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Bill Johnson, 1990
Bill Johnson received the award in 1990 for outstanding efforts to identify and protect archaeological sites located in the Coalinga District during his tenure as CAL FIRE Battalion Chief covering that Battalion from 1986-1990. This rural area west of Coalinga in the southern Diablo Range has proven to be extremely rich containing a wide variety of archaeological sites although prior to Bill's work very few of these were known.
His first encounter with the CAL FIRE Archaeology Program occurred in 1986 during implementation of a CAL FIRE controlled burn project located in Los Gatos Creek Canyon under the Department's VMP Program. Bill authorized construction of a firebreak (bulldozer line) on lands owned by rancher Jack James without knowing that he had placed that dozer line across a significant archaeological site located along the creek. Dan Foster came down from Sacramento to provide assistance. Soon a friendship and partnership was established based on a mutual desire to identify and protect archaeological sites in the Coalinga area. Bill, working with Dan Foster and Richard Jenkins, developed a plan to mitigate the damage caused by the bulldozed firebreak across the site. This was a week-long archaeological dig at the Corral Site which was attended by over 14 volunteers including several local landowners. This site dig, and the numerous archaeological surveys that followed it, converted Bill Johnson to become a full supporter of the Department's programs to protect archaeological sites.
Bill recruited the participation of an enthusiastic retired oil worker in town named Lou Deford and organized the Coalinga Archaeological Research Group (COALARG) - a group composed of local landowners, museum officials, agency archaeologists, and members of the public. Bill's group conducted numerous surveys of this rural backcountry and identified nearly 100 new archaeological sites. These included rock shelters, petroglyph boulders, village sites, chert quarries, and temporary camps. The sites were recorded and studied, artifacts from local collections were documented or given to the local museum, and basemaps were prepared to protect the sites during fire suppression efforts while fighting wildfires in this rugged part of California. The group was active for six years until Bill's transfer to the Shaver Lake Battalion and Lou Deford's death left the group without the local leadership necessary to continue.
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