Greetings family, friends, and neighbors. Most everyone is familiar with "Old Faithful", Yellowstone's storied geyser, however few people are aware of the extensive geothermal activity near Geyserville , California. Today's historical snippet digs into "The Geysers"......Bill
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THE GEYSERS
The world’s largest energy producing geothermal field isn’t in Yellowstone, Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, New Zealand, or Iceland, but in Northern California, just seventy miles north of San Francisco. Super heated steam emitted from the Big Sulpher Creek canyon near the village of Geyserville is caused by magma near the surface and spanning forty five square miles below Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino counties. Dubbed “The Geysers” by area pioneers, the dry steam vents, boiling mud pots, and bubbling hot springs are technically fumaroles.
The indigenous people who occupied the region recognized the value of the naturally occurring steam and hot springs for cooking, healing and spiritual practices. John Fremont’s 1847 survey expedition were the first European Americans to set sight on the wonders of the region. Within a few short years Archibald Godwin’s newly established Geysers Resort Hotel was attracting upper crust clientele including the likes of Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant and Mark Twain, to sample the resort’s popular natural soothing and restorative features.
In 1921 the owner of the Geysers Resort installed a small steam turbine to light the hotel, however the first modern geothermal well wasn’t drilled until the mid 1950’s, jumpstarting the rush to exploit the naturally occurring power source. At the peak in 1987 “The Geysers” was home to twenty one plants generating enough electricity to power the needs of Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino as well as a portion of Marin and Napa counties. To extend the life of the Geyser field, Plant operators began injecting waste water, piped from Lake County and the City of Santa Rosa, into the wells in the 1990’s. Calpine Corporation currently operates thirteen out of the eighteen active private geothermal plants, US Renewables Group, Northern California Power Agency, and Silicon Valley Power the balance.
Once the sacred home of the indigenous people and briefly a resort spa for the wealthy and famous, the fumaroles of Big Sulpher Creek Canyon are now a sustainable geothermal non- wind, solar or hydroelectric power source.
-Bill 9/25
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