Author Note
I
can still remember the first time I saw Fort Ross. My husband and I were on a leisurely drive from San Francisco to Oregon and Washington, following the spectacular coast. We saw a sign for a historic Russian fort and, of course, had to investigate.
There it sat, just off State Highway 1, shrouded by mists. Al and I spent a wonderful couple of hours exploring the blockhouses and chapel and manager’s residence, then walked along the windswept cliffs to an orchard that to this day bears a rich harvest.
Several years later, I started writing historical romances. I knew I had to set one in that haunting spot. We made another trip to the fort, where I did some serious research and fell in love with the place all over again.
You might be interested to know that I’ve portrayed the historical events as they occurred. The Russians established Fort Ross in 1812 as a base for sea otter hunting and a resupply post for their settlements in Alaska. The otter played out soon after the fort was built, and, sadly, agricultural efforts didn’t bring the yield that was hoped for. Tsar Nikolas I ordered the fort sold. Alexander Rotchev and his beauteous Helena, for whom the mountain to the north was named, sailed home on the first of January, 1842. California, along with the pesky Texas, was ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. It became part of the union in 1850.
To this day, historians scratch their heads over Captain John Sutter’s surprising purchase of Fort Ross. No one’s quite sure how a man who’d overextended himself in his own enterprises could produce the necessary wherewithal for this extraordinary expansion.
Storyteller that I am, I had to come up with my own explanation. As Tatiana would say, it was most fantastical.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-6101-3
COUNTESS IN BUCKSKIN
Copyright © 1998 by Merline Lovelace
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