Aerial view down a forested canyon onto a green meadow scattered with oaks, a faint track curving across the grass, and blue mountain ridges on the horizon.
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San Domingo Arbory

Sierra Nevada foothills, California

Work at this site

Oak-dotted meadow and forested canyon from the air. Photo: DeepForest

Overview

About 450 acres of oak and pine forest, grazing meadows and seasonal creek valley along San Domingo Creek outside Murphys. This site has multiple ecosystem types and our initial work focuses on restoring access trails, wildfire risk reduction, and invasive species management. The site has a rich cultural heritage from pre-Colonization grinding stones to documented Gold Rush homesteads, and a section of the old Ponderosa Way fire road, built by 1930s New Deal work relief programs.

The land rises from about 1,440 ft (440 m) along the creek to 2,330 ft (710 m) on the ridges. Nearly all the rain here falls in winter, and summers are long, hot and dry. Big winter storms can flood the valley bottom, and for about three months of the year the creek runs dry.

Steep canyon slopes of oak and pine, among them valley oak (Quercus lobata), canyon live oak (Quercus chrysolepis), ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and gray pine (Pinus sabiniana), rise above open meadows fed by springs. Like much of this region, the land was mined for gold from the 1850s and later logged and ranched, and decades without the frequent fire that once kept these slopes open have left them crowded with brush, dead wood and small trees. Part of this site was burned in the 1992 Old Gulch Fire.

The work here is restoring the forest, creek and woodlands into functional, fire-resistant ecosystems. Immediate work focuses on reducing fire risk and fuel loads to work towards regular prescribed burns. We are also managing invasive plants such as Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus).

Change over time

Seasons and Time

The same views photographed months apart. Drag the divider to compare.

Spring view from a slope through a tall pine: green oak woodland, scattered pines and green pastures and vineyards in the valley below, with blue ridges on the horizon. March 2025
The same view past the same tall pine in September: the woodland is still green but the open hillsides and pastures in the valley have turned golden. September 2025
Looking out past a tall pine over the valley. The oaks and pines stay green through the dry season while the grasses on the open hills turn gold. Photos: DeepForest
A meadow of tall green grass in April, edged by large oaks, with the forested hill behind lit orange by the evening sun. April 2025
The same meadow in October: the grass is dry, pale and flattened below the same oaks and forested hill. October 2025
One of the San Domingo meadows, green in April and dry by October. In this climate almost no rain falls from late spring to fall. Photos: DeepForest
Looking over green oak and manzanita treetops in May toward forested hills, with a bright green clearing in the middle distance. May 2025
The same view in August: the forest is a darker green and the clearings and open slopes between the trees are dry and golden. August 2025
Across the forested hills from one spot in May and in August. The open ground dries out first; the oak and pine canopy holds its green. Photos: DeepForest
A small concrete dam across San Domingo Creek in February, with white water pouring over the right end beside a mossy boulder, and mossy bedrock in the foreground. February 2025
The same dam in November: only a thin trickle runs over the right end into a clear, still pool, and the bare concrete wall and grey bedrock are fully exposed. November 2025
The concrete dam on San Domingo Creek in a wet February and at the end of the dry season. The creek runs strong through winter and drops to a trickle by fall. Photos: DeepForest
History

History of San Domingo Arbory

Thousands of years of human life along San Domingo Creek, a Gold Rush mining camp, and more than a century of homesteading and ranching by the Ponte and Valente families, alongside the ecological story of how the land was shaped.

San Domingo Arbory sits at about 2,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Murphys, on the slopes and flats along San Domingo Creek. It is blue oak and foothill pine country, and the creek has drawn people to it for a very long time.

A long human history

People have lived along San Domingo Creek for thousands of years, and the creek carries a record of human life forward to recent centuries. We share this as context for how old the human story of this place is, and we do not publish the locations of any cultural sites.

In the 1850s the Gold Rush brought miners from around the world to the creek, which became its own mining district. Later records describe the Ponte ranch as standing where the old San Domingo mining camp had been.

The homesteads

San Domingo Arbory is made up of the original Ponte and Valente homesteads, with the Briseno family’s ranch next door. The Ponte family, who came from the Azores, settled here in the late 1860s and received a federal homestead patent in 1888, the same year as their Briseno neighbors, who had arrived in the gold fields from Spain by way of Chile in 1849. The two families joined through marriage, and the land then passed through the Valente line of the family. The Genochio home site lies within the Ponte homestead.

For generations the ranch was nearly self-sufficient. The families irrigated the flats from a hand-dug ditch off the creek, kept a vineyard of Mission grapes, orchards, gardens, hay and grain, and raised cattle, pigs and a large herd of Angora goats whose wool was the main cash crop. After World War II the younger generation left for new lives, and the land continued as cattle range.

Ecological history

  • Geology and water. San Domingo Creek cuts through the foothill metamorphic belt, where marble and limestone form caves and springs, and where gold-bearing gravels and quartz veins drew the miners.
  • Before the Gold Rush. These slopes were open blue oak and foothill pine woodland with grassland and creekside forest, kept open by frequent, low-intensity fire.
  • Mining (1850s onward). Placer mining reworked the creek gravels, and ditches moved water across the landscape. Gold Rush mining across the Sierra also left mercury in stream sediments, a legacy still present in watersheds like this one.
  • Ranching (1860s to the present). Irrigation water supported the vineyard, orchards and fields on the flats, goats browsed the brush on the hillsides for decades, and timber was cut from the surrounding slopes.
  • After the goats. When the goat herd and the family farm faded, brush and young trees filled in areas that had been kept open, and invasive thistles spread through the grasslands.
  • Fire (1992). The Old Gulch Fire burned more than 17,000 acres across this part of Calaveras County.

Our restoration work today (fuel reduction, invasive plant control, and care for the creek and oak woodland) builds on this history, in some ways bringing back what grazing animals, a well-tended ditch and frequent fire once did.

Stories and sources are shared here; locations of archaeological and cultural features are never published.

Key sources

  1. U.S. General Land Office homestead patents, Antonio S. Ponte and Bernardo Briseno, 1888, Stockton Land Office
  2. Homestead case files, U.S. National Archives
  3. Antonio S. Ponte, notice of water right on San Domingo Creek, Aug. 21, 1888, Book K of Mining Claims p. 494, Calaveras County Records
  4. Calaveras County deed, mining claim and assessment records, 1888-1960
  5. 'The Pontes of Fourth Crossing,' Calaveras Publishing Co., July 16, 1981
  6. Mary Matzek, 'Ponte Ponders Past,' The Calaveras Enterprise, Jan. 7, 1987
  7. Eva Soracco, 'Dogtown: Calaveras County's Town That Wasn't a Town,' Las Calaveras (Calaveras County Historical Society), Jan. 1962
  8. U.S. Forest Service, National Fire Plan success story: Domingo Shred Project, Stanislaus National Forest (Old Gulch Fire, 1992)
Recent

Field journal

All 21 entries

Field journal entries from this site as the work happens, newest first.

  • Video

    · San Domingo

    Sunset flight over the creek canyon

    A slow drone pass at sunset over the canyon of San Domingo Creek, late in the dry season: the meadows in the valley have gone gold, while…

  • Bright green new grass grows through flattened, pale dry grass in a sloping meadow with leafless trees, below an oak and pine covered hill under heavy winter cloud.

    · San Domingo

    Green grass under last summer's thatch

    Late in the afternoon of December 23, 2025, new green grass was coming up through the flattened, bleached thatch of last summer's growth…

  • Low aerial view of a frost-whitened meadow beside a narrow, stony creek channel, with a large tree holding yellow leaves and dense green woodland behind under a pale morning sky. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    Frost on the creek meadow

    Frost still lay on the meadow along San Domingo Creek on the morning of December 13, 2025, when we flew a drone low along the creek at San…

  • Bright orange coals glow through a narrow seam in the dark steel wall of a ring kiln. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    Biochar burn day at the ring kiln

    Burn day in the steel ring kiln at San Domingo, the day after the crew staged the burn. Slash from thinning goes in load by load, and a…

  • Tall orange flames rise from a load of brush in a new steel ring kiln with bright, bolted panels, standing on bare red earth below an oak-covered bank. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    First burn in the new ring kiln

    On November 24, 2025, we ran the first burn in a new steel ring kiln at San Domingo Arbory, among DeepForest's first biochar burns. Its…

  • A creek runs between dark, wet, rounded boulders and moss-covered rocks under leafy trees, with raindrop rings on the pool in the foreground and yellow leaves in the shallows. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    The creek running in a November rain

    Rain was falling on the creek at San Domingo Arbory around midday on November 16, 2025, ringing the pools with drops. Water ran fast…

  • A large, rounded paw print pressed into soft, gray-green mud, with an outspread hand beside it for scale. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    A large paw print in the mud

    Late in the afternoon of October 22, 2025, we found a large paw print pressed into soft, algae-streaked mud at San Domingo Arbory. Beside…

  • Four deer stand and graze in dry golden grass beneath the spreading branches of an oak, beside its dark trunk.

    · San Domingo

    Deer at first light in the dry meadow

    Four deer were grazing at the edge of a meadow under the oaks at San Domingo Arbory just before 7:30 am on October 11, 2025. Two were…

  • Aerial view over dense green oak and pine forest toward a hillside of golden dry-grass meadows dotted with dark green oaks, under a clear blue sky.

    · San Domingo

    Gold meadows and green oaks in late July

    We flew a drone over San Domingo Arbory on July 26, 2025, in the middle of the dry season. The grass in the meadows on the far slope had…

  • A slender snake banded in dark brown and cream crosses a pale gravel road toward a bank of dry grass and green shrubs.

    · San Domingo

    A kingsnake crossing the ranch road

    In the early afternoon of June 14, 2025, a snake banded in dark brown and cream crossed a gravel ranch road at San Domingo Arbory and…

  • A freshly bladed trail of bare red soil, ridged with the cleat marks of a tracked machine, curves along the edge of a green meadow below oaks, with lupine on the bank and a chainsaw lying in cut grass. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    A new trail along the spring meadow

    On the morning of May 2, 2025, a newly cut trail of bare red soil curved along the edge of a meadow at San Domingo Arbory. The soil still…

  • A shrub with long, narrow, toothed leaves on reddish stems holds clusters of small pale lavender flowers, in a grassy opening dotted with blue lupine spikes. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    Yerba santa in bloom among the lupine

    On a cloudy afternoon on April 26, shrubs with long, toothed leaves and clusters of pale lavender flowers were in bloom on the open slopes…

Media

Video and photos from this site.

Video + drone footage

A slow drone cruise over the San Domingo Creek canyon at sunset, late summer.
A drone pass over oak and pine woodland in winter, with smoke rising from the ring-kiln biochar burn.
A slow drone pass over the forest and meadows in spring, with a smoke trail from biochar production in the background.

Photos

  • Low evening sun lights a forested hillside above a row of large, leafy oaks and a bright green spring meadow. Spring meadow at golden hour.
  • Aerial view at sunset down a deep, forested canyon, with dry golden meadows in the valley beyond and the sun setting behind distant ridges. The San Domingo Creek canyon from the air at sunset, late summer.
  • A tall column of flame rises from a steel ring kiln loaded with burning branches in a dirt clearing. Slash from fuel reduction burning in the ring kiln.
  • A tall, leafless oak stands on a bright green grassy slope against a deep blue sky, with the sun flaring to its right. A pile of cut brush lies beside the trunk, and oak woodland and forested hills fill the background. A leafless oak above new green grass in winter.
  • Aerial view over dense oak and pine woodland, with a thin plume of smoke rising from among the trees beside a dry meadow and forested slopes behind. Smoke from the ring-kiln biochar burn rising through the oak and pine woodland, seen from the air in winter.
  • A grassy ranch track carpeted with purple lupine flowers runs between green shrubs and a grassy bank toward tall pines. Lupine bloom along a ranch track.
  • Three deer stand in tall, dry golden grass beneath overhanging oak branches. Deer in the dry-season meadow.
  • Aerial view over forested hills of oak and pine, with two green meadows in the valley, a thin column of smoke from biochar production rising from the lower meadow, a dirt road winding up from the lower right and open farmland on the far ridges. San Domingo Arbory from the air in spring, with a smoke trail from biochar production in the lower meadow.
  • A tall pine stands in silhouette against pink and orange sunset clouds, above a dark grassy meadow edged by oaks and bare trees. Winter sunset over the meadow, with a tall pine in silhouette.
  • A bank of fog fills the valley behind a dark stand of oaks and pines, with a forested ridge rising above the fog under a cloudy sky. Fog in the valley at dawn.
  • Close-up of deeply furrowed oak bark with acorns wedged into small drilled holes, the food store of acorn woodpeckers. Acorn woodpecker granary in oak bark.
  • A broad, rounded oak stands in tall green grass, with denser woodland behind it under a clear blue sky. Oak in spring grass.
  • A tall pine rises above younger conifers at the edge of a green hilltop meadow, looking out over layered forested hills to a distant ridge under a pale, streaky sky. Hilltop meadow above the canyon.
  • Sunlit mist drifts across a dirt ranch road lined by a wire fence and large oaks. Morning mist on the ranch road.
  • Close-up of a white, cup-shaped mariposa lily with reddish-brown and yellow markings at the base of its petals, among dry grass. Mariposa lily in bloom.
  • A hand holds up a round miner's lettuce leaf with a small cluster of white flowers rising from its center, above a carpet of the same plant under oaks. Miner's lettuce under the oaks.
  • Overhead view of a green water tank beside two solar panels inside a small wire enclosure in a grassy pasture. Solar-powered water tank in the pasture.
  • Aerial view of a sloping green meadow with leafless oaks, a few evergreen oaks and tall pines, below wooded hills; a small water tank stands in the middle of the meadow. Winter meadow and oaks.
  • Aerial view across steep slopes covered in dense, spring-green oak and pine forest, with a deeper canyon at left and distant ridges under clouds. Forested slopes in spring.
  • A wide view across a canyon of rounded oak and pine woodland to forested ridges under a pale, cloudy sky, with a small grassy clearing and dirt track on the lower right. Oak woodland and pines across the canyon slopes under winter cloud.
  • A cone-shaped pile of stacked branches stands in a sunny clearing among young pines, with cut log rounds in the foreground, pine slash on the ground and a wire fence behind. Brush stacked into a teepee in a cleared patch among young pines, with cut pine rounds in front.
  • A tall flame rises from a cone-shaped pile of stacked branches at night, throwing sparks and pale smoke into a black sky above bare ground. A bonfire of stacked brush after dark in winter.
  • Close view of the seam between two scorched steel kiln panels, with glowing orange coals and ash spilling through the gap and smoke rising off charred wood inside. Glowing coals spill through a seam in the steel kiln wall during a winter burn.
  • An open hand holds several small wild mushrooms with tan, finely scaly caps, lilac-purple gills and fibrous purplish stems, over leaf litter. Wild mushrooms with lilac gills and scaly stems, held for a closer look in winter.
  • Freshly cut pine limbs with long gray-green needles lie heaped on green grass beneath a stand of pines, with a sunlit grassy slope behind. Freshly cut pine limbs from thinning on the green winter grass.
  • White frost coats a dense, mounded blackberry thicket and the grass along a gravel track. Behind it rises a hillside of lichen-draped live oaks, bare winter trees and pines under a clear sky. Hoarfrost on Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) beside a gravel track on a winter morning.
  • Sunlight filters through an open stand of tall pines onto a grassy green opening that runs back between the trunks, with small shrubs in the foreground. Open pine forest with a sunlit grassy understory.
  • Four tall pines stand in silhouette against a pale yellow and blue dusk sky above a large, moss-covered oak and a dry winter meadow. Pines and a mossy oak at dusk above a winter meadow.
  • A green grassy swale curves between two rolling slopes, edged on the right by a dense stand of evergreen oaks, below forested hills under a pale sky. A grassy swale between oak-covered hills.
  • A dense, fern-like carpet of gray-green mountain misery covers a slope beneath oaks and a tall pine, with blue sky showing through the canopy. Mountain misery (Chamaebatia foliolosa) carpeting the slope under oaks and pines.
  • Warm late-day light falls across a canyon of dense evergreen shrubs and scattered pines under a pale, streaky sky, with a wispy gray-green pine and a leafy shrub in the right foreground and a bare, forked dead branch at lower left. Late-day sun on gray pine (Pinus sabiniana) and chaparral slopes across a canyon.
  • Aerial view at dusk over a wooded draw: tall pines and dense dark oaks fill the left side, while a sloping green meadow with scattered bare oaks and a faint two-track ranch road runs up the right toward forested hills under a pale pink sky. Dusk over a green meadow and oak woodland in winter, seen from the air.
  • Glossy red new leaves of poison oak, in lobed sets of three, surround small clusters of green flower buds on an upright stem against a blurred green meadow. New leaves and flower buds of Pacific poison oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum) in spring.
  • The sun sets into an orange sky just above a distant blue ridge, framed by dark silhouetted shrubs in the foreground and a tall pine at right. Sunset over the foothill ridges.
  • A gnarled old oak with a dark, lichen-flecked trunk and a twisted, partly dead crown stands in tall green grass, with a tangle of fallen gray branches at its base and leafy oaks on either side under a clear sky. Gnarled old oak with a partly dead crown in tall spring grass.
  • Heavy gray clouds hang over steep hillsides of mixed oak and pine forest above a sloping meadow of tall, bright green grass, with a few purple lupine spikes in the foreground. Spring storm clouds over the meadow and wooded hills, with rain falling.
  • Clusters of small white flowers on narrow-leaved shrubs and a few spikes of blue lupine fill the foreground, above a canyon of oak and pine woodland that climbs to forested ridges under heavy gray clouds. Flowering shrubs and lupine above the oak-and-pine canyon in spring.
  • A single deep violet wildflower with six curled petal tips and several striped, unopened buds rises on a slender stem from sunlit dry golden grass. A brodiaea (Brodiaea sp.) blooms in dry grass in early summer.
  • A sprawling clump of lavender pom-pom flower heads with green centers spills over sunlit dry golden grass, with a reddish earthen bank blurred behind it. Coyote mint (Monardella sp.) in bloom over dry grass in early summer.
  • Low late-afternoon sun lights a steep hillside of dense oak and pine woodland in warm gold, with a few dead snags on the ridgeline, shaded trees in front and dried thistle heads in the lower right. Late-afternoon sun on oak and pine woodland in summer.
  • An orange sunset glow fades over layered blue ridges beyond a wooded canyon, where a pale dry meadow opens among dark oaks below a leafy tree in the foreground. Sunset over the oak-woodland canyon in late summer.
  • A star-filled night sky with the faint, hazy band of the Milky Way rises beside the softly lit, leafy canopy of a tree along the left edge of the frame. Stars and the faint Milky Way beside a tree at night.
  • A weathered, decaying fallen tree with broken limbs pointing skyward lies beside a dirt path. Behind it, sunlit pines and oaks cover the slope of a canyon under a clear blue sky. A decaying fallen tree beside a trail above a forested canyon in fall.
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