The former Cook Ranch along Lichau Road on Sonoma Mountain (photo public domain)
One June day in 1887, while delivering a wagonload of fresh strawberries to merchants along Petaluma’s Main Street, Frank Roberts ran into a neighbor from Sonoma Mountain, “French Louie” Marion, who was also delivering strawberries. The two got into a heated argument that ended when Roberts grabbed a handheld plowshare and whacked French Louie across the head with it, inflicting a large, bloody gash.
Arrested for assault and battery, Roberts was tried in court twice, with both cases ending in a hung jury. Although Petaluma had grown by the 1880s to a town of more than 3,000, a spirit of frontier justice still prevailed, with people often left to settle scores on their own.
And settle them they did, especially on Sonoma Mountain, where, in addition to physically accosting each other, neighbors were often in court, battling each other over deeds, property boundaries, water rights, livestock, and trespassing. But strawberries?
Illustration of Petlauma, 1877 (illustration courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
First introduced to Sonoma County in the 1850s, strawberry cultivation thrived in Petaluma’s Mediterranean climate. Farmers looking to get a premium price for their berries—25 cents per pound in 1887 ($7 in today’s currency)—relied upon branding, especially in June, when a number of local churches and temperance organizations held annual strawberry festivals, serving up berries and ice cream.
The town’s main influencers were the two newspapers, the Argus and the Courier, whose editors were plied with free baskets of berries by growers looking to have theirs declared the largest, reddest, and most delicious of the season.
Argus office in McCune Building on northeast corner of Main & Washington streets; Courier office a few doors down on Main Street across from Mary Street and Penry Park (photos courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
The honor, previously held by Roberts, was bestowed upon French Louie in June 1887.
One of only a handful of French immigrants on the west slope of Sonoma Mountain—most early French immigrants settled in either Sonoma Valley or Healdsburg, many of them operating hotels and resorts—French Louie left his native Normandy while still a teenager in the early 1870s, fleeing like many other French immigrants the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. Working on a ship bound for America, he befriended a young shipmate named Peter Torliatt who was either escaping the French military draft or running away from his village near the Italian border after being caught throwing rocks at a priest.
Once their steamer docked in San Francisco, the two young men jumped ship, and eventually made their way to Penngrove, where they were hired by Ned McDermott to work on his ranch along Lichau Road atop Sonoma Mountain. Like many of the mountain’s early settlers, McDermott was Irish, Sonoma County’s first large immigrant group.
Evart Produce Company on Penngrove’s Main Street, 1902 (photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
The Irish were drawn to the mountain by its springs, which provided year-round irrigation, as well as the notion that wheat—California’s first major boom crop in the mid-1800s—would grow better on the mountain’s rolling slopes than on the valley floor below.
In 1882, French Louie married McDermott’s only child, 20-year-old Minnie McDermott. Four years later, not long before French Louie’s brutal encounter with Frank Roberts, Minnie died in childbirth. By that time, both French Louie and Torliatt were leasing their own ranches along Lichau Road on the mountain. With the wheat boom having gone bust by the 1880s, the two men, like most Petaluma ranchers, turned to dairy ranching, supplementing their income with eggs from pastoral chickens and market vegetables and fruits, including strawberries.
1890s dairy ranch outside of Petaluma (photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
The attraction of cultivating strawberries was that, unlike grain crops, which were planted and harvested only once a year, strawberries reproduced steadily through spring and summer, providing the highest income per acre of any crop in the area. In 1887, an acre of strawberry plants yielded $400 in annual income ($11,500 in today’s currency).
For growers on Sonoma Mountain the yields were even better. Thanks to the mountain’s year-round springs and freedom from the frosts that plagued the valley floor, they were able to reap a second season, harvesting strawberries in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Losing his crown as the mountain’s strawberry wizard, was no small thing apparently for a wealthy rancher like Frank Roberts. Born to early Santa Rosa settlers, Roberts married Mary Hopper, the youngest daughter of one of Sonoma Mountain’s largest landowners, Tom Hopper.
Tom Hopper (photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
Having come to California from Missouri in 1847, Hopper found success in the mines during the gold rush before settling in 1852 on Sonoma Mountain, where he eventually expanded his ranch to 2,360 acres.
In September of 1853, a neighbor of Hopper, looking to keep Hopper’s cattle out of his potato fields, touched off a fire to burn the grasslands on his ranch. The wild oats in the field, which stood six feet tall and were dry as timber in early fall, blazed furiously. By evening time, the fire had burned over the top of Sonoma Mountain, inflicting heavy losses on several neighbors.
Thanks to further real estate investments, Hopper went on to become one of the wealthiest men in the county. After becoming president of the Santa Rosa Bank in 1878, he moved to Santa Rosa, dividing his Sonoma Mountain ranch between his daughters Eliza and Mary.
Eliza married Isaac Fountain “Fount” Cook, who came to the area from Indiana as a child with his parents in 1854. The Cook Ranch sat halfway up the mountain along Lichau Road. Mary married Frank Roberts. Their Roberts Ranch, which included a lucrative rock quarry as well as a strawberry patch, extended from Petaluma Hill at Roberts Road up the mountainside to the Cook Ranch.
View of the former Cook Ranch along Lichau Road atop Sonoma Mountain (photo public domain)
After French Louie recovered from Roberts’ head bashing, he sent for his sister Pauline back in France. To his surprise, Adrienne, his other sister, showed up, having intercepted the money he sent Pauline for ship passage. After being in the country for only two months, she married Peter Torliatt, French Louie’s neighbor. It would be a troubled relationship.
Peter Torliatt (photo courtesy of Lee Torliatt)
In 1889, French Louie married the daughter of another of his Irish neighbors, 19-year-old Nellie Crilly. Nellie’s parents, Ellen and Nicholas Crilly, had established a ranch near the top of Lichau Road in the late 1860s. Like other settlers, they endured a number of bitter disputes with neighbors on the mountain. In 1872, while involved in a lawsuit filed by their neighbor James O’Phelan, the Crillys took a family trip to San Francisco. While they were away, someone burned down their house.
Six months later, Ellen Crilly took out her revenge on O’Phelan in an encounter recounted in the Petaluma Argus:
“There was considerable excitement created on the Sonoma Mountains one day last week, growing out of a dispute on boundaries of the lands of James O’Phelan and Nicholas Crilly. Crilly, it seems, ran a fence through the premises of the neighbor O’Phelan, who after taking counsel in the matter, determined to tear [the] same down.
He was in the act of removing the fence, assisted by a hired man, when Mrs. Crilly appeared from a buckeye bush and with a handful of rocks and the “sprig of shelalah,” commenced a vigorous warfare. One rock struck the hired man on the head, inflicting an ugly scalp wound, which rendered him “hors de combat.” She then directed her attack against O’Phelan, and administered a severe blow upon his “cronk” with her stick. This let [sent] him out and left the woman in possession of the field.
A warrant was sworn out for her arrest, and Deputy Sheriff Hedges was two days scouring the hills in search of the combative Amazon. It appears that after her splendid feat at arms she became frightened and took to the brush, and up to date the place of her retreat remains a mystery.”
In 1881, Nicholas Crilly died unexpectedly, leaving Ellen a widow with ten children to run the dairy. Shortly after French Louie married her daughter Nellie, Ellen was pulled into a new violent dispute on the mountain with a neighbor named Puckett.
An unidentified rancher and his wife heading into Penngrove by buckboard, circa 1900 (photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
A teetotaler with strongly held opinions, Edward Puckett settled on the mountain in 1854 after coming across the plains from Missouri. In addition to operating a 186-acre dairy, he was known for growing some of the best apples and Picholine olives for making olive oil in the area. In 1867, he married Mary Meany, a Petaluma schoolteacher and poet, originally from Ireland. The couple had one son, Alfred, an inspiring writer, who, under his mother’s tutelage, became known at a young age as the “poet of Sonoma Mountain.”
In 1872, Puckett had provided an easement across his property for Lichau Road, named after one of the mountain’s earliest settlers. Puckett however reserved the right to maintain two gates on the road in order to keep his cows from wandering off the ranch. Neighbors living further up the road—the Crillys, Todds, Jordans, and Duersons—complained to the county for years about the nuisance of Puckett’s gates on a public thoroughfare. Puckett, in turn, offered to take them down if the neighbors would build a wooden fence on his property along both sides of the road.
1898 map of Todd and Puckett ranches (circled) along Lichau Road (map courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
The dispute was still going on in 1890, when James M. Todd, who owned an adjacent ranch, entered Puckett’s farm one evening to retrieve a stray calf that had wandered through a break in the fence. Todd claimed the break had been created by Puckett’s hogs. He brought with him three young stepsons—Willy, Melvin, and Adelbert Cook—and one of Ellen Crilly’s sons, 16-year-old John.
They were met on the property by Puckett and his 21-year-old poet son Alfred. After exchange of some “rough language,” Todd and Puckett began to brawl.
Willy Cook, 19, pulled out a revolver and fired a shot at Puckett, barely missing his head. Puckett’s son Alfred attempted to wrestle the gun away from Willy, while Todd and the other young men ganged up on the elder Puckett. During the tussle with Alfred, Willy fired the gun three times, hitting Alfred in the shoulder and abdomen. While he lay bleeding, John Crilly egged on Willy to shoot Puckett as well. Fortunately for Puckett, Willy’s gun was out of bullets.
Charged with attempted murder, Willy Cook pleaded self-defense and was acquitted in a jury trial. Alfred Puckett eventually recovered from his wounds and went on to become a noted local historian.
In 1894, Frank Roberts made a small fortune when the Southern Pacific Railroad announced they were purchasing the entire inventory of his rock quarry, along with the quarries of four of his neighbors, amounting to 350,000 basalt blocks, to pave the streets of San Francisco’s Potrero District.
The former Roberts Ranch along Petaluma Hill and Roberts roads (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)
The deal made Roberts one of the wealthiest men in the county. That however didn’t stop him from battling with a neighbor over a $57 bill for a broken water pipe.
Water rights on them mountain were even more precious than land. In the early 1870s, three of the mountain’s large landowners—Tom Hopper, William Hill, and Henry Hardin—secured water rights to the springs that fed Copeland and Lynch creeks. Forming the Sonoma County Water Company, they piped the water, along with water from Adobe Creek, into Petaluma, serving as the town’s main water source. In exchange for running their pipes across the ranches on the mountain, they provided ranchers with access to the water as well as stock in the company.
The water pipe running across Robert Forsyth’s ranch developed a leak that spilled out onto the adjacent Roberts Ranch. Roberts had the leak repaired, sending the $57 bill to Forsyth, who refused to pay it. Roberts responded by suing Forsyth, making it clear that the money was immaterial, it was the principle that mattered.
Frustrated with the slow pace the lawsuit was taking in the courts, Roberts resorted to fisticuffs, not once but twice. In the first encounter, he wielded a cane at Forsyth, who fought him off with a knife. In the second showdown, Roberts wielded an axe, while Forsyth fought him off with a club. Each man filed charges of assault and battery against the other, all of which were eventually dropped, along with Roberts’ lawsuit for the $57.
Contemporary strawberry farm on Stony Point Road (photo courtesy of Stony Point Strawberry Farm)
By the 1890s, the strawberry competition between Roberts and French Louie had been put to rest by Peter Torliatt, who had ascended to being the area’s strawberry wizard. Torliatt was leasing the 518 acres that remained of the Cook Ranch after Eliza Cook and her husband moved to Santa Rosa. In addition to operating a dairy on the ranch, he maintained a 2-acre strawberry patch.
But Torliatt had domestic problems. In 1898, Adrienne filed for divorce and custody of their four children, before reconciling with her husband.
Peter and Adrienne Torliatt with two of their four children, Marie and Teresa, 1890s (photo courtesy of Lee Torliatt)
A year later however, the couple fell into a raging fight. Two of their children, fearing for their mother’s safety, ran to the adjacent ranch of David Horne for help. Horne, a Scotsman who had been feuding with Torliatt over water rights, went to the Torliatt house with another neighbor, William Duerson.
As they approached the house, a shot rang out. They loudly announced their presence, after which another shot whizzed by their heads. Retreating, they contacted the sheriff, who traveled up tp the mountain to arrest Torliatt for assault with a deadly weapon.
At his court trial, Torliatt maintained that he had been shooting at an owl in a tree that had been disturbing his chickens, and that he wasn’t aware of the presence of Horne and Duerson by the ranch house. As evidence, he introduced a dead owl to the court, the body still suspiciously warm a week after the incident. The case was eventually dropped.
In August of 1900, Adrienne Torliatt once again filed for divorce. That same month, Torliatt received an eviction notice from Eliza Cook, exercising a clause in the lease that allowed her to sell the ranch at any time, assuming it was after the annual harvest. Cook sold the ranch that month to L.L. Cannon, a breeder of champion racehorses, but Torliatt refused to vacate, maintaining that his second strawberry harvest wouldn’t be over until after Christmas.
Cook took Torliatt to court, where a number of experts were called in, including horticulturalist Luther Burbank, to testify on the nature of strawberry cultivation, particularly in regard to the second season on Sonoma Mountain. The judged ultimately ruled in Torliatt’s favor.
Horticulturalist Luther Burbank, 1901 (photo courtesy of book “The World’s Work,” archive.com)
The next spring, Torliatt purchased a 30-acre ranch on Ely Road east of Petaluma, where he relocated his famed strawberry plants. By the early 1900s, he was earning $5,000 a year ($144,000 today) from three acres of what many considered the finest strawberry patch in the county.
Adrienne, who had dropped her second divorce suit, would file for divorce three more times, citing cruelty as the reason. She eventually separated from her husband and moved into Petaluma with her two daughters, while the couple’s two sons remained with their father on the ranch. The courts denied her divorce suit each time, noting that both parties were in acting in bad faith as the fight was really over dividing up their community property. They remained in a standoff until Torliatt’s death in 1916.
French Louie continued to grow strawberries on Sonoma Mountain until 1911, when he and Nellie decided to move into town due to his declining health. French Louie had just finished moving their furniture into their newly rented house at 23 Post Street, when he died. He was 57.
****
Full disclosure: the author John Sheehy’s Irish great-grandparents settled on Sonoma Mountain in 1863, although thankfully not along Lichau Road, but instead at the bottom of the range outside Lakeville.
SOURCES:
Newspapers
Petaluma Argus: “Strawberries and Cream,” May 17, 1866; “Dwelling Burned,” January 27, 1872; “War on the Sonoma Mountains,” June 1, 1872; “The Festival Last Evening,” May 2, 1873 “Died: Nicholas Crilly,” May 27, 1881; “Notice: Frank G. Roberts to Mary E. Roberts,” August 12, 1881; “That Mountain Nuisance,” October 4, 1884; “Fine Apples,” December 5, 1885; “Strawberries,” April 16, 1887; “Strawberries for Christmas,” December 10, 1887; “Brevities,” April 11, 1899; “Roberts Brings Suit Against Forsyth,” February 20, 1905; “Delicious Strawberries for Easter,” April 14, 1906; “First of the Season,” February 27, 1908; “Denied Divorce,” November 20, 1908; “Third Case is Dismissed,” October 10, 1911; “Strawberries in the Market,” April 13, 1912; “Finest Strawberries on Christmas Day,” December 8, 1912; “Sudden Death of A.J. Puckett,” March 9, 1926.
Petaluma Argus-Courier: Emily H. Kelsey, “Pioneers Bought Vallejo’s Land,” August 17, 1955.
Petaluma Courier: “A Mountain Nuisance,” October 1, 1884; “Courierlets: Roberts and Marion,” July 27, 1887; “Courierlets: Marion,” February 1, 1888; “Petaluma Entire Paving Block Supply Purchased,” September 26, 1894; “Strawberry Culture,” May 27, 1896; “Courierlets: Puckett,” December 7, 1898; “A Penngrove Suit: Horne,” March 30, 1900; “A Letter from Penngrove Way,” August 8, 1900; “Petaluma Case Tried Wednesday,” November 16, 1900; “Peter Torliatt Gets the Decision,” November 22, 1900; “Mary Catherine Puckett,” Courier, July 2, 1901; “Frank Roberts Assaulted,” December 17, 1904; “Another Pioneer Passes: Puckett,” September 11, 1907; “Pioneer of Olden Days Called: McDermott,” October 13, 1909; “Pioneer of Petaluma Dead: Ellen Crilly,” March 29, 1911; “I.F. Cook is Summoned at Santa Rosa,” February 11, 1917; “Contested to Be Filed in Cook Will,” February 28, 1917.
Sacramento Bee: “From Sedate Boston to the Wild Gold Country of California (Wharff profile),” September 12, 1942.
Santa Rosa Press Democrat: “Torliatt Held to Answer,” February 10, 1899; “He Shot at an Owl,” February 11, 1899; Gaye LeBaron, “French Among the Important Early Immigrants,” November 7, 1993.
Sonoma County Journal: Ad for strawberry vines, January 19, 1856; “Strawberries,” May 27, 1859.
Sonoma Democrat: “Another Tragedy: Alfred Puckett is Shot on Sonoma Mountain,” December 13, 1890; “Cook Acquitted,” October 31, 1891; “Same Couple Figure Four Times in Divorce Court,” April 28, 1911.
Books, Journals, Websites, Documents
Thomas Jefferson Gregory, History of Sonoma County, California, With Biographical Sketches of Leading Men and Women (Historical Record Company, Los Angeles, 1911), p. 433.
Scott Hess and John Sheehy, “Sonoma Mountain,” On a River Winding Home (Ensatina Press, 2018), pp. 60-64.
Lee Torliatt, Golden Memories of the Redwood Empire (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2001), pp. 22-27.
1881 Copeland Creek Easement between Thomas Hopper and M.J. Miller. Courtesy of Michael Healy personal collection.
Letter from David Wharff to A.P. Behrens, April 26, 1918. Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library.
How Chinese Imports Doomed a Women’s Home Industry
Petaluma’s Carlson-Currier Silk Mill, built 1892, supported cheap silk imports over a domestic industry (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
On the evening of July 16, 1892, Ida Belle McNear called the women in her social coterie together for a meeting at Petaluma’s city hall. The topic was silk. Numerous attempts to create a raw silk industry in California over the previous 25 years had come to naught. Now, McNear believed she’d discovered a breakthrough.
Her father-in-law, grain merchant and capitalist John McNear, had recently convinced a San Francisco silk manufacturer to build a new mill in Petaluma. After some arm twisting, the mill’s executives, Edward Carlson and J.P. Currier, agreed to purchase California-grown raw silk from Ida Belle McNear at a 25% premium over the price they paid for imported raw silk from China. The men also warned her that her scheme would never work.
Ida Belle McNear, center pointing, with family members on the Petaluma wharf (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
Dauntless, the headstrong 32-year old McNear forged ahead, launching that evening at city hall the Petaluma Women’s Silk Association.
America’s dalliance with sericulture, or silk farming, began in 1825, after Congress approved the import of silk goods from Europe and China, setting off a new fashion fad. A year later, the white mulberry tree, moris multicaulis, was introduced to America from southeast Asia. When eaten by silkworms, the tree’s tender leaves produced silk of the highest quality.
1830s silk fashions (photos LACMA)
A subsequent “Mulberry Craze” soon overtook the country, giving rise to horticulture’s largest speculation bubble since the infamous “tulipmania” in 17th century Holland. Stock companies were formed to finance the plantings and import millions of silkworm eggs from Europe. Silk mills were rapidly constructed in New England and Michigan.
At the height of the market, the price of a young tree start rose from 5¢ to $5, before the bubble burst in 1839. Five years later, a mysterious blight destroyed what was left of America’s mulberry groves, forcing domestic factories to begin importing raw silk from Europe and Asia.
Poster for auction of mulberry trees in Connecticut, 1840 (photo crickethillgarden.com)
Twenty years later, a second American sericulture craze began after disease devastated mulberry groves in France and Italy. This time, the craze’s epicenter was California, whose Mediterranean climate made it ideal for growing mulberry trees.
Led by a French botanist named Louis Prevost, the craze was incentivized for the first two year by bounties from the state legislature of $250 for cultivating at least 5,000 mulberry trees and $300 for each 100,000 silk cocoons produced.
Orchards and vineyards were advised to border their roads and property lines with mulberry trees in preparation for the coming sericulture boom. California’s largest vineyard at that time, Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma, planted 3,000 mulberry trees around its 500 acres of grapes.
Diagram of the various stages of a silkworm (photo Barre Montpelier Times Argus)
Before the new craze could gain significant traction, Prevost died, leaving California sericulture to flounder as Europe recovered from its blight.
In 1880, imported raw silk sales surged to $13 million from a mere $3 million ten years earlier, as American women again became entranced with silk fashion. The sudden rise inspired a circle of influential Philadelphia women interested in promoting a domestic sericulture industry to form the Women’s Silk Culture Association of the United States.
Twelve auxiliary groups sprang up around the country, including in California, where a group of prominent suffragists with political clout formed the California Silk Culture Association.
Led by Elise Wiehe Hittell, wife of state senator and eminent California historian Theodore H. Hittell, the association’s members included Laura de Force Gordon, co-founder of the California Woman Suffrage Association, journalist, and the second female lawyer admitted to the state bar; Ellen Clark Sargent, treasurer of the National Woman Suffrage Association and wife of U.S. Senator Aaron Sargent; and Windsor’s Sarah Myers Latimer, a co-founder of the Sonoma Country Woman Suffrage Association and wife of California Superior Court Judge Lorenzo Latimer.
Portrait of Sarah Myers Latimer of Windsor by her son L.P. Latimer (photo Windsor Museum and Historical Society)
The women promoted sericulture as a home industry, pointing to Italy and France, where raising silk worms and reeling silk from cocoons was managed as a side business by women on family farms. In the five or six weeks it took each year to feed the worms and unreel the raw silk from the cocoons from 100 mulberry trees, a mother and her daughters were able make $300, or $8,500 in today’s currency, providing them with some economic independence.
Women reeling silk from cocoons, 1895 (photo History Museum, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
The silk culturists compared the work to that of raising chickens and eggs, which in the early 1880s appeared to defy industrialization, as chickens were still pastoral creatures who ranged about the barnyard and farm, leaving their eggs in mangers or under porches until the farm wife sent the children out to scare up any available eggs to sell for “pin-money” in town.
But industrialization was coming even for the chickens, thanks to innovations in the early 1880s of a Danish immigrant named Christopher Nisson at his Pioneer Hatchery in Two Rock.
Using an efficient new incubator developed in Petaluma by Isaac Dias and Lyman Byce, Nisson designed a poultry assembly line that began with hatching eggs in dozens of incubators, then placing the baby chicks in stove-heated brooder houses that served as surrogate mother hens. Once they were old enough to begin laying eggs themselves, they were moved them to a colony house, where their eggs could be easily collected.
Christopher Nisson’s Pioneer Hatchery, Two Rock, 1920 (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
Nisson’s industrialized model would eventually give rise to a major egg boom in Petaluma that would last until the Great Depression.
Meanwhile, the women of the California Silk Association pressed forward with their craft-scale model for sericulture, using their political clout to persuaded the California legislature to create a State Board of Silk Culture, with five of its nine appointees drawn from the silk association. The state board distributed subsidies for planting mulberry trees and raising silk cocoons around the state, including in Sonoma County, where the sericulture effort was led by Frances Purrington on the farm she shared with her husband Joseph in Green Valley.
Laura De Force Gordon also convinced the legislature to appropriate $7,500 for funding for two years a free filature, or silk-reeling school, in San Francisco for young girls.
Laura de Force Gordon, 1887 (image Library of Congress)
On the promotional front, the women made a push at agricultural expositions, including the 1882 Philadelphia Silk Exposition, where cocoons raised by Mrs. H.C. Downing of San Rafael won first prize for exceptional quality; the 1884 Sonoma-Marin District Agricultural Fair, where a sericulture exhibit by horticulturalist Dr. Galen Burdell of Novato became the talk of the exposition; and the 1884 California state fair, where Lyman Byce’s new Petaluma Incubator Company displayed a baby incubator to improve the efficiency of hatching silkworm eggs.
The association also worked with the State Board of Silk Culture to promote silk culture in the public schools, distributing mulberry trees, silkworm eggs, and instructions to provide young girls with an elementary knowledge.
For most young women, the only employment available at the time was teaching, which only employed one in ten of them, or factory work. Many reported to having to marry unwisely in order to be supported. Silk culture was intended to teach them to earn money at home, and so provide them with an option to having to marry unwisely in order to be supported.
In 1885, the association helped to secure in the East Bay town of Piedmont one of five silk Experimental Stations established by the U.S. Department of Agricultural across the country to foster sericulture.
Piedmont Experimental Silk Culture Station, 1890s (photo History Room, Oakland Public Library)
Shortly after, Hittell spun off a new organization from the California Silk Association called the Ladies Silk Culture Society to foster sericulture for women in the state. The society’s membership such luminaries as Charles Crocker, president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, U.S. Senator Leland Stanford, former state governor George C. Perkins, and a number of professors of agriculture and the sciences at the University of California.
The society assumed operation of the Experimental Silk Station in Piedmont, which consisted of a building for silk reeling and a eucalyptus-covered tract of 15 acres. With $10,000 appropriated from the state legislature, they replaced the eucalyptus with 6,000 mulberry trees and acquired half a million silkworm eggs for annual distribution. Hiring 100 women and girls, they used the station to teach people how to cultivate and handle silkworms, with the expectation they would be sent out as teachers of others in far reaches of the state.
Their efforts however faced an uphill battle with the industrialization overtaking the country. The Carlson-Currier Silk Mill in San Francisco publicly claimed to “have proven itself the fast friend of native-grown silk” by spinning some raw silk from the society’s Piedmont Experimental Station.
Trade card for Carlson & Currier, a subsidiary of Belding Bros. & Co. Silk Manufacturers, 1883 (California Historical Society)
However, as the west coast subsidiary of one of the country’s largest silk manufacturers, Michigan-based Belding Brothers & Company, their business relied upon cheap raw silk imports from Asia, where laborers made between 6 and 15 cents a day, versus $1 a day in California, for the tedious task of reeling raw silk from cocoons by hand. Half a pound represented a good day’s work.
Industrialists argued the solution was in labor-saving filature machinery that would take the silk directly from the cocoon and twist it for the weaver. American inventors set out to develop a reliable automatic reeling machine, but by the late 1880s, all attempts had proved disappointing.
In 1890, as import sales of raw silk rose to $24 million, or roughly $700 million in today’s currency, silk culturists called for tariffs on imported raw silk so as to make domestic sericulture competitive.
Silk dinner or reception dress in the 1880s (photo Frick Pittsburg)
Other industries were also lobbying congress for what came to be called the McKinley Act of 1890, a bill spearheaded by congressman and future president William McKinley, that raised duties of nearly 50% across a range of imported foreign goods to protect American manufacturing. Silk manufacturers, fearing silk tariffs would drive up consumer prices and thus reduce demand for silk goods, fought against the proposal, leading to its exclusion form the bill.
After the tariff battle, the political tide turned against silk culturalists, as government funding dried up at both the state and federal levels on the grounds that past appropriations had yielded poor results. In March of 1892, the Ladies Silk Culture Society purchased the Piedmont Experimental Silk Station from the U.S. government for a only $50, with plans to maintain it privately.
Four months later, Ida Belle McNear and the Petaluma Women’s Silk Association waded into the silk culture morass. Their plan was to set up a filature in Petaluma for reeling silk from cocoons they purchased from women around the state. They would then sell the raw silk to the new Carlson-Currier Silk Mill being constructed in town at an agreed upon 25% premium, making Petaluma the new silk center of California.
Carlson-Currier Silk Mill, Petaluma, 1910 (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
Carlson-Currier had been lured to Petaluma from San Francisco with incentives provided by John McNear and other capitalists in the local Improvement Club, looking to transition the town into industrial center, the “Oakland of the North Bay.” The incentives included free land for the mill site and a bonus of $12,000, or $300,000 in today’s currency.
The club’s other big selling point was access to cheap labor, specifically girls and young women from town and the surrounding farms. They already filled the factory floors of Nolan-Earl Shoe Factory and Adams Box Factory in McNear’s new Factory District near the railroad depot, as well as the new poultry hatcheries springing up around town.
Ad in Petaluma Argus, September 1, 1909
Of the 200 employees Carlson-Currier ultimately employed after the mill opened in October, 1892, three quarters were female.
Merely three months after the new mill opened, Ida Belle McNear and the Petaluma Women’s Silk Association threw in the towel, realizing Carlson-Currier’s 25% premium for domestic raw silk was woefully insufficient in turning a profit on domestic sericulture. Labor costs alone for the two days it took a person to reel a pound of raw silk from cocoons by hand far outweighed the $1.40 per pound that Carlson-Currier paid for imported raw silk from Asia.
For largely the same reason, two years later the Ladies Silk Culture Society closed down their Piedmont Experimental Station, formally ending the dream of a home silk industry for women.
Inside Petaluma’s Carlson-Currier silk mill, subsidiary of Belding Bros. (photo Sonoma Country History & Genealogy Library)
Meanwhile, Petaluma’s silk mill continued to grow and thrive, doubling in size during the fashion-conscious Roaring Twenties. However, the onset of the Great Depression decimated the luxury fabric market, as did the increasing popularity of cheaper synthetics like rayon and nylon, and the embargo Japan placed on silk exports in the years preceding World War II.
After the silk mill was forced to close down in 1939, the mill was purchased by the Sunset Line & Twine Company, which operated there until 2006, after which the building was converted to a boutique hotel.
Sunset Line & Twine, 1940s (Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
*****
A version of this story appeared in the Sonoma Historian Journal, 2021 No. 1.
SOURCES:
Newspapers and Magazines
Los Angeles Times: David Karo, “The Fruit of Broken Dreams,” July 19, 2000.
Mercury News: Nilda Rego, “Days Gone By: Piedmont Clings to Its Caterpillars as Silkworm Mania Dies Out in California,” March 23, 2012.
Alameda Daily Argus: “Something About Silk,” November 24, 1883.
Petaluma Argus: “Our Fair,” September 1, 1882; “A Plea for Silk Culture,” March 28, 1885; “Eighteenth Annual Fair,” August 30, 1884; “Petaluma,” February 7, 1885; “The Multicaulis Mania,” June 27, 1885 (reprint from Harper’s Magazine, July 1885).
Petaluma Courier: “Silk Worms,” February 14, 1883; “The Petaluma Incubator,” October 8, 1884; “That Silkworm Foolishness,” July 30, 1890; “For a Silk Mill,” August 19, 1891; “Silk Factory Philosophy,” December 19, 1891; “The Silk Factory,” December 18, 1891; “Carlson-Currier Company,” October 19, 1892; “Silk Reeling,” January 24, 1893; “Personal Notes,” March 26, 1893.
San Francisco Call: “Enthusiastic Ladies,” July 17, 1892; Sericulture at Home,” October 2, 1892.
San Francisco Chronicle: “New Silk Mills,” S.F. Chronicle, November 29, 1891.
San Francisco Examiner: “Work for Women,” October 8, 1883; “A Young Industry,” June 23, 1884; “A Silk Culture Society,” June 5, 1885; “The Sericulturists,” October 14, 1887; “Signed by the Governor,” March 22, 1889; “The Culture of Silk,” January 25, 1891; “An Eloquent Arraignment,” March 24, 1891; “Silk Culture,” March 25, 1891; “In a Commercial Arcadia,” March 6, 1892; “Petaluma’s Silk Plant,” June 26, 1892; “To Stimulate Silk Culture,” July 21, 1892; “The Congress for Women,” May 2, 1894; “Horticulture and Agriculture,” January 24, 1894; “On the Wrong Track,” May 10, 1895;
Annual Report of the Women’s Silk Culture Association of the United States, Volume 3 (Philadelphia, April, 1883).
Stanton, Anthony, Gage, History of Woman’s Suffrage, Vol. 3, p. 762.
Nelson Klose, “Sericulture in the United States,” Agricultural History, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 225-234.
E.O. Essig, “Silk Culture in California,” Agricultural Experiment Station, Circular 363, October 1945, College of Agriculture University of California at Berkeley.
Evelyn Craig Pattiani, “Silk in Piedmont,” California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 4 (December, 1952), pp. 335-342.
Petaluma housing development under construction, 2019 (photo courtesy of Getty Images)
On January 19, 1971, the Petaluma City Council, led by Mayor Helen Putnam, did the unthinkable—in the midst of a construction boom, they declared a moratorium on further land annexation and zoning changes within the city, essentially stopping the boom in its tracks. They then hired a consulting firm to convene Petaluma’s first community-wide planning process in developing an Environmental Design Plan to manage growth and curb the suburban sprawl overtaking the city.
Challenged legally by developers all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the council won a landmark decision to preserve the city’s character and open spaces “by growing at an orderly and deliberate pace.” The victory made Petaluma the darling of the so-called “slow growth movement.”
It also gave birth to a chronic problem with affordable housing, one that today has reached epidemic proportions.
Petaluma’s suburban housing boom began immediately after World War II, as developers, armed with government subsidies for returning servicemen, descended upon the area, buying up cheap farmland east of town and building tract homes. The city’s population, which stood at 8,000 in 1945, quickly mushroomed to 25,000 by 1970.
That same year, new housing starts, which averaged 300 per year throughout the 1960s, tripled. When the City Council convened in January, 1971, not only were they facing a population surge to 32,000 by 1972, they were also presented with a new slate of development proposals, that, if approved, would further raise the population to 37,000 by 1973, completely overwhelming the city’s infrastructure, particularly its wastewater treatment plant.
Early 1970s postcard with aerial view of East Petaluma (photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
The sudden growth spurt was caused by water. The City Council agreed in 1961 to divert water to Petaluma from the newly constructed Coyote Dam on the Russian River. With the exception of Novato, Marin County refused to follow suit, placing a natural limit on its housing development, which in turn increased land costs. San Francisco commuters looking for affordability turned to Petaluma, where, in 1970, they could purchase the same quality and same-sized home as in Marin for 20% less.
In 1972, Petaluma adopted its growth management plan, limiting new home development to 500 units per year, and allocating those units evenly between the town’s east and west sides in hopes of preserve the vitality of the downtown. To improve the quality and variety of home construction, it placed a 100-unit cap on each developer, seeking to create a field for competition. To protect Petaluma’s agricultural heritage, they imposed a greenbelt around the city.
The quality issue was in response to complaints from homeowner associations of the shoddy construction of their new tract homes, in particular those built by one of the city’s largest builders, Condiotti Enterprises of Santa Rosa, who offered the lowest priced houses in the area.
Art Condiotti, president of Condiotti Enterprises (photo courtesy of Santa Rosa Press Democrat)
Most of the defects were due to poor construction techniques, including squeaky floors that humped and dipped, buckling walls, ineffective heating, cracked and overflowing toilets, defective tubs, broken drain pipes, cracked stucco, and wavy roofs.
The popularity of Condiotti’s poor-quality, cookie-cutter homes spoke to an underlying driver of Petaluma’s housing boom: affordability.
A primary argument in the lawsuits developers waged against the city’s managed growth plan was that it would drive up home prices, excluding lower income buyers. To withstand the legal challenges, the city required each new development to allocate between 8% and 12% of its units to affordable housing. Market forces quickly rendered the allotment woefully insufficient.
By the time the Supreme Court allowed Petaluma’s plan to stand in 1976, the growth tsunami had rolled northward to Rohnert Park, where land was selling for 30% less than in Petaluma. That city’s population, which stood at 7,200 in 1972, quickly tripled to 22,000 by 1978, causing them to impose their own growth management plan.
Petaluma housing construction (photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
Meanwhile, construction of small, lower-priced houses almost disappeared from Petaluma. While only 20% of new homes in 1970 sold for more than $30,000, by 1976, almost 70% did (in 1970 dollars). The average home size during that time also expanded from 1,600 to 1,900 square feet.
Some of the price increase was due to higher costs. The 100-unit cap reduced building efficiencies for developers, and construction on the hilly westside proved more costly than on the eastside flats.
But builders also surmised that luxury housing was more likely to get approval from city officials, who placed more weight on quality and amenities than on affordability in assessing development proposals. Luxury housing also played well with nearby residents, who formed housing cartels to protect their property values.
The final kicker was passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, which limited property taxes to 1% of a property’s assessed value. To help replace funding the taxes had provided for infrastructure, the city was forced impose new development fees, which raised building costs about 25%.
By 1982, less than 50% of the city’s new homes quota had been built since the growth plan went into place in 1972, delivering a further blow to any meaningful production of affordable housing. The city increased the quota for affordable units to between 10% and 15%, and also offered builders the option of paying a fee in lieu of designating certain units for low or moderate income residents.
However, the ability of even these stronger incentives to overcome the adverse impacts of growth control programs on affordable housing weren’t able to keep pace with housing scarcity that would face Petaluma in years to come, further driving up homes prices, and reducing mixed-income housing.
Linda Del Mar development off of Payran Street, 1960s (photo courtesy of the Sonoma County Library)
Back in 1971, after the City Council declared a moratorium on further land annexation and zoning changes, they hired a San Francisco consulting firm to recommend revisions to the city’s 1962 General Plan. The consultants began by surveying residents.
They found that the majority wanted light industrial growth for jobs, open space of surrounding agricultural land, and a permanent greenbelt between Petaluma and towns to the north and south.
Most importantly, they wanted controlled growth with a target population of no more than 40,000 people, considerably lower than the ultimate population of 77,000 envisioned in the city’s 1962 General Plan.
That became clear in June of 1971, when the mayor and the city council put a $2 million bond issue before voters, to be matched by federal funds, for expanding the sewage plant to accommodate a maximum population of 100,000. It was soundly defeated.
Petaluma’s population growth 1880-2020 (graph courtesy of worldpopulationreview.com)
For the past 50 years, Petaluma’s growth management plan has succeeded in holding the city’s population well below the ultimate target of of 77,000 set in the 1962 General Plan. As of 2020, the population stands at 60,700.
However, the curb on growth has come at the expense of affordability. In December, 2020, Petaluma’s median home price stood at $769,000. Discounting for inflation, that’s the equivalent of $115,000 in 1970 dollars. The median home price for a home in Petaluma in 1970 was only $20,600.
*****
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier.
SOURCES:
Newspapers
Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Annexation Rejected by Council,” December 8, 1970; “Moratorium on City Rezoning,” January 19, 1971; “Planning Department Pays Key Role in Area Future,” April 24, 1971; “Residents favor Industry, Open Space,” April 13, 1971; “Support the Sewer Bond,” June 1, 1971; “Bind Measure in Close Vote,” June 9, 1971; “Planners Ask that Citizens’ Committees be Established,” September 9, 1971; “Sewage Disposal Problems Council’s Latest Headache,” October 21, 1971; “Environmental Design Plan Report Tuesday,” November 17, 1971; “Sewer Improvement isn’t Answer,” January 12, 1972; “Design Plan Passes, is Effective immediately,” March 28, 1972; “How to Control Growth?” April 11, 1972; “House Builders Meet with Council on 500,” March 23, 1972; “Design Plan Passes; Is Effective at Once,” March 28, 1972; “Petaluma Environmental Play Fails to Get OK,” January 25, 1973; “Controversial Growth Policy Goes on Ballot,” April 4, 1973; “Housing Limit Challenged,” April 25, 1973; “Good Case for Housing Limit,” April 26, 1973;“Owners Itemize Condiotti Homes Complaints,” May 11, 1973; “Growth Case Moves to High Court,” AC, December 31, 1975; “Growth Review Denied,” AC, February 23, 1976; “Disgruntled Homeowners Say Agreement Reached,” June 18, 1976; “Scharer Brings Different Personality to City Manager Post,” October 5, 1981; “Petaluma’s new Housing Element Conforms to State Law,” October 27, 1982; “Council Adopts In-Lieu Fee System,” August 21, 1984.
Santa Rosa Press Democrat: “Census Says Median Value of 78,060 County Homes is $20,900,” March 4, 1971; “No Permits Until Builder Makes Good,” November 24, 1976; “Growth: Tract home, bedroom community has much to offer,” March 14, 1979; “Development Plan Embroils Builder in Political Scrimmage,” October 4, 1992.
Journals, Magazines, Books, Websites
California Planning & Development Report, “Petaluma Marks 30 Years Of Growth Control” Apr 1, 2002. https://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-962
Conor Dougherty, Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America
Bernard J. Frieden, “The Exclusionary Effect of Growth Controls,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 465, Housing America (Jan., 1983), pp. 123-135.
Douglas R. Porter and Elizabeth B. Davison, “Evaluation of In-Lieu Fees and Offsite Construction as Incentives for Affordable Housing Production,” Cityscape, Vol. 11, No. 2, (2009), pp. 27-59.
Benjamin Schneider, “How to Make House Crisis,” Bloomberg Citylab, February 21, 2020. citylab.com.
Seymour I. Schwartz, David E. Hansen, and Richard Green, “The Effect of Growth Control on the Production of Moderate-Priced Housing,” Land Economics, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Feb., 1984), pp. 110-114.
“Home values in Petaluma, CA,” realtor.com.
“Petaluma, California Population 2020 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs,” worldpopulationreview.com.
David Yearsley River Heritage Center, Steamer Landing Park (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)
In 2004, the McKinney Livery Stable was removed from the corner it had occupied for a century at First and D streets, to make way for a parking garage. Relocated to Steamer Landing Park, the false front building was painstakingly restored and reincarnated as the David Yearsley River Heritage Center, a memorial to a time in which the horse was Petaluma’s primary form of transportation.
Yet, a mystery remains. Why was it originally called the McKinney Livery Stable when it was built and operated by a man named Jack Grimes? Who exactly was McKinney?
Local historian Terry Park puts his money on a racehorse.
John Jarr, a German immigrant, who operated a local beer distribution company, atop a wagon of the John Wieland Brewery in San Francisco, outside McKinney Livery Stable, 1st & C streets, circa 1907 (photo Sonoma County Library courtesy of Lee Torliatt)
Horse transportation was already on the wane in 1904 when Grimes opened McKinney Livery. A new era of equine-free travel was dawning, beginning in the 1890s with the craze for the bicycle, a machine embraced by women as “the freedom machine,” as it meant they were no longer dependent upon a man hitching up a buggy to drive them around town.
A similar sense of liberation greeted the 1904 opening of the Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railway, an electric trolley providing service to Petaluma, Sebastopol and Santa Rosa, with numerous stops in between. The railway’s “windsplitter” cars offered farmers a convenient means of getting into town as well as an alternative to hauling their produce, milk, and eggs to market by horse and wagon.
Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railway passengers boarding a “windsplitter” car at the East Washington and Weller streets depot, 1907 (photo Sonoma County Library)
The new P&SRR also purchased the Petaluma Street Railway, a horse-drawn trolley first installed in 1889 that traversed the city’s cobblestone streets on rails from Sunnyslope Avenue down F Street to Sixth, then across Sixth and Liberty streets to Western Avenue and Kentucky Street before heading along Washington Street to the fairgrounds. The P&SRR’s plan was to convert the line to modern electric cars, but after seeing a sudden decline in trolley ridership, they instead shut it down and ripped out its tracks.
Petaluma Street Railway’s horse-drawn trolley on the rails on Kentucky Street as viewed from Western Avenue, 1895 (photo Sonoma County Library)
Declining usage of the horse-trolley coincided with the opening in 1903 of Petaluma’s first local auto dealership at Steiger’s Sportsman Emporium on Main Street, across from today’s Putnam Plaza. Steiger’s initial model was a single cylinder Oldsmobile Runabout with seven horsepower—“horsepower” being a new measure for comparing gas engines with the power of draft horses—for $650, or $18,000 in today’s currency.
In 1904, the same year Grimes opened the McKinney Livery Stable, Steiger’s launched Petaluma’s first “livery auto,” marking the beginning of the end for local horse and buggy taxis, or “hacks” as they were called.
1903 metal sign for the Oldsmobile Runabout (photo walmart.com)
McKinney Livery Stable joined five long-standing local liveries. The oldest, Murphy Stables, established in the 1850s as the Petaluma Livery Stable, was located on Main Street across from today’s Penry Park in what is now known as the Mahoney Building. Buggies were parked upstairs and the horses taken down a ramp to the stables on Water Street. Like the other liveries, Murphy’s was located near a hotel, in this instance the Washington Hotel, whose site is currently occupied by a Bank of America parking lot.
Kamp’s Livery & Feed Stable, Main Street across from Penry Plaza, circa 1900, which became Murphy Livery after Nicholas Kamp sold it to William Murphy in 1902. Three years later, Kamp purchased the former Fashion Livery at the corner of Kentucky and Washington streets, renaming it Kamp & Son. Currently occupied by Buffalo Billiards. (photo Sonoma County Library)
The other four liveries were all established in the 1870s and 1880s. They consisted of Kamp & Son on the southeast corner of Kentucky and Washington streets; the American Livery at 122 Kentucky Street, which backed up to the American Hotel on Main Street, where Putnam Plaza currently sits; the City Livery, on the northeast corner of Western Avenue and Keller Street across from the City Hotel (renamed the Continental Hotel in 1905) on Western Avenue; and the Centennial Livery on Main Street wedged between the Masonic Lodge and the Cosmopolitan Hotel, in the building now occupied by the Lan Mart.
In addition to providing parking for hotel guests, liveries offered saddle horses and horse rigs for hire by the day or week. Rented rigs were especially popular on Sundays, when people liked to dress up and take drives about town, particularly young men courting young ladies.
The other function liveries served was boarding horses, particularly racehorses and stallions rented out for breeding, both of which were Grimes’s primary purposes in opening the McKinney Livery Stable.
Sunday afternoon carriage ride along Petaluma’s Sixth Street, 1900 (photo Sonoma County Library)
Grimes had been in the horse business since immigrating in the early 1880s from Ireland’s County Tipperary, to Lakeville, where he joined his aunt Margaret Mallen and her children on their farm in Lakeville, shortly after Mallen’s husband passed away. At the time, Lakeville was a vibrant center of the local Irish community, Petaluma’s first large group of immigrants.
It was also home to William Bihler, a German immigrant who bred cattle and horses on his 8,000-acre ranch. Bihler was the owner of Young England’s Glory, said to be the finest English Draft stallion in America. Along with Harrison Meacham, who bred Clydesdale draft horses on his 7,000-acre ranch northwest of Petaluma, and Theodore Skillman, California’s main importer and breeder of French Norman draft horses at his Magnolia Ranch north of town, Bihler helped to establish Petaluma’s reputation as the “Big Horse Market” of the Pacific Coast. Draft horses, in addition to working the farms, were also in high demand for pulling carriages and delivery wagons around the growing metropolis of San Francisco.
Illustration of Theodore Skillman’s imported French Norman draft horses (Petaluma Argus, December 20, 1884)
Petaluma was also becoming known in the 1880s for harness racing. In 1882, the Sonoma and Marin Agricultural Society, which had staged an annual fair in Petaluma since 1867, purchased 60 acres of the Payran ranch on the east side of town for a new Agricultural Park, having outgrown its 10-acre site at Fair Street, site of today’s Petaluma High School.
One of the problems with the old fairgrounds was the racetrack, which, in addition to being only a half-mile long, had a rock stratum beneath its surface that many horsemen considered unsafe, deterring racing entries, which served as the fair’s largest source of revenue. The society’s new fairgrounds provided a mile-long track on adobe soil, which, while not ideal for winter racing, made for one of the fastest summer tracks in the state, reviving local harness racing, which since the Civil War had evolved from impromptu heats on country roads, into professional events at county fairs.
Harness race at Petaluma’s Agricultural Park, circa 1885 (photo Sonoma County Library)
The races, in which a horse pulls a driver in a two-wheeled cart, were based on two different gaits, trotting and pacing. Trotters moved their legs forward in diagonal pairs, with right front and left hind legs striking the ground simultaneously, followed by left front and right hind legs. Pacers moved their legs laterally, with the right front and right hind legs moving together, then the left front and left hind legs. By the 1880s, harness races, which had run up to four miles, had been reduced to between half a mile, or four furlongs, and a mile and a half.
The shorter distances favored sprinters and younger horses, leading to changes in breeding practices that resulted in the Standardbred, a horse trained to either trot or pace at the 30 miles per hour required to meet the “standard” 2:30 minute mark around a one-mile track.
As farmers’ demand for draft horses begin dropping in the 1880s with the adoption of steam-powered tractors and threshing machines, many local horsemen shifted to breeding racehorses.
That was the market Grimes targeted when he opened his first livery in 1887, leasing with a partner a stable on East Washington Street across from the train depot. By the 1890s, his horses were winning races and awards, including first prize for his pacing stallion, Location, Jr., at the 1899 state fair.
Harness racing, however, was curtail in the mid-1890s, after California’s governor cut the state’s subsidies for county fairs as part of a tax-reduction initiative. The Sonoma and Marin County Agricultural Society managed to secure private funding for one last fair in 1895, followed by a five-day harness racing meet the following year, after which the Petaluma Savings Bank foreclosed on their fairgrounds. Horse racing in California subsequently shifted entirely to privately owned tracks, where wagering became paramount.
In November of 1902, Harry Stover, a well-known California racehorse owner, purchased Petaluma’s dormant 60-acre Agricultural Park, along with 50 adjacent acres, renaming it Kenilworth Park in honor of his prized thoroughbred racehorse.
Illustration of Harry Stover’s prized thoroughbred Kenilworth, 1901 (from the San Francisco Chronicle)
Born in Kansas and raised in Humboldt County, Stover began buying and racing horses while still a teenager working in a Eureka sawmill. In his youth he also excelled at cross-country racing, instilling in him a drive to win at any cost. It was a trait not always admired by his fellow horsemen at the race track. Accusations of bookmaking and under-the-table dealings led to periodic suspensions for Stover from the racing circuit, earning him a reputation “not of the sweetest order, and especially unsavory in California.”
Based in the Bay Area, Stover raced his thoroughbreds under the colors of one of Kentucky’s prominent breeders, Ketcheman Stables, while traveling the annual racing circuit that started in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the spring, then onto St. Louis, Chicago, and the Midwest in the summer, and finally New York and the East Coast in the fall.
In 1900, he purchased a thoroughbred named Kenilworth who quickly made him one of the top horsemen in the country. Tall and leggy with a swimming stride, the two-year-old colt was said to take to a muddy track like a duck to water, an advantage for rainy meets in the Midwest and East. In Kenilworth’s first year on the turf, he set a California record of nine straight wins, earning Stover more than $25,000 in purses, or $775,000 in today’s currency.
Harness race at Kenilworth Park, early 1900s (photo Sonoma County Library)
California horse racing faced a new challenge by that time from Progressives and evangelists like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union who were engaged in a moral campaign to stamp out vice. Bowing to their influence, in 1899 the city of San Francisco banned gambling, resulting in the closure of its popular Ingleside Race Track. A new track named Tanforan was quickly constructed in nearby San Bruno to circumvent the ban.
Stover saw a similar opportunity in establishing his race track at Kenilworth Park as an alternative to the late spring meets held in Los Angeles, which some horsemen complained were becoming light in the winning purses.
For financial backing he turned to Rudolph Spreckels, a scion of the Spreckels sugar family, who had recently purchased the Sobre Vista Ranch in Glen Ellen as a summer residence. Like many wealthy men of the day, Spreckels maintained a racing stable of thoroughbreds and standardbreds. He boarded them at Petaluma’s former Agriculture Park, which, after shutting down, had been leased to a group of local horsemen, including Grimes, for boarding and training purposes.
Kenilworth being restrained at Kenilworth Park track (photo Sonoma County Library)
Stover quickly set about reworking the racetrack for thoroughbred as well as harness racing, and remodeling the stables to accommodate hundreds of horses for boarding and training. He also created an arena for game chickens, cockfighting being one of his favorite side hobbies.
It wasn’t until 1906 that the state’s governing racing authority, the California Jockey Club, approved Stover’s application for a spring meet. In the meantime, he staged his own harness and thoroughbred races at the track, often featuring his prized stallion Kenilworth, now referred to in racing circles as the “Petaluma Flyer.”
Harness race at Kenilworth Park, 1907 (photo Sonoma County Library)
The renewal of local horse racing inspired Grimes to build his own livery as a training and breeding stable. Local historian Terry Park believes the name, McKinney Livery, was a means of branding the stable for horse breeding, in that McKinney was the name of a legendary California stallion owned by Los Angeles Irishman Charles A. Durfee.
After entering race circuit in 1889 as a two-year-old colt, McKinney won 17 out of his 24 starts, setting a record of 2:11 in a historic mile-long harness race during his final campaign at the age of four.
Standardbred McKinney (photo Harness Racing Museum)
After his retirement from the track, the breeding demand for McKinney was so great that over his lifetime he sired more than 1,400 progeny, creating a bloodline in the making of the American Standardbred. By the early 1900s, McKinney had earned in race purses and stud fees more than $150,000, or $4.5 million in today’s currency.
In setting up his new stable, Grimes acquired two horses sired by McKinney, the more distinguished of which was McMyrtle, a prize-winning standardbred Grimes advertised as “the best bred horse in the county.” Of the horses entered in the harness race meet held at Kenilworth Park in 1907, McMyrtle was among two dozen pacers and trotters who were sired by McKinney.
John Grimes’ prized standardbred stallion McMyrtle (photo Breeder & Sportsman)
The moral crusade to shut down racetracks however was taking its toll on horse racing. In 1904, Petaluma’s mayor, William H. Veale, bowing to the demands of the Good Government League, issued an order to close all gambling within the city limits. As the race track at Kenilworth sat on the eastern boundary line, the boxes for the bookies were simply moved to the east side of the track just over the city limits.
Race tracks in other parts of the country were not so fortunate. Of the 314 tracks operating across the United States in 1897, only 25 remained by 1908, after New York became the first state to officially ban gambling. The California legislature followed suit in February of 1909 with the Walker Otis Anti-Racetrack Gambling Bill, making it impossible for bookmakers to ply their trade, and resulting in the closing of race tracks around the state.
As other states adopted bans on gambling, the Aqua Caliente track in Tijuana, Mexico, just across the California border, became the new betting mecca for horse racing.
Aqua Caliente Race Track, Tijuana, Mexico, circa 1910s (photo Hippostcard.com)
Stover, who had participated earlier in an ill-fated scheme to establish winter racing meets in Mexico City, wasn’t able take advantage of the new Mexican racing boom however. Four months after California passed its gambling bill, he died while attending a race at a track he owned in Salt Lake City. Stover was 45. The cause of death was tuberculosis, which he’d suffered from for some time. He placed his last bet on one of his thoroughbreds, Native Son, who won the first race of the day.
Stover left Kenilworth Park, which he had expanded to 250 acres with more than 100 mares and stallions, making it one of the largest breeding farms in California, to his widow Hattie. In 1911, she sold 65 acres of the property to the city of Petaluma, who converted it into a municipal park for baseball games, gambling-free horse racing, rodeos, and a public campground.
In 1914, Hattie Stover parted with her husband’s favorite horse, Kenilworth, selling him to the John and Louie Bugeia, who continued to show him in expositions and breed him on their horse ranch at Black Point in Marin County.
Auto taxi fleet outside the Continental Hotel on Western Avenue at Kentucky Street, across the street from the City Livery (current site of Chase Bank), 1915 (photo Petaluma Historic Library & Museum)
The Centennial and American Livery stables closed in 1911, victims of the automobile’s increasing popularity. Two years later, Grimes, a lifelong bachelor, decided to take an extended trip back to Ireland. He retained the livery but auctioned off his stock, including his prized standardbred McMyrtle and a draft horse named Duke, which he claimed to be the only remaining Norman stud in Sonoma County.
When Grimes returned to town in 1914, he rebuilt his breeding stock and added a second barn to his livery at First and D streets. A few years later, shortly after America entered World War I, the three remaining liveries in town closed down, leaving Grime’s McKinney Livery the last stable standing.
Four men outside McKinney Livery Stable, circa 1910s (photo Sonoma County Library)
In 1920, Grimes was thrown from a hay wagon and seriously injured. Unable to maintain the livery, he auctioned off his stock of more than 100 horses and sold his two barns to grain merchant George P. McNear, who leased them to the Sonoma Express Company. Two years later, Grimes died at the age of 64.
The legendary Kenilworth lived until 1933, just short of his 35th birthday, having won 94 races during his seven-year career on the racing turf. That same year, with the economy crippled by the Great Depression, California voters passed a referendum legalizing pari-mutuel betting at race tracks, which allotted a fixed percentage of the money wagered to racing purses, track operating costs, and state and local taxes, before being divided up among winning betters.
Horse races returned to county fairs, although not at Kenilworth Park, where the Sonoma-Marin District Fair, which began restaging annual fairs at the park in 1936, converted the track to auto racing.
After Grimes’ death, the McKinney Livery Stable was utilized for many purposes over the next century—including as a warehouse, a hide tanning factory, a poultry dealer, a pinochle parlor, an auto and tractor repair shop—until 2004, when thanks to the initiative of Katherine J. Rinehart and other local building preservationists, it was moved to its new home in Steamer Landing Park and rechristened.
The David Yearsley River Heritage Center, Steamer Landing Park (photo courtesy of Dwight Sugioka)
*****
Special thanks to historians Terry Park and Katherine Rinehart for their help.
SOURCES:
Newspapers
Buffalo Review: “Sporting Events of the Day,” October 2, 1900;“Kenilworth Demonstrates His High Class,” October 9, 1900.
Los Angeles Evening Express: “Petaluma Flyer Comes,” September 30, 1903.
Nashville Tennessean, “Live Sporting Notes,” January 17, 1894.
Oakland Tribune: “The Premiums,” September 3, 1890.
Petaluma Argus: “The County Fair,” September 19, 1867; “Norman Stallion Duke de Chartes,” May 25, 1877; “Draft Horses,” August 26, 1881; “Draft Horses,” November 25, 1881; “Agricultural Park,” December 23, 1881; “What Others Think,” January 6, 1882; “Selections,” September 21, 1899; “Agricultural Park is Sold,” November 25, 1902; “Two New Automobiles for Petaluma People,” October 31, 1903; “Bought the Old Street Railway,” November 11, 1903; “Is Building a Big Barn,” November 2, 1904; “Steiger’s New Building a Big Improvement,” July 27, 1905; “Finished Work of Removing the Rails,” July 2, 1906; “Opening of the Races,” August 23, 1907; “Master of Kenilworth is Dead,” June 3, 1909; “Mrs. Stover Presents Cup,” August 13, 1909; “More About the Fine Races,” July 21, 1914; “Mrs. H. Stover Will Dispose of Kenilworth,” August 30, 1914; “Grimes Auction was Underway,” December 6, 1919; “Firemen Stop Serious Fire in City’s Largest Stable Sunday,” December 8, 1919; “Purchased the Grimes Property,” July 12, 1920; “Death Calls Jack Grimes,” October 9, 1922; “W.H. Dado Buys the Jos. Steiger Sporting Goods Store on Tuesday,” December 10, 1924.
Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Hotel Will Be Called the Continental,” June 9, 1905; “Petaluma Once Had a Street Railway,” May 9, 1941; “Kenilworth, Famous Stallion Dies at Novato,” February 8, 1933; John Anderson, “Early Petaluma Had Horse Drawn Street Cars, Many Livery Stables,” August 5, 1955; “Memories of Petaluma in the early 1900s,” April 24, 1982; “Petaluma’s Hidden Gems,” May 10, 2012.
Petaluma Courier: “East Petaluma,” August 17, 1887; “Petaluma Street Railway,” October 3, 1889; “No Appropriations,” March 28, 1895; “For Our Fair,” April 23, 1895; “A Slight Mistake,” July 29, 1896; “Donahue Dots,” July 22, 1896; “Agricultural Park,” March 9, 1897; “Sobre Vista Purchased,” April 2, 1897; “Street Cars No More,” October 3, 1898; “Local Brevities,” March 29, 1899; Ad for Grimes’ stallion breeding, May 20, 1899; Notice, March 14, 1900; “Spreckels’ Horses Arrive,” April 19, 1902; “Working out at the Track,” November 25, 1902; “Local Brevities,” December 2, 1902; “Jack Grimes’ New Menagerie in East Petaluma Grows,” April 7, 1903; “Transfers of Sonoma County Real Estate,” October 24, 1904; “Mrs. Stover Presents Cup,” August 13, 1909; Ad for Myrtle, April 30, 1910; “Blooded Stock is Sold at Auction,” August 3, 1913; “Mrs. H. Stover Will Dispose of Kenilworth,” August 30, 1914; “Springtime Won Race,” October 27, 1914; “Will Erect a Large Barn,” April 7, 1915; “Jack Grimes Was Severely Injured,” December 2, 1919; “Mrs. M. Mallen Succumbs in San Francisco,” March 6, 1920.
San Francisco Call: “Kenilworth Makes a Great Record,” April 14, 1901; “Last Day of the Running Races,” May 4, 1890; “Kenilworth Park Meeting,” January 24, 1906; “Kinney Lou and Driver Are the Features,” October 11, 1908; “Noted Turfman Passes Under Final Wire,” June 4, 1909.
San Francisco Chronicle: “Gossip of the Turf,” April 6, 1901; “Harry Stover and his Stable Suspended,” May 1, 1902; “Trotters Bring $3,155 at the Petaluma Sale,” August 5, 1913.
Santa Rosa Republican: “Order Made to Stop Gaming,” May 24, 1904; “One Stake is Filled,” February 17, 1908; “News Items from Republican of Twenty Years Ago,” August 3, 1933.
Books, Journals, Magazines, Websites
“The Horse In Sport,” The International Museum of The Horse. http://www.imh.org/imh/his/harness
Paul Roberts, Isabelle Taylor, Laurence Weatherly, “Looking Back: The Lost Tracks of the San Francisco Bay Area,” Thoroughbred Racing Commentary, thoroughbredracing.com.
W. Robertson, The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964).
Suffrage and Prohibition: A Tale of Unintended Consequences
Flappers out and about in New York City, 1920s (photo Getty Images)
In June of 1932, Dr. Harry Gossage, Petaluma’s former mayor, signed a resolution along with 41 other Sonoma County physicians calling for the decriminalization of wine and beer. It had been 12 years since Prohibition became the law of the land. With it came many unintended consequences, the most surprising of which was permitting women, previously banned from imbibing in public, to join the party in speakeasies and drink to their hearts’ content.
That taste of personal liberation, along with Margaret Sanger’s recent launch of the Birth Control League and ratification of the 19th Amendment giving women the vote, inspired a generation of young women to energetically push against the barriers of economic, political, and sexual freedom. Breaking one law—in this case, the Volstead Act that enforced Prohibition—gave them an unspoken license to break other social mores of their parents’ Victorian generation.
Petaluma’s Main Street, 1922 (photo Sonoma County Library)
Scorned by many at the time as outrageous, immoral, and even downright dangerous—the “sex-crazed kid sister of the suffragist”— they tossed off their corsets, bobbed their hair, shortened their skirts, and, bucking all conventions of acceptable female behavior, became “flappers,” the first generation of truly independent American women, imbibing cocktails and dancing to jazz tunes in speakeasies with an abandon never before seen.
Thanks to the unexpected liberating convergence of suffrage and Prohibition, they were able to step down from the confining Victorian pedestal of moral purity, and enter a new realm of permissibility.
Two women on ferry to San Francisco, 1920s (photo Sonoma County Library)
The 1932 resolution signed by Dr. Gossage and others came during a presidential election year, as the country was entering its third year of the Great Depression. One of the wedge issues that year was Prohibition. Republican president Herbert Hoover, who had designated Prohibition the country’s “noble experiment,” supported its continuance.
His challenger, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose platform called for the government taking a major role in addressing the Depression, favored its repeal, looking to restore to the federal treasury billions of dollars in lost tax revenues alcohol sales had generated prior to Prohibition, money now lining the pockets of bootleggers.
But taxes weren’t the only reason people called for Prohibition’s repeal.
The “drys,” or Prohibition advocates, decried alcohol as the root cause of all societal evils, including laziness, promiscuity, violence, crime, and poverty. Eliminate the drink, they claimed, and Americans will be happier, healthier, and more prosperous.
Pro-Temperance Cartoon from the 1900s (photo Fotosearch/Getty Images)
While acknowledging that giving up booze wouldn’t be easy for many, they contended that after some initial resistance, people would reconcile themselves to a world without alcohol, and quickly come to value its moral impact on life. They also predicted that once drinkers with entrenched habits died off, a new generation of young people would have grown up not even knowing what liquor was.
Sadly, they misjudged American youth, of whom, Mark Twain sagely noted, “it is the prohibition that makes anything precious.” That went for much of the rest of the country as well.
Speakeasy in New York City, 1932 (photo Getty Images)
People like Gossage who signed the resolution calling for legalization of beer and wine saw it as a means of addressing Prohibition’s adverse consequences. That included restoring respect for the law, reducing the health risks of unregulated alcohol, and providing a “great moral benefit to the nation.”
Ironically, morality was supposedly what had brought Prohibition about in the first place.
The temperance movement began in the 1820s and ’30s as part of a religious American revival called the Second Great Awakening. It was led largely by men until the 1870s, when the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was created.
Petaluma women were at the forefront of the WCTU movement, forming California’s first chapter in 1879. They soon after hosted the first statewide convention, and in 1883, welcomed to town the organization’s dynamic national president, Frances E. Willard.
The Sonoma-Marin WCTU, 1910 (photo Sonoma County Library)
Under the slogan “do everything,” Willard energized a sisterhood of 150,000 women across the country by pursuing a range of social reforms in addition to temperance that she referred to as Christian Socialism.
They included children’s education, orphanages for street children, asylums for inebriate women, equal pay for equal work, and raising the age of sexual consent from 10 to 16. She also forged an alliance with the woman’s suffrage movement in hopes that women would one day be able to advance those social reforms at the ballot box, using “the ballot as a bayonet.”
Frances E. Willard, WCTU president 1879-1898 (photo Getty Images)
To appeal to her more timid conservative members, particularly those on the east coast, who believed that a woman’s place should remain in the home and not in the dirty realm of politics, Willard advocated for “home protection” against the tyranny of drinking men, and the belief that woman’s innate morality would cleanse the nation of its sins.
As a wholesome alternative for men looking to quench their thirst in the saloon, the WCTU installed public water fountains in parks and town squares across the country, including, in 1891, upon the street corner beneath the town clock in Petaluma. The town reportedly had 50 saloons at the time, or one for every 60 residents, a number of them within close proximity of the fountain.
Etched into the side of the Petaluma fountain the ladies of the local WCTU wrote, “Total abstinence is the way to handle the alcohol problem.”
WCTU fountain, Petaluma Boulevard & Western Avenue, Petaluma (photo Sonoma County Library)
Following Willard’s death in 1898, the national WCTU dropped its support of suffrage, refocusing its efforts strictly on home protection and maintaining the social purity of women.
In turn, the National American Woman Suffrage Association led by Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt at the time, sought to distance themselves from the temperance movement, which they feared had created too many enemies for woman suffrage.
Petaluma’s WCTU chapter, however, retained its support of the suffrage movement, right up until 1911, when women won the right to vote in California.
Group of Bay Area women campaigning for state suffrage amendment in 1911 (photo Underwood Archives/Getty Images)
While women nearly doubled the number of voters in the state, state propositions in 1914 and again in 1916 calling for prohibition of liquor were soundly defeated, indicating that California women were not single-issue voters when it came to alcohol.
Despite Willard’s efforts, the temperance movement itself didn’t gain impactful national momentum until the 1890s, when a group of men formed the Anti-Saloon League, effectively pushing the women of the WCTU to the sidelines. Unlike Willard, the League focused on a single goal of getting rid of alcohol.
It would turn out to be the most effective political group in American history, setting a model for the way politics are still practiced today.
National officers of the Anti-Saloon League (photo Library of Congress)
Composed primarily of Methodists and Baptists, the Anti-Saloon League was well funded and highly organized, with a massive printing operation in Ohio that churned out 300 tons of propaganda each month, effectively turning alcohol into a political wedge issue that mobilized supporters across the country. Politicians of either party who opposed Prohibition were met with retribution at the polls from the League’s Christian voter base.
Led by Wayne Wheeler, the League primarily focused their attacks on the beer, wine, and liquor industries, in the belief that alcohol was a drug being pushed upon Americans, and once the pusher was eliminated, people would naturally stop drinking, as temperance, in their view, was the innate state of human beings.
Anti-Saloon League rally with “vote dry” signs (photo courtesy of John Binder Collection)
What they either failed or merely chose not to recognize, was that while excessive drinking was indeed a serious problem, especially among the working class, alcoholism was also symptomatic of deeper underlying conditions arising from the massive industrialization, urbanization, and immigration transforming the country, including overcrowding, harsh working conditions, crime, and poverty.
For all their talk of a moral movement to save people from alcohol by getting rid of the saloon, what the Anti-Saloon League and their temperance allies in the WCTU really worried about was who the saloon catered to: the immigrants flooding the country at the turn of the century.
Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, 1900s (photo courtesy of New York State Archives/Empire State Digital Network)
That was certainly true of the temperance movement in Petaluma. Having been settled in the 1850s and ’60s largely by white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants from New England, the town experienced its first wave of immigrants in the 1860s with the arrival of the Irish.
They were followed in the 1880s by Swiss Italians from the Canton of Ticino, in the 1890s by Portuguese from the Azores, Germans from the Isle of Fohr, and Danes from Frisia on the North Sea, and finally, in the early 1900s, Eastern European and Russian Jews escaping the pogroms in their home countries.
Jewish Community Center opening August 1925 (photo courtesy of B’nai B’rith Jewish Center)
While these immigrants were eager to begin new lives in Petaluma, they were not willing to give up their native culture, which included their drinking habits. For most of them, drinking was not a moral vice but an integral part of their culture.
At the turn of the century, Petaluma’s saloons were largely affiliated with specific ethnic groups, which helped to keep their native traditions alive, providing spaces where they could converse in their native tongues, or read in their native language. They also served as headquarters for planning dances, festival, lectures, political rallies, and funerals.
Domenico Pometta’s Swiss Saloon, Main Street, Petaluma (photo courtesy of Margaret Pometta Proctor)
But rather than view these various cultures as part of the great American melting pot, the Anti-Saloon League and WCTU saw them as cauldrons of sin and debauchery. What they feared most was that the immigrants represented large numbers of new voters who were going to change the America they knew.
To stop that from happening, they embarked upon a campaign to “Americanize” the immigrants, beginning with shutting down the one of their primary community hubs, the saloon.
For assistance in that effort, they turned to the Ku Klux Klan, which had seen a revival in 1916 following D.W. Griffith’s sensational blockbuster film Birth of a Nation, originally called The Clansman. The Klan viewed their alliance with the Anti-Saloon League as being consistent with their broader mission of purifying the race of the nation.
Poster by Rollin Kirby of the Anti-Saloon League and KKK alliance, 1923 (photo Library of Congress)
They also formed an alliance with the U.S. government once Prohibition was imposed, serving as a citizen militia to the Federal Prohibition Bureau, which began deputizing volunteers, including members of the Klan, to expand its ranks in enforcing the new law.
Members of the Ku Klux Klan marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC., August 19, 1925 (photo Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)
If local law enforcement could not or would not do their duty—largely because they were on the take or else simply looked aside—the Klan stepped in, violently raiding distilleries, speakeasies, and even private homes.
Not surprisingly, they used the laws prohibiting alcohol to wage war against the groups they identified as the enemies of “one hundred percent Americanism”—Catholics, Jews, and Blacks.
Petaluma Argus article on a local Ku Klux Klan rally, June 1, 1925 (Newspaper.com)
In Petaluma, the Klan made its presence well known during the mid-1920s, including staging a cross burning during a rally out near the Petaluma Adobe, a blaze so large it was visible from the downtown.
The Anti-Saloon League had originally launched its campaign to achieve national prohibition through a constitutional amendment in 1913, while celebrating its 20th anniversary at a convention held in Columbus, Ohio. That same year, the League threw their support behind ratification of the 16th Amendment to the constitution, which allowed Congress to begin collecting income taxes.
Up until that time, some 30 to 40 percent of the government’s income since the time of the Civil War had come from alcohol taxes. Passage of the 16th Amendment took away from the alcohol industry one of its major defenses against federal Prohibition, as it eliminated the government’s dependency on alcohol sales taxes.
“The Hun Rule Association,” a political cartoon used by the Anti-Saloon League to vilify the German brewing industry in the U.S. during the 1914-1917 (illustration public archives)
World War I helped the League’s cause as well. Since most beer brewers were of German decent, the Anti-Saloon League used it’s propaganda machine to equate immigrants, and therefore drinking, with being anti-American.
Six years later, in January of 1919, the Anti-Saloon League was finally able to claim victory for its Prohibition campaign when the 18th Amendment was ratified by the states.
Anti-Saloon League paper, The American Issue, with headline, “U.S. Is Voted Dry” (photo Anti-Saloon League Museum)
As drinking supplies dwindled during the first few years of Prohibition, the national level of alcohol consumption dropped 70 percent, raising speculation of a new alcohol-free economy.
Real estate developers and landlords looked forward to rising rents as seedy neighborhoods, formerly anchored by saloons, improved. Theater owners anticipated new crowds looking for ways to entertain themselves without alcohol. Manufacturers of chewing gum, grape juice, and soft drinks began ramping up production to meet anticipated demand.
Sonoma County’s most zealous detective, John Pemberton, right, with federal agents raiding a still (photo Sonoma County Library)
None of it came to pass. Although the overall American economy experienced a boom during the 1920s—including in Petaluma, where the local egg industry provided citizens with one of the highest incomes per capita in the country—Prohibition’s economic impacts were largely negative.
The amusement and entertainment industry saw a decline across the board. Restaurants failed, as they could no longer make a profit without serving beer and wine.
Mystic Movie Theater, 1927 (photo Sonoma Country Library)
Theater revenues declined, including at Petaluma’s Mystic Theater, which ended up selling out, along with the other theater in town, the Hill Opera House, to a large movie chain.
In addition, the closing of breweries, wineries, distilleries, and saloons eliminated thousands of jobs, including at George Griess’ U.S. Brewery on Upham Street near Bodega Avenue in Petaluma.
Petaluma U.S. Brewery, Upham Street near Bodega Avenue (photo Sonoma County Library)
But the Volstead Act, the federal law put into place in 1920 to enforce Prohibition, also contained loopholes and legal exceptions that law-abiding citizens quickly began to take advantage of.
For while the 18th Amendment banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol, it did not ban the possession nor consumption of it. That included alcohol used in medicine.
Prior to Prohibition, the American Medical Association had taken a principled stand against alcohol-based medicines, noting their lacked any proven scientific value. Once Prohibition was imposed however, the medical establishment did an about-face, identifying 27 separate conditions that responded well to alcohol-based medicines, including anxiety, influenza, diabetes, asthma, snake bite, and old age.
Prescription for one pint of medicinal whiskey, 1930 (photo Robert Day Collection, UCSF Library)
Two of the most popular prescriptions were a “hot claret wine gargle” for sore throats and hot toddies for those with colds.
In Petaluma, a plethora of drug stores—Clark, Gossage, Herold, James, Morris, O’Neill, Petaluma Drug, Tuttle—sprang up around town, some reportedly operated by bootleggers who found it easier to start a pharmacy than a speakeasy.
Legitimate drugstore chains also flourished. Walgreens, which had only 20 locations in 1919, grew to more than 600 locations by the early 1930s.
Petaluma drug stores in the 1920s: James Drug, 117 Kentucky Street; Herold Drug, corner of Kentucky and Washington; O’Neill Drug, 9 Main Street (photo Sonoma County Library)
As another exception to the Volstead Act, people were allowed to manufacture up to 200 gallons a year of either cider and wine—an equivalent of 4 gallons a week—for consumption exclusively in the home.
That was good news for Sonoma County grape growers, who, prior to Prohibition, were California’s largest wine producer. While a number of small wineries were forced to close, larger wineries switched to producing sacramental and medicinal wines, and to making chunks of dried grape concentrate called “wine bricks.”
Each brick made a gallon of grape juice, and some came with a “warning” that if left sitting out too long, the juice would ferment and turn into wine. In the first five years of Prohibition, grape acreage in California increased seven-fold, as wine consumption in the U.S. jumped from 70 million gallons to 150 million gallons a year.
Wine brick label (photo Italian Museum of Los Angeles)
Sonoma County was also America’s second-largest hops producer prior to Prohibition, and while a number of breweries had to close down, others transitioned to selling “near beer,” or legal brew that contained no more than the 0.5% of alcohol permitted by the law. Some brewers marketed it as a health drink they called “cereal beverage.”
Others breweries began producing malt syrup, an extract that could be easily made into beer by adding water and yeast and allowing time for fermentation.
While home stills and brewing kits were technically illegal, Petalumans could purchase the parts they need for making stills at places like the original Rex Hardware at Main and B streets across from Center Park.
Rex Hardware, 3 Main Street, 1924 (photo Sonoma County Library)
Despite all of the home brewing and winemaking, what distinguished drinking habits most during Prohibition was the switch from beer and wine to hard liquor as the drink of preference.
By the end of the 1920s, liquor constituted nearly two-thirds of the country’s total alcohol consumption. That was partly because spirits were compact and easier to conceal and transport, and also because of the popularity of the “cocktail.”
Mlle. Rhea of Washington, D.C., demonstrates the garter flask fad, and a woman uses a dummy book bearing the title ‘The Four Swallows’ as a hiding place for liquor, 1920s (photo public archives)
Many people who didn’t like the taste of beer, wine, or straight hard liquor, found cocktails irresistible, particularly women.
The irony was that cocktails, which prior to Prohibition had been virtually non-existent, became popular in speakeasies because they masked the foul taste of bathtub gin and moonshine whiskey.
Regardless, cocktail dinner parties at home soon became all the rage, and the social practice of the five o’clock “cocktail hour” became a tradition for many.
Women at a speakeasy (photo Culver Pictures)
Given the secretive nature of speakeasies, it’s impossible to determine how many operated in Petaluma during Prohibition, but from oral accounts there were many.
A number, like Volpi’s on Washington and Keller streets, had been grocery taverns prior to Prohibition. The owners simply sealed off the bar from the rest of the store and provided customers with a secret entrance.
Many former saloons simply switched to operating as soda fountains, with the added treat for certain customers of mixing a little alcohol in with their sodas. One of them was the Mercantile Grill on Main Street, site today of the Starbucks adjacent to Putnam Plaza, which was run during Prohibition by a group of bootleggers known as the Cree Gang. The gang also operated a rod and gun club on the river near Haystack Landing that served as a front for their speakeasy.
Mercantile Grill, 125 Main Street (photo Sonoma County Library)
Until the Coast Guard stepped up their enforcement efforts, Tomales Bay and the Sonoma coast, with their hidden coves and proximity to San Francisco, served as a smugglers’ paradise for transporting rye whiskey down from Canada.
Rumrunner boat unloading, 1920s (photo public archives)
The Petaluma area, with its rural dairy and chicken ranches, also became a major producer of “jackass brandy,” a bootlegged whiskey that reportedly “bit like a mule and kicked like a horse.”
To disguise their tracks to secret stills on ranches, bootleggers often wore shoes that simulated cow hooves.
The shoe of an alcohol smuggler arrested with wooden soles in the form of cattle hooves to camouflage his footsteps, circa 1924 (photo Library of Congress)
In terms of alcohol production, Prohibition served to shut down a multimillion dollar alcohol industry and put it in the hands of homebrewers and craft distilleries around the country. As a result of their combined efforts, by the mid-1920s national alcohol consumption had rebounded to 70 percent of pre-Prohibition levels.
Only now with that consumption came a major decline in respect for the law.
Gil Hall, a colorful attorney known as Petaluma’s “Perry Mason,” defended most of the local bootleggers apprehended by the law. While representing a bootlegger on trial, Hall asked to see the alleged bottle of liquor found on his client. After opening the bottle, Hall drank it dry, proclaiming it wasn’t whiskey at all. With the evidence gone, the case had to be dropped.
Petaluma attorney Gil Hall, 1924 (photo Sonoma County Library)
A similar case occurred with a jury in Los Angeles, who, asking to see an alleged bottle of moonshine while deliberating in the jury chambers, drained it, resulting in the release of the accused due to lack of evidence.
Apocryphal tales aside, the reality was that during Prohibition alcohol-related crimes overwhelmed both the jails and judicial system, forcing prosecutors to resort for the first time to using mass plea bargains as a means of clearing hundreds of backlogged cases.
The other major problem plaguing Prohibition was the health risk posed unregulated booze. As the black market for bathtub gin and moonshine became more lucrative, bootleggers turned to cheaper sources of alcohol, specifically methanol, or wood alcohol, included in industrial products like fuel and formaldehyde.
Stronger than ethanol, or drinking alcohol, wood alcohol was traditionally “denatured” to make it undrinkable by adding toxic or foul-tasting chemicals to it. Once bootleggers discovered they could hire chemists to re-purify or wash out the noxious chemicals, they began using wood alcohol in their moonshine to cut costs.
A federal chemist at work (photo Library of Congress)
In response, the government doubled the amount of poison additive, making it harder to re-purify. As a result, three drinks of booze made with tainted wood alcohol was capable of causing blindness—giving rise to the phrase “being blind drunk”—or even death. During Prohibition an estimated 10,000 Americans died from poison hooch, and thousands were either struck blind or suffered respiratory paralysis.
Seymour Lowman, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Prohibition, stated that if a sober America meant people at the fringes of society “dying off from poison hooch, then a good job will have been done.”
Part of what motivated Gossage and physicians around the country to petition for legalizing beer and wine, was the risk that cheap tainted liquor posed to the young, whose consumption of alcohol, contrary to the hopes of the drys, had increased significantly, especially on college campuses, where Prohibition came to be viewed as something to rebel against.
Gertrude Lythgoe, a bootlegging celebrity known as “the Bahama Queen” for the wholesale alcohol operation she established in Nassau during Prohibition., 1920s (photo salljling.org)
The other unintended group of new drinkers Prohibition ushered in were women. Their new willingness to drink in public—or at least in the semipublic atmosphere of the speakeasy—owed much to the death of the saloon, whose masculine culture could no longer govern the norms of public drinking. Unlike saloons, speakeasies were coed.
Public drinking by women and college youth helped bring about what social scientists call a “normalization of drinking,” which rippled into other parts of society.
In cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, a new generation of mixed-gender and mixed-race pacesetters were rebelling in jazz-filled speakeasies with innovative new dance styles like the Charleston.
Flappers dancing while musicians perform during a Charleston dance contest, NYC, 1926 (photo Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Thanks to Hollywood movies, tabloid newspapers, and radio, the new Jazz Age reverberated across the country like a cultural earthquake, shaking the foundations of even small towns like Petaluma.
The common perception of women’s relationship to alcohol perpetuated by the WCTU was largely an adversarial one. In towns like Petaluma, Victorian codes of morality, piety, class structure, and social standing clashed with the image of independent women drinking in public, fostering a stereotype that only dancehall girls and women who sold themselves as prostitutes entered establishments that sold alcohol.
Four women line up along a wall and chug bottles of liquor in 1925 (photo Kirn Vintage Stock/Corbis)
But women on the whole were never as teetotaling as the WCTU made them out to be. Many kept bottles of beer, wine, or alcohol with their kitchen supplies for use in cooking, to be served with a meal, or for a quick nip when the urge arose.
The popular cooking and homemaking books of the time, like Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, published in 1861, contained recipes for drinks like Sloe Gin Cocktail, Strawberry Fizz, and Silver Sour.
Other women relied on patent medicines or over-the-counter remedies, such as Lydia Pinkham’s Herb Medicine or Wine of Cardui, marketed as medical panaceas for curing an assortment of ailments. Most of them contained significant levels of alcohol—usually in the range of 20%—leading a number of women to an alcohol addiction.
Ad for Wine of Cardui and Lydia E. Pinkham’s Herb Medicine in Petaluma Argus, October 26, 1912 (Newspaper.com)
Women did in fact purchase alcohol from saloons, but those transactions usually took place at the back door, and the liquor purchased was consumed at home. Around the turn of the century, saloonkeepers looking to expand their market began creating what they called “wine rooms,” either at the back of their saloons or upstairs if they had a second floor, for a mixed clientele of “respectable” men and women.
Posted with a “Family Entrance” or “Ladies’ Entrance” separate from the saloon, the layouts often consisted of a hallway with several rooms, each equipped with a table and chairs, perhaps a sofa, and in some rooms enough space for dancing to a gramophone.
Arcade Saloon, far left, 15 Western Avenue, 1890s (photo Sonoma County Library)
Petaluma’s Arcade Saloon on Western Avenue, site today of the Petaluma Textile & Design store next door to Andresen’s Tavern, was one such place, with wine rooms most likely upstairs.
Working-class women in particular began to frequent wine rooms, sometimes exclusively with other women on a “girls night out.”
Women in a wine room, 1890s (photo Kim Vintage Stock/Getty Images)
While middle-class women who largely consigned strictly to homemaker roles, those from working-class backgrounds were often expected to take care of household duties while also working long shifts in often labor-intensive jobs. In Petaluma, those jobs were primarily at the new factories along the east side of the river, including the Carlson-Currier Silk Mill and the nearby Nolan-Earle Shoe Factory.
Carlson & Currier Silk Mill, Petaluma, 1890s (photo Sonoma County Library)Nolan-Earle Shoe Factory, 1907 (photo Sonoma County Library)
Authorities eventually grew leery of wine rooms as they tended to foster carousing between men and women, often leading to trysts and violence, the latter usually initiated by married men who discovered their wives in a wine room with another man. Wine rooms in lower-end establishments were often little more than glorified prostitution “cribs” attached to saloons.
That placed wine rooms in the crosshairs of the WCTU’s crusade of social purity for women, leading many cities, including Petaluma, to close them down and initiate laws criminalizing women in spaces designated for drinking.
Couples in a wine room, early 1900s (photo Richard F. Selcer Collection)
In Colorado, one of the first states to grant women the vote in 1893, a Denver saloon owner decided to challenge the law, arguing that since women had been given right of suffrage they were “entitled to the same pursuit of happiness as their brothers,” including drinking in his saloon. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that states had to the right to impose restrictions on whom they sold alcohol sold to, including on the basis of gender and race.
A similar incident occurred in Petaluma in 1913, two years after California women won the vote. John Keller operated a saloon in the Mutual Relief Building at the corner of Western Avenue and Kentucky Street with a side entrance for retail liquor sales.
Mutual Relief Building,f Western Avenue and Kentucky Street, 1966 (photo Sonoma County Library)
One evening he sold a bottle of liquor to a woman who later was found passed out drunk on the grounds of Lincoln Elementary School at Fifth and B streets. Keller was fined the equivalent of $4,000 in today’s currency, and warned that a second charge of selling liquor to women would result in the loss of his liquor license.
Seven years later, the imposition of Prohibition inadvertently opened up new, uncharted territory. Saloons and liquor stores might have legally barred women, but illegal speakeasies had no such rules. They not only changed how women drank, they allowed them to move into spaces previously reserved exclusively for men.
Speakeasy in New York City, 1920s (photo by Margaret Bourke-White/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
For a generation ravaged by the carnage of the Great War and the terrifying influenza epidemic of 1918 and 1919, the world had shifted. They no longer viewed life through the rational, moral, and orderly Victorian lens of their parents.
Instead, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his essay, “Echoes of the Jazz Age,” their attitudes shifted to one of irrationality, with humans viewed as neither innately moral nor logical in their behavior, “a whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure.”
Norwegian pole vault champion, Charles Hoff, dances with Tempest Stevens in a Charleston contest, 1920s (photo Bettmann/Getty Images)
For young women especially, the forbidden pleasure of drinking in speakeasies or at private parties with friends represented a way of expressing their independence. Yet such newfound freedoms and redefined roles in a libertine era often came with new challenges. Female alcoholism, for one, became a growing problem.
Women weren’t just on the consumption end of Prohibition, they were involved in the craft production. While it’s not known how many women actually entered the bootlegging trade, of those documented, there were certain demographic patterns. Most were mothers or daughters trying to financially support their families. A majority were immigrants who felt justified in their actions since they had come from cultures that didn’t view the creation or consumption of alcohol as a moral issue.
Women working in the Gausti vineyard in Los Angeles, 1929. (photo Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library)
The great “noble experiment” of Prohibition was based on the theory that personal behavior follows structural change. By changing the law of the land—in this case banning alcohol—one naturally would change human behavior, eliminating the sin of drinking.
But women succeeded in flipping that theory on its head. Taking advantage of the underground culture and social chaos created by Prohibition, they used their personal behaviors to express new freedoms that resulted in structural changes to the long-held roles of women in society.
Dorothy Wentworth, right, is shown with a friend at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, Dec. 5, 1933 to enjoy their first legal cocktail party in many years (photo Associated Press)
And once Prohibition ended, they were no more willing to give up those new freedoms than they were to give up their cocktails.
By 1932, when Gossage and his fellow physicians got around to issuing their appeal for the legalization of beer and wine, it was widely recognized by everyone excerpt for perhaps the most zealous of the drys that, whatever the intentions of Prohibition, the cure was worse than the disease. For more than a decade, the law meant to foster temperance, order, and law-abiding citizens, had instead ushered in an era of intemperance, excess, and lawlessness.
In 1929, one woman decided to do something about it.
Pauline Morton Sabin on the cover of Time magazine , July 18, 1932
Pauline Morton Sabin was a wealthy, blue blood New York socialite. The first woman ever to serve on the Republican National Committee, she was also a temperance supporter, and a major fundraiser for Republican presidential campaigns during the 1920s.
Sabin however found the hypocrisy of Prohibition intolerable. She was especially repelled by Republican politicians who voted dry and then turned up at her dinner table expecting a drink. She also had a special aversion to the WCTU and the way its president, Ella Alexander Boole, claimed to speak for all American women. Sabin believed that Prohibition had failed and it was the responsibility of American women to do something about it.
In 1929, she formed the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, also known as “The Crusaders.” Within a year the group had more than a million members, three times that of the WCTU.
Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform promotion (photo PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
Sabin and her organization began lobbying politicians, attending political conventions, and campaigning throughout the country to ratify the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition.
Pauline Morton Sabin at the 1932 Democratic Convention with Al Smith, far left (photo Associated Press)
Her justification, like that of presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt, focused solely on economic recovery. After 12 years, Prohibition had cost the federal government $11 billion in lost tax revenue and more than $300 million in enforcement expenses. With the arrival of the Great Depression, Sabin argued that those costs were too large to bear any longer.
A giant barrel of beer, part of a demonstration against prohibition in America (Photo by Henry Guttmann/Getty Images)
The public largely agreed. In November of 1932, they elected Franklin Roosevelt president. A year later, on December 5th, 1933, a majority of states ratified the 21st Amendment, ending Prohibition. Speakeasies everywhere threw open their doors.
Front page of the Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 5, 1933 (Newspaper.com)
With Prohibition finally ended, the word “saloon” virtually disappeared from America’s vocabulary. New establishments that referred to themselves as “cocktail lounges” and “taverns,” and who welcomed both men and women, sprang up all over.
A speakeasy opens its doors to the public on December 5, 1933 (photo Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho)
In Petaluma, they included Andresen’s Tavern, located within steps of the town clock, below which sits the WCTU water fountain with its engraved message, “Total Abstinence is the Way to Handle the Alcohol Problem.”
Andresen’s Tavern, 19 Western Avenue (photo Petaluma Argus-Courier)
Only now, the water fountain would forever stand as a monument to the surprising unintended consequences of Prohibition.
A version of this article was delivered as a talk sponsored the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum as part of their 2020 exhibit, Petaluma’s Participation in the Women’s Suffrage Movement, curated by Paula Freund and Katherine Rinehart.
SOURCES:
Books, Journals, , Magazines, Websites
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, the film “Prohibition,” 2011, pbs.org. pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/
Jane Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana, IL: U Illinois Press, 1986).
Erin Blakemore, “How Prohibition Encouraged Women to Drink,” JSTORdaily.org.
Jack S. Blocker, Jr., “Did Prohibition Really Work? Alcohol Prohibition as a Public Health Innovation,” American Journal of Public Health, February 2006; 96(2): 233-243.
Kat Eschner, “Why the Ku Klux Klan Flourished Under Prohibition,” December 5, 2017, Smithsonianmag.com.
Nicholas Hines, “Prohibition’s Grape Bricks: How to Not Make Wine,” September 17, 2015. Grapecollective.com.
Michael Lerner, “Prohibition: Unintended Consequences,” 2011, pbs.org.
Sally J. Ling, “Gertrude Lythgoe – Fascinating Women of Prohibition,” Florida’s history Detective blog. Sallyjling.org.
Lisa McGirr, The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State (NY: Norton, 2015).
Mary Murphy, “Bootlegging Mothers and Drinking Daughters” American Quarterly, 1994, 46(2), 174-94.
Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (NY: Scribner, 2011).
Tanya Marie Sanchez, “The Feminine Side of Bootlegging,” Louisiana History, Autumn 2000, 41(2), 403-433.
Jim Vorel, “How Progressives, Racists, Xenophobes and Suffragists Teamed up to Give America Prohibition, Paste magazine, February 25, 2019. Pastemagazine.com.
Elaine Weiss, The Woman’s Hour (NY: Viking Press, 2018).
Newspapers
Fresno Morning Republican: “The Saloon’s Wine Room for Women,” July 31, 1902.
New York Times: Jennifer Harlan, “A Splashy Start to Prohibition, 100 Not-so-dry Januaries Ago,” January 3, 2020.
Petaluma Argus: “Local Saloon Man Pays Fine,” September 18, 1913; “Ku Klux Klan Held Outdoor Initiation Saturday,” June 1, 1925.
Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Hoover Sees No Hope for Wine and Beer,” September 8, 1931; “Medicos for Modification,” June 4, 1932; Chris Samson, “Petaluma Old-timers Share Stories of Smuggling, Stills, Raids and Speakeasies,” October 14, 2011.
Petaluma Courier: “Sold Liquor to Woman¬–Is Fined,” September 19, 1913.
Stockton Daily Evening Record: “Beast and the Jungle,” January 10, 1910.
Viewed by many at the time as the “sex-crazed kid sister of the suffragist,” a new generation of young women—recently empowered by the right to vote thanks to ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920—were inspired during Prohibition to toss off their corsets, bob their hair, shorten their shirts, and bucking all conventions of “acceptable” Victorian behavior, energetically push against the barriers of economic, political, and sexual freedom for women.
They are now considered the first generation of truly independent American women, thanks in large part to the unusual convergence of suffrage and Prohibition.
In this video presentation sponsored by the Petaluma Historical Museum and Petaluma History Room, historian John Sheehy explores how this unexpected turn of events came about in Petaluma.
Up until 1970, the idea of citizens having a say in shaping the future of their city was largely unthinkable. In towns like Petaluma, outside developers were in the driver’s seat, and used their financial muscle to squelch anyone who got in their way.
But Petaluma, led by its first woman mayor, Helen Putnam, did just that, shutting down all new construction to spend a year engaging citizens in hammering out a new planning policy to curb the helter-skelter urban sprawl. It was revolutionary, and produced a landmark plan that limited new homes to 500 units per year and created a greenbelt around the city to help maintain its integrity and character. It also led to a colossal three-year battle with developers in the courts that advanced all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, establishing a precedent for communities across the country struggling with similar growth pressures.
In this video presentation sponsored by the Petaluma History Room and the AAUW, historian John Sheehy looks back at the lessons of Petaluma’s historical 1970s planning process that changed not only how we think about urban development today, but served to demonstrate that nothing gives people a stronger sense of belonging than the opportunity to shape the community where they live.
Helen Putnam, new east side suburban development, 1970 (Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
In 1970, the idea of Petaluma citizens participating in shaping a path forward for their city was unthinkable. Outside developers were firmly in the driver’s seat, and they used their muscle and pocketbooks to ensure that no one got in their way.
But Helen DuMont Putnam, the city’s first woman mayor, did just that, shutting down all new development in the fall of 1970 to spend a year engaging with citizens in hammering out a new planning policy, one that would curb the urban sprawl overtaking the city.
That planning process not only united a city that had become increasingly split between its east and west sides, but it demonstrated that nothing gives people a sense of belonging more than having a or the chance to shape the community in which they live.
The plan that emerged was revolutionary, leading to a legal battle with developers over the next three years that unfolded in a series of dramatic twists and turns before ending up at the U.S. Supreme Court. The court’s decision would not only have an impact on the future of Petaluma, but on cities facing urban sprawl across the country, making Helen Putnam a torchbearer of the urban slow-growth movement.
Helen Putnam in Walnut Park, 1967 (Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
Surprisingly, it was not a path she ever envisioned for herself. Neither an activist nor a crusader, she was best known in political circles for bringing disparate people together in forging compromises. To most people outside her inner circles, she was the “nice lady with all the bracelets,” a reference to the 25 bracelets she wore on each arm her as her signature look.
But once Putnam committed to a course of action that she believed in, a willful and determined side of her personality kicked in, one best expressed by her favorite motto, “Full speed ahead.”
Stylish, charismatic, and strikingly tall, from the moment Helen DuMont arrived in Petaluma in 1931, she became known for her ability to infuse energy into every room she entered. Born in Bakersfield, raised in Alameda, she came to town at the age of 22, fresh out of UC Berkeley with a degree in education, to teach elementary school, and then junior high.
Putnam in Petaluma Spring Fashion Show, 1951 (Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
A classically trained pianist, during the 1930s Putnam played in a musical trio that performed at gatherings around town, including those of the Business and Professional Women’s Club, whose message to women at the time—that women needed to assume their share of responsibility for their communities by rendering public service—planted a seed in the mind of the young schoolteacher.
Putnam also began hosting local fashion shows, where she honed her skills as a mistress of ceremonies as well establishing a reputation as a fashion maven.
In 1937, she married Petaluma native Rutherford (Rud) Putnam, a service manager at a local auto dealer, and moved into the family home at B and Fair streets, whose address that became symbolic of another of her mottos: Be Fair. Four years later, she retired from teaching to devote her time to starting a family, giving birth to a daughter and son in short order. As a homemaker, Putnam prided herself on having a place for everything and everything in its place. That sense of order would carry over in her public service.
Putnam home, 900 B Street at Fair (Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
An outgoing personality whose conversation crackled with energy, Putnam was naturally drawn to networking among community organizations, beginning with the Gamma Gamma Society, a sorority that gathered for bridge and other amusements. As in almost every organization she joined, she quickly rose through the ranks to become president of the local chapter.
In 1947, she was coaxed by women in her network to run for a seat on the school board. Outpolling the other candidates, she was only the second woman to ever be elected to the board, and among current members, the only one with teaching experience. Recognizing Putnam’s natural leadership ability, her fellow board members chose her to serve as president, a position she would hold for the next 12 years.
1947 Board of Education, l to r: Norman Neal, Hall Weston, Putnam, C.A. Stimson, Charles Bock.
The school system she presided over in the late 1940s was dramatically different than the one she had experienced as a young teacher. Immediately following World War II, California discovered a second gold rush in suburban housing.
In Petaluma, as in other towns on the outskirts of large cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, an influx of discharged servicemen from all over the country were moving into town with their young families, creating a housing crisis. To help address the crisis, the federal government subsidized developers in building a cascade of suburban tract homes for the veterans, and also provided the veterans themselves with low-interest home loans requiring no down payment.
To ensure that new suburban communities in places like Petaluma remained largely white, the government required developers to insert clauses into the deeds of the houses they built prohibiting the sale, resale, or even rental to people of color.
Farmland east of downtown Petaluma, 1939 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
Petaluma’s first suburban development, Madison Square, created by Goheen Construction of Mill Valley, broke ground in 1946 on the farmland east of town. Bounded by East Washington, Payran, and Vallejo streets, and extending north to the Petaluma River, it was the largest housing development the city had ever seen, ultimately comprising 240 homes.
A three-bedroom home in Madison Square sold for $7,000, or $92,000 in today’s currency, with a monthly mortgage of about $44, or about $600 in today’s currency. A similar, though smaller development also went up at that time on the west side near Petaluma High School, extending along Dana Street from Fair to Melvin streets.
Madison Square housing development, looking down Madison Street, early 1950s (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
On the front lines of the sudden flood of young families into Petaluma were the elementary schools. As school board president, Putnam was tasked with mounting a school bond campaign to replace three cramped and outdated elementary schools built in the early 1900s—Lincoln, Washington, and McKinley—that failed to meet new earthquake safety requirements set by California’s recently passed Field Act.
Lincoln, McKinley, and Washington elementary school, late 1940s (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
The bond passed, and in 1949, a new McKinley School, able to accommodate 200 students, opened on Ellis Street. A year later, it was already in double session. In just five years, from 1945 to 1950, Petaluma’s population grew from 8,000, where it had sat at since 1930, to 10,000 residents, a 20% increase.
In addition to raising capacity issues at McKinley, the two new elementary schools planned for the west side, McNear, which was already under construction, and Valley Vista, scheduled to open in 1954, were already in need of expansion, forcing Putnam to campaign for a second school bond as large as the first.
New McKinley Elementary School, Ellis Street, built 1949 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
As president of the school board, Putnam was provided a seat on the city planning commission, which gave her a bird’s eye view of another post-war tsunami: the dramatic rise in car ownership that set off a massive expansion of state highways. In 1949, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved the location of a new freeway east of town, scheduled to open in 1957.
The news set off a land-buying spree of East Petaluma by developers. Two developers in particular, Blackwell Brothers of Santa Rosa and John Novak of Novato, both financed by Chicago and east coast backers, locked up farmland along both sides of the future freeway, and set about building tract homes.
Construction of U.S. 101 viewed from the new East Washington Street overpass looking north, 1955 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
Novak mapped out the land north of East Washington Street along McDowell Road, including 25 acres slated for the Petaluma Plaza Shopping Center, to construct 295 houses in a development called Novak Meadow.
The Blackwell Brothers were planning 385 houses south of East Washington Street along McDowell Road, in a development called McDowell Village. They also intended to build the Washington Square Shopping Center cater-corner to Novak’s shopping enter.
East Washington Street & McDowell Road, 1952 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
In 1952, five years before the new freeway opened, both developers began marketing their homes to commuters working in San Francisco, 45 minutes away by car. They were selling out. In exchange for requesting that the city annex their housing tracts, developers agreed to install sidewalks, sewers, street lighting, and fire hydrants, leaving the city on the hook for water, sewage, police, fire, and schools.
By 1954, the city had annexed another 1,800 acres for subdivisions on the east side, and also approved developments on the west side in the hilly neighborhoods of Sunnyslope, La Cresta, and Cherry Hill.
Housing construction on Hill Boulevard and Bassett Street above Petaluma High, 1955 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
Petaluma’s school population, which stood at 1,600 students in 1950, was projected to double by 1960. That placed Putnam back out on the campaign trail for yet another school bond, matched this time with a long term loan from the state for a combined total $4.2 million, or $40 million in today’s currency.
On the drawing boards this time were building two new schools on the east side—McDowell Elementary and the original Kenilworth Junior High on East Washington Street—and a replacements of the high school on Fair Street, which, having been built in 1915, was at capacity and deemed unsafe for earthquakes.
Petaluma High School, Fair Street, 1915-1959 (photo from 1920s postcard)
During this period, Putnam was also busy raising her profile in the area, especially among women, by making frequent appearances at PTA meetings, giving talks on Petaluma’s early history, and hosting fashion shows throughout the North Bay. In 1949, she became host of a midday talk show on KSRO radio, “Shopper’s Guide with Helen Putnam.” Targeted at homemakers, the show featured local news, shopping suggestions, and homemaking tips and was so popular it ran for five years.
Lillian McIntosh (seated), Putnam, and Eddie Dolan preparing for TV show on education at McNear School, 1952 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
Putnam also expanded her involvement in educational circles, joining the Sonoma County School Boards Association and rising though its ranks to become president in 1952. She followed a similar path with the California School Boards Association, becoming president in 1958.
By the late ’50s, Putnam was spending considerable time traveling around the state hobnobbing with various school boards and elected officials, including the governor, who appointed her a delegate to the 1955 White House Conference on Education hosted by the vice-president, Richard Nixon. While in Washington, D.C., she took the opportunity to visit the chambers of a former California governor she had worked with, Earl Warren, who had recently been appointed chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
1955 White House Education Conference, l-to-r, Richard Nixon, vice-president, Putnam, Gardiner Johnson, chief of the California delegation (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
But all the travel and hobnobbing increasingly pulled her away from Petaluma, where problems began to surface in the school district. In addition to the city’s increasing population, which jumped 40% from 1950 to 14,000 residents in 1960, the local tax assessment for schools was woefully insufficient, resulting in a group of underpaid, and very disgruntled, teachers.
In May of 1959, Putnam campaigned for increasing the tax assessment as well as for another large school bond to replace the junior high on Fair Street and build a second high school on the east side, which a decade later became Casa Grande High. The tax assessment passed, but the school bond did not, as voters made it clear they wanted to see a change on the school board. A month later, they got it.
Viewing model for new Kenilworth Junior High, 1955, l-to-r, Charles Bock, George Rohda, C.A. Stimson, Hall Weston, Norman Neal, Helen Putnam, Dwight Twist, and Fred Keeble (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
Running for her fourth term as president of the board, Putnam was trounced along with another incumbent up for reelection. Six months later, their elected replacements succeeded in passing a new school bond twice the size of what she had asked for.
After her defeat, Putnam returned to teaching elementary school, first at Marin School and then at Waugh School. She also tried her hand at politics, campaigning for the Democratic nomination to a state assembly seat, where she placed fifth in a field of five.
Putnam teaching first grade, Two Rock Union School, 1960s (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
In 1963, she was appointed principal and first grade teacher of Two Rock Union School west of town, a position she would hold for the next 15 years, most of them spent in public service as well. After wading back into politics as president of the local Democratic Club, in 1965 she decided to throw her hat in the ring as a candidate for mayor.
Mayors had traditionally been men drawn from the local business community. When her opponent pointed to her lack of business experience, Putnam demonstrated a graceful ability to reduce a political peer to a schoolboy, pointing out that “school business was big business.” In terms of budget and staff, it was in fact larger than most of the businesses in town.
Her mayoral campaign focused on three primary issues: generating new jobs by attracting clean, light industry to town; developing the Petaluma River into the business and recreational heart of the city, including rebranding Petaluma a river town as opposed to a chicken town, given that the local poultry business collapsed after World War II; and maintaining the city’s identity in the face of encroaching suburbia.
Putnam at the Petlauma Turning Basin, 1965 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
“The type of growth I’m interested in,” Putnam said, “is growth that retains Petaluma’s rank as a first-class city, not as a bedroom.”
That played well with many voters, among whom the watchword in the mid-1960s was “Let’s not become another San Jose,” referring to the south bay city that had been swallowed up by urban sprawl.
Elected Petaluma’s first woman mayor—or “electric mayor” as a second grader dubbed her, mispronouncing the word “elected”—Putnam was often showcased in the national press with a handful of other trailblazing women mayors. An informal survey conducted at the time by the Associated Press, found that the typical woman mayor was energetic but calm, outspoken but objective, and never lost her cool in public.
Ladies Home Journal, February 1973, featuring Putnam (Petlauma History Room)
Many had backgrounds as teachers, which imbued them with talents of fierce dedication, idealism, organizational ability, and a human concern for the “people” side of problems. Typically the first woman elected mayor of their city, they made a point of asserting their femininity and maintaining a ladylike dignity. As one woman mayor said, the trick to holding the respect of your colleagues and citizens was to, “Think like a man and act like a lady.”
Yet, their very presence made them reformers in a political system where decisions were largely made by men in smoke-filled back rooms, who then came out to announce them to women.
El Sombrero Restaurant, 215 Petaluma Boulevard North, 1965
Two of the favorite “back rooms” in Petaluma at the time were the morning coffee klatch at the U.S. Bakery on Petaluma Boulevard, where Della Fattoria is located today, followed by a two-martini lunch at El Sombrero restaurant on Petaluma Boulevard beside Penry Park.
But Putnam had no time for back room meetings, as her most immediate challenge as mayor was saving the downtown, and she chose to do so in a very public manner.
Helen Putnam meeting President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966 (photo Petaluma Argus-Courier)
The new shopping centers on the east side were drawing foot traffic away from the downtown, throwing merchants into a financial tailspin. Commercial landlords, no longer able to command premium rents, were letting their buildings slowly deteriorate. East Washington Street, the sole, two-lane thoroughfare connecting the east and west sides of town, was chronically congested.
Wickersham Building, 170 Petaluma Boulevard North, 1973 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
To alleviate the congestion and hopefully draw more people downtown, Putnam spearheaded an initiative in 1967 to widen Washington Street to four lanes, including installing a new four-lane bridge over the river. She then began championing a federally sponsored redesign of the downtown called the Core Area Plan.
The plan centered on converting Kentucky Street between Western Avenue and Washington Street into a closed-off mall, a common solution for federally funded, urban renewal programs around the country at the time. Parking for the mall would be provided by demolishing all the buildings along the east side of Keller Street between Washington Street and Western Avenue.
Sketch of proposed Kentucky Street Mall, 1968 (Petaluma Argus-Courier)
The plan also called for demolishing all of the buildings along the east side of Petaluma Boulevard from D Street, where the Theater District sits today, to Oak Street, and installing a six-lane thoroughfare running adjacent to the Petaluma River, with a pedestrian walkway between river and thoroughfare.
Sketch of proposed Esplanade, 1968 (Petaluma Argus-Courier)
In June of 1969, the Core Area Plan was submitted to voters in the form of a bond issue, and rejected. In that same election, Putnam was reelected to a second term as mayor by a very slim margin.
During her second term, Putnam changed her stance on downtown development from destruction to restoration, embracing the local Heritage Homes movement, which had been born in 1968 out of a beautification project inspired by Putnam, and then spirited following the demolition of the Healey Mansion at the corner of Washington and Keokuk streets in 1969 to make way for a gas station.
Healey Mansion, corner of Washington and Keokuk Streets, built 1909 and demolished 1969 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
She also brought to town restoration developer Skip Sommer to begin reviving the historic downtown by converting the Petaluma Mill into specialty shops, as well as relocating to the Turning Basin two Victorian homes slated for demolition, one to make way for a Wendy’s restaurant and the other for a 7-11 convenience store.
The Great Petaluma Mill, Turning Basin (Sonoma Country Genealogy & History Library)
Meanwhile, development on the east side, which had continued apace at an average of 300 new homes a year during the ’60s, suddenly accelerated in 1970, when builders erected almost 600 homes, bringing the town’s population, which stood at 14,000 in 1960, to 27,000 by 1970.
With 900 additional homes having been approved for construction, another 5,000 residents were projected by the end of 1971, raising the town’s total population to 32,000. In the fall of 1970, the city council was presented with a slate of additional proposals, which, if approved, would increase the city’s population by the end 1972 to 37,000.
Why the sudden acceleration in development? The short answer was water.
Petaluma postcard, early 1970s (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
Prior to 1960, Petaluma’s main water supply was drawn from wells and the headwaters of Adobe Creek on Lafferty Ranch atop Sonoma Mountain. In 1961, the city council agreed to build an underground aqueduct that diverted water to town from the Russian River via the newly constructed Coyote Dam on Lake Mendocino. Substantial water capacity was added in 1962 with the approval of the Warm Springs Dam west of Geyserville, although it was delayed by challenges from environmentalists and slow growth advocates from opening until 1982.
The Russian River aqueduct extended to Novato, but no further into Marin County. That served as a natural limit on suburban development in southern Marin, which in turn, raised the cost of land there, meaning that a homebuyer could get the same quality and same sized home in Petaluma for 20% less than they would have to pay in Marin. With new tract homes selling in Petaluma in 1970 for between $25,000 and $35,000, or $150,000 to $200,000 in today’s currency, that represented a significant savings.
Hopper Street Sewage Treatment plant, built 1937 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
But while Petaluma had plenty of water thanks to the diversion of Russian River, it didn’t have adequate sewage treatment. The sewage plant, originally constructed in 1937, was expanded in 1965 to accommodate a maximum population of 32,000, a level the city wasn’t expected to hit until at least 1980, and certainly not in 1971. The soonest an expansion could be made to the plant was three years and half years away.
Putnam and the city council suddenly found themselves between a rock and a hard place. In January of 1971, they declared a moratorium on further land annexation and zoning changes. They also hired San Francisco consulting firm Williams and Mocine, to recommend revisions to the city’s 1962 General Plan. The consultants began by surveying residents. At the time, 76% of residents on the east side commuted to work outside of town, while 61% of residents on the west side worked in town.
Petaluma City Council, 1973. Seated l-to-r: Bill Perry, Mayor Helen Putnam, Jim Harberson; standing l-to-r, Bob Brunner, Jack Cavanagh, Bob Daly, Fred Mattei
They found that the majority wanted light industrial growth for jobs, open space of surrounding agricultural land, and a permanent greenbelt between Petaluma and towns to the north and south. Most importantly, they wanted controlled growth with a target population of no more than 40,000 people, considerably lower than the ultimate population of 77,000 envisioned in the city’s 1962 General Plan.
That became clear in June of 1971, when the mayor and the city council put a $2 million bond issue before voters, to be matched by federal funds, for expanding the sewage plant to accommodate a maximum population of 100,000. It was soundly defeated. As a stopgap measure, the city decided to fund a $3.8 million enhancement to the sewage plant from revenue bonds, with federal and state funds picking up 80% of the price tag. But it remained a temporary measure, as the enhanced plant fell short of meeting state standards.
Meanwhile, on the planning front, the city’s consultants convened a panel of six citizen committees to work on what came to be called the Environmental Design Plan. The draft plan was then subjected to a number of public hearings.
On the eve of the plan’s adoption, Putnam and the city council met with developers. At the meeting, Putnam pointed out there was a trend toward limiting growth in California communities, and the city’s proposed plan had the support of the state’s commission on city annexations, of which she was a member. It was in the best interests of all, she offered, that developers find a way which to work with the city on administering the plan, rather than opposing it.
Putnam at CALAFCO meeting, Sonoma County, 1974 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
The developers were not receptive. They wanted a more flexible plan, one that didn’t limit the number of new houses built per year, as they believed it would lead to an inequity in how permits were allotted among builders, especially since the city was planning to limit individual developers to no more than 100 units per year, and exert more influence over design and construction quality.
Such restrictions, they argued, would not only drive up land costs, as water restrictions had previously done in Marin, but also construction costs, as the 100-unit cap per developer reduced cost efficiencies. Those inefficiencies would be compounded if developers were required to build on the west side of town, as the city was proposing, where hills made development more costly than building in the flats on the east side.
The bottom line for developers was that the city’s restrictions were going to out price lower income buyers, who represented a large part of their market. One developer jokingly warned Putnam that if the plan was adopted, builders might “haul off and give you a good suing.”
A week later, on March 28, 1972, the city council approved the Environmental Design Plan. The plan limited new development to 500 units per year for the next five years; 250 on the east side and 250 on the west side. It also included a greenbelt around the city.
Front page of the Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 28, 1972
Given the plan’s impact on unincorporated areas adjacent to the city, Putnam and the city council sought out the approval and support of the county board of supervisors. But the supervisors withheld their endorsement, voicing concerns the plan was unfair to rural landowners, in particular dairy ranchers—many of them struggling to stay afloat at the time—who were denied the right to sell their property to developers at market value.
The supervisors were also concerned about legal challenges to the plan, which everyone knew was coming.
On April 24, 1973, a coalition of Bay Area construction interests filed suit against the plan in federal court, seeking to have it declared illegal on the basis that it infringed upon people’s constitutional rights to live where they wanted. The backdrop for the legal challenge was lawsuits being waged across the country against cities using redlining as a means of maintaining racial segregation.
Two months later Putnam was reelected to her third term as mayor on a platform of “orderly progress and prosperity,” as opposed to the helter-skelter approach the city had been hostage to. Also on the ballot was a measure asking residents to approve the new growth limits. Largely advisory, it passed by a margin of 5-to-1.
Putnam with architect Dick Lieb (r) at opening of new Petlauma Library, 1976 (Sonoma County Genealogy & History Library)
In January of 1974, Judge Lloyd Burke of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco issued a verbal ruling striking down Petaluma’s growth plan. The following April, he went further in his written ruling, demanding that Petaluma maintain its city services to meet “market demand” and not use measures designed to “limit growth,” which he contended served to raise property values to the point that constructing low-cost housing was no longer economically feasible.
The city immediately requested a stay of the order while they appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Burke quickly denied their request. The city then appealed to the Ninth Circuit for a stay, which they also denied.
At this point, many would have thrown in the towel. But not Putnam. She carried on in her usual “full speed ahead” mode, asking the city’s outside legal counsel to make a last resort request for a stay order to Justice William O. Douglas on the U.S. Supreme Court, which he granted.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, San Francisco
On Valentine’s Day, 1975, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard Petaluma’s case. Attorneys representing the city argued that Petaluma was under unsustainable growth pressure by market forces, growing at a rate of 5% a year, versus 1.7% for the rest of the Bay Area, and 1.1% for the state. They held that the city should not have to provide services dictated by the whims of the housing market; nor plan the city’s development based on what developers wanted; nor be forced to annex land.
On August 23, 1975, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the city was within its rights “to preserve its small town character, its open spaces, and low density of population, and to grow at an orderly and deliberate pace.”
Now it was the builders’ turn to appeal the ruling, which they did, petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case.
Up to that point, the city had spent $48,000, or roughly $250,000 in today’s currency, on legal fees. Of that amount, $11,000 had been covered by donations from other cities, in average donations of $250. The developers had spent $75,000, or the equivalent of $360,000 in today’s currency. Going to the Supreme Court was expected to cost each side another $20,000, or roughly $100,000 in today’s currency.
On February 23, 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, letting stand the ruling of the lower court.
Front page of the Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 23, 1976
Later that year, a new majority was elected to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. They soon followed Petaluma’s lead in approving a new general plan that called for concentrated growth in the cities, limited development in rural areas, preservation of agricultural lands, and greenbelts between urban areas.
The new plan was timely, as right after Petaluma adopted its growth limits in 1972, the development tsunami moved on to Rohnert Park to the north of town, where a standard building lot sold for $10,000 less than in Petaluma, and $20,000 less than in southern Marin.
As developers descended upon Rohnert Park, the city’s population, which stood at 7,200 in 1972, tripled within six years to 22,000. In 1978, the city resorted to implementing its own growth management plan of 650 units a year, placing a hold on land annexation.
Meanwhile, Petaluma had become the darling of the “slow growth movement,” with Putnam receiving invitations to speak around the state and across the county. The second wave of feminism was happening all around her, and as one of only handful of women mayors in the country, she was asked to speak before women’s organizations, including the inaugural meetings of the Sonoma County chapters of NOW and the National Women’s Political Caucus.
But Putnam never served as a spokesperson for the feminist movement, nor even made public references to it. Instead, she was something more important than a mouthpiece: she was a model.
Putnam speaking at League of California Cities convention in San Diego, 1976 (Sonoma County Genealogy and History Library)
In 1976, Putnam was elected the first woman president of the League of California Cities. Later, in 1982, the league created the Helen Putnam Award for Excellence in her honor that continues to this date, bestowed upon city governments that demonstrate innovative problem solving.
In 1978,Putnam successfully ran for a seat on the county board of supervisors, representing Petaluma, Penngrove, and Cotati. Sadly, becoming a supervisor required that Putnam step down as principal and first grade teacher of Two Rock Union School.
As only the second woman elected to the board, she served alongside Helen Rudee, the first woman elected two years before. Much of the board’s focus in Putnam’s first four years was devoted to implementing the new general plan which imposed controlled growth upon the county. She was reelected to a second four-year term in 1982.
Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, 1982. Seated l-to-r, Helen Rudee, Bob Adams, Helen Putnam; standing Nick Esposti, Ernie Carpenter
Two years later, Putnam entered the Petaluma hospital for cancer surgery. She unexpectedly died following the surgery of a blood clot at the age of 75.
A few months before, she had addressed a black-tie fundraiser in Petaluma for California Lt. Governor Leo McCarthy, sponsored by the Petaluma branch of the American Association of University Women.
“I’m proud,” she told the gathering, “very proud, that everything I’ve done in my adult life, no matter how it turned out, I’ve done right here in this town.”
It was, McCarthy later remarked, like witnessing a real-life character from Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town.”
Helen Putnam dancing in the aisles with Petaluma grocer Bob Mallot, 1955 (Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
*****
SOURCES
Newspapers 1930-1946
Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Annual Dinner of Commerce Chamber,” March 13, 1934; “Elks Will Hold Memorial Service Sunday Night,” November 30, 1934; “B.P.W. Hold Spring Fashion Show,” February 27, 1937; “Petaluma’s Baby Service Club Receives Charter,” AC, May 21, 1937; “Miss Helen Du Mont is Bride at Oakland,” July 19, 1937; “Easter Bonnet Parade is Scheduled for Tonight at Woman’s Club,” March 9, 1939; “N. Thompson Again Heads School Board,” July 10, 1941; “$500,000 Housing Program Here,” April 2, 1946; “Style and Color Feature Fashions on Display at Show Given by Silver Spray Lodge,” April 6, 1946.
Newspapers 1947-1964
Petaluma Argus-Courier: “18 New Homes to Be Built In Petaluma,” January 11, 1947; “Alice Burmester Installed as New Gamma Gamma President by Helen Putnam,” March 13, 1947; “W.J. Minogue Holds Lead in Election,” June 17, 1947; “Helen Putnam Heads School Board,” July 2, 1947; “All Out Vote Urged in Special School Bond Election,” June 21, 1948; “Petaluma Gets Plan for New Freeway,” August 31, 1948; “Mrs. H. Putnam Represents School Boards at Trustees Convention at Long Beach,” October 16, 1948; “The Schools of Today,” April 26, 1949; “First of 1949 Fashion Series,” May 25, 1949; “Early Petaluma is Subject of Talk by Mrs. Helen Putnam,” October 21, 1949; Ad for “Shopper’s Guide with Helen Putnam,” December 12, 1949; “City Council,” December 20, 1949; “Helen Putnam in Demand as Fashion Show Commentator,” October 11, 1950; “Great Changes Are Expected Here Due to the Residence Area,” January 5, 1952; “Sonoma County School Trustees Association,” May 26, 1952; “Mrs. Putnam Quits City Planning Commission,” December 8, 1953; “Mrs. Putnam Reports NSBA Convention, Atlantic City,” March 9, 1954; “Board President Writes, A Look at Area’s Schools: with New Money, Without,” December 4, 1954; “Bond Issue, State Loan Both Carry,” December 8, 1954; “Shopping Center, More Homes Due,” January 27, 1955; “Novak Expands Plan for East Petaluma,” August 19, 1955; “Education Chief Returns; Opposes U.S. Education Aid,” December 6, 1955; “Another Big Subdivision Planned,” February 22, 1956; “Kenilworth School Dedication Sunday,” September 14, 1957; “Mrs. Putnam Speaks Against Tenure Plan,” April 16, 1959; “Immediate need is Solved; Later Need is Postponed,” May 21, 1959; “Voters Drop Two From School Board,” June 10, 1959; “High School District Can Now Play New Schools,” November 5, 1959.
Santa Rosa Press Democrat: “$150,000 Special Bond Issue for Schools is Called,” September 21, 1950; “Bay Area Population Wave Rolls Toward Lower Sonoma County,” October 21, 1956; “Hope of the Future Is in Our Schools,” October 21, 1956.
Newspapers 1965-2010
Long Beach Independent: “Mayors Predict More Women in Government,” July 25, 1977.
Los Angeles Times: “Petaluma Doing ‘Just Fine’ After 17 Years of Controls,” April, 11, 1988.
Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Helen Putnam, First Woman Ever to Seek Office of Mayor,” Argus-Courier, May 25, 1965; “Group Formed Here to Restore Older Homes,” February 8, 1968; “Probe City Sewer Future,” October 16, 1970; “Annexation Rejected by Council,” December 8, 1970; “Planning Department Pays Key Role in Area Future,” April 24, 1971; “Residents favor Industry, Open Space,” April 13, 1971; “Support the Sewer Bond,” June 1, 1971; “Bind Measure in Close Vote,” June 9, 1971; “Planners Ask that Citizens’ Committees be Established,” September 9, 1971; “Sewage Disposal Problems Council’s Latest Headache,” October 21, 1971; “Environmental Design Plan Report Tuesday,” November 17, 1971; “Sewer Improvement isn’t Answer,” January 12, 1972; “How to Control Growth?” April 11, 1972; “House Builders Meet with Council on 500,” March 23, 1972; “Design Plan Passes; Is Effective at Once,” March 28, 1972; “Petaluma Environmental Play Fails to Get OK,” January 25, 1973; “Housing Limit Challenged,” April 25, 1973; “Good Case for Housing Limit,” April 26, 1973; “Putnam Traces Deeds for City,” June 8, 1973; “Measure A,” June 11, 1973; “Putnam, Mattei, Brunner, Harberson Elected to Petaluma Council Positions,” June 13, 1973; “City Loses Growth Suit,” January 18, 1974; “City Growth Ordinance Outlawed,” April 29, 1974; “Judge Burke Denies Stay in Petaluma Growth Case,” May 25, 1974; “Stay Requested on Growth Judgment,” July 11, 1974; “Growth Ruling Stay Ordered by Douglas,” July 15, 1974; “Growth Plan Upheld,” August 13, 1975; “Growth Case Moves to High Court,” AC, December 31, 1975; “Growth Review Denied,” AC, February 23, 1976; “Mayor Putnam Voices Excitement for Future,” October 19, 1976; “Putnam Elected Supervisor,” November 8, 1978; “Madame Mayor” Begins New Career,” December 25, 1978; “Helen Putnam Dies,” July 3, 1984; Don Bennett, “A Look back at Petaluma’s First Shopping Center,” August 20, 2010.
San Antonio Express: “More Females Go Into Politics,” April 14, 1968; “The Maternal Mayors?” March 10, 1968.
San Francisco Examiner: “The Lady is a Mayor,” June 27, 1965.
Santa Rosa Press Democrat: “Mrs. Putnam to Run for Mayor’s Post,” April 12, 1965; “County Supervisor Race: Growth is Key Issue to Putnam, Cavanagh,” October 3, 1978; “Putnam Elected Supervisor,” November 8, 1978.
Magazines, Books, Journals, Websites
California Planning & Development Report, “Petaluma Marks 30 Years Of Growth Control,” Apr 1, 2002. https://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-962
City of Petaluma: General Plan 2025 (May 2008). https://cityofpetaluma.org/general-plan/
Bernard J. Frieden, “The Exclusionary Effect of Growth Controls,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 465, Housing America (Jan., 1983), pp. 123-135.
Marisa Kendal, “For Whites Only: Shocking Language Found in Property Docs Throughout Bay Area,” Bay Area News Group, February 26, 2019. Bayareanewsgroup.com.
Ladies Home Journal: “The Mayor’s a Lady,” February, 1973.
Andrew Martin, Petaluma Memories Video Series, “Helen Putnam,” 2012, archive.org https://archive.org/details/cstr_vid_000248/cstr_vid_000248_04.mp4
“Helen Putnam, Papers and Correspondence, 1947 – 1984,” History Room, Petaluma Public Library.
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Money: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Liveright Publishing, reprint edition), 2017.
Seymour I. Schwartz et al., “The Effect of Growth Control on the Production of Moderate-Priced Housing,” Land Economics, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Feb., 1984), pp. 110-114.
San Francisco women campaigning for passage of the 1911 amendment granting California women the right to vote (Underwood Archives/Getty Images)
As Election Day approaches, both political parties are jockeying for a constituency that may determine the outcome, especially in swing states—women voters. It was the same in 1912, the first year California women had the right to vote in a presidential election.
Then, as today, American politics were fractured, not only by polarization between the two major parties, but by divisions within them. The main election issue was that the economy had run amok with corporate monopolies protected by high tariffs. The cost of living was high, the gap between rich and poor was widening, jobs were being eliminated by new technologies, immigrants were streaming into the country, and Jim Crow was rampant.
The American Socialist Party, traditionally associated with organized labor, was gaining support from middle class voters by calling for reforms that returned power to the people, including enacting a minimum wage scale, banning child labor, adopting the ballot initiative, imposing federal management of the banking system, and federal inspections of workshops, factories, and food producers. As models of socialism, they pointed to public schools, highways, and the postal service.
Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Debs and vice-presidential candidated Emil Seidel, 1912
In Petaluma, the local Socialist party was led by two painting contractors, Lewis H. Hall and David Gutemute, and a shoe factory worker, William Boyd. In addition to working at the shoe factory, Boyd also operated a three-acre chicken ranch on Webster Street across from the Petaluma High football field. In 1911, after crushing two of his fingers in a feeding machine accident, Boyd quit the factory and launched a socialist newspaper called the Pacific Leader.
The Leader was printed by a fellow socialists, Anna Morrison Reed and her son Jack, whose print shop on Main and Martha streets beside Hill Plaza (today’s Penry Park) also printed Reed’s Sonoma County Independent newspaper and Northern Crown literary magazine. A well-known poet and journalist, Reed canvassed California in 1911 on behalf of the Equal Suffrage Association for the state’s amendment granting women the vote, which passed by a narrow margin of 50.7 percent.
The Anti-Suffrage Society (A.S.S.) satirized as behind the times in a suffrage postcard, c. 1909-1912 (Museum of London Collections)
Anti-suffragists claimed the amendment would have little impact on the 1912 election, as the majority of women were not interested in politics, then a dirty business of men in smoke-filled back rooms, and would vote as their husbands did. It was certainly no place for a lady, they contended, and definitely not a lady uneducated in political matters.
Boyd set out to help change that by hosting women speakers at the Petaluma Woman’s Club and the Socialist Hall to school women on the different parties and their platforms. He also traveled throughout Sonoma and Marin counties lecturing on the need for “humanitarian measures,” such as compassion for the poor, prohibition of child labor, equal pay and lower hours for women workers, “white slavery” or prostitution, and protection of the home against sickness, irregular employment, and old age through the adoption of a social insurance.
Recent passage of suffrage amendments in California and Washington state increased the number of states in which women could vote to six. That meant 1.3 million women of voting age were now eligible to participate in a national election that would ultimately draw 15 million voters. Initially, only the Socialists courted women, making suffrage part of their platform, and fielding a number of female candidates in state races, including governor of Washington. They were largely ignored by Republicans and Democrats, for whom a woman’s place remained in the home.
1912 political cartoon of Theodore Roosevelt trying to appeal to all constituencies (Karl K. Knecht, Evansville Courier, October 1912)
That changed once Theodore Roosevelt, after losing the Republican nomination to William Howard Taft, formed a third party called the Progressives. Looking to block the rising popularity of the Socialists, Roosevelt offered reforms designed to retool capitalism by restoring competition and minimizing exploitation of the working class, but at the same time drawing the line at fundamentally changing the economic power structure.
The Democrats, then the party of states’ rights and Jim Crow, adopted a similar platform after nominating reform-minded Woodrow Wilson. Neither party had any intention of letting socialism spread throughout America.
With his new Progressive Party, Roosevelt had a sudden change of heart regarding women. Embracing suffrage and adopting “social legislation” as the Progressives’ mantra, he appealed to women with many of the Socialists’ “humanitarian measures.”
Front page of the Woman’s Journal in 1912, depicting views of Taft, Wilson, and Roosevelt toward women voters (The Woman’s Journal, August 10, 1912)
In California cities like Petaluma, where Roosevelt clinched the nomination of both the Progressive and Republican parties, making Taft a non-presence in the state election, Boyd battled toe-to-toe with Roosevelt backers. The jostling resulted in drawing out more women voters, as it meant that for the first time in history, presidential candidates were treating women as important to victory.
In 1912, women nearly doubled the total number of registered Petaluma voters, making up 44 percent of the electorate. Election Day was marked by a torrential downpour. Local Socialists and Progressive party members organized fleets of automobiles to carry women voters to the polling stations, which themselves had been transformed thanks to having women appointed members of the elections board for the first time in the city. Men could be seen removing their hats as they entered polling places, and many left their cigars and cigarettes outside.
Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs speaking to a crowd (Fotosearch/Getty)
In Petaluma, a strong turnout of women voters is attributed to both Roosevelt’s close win over Wilson with 43 percent of the vote, and to Socialist candidate Eugene Debs capturing 14 percent, the largest percentage ever for a Socialist presidential candidate. Statewide, the results were much the same, with a Roosevelt win, and Debs drawing 12 percent of the vote.
Nationally however, Roosevelt’s Progressive Party resulted in both splitting the Republican Party and Wilson winning the election with only 42 percent of the vote.
Following the 1912 election, William Boyd and other local socialists continued to press their cause, running a Socialist ticket for local elections in 1913. But the 1912 election in many ways represented a high-water mark for the Socialist Party, in that it had managed to reform the two major parties. Not to mention that, going forward, political parties would no longer take the vote of women for granted.
***
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 29, 2020
SOURCES:
Books, Journals, Magazines, and Websites
Jo Freeman, We Will Be Heard: Women’s Struggles for Political Power in the United States (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008).
Jill Lepore, “Eugene V. Debs and he Endurance of Socialism,” The New Yorker, February 11, 2019.
Robert Tuttle, “The Appeal to Reason and the Failure of the Socialist Party in 1912,” Mid-American Review of Sociology, 1983, Vol. VIII, No. 1:51-81.
Index to Registration Affidavits of the Election Precincts of Sonoma County, California, General Election, November 5, 1912. Ancestory.com.
Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census, 13th Census of the U.S. Taken in the Year 1910, Vol II, Population, California, Table IV (Gov’t Printing Office, 1913). Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library.
Newspapers
Petaluma Argus: “Woodmen Convention,” Mary 19, 1910; “W.M. Boyd Has Accident,” May 23, 1911; W.G. Henry to Lecture (at Socialist Hall),” August 17, 1911; “To Start a New Paper Soon,” November 18, 1911; “Bessie Beatty’s, Splendid Effort,” January 17, 1912; “Miss Maley at the Hill,” March 7, 1912; “The Adjutant General Did Not Order Arrangements for Debate,” March 13, 1912; “Was Arrested on Charge of Criminal Libel on Saturday,” March 16, 1912; “Indictment Dismissed,” April 27, 1912; “Was Endorsed by Marin County Organizations,” June 17, 1912; “Pacific Leader Now the Name of Labor Journal,” July 12, 1912; “W.M. Boyd Leases the Reed Job Printing Office,” October 10, 1912; “Quiet Election and Full Voting Strength Will Not Be Polled,” November 5, 1912; “The Socialist Vote Here,” November 6, 1912.
Petaluma Courier: Boyd ad for pullets at Pearce Street farm, October 16, 1909; “Socialist Club Elects Officers”, January 10, 1910; “Elected Officers,” March 30, 1910; “W. Boyd Will Open Discussion,” November 3, 1911; “Will Give Series of Lectures,” July 20, 1912; “Local Delegates Elected,” August 17, 1912; “Attended Meeting at Santa Rosa,” August 25, 1912; “Socialist Candidate for President,” August 26, 1912; Boyd Speaks at San Anselmo Woman’s Club, August 28, 1912; “A Challenge,” October 28, 1912; “Roosevelt Bait for Suffragists,” October 29, 1912.
Good and evil, smart but ignorant, compassionate yet unsympathetic, honorable as well as ignoble, a man of many professions and passions.
Edward S. Lippitt at his office in the Mutual Relief Building, Kentucky Street and Western Avenue, 1910 (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
As farmers, merchants, stock breeders, and ministers descended upon the newly established city of Petaluma in the 1860s, the one thing missing from the growing metropolis was a Renaissance Man—a knowledgeable, educated polymath proficient in a range of different fields, who could help bring Petaluma’s various economic, civic, and religious threads together into a cohesive whole.
In 1863, such a man arrived: Edward Spaulding Lippitt. A theologian, lawyer, educator, newspaper editor, gardener, and politician, he would have a major influence on the town’s moral, educational, and political development, for better or worse, over the next half century.
Born in 1824 on a farm in Woodstock, Connecticut, Lippitt descended from English Puritans who settled Rhode Island in 1630. He exhibited at an early age both the ambition and restlessness that marked the many twists and turns of his adult life. At sixteen he left school to apprentice for two years with a Yale-educated carpenter before entering Yale himself. After one semester, he transferred to Wesleyan University, an all-male Methodist college in Connecticut, lured by a scholarship he received from a family friend.
Lippitt graduated with a Master of Arts degree in 1847. He initially took a job as a school principal in New Hampshire for a year before entering Harvard Law School. He remained at Harvard only one semester before heading to Ohio, where he took a summer job as a surveyor on a new rail line from Cincinnati to Columbus. At the end of the summer, he settled in Cincinnati, accepting a job teaching mathematics and science at Wesleyan Female College.
Wesleyan Female College, Cincinnati, founded 1843 (photo Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library)
Lippitt also married in 1848, but lost his wife to cholera less than a year after the wedding. In 1851, he married a second time to Sarah Lewis, daughter of a prominent physician in Monroe, Louisiana, and stepdaughter of H.H. Kavanaugh, a prominent bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, which had spilt from the main church over objections to church’s support of abolition. The couple would go on to have nine children, four of whom died in childhood.
In 1853, Lippitt left Wesleyan Female College to open his own school in Cincinnati, which he called Professor Lippitt’s Scientific and Classical Institute. It closed within a year. In 1854, after being ordained a deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church, he was appointed principal of the Boys Classical School in Cincinnati, as well as board secretary of the newly established Methodist Spring Mountain Seminary.
After immersing himself in an independent study of law books, he was admitted to the bar in Ohio, a common practice for many lawyers at the time. He followed up with an apprenticeship as a junior partner at the Cincinnati law firm of Probasco, Lippitt & Ward. In 1859, after the law firm’s senior partner died, he was hired by Cincinnati’s city solicitor, Rutherford B. Hayes, as assistant city solicitor. A strident reformer, Lippitt also became politically active in the abolitionist wing of Ohio’s newly established Republican Party.
Hayes, who would later be elected Ohio governor in 1868 and U.S. president in 1876, was voted out of office as city solicitor in the spring of 1861 just as the Civil War was starting, and soon after joined the Union Army. Lippitt chose to stay in Cincinnati, securing a new position with the post office.
Rutherford B. Hayes, Cincinnati City Solicitor, 1850s
In 1862, he was indicted for embezzlement after allegedly opening letters in the post and stealing money from them. Lippitt posted a $1,500 bail, but forfeited it, fleeing Cincinnati with his wife and children before the trial. He was reportedly seen making his way to Oregon, but instead, after a wagon train ride across the country, ended up in Sacramento, California, where, at the local Methodist Episcopal church, he ran into a minister he knew from college who offered him a job teaching mathematics at the University of the Pacific, a Methodist college in Santa Clara.
After a year in Santa Clara, Lippitt was hired in July 1863 as the second superintendent of the newly established public school system in Petaluma. Tax-funded since 1859, the school district consisted of four primary and grammar schools. The main campus was the recently constructed Brick School at the northeast corner of B and Fifth streets. Tasked in part with creating a high school curriculum for students in the growing city, one of the initial controversial issues Lippitt faced was educating Black students.
Petaluma Brick School, northeast corner of B and Sixth streets, built 1860 (photo Sonoma County Historical & Genealogy Library)
In 1864, a new California state law required that public school districts provide funding for “separate but equal” schools for children of color. Working with the school trustees and leaders of the local Black community, Reverend Peter Killingsworth of the local African Methodist Episcopal Church and George W. Miller, a barbershop owner, Lippitt hired a young Black teacher from San Francisco named Rachel Coursey, and rented out a house on Washington Street as a school for Black students.
A skilled and forceful orator, Lippitt also played a prominent role in Petaluma’s early religious community. Shortly after his arrival, he was appointed superintendent of the Sunday School program at the Methodist Episcopal Church, the city’s largest Protestant congregation, then located at the northwest corner of A and Fourth streets. He also served as the interim minister at the Congregational Church for ten months.
In 1864, in addition to his job as school superintendent, Lippitt was appointed to a two-year term as pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church. During his tenure, Rev. Lippitt oversaw the construction of a new church at the northwest corner of Keller Street and Western Avenue. After his term as pastor ended, he continued to serve as one of the congregation’s elders for decades, teaching Sunday school, giving occasional Sunday sermons, and officiating over weddings and funerals.
Petaluma Methodist Episcopal Church, northwest corner of Keller Street and Western Avenue, built 1867 (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
Lippitt also became politically active in the Radical Republican Party, including serving as chairman of the Sonoma County Republican Party. Nationally, the Radical Republicans, led by Christian reformers like Lippitt, had focused largely on abolishing slavery and establishing civil rights for former slaves. Following the Civil War they dominated Congress, setting the terms for Reconstruction of the South, as well as securing the presidential election of Ulysses S. Grant in 1868.
In March 1867, Lippitt announced plans to run for State Superintendent of Public Schools, challenging the Republican incumbent, John Swett. He lined up as backers two powerful state Republicans, George Gorham, who was running for governor that year, and U.S. Congressman Cornelius Cole, a former classmate from Wesleyan University who was running for the U.S. Senate.
At the annual conference of the Sonoma County teachers that summer, Lippitt, in his sometimes haughty manner, announced that, if elected state school superintendent, he would use his influence to adopt the Protestant Bible as a textbook in public schools. His announcement was met with an outcry from attendees. Some opposed using such a holy text in a secular setting. Others objected to the use of a Protestant Bible in schools attended by Catholic and Jewish students.
In response, Lippitt lashed out at Catholics at the conference, specifically Irish Catholics, then California’s largest immigrant body, alleging that statistics showed crime to be more rife in Catholic countries due, in his opinion, to their lack of access to “a free and open bible.” After being publicly rebuked by Sonoma County’s School Superintendent Rev. C.G. Ames, Lippitt lost the backing of Gorham and Cole in his campaign for the state race, and withdrew his bid.
Professor Lippitt’s Scientific and Classical Institute, D Street, built 1868 (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
A month later, Lippitt resigned from his position as Petaluma Public School Superintendent and announced plans to build a new private high school in town. Professor Lippitt’s Scientific and Classical Institute he stated, would be Christian in nature, but not sectarian, and designed to prepare students for universities, the ministry, and other professions. Lippitt opened the school in the fall of 1867 in the temporary quarters of Brier’s Church on Third Street (now Petaluma Boulevard South) near C Street.
A year later, he trumpeted the grand opening of a handsome new Gothic Revival Style schoolhouse on D Street between Sixth and Seventh streets, then at the edge of town. Debt-financed, the school cost $7,000 ($126,000 in early 21st century currency). It extended from D to E streets, and sat only half a block from the Gothic Revival Style house Lippitt had recently built for his own family at the southwest corner of D and Sixth streets.
Lippitt home, southwest corner of Sixth & D streets, built 1860s; just before being demolished in 1966 (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
In February of 1870, Lippitt was invited to deliver the keynote address at a gathering celebrating the ratification of the 15th Amendment that provided Black men with the right to vote. The event was hosted by Petaluma’s Black militia, the Colfax Guard, named for the abolitionist and U.S. vice-president Schuyler Colfax, and led by local Black leader Captain George W. Miller. A few months after the celebration, Miller led a delegation of Black residents to Lippitt’s home, where after serenading him in gratitude for his advocacy of civil rights, they presented him with two silver tablespoons featuring a medallion of Lady Liberty with his inscribed initials.
A month later, in June of 1870, Lippitt was forced to closed down his private high school due to under enrollment. That fall, the school was taken over by Petaluma’s former school principal Abigail Haskell and her teaching colleague Tracy Mott, who renamed it the Petaluma Home Institute. Their institute only lasted a year before it too closed its doors. In 1873, the Petaluma School District purchased the building in a foreclosure sale for $3,800 to use as its first public high school campus. As they set about remodeling it, they incurred bitter criticism from Lippitt for “turning a tolerably fine building into a mongrel” at an unnecessary cost to taxpayers.
The Petaluma Argus office, McCune Building, northeast corner of Main and Washington streets, 1877 (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
With his bank account drained, Lippitt took a part time job as associate editor of the Petaluma Argus, a weekly Republican newspaper run by Henry L. Weston. He also opened up a legal practice on the side at the Argus building at Washington and Main streets. Soon after hiring Lippitt, Weston departed on a six-month sojourn to the East Coast with his family, leaving Lippitt in charge of the newspaper. He wasted no time employing the pages of the Argus to settle old scores with his Republican friends, including Cornelius Cole, who had been elected to the Senate in 1867, and George Gorham, who, after losing the governor’s race that year, took a job in Washington as secretary of the U.S. Senate.
Lippitt’s quarrel with the men extended back to the fall of 1869. Then chairman of the Sonoma County Republican Party, Lippitt lobbied Senator Cole to nominate a local candidate to what was then a federal appointment as attorney general of California. When word came that Cole was instead planning to nominate Santa Rosa attorney L.D. Latimer, Lippitt wrote to Cole, accusing Latimer of being someone who spent his earnings at the bar and the gambling table. After an initial public flurry, during which Lippitt’s charge was widely disputed, Latimer was appointed state attorney general and Lippitt’s “dirty trick” became the subject of an expose by the Washington correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, a Republican newspaper.
Livid, Lippitt went after Cole and Gorham in his Argus editorials, accusing them of being “pot house politicians” who were misrepresenting the Republican Party in Washington. He also accused the Chronicle’s correspondent of slander. The correspondent in turn sued Lippitt and the Argus, asking for $5,000 ($100,000 in early 21st century currency) in damages to his reputation. When Weston returned from his East Coast journey, he promptly published an apology to the Chronicle’s correspondent and asked for Lippitt’s resignation from the newspaper, after which the lawsuit was dropped.
Henry L. Weston, editor and owner of the Petaluma Argus, 1869 to 1887 (photo Petlauma Argus-Courier)
After being fired from the Argus, Lippitt focused his attention on building a law practice specialized in deeds, mortgages, and leases. In 1873, he was appointed both the city’s notary public and its legal solicitor, two positions he held concurrently with his private practice until 1881.
To help restore his finances and expand his business network, he joined the boards of a number of local business enterprises, including the Mutual Relief Association, Petaluma’s largest insurance company; the Sonoma and Marin Railroad Company, a venture originally formed by a group of wealthy Petaluma capitalists that was sold to Peter Donahue, owner of the San Francisco and North Pacific Railway, who finished laying the tracks to San Rafael and Tiburon; and the Sonoma Marin District Agricultural Society, established in 1867 to promote advances in farming and sponsor the annual county fair, where Lippitt’s roses, fuchsias, and fruits were regular contest winners.
Fairgrounds of the Sonoma Marin Agricultural Society on Fair Street, 1873 (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
In a demonstration of his broad talents, Lippitt was also commissioned by the city in 1876 to create a landscape design of trees and flowers for the newly established D Street Plaza, later renamed Walnut Park, which they never implemented, leaving the site a grazing lot for livestock for another two decades. A bibliophile with reportedly the largest private book collection in the area, he was a strong advocate of public libraries. In 1867, he helped create a library in the Odd Fellows Lodge that was open to the public for a membership fee.
After San Francisco passed an act in 1867 allowing the city to levy taxes for a public library, Lippitt submitted a proposed amendment to the state legislature that would extend the act to all incorporated California cities. After the amendment known as the Roger’s Act passed, a public library was established in Petaluma’s city hall, using books donated from the Odd Fellows library. Appointed a lifetime director and trustee of the library, Lippitt became a regular speaker in their annual lecture series, and in 1904 was given the honor of laying of the cornerstone of the new Carnegie Free Public Library at B and Fourth streets.
Petaluma Carnegie Library, 4th and B streets, built 1904 (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
But it was in the political realm that he sought to make his biggest impact. Following the onset of a financial recession in 1873 and a number of financial scandals in the Grant administration, the Republican Party began to splinter, and in 1874 lost control of Congress to the Democrats. Despite his fallout with Senator Cole and Senate Secretary Gorham, Lippitt remained actively engaged in the Republican Party as a member of the State Central Committee, and ran in the 1875 Republican primary for country district attorney, but lost.
After his defeat, he underwent a political conversion to the Democratic Party, denouncing the Republicans as having “degenerated into a vast machine for the manufacture of all that is evil.” Joining the Democratic State Central Committee chaired by railroad baron Peter Donahue, he barnstormed the state for the Democrats during the 1876 presidential election, speaking in his usual fiery style as a former Republican insider who now regarded Reconstruction “the greatest crime of the nineteenth century.”
Renouncing his abolition beliefs, Lippitt called former slaves in the South the “lowest in scale of civilization and intelligence of any race on this continent . . . cruel and barbarous, whose respect for life is about that of the Chinese.” He accused northern carpetbaggers of subjecting the South to “the rule of the most ignorant races of servile men” by giving Blacks the vote while denying the same right to former Confederate officers, arguing that Blacks should not be given the vote until they were educated to execute it properly, a process he expected might take generations.
As the November presidential election of 1876 drew nearer, Lippitt signed on as the founding editor of the Petaluma Courier, a weekly Democratic newspaper launched by printer William F. Shattuck, whose father, Judge Frank W. Shattuck, was a prominent leader of the Sonoma County Democratic Party. Lippitt wasted no time discrediting Republican presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes, claiming to have inside knowledge as Hayes’ former “law partner” in Cincinnati, a claim that Republicans quickly exposed as a lie, noting that he had merely been an assistant solicitor.
Petaluma Courier office, Main Street across from Mary Street, c. 1880s (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
One of the most contentious and controversial presidential elections in American history, the 1876 election was marred by massive fraud, voter suppression, and illegalities on both sides, in the end leaving the deciding electoral votes of four states—Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon—unresolved. With Democrats controlling the House and Republicans the Senate, a congressional commission ended the impasse by crafting an informal deal known as the Compromise of 1877, which awarded the disputed four electoral votes to Hayes, making him president. In return, Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South and end Reconstruction, which allowed Democrats to impose a series of “Jim Crow” laws, legalizing discrimination and disenfranchising Black voters for the better part of a century.
While Lippitt praised the new Southern policy that President Hayes was forced to implement, he denounced the means by which Hayes came to power as “rotten, low, mean, and sneaking.” It was somewhat surprising then, that when President Hayes and his delegation came to Petaluma in 1880 to visit the agricultural fair, he attended a luncheon reception at Lippitt’s house.
With the end of Reconstruction, Lippitt used the Courier to launch a newspaper war with Henry Weston’s Argus over Petaluma’s “colored school.” The Argus had joined in a Republican campaign of questioning the cost efficiency of maintaining California’s segregated school policy for a relatively small number of Black students, as opposed to integrating those students into the white schools.
The campaign, spearheaded by a group of state Black leaders, including Petaluman George Miller, who convened annually as the Colored Convention, succeeded in convincing the school boards of other cities, including San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland, and Vallejo, to abolish their “colored schools.” Petaluma, in what the San Francisco Chronicle described as “spirit of caste still alive and dominant,” remained a prominent holdout.
The local newspaper war intensified when it was revealed that a Black barbershop owner named Henry Jones had asked the principal of the white Brick School, Martin E. Cooke Munday, to admit his son, complaining that the boy was receiving a substandard level of instruction at the “colored school.” Lippitt’s Courier reported that Munday, a young leader of the local Democratic Party, had found Jones’ son unqualified for entry to the all-white Brick School. Alternatively, the Argus reported that Munday had privately told Jones that “no colored child” would be admitted as long as he was principal of the school.
Lippitt and the Courier continued to support Petaluma’s “separate but equal” policy until the California legislature finally outlawed such policies in 1880. By that time, most of Petaluma’s Black population had left the city for safer Black communities in Vallejo and Oakland.
Lippitt remained editor of the Courier into the 1880s, employing it as a mouthpiece of the Sonoma Country Democratic Party. He also barnstormed the state on behalf of Democratic candidates, sometimes alongside former school principal Munday, who, after replacing Lippitt as city attorney in 1882, was elected to the state assembly in 1885 before making an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor.
Lippitt’s son Edward (center), with members of the Lippitt Temperance Club, 1903 (photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
Temperance was another cause Lippitt promoted in the Courier. A member of the Petaluma Temperance Reform Club, he ran a weekly column in the paper called “The WCTU Corner.” Along with his son Edward L. Lippitt, a music teacher, he also formed the Lippitt Temperance Club to teach moral and social values to young men and women in town. Lippitt however drew the line at the WCTU’s early campaign for woman suffrage, writing in the Courier that women petitioning for the right to vote should be “lynched.”
Likewise, when local wheat farmers, many of them former Republican colleagues, formed cooperatives in the mid-1870s as a means of collectively negotiating with grain brokers and railroad monopolies, Lippitt denounced them in the Courier for embracing “communism and socialism.”
Mutual Relief Building, southwest corner of Kentucky Street and Western Avenue, built 1886; pictured in 1966 (photo Sonoma Country History & Genealogy Library)
After relinquishing editorship of the Courier, Lippitt moved his law office in 1886 into the new Mutual Relief Building at the southwest corner of Kentucky Street and Western Avenue, and welcomed his second son Frank to join him in his practice, now called Lippitt and Lippitt. For the first five years, Frank operated a branch office for the firm in San Francisco. He was subsequently appointed to his father’s old position as Petaluma city attorney in 1896, while still continuing to work with his father in their private practice.
Frank Lippitt in the offices of Lippitt & Lippitt, Mutual Relief Building, 1910 (Photo Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)
By the turn of the century, Lippitt was a fixture around town, bestowed with the title of Petaluma’s “Grand Old Man.” He reported regularly to his office until 1911, when a series of apoplexy attacks left him housebound. Just months before he died at the age of eighty-seven in 1912, he wrote that the most valuable advice he had received in life was from the father of a classmate at Harvard, who as a physician treated Lippitt for a cold in his freshman year.
“Young man,” the physician told him, “God made man with a beard, and placed him in a garden. I will give you a prescription, which if you follow, will ensure you a long life: Let your beard grow, and work in a garden.”
“I have shaved but once since,” Lippitt wrote, “and have always had a garden to work in and to take great delight in its flowers and fruits.”
***
SOURCES SUMMARY
Newspapers
Cadiz Sentinel: “Young and Pure—More of it,” April 2, 1862.
Cincinnati Daily Press: June 2, 1859; June 18, 1859.
Cincinnati Enquirer: Advertisement, September 3, 1853; “Professor Lippitt,” April 21, 1862.
Cloverdale Reveille: “In the Superior Court,” September 28, 1889.
Daily Ohio Statesman: “The Grand Jury,” April 26, 1862.
The Elevator: “Petaluma,” November 1, 1867; “Correspondence of the Elevator,” February 19, 1869.
The Highland Weekly News: “Political Meetings,” September 15, 1859.
Los Angeles Herald: “Prof. Lippitt Speaks,” October 25, 1888.
McArthur Democrat: “You have Tears to Shed,” August 3, 1855.
Petaluma Argus: “The School Festival (J.M. Littlefield superintendent), April 24, 1863; “District School,” July 1, 1863; “M.E. Sabbath School,” October 9, 1863; “Public School,” January 13, 1864; “Resigned,” July 18, 1867; Ad for “High School,” September 26, 1867; “Prof. Lippitt’s Scientific and Classical Institute,” February 6, 1868; “Commencement,” August 20, 1868; “Grand Union Meeting,” September 10, 1868; “Republican County Convention” July 8, 1869; “Appointed,” December 18, 1869; “An Unprovoked Slander,” January 1, 1870; “Flag Presentation,” January 1, 1870; “Celebration,” February 28, 1870; “We Bow,” April 16, 1870; “Going East,” May 23, 1870; “Personal,” October 8, 1870; “We Bow,” April 16, 1870; “Two Dead Ducks,” April 23, 1870; “Going East,” May 23, 1870; “The Levee,” June 4, 1870; “A Splendid Testimony,” June 25, 1870; “Personal,” October 8, 1870; Ad for “E.S. Lippitt, Attorney and Counselor at Law,” October 8, 1870; “Petaluma Home Institute,” December 17, 1870; Advertisement for E.S. Lippitt, Notary Public, February 10, 1873; “Farmers Club,” April 1, 1873; “City Attorney,” May 13, 1873; “The Fair,” October 11, 1873; “To Be or Not to Be,” June 26, 1874; “The Fair,” September 18, 1874; “Board of Directors,” November 20, 1874; “Temperance Convention,” July 9, 1875; “Our Plazas,” January 28, 1876; “The Negro School,” April 5, 1877; “Personalities,” August 31, 1877; “How is This?” August 24, 1877; “The Election,” April 11, 1878; “Sonoma and Marin Railroad,” July 5, 1878; “Temperance Lecture,” June 6, 1879; “Who Has Lied,” October 25, 1884; “The Public Schools,” November 7, 1893; “History of the Local Library,” June 10, 1904; “Eighty Candles Adorn His Birthday Cake,” September 14, 1904; “Petaluma’s Grand Old Man Passes Another Milestone,” September 17, 1909; “Reminiscences of a Long Life”: May 13, 1910, September 2, 1910, October 3, 1910, October 29, 1910, June 10, 1911, June 17, 1911.
Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Newspaper Completes Century,” August 17, 1955; “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” December 17, 1960; “Argus-Courier Celebrates 160 years of Chronicling Petaluma’s History,” September 24, 2015;
Petaluma Courier: “The Tilden Troopers,” November 9, 1876; “Petition for Woman Suffrage,” December 28, 1876; “The Result Secured,” December 28, 1876; “The Colored School,” April, 12, 1877; “Letter from a Citizen,” April 19, 1877; “The Election,” September 6, 1877; “President Hayes in Petaluma,” September 15, 1880; “Death of Bishop Kavanaugh,” March 19, 1884; Lippitt Attorney at Law advertisement, January 20, 1886; “A Lively Meeting,” October 19, 1896; “The L.T.C. held . . .” January 23, 1897; “Organized a New Chapter,” January 18, 1902; “The L.T.C.” January 29, 1903; “Prof. E.L. Lippitt and his L.T.C. . . .” August 14, 1907; “E.S. Lippitt Again Ill,” November 22, 1911; “E.S. Lippitt Better,” July 24, 1911; “Death of E.S. Lippitt,” May 3, 1912.
San Francisco Chronicle: “How Latimer’s Appointment Came,” December 24, 1869; “Another of His Public Statements Proved False,” November 6, 1873;
San Francisco Examiner: “In the Assembly,” January 28, 1884
Sonoma Democrat: “Teacher’s Institute,” June 1, 1867; “The Bible in the Public Schools,” June 8, 1867; “Schoolmasters Abroad,” June 8, 1867; “Sunday Laws,” August 24, 1867; “A Bigot,” October 2, 1867; April 23, 1870; “Two Dead Ducks,” April 30, 1870; “Law Suit,” August 27, 1870; “Law Suit Dismissed,” October 29, 1870; “Apology,” November 5, 1870; “E.S. Lippitt Resigns,” November 12, 1870; “Democratic Meeting,” August 18, 1877;
Books, Journals, Websites, Archival Records
“Alumni Record of Wesleyan University,” Middleton, Conn, 1883, p. 83-84.
Michael Les Benedict, “Southern Democrats in the Crisis of 1876-1877: A Reconsideration of Reunion and Reaction.” Journal of Southern History (1980): 489-524.
D. Michael Bottoms, An Aristocracy of Color: Race and Reconstruction in California and the West, 1850-1890 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2013), pp. 55–59.
Tom Gregory, “Biography of Edward S. Lippitt,” History of Sonoma County, California (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1911.
History of the Bench and Bar: Being Biographies of Many Remarkable Men . . ., edited by Oscar Tully Shuck (Commercial Printing House, 1901), p. 533-534.
Ari Hoogenboom, Rutherford Hayes: Warrior and President (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1995), p. 114.
E.S. Lippitt, Autobiography of Edward Spaulding Lippitt, edited by Lee Torliatt (Santa Rosa: Sonoma County Historical Society), pp. 1, 41, 43.
J.P. Munro-Fraser, History of Sonoma County (Allen, Bowen, & Co., 1880), p. 328. “Petaluma Township, Part 3 1880.”
Catherine Coffin Phillips, Cornelius Cole, California Pioneer (San Francisco, 1929)
Katherine Rinehart, Petaluma: A History in Architecture (Arcadia Publishing, 2005); Petaluma Argus: An
Willoughby Rodman, History of the Bench and Bar of Southern California (California, W.J. Porter, 1909) p. 208.
“Woman Suffrage Petition, 1870,” Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library. .
