Alan Ehrgott

A historian, conservation biologist and storyteller, Ehrgott writes to bridge myth and fact, honoring the voices of those often left out of traditional histories. In 1975, after Alan Ehrgott had earned his bachelor’s degree in conservation biology and was halfway through a master’s at U.C. Riverside, he embarked on the great adventure of backpacking the length of Baja California. For the next fifty years, Alan continued to research California’s history. Meanwhile, under contract by the Bureau of Land Management he published The Organized Recreation use of the California Desert. For ten years, he owned an adventure-travel business, and he founded the American River Conservancy and was its executive director for 30 years. During his tenure, he completed eighty-three acquisitions of riverfront and endangered species habitat, protecting and enhancing over 27,000 acres within the American and Cosumnes River watersheds. In 2017, Alan won the National Wilderness Conservation Award for his purchase of 10,000 acres of forest at the headwaters of the American River and the dedication of a 3,033-acre portion as wilderness which was gifted to the Tahoe National Forest.

Alan is now retired and lives in Coloma, California. As a conservation biologist and wilderness guide he has explored large portions of the world but finds he is most fascinated by the natural and cultural ecologies of Indigenous Californians. In writing The Elusive Conquest of Queen Califa, he explores the early history of California, and uses the larger-than-life painted murals of the Cochimi tribe found in the Sacred Canyons of central Baja California to tell stories of these native people and their 162 years of successfully resisting the colonization by Spanish conquistadors and Jesuit padres.