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Mather Field supply staff during World War II (courtesy of June Barmby Sandbakken). 05112_gsl_128pg_r8_v8.qxd:Stories of the Land 5/20/09 4:02 PM Page 115
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The second half of the 20th century has brought more change to the Brighton area. The prime agricultural lands cultivated by the Routiers, Manloves, and other pioneer farmers bordering Folsom, Keifer, and Old Placerville Roads, started being developed into mixed use and residential neighborhoods in the 1950s. Brighton Township then was either home to or close to three large employers — Mather Air Force Base, the Army Signal Depot, and GenCorp/Aerojet-General Corporation, a private jet and rocket propulsion design, testing and manufacturing company. Affordable housing
was needed. Companies like Sierra Builders and Rosemont Development began purchasing land and building. Development had arrived. The opportunity this time would be in real estate, building, and selling homes.
oday well over 100,000 people live in the area bounded by the American River As the aggregate plays out, the question becomes: What next? What will the next era bring and Jackson Road to north and south, and Watt and White Rock Road to the west for this ever-changing landscape? and east. The strawberries, grapes and truck farms that dominated the northern half of Brighton Township 100 years ago have been replaced by mixed-use Back in 1967 Henry Teichert predicted that a new kind of community would eventually residential and business areas. Mather Air Force Base is now Mather Field, a need to be built to satisfy housing needs in the Sacramento area. Henry believed that major civilian cargo airport with a growing business and residential community. communities and neighborhoods would need to be planned which make more efficient use Just north of Mather is a business community with over 45,000 employees. Stores and of the land. Perhaps, Henry’s prescient thoughts spoke to the modern pressures to build offices line most of Folsom Boulevard with residential neighborhoods extending to the more densely. He spoke of the possiblilities of the company eventually becoming involved north and south. And south of Brighton Township, single-family housing developments in land development or redevelopment and “habitat”. Interestingly, his use of the word sprinkled with ranchette neighborhoods dominate the landscape from Gerber Road to “habitat” referred less to wildlife habitat and more to new forms of building and Elk Grove. There are still some farms here and there in between. Industry lines the major construction that were presented at the Expo ’67 in Quebec, Canada. Habitat 67 was a roads. The aggregate lands, predominantly Teichert’s approximate 3,800 acres on about six housing complex designed by architect Moshe Safdie representing an early step toward sections of land, lie somewhere close to the middle of the remaining undeveloped portion what we refer to today as “Green Building”. of old Brighton Township. 05112_gsl_128pg_r8_v8.qxd:Stories of the Land 5/20/09 4:02 PM Page 116
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The 1963 aerial view at left shows Del Paso Rock Products adjacent to the American River and Watt Avenue Bridge. The same area is shown below in 2005 with Teichert Corporate Headquarters located to the right of Watt Avenue and north of the American River Bike Trail and levee (courtesy of Teichert).
Teichert Corporate Headquarters building (2005). 05112_gsl_128pg_r8_v8.qxd:Stories of the Land 5/20/09 4:02 PM Page 117
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Some forty years later Teichert is still interested in exploring the possibilities of improving The agreement between school district and private business also fit with Teichert’s desire the places we live by investigating ways to create more efficient, attractive, mixed use and to give back to the community, particularly to children. The project offers much more mixed density neighborhoods. Taking successful design features from the past and melding than simply a school and housing. The retention basin, built to serve the needs of both them with contemporary green building techniques. Introducing areas of native and natural the school and the residential community, will hold a 500-year storm event for 10 days, habitat. Exploring and understanding the history of the land. Honoring that history by but it serves an educational purpose as well. incorporating features into current design. Researching and experimenting with cost-effective methods for reclaiming and rehabilitating former aggregate lands. Teichert’s restoration employees began working with Rosemont High School students to create a habitat plan for the basin. The goal was to turn it into an interpretive study area The question put simply by Fred Teichert — how do you take a business that is hugely for students. The first group of students who became involved learned about mining, slope invasive and make it part of the community — is not new to the company. One of the erosion, reclamation, and steps taken toward restoration. They planted native grasses and answers has been to transform the land once the resources it holds have been realized. native shrubs such as redbud and coffeeberry. When Del Paso Rock Products was depleted it became the site of Teichert Corporate headquarters and other businesses along American River Drive. What was once a gravel The Sacramento Tree Foundation worked with the California Conservation Corps, adding pit is now a lush, shaded business community adjacent to the American River Parkway 200 native oak trees to the mix. Students learned about newer technologies for mapping and and high-end residential neighborhoods. monitoring plantings including the use of Global Positioning Systems (GPS). Wildlife was considered as well, with nesting boxes for birds installed. By late spring of 2006, the native Recently the Company worked with Sacramento City Unified School District to develop grasses were thigh high with new growth showing on the majority of shrubs and trees. Rosemont High School. The school district purchased the portion of the Teichert aggregate land that was at grade for its classrooms, and Teichert donated the below-grade reclaimed aggregate land for the school’s athletic facilities with an adjacent water retention basin for drainage. The old aggregate pit’s existing slope was a natural fit for the football stadium’s seating. In addition, Teichert masterplanned, entitled and then sold property adjacent to the school for a new neighborhood community. 05112_gsl_128pg_r8_v8.qxd:Stories of the Land 5/20/09 4:02 PM Page 118
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Students learn to use a Global Positioning System (GPS) (left) to map their recent plantings (right) as part of the habitat restoration project.
The company has also successfully rehabilitated riparian areas at other Teichert sites, consider which actions will protect and develop natural resources for current and future including properties along Cache Creek in Woodland. Here, the company donated relaimed generations. But beyond making open spaces, there are many other elements involved in land for the formation of what is now called the Jan T. Lowrey Cache Creek Nature Preserve. creating a sustainable community. Ecologically friendly or green-building methods are The preserve highlights a variety of habitat types along Cache Creek and serves over 3,000 required, and there are economic considerations such as the efficient use of necessary school children a year. The preserve is managed by the Cache Creek Conservancy, a non- resources, including clean air and water, waste disposal, flood protection, renewable energy profit conservancy composed of property owners, agriculturalists, aggregate producers, sources, public transportation and roads to jobs, affordable land and housing, emergency and environmentalists. services, schools, and health care. A well-thought-out and designed community offering mixed-density housing and mixed land uses along with access to public transportation, The knowledge gained through all of these restoration successes can be applied to efforts can meet these requirements. Take what has worked well for communities in the past and to restore portions of Morrison and Elder Creeks running through Brighton Township, as incorporate it into the design. Add vegetation, trees, and swales to provide ecosystem services well as other areas, to provide neighborhood access to natural, open spaces. such as stormwater runoff retention, energy use reduction, and carbon storage. Mix in new green-building technologies that make the structures themselves more efficient and It’s a logical step to move from creating a functioning ecosystem for plants and animals to environmentally friendly. Top it off with easy access to mass transit and places of employment. creating functional neighborhoods for people. Communities that seek long-term success 05112_gsl_128pg_r8_v8.qxd:Stories of the Land 5/20/09 4:02 PM Page 120
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Neighborhood of 105 homes conceived and developed by StoneBridge Properties, a subsidiary of Teichert Land Company, and built by THE NEW COMMUNITIES OF BRIGHTON TOWNSHIP Meritage Homes in 2005. 05112_gsl_128pg_r8_v8.qxd:Stories of the Land 5/20/09 4:02 PM Page 121
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Creating such neighborhoods from Brighton Township’s Seeking better lives like so many of America’s immigrants, former aggregate lands fits with the pioneering history of they transformed Brighton into the Strawberry Capital of the community at large. From the first Nisenan the World through years of hard work and dedication. inhabitants to the gold seekers to farmers and ranchers And, ultimately, the very soil of the township became the — all worked to figure out new and better ways to live. stuff of cities, supplying the sand, gravel, and concrete to The Nisenan discovered that burning the tules and the build airports, bridges, highways, roads, and buildings. grasses beneath oaks produced better “crops” in subsequent years. They tended the land and understood Each era, each generation has left its mark on this land. In their role within the ecosystem. John Sutter harbored a jazz music there is a term called “riffing.” It means taking The Rosemont High School football stadium is on restored mining lands. dream of creating an agricultural empire in the west and a musical or written phrase and changing it, transforming might have succeeded if gold hadn’t been discovered. As it it, adding your own interpretation, and making it your was, his settlement established Sacramento and nearly half of Brighton Township. The own. Something similar has occurred with the generations living and working on Brighton other half belonged to William Leidesdorff, the pioneer of African descent who came to lands — each, in a different manner, has taken the land and transformed it, reshaped it. San Francisco and, subsequently, Brighton. Both men were the first to run herds of cattle Here and there resonances from earlier days remain, a grove of oaks east of Mather, a long- and raise agricultural crops on their properties. The Gold Rush brought the need for food abandoned orchard, the White House at Walsh Station, tules along a portion of Morrison and supplies for the thousands heading to the goldfields and Brighton became home to the Creek, mining equipment in old aggregate pits, rows of trees once planted to shade first farmers and ranchers. Manlove, Perkins, Mayhew, Routier — the roads we pass by carriages driving along Hedge Avenue, and a few farms where crops are still harvested. without thought to their origins — honor a few of those who pioneered agriculture in the Perhaps the next riff will bring Henry Teichert’s 40-year-old prediction to fruition. Brighton region, developing new fruit cultivars and planting practices that helped California begin Township, once home to saber-toothed tigers, mastodons, an ancient culture and pioneers, feeding the nation and the world. Theodore Judah engineered the first railroad in the State’s could be transformed again, this time becoming a model community demonstrating the history through Brighton Township where the Light Rail runs today. Local shippers invented feasibility of sustainable development. A continuum, taking something from the past, refrigerated rail cars and a Brighton plum picked one day would be purchased in a London adding the present, and moving into the future. market 12 days later. Japanese families added more to Brighton’s agricultural history. 05112_gsl_128pg_r8_v8.qxd:Stories of the Land 5/20/09 4:02 PM Page 122
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Special Collections Resources Sacramento Archives and Museum Collection Center The Bancroft Library 51 Sequoia Pacific Blvd. University of California Sacramento, CA 95814 Berkeley, CA 94720-6000 Phone: 916-264-7072 Phone: 510-642-3781 Fax: 916-264-7582 Fax: 510-642-7589 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] (reference) http://www.sacramenities.com/history/ http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info/ Sacramento Public Library California State Library Sacramento Room California History Room Central Library 900 “N” Street, Room 200 828 “I” Street Sacramento, CA 95814 Sacramento CA 95814 Phone: 916-654-0176 Phone: 916-264-2770 Fax: 916-654-8777 Fax: 916-264-2884 E-mail: [email protected] http://www.cityofsacramento.org/webtech/150/library/ http://www.library.ca.gov/