount Diablo that are wonderful scenery and wonderful hiking. It’s a great movement.

01-00:49:42 Farrell: Has it picked up steam? What do you see the future of that movement being?

01-00:49:47 Sullivan: Yes. They just recently made some large purchases of the Thomas Ranch,

which is now open for the first time. Last weekend, they had a walk there. They’ve had two walks that I’m familiar with. The next big movement is the Concord Weapon Station, of course. The East Bay Parks are now buying into


that, which is going to be a tremendous asset to the East Bay to have the most spectacular mountain in the Bay Area, Mount Diablo, and to have the surrounding areas preserved.

01-00:50:31 Farrell: Who funds Save Mount Diablo?

01-00:50:35 Sullivan: I have no idea.

01-00:50:38 Farrell: We talked a little bit about John Waters, and I’m also wondering about some

of the other people that you worked with through the East Bay Regional Parks District. Can you tell me a little bit about your work with Steve Edwards?

01-00:50:51 Sullivan: Yes, Steve is a very, very unique individual. [phone rings] Sorry. He was the

botanical curator for the East Bay Regional Parks. He has an amazing interest in science and in all aspects of science. He’s always been active in geology, but after he retired, he became increasingly active and he is an amazing person in the field. He has a better eye than I do. He has an excellent ability to photograph, good skills. He shares all his work. He has become part of a group that includes Steve, Ross Wagner, and a few others, including myself. They’re looking at the geology. It’s what I call the Contra Costa group.

As long as they want to hike those hills—and I’ve suddenly slowed down—they’re taking apart the geology of the area, mapping and we hope to publish that in the next year or two.

01-00:52:14 Farrell: You also worked with Roger Epperson. Can you tell me a little bit about him

and your work with him?

01-00:52:20 Sullivan: Well, Roger was critical because he was the supervisor of the park, and I

couldn’t have done anything without his backing. He let me do whatever I wanted. That changed. But he came in very early on and the greatest tragedy to me was his death because he was a very wonderful supervisor, because he let you do what was appropriate. He saw things, getting things done, so he played a very important part in building the structure from virtually ground zero.

01-00:53:07 Farrell: How about Traci Parent?

01-00:53:09 Sullivan: I can’t say enough about Traci. Traci Parent. I just got a letter from her

yesterday. She was there as a student when I first came. Of course, I’m very interested in the cemetery and that’s where some of her interests—not main, perhaps—but her book is right on the table right there. Traci, I just can’t say


enough. She is just a wonderful person, tremendous naturalist, and just tremendous.

01-00:53:51 Farrell: Was she your student when she came?

01-00:53:53 Sullivan: No, I wish she was. I think she was at Sacramento State, I think.

01-00:53:59 Farrell: How did your work overlap with hers?

01-00:54:03 Sullivan: Well other than, she and I led field trips for teachers. What we would do, we’d

go underground in the morning, and in the afternoon, we did her famous cemetery walk.

01-00:54:17 Farrell: Can you tell me a little bit about that?

01-00:54:19 Sullivan: The cemetery walk? Yeah. Well, she has worked out all the details of who

was buried as best as she can do. She’s done the genealogy; she’s done the associated history and produced this wonderful volume, which is about three inches thick, on the cemetery. She’s seen that it got published.

01-00:54:51 Farrell: Are there any other people that you worked with that are significant or worth

mentioning?

01-00:54:55 Sullivan: Yeah, well, the other miners have been important as well. I’m trying to

think—golly, they would kill me if I forget. [Rick Yarborough, Pat Dedmon, Bob Kanagaki, Rex Caulfield, Kevin Dixon, and Bob Doyle].

01-00:55:09 Farrell: We can always add them in.

01-00:55:10 Sullivan: I will add them in.

01-00:55:12 Farrell: Yeah, no problem. You’re interested in studying these things; what was your

relationship with the miners like?

01-00:55:23 Sullivan: Fantastic. Fantastic. I mean, I was, you know, welcomed. I could wander

freely though the mines. They allowed my students to wander. I was the only group, I think, that was given free access. I could lead a group underground and I wasn’t restricted to the areas that the public were. They taught me a lot about mining and they were just a really nice group of people.


01-00:55:59 Farrell: Can you tell me a little bit about the perception of Mount Diablo by the

public? Because you were leading field trips and they were for geologists, but do you have a sense of, you know, how the public felt about Mount Diablo, if they really knew it was there?

01-00:56:19 Sullivan: Oh, I don’t know if they knew about Black Diamond necessarily, but they

knew a lot about Mount Diablo. I think that has always been, you know, quite well known. It’s amazing that people still don’t know—and I’m talking about Marin County now, so we’re on the other side—they don’t know much about some of the parks over there. I don’t know about the San Francisco group either.

01-00:56:55 Farrell: Can you tell me a little bit more about East Bay Regional Parks District

governance of the parkland that you’ve worked with or on?

01-00:57:04 Sullivan: I really can’t. I mean, I’m not a politician.

01-00:57:07 Farrell: Sorry, I guess I mean the ease of working with them and your feelings about

how they managed it.

01-00:57:16 Sullivan: Well, I better be careful. [laughter] I mean, Bob Doyle is just tremendous.

He’s very, very supportive. Getting a permit can take a little longer than I would wish. I needed a collecting permit last year and it took me a little while. I can see their concern, because things can happen where people who they give a permit to can cause problems. But I assure that all I’m interested in is taking a handful of rock. But anyhow, with Bob Doyle’s help, I have no trouble getting a permit.

01-00:58:02 Farrell: How do you feel about their interest and intention to documenting the geology

of their parkland?

01-00:58:11 Sullivan: I give them copies of all my papers, and I don’t know what happens to them. I

don’t think they necessarily fully understand the geology. I’m not sure if John fully understood how I interpret the geology. I don’t know why, I’ve never been asked to speak to them. I’ve had them come on my field trips, but I’ve never been asked—which is fine for me, because that’s a pain in the neck, but I would have been willing to give a workshop, perhaps, on the geology. But I think they, on the whole, have a fairly good understanding. But I think there are some details that would improve them.

I went underground with my seven-year-old grandson last year. They didn’t know who I was and I listened to the interpretation and it was done very well,


was really good. One funny thing happened is that they take you first into the underground auditorium and they give you a little bit of the history. It was done much better than I could. He did an extremely good job.

In part of the presentation, he said, “Can you imagine that these men were working for a dollar a day? Working twelve hours for a dollar? The young boys that were there were working for fifty cents? Don’t you think that’s bad?” My little grandson put his hand up and said, “My grampy pays me fifty cents a day to work in the garden [laughter].”

01-01:00:11 Farrell: Oh, that’s really funny. What was the reaction to that?

01-01:00:20 Sullivan: Well, they laughed. Eventually the guy found out who I was on the trip at the

very end of the trip.

01-01:00:29 Farrell: That’s a great story. I know that you’ve written the field guides and you’ve

published a lot, but I guess, what are your feelings on the contributions that you were able to make to the field of geology through your work with the East Bay Regional Parks District?

01-01:00:45 Sullivan: Well, you know, I am on various Research Gate and some of these websites.

They tell me how many people are reading my papers. People from all over the world are reading, particularly my 2012 publication. I think that is a significant one. I don’t know about the others. My field guides I don’t even take too seriously.

01-01:01:15 Farrell: Can you tell me a little bit about the scientific and educational values of the

Black Diamond surface rocks?

01-01:01:24 Sullivan: Yeah, Black Diamond—it’s on the north flank—and what the geology is, it is

an area that was pushed up by Mount Diablo in recent times and we’re trying to work on exactly when that happened. But it tilted up as a large block that was not complicated by being twisted and faulted, so it’s a fairly homogenous unit. Therefore, the structure is fairly simple, which is a good educational tool, because when you’re starting out learning geology, you don’t want a complicated structure.

You have 80 million years of history there. It is the history of the last 80 million years. It tells a time when it was subtropical in California. During the first 50 million years, it was ocean covered most of the time. And then something happened—and that’s one of the things I’m working on—it changed into land and the climate changed. You see it changing from subtropical. One of the things I’m working on now with Lanny Fisk, who is a


palynologist, we’re working on the spores and pollens that we’re getting out of the sandstones so we can have more details on what kind of plant life lived at various times.

01-01:02:59 Farrell: Is this why Black Diamond has been so important to the scientific community

for so long?

01-01:03:05 Sullivan: Right. You have the type section of many of the classical formations. They’re

named there. That’s the place you go to describe them first. Therefore the Markley sandstone is named after the Markley Canyon. Nortonville shale is named after Nortonville, and so on and so on. It’s classical. You have an underground exposure of the Domengine, which is the best that you can ever imagine.

01-01:03:40 Farrell: Can you tell me a little bit about the Domengine and why it’s been so

interesting to people?

01-01:03:47 Sullivan: Well it is, as I said, a reservoir. It’s also got coal deposits. Economically, it’s

important. Why would, for example, an oil company want to see it? Well, they hear it is a reservoir that’s buried 3,000 feet in the Sacramento Valley at the surface, and they’re not looking at a four-inch core, they’re looking at an outcrop and they’re looking at a section underground. They can look at the reservoir qualities of that. Same thing with a hydrologist, because it’s still an aquifer.

Also, students and geologists can see in perfect, 100 percent, all the details of the rock. If you can work on the environment, you can say, well at this river at this time, this is the way the sands were deposited. Therefore, you’re using the past to explain the geology.

01-01:04:57 Farrell: I want to ask you a couple more questions just to wrap up. Can you tell me

about what it’s been like for you to work on these field guides and with the East Bay Regional Parks District?

01-01:05:09 Sullivan: You should ask my wife. [laughter] I’m still doing it. As I said, I’m editing the

Geology of Mount Diablo volume, which is the seventh-fifth anniversary volume. Particularly since I retired—I retired in 1997, so that’s twenty years ago—that’s all I’ve done. Well, that’s most of what I’ve done is I’ve continued to work, with the help of Steve Edwards, Ross Wagner, Lanny Fisk and all these people. Kris McDougall from the Survey. All these people have helped me.


I kind of have a group that’s doing the things I can’t do. They are doing them. We are really working, trying to figure out when Mount Diablo came up. What happened is that all the deposits up until about 50 million years ago were marine, and suddenly, geologically speaking, the Sacramento Basin—that’s where the sediments were deposited—became continental. When did it and why did therefore it stop subsiding? Why did we begin to see it filled in by rivers? When did the last sea enter across? Because we know that Mount Diablo probably came up as young as 3 million years ago. When did the Coastal Range stop the Pacific Ocean coming? We would like to know that.

We do know, just recently, Lanny Fisk tells me that he’s shown that during the Ice Age, during the melting of the ice caps, the sea managed to come in through Carquinez Straight. But that is therefore just a local one. We would like to know: when did the Pacific actually come over where Mount Diablo is? We’re trying to date the volcanic ash deposits in the succession, because the volcanic ash deposits tell us the age precisely.

We can also find the source of what we find. For example, up to 50 million years ago, most of the ash—and in fact, up until 12 million years ago—was coming in from the Sierra side. We found later that the ash comes in from Sonoma. We’re interested in finding out the provenance and the age of ash deposits and then and many other things. It’s crucial. Mount Diablo is important, but the story is preserved in Black Diamond. Mount Diablo is the heart of the mountain, but that’s ancient rock. What has happened in the last 80 million years is on the flanks of Mount Diablo.

01-01:08:35 Farrell: What has it meant to you to do this kind of work?

01-01:08:37 Sullivan: Well, it kept me sane. Hopefully it will keep my brain active. I mean, I’m still

leading field trips and I’ve made some good friends. I met some wonderful people and I’ve enjoyed very much working with East Bay Regional Parks, with nice people. I had a back problem earlier in the year and I’m dying to get back in. I can’t work in the summer; it’s just too hot. I’m seeing what’s happening this fall, see if Steve Edwards and Ross Wagner want to come out, and if the miners, Pat Dedmon and all these people, I’m dying to go over there to see Pat. We’d like to talk.

People recognize that. I also have other interests. I lead walks of the downtown area of San Francisco related to the 1906 earthquake. I do that kind of thing. I have a varied interest.

01-01:09:52 Farrell: What has meant to work with your son and pass on your love for geology to

your family?


01-01:09:59 Sullivan: Yeah, I have two sons. My oldest son is the geologist. My younger works for

Salesforce. But to work with my oldest son is interesting because he’s worked the research side of an oil company. He’s working with the best people and they have the best information from all over the world, but he doesn’t work with me too well. [laughter] But he’s a wonderful guy and he does help me from time to time. As I’ve said, we’ve coauthored a few papers. But if he and I had worked together, we would have taken apart Mount Diablo.

01-01:10:46 Farrell: What are your hopes for the field of geology, particularly in this area, in the

future?

01-01:10:52 Sullivan: Well, I hope San Francisco State would get their act together and get geology

back to where it was when I left the department. I helped to build it up from scratch, and they’re finding ways to take it apart. What I’d like to see with geology is that I would like to see the application of geology to global warming and all these other aspects. I think there’s a very important contribution there. I think we need more people to study geology and to get into the sciences and to study that. I think that’s very crucial.

01-01:11:37 Farrell: Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

01-01:11:40 Sullivan: I don’t think so.

01-01:11:42 Farrell: Well thank you so much.

[End of Interview]

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