FORT ROSS

On October 7, 2002, we visited the Fort Ross Historic Park, site of a colony established by the Russians in the early 1800's. The fort is located on the Sonoma County Coast of Northern California, between Jenner and Salt Point along Highway 1. It's 97.5 miles north of San Francisco but allow about 3 hours for the drive due to the traffic in San Francisco and the winding road, as it gets closer to Fort Ross. It's 25 miles north of Bodega Bay, and about 70 miles south of Fort Bragg.

In the early 1700's a Russian expedition left Siberia and sailed eastward, hoping to discover a northern passage to Europe. Instead they followed the Aleutian Islands to Alaska, where they found a great abundance of seals and sea otters. During the remaining years of the 18th century, the Russians established a series of settlements to support the hunters who came to take the valuable furs. Over the years, the Russian explorers followed the coastline south as far as northern California, where they found additional colonies of seals and otters. Fort Ross was built to give them a permanent base of operations. In this photo you can see the tall wooden fence that surrounds the fort, the Russian Orthodox chapel, and the hills beyond.

Here's another view looking down into the fort from a guard tower known as the "blockhouse."The bigger building to the right is the Director's house.

The camp at Fort Ross housed between 50 and 100 Russian soldiers, administrators and seal hunters. They enlisted the help of the local native american tribe, the Miwok Indians, to construct the fort and to help grow vegetables. The climate in this area is pleasant (especially compared to Siberia and Alaska!), but the Russians had no interest in expanding the settlement beyond the operation to harvest the marine mammals.

The string of California missions founded by the Mexicans in the 1770's reached their northernmost point at Sonoma, a site that lies about 50 miles southeast of the Russian settlement. The Sonoma mission was forbidden to have contact with Russians, and travel between the two settlements was difficult. But each colony needed what the other offered to sell. The Russians wanted wheat, which was easy to grow in the Sonoma area. And the Mexicans wanted the iron goods (nails, hammers, axeheads, wheel bearings for wagons and so on) that the Russians brought by ship from Siberia. So there was regular, if unofficial, trade between the two groups.

By the 1840's the seals and otters had almost all been killed, and the Russian colony had became unprofitable. The Russians tried to sell their fort to the Mexicans, and to the English Hudson's Bay trading company, which had operations on the Pacific coast north of California. Finally the Russians found a buyer in the person of American John Sutter, who was trying to start a new colony some 120 miles south and east, near present-day Sacramento. After the purchase, Sutter stripped everything of value from the fort and moved it to his colony. Fort Ross was abandoned and fell into ruins.

A few years later, Sutter decided to build a new sawmill to provide his growing colony with construction materials. In January, 1848, Sutter's foreman, James Marshall, discovered gold in the stream at the sawmill. This discovery put California in the minds of fortune-seekers from around the world, and changed the history of America.

The Blockhouse

The blockhouse was vital to the defense of the early frontier forts. There are two towers, each having 8 sides with cannons defending all sides in this fort.

From the blockhouse, an attacker could be put under a deadly barrage. In the event that the stockade wall was broken, the defenders could retreat here for a last ditch fight.They established themselves in such strength that the meager Spanish forces to the south realized they were unable to expel the Russians.

The Russians brought in 41 cannons of various sizes and origins. This made the fort appear very strong and even unconquerable to the eyes of the local Spaniards and Native Americans in the area.

The Chapel This chapel was part of the settlement founded by the Russians in 1812. The first photo on the left was taken through a closed window from another building. Notice how the window pane gave the chapel a distorted effect. Mouse over the left photo to reveal another image.

This building stored supplies like butter, blankets, lanterns, candles, tobacco, boots, otter fur, ropes, nails, tools like saws, hammers, etc. as shown in the photos below. Some of the rooms were used as bedrooms for the soldiers.   Mouse over this photo to reveal another image

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millstone

Fort Ross is a few miles north of the point where a large river enters the ocean. It seems likely that the Russians, who had sturdy boats for use in seal hunting, would have traveled up this river to trade with the Mexican colony at Sonoma. The river is navigable for many miles, and it would have been much easier to transport bulk cargo like wheat by boat than over the mountains by horseback. We still call this river today the Russian River.

Before heading home, we stopped to enjoy the sunset along the Sonoma Coastline. Shown here are silhouettes of sea stacks against the setting sun and homes along the coastline. We headed home via Bodega Bay and enjoyed a seafood dinner at "The Tides," after a long day.

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