Spotting a sea turtle or Galapagos tortoise on the early wharfs and streets of San Francisco or Sacramento, California during the Gold Rush (1848-1855) would not have been a rare event. Massive population influx into the San Francisco Bay region during this time resulted in substantial impacts to native species and habitats of all taxa, but the demand for food resulted in many resources, turtles and tortoises included, being imported into the cities. Providing a fresh and delectable food source, these terrapin were brought to San Francisco and Sacramento to feed the hungry Gold Rush populous. Their taste, popularity and demand also resulted in small numbers being imported into gold mining towns in the San Joaquin Valley and foothills of the Sierra Nevada’s. Remarkable as this process was, the consumption and importation of both sea turtles and Galapagos tortoises during the Gold Rush pushed native populations of these species to the brink of extinction during the mid to late-nineteenth century. Declining numbers of terrapin and increased scientific curiosity, with a desire to safeguard these creatures for future generations, resulted in their eventually legal protection and conservation. In many ways the impacts of the decimation of terrapin in the eastern Pacific during the Gold Rush are still felt today, as conservation and breeding efforts continue in an attempt to return native turtle and tortoise populations to pre-Euro-American contact levels. This research describes the historical, and new archaeofaunal, evidence of the terrapin import market in San Francisco, Sacramento and beyond during the dynamic period of the California Gold Rush.

In 1959, Arthur Fletcher—a former professional football player and mid-level Kansas politician—moved to California. He was down on his luck, and things soon went from bad to worse. He made few inroads in Sacramento as the conservatives of his Republican party—including racist John Birchers—marginalized liberals and moderates. He suffered personal tragedy: his wife committed suicide, jumping off the Bay Bridge. Fletcher now found himself a single parent in a Berkeley housing project. As far as he had come from childhood poverty in segregated Junction City, Kansas, Fletcher was back to square one. But he had an incredible tenacity and drive—and more than a few political connections. He resolved to use politics to improve the lot of his fellow man, especially the black man. He took a job as a teacher in an inner-city special needs program, funded by the War on Poverty, and ran for state assembly. Fletcher did well in the race—for a Republican—but lost. He moved to Pasco, Washington, founding a black self-help group and winning a city council seat. This brought the attention of Richard Nixon, who in 1968 was looking for a civil rights program that jibed with the Republican Party’s corporatist ethos. President Nixon appointed Fletcher to the Labor Department, where he implemented the Revised Philadelphia Plan, earning himself the title "father of affirmative action." Fletcher’s experience was hardly typical of civil rights leaders. He preferred to work inside the system, with all the acceptance of it that that implied. But he knew what life was like in the ghetto, and resolved to put his insider’s skills to the task of undermining the very system he served. His years in California, which proved the most trying of his life, were formative, and are the subject of this paper.