Fort Ross

Greetings family, friends and neighbors. Russia had a permanent colony on the California coast less than 100 miles North of San Francisco as late as 1841. Now a  Historical State Park, today's snippet is about Fort Ross.....Bill

 THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING

THE RUSSANS ARE COMING

The 1966 Oscar nominated comedy film with the subtle Revolutionary War title takes place off the New England coast on fictional Gloucester Island where a Russian submarine has gone aground. Chaos breaks out among the townsfolk when a small landing party “invades” the village seeking to commandeer a motor launch and free their hapless sub.  Gossip, bedlam, and comedic situations increase until an armed stand-off at the islands harbor is calmed when the islanders and submariners work together to save a young boy. In the final scenes an armada of village watercraft shield the fleeing submariners from responding Air Force jets. Although set on the Eastern seaboard, the movie was actually filmed on the side streets of

Mendocino and at Fort Bragg’s busy Noyo Harbor. Personnel from Russia’s Alaskan colonies arrived in Alta California in 1803 in joint venture hunting expeditions for seals and sea otters for the Russian-American Company. Finding the coastline north of the extent of Spanish occupation uncolonized by European powers, a permanent settlement was established as an agricultural base to supply Russian colonies in Alaska. In 1821 a location with a modest anchorage, abundant natural resources, and near the seasonal home of the friendly indigenous Kashaya Pomo was selected for the location of Fortress Ross, the southernmost outpost in the Russian colonization of the North American continent. Fort Ross became a successful functioning multi-cultural settlement for thirty years and the site of California’s first windmills, shipbuilding, and introduction of glass windows, stoves, and wooden housing.

The near elimination of the sea otter population, secularization of the California Missions, Russian encroachment into Mexican territory, introduction of infectious diseases, unfavorable trade agreements and the sale of the Russian-American Company to John Sutter signaled the end of Fort Ross in 1841. The Russian’s weren’t coming in 1966, they had already been here for nearly 150 years!

-Bill 6/25