Placer park gift comes with troubling catch: The name of Shockley

AUBURN – A rare gift of 28 acres of wild forest just north of the city limits has sparked charges of racism and has pitted environmentalists against social activists.

The land known as Shockley Woods was bequeathed to the Auburn Recreation District with $50,000 for upkeep and one condition: It must be named for a man who believed African Americans are inferior and should be paid not to reproduce.

Before most of the district's board realized Shockley – winner of the Nobel Prize in 1956 for co-inventing the transistor – had another, more troubling side, the board voted 3-2 to accept the gift from Shockley's estate. They also agreed to the name: "Nobel Laureate William B. Shockley And His Wife Emmy L. Shockley Memorial Park."

"I don't go out and Google benefactors," said board member Scott Holbrook, who voted against the gift because it might cost too much to clear dead wood that's become a fire hazard.

Holbrook said that once the board accepted the gift and the name, "they whipped us a check and the deal was consummated."

That was before the Auburn Journal published an article revealing Shockley's views on race.

What makes this conundrum particularly touchy is that the district didn't inherit a park named generations ago after a white supremacist, such as the former Charles M. Goethe Park in Sacramento County.

While 28 acres of open space may be hard to come by, Auburn resident Karen Tajbl said that in 2009, the Shockley name is too high a price to pay, even if it comes with a disclaimer.

"Public lands should not have strings attached," Tajbl said. "Would the (recreation district) accept 1,000 acres of open space on the condition it be named 'William Joseph Simmons Park?' "

Some might not realize Simmons was one of the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan unless they Googled him, Tajbl said.

"I sure don't like naming a park after a racist; no one does," Holbrook said. "But on the other hand, they (the Shockleys) are dead. … What happens if we ignore the request of the estate and call it whatever we want? I don't know if the estate police come after us."

William Shockley died in 1989, Emmy Shockley in 2007. Kathleen Golden of the Wells Fargo Wealth Management Group, which administers the Emmy L. Shockley Trust, said the park's 13-word name was Emmy's wish.

There's no record of the Shockleys ever living in Auburn. They resided in Palo Alto, where technology that Shockley developed was instrumental in shaping today's Silicon Valley.

One Auburn resident reported that in 1911 Shockley's father, mining engineer William Hillman Shockley, subdivided the Shockley tract into 18 lots of 5 to 21 acres apiece, said recreation district Administrator Kahl Muscott.

The gift along Shockley Road is a forest of century-old California oaks, manzanita and native grasses occupied by squirrels, birds, coyotes and rattlesnakes, Muscott said.

"It looks like a Hansel and Gretel forest to me," said Pamela Vann, the district's landscape architect, as she peered into the dense, dark woods. "It's a beautiful property and has a lot of potential for passive uses, such as trails and picnic spots."

Muscott opposed the gift because, if a fire started, "it would go up pretty quickly and some houses border it."

Estimates of how much the land is worth range from about $200,000 to $1 million or more. "This is a very developable piece of property," Vann said.

At the recreation district's April 30 board meeting, 30 citizens debated the name. Several environmentalists backed the gift, name and all, because it protects the land from development.

"This is very prime open space, and we can confine our development to other areas," said Eric Peach, an environmentalist who teaches ceramic art and history.

"The best thing the community could do is have a picnic in the park and invite people of all IQs and races to offset Shockley's racist beliefs," Peach added.

Another who backed the gift, Larry W. Smith, organizes Auburn's Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration. He said he heard Shockley give a eugenics speech in Palo Alto in the early 1970s.