Crossing the tracks

As you walk toward Aquatic Park, you are traversing a space of motion and commotion with a deep history. Highways, salmon runs, bus lines, game trails, and train tracks all criss-cross here. This place has been important for travel and trade for thousands of years. When this paved-over land was ruled over by herons and horse muscles, tule boats skated the shores. By boat, these people harvested fish and plentiful shellfish, with long-established trade routes that spanned across western America. That history of commerce and exchange can be found in the burials of these shellmounds, with obsidian sourced from as far aways as the Modoc Plateau in the northeast corner of the state, and from the dentalium shells that were trafficked from Baja to British Columbia.