Contra Costa supes approve renaming portion of Kirker Pass Road

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY – Contra Costa County will proceed its effort to rename a part of Kirker Go Street, however solely in unincorporated elements of the county and town of Pittsburg, county officers stated Tuesday.

The county’s Board of Supervisors has sought since February to rename the winding street that connects Harmony and Pittsburg after native officers realized that James Kirker allegedly killed a whole lot of Apache males, girls and kids within the mid-1800s whereas working for the state of Chihuahua in Mexico.

That effort lately hit a snag, Supervisor Karen Mitchoff stated through the board’s assembly Tuesday, as a result of residents who reside alongside the street inside Harmony’s metropolis limits opposed having to alter their dwelling addresses as soon as the street’s title is modified.

“I didn’t suppose there have been that many residents whose property affronted Kirker Go Street,” stated Mitchoff, whose district included Clayton, Harmony, Nice Hill and a part of Walnut Creek.

Mitchoff added that she didn’t initially view the change of tackle as a big burden and was “slightly irritated” by that reasoning, however has since change into extra knowledgeable.

“It’s fairly inconvenient,” she stated. “It’s your driver’s license, it’s your medical information, it’s your voting information, it’s your tax information, it’s your property taxes, it is your kids’s college information. And that basically could be a burden.”

The county will now search solely to alter the title of Kirker Go Street between the purpose it exits Harmony’s metropolis limits and its junction with Railroad Avenue within the metropolis of Pittsburg, which has expressed an curiosity in renaming the street.

The town of Clayton has not indicated its help or opposition for the renaming effort, based on the county, however Mitchoff stated the county will even abandon Kirker Go renaming efforts that have an effect on town.

The roadway doesn’t lengthen into Clayton, however some properties throughout the metropolis’s limits do have Kirker Go Street addresses that may be topic to the potential renaming.

The street is known as for James Kirker, who settled within the space of Contra Costa County in 1850 and lived there solely till his dying in 1852 or 1853. The county formally named the street after Kirker in 1892.

County officers first began contemplating the title change after Daniel Kelly, a retired San Francisco social employee and a grasp’s pupil in Arizona State College’s historical past program, outlined Kirker’s historical past as a “homicidal racist.”

After calling on the county to alter the street’s title in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle, Kelly did the identical through the board’s Feb. 8 assembly.

After working as a trapper in what was then northern Mexico and is now southern New Mexico, Kelly argued Kirker turned a mercenary of the Mexican authorities, which was looking for to extract copper ore from the realm.

When Apaches within the space tried to stop the mining effort and couldn’t be overwhelmed in battle, Kelly stated the Mexican authorities issued bounties of “100 pesos for the scalp of an Apache man, 50 for a girl’s and 25 pesos for a kid’s scalp.”

In line with Kelly, Kirker and others looking for to assert the federal government’s bounties raided an Apache camp exterior the city of Galeana within the state of Chihuahua in June 1846, bludgeoning between 130 and 170 Apache males, girls and kids and mounting their scalps on poles exterior the camp.

An essay penned by native historian William Mero within the archives of the Contra Costa County Historic Society additionally portrays Kirker as a mercenary in northern Mexico that labored to defend Mexican mining efforts from raiding indigenous teams together with Apaches.

Kirker was “accused by his enemies of main a band of Apache raiders,” based on Mero, however there isn’t any proof Kirker personally took scalps.

“Kirker organized militias in lots of the villages in Chihuahua State towards rising Apache assaults,” Mero wrote. “Later James Kirker led a big band of Mexican, American, Delaware and Shawnee warriors. They fought the Apaches who have been raiding deeper and deeper into northern Mexico. Kirker’s band was simply one in every of many such mercenary gangs of American and Mexican Apache scalp hunters working for the State of Chihuahua.”

Supervisor John Gioia argued that the short-term inconvenience of the title change is outweighed by the ethical crucial to alter the title.

“I feel we’re doing the correct factor,” he stated Tuesday. “And all I can say is I might proceed to encourage the cities to make the identical change and even over any short-term concern that residents or companies might have as a result of in the end, title adjustments happen at streets on a regular basis.”

A brand new title for Kirker Go Street has but to be proposed, Mitchoff stated Tuesday, and can possible be finalized as soon as county officers can maintain a neighborhood assembly with native residents to take suggestions.

Some native residents and county planning officers have additionally recommended extending the title of Ygnacio Valley Street, which turns into Kirker Go Street at its intersection with Clayton Street, fairly than figuring out a wholly new title.