4000 BC – 1800 AD approx.

Here in the northern California foothills,  way back – way way back in the Jurassic period, long before the city of Lincoln was Lincoln, there was a mountain range here the size of the Andes. If you garden much you are already aware that just a couple feet under the surface of your grass is a layer of boulders and cobblestones – remnants of a time when this mountain range existed. Walk the trails and you’ll see rock formations the size of houses and cars all along the valley, and of course the smaller cobblestones. Ancient molten rock cooled and formed the granite basis for this mountain range. Millions of years of erosion and lifting, cracking and “rounding” the jagged corners of enormous hunks of granite resulted in the outcroppings of these fantastic boulders. Lincoln also has abundant clay as evidenced in the still thriving business downtown at Gladding McBean,  and the hills still have gold. They really do. We also have a salt marsh, born from ancient seas that covered the area. Our Kilaga Springs Lodge is located in the area of that salt marsh.

The idea of Lincoln was actually a result of plans in 1854 to lay railroad tracks from Sacramento to Folsom. Charles Wilson and W.T. Sherman – actually General Sherman of the Civil War – along with engineer Theodore Judah were on the team to make that happen. But the railroad plan was not successful in reaching its goal and so Charles Lincoln bought the land upon which Lincoln now stands for a paltry $600 and a town plan was laid out in 1859. The railroad arrived in 1861 with a post office to follow making Lincoln official. The climate, the scenery, the resources and the people all made Lincoln a desirable place to live, continuing to this very day. Lincoln is one of the fastest growing cities in America now, and our quality of life is spectacular, thank you very much.

I do not know who said it but it is worth repeating – “Bloom Where You Are Planted!” and then after you have bloomed, continue to thrive and become a perennial.