Twenty-Three Views of the Geysers Geothermal Field, What Was Said

Abstract

This history of The Geysers Geothermal Field focuses on the rich variety of activities in the field, how each influenced the rest, and how many occurred simultaneously over long periods. First, of course, the field was an untouched natural area. About 10,000 years ago, Indians arrived and made it their home, bathing and healing in the areas they held sacred, those with hot springs and fumaroles. In the 1850s, settlers entering California began organizing and promoting tourism at The Geysers, to the point that by the mid-1880s European royalty couldnít resist the long, dusty trip to savor its charms. In the 1920s, the first geothermal electrical generation project in the Americas began at The Geysers, and in 1955 the first modern geothermal well in the Americas was drilled there, beginning the modern era of electrical power generation. The variety of human activity at The Geysers and the views of the participants (depicted in bold type) perhaps reflect the same variety of human activity found around Mt. Fuji by the Japanese artist Hokusai, who depicts this in his collection of woodblock prints, One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji.