California fur rush
[1] Before 1825, these Europeans were drawn to the northern and central California coast to harvest prodigious quantities of southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis) and fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus), and then to the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta to harvest beaver (Castor canadensis), river otter (Lontra canadensis), marten, fisher, mink, Gray fox furs (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), weasel, and harbor seal.
[3] Just three years after Juan de Ayala sailed the first ship to pass through the Golden Gate in 1775, North America's Pacific Coast fur trade began, but not by the Spanish who had sailed the California coast since João Rodrigues Cabrilho's voyage in 1542 and Sebastián Vizcaíno's mapping of coastal California in 1602.
"[5] Apparently the Spanish had not earlier appreciated the value of furs, being from warmer climes, despite sea otter described in 1776 off Fort Point (then Cantil Blanco) in San Francisco Bay by Father Pedro Font on the De Anza Expedition.
[10] The Russian-American Company's Ivan Kuskov sailed into Bodega Bay in 1809 on the Kad'yak and returned to Novoarkhangelsk (Sitka) with beaver skins and over 2,000 sea otter pelts.
[11] They settled Fort Ross and vicinity in order to pursue the animals in the region and to provide food for their Alaskan settlements.
[12] In his 1896 history of the Russian settlement of California, Thompson wrote of Kuskov's first voyage to Bodega Bay in 1809: "After carefully exploring the surrounding country, some temporary buildings were erected, some otter and beaver skins were procured, and friendly relations were established with the Indians".
[11] Before establishing a southern colony at Fort Ross, the Russian-American Company contracted with American ships beginning in 1810, providing them with Aleuts and baidarkas (kayaks) to hunt otter on the coast of Spanish California.
[14] By 1817, sea otters in the area were practically eliminated and the Russians sought permission from the Spanish and the Mexican governments to hunt further and further south of San Francisco.
[21] After sailing up and down the California coast, Richard Henry Dana recorded on May 8, 1836 at his last stop in San Diego how the trade in cattle hides had overtaken the fur trade: "Our forty thousand [cattle] hides and thirty thousand horns, besides several barrels of otter and beaver skins, were all stowed below, and the hatches calked down.
"[22] As the marine fur-bearers became too depleted to hunt and contracts with the Hudson's Bay Company provided food for the Alaskan settlements, the Russians abandoned Fort Ross in 1841.
[26] A colony of translocated sea otters near San Nicholas Island is showing population growth after ten years of low numbers.
[29] Both the California golden beaver and southern sea otter are considered keystone species, with a stabilizing and broad impact on their local ecosystems.
