3 Groups Seek to Catalog Past, Make History

It’s the attic-cleaning job from hell--a shabby warehouse with stacks of sagging boxes. And no telling what’s inside them without a cataloging system to track the thousands of items--maybe a prehistoric headless walrus-like creature or, hello, a 22-million-year-old baleen whale fossil.

So why is there suddenly a line for the grunge detail--a three-year project to painstakingly sort, protect and display Orange County’s long-neglected fossils and artifacts?

Three organizations have submitted proposals to take on the $420,000 archeological and paleontological curatorial job--Cal State Fullerton, Discovery Works Inc. of Irvine and the Orange County Natural History Assn. in Laguna Niguel. And two are actively lobbying to take on the task of finally caring for a bunch of dusty relics that have languished out of sight for two decades. (The third applicant doesn’t think it’s appropriate to lobby.)

Finally, said a relieved Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who has been leading the effort to unclutter the county’s warehouse of shells, prehistoric tools, arrowheads and other items.

“When I got on the board, I saw what a tragedy our [archeology and paleontology] program was,” Spitzer said. “Despite the wonderful volunteers doing everything they can to keep everything above water, there’s no way you could keep this together without professional consultants.”

Spitzer is part of a four-person committee that will review the three proposals and report to the Board of Supervisors in early October. The committee, which will interview the applicants, probably will rank the submissions and make comments, Spitzer said. Other committee members are Keith Dixon, a member of the Orange County Historical Commission; Patricia Martz, professor of anthropology and archeology at Cal State Los Angeles; and Robert Reynolds, a curator at the San Bernardino County Museum. The review committee was appointed by the county’s Harbor, Beaches and Parks department.

Although the county received only three submissions, about 30 people attended an initial meeting on the application process, said Tim Miller, the department’s manager.

“You have to understand this is kind of making history,” Miller said. “There has been a lot of interest since we’ve begun to get this thing going.”

The get-go was the hard part.

In 1987, the Board of Supervisors decided that all specimens found by developers with county permits should remain in the county--but they did not set up a system to preserve or catalog the items. In March, The Times reported that the county had been dumping artifacts into a jammed 5,000-square-foot Santa Ana warehouse. Some artifacts are stuffed into cardboard boxes piled four deep on the floor; others have been left outside in rain, sun and wind.

Once a week at the warehouse, one county employee and a couple of volunteers have been trying to organize the collection, but they cannot keep up with the boxes of relics that keep arriving from county developers.

In June, after a public outcry on the warehouse’s condition, the county put together a funding package that would allow supervisors to hire professionals to oversee the fossils and relics for the first time. Supervisors will review the three proposals and hire the consultants with the best plan.

Enter the three applicants. All say they are excited by the opportunity. All have assembled professional teams that would oversee the collection. All have extensive experience working in the county.

So who’s the best? Depends on who’s talking.

In its newsletter, the natural history association has urged associates to lobby supervisors on its behalf. The association’s volunteers have worked with the county’s fossil collections for years, said Steve Conkling, the group’s president and curator of paleontology. In fact, the group’s very survival may depend on getting the county job, he said.

“If we don’t have collections, there’s really no need for a museum, so our survivability, our hope for the future, and the idea of having a natural history museum in Orange County rests in large part upon getting that contract so we can continue to work with those collections,” he said.

Cal State Fullerton’s team plans to forward a packet to supervisors with supporting letters from legislators, cities and community members. The university decided to apply for the job after its president, Milton A. Gordon, read about the situation and asked faculty to consider getting involved, said Susan Parman, chairwoman of the anthropology department. The job would dovetail nicely with the opening this fall of the university’s multimillion-dollar archeological center, which will include a new laboratory and the Center for California Public Archeology, she said.

The county project is “a wonderful opportunity to train students . . . in the process of contributing to the county. We’re also fulfilling our mission as a university to promote training and research and will able to integrate the wealth of material that is here,” Parman said.

Discovery Works Inc. has no plans to lobby for the job, said the company’s President Beth Padon, adding that she believed such actions might be “frowned upon.” Padon, who is a professional archeologist, runs the private corporation with a partner, providing archeological and other services.

Padon has worked in the county’s warehouse as a volunteer for the Pacific Coast Archeological Society and wants the opportunity to be more involved with the collection.

“I’m motivated by the resources themselves, both the archeology and the fossils,” she said. “There’s a lot of potential for interesting and unique information on the prehistory of Orange County. We can’t even begin to think what’s there. I think we’re going to find new species.

“The warehouse could become a visible place to share this information, and we can really bring a newfound pride to Orange County citizens as stewards of our past.”