Overview: This story explores the entrepreneurial history of my great-great-grandfather in the ghost town of Boca at the turn of the 20th century, and traces this legacy to today’s ecological crisis. During a visit to Boca, along the Truckee River, I examine the hidden costs of an economic system divorced from nature’s regenerative cycles. By soundly acknowledging my family’s and settler society’s indebtedness to Native people and their occupied homelands, I add my voice to the growing movement to unravel and reweave the tattered fabric of this country — one thread, one family story, at a time.

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The  Truckee River flows northeast from Lake Tahoe through Washoe territory to its terminus in Pyramid Lake, homeland of the Paiute Tribe.  My dear friend Anna and I are on a writing retreat here in the alpine forest nourished by these waters. We met nearly 30 years ago campaigning against Clinton’s NAFTA for Africa trade bill and have been allies in fighting for social, economic and ecological justice ever since. I mention to Anna that my family has historical ties to a site nearby called Boca. Anna, an intrepid traveler, photographer and history buff who once wrangled me into a last minute trip to protest the World Trade Organization in Cancun, is eager to check out the old ghost town.

We travel down Interstate 80 alongside a constant stream of Walmart and Amazon trucks to the mouth of the Little Truckee where it joins the main Truckee River. The winters here on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains are extremely cold. On January 20, 1937, the temperature dropped to 45 degrees below zero, the coldest ever recorded in California. A reservoir created by a damming the Littler Truckee supplies water to farmers and residents of Reno, Nevada living in the arid rain shadow below.  

In the 1860’s, hundreds of men camped here while building the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. The final gold spike was ceremoniously hammered in by robber baron Leland Stanford on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, and the West opened for business.  Because of its cold winters and clear water, an ice company was established in Boca in 1868, followed by a timber mill, a brewery, a hotel, a post office and a cemetery.  

A week earlier, a friend on a summer roadtrip to Colorado sent me this disturbing story of the Pyramid Lake War of 1860, captured from a historical marker: 

“Conflict between the people of Pyramid Lake and white settlers came to a climax after two young Paiute girls were kidnapped and abused by white traders. A search party was sent from Pyramid Lake to rescue the girls. A fight broke out and four whites were killed. White communities in Western Nevada panicked, fearing the Indians were on the warpath. A militia of 110 men was formed under the command of Major Ormsby. They marched on Pyramid Lake to teach the Indians a lesson. Under War Chief Numaga, the Pyramid Lake people defeated the militia in the first Pyramid Lake war. Seventy whites were killed. Troops were summoned from California and in later battles, the Pyramid Lake people were outnumbered and forced to leave their home and fisheries to wander in the desert.” 

Another historical account notes that 160 Paiutes were also killed in the second wave of attacks. The towns of Boca and Truckee were established in the shadow of this violence and ethnic cleansing.

The ice is what led my great-great-grandfather — Frederik Alden Thomas, an enterprising commodity broker from Chicago — to engineer a key link in California’s agricultural supply chain that made it the gold standard for today’s globalized food system. He invented an insulated railcar that used large blocks of ice to keep produce chilled while being transported nearly two-thousand miles across the Great Desert to Chicago. None of the Californian farmers believed this feat was possible, so Frederik financed the first shipments out of his own pocket.  Eventually, his patented innovation unlocked faraway markets and unleashed the most extensive terraforming — land transformation — experiment in history, fundamentally reshaping the Central Valley and the American West.

In the blink of an eye, the vast tule marshes of the 450-mile long Central Valley that teemed with life were drained and carved up for large-scale industrial agriculture. Diverse tribal communities, herds of tule elk, deer, California grizzly bear and immense flocks of migratory birds that thrived in the Central Valley were quickly eviscerated as obstacles to progress.  Tulare Lake — the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi — completely disappeared after the rivers that fed it — the King, Kern, Kaweah, and Tule — were dammed and diverted for irrigation. 

Unlike smaller family farms that settled much of the east and mid-west, property rights in California were heavily influenced by Mexican land grants and the manipulation of U.S. government policy after the state was established in 1851. The rampant growth and scale of agriculture in the Central Valley depended then, as it does now, on imported water, byzantine water rights and oppressed labor. Initially Native people were forced to work the farms and ranches — in fact, according to UCLA Historian Benjamin Madley, author of The American Genocide, one in four Californian farms employed a Native child “rescued” (kidnapped) from their tribal family. 

I arrive at Boca — the Spanish word for mouth —  in the heat of a late summer afternoon with mixed emotions. My curiosity is clouded by the grief of knowing all too well the ecological and human cost of my great, great grandfather’s ingenuity. With record-breaking heatwaves, floods and wildfires burning across the globe, I am hauntingly aware that present and future generations are now paying for the ignorance, arrogance and greed baked into the mindset of EuroAmerican men like my ancestor.

I surveyed the landscape dominated by secondary growth conifers and let my awareness drop into deep time. I take solace in knowing the land here has been prayed over by the Washoe people since long before the first Europeans set foot on Turtle Island. Their enduring stewardship built up the natural wealth that newcomers, including three generations of my grandfathers, rapaciously leveled and liquidated into cash flows and capital stocks, amassing a bedrock of economic and political power in the process.  

I try to scrutinize my relative’s life story through the contextual lens of his day and age. Frederick was the product of a dominant white culture that depicted Native people as a savage, inferior race. The first governor of California, Peter Burnett, funded state militia to attack Native Californians and famously stated that a “war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.” By the 1890’s, the U.S. government aimed, in Captain Richard Henry Pratt’s words, to “kill the Indian, save the man” by forcing Native youth to attend boarding schools. 

 Reflecting on this legacy of genocide and the destruction of nature, I wondered: if the men of Frederik’s generation had known that the political-economy they built would one day eclipse a livable future for life on earth, would they have continued in the same vein? Perhaps more importantly, why do their descendants—why do we —continue barreling down the same path now? 

I picture Frederik on the train, pouring over budgets and bank ledgers, calculating costs and profits. His first wife died of dropsy (swelling related to organ failure) and he married the nurse that had tended to her. My great-grandmother whom we affectionally called Nana, was born from that marriage. Frederik dearly loved his daughter and set aside funding to ensure she could attend college after he passed. I was fortunate to meet Nana when I was a young girl. She was a librarian — our family genealogist who had proudly documented our ancestry as descendants of Mayflower pilgrims. To inspire a love for reading, she gave me a copy of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I am here, writing this now, thanks to this heritage. Through the window of hindsight, I have a vantage point to see what needs healing — both in the land, and in my family.

On the hillside above us are a few scattered pines that look like they are holding on for dear life. Seeds, roots and mycorrhizal fungi lie dormant in the parched soil, waiting for rain. The river provides a critical wildlife corridor for mule deer who overwinter at lower elevations and return to mountain meadows in the spring to give birth. I imagine Native Paiute and Washoe families camped here during the summer to fish and hunt for what they needed to survive the long winters.

It is fitting that the first person we meet is a long eared doe.  She watches us carefully, her large eyes asking: are we friend or foe?  For a brief moment,  tendrils of dry air rising from the grassy field where the doe is enjoying her evening meal hold us in timeless equipoise. We fill our mammalian lungs with oxygen enriched by the surrounding forest and return the gift of our breath to the shared space between us. 

Anna and I walk up a trail, studying peeling signs that narrate the story of Boca.  Like so many of the West’s frontier towns, it’s a story of boom and bust. Dusty shards of ceramics, pieces of colored glass, old bed springs and a small cemetery marked by a rusty gate were all that remained of the town.  

I pictured the workers that felled trees for timber and cut giant 250 lbs blocks of ice using mule-drawn saws.  The local brewery must have supplied the hard-working men that laid siege to the forests, rivers, and marshes with a steady stream of liquid courage. Ice was also used to cool the Comstock mines so men could claw out silver in hellish conditions. What kept these men coming back to the mills, mines, and construction sites?  Were they awash in ecological amnesia? Could they not see the forest disappearing before their eyes, or did the feverish groupthink blind them to the unsustainable nature of their toil? Or were they so desperate and hungry for their next meal, their next cold beer, to care? 

Anna and I make our way down to the Little Truckee River passing through tall bunches of deer grass and bushy thickets of willow.  To our surprise, we discover the crumbling walls of an old powerhouse had become a canvas for graffiti artists. Their colorful artwork — including a “Power to the People” slogan — is so vibrant, even Banksy would be impressed.  A large lodgepole pine is slowly engulfing what’s left of the building as its cobblestones gradually make their way back to the river’s edge.  

Recently, my email inbox has been flooded with news about the Central Valley’s dire groundwater crisis. Over-pumping for intensive agricultural production has destroyed up to 15% of its aquifer. The veins of the Central Valley have literally been crushed to feed the profits of agribusiness empires like the Wonderful Company (formerly Paramount Farms), owned by billionaires Stuart and Linda Resnick. The layers of ecological debt keep piling up. (See https://www.kqed.org/science/2001540/california-scientists-find-early-warning-sign-of-irreversible-groundwater-damage).

Five generations of my family — myself included — have benefitted from the rampant and reckless exploitation of nature that began with the genocide of Native people and the destruction of their sustainable, biodiversity enhancing food systems, and has now permanently impoverished the environment we all depend on.  How do I “honor my ancestors” when this is our story? Fredrik’s California Fruit Transport Company was short-lived when electric powered refrigeration was invented, but the real cost — the balloon payment on mortgaging the Earth — is now due. 

We walk out to the edge of the land where the Southern Pacific railroad still crosses the terrain. I’m looking down to watch my step on the uneven path. Above our heads, a larger raptor flies off towards the Truckee River.  I realize the tall post in front of me is a man-made platform topped by a large woody nest. Two young Osprey are squawking and stretching their wings. These resilient birds — descendants of dinosaurs — are waiting for their parents to return with a fishy snack.  Perhaps us newcomers will now heed the call to align with Mother Nature’s rhythms, repair the harm, and free ourselves from the man-made cycle of boom, bust and dust.

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