Forbes Island Floats Again

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

The recent news that the infamous Forbes Island has been resurrected in the Delta reminded me that its visionary builder, Forbes Kiddoo, got his start fabricating concrete barges for Sausalito floating homes.

Most of those barges measured no more than 20 by 40 feet, but one day Forbes got the inspiration to build one 100 feet long and 50 feet wide — and to turn it into a floating island. He launched the island in 1980, complete with palm trees growing out of tons of topsoil, a sandy beach and underwater viewing ports à la Captain Nemo.

In 1987 The Historical Society’s Annie Sutter penned a glowing description of the island’s décor in this paper:

“Forbes has built it with exquisite attention to detail from the main salon with its long bar, fireplace, inlaid table, chandeliers and candelabra to the five staterooms. The interior glows with polished woods, bronze, stained glass, mirrors and Oriental rugs. And he has a collection of nautical artifacts and marine paintings that would make a maritime museum salivate.”

But by then Forbes had run afoul of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, which tagged the island as illegal Bay fill, and ordered it removed from Richardson’s Bay. Forbes fought the good fight for years until the BCDC agreed that if he installed a motor on the island, they would reclassify it a vessel and allow him to move it.

During this time, in the early 90s, I had the pleasure of serving Forbes drinks, first at the no name, and then across the Bay where he was having the engine installed in Richmond. As a bartender, I appreciated that when Forbes drank, everyone at the bar drank, enjoying his quips and atrocious puns.

When fitted out with a motor and 42-foot propeller in 1991, “the island chugged over to Antioch under its own steam, as it were, instead of having to be towed,” according to the Petaluma Argus Courier. Forbes told the paper that his island traveled at 22 knots, “not exactly America's Cup material, but impressive anyway.” He boasted, "It's the world's record for a floating island.”

After several stops outside the BCDC’s jurisdiction, Forbes remodeled his island into a fine dining restaurant, and berthed it off Pier 39 in 1999.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported: “The restaurant was as adored as it was snubbed (its reviews on Yelp spanned the spectrum), while serving as a wedding venue and tourist attraction for those who appreciated its novelty. Tony Bennett was a fan and once performed in the vessel’s wine cellar.”

In 2010, I booked the restaurant’s private Sea Lion room for my wife Jane’s birthday (don’t ask which one!). Forbes himself ferried us out to the island in a launch ominously named Titanic. But when we arrived, we found that the sea lions had deserted their nearby post. Seems the ocean and bay had become unusually warm, forcing their favorite prey to travel farther and deeper to feed, and the sea lions had followed suit. Later I learned that the largely bachelor colony of Pier 39 sea lions was seasonal, coming and going to breed and feed as they saw fit.

By 2017, said the Chronicle, “maintaining a kitschy floating restaurant in the San Francisco Bay became too costly (the barge’s steel shafts, called spuds, which hold the deck together, continually broke) and Kiddoo decided to close the business for good.” After 17 years in business, Forbes shuttered his restaurant in 2016 and retired at the age of 79. Once again, the island was moved around Suisun Bay and the Delta.

Then in 2018 a Bay Area man gathered a group of nautical radicals, including a landowner in the Delta, and formed a holding company called Seastar Marine to purchase the vessel from Kiddoo. They have relaunched it as an event venue located at Bradford Island in the San Joaquin River. Forbes, who passed away shortly after the sale at age 81, would be pleased to know that people are still enjoying his one-time home and showcase.

COURTESY PHOTO

Forbes Island finds a home in the Delta.

Triumph and Tragedy aboard the Chipsa

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

ILLUSTRATION FROM S.F. CALL

The Chispa had a checkered past.

The schooner Chispa was built in 1879 by Matthew Turner in San Francisco. The day after launching she took first prize in a San Francisco Yacht Club race and was known to be one of the fastest yachts in San Francisco Bay and offshore. The yacht was owned by Commodore I. Gutte and affiliated with the SFYC, which was based in Sausalito at that time.

Chispa participated in many regattas, including an outing to Pittsburg on July 4, 1885. Here are excerpts from a Sausalito News account of that sail:

“The San Francisco Yacht Club had a very enjoyable run up to Pittsburg Landing for their Independence Day cruise. The yachts started from Front street wharf at 3 o'clock Friday afternoon with the exception of the Chispa which left about half an hour later but overhauled most of the other boats coming in at Martinez but a few minutes behind the winners. All the boats were gaily decorated with Chinese lanterns on the night of the Fourth and seemed to vie with each other in the display of fireworks.”

However, in 1898 Chispa was the scene of a grisly — and controversial — murder.  The September 25 San Francisco Call reported:

“Captain James Morse Brooks, the navigator of the Chispa, was murdered while asleep in his bunk aboard that vessel at about 1:30 o'clock this morning. Peter Nelson, a deckhand, claims that the crime was committed by the proverbial ‘two men, one tall and the other short,’ and that he himself escaped death only by leaping over the side and swimming for his life. The circumstances are so peculiar that the authorities believed themselves warranted in arresting Nelson on the suspicion that he was the assassin, and he is now confined in a cell in the San Rafael Jail.”

The Chispa was anchored about 200 yards off the San Francisco Yacht Club house. A game of cards had just ended and the players were all on the street at the time. When they heard shots offshore, a handful of concerned citizens and lawmen clambered into a couple of small boats to investigate.

According to the Call, “The Chispa was boarded by the party and a terrible sight was revealed. Captain Brooks lay on his right side in his bunk, with his right hand under his head. His head and face were covered with blood, flowing from two ghastly wounds. One was in the edge of the hair in the left temple and the other behind the left ear. Both had been inflicted with some sharp instrument. The bed clothing, the head of the bed, and every article close by was spattered with the dead man’s life fluid.

“That robbery had been the motive for the deed was shown by the fact that the pockets of all the clothing in the room were turned inside out, the drawers of the lockers drawn forth and the room in a topsy-turvy condition. On the floor was found a common Ice pick, covered with blood, a silver quarter and a dime and a small bone-handled penknife with the large blade open.”

The Call quoted deckhand Nelson’s account of the crime:   

"I had been in town with the captain, and we had been drinking beer at Garcia & Payne's tamale cafe. The captain was under the Influence of liquor at the time and we came aboard and both went to bed. This was about 9:3 o’clock. I slept soundly until I heard something rattling and then heard the captain moan 'Pete, help: They are killing me.' I got out of bed and started for the stateroom where he slept. As the door opened a short, heavy man shouted: ‘Put a bullet in him and stop that groaning. Kill that — too,' meaning me. I ran back and climbed through the hatch on deck.

“By the light of the anchor lamp I saw another man, a tall, dark-appearing fellow. I jumped just as he shot at me and swam for my life. Two more shots were fired and the second hit me in the calf of the right leg. I called loudly for help and was picked up by the keeper of the Ramona. Captain Brooks and I never had any words and I have worked on the yacht only two weeks. He showed only a dollar while he was on shore and that was when he paid for the beer at Garcia & Payne's."

The paper then detailed four discrepancies in Nelson’s account. The shore party reached the Chispa about five minutes after the shots were fired, yet the lawmen “both assert that the body of the dead man was already icy cold, showing that he must have been killed some time before the commotion.” The lawmen doubted that Nelson’s wound was from a gunshot, deciding, “It could have been made with any sharp-pointed instrument, and the ice pick might have been used to inflict it.”

Nelson’s description of the tall man on deck was positive and exact in detail. But “when asked how he could make out so many things in the dim light and when he had rushed up and jumped overboard so quickly, he hesitated and became hazy” about some of his description.

Finally, the deckhand was picked up within two minutes from the time he jumped overboard, and yet none of those who came from the shore saw any boat leave the yacht. “The light was dim, but it appears to the authorities that they could have noticed that fact.”

Nelson was eventually arrested, and various papers carried stories of his detention and the ongoing investigation, but I could find no reports of a trial, so the mystery remains unsolved.

Sausalito’s Quiet Superstar

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

Nick Reynolds, a founding member of the folk music phenomenon known as the Kingston Trio, was a long-time, civic-minded resident of Sausalito.

COURTESY PHOTO

Nick Reynolds in his heyday.

Under the direction of charismatic manager, Frank Werber Nick, Bob Shane, and Dave Guard were literally getting their act together by appearing in small clubs on the Peninsula and in San Francisco in the late ‘50s. They were also immersing themselves in the post-beatnik counterculture that was blooming here. In the book Greenback Dollar by William J. Bush, Reynolds explained how that immersion brought them across the Bay:

“We'd go to these jazz and poetry readings where there'd be a piano player and horn player, and Alan Watts would stand up and recite a whole bunch of stuff I didn't even understand, but I knew something was happening because the places were packed! Frank Werber had a houseboat in Sausalito, and we discovered Sausalito and just fell in love with it. That's where all the bohemians and artists were—down on the waterfront in houseboats. Alan Watts and Allen Ginsberg, everybody was around there. We'd see them all in the park."

Weber was a full partner with his clients, sharing a quarter of all revenues of Kingston Trio, Inc.  After the smash success of their first record, “Tom Dooley” in 1958, he decided to diversify. His talent agency, Trident Productions, took on other clients and he began investing in other businesses, including a nightclub on Bridgeway called the Yacht Dock which he and the trio bought in 1960. They kept that name until about 1966, when they completely remodeled the space into a prototypical fern bar and renamed it The Trident — a musical entertainment venue, natural foods restaurant and a hangout for a mixed bag of celebrities, hippies, and locals.

Eventually, Nick Reynolds married and bought a house on Santa Rosa Avenue in the Sausalito hills. In 1960, the Sausalito News reported that the trio had cancelled an appearance for the Sausalito Teenagers organization at the Woman’s Club because “the stork is hovering over the Reynolds home on Santa Rosa Ave.”

A short time later, the paper recounted: “Nick Reynolds of the noted Kingston Trio, has donated autographed copies of the four LP recordings of that group to the Sausalito Teenagers. Reynolds, who has been interested in the group since its inception, had intended to appear before the group but a bouncing baby boy, name of Joshua, was born to the Reynoldses about the date of the promised appearance. The Teenagers, elated at their gift, reciprocated with a gift of a blanket for the baby Joshua.”

(Flash forward to 2013 when Josh Reynolds appeared at the Trident with the world premiere of "The Lion Sons," a trio performing Kingston Trio material. The performance was a successful fundraising bash for the Historical Society.)

Reynolds and his wife Leslie opened their home for a fundraising tour for the Sausalito Nursery School in 1964 and he volunteered as an auctioneer at a benefit for Star of the Sea church’s youth fund. He made local news again in 1964 when he took up Formula B car racing, and when he and the Trio’s Road manager helped to rescue a driver who went off the sea wall on Bridgeway and into the Bay.

Nick would remain in the Trio until the original group disbanded in 1967. Not long after that he and his wife left Sausalito for Port Orford, Oregon before finally returning to his hometown of Coronado, CA, where he passed away in 2008.

According to his obituary in the Coronado News: “While music was always an important part of Nick Reynolds' life, he was also an avid photographer, skeet shooter, tennis player, passionate Formula B race car builder and driver, antique collector, restauranteur, astute businessman, dedicated community volunteer and, above all, a deeply loving father, husband, brother and friend.

“To those who knew Nick personally, he will be remembered as a gentle, incredibly perceptive individual with a wry wit and a generous heart.”

Two Doomed Sisters

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

We’ve written before about the 1904 collision of the ferries San Rafael and Sausalito, which inspired the opening chapter of Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf. It turns out that the San Rafael, which sunk after the collision, had a sister ship — ironically called the Saucelito  which was involved in a similarly tragic crash 27 years earlier.

In October 1877 the Sacramento Daily Union reported on a collision between the steamers Saucelito and Clinton (no relation!) off Alcatraz.

The Clinton, which sank almost immediately, was no longer serving as a ferry, but had been towing freight barges that fateful day. The Saucelito, formerly known as the Petaluma, was returning from San Francisco about 6:40 p.m. when the disaster took place. The paper reported: “Whistles were sounded as the steamers approached, but the vessels did not clear each other, and the Saucelito ran into the Clinton almost amidships, and cut into her so deeply that she sank in a few minutes. The Saucelito continued her trip and landed her passengers at her berth near Vallejo street wharf, but being injured considerably by the collision, it was considered advisable to steam back to Saucelito, with the intention, if necessary, of running her on the flats in Richardson's bay.”

The Captain of the Clinton, incongruously named Charles J. Lucky, gave the paper a firsthand account of the accident. Here are excerpts from his statement:

“Shortly after passing Arch Rock, I saw the Petaluma coming up from Saucelito and gave the usual signal — one whistle — for her to pass on the port side, and put my helm hard-a-port, but got no answer. I signaled a second time and kept my helm a-port, but the Petaluma did not change her course. I saw there was not time to prevent a collision, and so I put my helm hard-a-starboard, to try and get a glancing blow, to lessen the force of the shock. It was then the crash came. She struck us fair amidships, on the port side.

“I ran down below and went along the main deck, when I stumbled down the hole which the Petaluma had made on her bow, and had to scramble up out of the water to get on my vessel again. I found my engineer, and asked him it he could work the engines. He was excited, and said he could not find the fireman. I said, ‘Let's look for him,’ and went to the engine room and found a lantern there. I returned to the fire-room, and as I got to the door some one cried "Help!" I ran to the port side from which the cry came, and found Mannie [the fireman] in the cut made by the Petaluma. He had evidently tumbled in as I did when I first went below. The water by the time I got there was up to my waist. Mannie was fighting to keep himself up, and as he saw me called ‘Help! help me: give me your hand, Captain !’ I reached down one hand and caught him by the wrist. He said ‘Don't let me go.’ I said, ‘I will not,’ and tried to hold him up with one hand, but found that he was caught by something, and in order to get a better hold I put the lantern in my mouth, and using both hands pulled Mannie half way up. By this time the water was up to my waist, and the vessel suddenly keeled to port — so much so that I could see the hurricane deck was shutting me in. I was therefore forced to let go my hold and make a struggle for my own life. Poor Mannie never said a word when I left him, and I was too eager for life to think of anything but myself. He was 65 or 66 years of age, and one of the oldest and best known engineers on the coast; and if he is gone, leaves a wife and several children in Brooklyn, where he resided.” Mannie was never seen again.

“After a hard fight I reached the bow, which was still out of water, and saw the Petaluma lying about fifty yards off, her paddles turning slowly to keep her in position. I cried out, ‘Stop her,’ pulled off my coat and boots, and, jumping into the water, swam alongside of the Petaluma and hailed, when a rope was lowered and I scrambled aboard. I ran up to the pilot-house at once, found the Captain and a deck hand at the wheel, and said: ‘Captain, this is terrible; How did it happen?’ He answered, ‘I don't know. I was down below when we struck.’

“The Petaluma landed us at the Vallejo street wharf; I heard some one say as I left that there were two feet of water in her hold, but know nothing about it myself. There seemed to be some forty feet of her starboard bulwarks stove in, and I thought I could see two large holes in her starboard bow.”

The Petaluma/Saucelito was repaired but was destroyed by fire in 1884 at the Pt. St. Quentin ferry wharf.

PHOTO FROM SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The Saucelito was an elegant replacement for earlier North Pacific Coast Railroad ferryboats.

A Tale of Two Sisters

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

The recent Fado night at The Pines Mansion in the Sausalito hills marked the 10th anniversary of the sister city relationship between Sausalito and the picturesque waterfront town of Cascais, Portugal. The evening featured a spirited performance of Portuguese folk music and was a fundraiser for the sister cities’ Youth Sailing Program.

Ever since the first immigrants from the Azores came to Sausalito in the 1830s to work as mariners and dairymen, the Portuguese influence has been a major factor in our culture, as recently demonstrated during the annual “Holy Ghost” Festa parade held on Pentecost Sunday (May 28, this year).

To learn more about how this relationship came about, I spoke with Vasco Morais, a mainstay of the Portuguese IDESST Hall on Caledonia St. The Portuguese cultural center was established in 1888 — before Sausalito had even become a city — as a focal point for Portuguese culture and traditions in Marin County.

“In 2008,” Vasco told me. “I was President of the Hall and marching in the Festa parade with Mayor Herb Weiner when he suggested a sister city relationship with Portugal.”

First, the cities and towns of the 9 Azorean Island archipelago were explored. But with the vast number of Portuguese immigrants on the East and West Coasts from the Azores, each had already established multiple U.S. sister city relationships.

Eventually, Vasco suggested his hometown, Cascais on the Portuguese Riviera. Like Sausalito, Cascais had its beginnings as a fishing village, with a strong maritime tradition, and is now a commuter suburb of a much larger neighboring city, Lisbon.

Mayor Herb introduced Vasco to the Historical Society’s Mike Moyle, who was also active in Sausalito’s existing sister city programs. Mike came up with the structure of a sister cities umbrella organization, with individual councils for Vina del Mar, Cascais and Sakaide, Japan.

Vasco recalls, “I met with a councilmember in Cascais who was responsible for foreign relationships. He was about to sign an agreement with Pittsburgh, but he’d been to Sausalito and felt it was a better choice. At the local yacht club, Clube Naval, I presented a Sausalito Yacht Club burgee and brought back one of theirs, which still hangs at the Sausalito club today. That bond became the bedrock of the relationship between the two cities.”

In June 2012, a Sausalito delegation attended the International Meeting of Twinned Cities in Cascais. The following year Sausalito reciprocated, inviting a delegation from Cascais to formally establish the Sister City relationship, which was ratified at ceremonies held at Vina Del Mar Plaza.

A key element of the relationship is the Youth Sailing Exchange in which six boys and girls trade places every other year, sailing together and developing lasting friendships. This unique exchange program is fully funded by Fado at The Pines. Staying with host families, the students practice citizen diplomacy as they represent their clubs and cities as ambassadors — all while improving their sailing skills.

Along with the sailing programs, Sausalito has also introduced Portuguese wine, food, and music. Fado is a traditional form of urban folk music in Portugal, and Sausalito hosts fadistas and other musicians to further this relationship.

The May 20 event featured the Daniel Pereira Cristo Quartet performing Northwestern Portuguese contemporary roots music. This was the group’s first appearance in the U.S. An earlier booking had been cancelled during the pandemic.

Portuguese wines and port, petiscos appetizers and Presunto Cura Alentejano, ham cured Portuguese style and sliced at the table, were served and a 5-night stay at a 5-star hotel in Cascais was raffled off. The winner was Michael Lewis, who was also the official photographer for the event.

PHOTO BY MICHAEL LEWIS

Daniel Pereira Cristo charmed the audience at the Pines.

63 Years of Caring for Sausalito

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

In 1960  the Sausalito Foundation was formed by residents to purchase two city blocks of underwater property at Shelter Cove and to deed them to the city. The purchased lots have preserved the view of San Francisco and the Bay forever. These lots are located on Bridgeway, from The Trident past Eden Roc.

Eight years later the Foundation began an ongoing acquisition and archival presentation of works by Sausalito artists and of Sausalito subjects, supported by the sale of sea lion replicas cast by Heath Ceramics. Many of the historic paintings and photographs are on display in City Hall.

In honor of the nation's bicentennial in 1976 the Foundation undertook restoration of the Vina del Mar fountain, which was originally created for the 1915 San Francisco Pan Pacific Exposition. Since then, the elephant sculptures and fountain in the park have been restored three times.

The Foundation has also refurbished and restored local parks and playgrounds and in 1985 installed the Sally Stanford Drinking Fountain and Leland Fountain for dogs at the downtown ferry landing. The fountains are, of course, named for the infamous Madame Mayor of Sausalito and her dog, Leland.

For the City’s Centennial in 1994 the Foundation, along with the Friends of the Art Festival, commissioned the installation of the Bolinar sculpture by local artist John Libberton, with landscaping by David Schwartz, at the intersection of Napa Street at Bridgeway near Dunphy Park. Donors were honored with their names on Heath Ceramic bricks.

More recently the Foundation has made annual contributions to the 4th of July fireworks, Sausalito Library Children's Holiday Tree, and has served as the non-profit fiscal agent for neighborhood improvement projects.

In 2012  the Foundation began the project of upgrading the Ice !louse Plaza at Bridgeway and Bay Street, which was completed by the Sausalito Historical Society in  2019. The plaza includes benches and items of historic interest in a landscaped setting— including a life size statue of Historical Society co-founder Phil Frank, who was instrumental in moving the Ice House from Caledonia Street to its central downtown location.

In 2016 the Foundation began the repair and restoration of the Jean Varda mosaic in Marinship Park, next to the Bay Model. The mosaic was originally part of Villa Roma Hotel in San Francisco. A costume and musical celebration of Varda was held in the park, saluting the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love.

The next year a photograph of the San Rafael ferry by Bruce Forrester was added to the Foundation's collection of local artists in City Hall. Bruce’s photos have often illustrated historic articles in MarinScope.

Last year the Foundation served as fiscal sponsor for the All Our Children United project to clean, beautify, and enhance the experience of moving through the tunnel that connects Marin City and Sausalito.

And this year the Foundation is working to restore and replace the sea lion statue by Al Sybrian which fell into the Bay in the January storms. As a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit, it is soliciting tax deductible donations to fund the restoration and future maintenance. According to Foundation co-treasurer Felicity Kirsch, some 140 donors of $250 or more have received commemorative replica sea lion statuettes.

The refurbishment plan includes patching cracks and affixing a new bronze base to secure the piece to its concrete pad. Reason Bradley of Universal Sonar Mount, an engineering and underwater sonar group, is coordinating the effort to fix the sea lion along with other Marinship artisans.

Donors can contribute online at thesausalitofoundation.com or mail checks to the Sausalito Foundation, P.O. Box 567, Sausalito, CA 94966.

The Foundation hopes to complete the project by late spring.

PHOTO FROM SAUSALITO FOUNDATION

Sea lion statue being sandblasted to search for cracks.

Saucelito Transportation Makes News

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

In the 1870s, various Northern California newspapers reported on new roads and rail lines being introduced in what was then called Saucelito.

The October 29, 1870 Marin Journal carried an article about a new road being constructed along the shore from Lime Point “to facilitate the operations of the men engaged on the fortifications” at Fort Baker. Lime Point frames the north side of the Golden Gate with its counterpart to the south, Fort Point in San Francisco. Early English surveyors believed the rocks that formed this point were of the same white chalk as the famous white cliffs of Dover, but, in fact, the white color comes from bird droppings. The Journal added: “A landslide occurred at the works being constructed at Lime Point last week. The men had been ordered away by the officer in charge a few minutes before, and no person was hurt.”

The same article told of a new road from Saucelito to Bolinas, “making the trip in the short space of 3 hours and 12 minutes, and being only 4 hours from San Francisco.” The following month the paper announced that: “In honor of the completion of the Saucelito Road a Banquet will be given to the Board of Supervisors at Saucelito, on the 8th proximo, on which occasion the following Bill of Fare will be presented: First Course: Green Turtle Soup; Stew a la Ring Tail Monkey; Stuffed Macaroni. Second Course: Ram Tail Pie, with truffles: Hearts of Oak, done brown; Saucelito Codfish Fritters.” Sorry, I was unable to find recipes for Stew a la Ring Tail Monkey or Ram Tail Pie.

The hazards of travel on the early roads were graphically described in the Journal a couple of years later:

John Nelson, proprietor of the Olema and Bolinas stage line, and a companion named Britton attempted the trip in a buggy, carrying a mail bag, despite being warned of “slides in descending the banks of the creek.” Here’s how the paper described their misadventure:

“While descending the bank, the horse fell forward and sank beneath the water, throwing Mr. Nelson over the dashboard on the horse's back; Mr. Britton fell into the creek, but they fortunately were able to catch hold of the wheel.“ But, “being unable to extricate themselves from this perilous position, they succeeded in detaching the animal from the buggy, and by main strength and perseverance gained high ground. Mr. Britton went for assistance to Supervisor Parsons, while Mr. Nelson attempted to recross the stream. Upon reaching the opposite bank the horse backed into deep water. The current was so strong that horse, buggy and driver were swept back across the creek, when Mr. Nelson caught at a bush on the bank. Coming in contact with the animal frantically struggling in the water, he lost his hold, but finally, after much exertion, succeeded in getting on his back. He again grasped the bush, when the horse and the buggy drifted away from beneath him. He was saved from a watery grave by the timely assistance of Messrs. Britton and Parsons. Taking the Supervisor's horse, Mr. Nelson again plunged into the torrent to the rescue of his property. Alter swimming down the stream some distance, the harness was cut loose and the horse saved. The buggy which was badly damaged, was afterward drawn out. The mail bags were found the next day.”

Hazards like that were alleviated when train service was introduced. In January, 1875, the Russian River Flag reported: “The first regular trains began to run last Monday on the North Pacific Narrow-Gauge Railroad. The schedule time from Saucelito to Tomales is to be three and one-half hours. The cars are to run southward in the morning and up in the afternoon.” Fares ranged from 25 cents between San Francisco and Saucelito, up to $2.25 to Tomales.

The Daily Alta Californian provided this account of an excursion on the new line on January 8, 1875:

“The North Pacific Railroad Company yesterday invited a number of prominent capitalists and citizens of San Francisco to take a trip over the new road from Saucelito to Tomales. They started at 7:30 a. m., arrived at Tomales at 1 p. m., spent two hours there and reached the city at 8 p. m. after a very pleasant day. All spoke well of the road, of the scenery, and of the lunch provided at Tomales by the people of that place and vicinity. The road runs through an extensive tract of redwood, which is a novelty to many of the old Californians. Paper Mill Creek, for seven miles, is a succession of beautiful and varied landscapes. Tomales Bay, about fifteen miles long and a mile wide, is a fine sheet of water.”

PHOTO FROM SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Sausalito’s business district was built up around the railroad and ferry wharf after 1875

Yerba Buena and Sousilito

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

In 1847, Dr. E.B. Jones, editor of the California Star, the first newspaper in Yerba Buena, published a description of the budding settlement and its cross-bay neighbor, which he spelled Sousilito.

Dr. Jones began by railing against previous descriptions written by visiting journalists:

“As we have never seen in any of the numerous journals published by travellers, a correct description of this part of California, we design from time to time, to give to our readers abroad, all the information that we may be enabled to procure in relation to it.”

After sarcastically dissecting a few of those early accounts, Jones offered his own description, excerpted and lightly edited below:

To supply the deficiency in all these works, (some of which have obtained an extensive circulation,) so far as it relates to this part of California, we have obtained from the most authentic sources the description of the town and bay, which follows:

Yerba Buena, the name of our town which means GOOD HERB, is situated on the south west side of the principle arm of San Francisco bay, about five miles from the ocean, on a narrow neck of land varying from four to ten miles in width. The narrowest place being sixteen miles south west of the town. It is in latitude 37° 45 north. This narrow slip of land is about sixty miles in length, extending from the point formed by the bay and the ocean, to the valley of San Jose. The site of the town is handsome and commanding—being an inclined plain of about a mile in extent from the water's edge to the hills in the rear. Two points of land—one on each side, extending into the bay form a crescent or small bay in the shape of a crescent in front, which bears the name of the town. These points afford a fine view of the surrounding country, the snow capped mountains in the distance, the green valleys beneath them, the beautiful, smooth and unruffled bay in front and on either side, at once burst upon the eye. There is in front of the town a small Island, rising high above surface of the bay, about two miles long, and one wide, which is covered the greater part of the year with the exuberant herbage of untrodden freshness. This little Island is about three miles from the shore. Between it and the town is the principal anchorage. Here the vessels of all nations rest in safety and peace, and their flags are displayed by the aromatic breeze. Two hundred yards from the shore, there is twenty four feet water, and a short distance beyond that, as many fathoms. The beach immediately in front of the now business part of the town, is shelving; but it will no doubt in a short time be filled up and become the most valuable part of the place.

The climate here is, in the winter, which is the rainy season, damp and chilly. During the balance of the year it is dry, but chilly, in consequence of the continual strong winds from the north and north west. There is but little variation in the atmosphere throughout the year—the thermometer ranging from fifty five to seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Yerba Buena is one of the most healthy places on the whole coast of the Pacific. Sickness of any kind is rarely known among us. The salubrity of the climate—beauty of the site of the town—its contiguity to the mouth of the bay—the finest harbor on the whole coast in front— the rich and beautiful country around it, all conspire to render it one of the best commercial points in the world. The town is new, having been laid off in 1839 by Capt. John Vioget—and notwithstanding all the troubles in the country has gradually increased in size and importance. It now contains a population of about five hundred permanent citizens. Two years ago there were but about two hundred. Three miles south is the mission Dolores on Mission creek, surrounded by a small valley of rich and beautiful land. The water from this creek can easily be brought by means of aqueducts to any point to supply vessels. For the supply of the citizens the best of well water is obtained in every part of the town, by boring the distance of forty feet.

On the north side of the bay from the straits to Sousilito, is one of the finest districts of country in all upper California. Next to Yerba Buena, Sousilito is the best point on the whole bay for a commercial town. It is seven miles a little east of north from this place on the opposite side of the bay, and has long been a watering point for vessels. An attempt has recently been made to lay off and build up a town at the straits. It will no doubt however, be an entire failure. San Francisco bay being the safest and most commodious harbor on the entire coast of the Pacific, some point on it must be the great mart of the western world. We believe Yerba Buena is the point, commanding as it does now, all the trade of the surrounding country, and there being already a large amount of capital concentrated here. The town of Yerba Buena is called in some of the old maps of the country San Francisco. It is not known by that name here however.

Ironically, on the very day the good doctor’s screed was printed, January 30, 1847, the military commander issued a proclamation changing the name Yerba Buena to San Francisco, following the Mexican–American War.

PHOTO FROM SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Earliest known photo of Sousilto/Saucelito/Sausalito, c. 1852

Growing Pains in Old Sausalito

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

In February 1985 the Sausalito News carried an article entitled “Sausalito, Past and Present,” which chronicled the challenges faced by the early developers:

The gentlemen who first conceived the idea of the Sausalito Land and Ferry Company did not profit by the scheme. Nearly half a million dollars was paid for the land. Large sums were expended for the various improvements and the anticipated real estate boom did not come. Few lots could be disposed of and under the strain the Company became seriously embarrassed. Nearly all the original incorporators fell by the roadside and yielded up their stock. Of the twenty gentlemen by whom the Company was brought into existence only five now have other than a sentimental interest in its affairs. The balance, to be expressive though inelegant, were "frozen out."

Still there was a constant progress — a slow, but at least healthy development. Each year saw some new improvement added, some new houses built, some gain in point of population. The town received quite a little boom when the North Pacific Coast Railroad was constructed. The shops were naturally located at Sausalito, as the tide-water terminus of the line and the presence of forty or fifty additional families made a very perceptible change for the better. Doubtless the advance would have been more rapid, had the Land and Ferry Company been less hampered financially, and able to carry into effect all the plans contemplated. The managers did their best, but could not compete successfully with the great corporations that were furnishing traveling facilities to other suburban sections with a lavish hand. The ferry-boat was a relic of antiquity, slow, ill arranged and uncomfortable, and it was only profitable to run it two or three trips a day. When we compare it to the floating palaces and half hourly trips that Oakland and Alameda enjoyed, the only wonder is Sausalito was patronized at all.

In the fall of 1882 the town's first boom began. The ferry line was leased to the North Pacific Coast Railroad and the magnificent steamboat of that company was put on the route. At the same time the Land and Ferry Company was acquiring new blood and became easier and therefore more active. The altered condition of things was soon made apparent. Lots were sold by the dozen. Scarcely a week passed without several sales being placed of record. Houses went up in every direction, new businesses were established and the sleepy little hamlet of the past woke up and began to assume the appearance and ambitions of prosperity. Mr. Robt. George, the efficient Secretary of the Sausalito Land and Fery Company, was able not only to clear the corporation almost entirely from debt, but also to make a number of needed and costly improvements.

Such is the briefest possible outline of Sausalito's past. The town is today a thriving community of about 1,500 inhabitants. It contains about fifty places of business including eight hotels, two restaurants, three livery stables, three blacksmith shops, two news agencies, one barber shop, one bakery, two boat houses, seven general merchandise houses, and a very fair representation of saloons.

Well, progress is progress . . . saloons and all.

PHOTO FROM SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The railroad and ferry wharf in 1888.

Art Festival Memories

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

At the recent opening of the Historical Society’s new exhibit of memorabilia from past Sausalito Art Festivals, exhibit curator Jim Scriba gave a brief oral history of how the festival blossomed and morphed over six-plus decades following its founding in 1952. His comments brought back a flood of memories from my days as a festival volunteer.

The Sausalito Chamber of Commerce took over production of the Festival from 1982-1999, as a fundraiser for community organizations. A friend and neighbor from the floating homes community, Suzanne Dunwell, was running the Chamber at the time and managing the festival was one of her responsibilities.

Suzanne had proven a creative producer by helping to pioneer the floating homes tour and organizing two Humming Toadfish festivals in the 1980s. The festivals celebrated a particularly noisy fish that built nests on the hulls of floating homes and then croaked all night long to attract mates. For a couple of years, the noise, which kept some houseboaters awake all night, was a hotly debated mystery until John McCosker of the Steinhart Aquarium sleuthed out the true culprits. Suzanne and others realized that when faced with a problem like this, the best approach was to make lemonade out of lemons, so they created a festival with micro-brewery booths, a toadfish kazoo band, and lots of wacky costumes. The festival attracted national media attention, of the “only in Marin” variety.

One of Suzanne’s Art Festival innovations was to arrange for a ferry to come from the City directly to the Army Corps of Engineers dock, making it fun and easy for tourists to visit the Festival. Each morning, she would drive me and her husband Steve to Fisherman’s Wharf where we’d set up shop and sell tickets for two ferry departures each morning. Then we’d board the second departing ferry and have the rest of each day to enjoy the art, music, food, and drinks of the festival.

Suzanne eventually moved on and later the Art Festival Foundation was formed to oversee what had become a nationally recognized artistic showcase.

In the 90s, I joined the Mayor’s Select Blue Ribbon Garbage Committee and proudly wore a succession of Garbage t-shirts, which tourists occasionally offered to buy right off my back. The committee was headed by Robin Sweeny, Sausalito’s first female mayor who served four terms before retiring. Robin worked tirelessly yet cheerfully every day of the Festival for many years. Her efforts were rewarded when one visitor commented, “This place is cleaner than Disneyland.”

While the Festival is currently dark, the Foundation remains active, and has agreed to serve as art curator for the Mill Valley Music Festival this May 13 and 14.

The Historical Society exhibit is on the top floor of City Hall, and is open to the public Mondays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and the second and fourth Saturdays of the month, 12-3 p.m.

PHOTO FROM SAUSALITO ART FESTIVAL ARCHIVES

Food booths were operated by local nonprofits during the Festival’s heyday.

When Hayden Named Names

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

“Film Star Names Ex-Sausalitan in Commie Testimony This Week” read the headline in the April 12, 1951, Sausalito News. The paper reported:

“Warwick Tompkins, a former Sausalitan, was named as a communistic influence in film star Sterling Hayden's testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) Tuesday. Referring to his membership in the Communist Party as ‘certainly the stupidest, most ignorant thing I’ve ever done,’ Hayden said Tompkins was instrumental in his affiliation with the Communists. Tompkins is former captain of the Wanderbird, a schooner which took youths on summer cruise voyages as paying crew... According to press accounts of the testimony, Hayden told the committee he had first met Tompkins in Boston when he was 14 years old. He said he saw Tompkins again in 1940 in California when he first went to Hollywood. The film star identified Tompkins as an employee of AMTORG, a Russian Trading firm, who continually supplied him with Communist literature and sent him Communist publications while he was in the Marines. It was Tompkins, Hayden said, who suggested that he contact V. J. Jerome, identified as head of the Communist Party’s cultural commission. According to the testimony, Tompkins later wanted to write a hook about Hayden, ‘The development of a nonpolitical American youth into a militant participant in the class struggle.’ Hayden said Tompkins followed him to Hollywood, took notes and wrote some 75,000 words ‘before I came to sufficiently to stop him.’ Hayden readily admitted he joined a Communist cell in 1946 and in seven months found out how wrong he was, so dropped out in December of the same year. He said he left the party with the realization that one of its aims was to overthrow the Government of the United States.”

Warwick Tompkins is best known in these parts as the father of Warwick “Commodore” Tompkins, who launched his world class maritime career by sailing around the Horn with his father in 1936 when he was just 4 years old. In 2014, Commodore Tompkins joined other Bay Area sailing legends in a memorable Historical Society panel discussion dubbed “Salty Stories.” The saga of that epic voyage has been told in Tompkins Sr.’s book “Fifty South to Fifty South” and the 2016 documentary “Life on the Water,” with actual onboard footage of the passage.

Hayden’s testimony wasn’t the first time Tompkins Sr. had been fingered as a communist. In October 1947, according to the News, a Marin City resident named Sidney Hall testified that several communist meetings had been held aboard the schooner Wanderbird at Sausalito Yacht Harbor. Hall told the Tenney Un-American Activities Committee, a California spinoff of the HUAC, that approximately one per cent of the population in Marin City belonged to the Communist Party at that time.

Sterling Hayden's admiration for the Communist partisans he had fought alongside during World War II led him into his brief membership in the Party. Hayden served in the Marines and then with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Europe. He was awarded the Silver Star for displaying “great courage” in the Mediterranean Theater.

VIDEO CLIP FROM S.F. STATE UNIVERSITY

Sterling Hayden testifying before HUAC.

The Navel of the Universe

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

Last week we told the story of the Spreckles Boathouse being moved to Waldo Point Harbor. The boathouse had an equally noteworthy neighbor there for many years: the ark Omphale. Thanks to Sausalito Historical Society co-founder Phil Frank, we can now share the history of this one-time local landmark.

In the 1970s, Phil was one of the editors of an alternative newspaper, The Garlic Press, which was “published at whim” for residents of the Gates community and Richardson Bay. Following are lightly edited excerpts from Phil’s June 1975 article:

“The Omphale is an ark located at the corner of Grove and Humboldt streets, believe it not, and is the most northern dwelling on the Arques property. Originally found in Alameda by the ex-wife of Varda, the barge was towed to its present site some twelve years ago and has been slowly decaying ever since. In the process she has had a spicy and varied life. The building was put up piece-meal, each space being rented out to raise enough money to continue its metamorphosis (not unlike what is now happening). After the central ballroom space became a reality many famous and infamous personalities graced the decks for fund-raising dinners, costume parties, legitimate and illegitimate theater, and just plain blasts. Alan Watts still walks the decks at night, as does Varda, Fritz PerIs [German-born psychiatrist who coined the term ‘Gestalt therapy’], and probably too many dogs and cats.

“Omphale means ‘center of the universe’ as well as ‘belly-button’ and was the name of a Greek goddess who held Hercules in bondage for a period of time. The remains of the boat were purchased some year and a half ago by another person with a dream of restoring it to its original splendor. Since then work has been more or less continuous depending on the world economy and personal economy. The most critical order of business was to keep it from collapsing, so the entire north side has been rebuilt from the mud up; hopefully the rest will follow.”

Sausalito artist and carpenter Al Garvey helped with the early restoration of Omphale. He recalled:

“In 1962, shortly after I finished building my houseboat, a lady called Virginia Barclay knocked at my door looking for a carpenter. She said she could never deal with a builder who was not also an artist, and would I be interested? Why not! So off we went—building, rebuilding, tearing down, and building again.

The barge was an old, old wooden job originally used to carry rocks to the building site of the Bay Bridge—110 ft. by 35 ft by 12 ft. of stanchions, X-members, rotten decks, and holey bottom. Virginia had a tug push it as high up onto the mud as possible at Waldo Point, where it commanded a spectacular view of the whole of Richardson Bay.

“Within a few weeks the most unlikely looking crew of carpenters was swarming all over the mud, constructing what began to look like a dirigible hangar. This shell, two stories high, covering the full width of the barge and extending to a point about 20 ft. aft of the rake, was to be the outer frame of the first apartment, where Virginia would camp and direct her artist-carpenters in the creation of what would, in time, become the Omphale.

“Most of the materials were scrounged, picked up at wrecking yards, or just washed up on some convenient shore. The materials were important because they dictated a good part of the design.

At the beginning, the only concrete notion we had was that there must be a space in the center large enough for a badminton court. This would also serve as a ballroom. The rest of the barge must have income-producing apartments to pay for the whole, as there was no financing available for so mad a project.

“Spaces created themselves as the by-product of a new room or a wall or a deck; and these spaces were in turn molded to suit the needs of the whole. There were never any drawings. The houseboat grew and developed like a piece of sculpture, each addition pointing the way towards a new direction.”

In the 1980s and ‘90s, the Omphale functioned as a new age wellness center. But in July 1996, a two-alarm fire destroyed her, injuring one resident and causing the disappearance of a cat. Marinscope reported: “Seven out of eight people who were in the building were forced to escape by jumping into Richardson Bay. Resident Mike Keiser suffered second degree burns on his face and head when he tried to go back into the building to a get a fire extinguisher. About 70 firefighters from the County of Marin, Sausalito, Mill Valley, Tam Valley, Tiburon and Corte Madera contained the fast moving fire in about two hours. Although it was difficult for firefighters to get to the seed of the fire because the Omphale was surrounded by water, the fire did not spread to adjacent houseboats. Resident Tina Osinski, wife of Keiser, is still missing her cat, Miss Peanut, who was inside the building at the time of the fire.”

PHOTO FROM SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

Aerial photo, c. 1962, showing the Omphale as the first of three boats moored between the Yellow Ferry and A Dock. The Spreckles boathouse is on the right. 

Spreckles Boathouse Spanned Centuries

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

PHOTO COURTESY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The Spreckels Boathouse in Shelter Cove around the turn of the 20th century.

The Spreckles Boathouse was once a gem in the tiara of Old Town Sausalito, but time and tides changed all that. In the fall of 1977, the Sausalito Historical Society newsletter recounted the 99-year history of this ill-fated waterfront landmark. Here are excerpts from that article:

The undignified demise last Tuesday of the rotting boathouse at Waldo Point gave little hint of its glamorous past. Listing so badly that passing tourists had taken to calling it the Leaning Tower of Pizza, it had lost all vestiges of a history that began in the late 19th century in a favorite enclave of the wealthy yachting community of San Francisco Bay. Shelter Cove, the small inlet at the south end of Sausalito, was for a brief period the domain of the Pacific Yacht Club, built in the cove in 1878 as the home of the more exclusive of Sausalito’s two yacht clubs of that era. In 1895, the club added a boathouse directly below where the Cote d’Azur apartments now stand.

But by 1905 the yacht club was in financial trouble and two of its members, Adolph and John Spreckels, heirs of the giant sugar fortune, purchased the club’s four-acre property on Shelter Cove. Adolph took over the clubhouse as his residence after the 1906 earthquake, commuting to San Francisco on his steam yacht, the Lurline, listed in 1899 records as the costliest yacht in California at that time. This period was the heyday of the little boathouse. In 1915, during the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, some 50 English dancers were quartered there. Viewed from the Sausalito hills, the building was a small white jewel set against the blue waters of the cove. When the Spreckels property was sold in 1924, the graceful peaked-roof building was valued at $5,500, a considerable sum in those days.

The estate changed hands several times in the ensuing years until, in 1958, the site was cleared for the construction of Cote d’Azur. As a newspaper article sadly put it, “Before the new, the old must go—gone—for progress.” But although Shelter Cove was radically transformed, the boathouse miraculously escaped the wrecker’s ball for another 19 years.

Demolition contractor Harold Holzinger, hired to raze everything on the Spreckels site, took possession of the boathouse. Finding the hillside too steep to remove the house by land, he brought in a barge and towed it up Richardson Bay to Waldo Point, tying up at Gate 6 at the north end of the Donlon Arques property. He rented out the interior space until the building passed into the ownership of the Arques houseboat harbor in 1971.

One of the early tenants there, Jim Tichy, reminisced in the Independent Journal last week: “There used to be some nice parties there. Musicians would come in and play.” But by the early ’70s, dry rot and other forms of destruction that afflict ancient wooden barges had taken their toll on the boathouse understructure. As Holzinger’s rent-paying tenants gave way to random squatters, who crashed at “the Spreckels” for short periods but took no interest in it as a home, the pleasant atmosphere enjoyed by those who lived there in the ’60s gave way.

By that time, too, the boathouse had begun to tilt ominously to one side. And although there was a lot of wishful talk about restoring it, right up to a couple of years ago, nobody responsible for the building wanted to sink that kind of money into it, and it was allowed to die a slow death.

ln the end, as the lower floor slipped into the water and the structure came under condemnation orders from Marin County, even vagrants didn’t try to live there anymore. It ended its days posing for the cameras of tourists. Looking like a sad-funny clown performing for coins, it became the most striking symbol of that “crazy houseboat bunch north of Sausalito” and a great photograph to show the folks back home.

Wild, Wild Wildwood Glen

By Doris Berdahl and Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

PHOTO COURTESY SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Members of the Ritchie family in Wildwood Glen c. 1912.

The following is a lightly edited excerpt from an article by longtime Historical Society volunteer Doris Berdahl in the fall 2010 Society newsletter:

Today it’s simply called The Glen. But in the late 19th century, it was known by a much more intriguing title—Wildwood Glen, a thicket of dark, dense growth where pleasure seekers could abandon their inhibitions and lovers could retreat from the prying eyes of their elders. A bit suggestive of forbidden pleasures, yes, but also a practical public utility—the source of much of Sausalito’s water supply at the turn of the last century.

In fact, the narrow ravine that cuts into the hills at the top of Turney Valley and threads between Santa Rosa Avenue and Glen Drive still sluices waters from Wolfback Ridge down the full length of the valley. Its year-round creek runs past the old Gardner House (The Bower) at Girard, then disappears briefly

under the road, reappearing between Pine and Turney and finally diving underground around Bonita. It empties into the bay near the Turney boat ramp.

Its waters have served many purposes. According to local historian Dorothy Gibson, Coast Miwok Indian settlements captured the creek at its base for domestic uses, as did Sausalito’s first European settlers (William Richardson and his Rancho del Sausalito). The 19th century whaling industry utilized it to supply ships heading out to the Pacific, and 20th century commercial interests (notably Elliott’s Laundry on Caledonia Street) tapped into it.

Mabel Wosser, a daughter of Thomas Wosser, principle engineer of Sausalito’s first cross-bay ferryboat, the Princess, recalls in her memoirs that before her family built their home on Pine Street in 1874, “only the Gardner and Ritchie homes had been built . . . in this lovely spot, with the exception, of course, of the Richardson adobe. A large creek ran through the valley to the bay. The Indians had lived there under the handsome laurel trees.”

More than halfway up the ravine, in an open glade, the Indians maintained what is believed to be a burial site, the graves of which have long since been obliterated. On the south side of the gulch, the Sausalito Land & Ferry Company created a reservoir intended to provide water for the growing town below, but which also functioned (more informally) as Sausalito’s version of the proverbial “old swimming hole.” It was abandoned as a water source in 1914 and finally drained in 1926 following a drowning incident.

But of the diverse uses made of Wildwood Glen, few were more lively and interesting than the entertainments held there during the latter decades of the 19th century. “Sausalito in the 1880s generated considerable interest among San Francisco’s rich.” Jack Tracy wrote in Moments In Time, “Saturday or Sunday excursions to Wildwood Glen had long been popular with the bourgeoisie. There was always something deemed slightly racy about Sausalito that livened up newspaper accounts . . . ”

Although the San Francisco Chronicle deemed Wildwood Glen “a damp and rhumatickey spot,” it held a particular fascination for the Bay Area German community. Accompanied by musicians, revelers frequently came over to Sausalito by ferry to dance, drink and romance in the Glen’s shady recesses. In response, enterprising Horace Platt of the Sausalito Land & Ferry Company, whose house bordered the creek, built an outdoor entertainment area, complete with picnic grounds and Edward Stahl, of German heritage, who served as unofficial chief of the Sausalito fire brigade, later acquired the Wildwood Glen property and continued the tradition of summer dance parties, stocked according to his newspaper advertisements with “the best wines and beers.” In the 1890s, a small hotel briefly thrived there, and as many as 2,000 to 3,000 visitors were said to visit in a season.

Today, while the creek still runs through The Glen—coursing rambunctiously in wet winters, trickling placidly in dry summers—the ambiance has changed. Its banks are heavily built out with contemporary homes, approved, following vigorous neighborhood opposition, by the Sausalito City Council in the 1970s.

In the same newsletter, fellow Historical Society volunteer Margaret Badger, brought readers up to date on historic Wildwood Glen: “In the 1940s and 50s, The Glen was a favorite playground for Turney Valley children, beginning at Girard Avenue, where the creek goes under the bridge, and ascending to where Glen Drive and Santa Rosa now meet. The gulch above Glen Drive was also a play area until about 1953 when, due to construction of the freeway above, it was destroyed.”

Archival copies of Historical Society newsletters may be viewed at www.sausalitohistoricalsociety.com.

An Imperfect History of 588 Bridgeway

Nora Sawyer, Sausalito Historical Society

History does funny things to the present. It can make current events seem so inevitable you can almost hear the click as things the moments fall into place. Other times it serves as a reminder that everything changes, that today’s certainties won’t necessarily be with us tomorrow.

For me, history at its most satisfying enriches the present moment, providing a perspective allows us to see the world from a vantage point outside of the span of our own existence. This is an everyday kind of magic – you don’t need to visit Angkor Wat or the Parthenon for it to work. In fact, I think it works best in familiar places. It’s part of what makes local history so much fun.

Take Scoma’s. Even now, with the current ban indoor dining, and outdoor dining just reopening, the building seems made for its current role. What else could it be but this restaurant, with its white tablecloths and expansive views, broad umbrellas shielding diners from the afternoon sun?

But of course it wasn’t always Scoma’s. You can see that from the windows, still decorated with a hand motif from its days as the Glad Hand more than fifty years ago. It wasn’t always a restaurant, either. When it was first built in 1904, the building served as an office and maintenance shop for Lange’s Launch Co., a local ferrying and tugboat service provided by Mat Lange. Captain Lange ran regular ferries, charters, and the “paperboat” that brought over newspapers from San Francisco. He delivered papers to Alcatraz, Angel Island, Tiburon, Belvedere, Sausalito, and even the Mile Rock Lighthouse outside the Golden Gate.

After the Golden Gate Bridge opened, there wasn’t as much of a need for paperboats and ferry services. Renowned for his cooking – especially the clam chowder he served at beach picnics -- Lange and his wife opened the first restaurant in the building in 1938. Serving crab, hotdogs, and sandwiches, Lange also offered fresh crab for sale, and chartered fishing expeditions.

After Lange’s death in 1949, Peggy Tolk-Watkins took over the space, renaming it the Tin Angel. The name came from an angel hung on the outside of the building, which Tolk-Watkins had found in the rubble of a New York church that collapsed after a fire. With multi-colored windows, a yellow piano, and an interior painted purple, red, black and green by Jean Varda and a crew of Black Mountain College Students, the Tin Angel became a center for art, jazz and folk music, and bohemian life in Sausalito.

Though the Tin Angel was only open in Sausalito for a few years, it quickly came to represent the dynamic, artistic side of the city that flourished after World War II. When the Chamber of Commerce held a slogan contest in 1950, one of the entries was “Sausalito: Home of the Tin Angel.”

In 1953, Tolk-Watkins sold the business to Al Engel, a banker, and Harrison Thompson, a top-ranked professional ice skater. Renamed the Glad Hand, the restaurant continued to show work by artists from around the bay area, and employed a number of local artists and writers as well, including abstract expressionist painter Walter Khulman, who worked as a cook for five years until a fellowship award from the Graham Foundation allowed meant he didn’t “have to cook these chickens anymore.”

Though a gathering place for Sausalito locals, the Glad Hand also attracted tourists and visiting celebrities such as Helen Hayes and Vivien Leigh. Russia’s prima ballerina, taking in the view, declared San Francisco “the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen.”

In 1968, Engel successfully petitioned to have the restaurant moved 25 feet further out into the Bay. The next year, he sold the business to San Francisco restaurateurs Al and Joe Scoma and Victor and Roland Gotti. The brothers renovated the building, adding outdoor seating and brightening the interior by adding more windows to let in light and air, and of course more access to the view.

Despite these changes, this small structure perched on the edge of the water has been a constant presence for over 100 years. Sausalito has changed. Newspapers are no longer brought by boat from San Francisco, and you won’t often hear the insistent rhythm of late-night jazz played along the waterfront. But you can still enjoy a bowl of clam chowder or some fresh crab, and the restaurant still welcomes locals and visitors alike. And as you look across the bay to San Francisco, you might find yourself thinking that this view, and that city, are the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

Myron Spaulding, the Dean of Boat Builders

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

COURTESY PHOTO

Myron Spaulding, the sailing violinist.

Myron Spaulding was a violinist who was also regarded as the finest sailor on San Francisco Bay in the 20th century. Even his peers and sometimes rival skippers Hank Easom and Warwick “Commodore” Tompkins agreed with this assessment, according to a 2020 profile of Spaulding in the sailing publication Latitude 38.

Spaulding was born in Eureka, in 1906. In an oral history he recorded for the Historical Society, he recalled how he got into sailing, when he joined a local yacht club at the age of six!

By 1915 he moved to San Francisco and enrolled in Polytechnic High School where he received a

credential in naval architecture and boatbuilding and designed and built his first small boat. Later

he earned an additional degree in music, playing the violin, which led to his day job.

After graduating, Spaulding played violin in the Fox Theatre's vaudeville orchestra, for silent movie houses, for the ballet, and eventually with the San Francisco Symphony where he performed until 1957. That work supported his real passion: racing and winning several class championships in the Bird class, Stars and 6-Meters. He also participated in six TransPacific races from San Francisco to Honolulu. The highlight of his racing career was winning the 1936 TransPac as skipper of the famous Sparkman & Stephens-designed yawl Dorade, earning him legendary status.

Spaulding opened a naval architecture office in San Francisco before World War II. His first significant design was the 20-foot Clipper. He also created the Spaulding 33, which can still be seen on San Francisco Bay, as well as notable custom boats.

During the war, he worked at the Madden and Lewis Company shipyard in Sausalito building tow boats and subchasers, then spent a couple of years as a marine surveyor before leasing property near McNear's Beach in the late 1940s, where he repaired boats, continued with survey work and designed boats.  After losing his lease to make way for development, he returned to Sausalito in 1951 and bought the present waterfront site of Spaulding Boatworks.

Sailor and historian Carl Nolte recalled: “To Spaulding boats were life: He loved the design of them, loved to build them and loved to sail them. He made himself into an expert on how the forces of wind and currents and the sea affect boats and their performance, and made himself a master of design. His aim was to build sailing vessels that would conform to class rules (for nothing is so circumscribed by exact measurements as classes of racing yachts) but also would be fast and beautiful.”

In the words of Commodore Tompkins, “Myron was a tremendous influence on every sailor active on San Francisco Bay in the first 60 or 70 years of the century, whether they knew it or not. Besides being an excellent sailor, he was one of the premiere designers in the country, though it went largely unrecognized. The thing that Myron did for all people under his influence was to show them a way and an ethic of addressing problems that was results-oriented and had very little to do with economics. Concepts and results were his standards of excellence. Never the dollar.”

Known as the dean of Bay Area boat builders, Spaulding worked almost until the day of his death. When his widow, Gladys passed away a little more than a year and a half later, she left the Spaulding Boatworks in a charitable trust, with instructions for the trustees to form a non-profit corporation, named the Spaulding Wooden Boat Center (SWBC). Today, the SWBC is a working and living museum, with the mission to restore historic wooden sailing vessels; preserve and enhance its working boatyard; create a place where people can gather to use, enjoy, and learn about wooden boats, while educating others about wooden boat building skills, traditions and values. Today, it’s part of the Spaulding Marine Center, at the foot of Gate 5 Road.

Grin and Bear It in Sausalito

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

Award-winning cartoonist George Lichty, creator of the famed “Grin and Bear It,” cartoon series, lived in Sausalito from 1948 into the 60s.

Shortly after he and his wife Eleanor settled here with their two daughters, Licthy was profiled in the Sausalito News. Writer Joanne Nichols claimed that “the man whose ‘Grin and Bear It’ cartoons in the San Francisco Chronicle are one of the better things about mornings.” She went on to recount Lichty’s somewhat haphazard work habits:

“Already a seasoned commuter, Lichty rides the bus to work every morning and home every night. He goes to work every day, not because he wants to, but because he has to, he explains: "I’m not one of those boys who can concentrate for a couple of days and turn out a week’s work.

“But the schedule, once he gets to work, is not precisely the timeclock variety. He draws awhile, gets up, looks out the window, has a cigarette, goes down for a coffee, talks to somebody, draws some more. How long it takes to do a cartoon this way depends . . . He has to keep at least two weeks ahead of himself to allow time for mailing the cartoons to the syndicate, making mats, and distributing them to the 215 papers throughout the country that carry his work. He’s behind right now, and had to work last weekend to catch up.”

Describing the new Sausalitan as “A quiet, dark-haired man in his mid-forties,” Ms. Nichols went on to detail his path to our town:

“Lichty has been a professional cartoonist since he left college. He was editor of the college humor magazine at the University of Michigan. A number of his cartoons, of course, appeared in the magazine, and when he graduated the editor of the old Chicago Journal offered him a job. The Journal was then in the process of folding, and one week later was absorbed by the Chicago Daily Times, first tabloid in the lake city.

“Lichty, a native of Chicago, remained with the Times. His early cartoons were essentially the same type as the things he does now (though they look horrible now, he says), and he’s never done any editorial page political cartoons or the like, confining his editorializing to needling windy senators. ‘Grin and Bear It’ was born in 1932. For two years it was a Times exclusive; then it was syndicated and spread throughout the nation.”

After an unsatisfying stay in Haiti, Lichty told the News, he put away his sketchbook and left. But, as Nichols put it:

“Sausalito, he feels, may get him started again—the sun and water and brown-shouldered hills. The Lichty’s came to Sausalito from the home in Winnetka (some 25 miles north of Chicago on the lake) because they usually go to Florida about this time of year and they decided to try California this summer instead. They drove from Chicago to Los Angeles and up the coast, and like Sausalito better than anything else they saw along the way. Meanwhile, the little girls Linda, 6, and Susan, 4, are getting brown, and their parents are continuing full of raptures over the changing beauty they see from their windows.”

During his time here, Lichty displayed his creative versatility by playing drums in Guckenheimer's Sour Kraut Band, a comic musical aggregation formed by Richard Gump, President of the luxury San Francisco retailer. The News had some fun announcing the band’s appearance at the grand opening of the Trade Fair aboard the ferry boat Berkeley in February 1960:

“The Guckenheimer Sour Krauts, often described as “men against the music world” began in Sausalito in 1948 or 1949 when San Francisco businessman Richard Gump decried Christmas commercialism, or wanted to let off steam, or to play quaintly sour Bavarian melodies Accounts vary.

“Anyway, several Sausalitans agreed with Gump that there was a serious lack in music and they set out to enlarge that lack. Hence the Guckenheimers began appearing on Bay Area street corners, playing a little Wagner, a little Bach and a little off-key.

“Although the Guckenheimer music has been said to have the pucker of a mouthful of rosin Lifesavers, someone has allowed them to preserve it on records. Sour Kraut records to date include Music For Non-Thinkers and Oom-Pah-Pah in Hi-Fi. It is hoped that Trade Fair will remain standing after the Sour Krauts finish playing.”

Later, George Lichty moved his family to Sonoma County, where he died at age 78.

New Marin City History Book

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

Felecia Gaston, who founded Performing Stars of Marin and The Marin City Historical and Preservation Society, has brought out a new book about the history of Marin City, titled “A Brand New Start . . . This is Home.” In the following lightly edited excerpts, Felecia recounts how the evolution of Marin City was part of a larger socioeconomic phenomenon known as The Great Migration:

PHOTO COURTESY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

WWII housing in Marin City

The Great Migration was the mass movement of about five million Southern Black people to the Northern and Western areas of the United States between 1915 and 1960. During the first wave, the majority of folks moved to major Northern cities such as Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan, Pittsburgh, and New York.

By 1942 the manpower shortage had already hit the Bay Area. Like Southern California, whose manpower supply had been depleted by the aircraft industry hurriedly built there, Northern California was too sparsely populated to support with local labor the demands of the shipyards springing up in Alameda, Richmond, Hunters Point, Vallejo, and Oakland, to say nothing of the labor needed on the docking facilities in Oakland, San Francisco, and Treasure Island. Now Marinship would make further demands on an exhausted labor supply.

In early 1942, the demands of World War II brought a great need for shipbuilding. To meet this demand, the U.S. shipbuilder W.A. Bechtel Co. built a shipyard at a former North-western Pacific Railroad repair yard situated in Marin County, at the north end of Sausalito, California, three mile (5 km) north of the Golden Gate Bridge. With its location at Richardson Bay, the shoreline in the vicinity of the proposed shipyard was uncluttered. It had no official name while it was being built but was referred to as the Marin Shipbuilding Division of W.A. Bechtel Company, and that lengthy title was shortened to Marinship which we now know today as “Marinship.” The loss of some ships in the Pacific by the Navy triggered an emergency need for even more ships by their customer the Maritime Commission. Using this as their legal reason, the company took government war powers (condemnation actions) against local property owners in order to add the additional land they needed to expand the shipyard. With only two weeks notice, the many residents of Pine Point, a quaint knoll located along the edge of the bay, were forcibly evicted by 28 March 1942. About 42 homes and buildings were removed. Pine Point was dynamited. At least 12 homes avoided demolition by being rapidly moved elsewhere in Sausalito. As a result of the rapid shipyard expansion the creation of Marin City began. Housing for 6,000 was created in Marin City, along with supporting schools, stores, and churches. Workers eager to take advantage of the well-paying wartime jobs migrated to the West Coast from all over the United States to work at the various shipyards, including Marinship.

World War II created the same kind of social dislocation in Marin that it did elsewhere in the nation, but with a special twist due to her bay site position and the absence of industry in the county. Men went to war, gas rationing throttled traffic across the Golden Gate Bridge, the proximity of so much of the Pacific Fleet and the boom in ship building gave farmers and ranchers more market than they could fill, wives were under special pressure to enter wartime employment, and an influx of outsiders flooded the county. The personnel at Hamilton Air Force Base was increased tenfold and families of San Francisco military personnel preferred rural Marin to The City. San Francisco Bay was crowded with ships at anchor. Ferry boats, overloaded with the increased labor force needed in a major port city, with commuting service men and city-based employees of Marinship, ducked in and out of warships as they piled back and forth from Marin to The City.

Marinship began running buses of its own across the bridge and then converted to contracting with Greyhound lines to bring the labor force to the yards. But providing transportation does not solve the problem of supply and demand.

First, you have to get the workers. Recruitment in the Midwest from St. Paul, Minnesota to Galveston, Texas in the deep South began in the summer of 1942. The response to such wage offers brought many hands off farms in those regions; men who had never known that kind of income hurried by bus, train, or rattletrap to that place called Sausalito in the county called Marin. Marin looked aghast at this multitude to be housed temporarily, of course. Hopefully, once the war was over, they would take their money and go home. And hopefully their families would keep home fires burning and not follow their husbands and fathers to Marin. The latter hope was eliminated immediately; few families remained at home, even temporarily.

Felecia goes on to relate Marin City’s postwar history, right up to the present time. Her well-researched and lavishly illustrated book will be available soon at Sausalito Books by the Bay and Book Passage.

Getting the Sea Lion Back in the Sea

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

The sea lion statue that was knocked off it pedestal in the January storms needs major repairs to resume its position as Sausalito’s international landmark for seven decades.

The story of the emblematic sea lion is as intriguing as the statue itself. According to the website Oursausalito.com, “Al Sybrian, the statue’s creator, was a respected local artist and craftsman, an habitue of The No Name Bar and Smitty’s Bar, and a popular companion and conversationalist. He was best known for his ability to build beautiful stone walls and pathways, themselves referred to as works of art.

PHOTO FROM SAUSALITO CURRENTS

Work has begun on restoring the world-famous sea lion statue.

“This spot where Bridgeway curves along San Francisco Bay was at one time called Hearst Point, when William Randolph Hearst started work on a mansion on the hill overlooking the spot. When the 1890 Sausalito City Council declined to give him the necessary permits he moved south and built Hearst Castle in San Simeon instead. In recent generations the term Hearst Point has fallen out of use.

“Sybrian lived nearby, and like many locals liked to watch the sea lions by the rocks. In 1957 he talked some neighbors into putting up the money and he made the original concrete version of the sea lion. The process took three months, but the result was a popular success.

“It was 1957, and although there were plenty of public regulations Sausalito was simpler than today. After several months of discussion Sybrian and a group of friends set out at 1:00 AM one night and simply carried the sea lion statue about 100 yards from his studio to its present location. The statue was an immediate hit, and created traffic jams on Bridgeway as commuters paused to crane their necks at it. Soon visitors from around the world came to see the sea lion, and compared it to Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid.”

The original concrete sculpture was recast in bronze in the mid-1960s to help it withstand the elements.

In 2013, writer Terence Clark and Historical Society Board member Bill Kirsch, an artist and long-time friend of Sybrian’s, explored his life and art in an illustrated book entitled "The Sea Lion and the Sculptor.” They describe Sybrian as a true vagabond, who “spent his artistic life with absolutely no desire for fame or money. His blue-collar attitude about work, his disdain for politics, and his love of argument endeared him to friends and acquaintances throughout his life.” The book is written largely in Sybrian’s own words—thoughts and observations extracted from the meticulous notebooks he kept and letters he sent to and received from his friends.” Bill Kirsch passed away in 2018, but the book is still available online and at the Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center, 22 El Portal near the ferry landing.

The Sausalito Foundation has been involved with financially sponsoring the casting and repairs of the Sea Lion since the 1960’s. The volunteer organization estimates that repairs will cost around $35,000, and is accepting donations at https://www.thesausalitofoundation.com.

George Vancouver Explores San Francisco Bay

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

Thirty years before William Richardson jumped ship at what was then called Yerba Buena, another English mariner, George Vancouver, sailed into San Francisco Bay and visited the Presidio de San Francisco.

Vancouver had entered the British Royal Navy at age 13 and accompanied Captain James Cook on his second and third voyages to the Pacific in 1772–75 and 1776–80.

COURTESY ILLUSTRATION

Vancouver’s ship, HMS Discovery

“George Vancouver was the greatest of James Cook’s protégés,” says no less an authority than the Captain Cook Society. “In the 1790s he led a British naval expedition to the Pacific Ocean and the northwest coast of North America. His charting of that intricate shoreline and its offshore islands from California north to Alaska was some of the most comprehensive and brilliant ever undertaken.”

Vancouver’s mission was to reclaim the land at Nootka Sound, named earlier by Cook, and to explore the northwest coast and the Spanish settlements in California. England had made a claim to California when Sir Francis Drake landed somewhere near San Francisco in 1579. More than 200 years later, Vancouver arrived at New Albion, as Drake had named it.

In his book Down by the Bay, Matthew Morse Booker picks up the story from there:

”In 1793, His Britannic Majesty’s Captain George Vancouver crept into San Francisco Bay in command of a small flotilla of vessels. Entering the territory of a traditional enemy without permission, Vancouver was relieved to discover that the Spanish fort commanding the imposing south shore of the bay entrance, the Presidio de San Francisco, was defended by only a small band of troops manning a handful of decrepit cannons. After a tense exchange of formal greetings with the Presidio's proud but outgunned commander, Vancouver went ashore with his ship's surgeon, naturalist Archibald Menzies. Menzies was eager to compare the plants and animals of this unknown coast to his collections from elsewhere in the north Pacific, but he contented himself with exploring the long lagoon behind the sandy beach near the Presidio. Vancouver, meanwhile, began a busy round of social activities and surreptitious spying. He dined with the officers Of the Presidio, ogled their wives and daughters, and visited the nearby Mission San Francisco. Vancouver and his lieutenants borrowed horses from their hosts to visit Mission Santa Clara at the southwest end of the hay The party picnicked in a grove of oaks that reminded Vancouver of an English park. Surveying the brown autumn hills and plains, dotted with majestic oaks and occasional streams, the Englishman saw a landscape that recalled familiar European places, and that seemed equally imbued with promise. But, Vancouver judged, the Spanish were neglecting this potential.”

Quoting from Vancouver’s accounts of his voyage, Booker points out that after a quarter century of Spanish religious instruction and economic guidance, the Indians, the laborers of the region, "still remained in the most abject state of uncivilization." Only the introduction of "foreign commercial intercourse" could "stimulate the Indians to industry," asserted Vancouver.

According to the website factcards.califa.org, “During the ten days they were anchored in San Francisco Bay, Vancouver and his men were well received by Hermenegildo Sal, commandante at the presidio (fort) there. He provided the visitors with a good supply of food for their ships. In turn, Vancouver presented Sal with some knives and table utensils, church ornaments, and barrels of wine and rum. Each group entertained the other with elaborate dinners.”

Sausalito historian Jack Tracy wrote that Vancouver “was welcomed and even escorted overland to Monterey for further receptions. It should be mentioned that the governor was away at the time, and when he heard of the hospitality shown the foreigner, he was, to put it mildly, not amused.”

When his exploring days were over, Vancouver sailed back to for Great Britain in 1795 by way of Cape Horn, completing a circumnavigation of South America. He retired to Petersham, London and died in obscurity on 10 May 1798 at the age of 40, less than three years after completing his voyages and expeditions.