Bolsa Chica up for historic designation

Danette Goulet

There is evidence that as early as 8,000 years ago there were people

living, fishing and burying their dead on Bolsa Chica.

On Friday the State Historic Preservation Commission will vote on

whether that history is enough to list the mesa as a state historic site.

It is a decision that members of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust have been

waiting on for a year, and one that was already made 18 years ago.

In 1983 the site was voted to be a historical site by the commission,

but that nomination never made it through the proper channels to be

recorded in Washington D.C., said Flossie Horgan, former president and

co-founder of the land trust.

Over the years the group has taken up the cause, once again in 1992,

then again in 1994.

“In 1994 human remains were found,” Horgan said. “It’s a burial site

-- we decided we were going to go forward again.”

Skull fragments and a tooth were found in 1999 during the grading of a

six-acre site on which Hearthside Homes planned to build homes.

Lucy Dunn, executive vice president of developer Hearthside Homes,

refused to comment Tuesday.

Last November efforts began again in earnest, lead by Patricia Martz,

a professor of anthropology at Cal. State L.A.

Martz studied the evidence of the village and burial site, which she

considers to be the most significant archeological site in coastal

Southern California.

Known as “ORA 83,” the site contains evidence of an 8,000-year-old

village site and burial ground on the Bolsa Chica Mesa. It is the last

remaining Early Holocene coastal village in Orange County and was the

site of the discovery of the largest number of “cogged” stones ever

found, Martz said.

These rare stone artifacts have been found at other sites but never in

the abundance that was found at Bolsa Chica.

“They are stones that have been shaped to look like cogs in a wheel or

stars,” Martz said.

The stones were created using what Martz called a pecking and grinding

technique, and have different numbers of grooves.

“This is the only place that this number of cogged stones have been

found,” she said. “They don’t show signs of wear, so we believe they were

used for rituals and had religious significance. After 7,000 years they

disappear, so it’s hard for us to know what they were used for.”

Martz believes that Bolsa Chica was a manufacturing site for these

religious stones, called star stones by Native Americans.

“My interpretation is that this was the central place for this

religion that stretched as far as the Mojave Desert where they were

trading these artifacts that had to do with a ritual,” she said.

“Although this group seems to have been the hub of this ritual, I think

it as important because we don’t really understand how people lived in

California 8,000, 9,000 years ago. And it looked like they had a

sophisticated religion that was not just local but recognized as far as

the Mojave Desert.”

Being listed as a historic site does not protect the land from

developer’s bulldozers, but land trust members hope it will add weight to

the case against building there.

“I wish I could say it would guarantee that the site would be

preserved, but that isn’t the way it works,” Martz said. “It will give it

the recognition it deserves as a historical site of importance. It just

really depends, it’s up to the local permit people.”

If the commission, which meets in San Simeon on Friday, votes to list

Bolsa Chica as a state historic site, it will then be taken to Washington

to be listed as a national historic site.