Fort Ross was occupied by the Russian American Company from 1812 to 1841. It was meant to be largely self-sufficient, but also to provide foodstuffs, building materials, and goods to support the RAC outposts in Alaska. To accomplish this, four mills — including two windmills — were constructed, as well as threshing floors, a Scottish mechanical thresher, brick kilns, tannery vats, shipbuilding structures and other elements of light industry.
Lecture presenter Glenn Farris is a retired California State Parks Archaeologist who spent thirty years working on sites throughout California. His work at Fort Ross commenced in 1981 with excavations at the site of one of the warehouses within the stockade area, and he still maintains a special affinity for Fort Ross State Historic Park.
In 2012 Farris produced a book called So Far From Home: Russians in Early California that includes a number of documents describing Russian activities both at Fort Ross and in the rest of California, mainly in the period 1803 to 1841.
The in-person lecture will be Thursday, October 7 at 7 pm in the Sonoma Mission
Chapel, 114 East Spain Street, Sonoma. Admission at the door is $10 general/ $5 for
SPParks members/ SSHP docents free of charge.
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Mission San Francisco Solano
114 E Spain St.
- Sonoma
Price: $10.00