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Chuck Schoendienst, 2005

The 2005 Golden Trowel Award was given to RPF Chuck Schoendienst for his outstanding efforts to incorporate archaeological site protection into forestry projects in northern California. The presentation ceremony took place on Wednesday February 8, 2006 at the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection meeting in Sacramento. CAL FIRE Archaeologist Richard Jenkins delivered an excellent report highlighting Chuck's career and listing his superior accomplishments in archaeological site stewardship. The information provided in this article was gathered from the report Rich Jenkins delivered to the Board.

Chuck grew up in Torrance, California and was active in the Boy Scouts of America. Chuck's Scout Master instilled the love of the outdoors in him and when it was time to go to college Chuck decided to leave urban Southern California behind to attend Humboldt State University. Chuck graduated with a Bachelors degree in Forestry from Humboldt State in 1976 and soon landed a job with Hollow Tree Lumber Company in Mendocino County. He later moved to the nearby Philo Lumber Company, and later still, on to the Louisiana-Pacific Lumber Company. Chuck helped prepare timber harvesting plans on private property for all three companies, and later on, with L-P, worked in their then-new Tree Enterprise Program.

Chuck came to work as a CAL FIRE Forester in 1981. He was assigned the task of preparing controlled burn projects under the old Chaparral Management Program and performing Forest Practice inspections in the western half of Tehama-Glenn Unit. Chuck has attended four CAL FIRE archaeological site recognition training sessions including one of the very first classes ever given in 1982. In fact, Chuck helped sponsor that course by securing the use of a training room at the CAL FIRE office in Red Bluff. The focus of the training was to familiarize CAL FIRE Foresters with archaeological procedures for the Chaparral Management and California Forest Improvement Programs that both required the identification and protection of archaeological resources. There were 20 CAL FIRE Foresters that attended that class and Chuck was student who eagerly accepted new archaeological review responsibilities.

In May, 1983, Chuck invited Dan Foster to look at some of his new site discoveries found on controlled burn and reforestation projects. Though these inspections Schoendienst and Foster were able to confirm site boundaries and make minor project changes to ensure protection. One of the properties inspected on that day was the Baccala Ranch located on the Campbellville Grade in eastern Tehama County. Chuck, RPF Chris Trott, and Foster walked through the project area on this ranch and found over a dozen previously unrecorded sites. These include a developed spring constructed by the Baccala Brothers in 1949, the ruins of an old cabin dating to the 1920s, and an a few unmortared stone corral. A very large site named "The Orchard Site" was also recorded by this 1983 survey team. This open meadow area contained the remains of old fruit orchard associated with the original homesteaders, and bedrock mortars and chert artifacts left by the Yana Indians at least 500 years earlier. Remnants of a very early historic structure were also recorded at the Orchard Site.

The largest and most complex archaeological site discovered that day was one that Chuck named "The Bell Springs Site", later recorded as TEH-1310. This beautiful spot on the ranch occupies another natural forest opening surrounded by pines and oaks, with natural spring seeps creating lush grassy areas. The meadow also contains places where the soil is so shallow that the underlying lava is exposed. These locations contained many ancient prehistoric artifacts from a very early occupation by Native Americans. Another historic stone corral was found at the Bell Springs Site during this same survey. Chuck located several prehistoric stone tools at Bell Springs including a large chopper made from a basalt cobble and a bedrock milling station on a large boulder down near the spring seeps.

The bedrock mortar contains two shallow mortar cups, probably used by the Yana Indians for pulverizing acorns. The acorn meal was ground, purified through a leaching basin lined with pine needles, and cooked into an edible soup through stone boiling in a large watertight basket. This was one of the staple foods for most California Indian groups. On another day Chuck took Foster to one of his VMP projects where they met the landowner and discovered a large midden site near the rancher's house.

The early part of Chuck's CAL FIRE career also coincides with the early history of the CAL FIRE Archaeology Program and Chuck deserves special recognition for his efforts to help this new program succeed within CAL FIRE's 30 million acres of mostly privately-owned forest and range wildlands throughout the state. Chuck has excellent "people-skills" and has developed positive working relationships with many ranchers and other types of private landowners that sometimes harbor a certain level of anxiety about resource inventory and protection work that CAL FIRE must complete in its role as CEQA lead agency. In these early years, some of these landowners were afraid of having archaeologists survey their lands for sites but Chuck helped overcome these worries and on his projects we were almost always able to complete archaeological site identification and protection work supporting the project and carrying-out the landowner's objectives. Chuck is certainly one of CAL FIRE's Foresters that helped teach the CAL FIRE Archaeologists how to work cooperatively with apprehensive landowners which is directly linked to the success of this program. During one of his visits with a rancher in western Tehama County, for instance, Chuck noted a peculiar artifact sticking out of a stone bowl mortar sitting on the porch. Chuck asked permission to examine the unusual football-shaped artifact fashioned from white quartz and remembered seeing a similar item in the CAL FIRE archaeological training class 5 years earlier. He contacted Dan Foster with news of the discovery and arranged to borrow the object for illustration and photography. To date only four such items have been scientifically documented, all from northern California, and Chuck deserves the credit for the discovery of the specimen from western Tehama County. (See the Plantation Cache Charmstone article for more information on this unique artifact type.)

Chuck became more involved with wildfires during the course of his career. He became qualified in many ICS positions and oftentimes assumed the role of Rehabilitation Unit leader once a fire was contained and controlled. During those assignments he coordinated the removal of soil pushed in to streamside zones, the construction of water bars on steep fire control lines, the seeding and mulching of unstable soils where appropriate, and also looked for evidence of archaeological sites. After serving in this Rehab role for a number of years Chuck joined forces with other CAL FIRE Foresters and helped develop the Fire Suppression Repair course that CAL FIRE still uses today. He and cadre members Bill Morrison and Barney Ward never received any formal training but used their experiences to develop the much-needed course. During the formulation of the course Chuck insisted that archaeological site recognition and protection be required as part of the post-fire analysis and worked with the CAL FIRE Archaeology Program staff to develop existing procedures. This is just another example of Chuck thinking out-of-the-box.

Chuck's latest achievement came in late 2005 while performing the role of the Tehama Glenn Unit Environmental Coordinator. Chuck had been reviewing Tehama County Planning Department documents for proposed subdivisions and other construction projects and found that the county archaeological review process was generally weak if not altogether non-existent. Chuck talked to Planning Department officials about CEQA requirements for archaeology and to the Archaeological Information Center folks at Chico State University about the Planning Department. The result of Chuck's input was a meeting between the Information Center and Planning Department that led to a vast improvement of the counties' archaeological review process. The Planning Department now queries Chico State's archaeological database for routine projects and requires project applicants to provide archaeological survey reports for projects deemed sensitive by the University. This is just another example of how Chuck has improved archaeological resource identification and protection during the course of his career, and for those efforts, he is to be commended.