From rediscovered family photos to contemporary takes on unprecedented times, pictures taken for all kinds of purposes illuminate our collective understanding of the changing world around us. This month we investigate and celebrate the capacity of photography to shape our relationship with nature, from our foundational collections to our current exhibits.
About the series: Zoom into the stories, secrets, and science of our collections during monthly webinars with Collections Manager Kathleen Aston. This live event is an extension of our monthly Collections Close-Up blog, with added insights and intrigue. Members are invited to participate in this program before it is made available to the general public as well as ask questions directly of Kathleen.
This month, the Geology Gents explore what has happened to the Earth throughout its history when sudden climate change has occurred. Hint: it usually involves mass extinctions. Look back at last month’s episode exploring Ice Ages as a primer for this discussion of paleoclimatology, or the study of ancient climates.
About the Series: Join the Geology Gents, Gavin and Graham, for monthly conversations about rocks live on Facebook. Each month we’ll explore a different geologic topic, from Santa Cruz formations to tips for being a more effective rockhound. Graham Edwards and Gavin Piccione are PhD candidates in geochronology with the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz.
Submit your questions ahead of time by emailing events@santacruzmuseum.org and feel free to include pictures of rocks you’d like identified! Pro-tip: the better the picture, the better the ID.
Laura Hecox: lighthouse keeper, collector, naturalist.
Photographer.
This January we piece together a richer picture of our founding collector by taking a new look at an old photograph. The image below depicts matriarch Margaret Hecox standing on the steps of the Santa Cruz Lighthouse in November 1887, accompanied by W.J. Morton and T.H. D’Estrella. We borrowed this picture from a descendent of Simon Hamer, Margaret Hecox’s nephew, who received it years after having spent time living with the Hecox family in Santa Cruz. It is similar to an image the Museum already has, except for one critical difference: it is captioned.
In addition to providing the exact date, and clearly identifying the individuals in the photo, including “Mother’, the final note of the caption, partially obscured by damage, reads “I took this photo”.
We celebrate Laura’s legacy and steward her personal collection, yet there is little documentary evidence of her life. Previous Collections projects have explored some of the precious few materials we have that were actually created by Laura – these include her catalog books and one of her scrapbooks. Our primary source of visual information about her life is a small collection of photographs.
Consisting of two sets of albums, these photographs depict various people and places around 1887 or 1888. These albums are where we derive most of our iconic images of Laura, tidepooling in petticoats beneath a natural bridge, or sitting on a cliff overlooking the ocean.
Image courtesy of Frank Folwell, relative of Margaret Hecox
One album is inscribed “with Christmas compliments” from Hecox family friend and photography enthusiast Theophilus Hope D’Estrella. D’Estrella was a teacher at the California School for the Deaf, where he got the nickname “Magic Lantern Man” for sharing magic lantern slides of his travels into the Sierras and along the California coast with his students. The D’Estrella album includes pictures of parks and buildings in the Monterey and San Francisco bay areas, as well as the sculpture studio of D’Estrella’s good friend and Laura’s nephew, Douglas Tilden.
The other album, contained within the same type of mass produced “Album of Photographs” folio, is more Santa Cruz focused. Its many images include rocky coast and crashing waves, the lighthouse, and local park scenes. Few images depict Laura herself. Some of the images are explicitly attributed to specific photographers, many are not. For the most part, they are all captioned in the same elegantly looped handwriting that we find in Laura’s catalog books and lighthouse paperwork. It also appears to be the same handwriting on the caption to Simon Hamer’s photograph. In this caption then, we find Laura not just collecting specimens, corresponding with scientists, and keeping up with the current events, but also engaging with emerging technologies.
The first modern photographic image was Joseph-Nicephore Niepce’s 1826 picture of a barn. Although the subsequent decades witnessed various innovations in the photographic process, it wasn’t until the 1888 release of the handheld Kodak camera that the process was simplified enough for photography to become a widespread hobby. So in this photograph we are seeing Laura use a camera during a time when most photography was still the province of professionals. Prior to the context provided by this caption, we had no way of knowing that any of the photographs might have been taken by Laura herself.
It is exciting to understand Laura’s active role in creating the materials we have in the collection, especially in light of the history of how her collection has been described. While today we often place her story front and center, historical accounts often attributed her collection to her father Adna, despite Laura herself deeding the collection to the city. Of course, we have many accounts of family collaboration – of Adna building cabinets and of Margaret organizing and sorting specimens – and we wouldn’t want to exclude them. Yet, as late as the 1930s we see reports of the relocation of the “Adna A. Hecox collection” to its new home in Seabright. Being able to attribute things like the taking of a photograph or the collecting of specimens to Laura herself allows us to participate in broader movements to recognize the role of women in the history of science and to celebrate diverse connections with nature.
The surfacing of this photograph enriches our understanding of Laura Hecox’s story, but anyone who has taken a closer look at the changing landscapes of the Monterey Bay knows that photographs have a lot to say about the story of the natural world around us. This is just as true in the 21st century as it was in the 19th, and you can see the evidence in our upcoming virtual exhibit 2020 Vision. For more on photographs as a tool for understanding of the world around us, and the interrelated worlds of photography and natural history, check out this month’s Collections Close-Up event: Picturing Natureon the January 14th at 5:30 p.m..
The winter solstice in the northern hemisphere marks the moment when the northern pole of the Earth’s axis is directed farthest from the sun. There is more darkness on this day than any other, but there is also the promise of new light.
As our region hunkers down into a new Stay-at-Home order, we invite you to cozy up with this Solstice Sip. Powered by the evergreen qualities of the conifers around you, whether from a neighborhood redwood tree or a douglas fir you’ve recently brought inside and covered in twinkle lights, this classic twist on an old fashioned will remind you of the light to come and the light that still flickers, even in these dark times.
**The example shown here features incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) harvested from a Christmas tree, but other options readily available in Santa Cruz are coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii). The fresher the growth of the sprigs, the richer the flavor. Make sure to properly identify your tree before harvesting because some coniferous may be toxic if ingested (i.e. ponderosa pine or pacific yew).
Ingredients
Evergreen Simple Syrup:
A few sprigs from a conifer** (about 1/2 cup)
1 cup of water
1 cup of sugar
The Solstice Sip cocktail:
1 1/2 oz Bourbon or Rye whiskey
1 tsp Evergreen Simple Syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Instructions
To make the Evergreen Simple Syrup:
Add water, sugar, and conifer sprigs to a small pot and heat over low for 15 minutes.
Remove from heat and let sit for another 15 minutes.
Strain out sprigs and store in a jar in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.
To make the Solstice Sip cocktail:
Combine simple syrup and bitters in a glass.
Fill glass halfway with ice, then stir about a dozen times.
By Graham Edwards and Gavin Piccione (aka the Geology Gents)
Santa Cruz is an ideal place to explore marine and coastal geology, with millions of years worth of geologic history exposed along its sea cliffs. One of the Gent’s favorite outcrops in Santa Cruz is along the cliff face on West Cliff Drive, at the end of Swift Street.
Getting to the outcrop
Park at the end of Swift Street and cross West Cliff Drive. Take one of the paths through the ice plant and walk down onto the coastal platform. Be careful, in some areas the path down to the outcrop can be steep.
To find the Swift outcrop on a map, the latitude and longitude are: 36˚56’58.72” N 122˚02’49.22” W
The Swift Street outcrop contains over 9 million years worth of geologic history of the coast of Santa Cruz. Familiar formations found at Swift Street include the Purisima sandstone and the Santa Cruz mudstone, along with younger beach deposits that make up the top layer of the outcrop (pictured right). Each of these layers are separated by sharp erosional contacts (geologists call these disconformities) that represent missing time and material in the rock record.
Ancient Methane seeps within the Santa Cruz mudstone
The bulbous, light-colored features found at and near the Swift Street outcrop are the geologic remnants of methane seeps, also known as “cold seeps” (pictured below).
Bulbous fossilized “cold seeps” at the Swift Street outcrop.
These formed while the Santa Cruz Mudstone was still mud in deep waters off the coast of California between 7-9 million years ago. The rock accumulated as sediments, including the bodies of perished sea critters, fell to the sea floor. As the bodies of phytoplankton and other marine microorganisms decayed in this mud, they released gases that slowly worked their way up to the surface. As these gasses followed cracks in the firmly packed sediment, they gradually widened these conduits and cemented the walls with carbonate minerals (the same thing limestone, chalk, and marble are made of), creating a sort of chimney to release these gases and fluids out of the seafloor.
Diagram of how the fluids and methane seeped their way from deep below the seafloor up through mudstones like the Santa Cruz mudstone. The original research on these fossilized methane seeps was done by UC Santa Cruz researchers and students! (Image source: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.151.216&rep=rep1&type=pdf)
Seeps like these that bring methane gas and fluids from deep below the seafloor can be found today out in the deep regions of Monterey Bay. In millions of years from now, these same chimneys may find themselves on a new coastal outcrop!
Seafloor methane seeps like the ones preserved at Swift Street occur in the Monterey Submarine Canyon today, providing nutrients for mini ecosystems on the seafloor, like these red-orange microbes that form mats around the seeps. (Image from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)
Layers of the Santa Cruz Mudstone
While the fossilized cold seeps tend to get a lot of the attention, the tough Santa Cruz Mudstone around them is itself a fascinating piece of rock. In this area, the Santa Cruz Mudstone hosts alternating layers of pale mud and blocky porcellanite (pictured right), a rock that gets its name from its close resemblance to unglazed porcelain. This rock is very similar to chert, a glassy rock formed at the seafloor from the accumulation of the glassy skeletons of diatoms. Porcellanite, like that found at the Swift Street outcrop, has a bit more clay and calcite (probably from critters that make chalky skeletons) giving it its more porcelain-like appearance.
The layers of porcellanites have a distinctively blocky texture. This results from the very brittle nature of the rock type. Just like pieces of porcelain, when these were squeezed and warped by tectonic pressure, rather than bending like the softer, more ductile mud layers, the porcellanite essentially shattered in response to those forces. Yet, even in its shattered state, the porcelanite rock is remarkably strong and durable. For this reason, Santa Cruz Mudstone with its rugged porcellanite layers makes up many of the flat bases of the sea cliffs around West Cliff as it stands up against the erosive force of the waves that more easily cuts into the sands and sandstones of the overlying cliffs.
The highest visible layer of the Santa Cruz Mudstone is a thick (almost 1 foot-thick) light-colored mud layer (pictured left), that has old clam burrows on its surface and is overlain by Purisima formation with large chunks of porcellanite from the mudstones below. This tells us that before the sands of the Purisima Formation were laid down atop the mudstone, it spent some time being eroded by waves. Those clam burrows are a testament to the time it spent as a rocky seafloor bottom over 6 million years ago.
The chunks of porcellanite just above the contact tell the story of the earliest history of the Purisima Formation as powerful waves broke down and churned up rocks that were incorporated into the first layers of the Purisima sands.
The Purisima Sandstone Formation
Above the Santa Cruz mudstone lies the Purisima sandstone, a rock formation known throughout Santa Cruz for its abundance of stark white fossils of ancient shells. Swift Street contains only a relatively small section of the Purisima Formation, but several areas within it exhibit amazing sedimentary textures. Up on the cliff, sections of the Purisima are a flat brown, with no visible fossils, and parallel “beds” or ancient sediment layers (pictured right). These areas represent long periods of constant sediment deposition, with no major storms or changes to the environment.
Elsewhere in the outcrop, shell-rich layers and features called “cross-beds” (pictured below) tell us that at other times between 7 and 2.6Ma, this area experienced large storms that created strong ocean currents. The jagged contact between the Purisima formation and the above Quaternary-aged sediments represents nearly two million years of lost time in the rock record.
Erosion and deposition of sands on top in the last 100,000 years
The base of the uppermost layer of the Swift Street outcrop is made up of an unconsolidated matrix of fine sand surrounding large, cobble-sized pieces of the underlying sedimentary rocks (pictured right), as well as abundant shell fragments. Because this layer is made up of fairly loose sediments, as opposed to rock, we know that it has not experienced long periods of burial required to turn sediment into rock (or lithification in geologist jargon.) For large cobbles to be ripped-up from the underlying layers and deposited here, requires high-energy wave systems like those found on the modern coast. Therefore, the transition from the underlying Purisima sandstone to these sediments likely represents a time where the Santa Cruz coast shifted from deep water to a coastal zone, likely as a result of sea level fall and tectonic uplift.
Rock Record is a monthly blog featuring musings on the mineral world from Gavin Piccione and Graham Edwards.
Graham Edwards and Gavin Piccione are PhD candidates in geochronology with the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. They also host our monthly Rockin’ Pop-Ups as “The Geology Gents”.
