In the summer of 1931, the year that the Pioneer Monument was dedicated near the mouth of Plateau Canyon, another event occurred there that was equally worthy of public notice.
The highway along the Colorado River was extended east from Plateau Canyon all the way to De Beque. Prior to that, motorists had to follow the Plateau Canyon road upstream to the De Beque Cutoff, then follow that northeastward to De Beque.
The new section of what was then called Colorado River Highway shaved eight miles off the journey between Plateau Canyon and De Beque and added a new, scenic section of roadway.
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In a published opinion filed on February 1, 2021, in an action arising from plaintiffs/appellants’ (“plaintiffs”) “potpourri” of unsuccessful legal challenges to the City of San Francisco’s decision to remove a controversial public monument celebrating California’s pioneer era, the First District Court of Appeal upheld dismissal of a CEQA claim for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.
Schmid v. City and County of San Francisco (2021) 60 Cal.App.5th 470.
The project at issue was the San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission’s (HPC) granting, at the request of the City’s Arts Commission, of a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) to remove and store the 1894 “Early Days” bronze statute – part of the “Pioneer Monument” in the City’s Civic Center area – due to complaints that it exhibited racial insensitivity. Because the Pioneer Monument is located in a landmarked historic dis
Sam Whiting April 5, 2021Updated: April 5, 2021, 1:16 pm
Oakland artist Katie Dorame stands next to one of her six posters depicting monuments of Indigenous Californians that are displayed in Muni shelters along Market Street. Photo: Amy Osborne, Special to The Chronicle
The Ohlone people, who have lived in San Francisco for thousands of years, never got a single monument as a token of gratitude from the settlers who took their land.
So Katie Dorame has given them six. They are not statues
yet but the posters depict what Dorame would like to see along Market Street, where other statues have lived.
“I made these future, imagined monuments to honor Native Californians and their contributions to everything around us,” says Dorame, 36, a North Oakland visual artist and member of the Gabrielino-Tongva tribe.
San Francisco’s ridiculous renaming spree
This debacle is just the latest example of “progressive” cultural censorship in a city once renowned as a bastion of free speech. Our purgative program began in 2018, when an 1894 statue titled Early Days was removed from a cluster of statues near city hall called the Pioneer Monument, at the behest of the city’s Indigenous activists. The piece, or at least most of it, was undeniably retrograde: It showed a Spanish priest looming above a cowering, seated Native American, with a debonair vaquero striking a proud pose nearby. The city’s art establishment remained silent as the statue was hauled away: The bloody 2017 riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee made it anathema on the left to question the destruction of monuments deemed objectionable by groups deemed to have standing. But the fact that Early Days was taken down without much opposition meant that the beliefs underlying the decision t