Redwood story

What started this story.

It came about when I asked a local driller if he had ever drilled into a redwood log.  His answer was yes, near Visalia he found a log at a depth of 230 ft.. Also his father, some 20 years previously had drilled into a redwood log within a mile of the same site. This perked may interest so I began calling drillers around Bakersfield. They had similar experiences. One driller suggested that I call Tom Haslebacher  who is with

The  Department of Water Resources of Kern County. He said he was very interested in our project.  He then gave me the name of Rob Negrini, Professor of Geophysics,CSUBakersfield.   I had enlisted the help of Doug Smith a friend with a home in Camp Nelson. He is a molecular and computational biologist  He is a Professor of Biology Emeritus from UC San Diego.

Doug and I now traveled to Bakersfield to visit  Rob Negrini.  By this time I had stories from as many as 20 drillers. I also had pieces of redwood  from four different wells that we were to have carbon-dated. Carbon dating is limited to dates of up to approximately 50 thousand years, and the time region of 50,000 to about 100,000 is difficult to determine. Carbon dating is also expensive . Dating using decay of potassium-40 to argon-40 is often used for ages greater than about 100,000years.

From Rob Negrini we learned about the Corcoran Clay. This was the sediment that was deposited in an ancient fresh water lake  from Bakersfield to north of Sacramento. This lake existed some 700,000 years ago. There is other sediment evidence, for example, ash created from known volcanic activity such as the Yellowstone ash found in the Corcoran Clay, also ash from the Mammoth Caldera  and  Mt Lasson  caldera.  This lake is now known as Lake Clyde or Lake Corcoran..

 I will now leave more of this story for later. 

Sonny Rouch

 
 
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