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Contact: John Dell'Osso, 415-464-5135
AmeriCorps and World PULSE teams this week provided considerable rehabilitation and general maintenance of the historic G Ranch Cemetery within Point Reyes National Seashore. These crews repaired fences, cleared away unwanted vegetation, cleaned gravestones, trimmed trees, and provided several fresh coats of paint to picket fences protecting the grave sites. The work teams were coordinated by the National Park Service and the US Coast Guard. The National Park Service infuses its operations with partnerships in all areas of management and at all levels of the organization to leverage and provide additional resources, to encourage diversity, to link with communities and educational institutions, and to facilitate a seamless network of parks and open spaces. AmeriCorps is a network of national service programs that engage more than 50,000 Americans each year in intensive service to meet critical needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment. AmeriCorps members serve through more than 2,100 nonprofits, public agencies, and faith-based organizations. They tutor and mentor youth, build affordable housing, teach computer skills, clean parks and streams, run after-school programs, and help communities respond to disasters. Created in 1993, AmeriCorps is part of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which also oversees Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America. Together these programs engage more than 2 million Americans of all ages and backgrounds in service each year. Through community service, cross-cultural exchange and educational travel, World PULSE (Program for Understanding, Leadership, Service and Exchange) strives to involve young people from diverse ethnic backgrounds and low-income communities in promoting respect and understanding between people of different cultures and communities. World PULSE aims to provide the opportunities, tools and leadership skills for these young people to shape their own futures and positively affect their local and global communities. Point Reyes National Seashore is host this year and young people from England, Korea, France and other countries will be here for nearly a month. This volunteer effort adds to the 1,200 volunteers at Point Reyes who contribute over 25,000 hours annually. The cemetery is located on a beautiful knoll overlooking Drakes Estero and contains the headstones and remains of Hinrk Claussen, his wife, and son and daughter-in-law in one fenced area. Hinrik Claussen, a Scandinavian immigrant dairyman, provided oversight for the historic Alphabet Ranches established in the late 1800s on the Point Reyes Peninsula. Mr. Claussen lived at the G Ranch, one of the first ranches to be completed in 1872. A separate fence enclosure under Coast Guard ownership contains the marked graves of four surfmen who died while on duty at the United States Life-Saving Station at the Point Reyes Beach in the early 1890s. The Life-Saving Station crews launched motor lifeboats into the heavy surf at the Point Reyes beach and conducted numerous rescues of stranded vessels on the treachous Point Reyes Headlands. A new Lifeboat Station was constructed in 1927 at a more protected location near Chimney Rock. The Station was rehabilitated by the National Park Service and now serves as an education facility for the visiting public. The Lifeboat Station has received National Landmark Status because it is the last remaining station with an operating railway system for launching vessels on the Pacific Ocean. The project is part of the National Park Service’s on-going program to preserve the cultural resources of Point Reyes National Seashore. To visit the gravesite, contact the Bear Valley Visitor Center at 415-464-5100 for directions. -NPS- |
Last updated: February 28, 2015