Richard Sloan has been all over the world but the San Joaquin River keeps drawing him back home to Fresno.
Many a Fresnan has told or heard of the “boomerang” effect Fresno has on its people.
In short, some residents will tell you that even if you leave Fresno to live elsewhere, in time, you’ll find yourself back in the best little city in the USA.
While it may be impossible to pinpoint what forces are at play that make it seem like all roads lead to Fresno, for one Fresno man, it is the San Joaquin River that keeps him coming back.
Enter Richard Sloan
Behind the buildings at the Park Place shopping center in north Fresno, there is a dirt path that leads into one of Fresno’s best secrets: An access point to the San Joaquin River, itself obscured from the street view by bushes and a chain-link fence meant to keep people away from large hills that were once massive dump piles.
Richard Sloan walks near the bank of the San Joaquin River on a brisk and bright Sunday morning. As his footsteps crunch on the gravel beneath him, his dog, Lily, zips through the foliage along the river’s edge, loosely following Sloan as he makes his way around the dirt paths.
Originally born in Colorado, Sloan moved to Fresno with his parents when he was around 4 years old. He moved to Khartoum, Sudan for two years and returned in 1964 to Fresno. It was then, when he was 13 years old, when he first became acquainted with the San Joaquin River.
Sloan and his friends would ride their bicycles along the river near where Palm and Nees sit today, even building a treehouse nearby. But one day when they tried to float down the river with some air mattresses at Lost Lake, one of Sloan’s friends stepped on a piece of broken glass and severely cut their foot, an event he says may “have been the start of my river cleanup awareness.”
“At the time, the river was really toxic because there were turkey farms at Ledger Island and they were washing all the pens out into the river, and my friend was afraid about toxic stuff getting into this heel,” Sloan said.
But Sloan would move away from Fresno and the river again in 1969, when he joined the Army at 19 after two years of junior college. During his 20+ year career in the Army and National Guard that would take him all over the U.S., he returned to Fresno and graduated from Fresno State with a degree in environmental studies with an arid lands geomorphology emphasis.
At one point, Sloan considered staying in Atlanta after being selected to become an assistant inspector general and was one of six people to staff the new Army Reserve Command Headquarters. After hearing about an open position from friends at Fresno State’s Army ROTC program, however, he returned yet again to serve in Army ROTC at Fresno State from 1994 to 1996, when he finally retired from the Army.
During his final years in service and after, Sloan began volunteering for the San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust. That was when he experienced his first canoe ride down the river, where he noted that he was “never out of sight of a tire” while on the water.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, why doesn’t anybody do anything about that?’ and that’s what spurred me onto that first cleanup, then after that, I started organizing tire cleanups and they turned out to be pretty popular,” Sloan said.
In 2000, he got a full-time position with the trust as the River Steward Coordinator and also became chair of the Sierra Club Tehipite Chapter. Through his positions he was able to coordinate the river’s first clean up at Camp Pashayan, where they pulled out 60 tires and an old-timey soda vending machine.
Over the course of three years working at the trust, the cleanups removed 3000 tires from the river, most of them tractor trailer tires according to Sloan. Even after leaving his position at the trust, Sloan continued to manage river cleanups, creating a nonprofit volunteer organization, River Tree Volunteers, in 2003.
Sloan says that by the time he left the organization in April of 2021, he oversaw the removal of around 11,500 tires, tons of junk, stolen vehicles and countless heavy home appliances.
Yet, he continues to frequent the river, picking up trash and observing changes in the environment. He makes notes of plants like Scarlet wisteria, an invasive species of flowers bearing eye-catching red and orange colors, but containing saponins that are toxic to humans and livestock.
For Sloan, the river belongs to everyone in Fresno, and he encourages anyone interested in learning about kayaking or canoeing to reach out to the Fresno Canoe and Kayak Club.
“Even if you can’t swim, we’ll put you in a life jacket and we’re not going to lose you,” Sloan said, proudly chuckling, “30 years on the river I’ve never lost anybody.”
If you’re interested, Sloan says the best way to reach him ahead of time is through the club’s Facebook page. He’ll provide life jackets, canoes and even super soakers for children.
Though Sloan has taken many things from the river, he asks that Fresnans take one thing with them after visiting the river: their trash.
“We really appreciate people picking up; we do have a problem with fishermen leaving fish hooks out here. And broken glass.”
