Josephine Clifford McCracken

Josephine Clifford McCracken (1839-1921) was born in Germany during a time of much civil unrest. The citizens wanted revolution, and as a former soldier at Waterloo, Belgium, her father saw what was going to happen. In 1846, he gathered his family and fled to St. Louis, Missouri only 2 years before the revolution.

In 1864, Josephine met and married Army Lieutenant James A. Clifford. He was stationed in New Mexico at the time. After a little while, Clifford's sanity began to unravel. He confessed to his wife that he had killed a man in Texas a while back. He threatened her, saying that if she told anyone, he would kill her too. After appealing to his superiors and making sure he was under guard, she fled to her family in San Francisco.

Once she was in San Francisco, she rediscovered her love for writing and literary pursuit. Her first article came out in the "Overland Monthly" in 1869 called "Down Among the Dead Leaves". After that she kept publishing and became a figure in the San Francisco literary community. In 1880, she bought 26 acres of land in the Santa Cruz Mountains and built a home in the community of Summit, California.

In 1882, she met and married Joseph McCraken in Salinas, California. McCraken was a former member of the Arizona congress. They lived in Josephine's Santa Cruz house together. It became a gathering place for many literary people of the time. In 1899, a large forest fire destroyed both the house and the surrounding redwood trees. This disaster prompted Josephine's cause to save the redwoods.

In 1900, Andrew Hill was commissioned to photograph the area after the fire. He wrote a letter of concern to Josephine. She published it in the Santa Cruz Sentinel along with an article urging people to rally around the cause. She continued to work with Hill and together, they were able to get legislation passed that was able to protect the redwoods in Big Basin Redwoods State Park.