A video interview conducted by John Patrick Sheehy
Link to video interview on Sonoma County Library website:
Skip Sommer Interview
Tag: Skip Sommer
The Birth of Petaluma’s Revival
When it came to business opportunities, Skip Sommer was superstitious. If a new venture didn’t include the number six, he approached it warily. If it referenced both six and an eagle, he doubled down.[1]
On May 11, 1975, Sommer drove his tan diesel Cadillac—license plate “Eagle 66”—into downtown Petaluma and pulled up beside the dilapidated Golden Eagle Mill at 6 Petaluma Boulevard North.[2]
Bingo!
Up the street, Petaluma’s statuesque mayor, Helen Putnam, was leading a group of 200 preservationists on a tour of the city’s historic downtown. As the group emerged from the new Lan Mart gallery of shops—Petaluma’s first adaptive reuse of a historical structure—Putnam steered them across the street to the Golden Eagle Mill.[3]
There, to the fanfare of popping champagne corks, she introduced Sommer, who emerged from a curtain of dusty cobwebs to announce his plan to save the river city. “In the old days,” he told the crowd, “schooners would tie up to the docks of this mill to pick up feed for the horses of San Francisco. Soon, it will be yachts tying up here to visit the new Great Petaluma Mill.”[4]
He proceeded to unveil his vision: transforming the old granary into a Victorian-themed arcade of specialty shops patterned after San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square.
As crazy as it might have sounded, Putnam let it be known that Sommer’s scheme had her full support. The stakes were simply too high to fail.
Sprawling housing developments were overwhelming Petaluma’s infrastructure. The city’s attempt to pump the brakes—capping new housing units at 500 per year and imposing a greenbelt around the city—was met with a lawsuit from developers. After losing the first round in court, the city was granted an appeals hearing.[5] Optimistic about a favorable outcome, Putnam unleashed her side maneuver: revitalizing the downtown.
“The type of growth I’m interested in,” she declared, “is growth that retains Petaluma’s rank as a first-class city, not as a bedroom community.”[6]
For Putnam, that meant staging a comeback of the Petaluma River.[7]
For more than a century, the river served as the lifeblood of the city, its downtown banks dotted with grain mills and warehouses. Following World War II, the rise of large factory farms in Central California and elsewhere decimated the local poultry and dairy industries, leading to a sharp decline in commercial river traffic. Then came the opening of the freeway in 1956, placing Petaluma within easy commuting distance of San Francisco.[8]
Tract homes quickly sprang up across the flats east of town, accompanied by shopping centers, restaurants, and motels, all draining foot traffic from the downtown. No longer able to command premium rents, commercial landlords let their timeworn buildings slowly deteriorate, leaving the town pockmarked with boarded-up eyesores.
In the mid-sixties, the city began tagging old buildings as safety hazards. In most cases, demolishing them was cheaper than bringing them up to code for earthquake and fire risks. That opened the door to urban renewal, the federally funded movement sweeping America.
The wrecking ball began swinging in 1965, its first victim the original Golden Eagle Mill built in 1888 along the east side of the Turning Basin. Before the mill’s destruction, Golden Eagle moved its operations into the former G.P. McNear Feed Mill at Petaluma Boulevard and B Street, which it purchased in 1958.[9]
Once the mill was razed, Novato developer Walter Kieckhefer began planning construction of the Golden Eagle Shopping Center (today’s River Plaza Shopping Center) in its place.[10]
Putnam, first elected mayor in 1965, supported urban renewal, overseeing the expansion of Washington Street, the sole traffic artery to the burgeoning eastside, into a four-lane thoroughfare. That began with the demolition of three blocks of historic buildings at the intersection of Washington Street and Petaluma Boulevard.[11]
In the late sixties she backed the Core Area Plan, a federally funded redesign of the downtown that called for converting Kentucky Street between Western Avenue and Washington Street into a closed-off mall, and demolishing all the buildings along the east side of Petaluma Boulevard from D to Oak streets to install a six-lane thoroughfare along the river.[12]
Two months before the Core Area Plan was put before voters, Petaluma’s urban renewal bulldozer hit a speed bump. The Healey Mansion, a stately Queen Anne Victorian at the corner of Washington and Keokuk streets, utilized for half a century as a funeral parlor, was torn down for a new gas station. Its leveling became the rallying cry of a local historic preservation movement.[13]
In June, voters rejected the Core Plan bond issue while reelecting Putnam to a second mayoral term by a slim margin. Deftly, she pivoted her downtown stance afterward from destruction to restoration, and began chasing federal tax credits for adaptive reuse—retrofitting old buildings for new uses.[14]
The trend began in 1964 with the transformation of San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory into a historically themed center of shops and eateries.[15] Two years later, Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act, giving communities some means of protecting their historic fabrics from the slash-and-burn of urban renewal. Grants and tax credits followed.[16]
National Ice & Cold Storage Building, E. Washington & Lakeville streets, c. 1950. (photo Sonoma County Library)
Petaluma’s first attempts at adaptive reuse began in 1972. Developer Kieckhefer set out to convert the National Ice and Cold Storage Building, built in 1908 at the corner of East Washington and Lakeville streets, into a local Ghirardelli Square. Once he saw the price tag for seismic upgrading, he changed his mind, and instead tore the building down to erect the Lakeville Shopping Center in its place.[17]
That same year, Victor and Marisa DeCarli recombined the two Gross Buildings, extending from Petaluma Boulevard to Kentucky Street, to create the Lan Mart Center of boutique shops.[18] Their initiative inspired Putnam to marshal a crusade to revive Petaluma’s historic downtown waterfront, using the old Golden Eagle Mill as her cornerstone.
What she needed was someone to lead the charge, not just a developer, but a charismatic ringmaster like Bert Kerrigan. Hired as a front man for the Chamber of Commerce in 1918, Kerrigan unleashed upon the town an energetic, three ring circus atmosphere that boosted Petaluma’s prosperity and fame as the “Egg Basket of the World.”
For help, Putnam reached out to an old friend, Bill Murray, chairman of the Bank of Marin, who had started his banking career in Petaluma during the 1950s. He had just the man for the job: Ralph “Skip” Sommer, a former stage actor and IBM salesman turned theme developer. Growing up in Michigan, Sommer spent his summers driving horse-drawn carriages of tourists around Mackinac Island, a Victorian-era resort that still bans automobiles. He understood history as an economic engine. [19]
Murray, whose bank had financed two of Sommer’s conversions of historic buildings into shops and restaurants in Marin, drove him up to Petaluma for his first visit.[20] Lured by federal tax credits and Murray’s financial backing, Sommer jumped at the opportunity. With Putnam’s assistance, the proposal was fast-tracked through the city planning commission, bypassing the need for an environment impact report.
Then came the deal killer: $275,000 for seismic upgrading ($1.4 million in today’s currency). Sommer blinked, until Murray told him the bank would finance it.[21]
Sommer staged the grand opening of the Great Petaluma Mill in October 1976 with the razzle dazzle of Harold Hill in “The Music Man.” Soon, he was piloting his yacht, The Great Eagle II, up the Petaluma River to proclaim the Turning Basin the new port of call for recreational boating. The press ate it up, dubbing him the “new business czar of the downtown waterfront area.”[22]
That same year, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the ruling of a lower appeals court which had granted Petaluma the right to preserve the city’s character and open spaces “by growing at an orderly and deliberate pace.”[23] Putnam’s two pronged approach—sustainable growth paired with a revitalized downtown—had worked.
In the first year of the Great Petaluma Mill’s operation, downtown sales taxes increased by 30% thanks to increased foot traffic. A restoration fever soon overtook the downtown with developers of adaptive reuse flocking to town.[24]
But Putnam wasn’t finished. She wanted to anchor the new recreational Turning Basin with the warmth of Victorian homes.
In 1976, the Wendy’s hamburger chain purchased the Burns-Farrell house at East Washington and Wilson streets with plans to demolish it for a burger joint. Putnam negotiated a deal to have Sommer buy the house for $1, and then move it to an empty lot on the Turning Basin, where he converted it into a restaurant called the Farrell House (today’s River House).[25]
Burns-Farrell House being moved from E. Washington Street to the Turning Basin, 1979 (photo courtesy of Skip Sommer)
The next year, she did the same with the Pometta House, a Victorian on Petaluma Boulevard South between C and D streets, slated for destruction for a new bank parking lot. Sommer moved it to 1 C Street, beside today’s Petaluma’s Yacht Club, converting it into an office building.[26]
Pometta House, Petaluma Blvd South, between C & D streets, 1977 (photo Sonoma County Library)
In 1979, Sommer sold the Great Petaluma Mill in order to help fund his next adaptive reuse performance out on the coast and his producer, Mayor Putnam, began her newly elected term as a Sonoma County supervisor. Petaluma would never be the same.[27]
*******
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 12, 2023.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “He’s Not Your Typical Developer,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 28, 1975; Interview with Skip Sommer by John Sheehy, December 23, 2022, Sonoma County Library Archives.
[2] Interview with Skip Sommer by John Sheehy, December 23, 2022, Sonoma County Library Archives.
[3] “Unique Development Announced,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 12, 1975.
[4] “Unique Development Announced,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 12, 1975.
[5] “Design Plan Passes; Is Effective at Once,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 28, 1972; “Good Case for Housing Limit,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 26, 1973; “City Growth Ordinance Outlawed,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 29, 1974; Growth Suit Decision Not Expected for Some Time,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 15, 1975.
[6] “Helen Putnam, First Woman Ever to Seek Office of Mayor,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 25, 1965.
[7] “River May Be Making a Comeback,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 28, 1975.
[8] “Cotati Man is First Fatality on Freeway,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 17, 1856.
[9] “Golden Eagle Completes McNear Deal,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 17, 1958; “Mayor Discusses Golden Eagle’s Present Property,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 24, 1964 “Golden Eagle’s Century Old Mill Site,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 13, 1965.
[10] “Golden Eagle, Once Towering Over Petaluma, Like a Phoenix Reborn,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 26, 1975.
[11] “Rezoning Aids Expansion Central Business District,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 17, 1967; “Our Most Important Need,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 11, 1967.
[12] “More Parking Would Boost Downtown Area,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 3, 1968.
[13] “Money to Decide Mansion’s Fate,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 1, 1969; “Thanks for the Effort,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 13, 1969.
[14] “Putnam Wins, Bonds Lose,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 11, 1969.
[15] “Old, Familiar Glow,” San Francisco Examiner, November 30, 1964.
[16] Historic Preservation & Development, September 20, 2006, U.S. Department of the Interior.
https://www.doi.gov/ocl/hearings/109/historicpreservationdevelopment_092006
[17] “Center Project Proceeds,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 14, 1972; “New Building to Follow Razing,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 17, 1973.
[18] “Lan Mart Stores are Commercial Experiment,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 15, 1973; “Lan Mart Center Has Grand Opening,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 6, 1973.
[19] Interview with Skip Sommer by John Sheehy, December 23, 2022, Sonoma County Library Archives; “He’s Not Your Typical Developer,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 28, 1975.
[20] “Skip Sommer’s Ideas Pay Off Very Well at Lark Creek Inn,” San Rafael Daily Independent, October 13, 1972; “Old Western Look,” San Rafael Daily Independent, October 30, 1974.
[21] “Great Petaluma Mill Needed Quake-proofing,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 1, 1976; Interview with Skip Sommer by John Sheehy, December 23, 2022, Sonoma County Library Archives.
[22] “Reviving a Turn of the Century Town Center,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 8, 1977; Bill Soberanes column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 25 1977.
[23] “Growth Review Denied,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 23, 1976.
[24] “Ambitious New Business Owners See Potential in Old Buildings,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 8, 1977; “Mill Played a Key Role in Downtown Revitalization,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 9, 1980.
[25] “Historic Home to Become Restaurant at New Site,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 6, 1976.
[26] “House on Wheels,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 5, 1978.
[27] “Putnam Elected Supervisor,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 8, 1978: “Marin Investors Buy Great Petaluma Mill,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 19, 1979.
The Search for Petaluma’s Real Founder
Solving a History Mystery
A number of years ago, I participated in a podcast interview about early Petaluma history for Onstage with Jim and Tom, hosted by Jim Agius and Tom Gaffey at the Phoenix Theater. Joining me were local historians Katie Watts, Skip Sommer, and Chuck Lucas. In the interview, we discussed at length Garrett W. Keller, who developed the town of Petaluma in 1852, before mysteriously disappearing.
After the podcast was broadcast, a woman claiming to be a descendent of Keller sent us an email informing us that we had it all wrong—her ancestor was not the man we made him out to be, a scam artist who illegally claimed land he didn’t own, divided it up into lots that he then sold to unsuspecting new settlers, and then vanished with the proceeds without a trace. He was actually an honest, well-respected fellow who went on to do good in the world, and who founded a town in Kansas after leaving Petaluma. I made another online search of Garrett W. Keller, but, as usual, finding nothing on the man, filed the woman’s email away
Years later, after accidentally stumbling upon it, I decided to contact the woman. She responded, and after some back and forth and digging around in ancestry records, we determined that she wasn’t in fact a descendant of Garrett W. Keller, but rather a descendant of another Keller who had resided sometime later in Petaluma.
But the point she made about Keller establishing another town in Kansas was a new lead in an otherwise cold case. As anyone who has engaged in researching family genealogy knows, such leads often go nowhere, but sometime they are the thread to a major discovery. Such a breakthrough is fraught with suspense, as it can lead to information that have been deleted, omitted, or else revised in family lore.
Communities are no different. Garrett W. Keller had been a vital part of Petaluma’s creation myth for 170 years. That he himself was something of a blank slate made it easier to fit him into the colorful myth of the wild west scam artist.
Such lore and mythology are important in passing down a sense of shared heritage and social identity, whether in families or cultural groups, apocryphal or not. History through is something different.
As any aspiring family genealogist discovers, it is first and foremost about inquiry, and the willingness to go where the inquiry takes you. Historian Jill Lepore calls it “the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence.” It’s an art that when done well gives us a richer and perhaps more inclusive humanistic view of our past in order get our bearings in moving forward. It’s always one that’s open to revision as new evidence comes to light.
In the case of Garrett W. Keller, my new evidence initially led me nowhere. In frustration, I turned to the historical sources that identified him as Petaluma’s founder. The first mention of him is in Robert Allan Thompson’s Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California, published in 1877. Thompson refers to him merely as “Keller,” with no first name nor middle initial.
It’s in J.P. Munro-Fraser’s History of Sonoma County, published in 1880, that he appears as “Garrett W. Keller.” In a footnote on page 260, Munro-Fraser points out that a “Garrett W. Keller” was appointed Petaluma’s first postmaster on February 9, 1852, which leads him apparently to conclude that he was the Keller who originally laid out of the town.
The next county history, 1889’s Pen Pictures From the Garden of the World, An Illustrated History of Sonoma County, written by longtime Petaluma Argus editor Samuel Cassiday, makes no mention of a Keller at all, although Cassiday first arrived in Petaluma in 1854, only two years after Keller had left.
Tom Gregory’s History of Sonoma County, published in 1911, basically picks up Munro-Fraser’s identification of Garrett W. Keller. The two historians appear to serve as the source of Ed Mannion’s legendary history column “Rear View Mirror,” which ran the Petaluma Argus-Courier in the early 1960s, and served in part as the basis of Adair Heig’s History of Petaluma: A California River Town, published in 1982, with Mannion as an advisor.
For help finding the primary source of Munro-Fraser’s discovery of Keller as Petaluma’s first postmaster, I turned for help to Katherine J. Rinehart, the former manager of the Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library. She provided me with the copy of an official handwritten record of Sonoma County’s first postmasters in the 1850s. This was apparently the same document Munro-Fraser discovered in his identification of Garrett W. Keller.
The first thing I noticed is that Munro-Fraser has incorrectly transcribed Keller’s name. In the handwritten record his first name is spelled “Garret,” with one “t”, and his middle initial is clearly not a W, but instead either a U or a V.
That question led me to a document I found in an online government depository entitled A Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval in the Service of the United State that had been typeset and printed in 1853 by the U.S. Department of State. In it, a “Garret V. Keller” is listed as the first postmaster of Petaluma, appointed February 9, 1852, and replaced in December, 1852. In a search of Newspapers.com, I also found a listing of California postmasters published in the November 15, 1852, edition of the Sacramento Daily Union newspaper, that confirmed “Garret V. Keller” to be the postmaster of Petaluma.
With the new name spelling and my earlier clue about Kansas, I began searching Findagrave.com for anyone with that name who had been buried in Kansas in the late 19th century. The site led me to a Garret V. Keller who died in 1901 in a small rural Kansas town of outside of the city of Leavenworth. There was no description of his life, but there was a link to the gravesite of his father, George Horine Keller, which did include a memorial drawn from a Kansas history book.
Reading down the text I suddenly hit paydirt:
“In Platte County, Missouri, [George Horine Keller] engaged in farming and manufacturing till the year 1850, but catching the gold fever, he sold out, equipped a large train with merchandise and went to California during the spring of that year. Settling down in the Sonoma valley, he founded the town of Petaluma, now a prosperous city of some 10,000 people. He returned in 1852 to Weston [Missouri].”
I quickly discovered in Google books a copy of the source cited in the memorial—Transactions of the Kansas Historical Society Collection, Vol. 10, 1907-1908, edited by George W. Martin. The book featured a short biography of George Horine Keller, noting that after founding Petaluma, he went on to help establish the town of Leavenworth, Kansas.
With that information, I also discovered online two other historical sources that provided more details on George Horine Keller’s life: William G. Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas, published in 1883, and The History of Leavenworth County, Kansas, written by Jesse A. Hall and Leroy T. Hand, published in 1921.
From a search of old newspaper clippings at Newspapers.com, I discovered that George Keller and his wife Nancy had one daughter and five sons. On the wagon train that took him to California in 1850, Keller had taken along with him with his oldest son, Garret Valentine Keller (named for his two Dutch grandfathers), as well as his new son-in-law Andrew Thomas Kyle, both of whom were 19 years old.
After being disappointed in the gold fields, the Keller party headed to Sonoma County, where, after Keller made his land claim and laid out the new town of Petaluma, his son Garret, then 21 years old, was appointed town’s first postmaster.
The one mention of George Keller I found in old Petaluma newspapers was in an article published in the Petaluma Weekly Argus in 1876 about a group of men who, while preparing Main Street Plaza (today’s Penry Park) for America’s centennial celebration, unearthed a coffin. From John E. Lockwood, who established Petaluma’s first trading post in 1850, reporters learned that it was the burial site of the first white man to die in the village in the fall of 1851. He and some other men dug the grave, and George Keller gave the service.
While sources indicate that George Keller and his son-in-law Andrew Kyle left Petaluma to return to Missouri in the fall of 1852, Garret Keller stayed behind in California for the next seven years, although it’s unknown exactly where. Postal records indicate he had vacated his position as Petaluma’s postmaster by December, 1852.
A brief biography of Garret Keller in Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas notes that in 1854 he married a woman in California named Jane E. Hoagland, who was a native of Fort Leavenworth in Kansas Territory. They moved to Kansas in 1859, where Garret purchased a farm in Springdale outside of Leavenworth. He apparently lived an otherwise quiet life.
As for George H. Keller, after returning in 1852 to Weston, Missouri, he became a prominent figure along with his son-in-law Kyle in establishing Leavenworth, the first town in the new Kansas Territory, under another illegal land scheme.
But there was another side to Keller, one in which he distinguished himself at the risk of his own life as an abolitionist leader who was elected to the first Kansas Territorial Legislature during the violent conflicts over establishing Kansas as a slave state or free state. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted in the Kansas Frontier Guard at the age of 60, and was immediately dispatched to Washington, D.C., to guard President Lincoln at the White House. After the war was appointed the first warden of the Kansas State Penitentiary by the state’s governor.
When he died in 1876, after retiring to a farm near the farm of his son Garret, Keller was highly lauded in newspapers throughout the state of Kansas.
Which leaves us with a much more complicated picture than we had for the previous 170 years with the blank slate known as “Garrett W. Keller.” The story of Petaluma’s true founder acknowledges what history does best, which the sociologist W.E.B DuBois noted was expose “the hideous mistakes, the frightful wrongs, and the great and beautiful things that people do.”
*****
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 11, 2021.
SOURCES:
Newspapers
Lawrence Tribune: “Settler’s Defense,” July 1, 1868.
Leavenworth Times: “Kyle’s Reminiscence of Early Border Life,” January 11, 1902.
Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Ed Mannion’s Rear View Mirror,” April 2, 1960.
Petaluma Courier: “Death of Major Singley,” March 2, 1898.
Petaluma Weekly Argus: “Centennial Resurrection,” March 31, 1876.
Sacramento Daily Union: “Post Offices in California,” November 15, 1852.
Books, Magazines, Journals
Samuel Cassiday, Pen Pictures From the Garden of the World, An Illustrated History of Sonoma County (The Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, 1889), pp. 109-114.
William Connelley, editor, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, Volume 14 (Chicago: Lewis, 1918), pp. 1209-1210; Frank M. Gable, “The Kansas Penitentiary,” p. 379.
Thomas Jefferson Gregory, History of Sonoma County, California, With Biographical Sketches of Leading Men and Women (Historical Record Company, Los Angeles, 1911), p. 177.
Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Petaluma, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1982), p. 29.
Jesse A. Hall and Leroy T. Hand, History of Leavenworth County, Kansas (Topeka, Kansas: Historical Publishing Company,1921), pp. 116-123.
LeBaron, Blackman, Mitchell, Hansen, Santa Rosa: A Nineteenth Century Town (Historia, Ltd., 1985), pgs. 16, 26-27.
George W. Martin, editor, Transactions of the Kansas Historical Society Collection, Vol. 10, 1907-1908 (Kansas Historical Society).
Henry Miles Moore, “Sketches of the Early Settlement of the City and County of Leavenworth,” Western Life (Leavenworth, KS), August 3, 1900.
Henry Miles Moore, Early History of Leavenworth, City and County (Samuel Dodsworth Book Co., Leavenworth, KS, 1906), pgs. 21, 24, 56, 86, 103, 123-127, 147, 161, 171.
J.P. Munro-Fraser, History of Sonoma County (San Francisco: Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880), p. 131, pp. 259-262.
Robert Allan Thompson, Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877), pp. 53-54.
“Territorial Legislature of 1857-58: George Horine Keller,” Kansas Historical Society Collection, Vol. 10, 1907-1908, edited by George W. Martin, p. 211.
Websites
“Guarding the White House,” The White House Historical Association, whitehousehistory.org
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/press-room/press-timelines/guarding-the-white-house
“1851, March 3 – 09 Stat. 631, Act to Settle Private Land Claims in California,” US Government Legislation and Statutes.
https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/hornbeck_usa_2_d/7
A Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval in the Service of the United States, 1853, United States, Department of State. https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Register_of_Officers_and_Agents_Civil/C5EDAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
Helen Putnam & the Supreme Court
The Woman Who Changed the Future of Petaluma
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
*****
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.