92615_RAA_LooseCannon_Text_R1_PROOF

Places and Whatnot

At the request of the newly formed American Colonial government, adven turers Thayer Bernheim and Nat Hayes mounted an expedition to map the western coast of the North American continent in 1780. Although losing almost a full third of their men and supplies while navigat ing the Straits of Magellan in the winter of 1782, the Bernheim and Hayes expedition nevertheless sailed triumphantly into Cornet Bay in 1784 and set up the first white settlement in the protected cove in an attempt to secure a base of operations for further travel up the coast. In the unseasonably cool spring of 1784, an earthquake (later determined by modern scholars to have been at least 6.5 on the Richter scale) destroyed the makeshift camp and stranded the Bernheim -Hayes ship Edification on a sandy shoal. A later storm hulled the ship before it could be re-floated and marooned the expedition a continent away from home and hearth. Hardy pioneers all, Bernheim and Hayes convinced their men to use sal vaged timbers from the Edification to construct a permanent settlement. They rebuilt their camp and began aggressive trading with local Nakniva Indians to replace lost supplies. Thirteen years later, when Captain Robert Block and the crew of the Contemporaneous retraced the assumed route of the Bernheim and Hayes expedition, they discovered, in 1797, a thriving town named "New Jericho" on the hills overlooking Cornet Bay. The transition of New Jericho from 18th century trading village to 21st century cutting-edge metropolis was not without hardship. In the over two hundred year history of the city, it has been razed and rebuilt three times. "The walls keep tumblin’ down, man," said jazz impresario Crazy Ed Broeder after the last great earthquake in 1933, "but as long as there are folks, there’ll be a New Jericho." New Jericho is built on a seismically unstable peninsula. Its present pop ulation is about 600,000. The downtown section is a typical mishmash of conflicting architectural styles, but the central, open Green is dominated by the Greek revival monstrosity that is the City Hall. Its looming facade is gritty with the patina of age and bears the marks of New Jericho’s former position as a leading industrial city. The Green sports a raised bandstand It was not to be. It is this hardy pioneer spirit that is still evident in the population of New Jericho today.

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