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Keith Meldahl wasn’t looking for gold when he recently followed the California Trail. He was looking for the past and he found it. |
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What they found when they crossed the continent
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
The truth of the past is always written in stone, and geologist-writer Keith Meldahl knows just how to read it. He has retraced the covered wagon journey taken by those hopeful people in the mid-1800s seeking gold in the distant west, and through his eyes and their journals has written a compelling story.
Meldahl, a Truro native, will return to the Cape to give a slideshow and talk based on his book, “Hard Road West — History and Geology along the Gold Rush Trail,” in Truro and Wellfleet this week.
He says the discovery of gold in California in 1849 resulted in “the largest overland migration America has ever known.” In his book, he recounts how the settlers, each thinking they would strike it rich, put their possessions and families into covered wagons and followed the 2000-mile California Trail. What they found along the way was much more hardship than they had ever imagined. They had to cross deserts and faced the awe-inspiring but physically daunting passage through the craggy Rocky Mountains.
When asked how his life went from growing up in Truro, fishing the local waters and working summers at Sal’s Place, to teaching geology and oceanography outside of San Diego, Meldahl laughs.
“I always liked the outdoors,” he says. “I never intended to go into geology, I come from a humanities-type family. I majored in history in college but then discovered geology, which is history written on a very broad canvas.”
It seemed a natural, a field that let him be outside and one that let him think about history in a different way.
“You figure out the past based on the evidence you have today,” he says. “It’s all rooted in the things you can see.”
He says he was always drawn to American history, and when that coupled with his love of geology he found himself very interested in the difficult passage over the California Trail. He had been reading about the explorations of Lewis and Clark and an idea formed in his head. He had a sabbatical coming up and decided to follow in the footsteps of the gold rushers.
He suggested to the college where he taught that he could use his experience to set up a detailed website for his students, a virtual trip that each of them could take, but the project grew and took on a life of its own. It finally morphed from a website to a book.
“It was like a 2000-mile-long camping trip,” he says, looking back to his research. “I just followed the old wagon ruts which are very easy to see in some locations. And I had a lot of the emigrant diaries with me.”
Using historical maps, he looked out at the old American West. He stood in the same spots and looked at the same mountains, the same perilous passages, and read the words left behind in diaries by those people who stood in the same spots 150 years ago.
And putting on his science hat, he looked at the geology of the land the trail traverses. From the two viewpoints he wove a story of the great American gold rush and of the history of the land.
The book has been well-received, enough so that he has a contract for a second book. For this one, tentatively titled “Frontier — the Geological Story of the West,” he will take another long field trip. This time he will start at the Golden Gate Bridge and go back up into the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
When he gives his slide talks on the Cape this week he will bring images from along the California Trail and will read from his book and from the original emigrant diaries.
Seeing the world through the pace of the past has given Meldahl a look back at a slice of American history in much the same way that his geological training lets him see the evolution of the earth’s history — very slowly.
“The world is a different place experienced in a car going 70 mph on the interstate compared to covering 15 miles a day with a horse-drawn wagon,” he says.
What: Slideshow-talk by Keith Meldahl
Where: Truro Public Library, Library Lane off Route 6 in North Truro
When: 2 pm Thurs., May 1
Where: Wellfleet Public Library, 55 West Main St., Wellfleet
When: 4 pm Sun., May 4
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May 1st, 2008