Bolsa Chica’s long history

One of the city’s most beloved and polarizing landmarks finally has a book of its own.

“Bolsa Chica: Its History from Prehistoric Times to the Present, and What Citizen Involvement and Perseverance Can Achieve,” was written by David Carlberg. It will debut at a library reception April 30.

“It is the definitive book on Bolsa Chica,” said Shirley Dettloff, Amigos de Bolsa Chica founding member, former Huntington Beach mayor and former state coastal commissioner. “Not only do we learn many historical facts, we see how a group of dedicated volunteers can truly make a difference.”

Carlberg is the president of the Amigos, which have fought for decades to preserve what is now one of the few remaining wetland ecosystems in the state, but worked to maintain objectivity when writing his book.

He and Dettloff see the site as a monument to the decades of work put in by countless individuals to save the wetlands, which have gone from Spanish cattle ranch to Gun Club to oil field to the site of the largest wetland restoration in the state.

“It just cries out for a book, because the history is so fascinating,” Carlberg said. “And it plays such an important role in our whole ecology here on the coast.”

Experts believe the area was first populated 8,000 years ago — before the Stone Age. About 4,000 years ago, Native American tribes milled gear-like cogstones on the site, and experts suggest that they sent the cogstones all over the area to other tribes. The stones’ purpose is unknown, but Carlsberg supports a theory that they were used ceremonially, possibly in an astronomical function.

One of the biggest surprises Carlsberg found while writing his book was that the name Bolsa Chica doesn’t mean “little pocket,” as originally postulated, but something closer to “little purse” or “little sack.”

During his research, Carlsberg also came upon 27 boxes of papers in a Claremont Colleges library about the turn-of-the-century Gun Club that stood on the land; after an entire day of researching, Carlsberg still hadn’t gotten through all of the materials.

After the heyday of the Gun Club, the Bolsa Chica mesa was used by the military, with two large guns installed that aimed toward the ocean.

After the war, plans began to install a massive housing development on the site, which developers thought would be a boon to the city.

“A lot of people didn’t understand the importance of wetlands,” Dettloff said. “They thought they were covering up a swamp.”

A retired Long Beach State microbiology professor, Carlberg became involved with the Amigos in 1977, after his wife Margaret told him about the nascent organization that was founded to prevent the construction of tens of thousands of homes on the site.

“It was step by step, and they were willing to take risks,” Dettloff said of the Amigos volunteers, who even went to Sacramento to voice their grievances. “The Amigos started when there was no Coastal Act, so the odds against us were tremendous.”

Decades later, only a few hundred newly constructed homes in the Brightwater development stand in the wetlands; most of the land was purchased and restored.

“It was truly David and Goliath,” Dettloff said.

Carlberg will sign his new book from 7 to 9 p.m. April 30 at the Central Library, 7111 Talbert Ave., in rooms C and D.

The book also will be available for $20 at amigosdebolsachica.org; for more information, call (714) 840-1575.

Reporter CANDICE BAKER can be reached at (714) 966-4631 or at candice.baker@latimes.com.