Prohibition in Sausalito

By Jack Tracy, Sausalito Historical Society

One hundred years ago, national prohibition came to Sausalito. In his book Moments in Time, Jack Tracy tells how it affected life hereabouts:

Sausalito's saloons and liquor stores closed; beer, wine, and whiskey disappeared from grocery store shelves as California and the nation began the thirteen-year experiment that ended in repeal.

PHOTO FROM MOMENTS IN TIME

Webb Mahaffy, center, preceded Herb Madden as Mayor. He and two hunting companions are shown swigging from a suspicious bottle, c. 1930. 

At first, prohibition had very little impact on Sausalito. Most people who were so inclined had stocked up on their favorite beverages, and those with access to grain soon learned the brewer's art. The saloons reopened as "Soft Drink Parlors," where it was usually possible to get a little something to liven up a seltzer. Mason's Distillery in Sausalito, a major producer of whiskey, underwent some worrisome moments until its role under the Volstead Act was determined. Mason's continued to manufacture alcohol under federal license for medicinal and industrial purposes. By 1925 the Mason By-Products Company was producing 2 million gallons of denatured alcohol per year, nearly one-sixth of all the alcohol produced in the country.

In the early 1920s, Sausalito had only two policemen, making enforcement of prohibition impossible. It was about as easy to get a drink in Sausalito as it had been before prohibition. As in most of the country, it became fashionable and somewhat daring to visit "speakeasies" or underground saloons and to know a bootlegger by his first name. One Sausalito resident recalls that as a boy he made pocket money by collecting empty liquor bottles that had washed up on Marin beaches and selling them to local contacts. The bottles would probably turn up the next day with new labels proclaiming the contents to be "genuine" twelve-year-old Scotch.

Canada, where sale of alcoholic beverages was still legal, was a major source of bootleg whiskey during prohibition. Marin County with its miles of unguarded beaches became a popular landing zone for whiskey smuggled in from Vancouver or for "moonshine" disguised as Canadian whiskey or Mexican rum. Soon Sausalito was the funnel through which bootleg alcohol passed to its destination in San Francisco's speakeasies. Knowing that a shortage of federal agents making random searches of vehicles on the San Francisco side of the bay meant little chance of getting caught, bootleggers brazenly loaded their liquor-filled autos and trucks onto ferryboats in Sausalito.

Because the prohibition law was unpopular, local authorities received little help in enforcing it from

residents. When a speakeasy or hidden still was raided, it was usually because the bootleggers got too bold. The Soft Drink Parlor Walhalla was raided in 1921. There had been reports of considerable nighttime activity at a trap door leading from Walhalla's floor to the bay beneath, where small boats could be hidden among the pilings. Annie Lowder, proprietor of the Walhalla, was carried off kicking and screaming after agents found 478 quarts of home-brew and "a large quantity of jackass brandy with a vigorous kick." The Sausalito Cash Grocery on Princess Street was raided in 1926 by Town Marshall Al O'Connor and Officer Manuel Menotti after neighbors complained of customers coming and going all night long. Sure enough, a small-time bootlegging operation had exceeded the bounds of propriety and called attention to itself.

Most people treated prohibition lightly. Alcohol was served at most social events in private homes, and often at club meetings. Jokes circulated about the latest "imports" and about the unprecedented number of drug store prescriptions for high alcoholic content cough medicine. But the lightheartedness diminished as incidents of serious illness and death from "bum booze" increased. An even more sinister side to prohibition developed in the mid-1920s when organized crime made bootlegging its number one activity. The Vo!stead Act was a dream come true for big-time gangsters. It drove an indispensable consumer product underground, creating a bonanza for criminals who had the money to buy and deliver large quantities of alcohol.

A national underground network of alcohol distribution developed, with the local user knowing only his immediate supplier, the friendly neighborhood bootlegger. Increasingly determined to crack down on gangsterism, federal agents arrested as many links in the chain of distribution as possible, often with some surprising results. Sausalito's mayor, John Herbert Madden, learned firsthand about the federal crackdown on prohibition violators.  He was accused of repairing the vessel Principio in San Pedro in 1924 with the knowledge that the ship was a known "rumrunner" owned by San Francisco bootlegger Joe Parente. Madden denied the charge, claiming that his boatyard repaired all manner of boats including Coast Guard patrol vessels, and that in many cases he did not personally examine the vessels. He was found guilty of conspiracy in 1926, sentenced to two years' imprisonment at McNeil Island, Washington, and fined $5,000. Madden continued to profess innocence in the affair; nonetheless, he served fifteen months of the sentence before his release. He was again elected to the City Council and in 1936 chosen again as Mayor of Sausalito.

Former CEO at Luso-American Financial

In August, I recounted how California got its name, when early explorers mistook it for a legendary island supposedly inhabited by female warriors under the rule of a queen named Calafia.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MARK HOPKINS HOTEL

Queen Calafia in all her glory

Now, thanks to historian Elenore Meherin, I’ve found what may be the source of that myth: a 16th Century novel by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo entitled Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián).

As Ms. Meherin wrote in the April 27, 1944 Sausalito News: “Few lands are famed in story before they have even been discovered. Certainly, no other State in the Union ever had a best-seller detailing her wonders before she was yet on the map. It is the unique distinction of California. No white man had yet set eyes on her hills and streams. For all the civilized world knew, the Golden West was a sea of mysterious terrors. Yet, California was already the goal to which the poets and adventurers looked. For it chanced that Montalvo the Spanish novelist, had a dream. It was in 1510, some three decades before this State was discovered. In this dream, California stood before him, the rich and beautiful being that she is. The sunset jewels were in her hair, apples of Hesperides in her arms and her feet sunk deep in golden sandals. The vision uplifted the poet. He sat down and wrote his fervid masterpiece.

“He spoke of an island with purple hills and silver moons, with luscious fruits and flowers and he told of caverns in the earth paved with gold—the very storehouse of treasures that John Marshall stumbled across 340 years later.”

Here's an English translation of how Montalvo imagined this area and its inhabitants:

"Know that to the right hand of the Indies was an island called California, very near to the region of the Terrestrial Paradise, which was populated by black women, without there being any men among

them, that almost like the Amazons was their style of living. These were of vigorous bodies and strong and ardent hearts and of great strength; the island itself the strongest in steep rocks and great

boulders that is found in the world; their arms were all of gold, and also the harnesses of the wild beasts on which, after having tamed them, they rode; that in all the island there was no other metal

whatsoever. They dwelt in caves very well hewn; they had many ships in which they went out to other parts to make their forays, and the men they seized they took with them, giving them their deaths, as you will further hear. And some times when they had peace with their adversaries, they intermixed with all security one with another, and there were carnal unions from which many of them came out

pregnant, and if they gave birth to a female they kept her, and if they gave birth to a male, then he was killed...

"On this island, called California, there are many griffons... and in the time that they had young, these women would... take them to their caves, and there raise them. And... they fattened them on those men

and the boys that they had borne...

"Any male that entered the island was killed and eaten by them...

"There ruled on that island of California, a queen great of body, very beautiful for her race, at a flourishing age, desirous in her thoughts of achieving great things, valiant in strength, cunning in her brave heart, more than any other who had ruled that kingdom before her...Queen Calafia."

The accompanying depiction of this formidable queen is from a mural on exhibit at San Francisco’s Mark Hopkins Hotel.  The hotel’s murals are described in a company brochure titled A Walk Back in Time:

“Of all the InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel’s artistic and architectural treasures, some of the finest are the nine murals depicting Early California in the Room of the Dons, originally the room adjacent to the lobby. These seven-foot-high panels were painted by Maynard Dixon and Frank Van Sloun, two San Francisco artists who frequently depicted Western scenes in their intensely individualistic styles.

“’For the very first time in the history of art in the world,’ enthused one San Franciscan at the December 4, 1926 grand opening, ‘two great artists have worked together and produced nine masterpieces which will live forever.’ Since then, these paintings have delighted generations of San Franciscans and

guests at the Mark Hopkins Hotel.”

Spanish language editions of The Exploits of Esplandian may be purchased on Amazon.com, appropriately enough. The site also carries a selection of English language books about Queen Calafia.

A Sausalito Icon Looks Back

By Jan Wahl and Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

Dorothy Cousins moved to Sausalito in 1954, and lived here for six decades.  According to her obituary in 2006, Dorothy was a devoted member of the Sausalito Woman's Club and a founding member of the Sausalito Foundation. She was also one of the founders of Marin Country Day School and served as president of The Tamalpais High School PTA. Dorothy and her husband Ivan were very involved with the Sunny Hills Children's Garden, a group home residential treatment service, and they initiated the Culinary Carnival as a benefit for the organization.

PHOTO FROM SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Dorothy Cousins at the time of her 1990 oral history

She was frequently visited by her famous sister Julia Child, one of the first celebrity chefs. The Sausalito News of November 25, 1961 reported, “Julia Child has been about town lately visiting her sister, Mrs. Ivan Cousins between times meeting the public at book stores in San Francisco,” while on a promotional tour for the classic cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

Julia Child also joined Dorothy and Ivan in fundraising for Children’s Garden. On November 7, 1978

this paper reported on her upcoming appearance at one of these events: “’I’m really looking forward to doing the demonstration and then relaxing and talking to people, enjoying all the food, and shopping for Christmas at all those booths presenting everything to do with food, from frying pans to white truffles,’ said Julia Child in a recent phone conversation with her sister, Dorothy Cousins, of Sausalito who is the co-chairman of the event. Julia Child will do a cooking demonstration at the Culinary Carnival at the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco.”

In a 1990 oral history, Dorothy Cousins told Sausalito personality Jan Wahl how she discovered our town in the 1930s, and some of the early impressions it made on her. The following excerpts from that interview have been edited for brevity and clarity:

I was boarding at the Katherine Branson School as a teenager and got to know Sausalito then. Looking out at Mt. Tamalpais, there wasn’t a house there. Marin City didn’t exist except for only a few bungalows. As a matter of fact, when I went to school here, Currey Avenue [where Dorothy was living in 1990] didn’t exist, nor did highway 101 nor did the bridge. And I’m quite sure I hiked over this property. It was country, but the town was always crowded, because in my day there were auto ferries and regular ferries, and people would rush to get on the ferries and sometimes there’d be long lines waiting to get on. Then there was a little electric train that went from Sausalito to Mill Valley, and all the way out to Fairfax. You could get from San Rafael to Sausalito faster than you can now. I wish it were still in use.

Sausalito was off limits for us girls, because it was a very rough town. It was Prohibition. There were a lot of rumrunners and some “ladies of ill repute.” We weren’t allowed anywhere unchaperoned.

We were very innocent in those days.  But our French teacher lived here, so we would come to see her and hike all the way to Muir Beach. I just adored being by the water.

In 1954 I moved here with my husband. Because of the Golden Gate Bridge, the ferries had stopped running.  The town was smaller, but there were still a lot of tourists on the weekends.  Not to the extent of today.

All kinds of people could afford to live here then.  A lot of reasonable houses were available. We rented a nice place on Crecienta Drive for $200 a month. Now there’s such high turnover in the police and fire departments because they have no place to live in town.

When I first moved here, the Sausalito school system was a little peculiar. There had been some terrible upsets, and many people had left. And at that time the Marin Country Day School had just started and so my husband and I worked hard on that.  And before that there was the Sausalito Co-op nursery school. I didn’t know a soul in Sausalito. But as soon as I joined the nursery school, I made most of my friends there because we cooperated together.

There was a terrible fight about the Spinnaker. That area was the only beach and we’d all go down there with the kids. Then the City Council sold it to somebody, and they put up all this riprap on the beach and nobody was allowed on it, and there was a real row about that. At that point the Council was meeting downtown, but the meeting was so big they had to move it to the school where City Hall is now. At least 200-250 people came out and some were yelling, “You’re selling our birthright!” And you know what happened?  The whole council was not re-elected. However, the Spinnaker was a fait accompli.

In the oral history, Dorothy goes on to share her impressions of town characters like Juanita Musson and Sally Stanford. She recalls her husband Ivan’s antique store on Caledonia Street, and many other memories. The entire interview can be heard via the Historical Society website: http://www.sausalitohistoricalsociety.com.

Saucelito Rancho Girds for War

PHOTO COURTESY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Colonel John C. Fremont, hero to some, villain to others

By Elenore Meherin and Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

This week we conclude the saga of how the Bear Flag revolt impacted life at William Richardson’s Saucelito Rancho. Ramon de Haro, beloved of Richardson’s daughter Mariana, has been away from the hacienda since word arrived about the revolt and capture of Colonel Vallejo in Sonoma. Here is Elenore Meherin’s lightly edited account:

The young girl in her bright flowered dress, the blue rebosa [scarf] fluttering, glided swiftly through a lane of rose trees. She whistled softly. An Indian boy appeared, leading a spirited black mustang. He pointed to the distant hills where two horsemen were just coming in to view. The girl nodded and sprang to the saddle. She was quick and vivid with beauty, but her red rippling mouth held no smile and her strange lilac-blue eyes were deeply shadowed. She was off with the morning breeze, eager to learn what new disaster the night may have brought. Ten days had passed since that ominous Sunday when Don Jose had brought to the dancers in the Richardson hacienda the stunning news of the war on Sonoma. They had been 10 appalling days for the ranchos of Northern California, every night horses and cattle were driven off by unseen thieves; men were arrested and thrown into prison without cause; homes were plundered. rumors flew thick and fast. It was known that Colonel Vallejo, his nephew and other native Californians of high rank and known friendly attitude to the Americans had been brought before Captain John C. Fremont in camp on the embarcadero in Sacramento. Fremont refused conciliation, ordered the prisoners taken to Sutter’s Fort where they were locked up in a bare room and kept without food till late the next day.

The war which the Californians did not want, had come. But as [Richardson’s young daughter] Mariana galloped through her father’s lush domain, the thousand cattle grazed in the sun, horses on the many hills nibbled the grass in their quiet, meditative way, a lark sang and the pines murmured in the early morning serenity. The peace of the woodland entered the girl’s heart and lifted it. Perhaps the trouble would pass. She caught up with the two riders, one was Pedro, her father’s Indian vaquero, the other her brother, Steve. He was but 16 but already one of the finest horsemen in the province. Steve’s young face, usually carefree and laughing, was haggard. He had been riding all night in an effort to learn if the terrible news brought yesterday to the Richardson Rancho was correct. He rode to his sister’s side and said briefly, “It is true. The Gringoes were murdered.”

The blood dropped from Mariana's face leaving it a stark white. She said through clenched teeth, ‘‘They were spies going through a friendly country, gathering weapons and starting war. It was right that they should die!”

Steve said, "It was not right to murder them. And it was not meant by Juan Padilla who captured them, that they should die. But Garcia, that cut-throat Bernardino Garcia, stole into camp in the night and killed the prisoners. It is a thing unheard of in this land. All California will suffer.” They rode on in stricken silence. For now, even the youngest knew the trouble would not pass. Cowie and Fowler were the two men who had been murdered. They were sent by the Bear Flag rebels to get gunpowder from the Fitch ranch on the Russian river. They had no right to make this hostile journey through a country still at peace with theirs. They were captured by a band of Californians and, as Steve had learned, they wore murdered, without the sanction of the leaders, by the disreputable Garcia. Steve said, "The Gringoes will take the land. General Castro has mustered 200 men to fight them. But they have no guns. He is sending 60 to Sonoma under Joaquin de la Torre. They camped at Olompali just below Petaluma last night.”

The girl said, anxiously: "And Ramon. You heard nothing of Ramon?”

"No . . . Nothing,” said the boy, noting his sister's pale set lips. He reached out and patted her hand in a young clumsy tenderness. “Don't worry about Ramon, he is so brave, so swift. Ramon will come through.”

They reached the hacienda just as the morning hymn fluttered on the breeze. First it was Dona Maria Antonia’s rich husky contralto, then ancient Monico's mighty tenor, then ten, then a hundred voices joining in the winged, many-tuned anthem.

"Singers at Dawn, in the heavens above

"With celestial voices people all regions.

“Gladly we too greet the kind God in His morn.”

The hills took up the song and flung it with the perfume of the roses down the wind. Mariana listened with dulled heart. How could her mother sing? She had just leaped from her horse when glancing moodily to the waters now named after her father, Richardson’s Bay, she saw a man riding a dark horse and leading a white one, a superb, fiery, proudly-stepping horse. Tears flew to her eyes. Ramon and the snow white stallion!

The Bear Flag Revolt Comes to Sausalito

By Elenore Meherin and Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

A Saucelito Rancho fiesta for the men of the USS Portsmouth was abruptly interrupted in June, 1946 with news of the Bear Flag revolt in nearby Sonoma. Here’s Sausalito New columnist Elenore Meherin’s account, edited for brevity and clarity:

The horseman who came galloping, swift and gaunt in the moonlight, was Don Jose de la Rosa. He had travelled the 70 miles from Sonoma to the Richardson hacienda in a few hours. For a moment he stood in dusty splendor, his silver trappings obscured, crimson velvet and ruffles of lace bedraggled. In the mellow radiance of the hundred tallow dips, girls and caballeros danced in the sala. The young men in their broidered jackets with bangles tinkling, swung the señoritas in circles. With their skirts of purple and green and scarlet billowing, their fans swaying and the flowers in their hair a-gleam, they looked like figures flitting through a rainbow. The dance went on, young voices lifted in happy song.

Suddenly, as though a knife had stabbed to every heart, the dance, the song, the laughter stopped. They clamored about Don Jose while the word went from lip to muted lip, “The Gringoes have taken Sonoma!” At three in the afternoon, Don Jose, sent as a messenger from Colonel Vallejo, had left the captured hacienda intent on reaching Captain John Montgomery in command of the Portsmouth now at anchor in Whalers’ Harbor, Saucelito. This is the damning and unbelievable story brought by Don Jose to Captain Richardson. It’s history now but a mean and sorry page.

At dawn that Sunday, there came a banging at the door of Colonel Vallejo’s hacienda. The Colonel saw the plaza filled with armed men. Three of the hulking figures, their rifles on their shoulders, now stormed with rocks at the door.

They took their friend Colonel Vallejo prisoner and marched him to the camp of Captain John Fremont.

Don Jose stood amidst the hushed dancers in Captain Richardson’s hacienda. He leaned on his sword, his eyes glinting through a film of dust, his face hard and sharp as though cut from stone. “Will Captain Fremont help?” The question came softly like a troubled sigh. Across the room from the arbor where the musicians sat, their hands idle on their fiddles, a deep contemptuous grunt answered. An Indian, immensely tall, with snow-white hair but straight as a lance stalked from the shadows.

IMAGE FROM WIKIPEDIA

The original Bear Flag had an oddly porcine air

The immortal ancient, Monico. He looked directly at Captain Richardson and said in his deep musical voice, “The Gringo captain will not help! The Gringo captain sent out an order, ‘Let the settlers who have nothing to lose go about provoking the Mexicans, let them steal horses and cattle and force the soldiers of Castro to start the battle!’ Then they, the Gringoes will come in and steal the homes from under you. The order is obeyed.”

Don Jose lifted his sword, flecked away the dust and said slowly, “I fear Monico is right. I have heard the settlers boasting of the fine horses they steal. They say there will be war and they will own the land. They think we are cowards and will not fight.” Mariana Richardson standing quiet, shaken and angry felt the Yankee lieutenant stiffen. His fingers which still clasped her arm tightened, but he asked in a voice of measured calm, “Have they raised the American flag?”

A faint scornful smile touched Don Jose’s thin lips. For the Bears had not dared raise the Stars and Stripes. They had requisitioned a red flannel petticoat from one of the wives, a square of white muslin and a pot of black ink from another. William Todd was elected artist. He was to draw a Grizzly Bear. This would signify the valor of the insurgents.

“But everyone is laughing,” said Don Jose, ‘‘for their bear has turned out to be a big, hulking pig. Their pig banner no doubt now flies over Sonoma.” He turned to the Americans whom he recognized as officers of the Portsmouth and asked if they would accompany him to their ship.

In a moment the road outside the patio was alive with horsemen dashing down the moonlit strand. A hush fell on the women left alone in the sala.

Mariana stood on the patio, straining her eyes after the riders. A hot hand clasped hers. 'You did not go with them, Ramon"? she said, anxiously.

“I did not go with them!” he answered ominously. She glanced up, startled, found his beautiful eyes glowing like lighted coals. He said hoarsely, “Querida, I am taking the white stallion to Tia Hilarita’s rancho. I will break him for you. In a week I will return and he will follow you as faithful, as gentle,” the words stopped. He reached out and took her white beautiful face in his hands and smiled at her and went on warmly, “will follow you as faithful, as gentle, querida mia as I, if that might be!”

"This is strange talk, Ramon. Surely you will not go tonight?”

"Yes. Now—this moment. The beast is too wild.”

He suddenly clasped her to him and for the first time, his young fresh lips crushed like flowers on hers. He said, “Querida, mia Querida remember me!” As though he were already lost. She saw the white stallion rear and plunge. But Ramon stood in his stirrups and waved to her.

To be continued………

Unsung Sausalito Artist

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

IMAGES FROM WIKIPEDIA

Harry Bowden

We’ve profiled a number of artists from postwar Sausalito, but I recently heard of one for the first time: painter and photographer Harry Bowden. Bowden was born in Los Angeles in 1907 and after graduating from the L.A. Art Institute, he became art director and designer with several California advertising agencies and received a number of awards for his work, according to Wikipedia. He also took up photography, working in movie studios as a still photographer.

In 1931, Bowden began studying painting at the University of California with Hans Hoffman, who influenced the Abstract Expressionist movement. Later he studied photography and painting in both New York and Los Angeles, taking various odd jobs to support himself.

By 1942 he had relocated to Sausalito to work at Marinship. After the war Bowden remained in Sausalito and exhibited his work in museums and galleries on each coast.  He also became a regular exhibitor at the Sausalito Library, and is mentioned in Betsy Stroman’s history of the library, A Place of Innocent Recreations, along with co-exhibitors Val Bleeker, L. Sutton Wood and others.

The Sausalito News reported in 1949 that Bowden had won a U.S. Savings Bond in Popular Photography magazine’s $60,000 prize photo contest. The paper reported: “Bowden has been a teacher in the California School of Fine Arts, has been actively engaged in photography as a hobby for 18 years. His photos have appeared in the Architectural Forum, Building America and in Parents Magazine. Once he made a two reel movie for a bus company. He has won honorable mention in a 1947 Painting of the Year exhibit and is a free-lance artist and designer. He is a member of the San Francisco Art Association and formerly belonged to the American Abstract Artists.”

In a 1955 Sausalito News profile, Bowden said he regarded photography as a "divertissement” — an exercise that offered him an opportunity to relax so he could return to his painting with “the high concentration” he found necessary. Yet his photographs won acclaim, hanging in New York’s Museum of Art and San Francisco’s California Palace of the Legion of Honor, as well as other prestigious institutions.

Bowden shied away from any discussion that photography is art. “Let’s just says it’s getting away from art,” he told the Sausalito News, and maintained that photography simply requires mastery of technique and “being capable of seeing that which lends itself to photography.” He generally spent his afternoons taking pictures, his mornings painting. He was assigned by UCLA’s library to take photographs for their archives of noted Californians. One assignment was to photograph San Francisco sculptor Benny Bufano and his studio before Bufano's work was turned over to Stanford University. He was also assigned to do phonograph record covers for jazz pianist Paul Lingle and trad jazz band leader Turk Murphy, among others.

Of his painting, Bowden told the News, “I’ve never stopped studying . . . Renoir said that if after you turned a picture to wall for three months and then looked at it again and saw nothing to change, you had no need to go on painting.”

IMAGES FROM WIKIPEDIA

Harry Bowden painting, a gouache entitled Plant on Table

Bowden painted in all media but mostly oils and watercolor in understated colors, with a wide range of subjects. “The main thing is the concept,” he told the News. “As someone said the subject is not the object of a painting. As in music, you play a theme around the subject.” His favorite painters? “The bad ones — you can learn so much from them.”

In 1965 the News reported that Bowden had died at his home on Easterby Street of an apparent heart attack. Earlier the paper announced an award for one of his oil paintings, “Old Town in the Cove,” a Sausalito harbor scene. I couldn’t find a copy of that painting on the Internet, and the Historical Society, Sausalito Library and the Sausalito Foundation have no knowledge of it.If any readers can supply information about it, please notify me at info@sausalitohistoricalsociety.org

Life at Richardson’s Hacienda

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

With this essay, we conclude Elenore Meherin’s four-part history of William Richardson’s daughter, Mariana, from the Sausalito News:

The rooms, even of wealthy haciendas, were usually bare, except for the bed which had exquisite linens and coverlets of satin, they had little furniture. But Mariana Richardson had a father who was a go-getter, a trader beloved by captains and cabin-boys. He was always bringing gifts for his winsome daughter. The bed had a blue brocaded quilt, yards of lace on the many pillows. She had a rug from Cathay on her floor and a carved shrine with a statue of the Virgin on the wall. Before this were a pair of tall, magnificent candlesticks of Russian brass. These were the gifts of Don Alexander Rotcheff, of the Russian company at Fort Ross.

IMAGE FROM PINTEREST
Early California vaqueros were dashing horsemen

As she now stepped into her room, two Indian maids greeted her explosively. They had a large crude wooden tub on the floor, and several pails.

“Look,’’ said Rosalia, dipping long thin fingers into the water, "it’s hot! We had to bribe that lazy Pedro to fetch the water from the spring.”

“El Senor, your father,” said the tall Elena, “should not give Pedro such fine clothes. That beautiful blue serape! All he does is lie in the sun!”

“But he is a wonderful vaquero,” said Mariana, laughing. “And it is he who plays the violin for the dance.”

“Is that work? Look,” said Rosalia, "we had to steal a tray of dulces for him. Victoria does not know. We shoved the tamales from the oven while she took the siesta and we heated it. Are you not pleased?”

“I am overjoyed. You are my blessed friends.”

“Then it is I, being the older,” said Elena, shoving Rosalia before her from the room, who shall return in five minutes to brush your hair!”

Mariana stepped into the lukewarm water, counting it un-dreamed-of luxury. By doubling her knees to her chest, she could just sit down. She had a cake of perfumed soap. Just a month previous, William Heath Davis, the dashing young merchant sailor, a favorite with all the Californians, had brought the "Euphemia” to Saucelito. Of course he gave a dinner on board for the Richardsons, he had a dozen fine handkerchiefs for Dona Maria Martinez, seven cakes of perfumed soup for Mariana. Seven diamonds would not have been so welcome. She smelt it with delight and lathered it freely over her slim glistening body, then, lifting the pails of cold water, rinsed it free.

The boat was at the landing when the girl stepped to the patio. She wore a dress of pale gold satin. Her skin had the same rich texture. Her black hair, caught with pearl rimmed combs, fell to her knees. Her eyes were like her father’s, the blue of lilacs, immense and shining. They were filled with excitement as she watched the festive throng now coming to the beach. Vaqueros raced across the strand, leading horses which the guests would ride the short distance to the hacienda. She saw her father’s quick slender figure. With him were two Yankee officers, severely smart in their blue uniforms. She had not time to wonder about them, for three astonishingly brilliant horsemen now dashed around the bend. That would be Ramon, Francisco and her brother Steve, They, too, saw the Americans. Ramon galloped to Mariana’s side and pointed, “Look querida! You will have fun enchanting the Gringoes.” She looked up and found his face flushing, his eyes eagerly seeking hers. She laughed softly. ‘They are not so handsome. And I do not know if they are brave.” “Ah yes, querida, they are strong and brave.”

“But they could not conquer the white stallion. Could they do that, amigo mio!” He laughed and, sweeping off his hat, murmured, “May you think the same tomorrow, querida mia!”

Love and Adventure on Saucelito Rancho

This is Part III of Elenore Meherin’s Sausalito News account of the world of William Richardson’s daughter Mariana in the mid-nineteenth century. Previously Mariana had witnessed the capture of spirited wild horses by her intended, Ramon de Haro and his cohorts. Ms. Meherin takes up the story from there:

The hacienda was now a marching pageant of color. Young Indian boys bearing pails of golden fruit sauntered from the orchard; slim brown maids in bright yellow blouses and gaudy pink skirts skipped across the patio, carrying baskets of neatly folded laundry; old women, their heads tied up in crimson scarfs, knelt in the courtyard rolling out endless tortillas.

Mariana jumped from her saddle, leaving her companions to get the wild horses into the corrals. Here, with others not yet tamed, they would be kept at night and herded by day until they were subdued enough to pasture freely with other animals of the rancho. In early California the horses were never stabled. She ran through the kitchens eager to sniff the tempting viands now being prepared for the week-end fiesta. Enormous cuts of beef were roasting on the spits, dozens of wild geese and wild duck were plucked and ready for the ovens. Trays of freshly-baked delicate pastry, richly iced—called by the natives dulces—were covered and set away to cool. Frijoles and chiles filled bowls to brimming abundance. Captain William Antonio Richardson might nonchalantly invite all the elite of Yerba Buena and bring them ashore in his schooner. It often happened that he did. No need to worry lest his wife, Dona Maria Martinez, complain. She’d be standing in the long narrow sala, eager and smiling. Hospitality, in that happy uncommercial heyday, was the first law of California life.

As the adored young princess of the household came stepping through the kitchen, Victoria, the fat brown superlative Indian cook, heaped a plate with piping hot tamales, beamed at the girl and, pouring out a stream of gossip, ordered her to eat. The Indian women were the radio broadcasters and newspapers of the epoch. They got the news first; they got it right or wrong but they duly and faithfully passed it on.

PHOTO FROM PINTEREST
This view of early Sausalito was painted by U.S. Navy cartographer James Madison Alden circa 1845

Yes, there are horse thieves about. That villain Fremont is stirring up the countryside. Down at Alisal near Monterey he took the best of Don Sebastian Peralta’s horses. When the Don requested their return, the Gringo captain ordered him thrown from his camp, threatened to flog him and called him foul names. The Gringo wrote the names on paper and sent it to the alcalde! But everyone knows Don Sebastian is a caballero muy ilustre. Down at Alisal, too, the Gringo’s drunken followers burst into the home of Don Angel Castro and seized his youngest daughter. Yes, it is all true, said Victoria, her eyes flashing. The Gringos had guns. They shoved the guns in the venerable old Don’s face. But the Holy Virgin looked down from heaven; she gave strength to Don Angel. He rolled the drunkards on the floor and turned them from his home. Now el Diablo Fremont is here, Senorita! At our doorstep.

Mariana, vigorously filling her mouth with the highly seasoned corn and chicken, grinned. “Santa Maria, but you’re a wonderful cook, Victoria. I am more frightened of my mother just now than of Don Juan Fremont, diablo though he be!”

“You may well be frightened,” Victoria scolded. “La Señora was very disturbed you went without permission.” Mariana, half listening, recalled Ramon’s proud flashing look as the white stallion surrendered, recalled the sweetness in his eyes when he said the steed was for her.

“’Tis worth while,” she said softly, “no matter what my mother says. Though she should cut my hair . . .” The stout Indian woman mistook her excitement. “Do not be alarmed, Ninita [little girl]. La Señora has gone to the glen where Francita’s baby is sick. She will cure the little one and by then, the captain, your father, will be here. Dona Maria Martinez will forget to scold.”

Mariana finished the tamale, chuckling for Victoria’s shrewd insight. Will I ever love as my mother loves, she mused dreamily. Though the earth were folding up, when he arrives, she is always glad. No—that will not happen to me. But she ran through the corridor and she sang as she ran.

Next week will conclude Elenore Meherin’s four-part series about Mariana and Rancho Saucelito.

Mariana Richardson’s Adventures — Part II

PHOTO COURTESY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

In this anonymous painting of Richardson’s hacienda, c. 1845, the pathway along the beach later became Caledonia Street

By Elenore Meherin and Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

Last week, we presented Elenore Meherin’s account of the budding romance between William Richardson’s daughter Mariana and “the handsomest and bravest of all California’s dashing young Caballeros” Ramon de Haro. The couple, along with Mariana’s brother Steve and Ramon’s brother

Francisco, set out to capture some gallant wild horses. This week that story continues:

Ramon reached out and plucked the rose from her hair. “For luck!” he said, sticking the flower in his vest. “It’s going to be a fight; the horse may well prove better than the man.” Mariana laughed. This was sport of a thrilling order. The boys had seen the magnificent stallion with a herd of mares. They were wild horses. Today they would lasso the best of these and bring them back to the Saucelito Rancho. Ramon touched her elbow, pointed to a little mountain meadow. "Look—there he is!”

She saw a flash of white, the great stallion with 10 or 12 black mares and three pintos. They were standing perfectly quiet, perfectly unaware. Ramon slid from his mount, quickly removed the saddle. They rode bareback with only a reata strapped about the horse’s body, when they went after the wild herd. Now Steve and Francisco galloped up. Without a word, they also removed their saddles. “I will get a pinto—the tall one," said Steve. Francisco answered, “It’s the shiny black one nearest to the tree for me!" They all rode on in swift, stealthy quiet.

Suddenly Ramon stooped low, giving his horse the rein. A moment later the wild mares and the white stallion were plunging onward in great alarm, the three horsemen and the girl galloping mile after mile in headlong pursuit. They were catching up on the herd, the stallion not 50 yards in the lead. A lasso went out. A moment of breathless suspense, then with unerring precision the noose tightened on the great white stallion’s neck. Instantly Ramon’s horse halted. Rider and mount might have turned to stone so motionless they stood while the magnificent snow-white beast plunged and reared and neighed screamingly with rage. Mariana stood at a little distance, tensed and prayerful, watching the breathless struggle. If Ramon’s nerve for one moment faltered he would be dragged to the ground and trampled to death. The stallion went racing madly, seeming bent on crashing rider and horse against a tree.

Ramon let him run, holding his own horse firm, but playing out the rope and flashing with excitement. Inches from the redwood tree, the rope pulled taut, the raging animal halted. She saw Ramon smile, saw his hand whipping up the loops, graceful, poised, inconsequent as though it were a ballet. Then the wild horse turned and charged. The girl closed her eyes. When she opened them, the white stallion, choked and exhausted, lay on the ground and Ramon waved in triumph. Only then, Mariana noted her brother with the pinto in leash and Francisco with the sleek black mare.

They rode gaily, like conquering heroes, back through the hills. The three wild horses were still rearing, untamed but forced to follow. Suddenly the stallion stopped short. He lowered his head and neighed loudly. He waited and neighed again—a long imperious summons, then a series of short, nervous, half - frantic cries. Ramon said softly, “He is calling to the mares.” On a ridge, running parallel to the one they traveled, the calico mares and two others appeared. They were running swiftly, determinedly, miles distant, but headed westward. The stallion sensed their presence for he lifted his head and snorted proudly.

“A lovely thing said Ramon, “they’re needing each other and knowing it and clinging together. I like a loyalty like that. Tomorrow I will bring in the mare.”

She looked up and found his eyes seeking hers and full of a shining sweetness. She said admiringly, "He is a noble beast, Ramon.” He laughed and dashing past her, answered, “Not too noble for you, Chiquita mia!”

She mocked. “You would give your right hand up before you’d yield this princely steed.” He shouted back so that the whole valley rang with his joy, “The hand, too, Chiquita, as you well know, is yours!” She had guessed the stallion would be hers but she was glad to hear him say it in this gallant way. As they came into the Saucelito Rancho, the American battleship “Portsmouth” was at anchor. Nearby was the Russian warship “Moscow.” These did not interest Mariana Richardson. Far out on the bay she saw her father’s launch sailing under a stiff breeze homeward. It would be crowded with guests. There would be a baile [dance] and great feasting. She felt happier than in all her life. (Continued Next Week)

PHOTO COURTESY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

In this anonymous painting of Richardson’s hacienda, c. 1845, the pathway along the beach later became Caledonia Street

Early Life in Rancho Saucelito

By Elenore Meherin and Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

PHOTO COURTESY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Caballeros like this one worked as vaqueros (cowboys) on the early California ranchos

In 1994, journalist and novelist Elenore Meherin wrote a four-part series for the Sausalito News featuring Mariana, the youthful daughter of Captain William Richardson. While describing her adventures, Ms. Meherin also provided vivid descriptions of life among the Californios and indigenous servants of the day:

She wore a bright red-ruffled skirt and a little tight bolero. She stole swiftly across the sunlit patio to the tree where a horse was tethered. She was very young but already her face had arresting provocative beauty. The horse whinnied. She answered with a soft, excited laugh and sprang to the saddle. Before she could lift the reins an Indian stepped from the shadow. He was tall and straight, his face as old and hard as granite. He now took the bridle and spoke in a voice of incredible deep music, “Does the madre know where you go?”

The girl chuckled, “She does not! But of course, you do. Tell me, Monico, is there anything you don’t hear? Listen—does the wind say a southeaster is coming up?”

The old Indian answered gravely, “There will be no storm of wind and rain, but a storm of men. It is no longer safe for you to ride, Ninita. There are bandits in all the hills.”

She leaned down and stroked the horse’s neck, then grinned at the loved old servant. “Bandits? They’ve been saying that since the pirates came, decades and decades ago.”

“Then you have not heard what the gringos do? Three days since, Francisco Arce and Lieutenant Jose Maria Avila were waylaid, their men wounded and 80 of General Castro’s horses stolen.”

“But why? We are not at war. My father says the gringos are good men.”

“They are not good men. They are horse thieves and highwaymen and they have come to steal the country.”

She patted the rifle strapped to her saddle. “Am I not the best shot in the ranchos—since you yourself have taught me? And almost the best rider? They will not steal our land, Monico, while God and the saints look on!” But she glanced back at the great rambling hacienda, its newly whitewashed walls and the climbing red roses glinting in the sun. Indians were now going to the fields and scores of children shouted in the glen. Three of them, brown and half naked, the youngest a mere infant, all astride one old nag now came galloping to the orchard. The apricots and purple plums weighted down the branches; one old cherry tree was still in riotous bloom. It grew at the edge of the creek where the water was dammed and where a dozen stout brown Indian women, now on their knees, were soaping mounds of snowy linens against the smooth stones. A lovely scene with the thousands of cattle roaming the many hills and the vaqueros now riding before them swift and reckless as the wind.

This was the Saucelito Rancho that Mariana Richardson surveyed so proudly on that destiny-packed morning of June 13, 1846.

But she stopped, picked a rose, tucked it in her shining hair and went galloping, a song in her heart, across the ravine. She took the road along the beach until it wound into the hills behind Mill Valley. The wild oats and the yellow mustard grew shoulder high, the deer ran before her. Now and then she saw a bear or a herd of elk. She had ridden among them longer than she could remember and she had never been afraid. At a distance, Monico followed. Mariana laughed. How foolish the wise can sometimes be! Where the trees began to tower and the road became a tangled path, she looked eagerly for other riders. Presently she saw three horsemen, brilliant figures with crimson and yellow bandanas fluttering but their bodies motionless in the swift and perfect rhythm of the canter. They were coming up from the Read Rancho where they were helping their aunt and only neighbor, the young widow Hilarita, with the marking of her cattle. Mariana turned and waved to Monico. He could go now. Even with bandits abroad, she would be safe with her brother Steve, and their two good friends, Francisco and Ramon de Haro. They were twins, alike in their long black hair, tied with ribbons, their flashing eyes and superb bearing. But Ramon was taller than his brother. In Mariana’s eyes he was handsomest and bravest of all California’s dashing young Caballeros. He was 20, she was 17. Among these hills they had both been born; here they had frolicked and here they would live and love and be happy always. So they thought that sunny June morning when they rode on their last adventure together. Ramon raced to her side, sweeping off his sombrero and saying excitedly, “We saw him in the hills, the snow-white stallion. I will catch him today.”

To be continued

A Child’s Look at Early Sausalito

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

PHOTO COURTESY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Mignone Trouette at age 10. This photo was taken in 1918

Mignone Trouette Conner was born in Sausalito in 1908 and lived here until her death at age 99. She was a historian, and a part of Sausalito’s history herself. In 1987, she recalled her childhood here in an oral history with the Historical Society’s Betsy Kraemer. Her French grandparents had immigrated to swampy New Orleans, but her grandmother suffered from anemia, and – desperate for a cure – visited a slaughterhouse to drink hot cow’s blood. “Finally,” Mignone recalled, “the doctors told her that if she stayed in New Orleans she wouldn't stay long.” Her grandfather, Paul Jean Trouette, had heard about Sausalito from his cousin, Jean Baptiste Baraty, head of a pioneer Sausalito family since immigrating here from France in 1878. The Trouettes arrived in Sausalito in 1883.

Mignone’s earliest memories provide an intriguing look at early Sausalito through the eyes of a young child. Here are some edited excerpts from her recollections:

My mother’s sister lived in Oakland, and when my aunt and uncle came to visit my parents in Sausalito they used to say “Oh, this is the last place on earth, it’s so dull.” It was very quiet.

But downtown at the corner of what was then Water Street and Princess Street, they used to have carnivals. As a little kid I used to do down there, but one year I had the measles and couldn’t go.  My aunt and uncle went and brought me back a kewpie doll.

Sausalito was like a little village. We knew everybody in town. On Sundays we would walk downtown in the early evening and sit on the plaza and watch the ferryboats come in, and the electric trains ran in those days. The hikers would take the trains up to Mount Tamalpais, and when they came back, they had ukuleles, and they would be singing.  It was a great joy to watch them as they boarded the ferries back to San Francisco.

When the Northwest Pacific Ferry Boat started taking on cars in the early 1920s, the cars used to line up almost to Mill Valley. People stayed in their cars all night to get on the ferry. My brother would gather wildflowers, go along where people were waiting to get on the ferry boats and sell them bouquets of flowers.

Around 1917, our home was on the corner of Turney and Girard. My father went to work for Ed Baraty (son of Jean Baptiste) as a butcher, and then bought him out. Papa had a cart and a horse, and he would take orders by telephone and deliver them by horse and cart.  Grandpa’s lot went from Litho Street to Locust Street and he had a barn with two stalls, one for his horse Belle and one for my father’s horse Jim. There were no sidewalks, just dirt.

When I went to Central School, there was an entrance on the West side for girls and one on the East side for boys.  We attended classes together, but we were separated otherwise. When the bell rang, we marched in and the girls went up their stairway and the boys went up theirs.

When I started school, I was at a real disadvantage because we only spoke French at home so I had to learn English.

As an adult, Mignone married her longtime admirer, Royal J. Conner, in 1931. The couple raised two girls, and Mignone became active in local politics as the voice for keeping "Sausalito's small-town charm." She served on the PTA and in 1944, as president, was an honored guest at the Marinship yard for the May, 7 launching of the USS Mission Capistrano.

According to her obituary, “After Roy's death, she continued to love and help the family and witnessed the marriages of all her grandchildren and the births of her great-grandchildren, and was happy to share all the wisdom 99 years of life had to offer.”

Mignone’s full oral history can be heard via www.sausalitohistoricalsociety.org

Marin’s Forgotten Pioneer, Part II

By Elenore Meherin and Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

Last week we presented Elenore Meherin’s Sausalito News account of John Read’s 1831 arrival at Yerba Buena, where he met Hilarita Sanchez, who became the love of his life. Here’s the second part of her saga, lightly edited:

In that day when this state was a Mexican province, a man could have rich acres, thousands of them, for the mere asking. A dazzling proposition to the Irish sailor lad. The limitless reach of green woodland fired his imagination. He wanted to wrest a kingdom of his own and lay it at Hilarita’s feet.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE LUCRETIA LITTLE HISTORY ROOM, MILL VALLEY PUBLIC LIBRARY
Reed's adobe brick house, built in 1836.

So he sailed across the bay to the lovely little cove at the lap of the mountain . . . our own Shelter Cove. Here were the red deer he had seen, herds of magnificent elk, and trees taller than a man had ever glimpsed. On the beach where Richardson [now] intersects with Bridgeway, John Read built his cabin. He became the first white settler of Sausalito, the first foreigner of Marin.

Except for the rare visits of the sailing ships there were no boats on the bay. No domestic commerce between the settlers. Read was not yet 26, but he had a man’s vision. He bought an old hulk, rebuilt it inside and out, fitted it with fine new sails, called it "Hilarita” for the girl he loved, and launched the first ferry between Marin County and the settlement of San Francisco [as Yerba Buena was renamed in 1847]. Three years later, in 1834, Read received a grant to the Corte Madera del Presidio Rancho, a kingly domain taking in the great part of Mill Valley, Strawberry Point, Belvedere and northward along the coast to and beyond California City.

It was a dense, virgin country. With amazing judgment, Read chose a site by a tumbling stream and built the first sawmill in Marin County. You can see the foundations yet in the park off Throckmorton, in Mill Valley. Then he built his adobe.

It was 1836 before John Read fulfilled his dream. At a wedding feast that lasted three days he married Hilarita and brought her in his schooner right up Richardson's Bay which then ran along Miller Avenue. The honeymooners stepped from their barge to their patio, and one of those fabulous dramas of early California days was now enacted.

The hacienda, encircled with a great rampart of mountains, lay in the golden bowl of the valley. The imposing grandeur of Tamalpais commanded the north, the wide blue bay bounded the south and east. In five years, there were four children born to the Reads. On the rolling hills were thousands of cattle, more horses than could be used. The sawmill did a thriving business. Every week the schooner took cargoes of hides, tallow, beaver and otter skins to San Francisco for barter with the traders.

Read had big plans for himself and his children, but in 1843, when he was only 38, he got a sun-stroke. They carried him from his horse to the hacienda. They had only one remedy in that primitive settlement. They bled him. And he died. His young valiant widow carried on. She lost one little boy; the remaining son, John Joseph Read, and the two girls, Inez and Hilarita, remembered a glamorous childhood. Rodeos with all of California coming in carretas [two-wheeled carts] and on horseback to the valley rancho, meriendas [snacks] at Muir Woods and Bolinas Beach songs at dawn and serenades in moonlight.

Hilarita educated her children as they both had planned. She handed down, intact, the royal acres her husband had developed. Their son John Joseph Read gave his native state all the land needed for the boulevard from Belvedere to California City. In return the road was unromantically named "Tiburon Boulevard.” With the American occupation, the squatters came. They killed the cattle, appropriating tens of thousands to their own use. They took possession of the choicest rancho sites.

Sausalito and Mill Valley have a grand story in their first settler, which both have strangely ignored. No ship of the hundreds now being launched is yet christened for the viking who first sailed a regular ferry across our bay, no monument to the pioneer who first saw the glory of the redwoods and the poetry in a tumbling stream.

The Quotable Walter Kuhlman

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

PHOTO COURTESY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Walter Kuhlman in his studio at the ICB

“Painting has to have an abstract substructure. Otherwise it isn’t worth a damn.” That was the credo of one of Sausalito’s most influential artists, Walter Kuhlman.  In a 1980 interview, he told MarinScope contributor Beth Galleto that he revealed himself to the world through his painting, but he declined to interpret his work. "Jung said that it is sufficient that an artist create,” Kuhlman explained. “He should leave interpretation to someone else. I'm content to do that.

Walter Kuhlman was part of a wave of WWII veterans who came to the Bay Area to attend local art schools on the G.I. Bill. He enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA, renamed the San Francisco Art Institute in 1961). “It was not like the organized art schools today where everybody is degree-nutty,” Kuhlman told Historical Society volunteer Peter Arnott. “In those days, the school was so free.  You’d come in in the mornings, paint until two o’clock, then go down to Bruno’s and drink wine. I never even got a certificate from the school.  I guess they gave them, but it didn’t matter.  We were painting.  We didn’t care if we were famous.  We were all out of the war —and survived.  We didn’t look to tomorrow.  We just painted.”

Kuhlman took a break from school to spend a year in Paris.  He later recalled that the impact of American painting was just hitting Europe at that time. “I was part of that vanguard," he told Beth Galleto.

Upon returning to Sausalito, he worked for a time at Heath Ceramics, which employed a number of local artists. Then he cooked for five years at the Glad Hand. One day a friend called to tell him that he had been chosen for a Graham Foundation Fellowship. "Only ten people in the world got these fellowships," Walter said, "and you couldn't apply for them." The fellowship freed him from financial worries, and upon hearing the news, he said, “Now I don’t have to cook these chickens anymore.”

Meanwhile, CSFA had become a hotbed of a distinct style of abstract painting known as West Coast Abstract Expressionism. Kuhlman and four fellow students met up with Richard Diebenkorn, the best known of the West Coast Abstract Expressionists and a member of the CSFA faculty. In 1948, Diebenkorn, Kuhlman and the others began meeting informally in each other's studios in Sausalito.

As Historical Society Board Member Wood Lockhart noted at an “Artistic Sausalito” program at the Sausalito Woman’s Club in 2009, “The Sausalito Six shared models and ideas. Sometimes they would have sessions during which they worked on keeping up their figurative skills, or pen and ink ‘jam sessions.’ They also had group shows in Sausalito at the Seashore Gallery,” and other venues.

The Sausalito Six worked together for less than two years, and then the artists went their separate ways.  Lockhart reported, “Walter Kuhlman, the only one of the Sausalito Six who later returned to live in Sausalito, had built a house for himself and his family in 1949 at an initial cost of $5,000, doing much of the work himself.”

In 1955, Kuhlman was the first artist to rent a space in the Industrial Center Building — beginning a tradition that continues today.  Peter Arnott recalls, “Over the years, Kuhlman has been honored with many distinguished awards. ‘But,’ he said, in his quiet, self-effacing way, ‘you can’t find happiness in the minds of others’.”

Examples of Kuhlman’s ground-breaking work hang in major museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the British Museum in London.  And he has graced the faculties of several Bay Area institutions, such as Stanford University, Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University, where he taught for two decades. 

“After a long and distinguished career,” Peter Arnott reported, “Walter Kuhlman died in March of 2009 at the age of 90.  During his lifetime, when asked to comment on his art, Kuhlman typically looked inward.  ‘I just get the canvas dirty,’ he said, ‘and then dream into it.’  And he continued, ‘It’s the emergence of life ... living things coming out of a shadow ... I never know what happens.’

And finally, the confession of the truly talented: ‘How do I know? I just do it’.”

Sausalito’s Almost forgotten Pioneer

By Elenore Meherin and Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

In her series of historical essays in the Sausalito of 1944, esteemed journalist Elenore Meherin contributed a two-part column on the life of John Read (aka Reed), who discovered our town before William Richardson. Here’s Part I of her account:

He was a young, blue-eyed giant, lonely and far from his native land. As the wind-tossed, weary schooner rounded Loma Alto, coming at last to port, John Read looked at the wooded islands of the great bay, at red deer running over a long sloping hill, ducks winging from the water. He took in every note of the wild, lovely scene and knew, at once, that he was home. It was spring of 1831. All the residents of Yerba Buena—as San Francisco was then called—with dogs, children, Indians and horses were down to the beach to welcome the trading ship. They were a tattered but gaily colored little crowd, about 30 in all.

IMAGE COURTESY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

This painting was created by sailor William H. Meyers, who visited the Bay just a few years after John Read. He mistakenly called our area South Soleta

Under a tree near a little spring, about where Portsmouth Square now stands, were a dozen tethered horses. Standing near the best of these was a young caballero, a rather gorgeous fellow in his scarlet breeches, his gaily embroidered short clothes and his carved boots. The saddle on which he leaned was mounted in silver. This man had a gelding that John Read wanted. You could buy a first-rate horse for $7 in that day. If you didn’t have money, you could have the nag free. “How much?” asked Read in excellent Spanish. He was an Irish sailor lad, this first settler of Sausalito, born in Dublin, 1805. At 15 he left the little patch of ground a man called home in his country and came to South America. He spent five years in Mexico, five or six more at sea, touching at San Francisco first in 1826. He spoke Spanish like a native.

“The horse,” replied the young gentleman of California, affably smiling, "is not for sale. I wait for my brother.”

But something in John Read’s eager friendliness must have touched the Californian’s heart. They were easy hearts to reach. Within 10 minutes John Read had the gelding; he and the two young Sanchez boys, Don Jose and Don Manuel were galloping down the valley to Buri Buri, the big rancho which began on the outskirts of Mission Dolores and extended half way through San Mateo. They rode through a fantastic fairyland. Hills splashed with gold of poppies and wild pansies, purple of lupin and wool-violet. Deer ran before them, wild fowl flew overhead and in the declivities of the distant mountains they saw vast herds of the wild horses, with the best of which the natives replenished their stocks.

They came at length to a wide, rambling adobe where the family were just sitting down to the noonday meal. The great hacienda was noble in its proportions, utterly meager in its fittings. The floors were bare, rooms sparsely furnished. A long crude trestle-table, a few rawhide chairs, three or four rough-hewn benches. But oddly, on the walls, a magnificent tapestry and a statue of the Virgin in a carved niche. On the statue was a blue robe, thickly embroidered with fine, real pearls. Everywhere, during the thirties, life in California presented these startling contrasts. Ranchos stocked with cattle, tables laden with perfectly cooked food, houses with adobe walls a foot thick. But no heat, no running water, no windows. A land of opulent resources but no industry and no conveniences.

On this spring day when John Read arrived, the garrison at the Presidio under Ignacio Martinez was 16 years in arrears on its salary. The soldiers had little more than the clothes they wore. Their wives often had to wait years for a new rebosa [scarf]. But never a people more rich in joy, more exuberant in health. John Read was welcomed by the old Indian fighter, Don Jose Antonio Sanchez. He sat down with the family to some asada, or meat broiled on the spit, to beefsteak with rich gravy and onions, eggs, beans, tortillas, coffee and a very fine dulce. Don Jose wanted to hear of far places, wanted to know the best market for his hides and tallow. Young Read answered but his eyes and his thought were on a radiant figure that now filled a pitcher with water from the spring, and came gliding like a dancer into the room. The sailor had not seen such dark winsome eyes in all his life, nor lips so red and sweet. The girl was still a child, but John Read fell in love with her. He decided then and there that she would be his wife. She was Hilarita Sanchez, one of the belles of that long-ago decade. There’s a picture of her, taken when she was well past fifty. It shows a strong, still-beautiful face, eyes luminous, hair black and thick. It fell to her knees when John Read first glimpsed her.

To be continued

Earl Dunphy, the Man Behind the Park

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

PHOTO FROM SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Earl Dunphy enjoyed a 5-decade political career in Sausalito

The reopening of Dunphy Park, after more than a year’s worth of improvements, brings to mind the man who gave the park its name: distinguished Sausalitan Earl Dunphy.

Last year the Historical Society’s Nora Sawyer described how the park was created on the site of what had once been a town dump.

”A group of local residents calling themselves the Community Park Volunteers proposed that ‘by means of volunteer labor and donated materials, a simple but pleasant park could be created.

“This group, led by Barry Hibben, formally requested permission to develop the park in September 1971. Over the next few years, the park took shape, fueled by volunteer efforts and contributions of funds, services and supplies by various groups, civic organizations, and individual volunteers. By December 1974, the park, named for long term City Councilmember Earl Dunphy, was complete.”

Fittingly, the new, improved Dunphy Park was also the result of countless hours of volunteer work and years of effort by citizens, elected and appointed officials, and City staff.

It’s a great story, but just as interesting is the story of the park’s namesake. Long-term Sausalitan Earl Dunphy worked for the NWP Railroad and at various other blue-collar jobs while also serving as postmaster, town trustee and councilman, including multiple terms as mayor. He was also on the town planning commission and was coordinator of civilian defense during WWII.

“An interest in politics is something you just have inside you; you receive nothing, but you feel you are accomplishing something." That’s what Dunphy told the Sausalito News in 1966, having served in local government for 44 years.

In a 1990 oral history for the Historical Society, Dunphy related how he got into local government, and some of his valuable early political lessons:

“My next-door neighbor, Billy Hannon, was mayor when I was about 15 years old, and he used to talk politics with me and finally he said, “Why don’t you come to a meeting?” So I started attending council meetings when I was 15.  They didn’t call them councilmen then; they were town trustees.

“Finally, in about 1935 I attended a meeting when they were arguing about spending a couple of hundred dollars to fix the firehouse door. At that time, the firehouse was opposite from where Ondine is. I said to myself, “I think I’ll run for the council,” so I talked to a couple of my friends, and they said, “Why don’t you? You’ve got nothing to lose.” So, we financed my campaign which was a total of $17, and I ran and was elected.”

Instead of fixing a door, Dunphy pursued a larger goal:

“I finally convinced the council – I want you to remember this: you never do anything by yourself – you must have support, and you need a majority. And believe me I was in the minority most of the time.  But I said let’s buy the property at the corner of Caledonia and Johnson and finally we got them to buy it. And we decided to put aside some money to build the fire station on that site. And also, to purchase some waterfront property and to put in some streetlights. We put three bond issues on the ballot in 1939 to put some lights down through town, to buy a waterfront lot at the foot of North Street and to relocate the firehouse. But all three were defeated.

“When the votes were tallied, we found out what happened. On the lights, the people on the hill rose against it because the lights were going to be on the waterfront, not on the hill.  On the firehouse, the people in old town voted against it because it would move the firehouse from the old part of town to the new part of town. And on the purchase of the waterfront property, the people in the north end of town voted against that because it was down in the south end of town. The city council said, ‘the people want them all, but they don’t want to pay for them.’ So, we built them all [without issuing bonds], and it turned out cheaper that way.”

All politics, as they say, is local.

Later, when Dunphy was mayor, a different bond issue was proposed — to buy the land that is now Dunphy Park. “I took an important part in that,” Dunphy recalled, “and it passed very quickly.” 

So next time you visit the waterfront park to enjoy the new landscaping, shoreline paths or the bocce and volleyball courts, take a moment to honor a true Sausalito giant: Earl Dunphy.

Oral histories such as Earl Dunphy’s are accessible at http://www.sausalitohistoricalsociety. com.

Smuggling in Sausalito

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

We recently presented excerpts from an account of otter hunting by pioneering newswoman Elenore Meherin, who wrote a series of historical essays for the Sausalito News in 1944.  Here’s her account of how Yankee merchantmen used Sausalito as a smuggling base in the 1800s:

PHOTO COURTESY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Yankee whalers such as this engaged in lots of trading other than whaling

The mountain dips a long shoulder to the sea, bringing the trees with it to the water’s edge. In the hollow of that great hulking shoulder is a little green and silver crescent, a very jewel of a bay. Like the Riviera, says the stranger gazing from water to high wooded cliff, or like Rio in the sweeping grandeur of its backdrop. Sausalito has more than unique beauty of setting. The small yellow boat-house, the frail weatherbeaten piers seem so quiet, so old and done, you wouldn’t guess these tranquil waters were but yesterday the scene of stirring drama. A school boy digging in the sands of Shelter Cove might well unearth a fistful of Spanish doubloons, a silver stirrup or a pearl- and turquoise-studded buckle. For to this very inlet came the audacious traders evading the Mexican revenue laws, here they secretly unloaded their cargo and here, at nightfall, galloped the owners of the princely ranchos to barter hides, tallow and bags of gold pieces for the varied and much-needed merchandise. It's a long century ago since the first smugglers made Shelter Cove their harbor, a hundred and seventeen years since Captain Frederick William Beachey sailed the British warship "Blossom” into San Francisco Bay. It was on November 6, 1826. He came to make a survey of the port and he noted with more than a touch of indignation, “As we opened out the several islands and stopping places in the harbour, we noticed seven American whalers at anchor at Sausalito, not one of which showed their colors.”

To those in the know there was nothing sinister or mysterious in the presence of the whalers. They'd been coming to Sausalito a good two decades. They came primarily for water. In Wildwood Glen were springs of abundant crystal-pure water—the finest in the whole province. These springs furnished the first water supply to San Francisco. It was taken in barrels and ferried across the bay on great scows. The fountains were later the property of Captain William Antonio Richardson. He gave the water and all the wood they could chop free to the traders. And he supplied them with horses and was a marvelous pilot through the Golden Gate. The whalers also secured great quantities of fresh fruit and vegetables at this little port.

But that’s just the daytime story of their presence. After dark was the real excitement, which, evidently Captain Beachey never discovered. You have to remember that California then was a sparsely settled Mexican province—a singing, carefree, unproductive country. The Mexican government was far away. They strangled their magnificent domain with impossible revenue laws. The Boston traders would sail around the Horn, stop off at the Sandwich Islands, then ply up to California. They might find all the ports closed except Monterey; they would be compelled to pay $20,000 in revenue for $20,000 in cargo. This boosted prices to such staggering heights the poor Californians were unable to buy the clothes and food they so desperately needed. It was a vicious circle. In the end both Californians and traders quietly and cleverly ignored the law.

And the doughty brigs with sails flung out would come jauntily into Shelter Cove, no colors flying. When it grew dark and the shadows trooped down from the mountains, you would see the tallow lanterns swinging and the crates swiftly dumped into small boats. Presently hoof-beats of the caballeros would ring down the glen and the whole beach would be alive with horses. It didn’t take long to transfer the cargo to the mustangs. By morning not a trace of the law-breaking showed on the beach but many a grateful senorita had a new rebosa [scarf], a jewelled comb and a bright satin petticoat.

William Heath Davis, who traded 60 years in California, gives a naively frank account of his smuggling adventures. To evade duties, he brought his boat “Don Quixote” into San Francisco Bay. Immediately the authorities put a guard on board, ordering him to proceed at once to Monterey. But the guard was an affable fellow and allowed himself to be locked up with a good meal and a bottle of aguardiente [distilled liquor]. There was nothing he could do, anyway. The crew and owners went to work, got all the valuable goods into boats and rowed them to the beach. There the cargo was hidden. It took till 4 o’clock in the morning but they’d saved themselves $19,000. Next day they blandly sailed to Monterey and declared a cargo of $1,500.

There were several ships in the harbor at the time. No one made any mention of the midnight proceedings. They didn’t regard smuggling a wrong but rather a benefit to the province. The Californians agreed. They were great smugglers. They had to be or go naked. There’s a pathetic letter on record. It’s from one Hermeneglido Sal, commandante of Santa Barbara: “I’m sending you one piece of cotton goods and an ounce of sewing silk by the wife of Jose Barbo. I have no combs and will not be able to get any for three years.” Small wonder the coming of a trading vessel meant carnival time to the lonely, ill-provided province. Small wonder Captain Richardson invited the seamen to his home, regaling them with chilis, tamales and the finest steers, fresh-slaughtered from his Sausalito ranch. The whole life of the settlement depended on these merchantmen.

Back issues of the Sausalito News can be accessed at sausalitohistoricalsociety.com.  On the home page, scroll down and then click on the link California Digital Newspaper Collection In red.

He Left His Heart in Sausalito

By Nora Sawyer, Sausalito Historical Society

In the absence of the Sausalito Art Festival this Labor Day weekend, Festival organizers and Antenna Theater are debuting The Heart of San Francisco, a COVID-safe theatrical event celebrating the elements that make San Francisco so beloved. The Bay Area will be transformed into an outdoor theatrical venue for this interdisciplinary audio-visual performance. The Heart of San Francisco will unite sky writing, boats, windsurfers, music, the Golden Gate Bridge, mountains, and islands together for a performance to experience in-person or via video streaming.

PHOTO BY BRUCE FORRESTER

Chris Hardman (standing, center) with members of Snake Theater in the 70s. Flanking Chris are waterfront legends TJ Nelsen (far l.) and Don Arques (far r.)

The man behind this ambitious undertaking is Chris Hardman, who founded Antenna Theater 40 years ago. As a thirteen-year-old, young Chris first set eyes on Sausalito from the back seat of his parents' car. The son of a writer of TV Westerns, Hardman had spent most of his life in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Looking down into Sausalito from the 101, with "the fog coming down, and all the boats laid out, was like looking into Middle Earth," he remembers. It was a vision of another world, a place where he wanted to be.

But first, he "ran away and joined the theater." While attending Goddard College in Vermont, Hardman encountered Bread and Puppet Theater, a radical, political theater troupe. Hardman was inspired by the way the way the group merged sculpture, music, language, and dance to create art that worked in conversation with its audience. He left Goddard to work with the theater, ultimately moving to Coney Island, where he lived and worked, building a carnival fun house.

When he moved back to the West Coast, a friend offered him the use of a studio at Gate 3 in Sausalito. The catch, he was told, was that "it wouldn't be there for more than three months before the whole thing got torn down." He ended up staying there for over a decade.

Hardman brought the interactive, immersive aesthetic he’d cultivated with the Bread and Puppet Theater and at Coney Island to Snake Theater, which he co-founded and brought to Sausalito in 1972. Snake Theater created site-specific pieces that told stories utilizing existing environments — an empty gas station, or the beach at Fort Cronkhite — and turned them into something new, telling stories that made the familiar spaces resonate in new ways.

He also got involved in the waterfront’s political battles. Hardman moved onto the Liberty, a 65-foot tug located near the Napa St. Pier. Then, on August 4, 1980, Bob’s Boatyard was torn down. Hardman, along with Annie Hallett, Chris Tellis, Phil Frank, Stewart Brand, and others, started Art Zone, which sought to protect the waterfront from development, preserve Sausalito’s unique character, and protect the artists and artisans who had made it their home. Hardman even ran for city council, using what may be my all-time favorite political slogan, suggested by Phil Frank: “A Hardman is Good to Find.”

Hardman recalls thinking it would be simple. “I was naïve,” he says. “I thought if you stated things clearly, it would be obvious — people would understand.” Instead, “it turned into a giant slog.” Developers saw Sausalito’s waterfront as an under-developed asset, occupied by hippies and squatters. Some Sausalito residents looked at the houseboats and saw only lawlessness. And many on the waterfront weren’t interested in organizing. “Before Galilee, it was a bit of a cowboy town,” Hardman remembers. “People were building boats, feeling temporary, thinking short term.”

Even those who didn’t have their eyes on the horizon needed some convincing. People were drawn to the waterfront as a place to express their individuality. “It started off as this free, libertarian place, an alternative to living in society.” Creating a coalition from that mix proved difficult. “We had to convince people it was in their best interests.”

Ultimately, an even broader coalition is what made it work. “We found allies,” Hardman explains, “people who were invested in Sausalito, the meaning of it, a vision of it that went beyond real estate.”
Meanwhile Hardman was still creating art. Snake Theater productions often addressed the tensions felt along the waterfront, and residents’ fear of displacement. He also founded the Antenna Theater, which incorporated prerecorded interviews with members of the community, and used headphones to create mobile, interactive pieces. In art and in politics, Hardman sought to tell stories that blurred the lines between play and audience, between people’s stories and larger folkloric themes.

This September 7th, large and small boats will sail out on the bay for a performance that will be live-streamed for viewers at home. At 3 PM, a skywriter will draw a mile-high heart over the Golden Gate Bridge, which will be visible throughout the Bay.

“America is going through a gigantic re-appraisal right now.” Hardman says. The performance is a response to death and loss, to the guilt and powerlessness people are feeling. Hardman wants to give people a way to transform those feelings, and empower them to change things for the better.

“This is a radical invitation,” he explains. “Do we live in a bubble? We do. We need to make the bubble bigger – that’s the only way out of this.”

To learn more about the Heart of San Francisco performance, visit antenna-theater.org

When Otters Almost Went Extinct

By Elenore Meherin and Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

Pioneering female journalist Elenore Meherin was featured in the San Francisco Call-Bulletin in the 1920s. After taking a five-year break to be with her family, she began contributing personality profiles and historic columns to the Sausalito News in January 1944.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MARINE MAMMAL CENTER
Sea Otter Yankee Doodle during rehabilitation at the Marine Mammal Center

The paper introduced her series in glowing terms: “It is not often that the editor of a weekly newspaper has the pleasure of welcoming as distinguished a personality as Elenore Meherin to his columns… From 1918 to 1939, with only minor interruptions, she was one of the newspaper greats of the West. She still is, as far as we're concerned.”

Her first column told of hunters who depleted the sea otter population nearly to extinction in the 1820s. Here’s her essay, with a few notations:

It’s only 174 years since the first white man gazed, astonished at the far-flung splendor of this San Francisco Bay; little more than a century since the first white settler stepped to the shores of Sausalito and decided that here was all of heaven any man could ask. The bay was a gold mine then more literally than it is now, for gold drifted in shining masses. Not the gold of metal, but of fur. For these waters that give us, with the season, sea bass, perch, lobster, gave in the old days the shimmering and almost priceless sea-otter. John Read, the intrepid Irish sailor who was first of white men to call Sausalito home, could stroll out from his shack any fine morning and meet a whole school of these sleek bathing beauties diving about where Bridgeway now skirts the water. He could cock his rifle and shoot. And there would be $5O in his enterprising pocket.

The individual otter varied from three and a half to nearly six feet in length and averaged three feet in width. William Heath Davis, who came to California in 1831, says the bay was crowded with them, and their capture was magnificent sport. Davis spent many a weekend at the Sausalito rancho of his friend, Captain William Antonio Richardson, and he often saw hundreds of the big creatures taken in an hour. The Russians came down from Fort Ross and hunted with great skill. They brought Aleuts from Alaska, bidarkas [portable boats with skins stretched over wood frames] made of whale bellies, and Russian rifles fashioned expressly for killing otters. The Aleuts would slither out in their light canoes; the moment an otter showed his head, he was shot. For decades the Russians maneuvered with the native Californians to gain control of this wealthy trade. The natives knew they had riches drifting in on every tide. But they never succeeded in taking it. Perhaps the senoritas were to blame. Any one of them could have wrapped herself from head to toe in coats as rich as mink, but they were a warm-blooded race and needed only a bit of lace or a silk from Cathay. The otter trade was California’s first gold rush. Within 10 years from the first trip of the San Carlos [when Europeans discovered San Francisco Bay], word of the bay’s fabulous wealth spread around the world. British, French, Americans and Russians watched each other with suspicion. For Spanish dominion over the provinces was already faltering.

The Spanish government made one valiant effort to garner the treasure. They sent a brilliant fellow, one Don Vicente Basadre, to open the fur trade with China, in 1785. The peltries were to be exchanged for quicksilver [mercury]. The governor of California, Don Pedro Fages, was delighted. He said he could furnish 20,000 skins a year. La Perouse, a visiting Frenchman, estimated the trade would prove more valuable than all the gold in the Mexican mines. By 1790, according to Bancroft, 9,729 skins were collected, valued at approximately $87,699. The boom ebbed. The Californians jumped to their silver-studded saddles, freed from the crass pursuit of trade, and hied to merienda [between meal snack] and fiesta, finding life and a twanging guitar in the moonlight happiness enough. The Russians never relinquished their interest. In 1823 they contracted with Governor Luis Arguello for the right to hunt otters in San Francisco Bay. They would furnish Aleuts and bidarkas; the Californians would feed the hunters and furnish 19 Indians, to watch the Aleuts! The profits were to be shared. The Russians even agreed to sell Arguello their share at $45 a skin, payment to be in California wheat. In a brief space they divided 1500 otters. That was the end of the contract. From then until they were ruthlessly exterminated, the magnificent fur-bearers were the smugglers’ prize, and Shelter Cove, then called Whalers’ Wharf, was the smugglers’ hideout.

Although they were believed to have been exterminated, a small group of otters survived, and since being listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 1977, the population has rebounded to around 3,000 animals for the past few years. The Marine Mammal Center at Fort Cronkhite began rescuing and rehabilitating southern sea otters in 1995 and has responded to more than 350 sick, starving, or injured sea otters.

Serge Trubach, Artist and Activist

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF GABRIELLE TRUBACH
Self portrait of Serge Trubach

In the pantheon of legendary Sausalito artists, Serge Trubach holds a prominent position. In his June 1979 obituary, this paper reported: “When Serge Trubach came to Sausalito in 1952, he brought with him a string of credentials attesting to his artistic ability.”

A native of the Ukraine, young Serge migrated to New York with his family before WWI and began his artistic career by drawing on sidewalks when he was eight years old. At age nineteen he won a Pulitzer Award and set sail for Europe to study. While there he extensively toured Berlin, Amsterdam and Brussels. When he returned home, American art critics claimed he had become too avant-garde. During those lean years, Serge struggled, supported by art projects for the depression-era Works Progress Administration.

In 1947 he found a degree of security on the teaching staff of the New England School of Art in Boston where he remained for five years. As Serge’s daughter Gabrielle recalls, “In 1952, Serge and my mother, fellow artist Leonora Cetone, sold their remaining artwork and relocated to the Bay Area, specifically, Sausalito. I presume this was because they were interested in becoming part of ‘beatnik’ artists milieu that existed there.”

The godfather of that milieu, Jean Varda, found them a place in Sausalito, a flat at 631 Bridgeway that Serge lived and worked in for the rest of his life. He also became friendly with Sausalito bohemians such as Enid Foster, Val Bleeker, Maggie Hazell, Walter Kuhlman and others.

Serge also won his first award on the West Coast at the Art Festival of San Francisco in 1952. Then he spent the next five years teaching full-time for the San Francisco Art League. His work was sold in a number of local galleries, and he had exhibitions at the Sausalito Art Festival, the San Francisco Arts Festival, the Marin Art and Garden Show; the de Young Museum, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Oakland Museum, and the Golden Gate Exposition. Prominent Bay Area collectors included Joseph Eichler, Herb Caen, Mortimer Fleishhacker and Mr. and Mrs. Peter Haas of the Levi Strauss family.

“He described himself primarily as a ‘non-objective’ painter,” says Gabrielle. “He was also interested in mysticism and symbolism. He was greatly influenced by the artists Andre L’Hote, Piet Mondrian, George Braque, Vassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.” Yet his creativity was quite eclectic, and he painted in a wide variety of artistic styles, media, and formats, including modern art, landscapes, still life subjects, commissioned portraits, life drawings, and cartoon caricatures; oil, charcoal, pencil paintings and drawings. He even created wood sculptures made with found objects.  

Serge belonged to Artist’s Equity of Northern California; he was a charter member of American Abstract Artists; a board member of the Sausalito Art Festival; and a juror for the California State Fair.

However, by the end of the 1950s, Serge had become disillusioned with what he saw as lack of community support for local artists. “People in Sausalito don’t buy any art,” he said in a 1978 oral history for the Historical Society.  He added, “We never had the backing of the public in Sausalito. The artists did it all themselves.”  He felt that Sausalito had deserted its legendary art colony in favor of tourism and other commercial pursuits. “I was walking down the street one day,” he recalled, “and came across a group of people who asked me ‘where is the art colony?’ I replied, ‘You’re looking right at it’.”

In 1960, Serge ran for city council — the first of 11 such attempts, all unsuccessful. A 1972 profile in this newspaper summed up his political agenda: “As he sees it, there should be children's festivals, holiday celebrations, permanent outdoor sculpture shows, exhibits, renewal of the defunct Sausalito live theatre, and lots more going on here. He wants to see the people of Sausalito demand and give more commitment to their community. To feel family vitality in their environment, and not become a retirement community or a place for swingers.”

I wonder what he’d think of Sausalito today.

Gabrielle Trubach, now living in Sebastapol, would like to connect with people interested in her father’s art.  Her email address is gtrubach@sonic.net.

New Chapter in the History of the Trident

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

The Trident/Ondine building, at 558 Bridgeway, is on the market for $12,800,000. That location has been part of Sausalito’s history for nearly 150 years.

PHOTO BY PAMELA WYCLIFFE
The Trident Deck is open for business

In 1873 the San Francisco Yacht Club moved from its small clubhouse across the Bay and constructed a new clubhouse on this site.  It was the second yacht club in the U.S., according to historian Jack Tracy, and the first on the West Coast. That original Sausalito clubhouse was destroyed by fire in March 1897 but was rebuilt and reopened with a gala dance 13 months later.  By 1926 the wake of large auto ferries, plus limited parking, caused the club to relocate to Belvedere.

After that, a series of waterfront hangouts occupied the property, including the Jazz Dock, a smokey dive bar with sawdust on the floor. In 1960, Kinston Trio manager Frank Werber procured the property for his clients. According to thetrident.net, he kept the Jazz Dock name until about 1966, when he remodeled the structure into a restaurant and renamed it the Trident. For the remodel, Werber engaged architect Roger Somers, who created hippie style curved railings and woodwork. Steve Elvin added a psychedelic mural on the ceiling; his art had been featured on posters for the top Bay Area rock bands, and he had created murals for singer Grace Slick and impresario Bill Graham, among others.

The Trident featured lots of local talent, including Vince Guaraldi, Jeannie Hoffman, George Duke, Flip Nunez, Don Scaletta and Denny Zeitlin. Other headliners included Jon Hendricks, Sergio Mendez & Brazil 66, Bola Sete, Willie Bobo, and Bill Evans.

Celebrities patronized the Trident as well. Janis Joplin had her own table, near a side door where she could slip in and out without being noticed. In 1974, Bill Graham threw an album release party for the Rolling Stones; legend has it that the tequila sunrise cocktail was invented for that party.

The club gained some notoriety in October 1971 when armed men in “in Scuba gear” entered The Trident from the water via a trap door, captured two employees, and robbed the safe of approximately $30,000 in cash. The caper became known as the Great Trident Frogman heist, but one of the captive employees, Patrick Pendleton, later explained that the robbers came across the Bay in an inflatable boat, dressed in wet suits for the wet ride, to stage their late night invasion. They were spotted motoring away from the scene of the crime and arrested. Pendleton was able to identify one of the suspects in court, and that perp was convicted.

By 1974 Werber started giving up most of his San Francisco business interests and moved away from the Bay Area. He suffered a stroke several years before his death in 2007. In 1980 the Trident closed its doors and became Horizons restaurant, presenting music only occasionally. 

Bob Freeman, a founder of the wildly successful Victoria Station and California Cafe chains, leased the property in 2002. He operated it as Horizons until 2012 when he and his partner Ron Davis and Bob Freeman revived the Trident name and uncovered the long-hidden ceiling mural to restore the place to its 1960s patina. Along the way, they acquired the building as well as the Trident name.

Freeman hosted two memorable Historical Society fundraisers. In 2009 we staged a Trident Flashback, encouraging everyone to come in 60s regalia, and featuring music by some of the groups that had performed live there back in the day. Then, in January 2013, we helped Bob celebrate the return of the Trident name with a party that featured the World Premiere of "The Lion Sons," a trio put together by Josh Reynolds. Josh is the son of original Kingston Trio member Nick Reynolds and was raised in Sausalito.

Looking back on it all, Bob Freeman says, “It’s been a fun ride, but I’m not getting any younger, and it’s time for someone else to take up the reins.”  He hopes that the restaurant will stay as it is and is even offering to continue operating it for a time for the new building owner. “I’m particularly concerned about taking care of the employees,” he added.

The Trident is currently open for outdoor dining, takeout, and delivery while we’re all sheltering in place.