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California, Primarily

June 6, 2016, 9:15 am
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California Counts, 2015 
Courtesy KPBS
“A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, 1913
Teddy Roosevelt made this analogy in his 1913 autobiography while expressing support for women’s suffrage. “I believe for women, as for men, more in the duty of fitting one’s self to do well and wisely with the ballot than in the naked right to cast the ballot,” he explained.

In today’s political climate, with emotions running high, voters appear to be using their votes as rifles. Once Californians have cast their votes, will they have voted “well and wisely”?

As California prepares for its primary election on June 7, we look at some reminders of past primaries, some groundbreaking, some surprising, some tragic—and some very recognizable.

1912

Theodore Roosevelt and Hiram Johnson, 1912
California Historical Society
In the 1912 election, Progressive (Bull Moose) Party nominee Theodore Roosevelt teamed up with California Governor Hiram Johnson. It was the beginning of both the Progressive Party and the primary process in California. Prior to the primary, presidential candidates were selected by their fellow politicians.
1932

(Left) John Nance Garner California Button Ribbon, 1932 
Courtesy http://oldpoliticals.com
(Right) John (“Cactus Jack”) Nance Garner, c. 1905
Courtesy www.old-picture.com
California Democrats originally from the South won the day in the 1932 primary as House Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas beat New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. When it became clear that Roosevelt was considered the stronger candidate in the general election—despite being short of the two-thirds votes required for nomination—Garner cut a deal and joined Roosevelt’s ticket as vice president.
1936

(Left) Upton Sinclair, c. 1920–39
Courtesy Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, UCLA Library
(Right) Governor Earl Warren, 1946 
California Historical Society
Running as a Democrat, Socialist Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, campaigned against poverty in California’s 1934 gubernatorial race, receiving almost 900,000 votes. Two years later, he ran in the 1936 presidential primary against Franklin D. Roosevelt, winning 11 percent of the Democratic vote. Republican Earl Warren was favorite son in the 1936, 1948, and 1952 primaries. He never won the Republican nomination but obtained judicial influence as the fourteenth Chief Justice of the United States.
1960

"It’s Nixon in ’60!” Bumper Sticker, 1960
California Historical Society
A 1960 California Republican Party pamphlet touted Nixon as “the most able and electable presidential prospect, of either party, in the Nation. Republicans, leading Independents and thoughtful Democrats throughout the State are swelling the ranks of one of the greatest citizens’ movements in California history.” In his closely contested race against John F. Kennedy—undermined by a poor showing during the presidential debates—Nixon lost the popular vote by .2 percent and the electoral vote by a 302–219 margin.
1968

Victory Celebration, 1968 
Courtesy Herald Examiner Collection, Los Angeles Public Library
Democrat Robert Kennedy addressed enthusiastic supporters in the ballroom of Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968, after winning the 1968 California presidential primary the previous day. Shortly after delivering his victory speech, Kennedy was critically shot in a hotel kitchen corridor. He died the next day. Kennedy’s assassination, which closely followed Martin Luther King’s (April 4, 1968), “shattered the nation,” the U.S. News & World Report observed.
1972

George McGovern, Dennis Weaver, and Tom Bradley, date unknown 
Courtesy Gary Leonard Collection, Los Angeles Public Library
Despite a “Stop McGovern” campaign led by Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, Senator George McGovern’s anti-Vietnam War platform helped him win California’s winner-take-all delegates in the 1972 California Democratic primary against Hubert Humphrey. Factors such as his  outsider status, perception by others as a left-wing extremist, and lack of party support, however, cost McGovern’s the election against incumbent President Richard Nixon by a wide margin.
Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

Sources



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The Rise of Ronald Reagan: 50 Years Ago Today

June 8, 2016, 12:08 pm
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Ronald Reagan, San Francisco Airport arrival, 1966, photo ©Bob Campbell,
San Francisco Chronicle, courtesy, California Historical Society,
CHS2016_2127

With conclusion of yesterday's California primary season, we look back to one of the most significant party primaries in State history: the Republican race in 1966. It was 50 years ago today when Californians awoke to the news that actor Ronald Reagan had won his party's primary on June 7, 1966, defeating San Francisco mayor George Christopher by nearly 35% percentage points.

Reagan's primary victory in 1966 set the stage for an epic showdown in the Fall with two-term governor, Edmund G. 'Pat' Brown, the father of current California Governor Jerry Brown. At the time, Governor Brown (who defeated Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in the Democratic primary) was pleased that Reagan defeated Christopher, thinking that Reagan would be easy to beat in the Fall. But Reagan would end up defeating Brown in November, setting the stage for the "Reagan Revolution" nationally and foreshadowing the themes that many Republicans, including Reagan, would use against Democrats in the decades to come: soft on crime, pro-welfare, tolerant of citizen unrest.

As we noted at the very beginning of this year, the 50th anniversary of 1966 allows us to look back at a revolutionary year in California history when two opposing forces that continue to shape the State and country were unleashed. In the primary against Christopher and then against Brown, Reagan ran explicitly against the growing tide of student activism in the Bay Area, saying he "would clean up the mess at Berkeley." Meanwhile, across the Bay, student activism had merged with a growing youth culture in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury area, creating the counterculture of the "hippies" that would capture the attention of the country the following year during the infamous "Summer of Love."

Yet, just as the masses were starting to gather on Haight Street and "rock dances" were being held every weekend at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium and The Avalon, Ronald Reagan won his first significant political election. In short, California's complicated history and split personality was on full display in 1966.

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The Bear Flag Revolt - June 14, 1846

June 14, 2016, 8:51 am
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1890 Photo of the original Bear Flag. 
Stored in the Halls of  The Society of California Pioneers 
the flag was destroyed in the
San Francisco earthquake and firestorm of 1906

In the late 18th century California was an important part of New Spain, having been colonized by the Spanish Empire primarily through the establishment of missions and presidios over the period between 1769 and 1823.  The 21 Missions established by Spanish Catholics of the Franciscan order, were both military and religious settlements that functioned independently of each other and allowed for the further colonization of what was then known as Alta California.  Prior to the arrival of Portuguese, English and Spanish explorers, California had one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse populations in pre-Columbian North America including more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans.

In 1821 the Mexican War of Independence effectively freed Alta California from Spanish Control.  California was divided into huge land grants for Mexican "Californios" who established family-controlled ranchos in what was then a remote northern province of the Mexican Empire (later Republic).

On June 14, 1846 a group of American settlers declared independence from Mexican rule, this uprising was known as the Bear Flag Revolt and occurred during the Mexican-American War (1846 to 1848).  As a result of the war, California was ceded to the United States by Mexico and became the 31st state admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850.
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Yosemite: A History of Presidential Attention

June 17, 2016, 7:45 am
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Pres. Theodore Roosevelt in Yosemite Valley, Cal (1903), Photographer: Pillsbury. California Historical Society.
This Father’s Day weekend, President Obama and the first family will pay a visit to Yosemite National Park to highlight the 100thAnniversary of the National Park Service and the President’s efforts to preserve natural resources, according to a release from the White House. President Obama is the first sitting President to visit the park since John F. Kennedy did so in 1962, over 50 years ago.

Prior Presidential visits to Yosemite included Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938, William Howard Taft in 1909, and Teddy Roosevelt in 1903 (see above). The trip so impressed Teddy Roosevelt that it ultimately led to the expansion of Yosemite and Roosevelt establishing five other national parks, among many of his other conservation efforts. 

Interestingly, Yosemite may have received its most important attention from a President who never visited. On June 30, 1864 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Land Grant which marked the first federal act to protect wild lands for the enjoyment of people and the first California State Park.  In honor of the 150th anniversary of the signing of this Act, the California Historical Society created Yosemite: A Storied Landscape, a major public history initiative that included a powerful exhibition, eBook, and related program series. (CHS's current exhibition, Experiments is Environment—about the famous collaboration between Anna and Lawrence Halprin in the 1960s—is also connected to Yosemite, as Lawrence Halprin was inspired by the Sierra Mountains in his design of the Yosemite Falls Approach.)

As noted above, President Obama is using his trip to highlight the Centennial of the The National Park Service. The NPS was established in 1916 after a group organized by Stephen T. Mather and Horace M. Albright gathered at UC Berkeley in 1915 (on the sidelines of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition) to plan a future for the existing and evolving national parks in the country. (Last year, UC Berkeley celebrated the Centennial of its role in creating the national parks system with a major symposium.) 

"I want to make sure that the whole world is able to pass on to future generations the God-given beauty of this planet," Obama said in a Facebook video announcing next week's trip. The visit will certainly serve as an example of respecting our public lands and, more importantly, preserving legacy.

The California Historical Society has been celebrating the Centennial of the National Park Service with a series of essays on national parks in California. Read more from the "Mirror of Us" series below:

Sarah Lee
Intern
California Historical Society
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A Mirror of Us: CHS Celebrates NPS and the Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks Centennials

June 22, 2016, 11:46 am
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Genl. Grant National Park, California. The World's Largest Tree.
California Historical Society

From Redwood National Park in the north to Joshua Tree in the south, California’s parks are as varied and diverse as the population of the Golden State itself. The oldest, Yosemite, was established in 1890; the youngest, Pinnacles, graduated from monument to park just three years ago, on January 10, 2013. Each California park has its own kind of beauty and all are a reflection of the society into which they were born—a reflection of us. With this offering in the “Mirror of Us” series, the California Historical Society celebrates Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks.
Read more »
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This Day in San Francisco History: The Founding of Mission Dolores (Mission San Francisco de Asís)

June 29, 2016, 4:07 pm
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William Alexander Coulter (b. Ireland, 1849-1936)
Mission San Francisco de Asis, 1910
Oil on canvas, 11 -1/2 x 17 -1/2 inches
California Historical Society, acquired through purchase and exchange
Acc. 62-88-1-2
On June 29, 1776, Mission San Francisco de Asís, named after St. Francis of Assisi but commonly known as Mission Dolores, was founded by Lieutenant José Joaquin Moraga and Francisco Palóu. It was officially dedicated on October 9, 1776. Today it is the oldest surviving structure in San Francisco and is in active use by the local Parish. On the 240th anniversary of the founding of Mission Delores, we look back on the importance of this institution in shaping California and its history.

Called “Mission Dolores” because of the nearby creek named “Arroyo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores” (meaning “our lady of sorrows”), Mission Dolores was built on the site of the Ohlone Indians of the Chutchui village. The Ohlone Indians comprised one of 40 tribes in a large Native American population —numbering 10,000—that predated the arrival of the first Europeans to the Bay Area. For thousands of years they occupied the area in settlements of 200 to 500 persons and sustained themselves with a “hunter-gatherer” lifestyle: they did not cultivate crops or herd domestic animals but instead hunted native game as needed and utilized naturally available foods

Under the leadership of Father Junípero Serra, a Majorcan and superior of the Franciscan Fathers, the first mission was dedicated Mission San Diego de Alcalà on July 16, 1769. It was the first of nine missions Father Serra would personally found and the beginning of a series of twenty-one missions that formed the framework of what is now the modern state. Some of these sites evolved into cities we recognize today: San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Jose, and San Francisco. The Spanish used the missions as frontier outposts to colonize and convert Native Americans thus the missions provide a window to California and our nation's past. Few regions of the world have such a physical, visual timeline of a nation's growth and development.

Padre Fray Junipero Serra
Courtesy, California Historical Society, FN-23572
Jeu des habitans de Californie, 1822, Choris
Courtesy, California Historical Society
Vault 910.4 C45_004
Mission Dolores was the sixth mission established by Father Serra. Father Serra remains unchallenged as a pivotal force in California’s early history, though his canonization on September 23, 2015 was met with controversy and protest from many indigenous groups who criticized his treatment of the Native Americans. For more than twenty-five generations prior to the Missions, Native Americans lived in their own places and under the terms of their own culture;  however, the social forces, diseases and violence they encountered soon brought them to the brink of extinction. The missions enslaved Native Americans and used them for labor. Those who ran away were captured by soldiers, brought back, and whipped severely. The conditions allowed disease to spread like wildfire, ravaging the native population.

In 2004 artist Ben Wood and archeologist Eric Blind investigated a centuries-old mural
concealed behind the wooden altar of Mission Dolores. It was painted in ochre, white, red, yellow, black, and blue/gray directly onto plaster by Native Americans, though the names of the artists are unknown. A reredos covered up the 22 feet by 20 feet mural in 1796.  Whether the mural was a gesture of Christian piety on the part of the natives or if it reflects a native aesthetic or symbolism remains unclear. Wood and Blind photographed the mural over two weeks, shooting one foot at a time. The images were then manipulated into a single composite.


Photo of the recreated mural on Bartlett at 22nd Street.
Photographer: LisaRuth Elliot
San Francisco, CA
On April 14, 2011 a public painting of the mural was unveiled on Bartlett at 22nd Street in San Francisco. It was the result of a collaboration between the Mission Community Market and Jeremy Shaw and recreated by Ben Wood and local muralists Jet Martinez, Bonnie Reiss, and Ezra Eismont. The mural and Wood’s work with Mission Dolores has provided the public a glimpse of a very important piece of San Francisco history.

Mission Dolores and the Parish
Photographer: Kathleen Yago
San Francisco, CA
Mission Dolores. Dolores & 16th (Sixteenth) St., CA (1906)
Courtesy of the California Historical Society
The Mission Dolores chapel was finished in 1791 and built with adobe walls that were four feet thick. This may have been one of the reasons that the chapel was one of the buildings left standing after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. In 1916 the buildings were reinforced with steel and survived subsequent earthquake Loma Prieta in 1989. Today the Mission continues to play a central role in the religious, civic, and cultural life of San Francisco.


Sarah Lee
Intern
California Historical Society


Sources

· Ben Wood, "The Hidden Mural At Mission Dolores", Foundsf.org.

· Guire Cleary, "Encyclopedia Of San Francisco", Sfhistoryencyclopedia.com.
http://www.sfhistoryencyclopedia.com/articles/m/missionDolores2.htm

· "Junipero Serra", Biography.com.
http://www.biography.com/people/junipero-serra-9479243#synopsis

· Kevin Starr, California. (New York: Modern Library, 2005)

· "Native Groups Protest Pope Francis' Canonization Of Junípero Serra Over Role In California Genocide", Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/9/23/native_groups_protest_pope_francis_canonization

· Rickie Lazzarini, "The History Of California", Kindredtrails.com.
http://www.kindredtrails.com/California-History-2.html

· "San Francisco De Asís | California Missions Resource Center", Missionscalifornia.com.
http://www.missionscalifornia.com/keyfacts/san-francisco.html

· Tricia Weber, "Mission San Francisco De Asis (Mission Delores)", Californias Missions.
http://www.californias-missions.org/individual/mission_san_francisco_de_asis.htm

· University of Santa Clara, "Historical Information - Mission Santa Clara De Asís", Scu.edu.
https://www.scu.edu/missionchurch/historical-information/







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Announcing the winner of the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award

July 8, 2016, 3:40 pm
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The California Historical Society (CHS) and Heyday have announced the winner of the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award: "The City of Vines: A History of Wine in Los Angeles," a rediscovery of where California’s wine industry began and a chronicle of its one-hundred-year history as the leader of the Golden State’s viticulture industry.
The author, Thomas Pinney, is an emeritus professor of English at Pomona College whose nearly lifelong passion for wine has resulted in renowned publications about winemaking in both California and the United States as a whole. He will receive a $5,000 advance, and his manuscript will be published in both print and e-book format by CHS and Heyday.
“For many years, from the time of California’s first settlement, California wine meant wine from Los Angeles, city and county both,” says Pinney. “That historical fact has been almost completely forgotten, and hardly any material evidence of it survives. I have had great pleasure in reconstructing the story. There is certainly much more to be known, and I hope that others will follow where I have begun.”
“For many years, from the time of California’s first settlement, California wine meant wine from Los Angeles, city and county both,” says Pinney. “That historical fact has been almost completely forgotten, and hardly any material evidence of it survives. I have had great pleasure in reconstructing the story. There is certainly much more to be known, and I hope that others will follow where I have begun.”
"The City of Vines: A History of Wine in Los Angeles" addresses the neglected story of winegrowing in the city and county of Los Angeles, where the industry began in California and where it remained of major importance for more than a century. From the mission era, when “California wine” meant Los Angeles wine, to the 1950s, when vast acreages of agricultural land were paved over and built upon to accommodate the post–World War II boom, this comprehensive account of an industry—and, indeed, a way of life—aims to repair a serious omission in public perception about the history of wine in the state.
“The California Historical Society is deeply honored to recognize the significant achievements of Dr. Thomas Pinney in reclaiming this significant, complicated layer of California viticulture history. As his manuscript suggests, we should know Los Angeles for wine as much as we know it for oranges, oil, and Hollywood,” says Anthea M. Hartig, PhD, executive director and CEO of the California Historical Society.
Steve Wasserman, executive director and publisher of Heyday, adds, “Heyday is thrilled to act as midwife to the birth of Thomas Pinney’s indispensable book. Publishing his book will help readers become aware of what has been for too long a well-kept secret among scholars: the essential role of Los Angeles in giving life to one of California’s pillar industries, now given its due in the meticulous storytelling of one our most respected teachers and writers.”
The California Historical Society Book Award is awarded annually for a book-length manuscript that makes an important contribution to scholarship and deepens public understanding of some aspect of California history. The work must adhere to high scholarly standards and must be lively and engaging to general readers as well. In addition to conventional works of historical scholarship, other genres that are considered include: biographies, collections of letters or essays, photographic or artistic studies, creative nonfiction, and other ways of informing the mind and engaging the imagination in an understanding of California’s past.
Finalists for the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award included: "Islands of Discovery, Unfulfilled Dreams, and Forgotten Treasures: The True Story of the Aborted 1939–1941 Channel Islands Biological Survey," by Corinne Heyning Laverty (Manhattan Beach); "Crush: Wine and California from the Padres to Paris," by John Briscoe (San Francisco); and "It Was Here: San Francisco’s Lost Art Gem," by Hiya Swanhuyser (San Francisco).
The California Historical Society Book Award allows CHS to continue its rich publishing tradition, which began in 1874. Heyday, founded in 1974, continues to be an important partner and collaborator with CHS. Together the organizations publish books on topics of California history that strive to transform California’s understanding of itself and shape its future.
About the Author: Thomas Pinney is the author of "A History of Wine in America," the definitive, two-volume account of winemaking in the United States, and "The Makers of American Wine."
About the California Historical Society: The California Historical Society, founded in 1871, is a nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire and empower people to make California’s richly diverse past a meaningful part of their contemporary lives. We hold one of the top research collections on California history, which includes over 35,000 volumes of books and pamphlets, more than 4,000 manuscript collections, and about 500,000 photographs documenting California’s social, cultural, economic, and political history and development, including some of the most cherished and valuable documents and images of California’s past. Learn more at http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org.
About Heyday: Heyday is an independent, nonprofit publisher and unique cultural institution. We promote widespread awareness and celebration of California’s many cultures, landscapes, and boundary-breaking ideas. Through our well-crafted books, public events, and innovative outreach programs we are building a vibrant community of readers, writers, and thinkers. Learn more at http://www.heydaybooks.com.
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83rd Anniversary: The Groundbreaking of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

July 9, 2016, 9:00 am
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Today we celebrate the 83rd anniversary of the groundbreaking for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The bridge was first called the James “Sunny Jim” Rolph Bridge to pay homage to the city’s then mayor and governor. However, he was not able to witness the opening of the inauguration of the bridge due to his passing two years before construction was completed. The official and functional name of the bridge thus became the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and is commonly called "Bay Bridge". When it was built, the bridge totaled a length of 23, 556 feet (8.25 miles including the East Bay crossing and the approaches in San Francisco) and was the world’s longest steel structure.

Gov. James Rolph, Mr. Herbert Hoover and others including Miss Alameda, Miss SF Bay Bridge, and Miss San Francisco at groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Bay Bridge, July 9, 1933, courtesy, California Historical Society, CHS2013.1290 [b]
On July 9, 1933 the California Department of Public Work broke ground and a 1-day ceremony was held to honor this event. Though actual construction work had begun in May with an informal ceremony at the site of the West Anchorage, a large crowd gather at Yerba Buena Island for a ceremony that included ex-President Herbert Hoover as a keynote speaker and performances by the Young Women of Bay Cities and the United States Navy Band. An airplane flight linked Rincon Hill and Oakland with a symbolic bridge of smoke and then President Franklin D. Roosevelt set a simultaneous detonation of blasts at Yerba Buena Island, San Francisco, and Oakland. Governor Frank Meeriam broke the ground assisted by San Francisco Mayor James Rolph.

Program of the Groundbreaking Ceremony for the Bay Bridge (Outside)
Photo courtesy of baybridgeinfo.org

Program of the Groundbreaking Ceremony for the Bay Bridge (Inside)
Photo courtesy of baybridgeinfo.org
The bridge was designed by the California Department of Public Works under its Chief Engineer Charles H. Purcell, Bridge Engineer Charles E. Andrew, and Design Engineer Glenn Woodruff. The turbulent water conditions (varying soils and water depths), inaccessibility to bedrock, gusty winds, and a host of other unique design challenges made the building of the bridge seem impossible. Engineers also assumed that the area’s high winds posed a greater threat than earthquakes, despite the bridges proximity to two major fault lines. Part of these natural hurdles to construction were overcome by building the bridge in two different sections connected by a tunnel through Yerba Buena Island. Political forces also prevented construction. Plans to build a bridge between San Francisco and Oakland had been discussed since the 1870s, but did not move forward until the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, with support from President Herbert Hoover, agreed to purchase bonds to be repaid later with bridge tolls. At last on November 12, 1936 the Bay Bridge opened and in its first year carried 9 million vehicles (102,200,000 per year today). The traffic levels that year exceeded expectations for 1950. Local residents now had a quick way to drive between the rapidly growing cities of San Francisco and Oakland: the East and West communities of the Bay Area were brought together like never before.

Construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge [Eastern span, ca.1934-35], photographed by Ted Huggins, courtesy, California Historical Society, CHS2011.738
Due to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the steel supports of the damaged decks shifted, slicing off five-inch steel bolts that connected the deck to the supports. This partial collapse required $6.4 billion towards reconstruction and after nearly a decade of construction and 24 years after Loma Prieta, the bridge opened again on September 2, 2013. The self-anchored suspension span was designed to withstand the strongest quake estimated by seismologists to occur at the site over a 1,500 year period.

Photo of Bay Bridge, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Today an average of 270,000 vehicles cross the Bay Bridge each day. It remains a beautiful and important historical landmark and exudes an aura of magnificence, thus making it one of the favorite tourist spots in the area. Visitors can stroll along the beaches under the bridge, enjoy a picnic around the area, bike across the bridge, and simply enjoy the view and peacefulness.

Photo of Bay Bridge viewed from Yerba Buena Island
Photographer: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle
San Francisco, CA


Sarah Lee
Intern
California Historical Society

Sources

American Philatelic Society
http://stamps.org/userfiles/file/MyAPS/Exhibits/StahlSanFrancisco-313005.pdf

Associated Press in San Francisco, “San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Opens To Traffic After Years Of Delays”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/03/san-francisco-bay-bridge-reopens

“Bay Bridge History” | Key Facts
http://www.baybridgeinfo.org/history

Michael Cabanatuan, “Bay Bridge Eastern Span Opens”
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Bridge-eastern-span-opens-4781385.php#photo-5131048

“Oakland Bay Bridge”
http://famouswonders.com/oakland-bay-bridge/

“San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_the_San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland_Bay_Bridge

“The California Quake: The Bay Bridge; Damage To Link Across Bay Is More Serious Than Thought”
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/20/us/california-quake-bay-bridge-damage-link-across-bay-more-serious-than-thought.html

“The San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge”
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/tollbridge/SFOBB/Sfobbfacts.html




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Looking to 1968 to understand tragedy in 2016

July 13, 2016, 3:42 pm
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Robert Kennedy campaigning in Los Angeles, courtesy of the Austin American-Statesman.
Like many people and organizations around the country, we at CHS have been grappling with heartbreak  and complex emotions resulting from last week’s tragic deaths of Alton Sterling in Louisiana, Philando Castile in Minnesota, and police officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa in Texas. Our headquarters is located in San Francisco, where issues related to race and policing continue to divide our community.

In these challenging times, when current events are so vivid and tense, we seek out historians, writers, and thinkers to help us understand the connection between past and current events. Here are some recent articles and exhibitions that have helped us understand the historic antecedents to last week’s horrific events. See, as we do, some glimpse of how leaders from yesteryear have healed some wounds, made some measures of progress, and lived the change they wished to see in America:
One common thread in recent writing is a reference to 1968, a year—like 2016—marked by political turmoil, civil protest, war, and fatal high-profile shootings. In 1968 we saw the Tet Offensive stoke the Vietnam War, students killed at Civil Rights demonstrations in South Carolina, the rise of Afrocentrism and of Black Power movements in California and across the country, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis and Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles, massive protests at the Democratic Party Convection in Chicago, the passage of sweeping gun control legislation, and the election of Californian Richard Nixon to the presidency.

It is not surprising that California is one of the major sites of these movements and events, and home to many of the people who carry them out. The history of our state is replete with stories of tragedy, harm, but also perseverance, and innovation,

Months ago, when we learned of Larry Tye’s new book “Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon” we invited him out to San Francisco for a talk and Q&A with our members. RFK was killed in Los Angeles, cutting short his life and his promising President campaign. At the time, we had no idea how relevant Tye’s work would be to current events.   The event is planned for August 12. We’ll be there, looking to learn more about 1968, and trying to better understand the events of 2016. We hope you’ll join us.
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Upcoming Events: The Modoc War

July 25, 2016, 5:00 pm
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Tule Lake, Camp South, from the Signal Station, Tule Lake in the Distance
Tule Lake, Camp South, from the Signal Station, Tule Lake in the Distance, from the series The Modoc War, Eadweard Muybridge, photographer; Bradley & Rulofson, publisher, 1873, albumen stereograph, California Historical Society
Last Thursdaywas the opening of two exhibits at the California Historical Society: “Sensationalist Portrayals of the Modoc War, 1872—73” and “Native Portraits: Contemporary Tintypes” by Ed Drew (on view July 21—November 27, 2016). This week and in the coming months, the California Historical Society will animate these exhibitions with a set of engaging public educations programs and events. We will host authors, scholars, and photographers in conversation on the history of the Modoc War, the depiction of Native Americans in nineteenth-century American photography using Modoc War photographs as a case study, and the use of the historic and unique tintype process to create thought-provoking images that challenge historic and contemporary perspectives of Native Americans.

We hope you will join us in learning more about the Modoc War, about the weighty, complicated history of photography, and about artists who find power and authenticity in their Native American heritage.


Thursday, July 28, 2016, 6:00pm, San Francisco, CA
The Modoc War: A History Examined Through Objects in the Exhibition
$5 for CHS Members and Educators, $10 General Admission
RSVP: https://modocwar_historytoldthroughobjects.eventbrite.com


Wednesday, September 28, 2016, 6:00pm, San Francisco, CA
Modoc War Photographs: How Native Americans Represented National Anxieties about Race, Democracy, and Expansion in Post-Civil War Era
$10 General Admission, $5 CHS Members and Educators

Thursday, November 3, 2016, 6:00pm, San Francisco, CA
History, Identity, Photography – Tintype Artists Ed Drew and Will Wilson in Discussion$5 for CHS Members, $10 General Admission
RSVP: https://history_identity_photography-discussionbtw2artists.eventbrite.com

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A Mirror of Us: CHS Celebrates the National Park Service Centennial

July 26, 2016, 9:00 am
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Redwood National and State Parks   

Coast Redwoods and Fog, Redwood National and State Parks 
Courtesy National Park Service 


From Redwood National Park in the north to Joshua Tree in the south, California’s parks are as varied and diverse as the population of the Golden State itself. The oldest, Yosemite, was established in 1890; the youngest, Pinnacles, graduated from monument to park just three years ago, on January 10, 2013. Each California park has its own kind of beauty and all are a reflection of the society into which they were born—a reflection of us. With this offering in the “Mirror of Us” series, the California Historical Society celebrates Redwood National and State Parks.


Bowing to Sovereigns

Boy (foreground) amidst Grove of Giant Redwood Trees, Humboldt County  
Historical Society; photo Redwood Empire Association 


The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time. 

—John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America, 1962 


Redwood National and State Parks in northwestern California is unique among the state’s National Parks. As its name implies, it is a National Park comprised of three State Parks: Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in Humboldt County, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, both in Del Norte County.  
Humboldt County Brochure 
California Historical Society 
With the National Park designation, these three formerly distinct parks now form one contiguous unit, which runs from just south of the Oregon border down Highway 101 for approximately 60 miles. It is jointly managed by the National Park Service and the California Department of Parks and Recreation. 

All three State Parks were created in the 1920s as concern grew among Californians about the loss of original Redwood forests due to logging. Beginning in the 1850s with the Gold Rush, the immediate and tremendous need for quality lumber and the relative accessibility of these forests made them good candidates for the burgeoning lumber industry. By the time Redwood National Park was created in 1968, it is estimated that 90 percent of original growth redwoods had been cut down for timber. 

Redwood Loggings, Scotia, California, before 1918 
Courtesy Save the Redwoods, www.savetheredwoods.org  

A pivotal actor in early efforts to save the trees was the San Francisco-based organization, Save the Redwoods League. Encouraged by National Park Service head Stephen Mather, conservationists John C. Merriam, Madison Grant, and Henry Fairfield Osborn first explored the state of the redwood forests in 1917.  

(Left to right) John C. Merriam, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Stephen Mathers, and Madison Grant 
Composite of Public Domain Images
Based on their concern about what they encountered, including automobile traffic on the Redwood Highway, they formed the League in 1918.

Coast Redwoods Dwarf Cars along the Redwood Highway before 1918 
Courtesy savetheredwoods.org; photo by H.C. Tibbitts 
Members of the Women’s Save the Redwoods League, 1919 
Courtesy, savetheredwoods.org 

During the 1920s the League raised funds—then matched by the state—to begin purchasing tracts of land to be set aside as State Parks. Prairie Creek Redwoods gained State Park designation in 1923, followed by Del Norte in 1925 and Jedediah Smith in 1929. Efforts began early to create a National Park, but that would not come to pass for many years. In the meantime, the League purchased a total of 100,000 acres between 1920 and 1960, and at the birth of the National Park—signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on October 2, 1968—the new National Park included 58,000 acres beyond those of the original State Parks.  

Although the League was successful in setting aside significant groves of trees early on, over time an increase in understanding of the entire forest ecosystem has led to the inclusion of non-forest areas, including parts of the Pacific coastline, rivers, streams, estuaries, meadows, and prairies. In 1978 President Jimmy Carter added an additional 48,000 acres to the park. 
 
Cow Parsnip on Yurok Loop Trail, Redwood National and State Parks 
Courtesy National Park Service 
It goes without saying that redwood forests inspire a near-religious awe in those who visit them. In addition to noted authors like John Steinbeck and John Muir, countless others have also been inspired by the redwood landscape. 

One notable exception to the legions of the awestruck was Ronald Reagan, who is often reported to have said about the trees, “If you’ve seen one redwood tree you’ve seen them all.” Reagan’s actual words, spoken as a gubernatorial candidate to a wood products association in March 1966, were:  

I think, too, that we've got to recognize that where the preservation of a natural resource like the redwoods is concerned, that there is a common sense limit. I mean, if you've looked at a hundred thousand acres or so of trees—you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at? 

The Big Tree, Redwood Highway 
© Patterson; California Historical Society 
Apparently however, a redwood may not just be any old tree. In 2016—fifty years after Reagan’s comments—a new benefit to preserving California’s redwoods has been discovered. According to researchers from Humboldt State University and UC Berkeley, with the assistance of the Save the Redwoods League, redwood trees are champions at combatting global warming. Because of their massive size and long lives, through photosynthesis they are able to absorb far larger quantities of carbon than any other known forests.   

Visiting the redwoods in 1962 John Steinbeck wrote, “One feels the need to bow to unquestioned sovereigns.” As it turns out, places like Redwood National Park may hold even greater powers than Steinbeck could ever have imagined.  

Sunset on Rocky Coast, Redwood National and State Parks 
Courtesy National Park Service 



Alison Moore 
Strategic Initiatives Liaison 
amoore@calhist.org 


Sources 

David Mikkelson, “If You’ve Seen One Tree..."; http://www.snopes.com/quotes/reagan/redwoods.asp  

National Park Service/Department of Parks and Recreation, Redwood National and State Parks; 
https://www.nps.gov/redw/index.htm 

Redwood National and State Parks; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwood_National_and_State_Parks 

Redwood National and State Parks: Official Map and Guide (U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service/Department of Parks and Recreation, State of California, 2001) 

Paul Rogers, “Are California Redwood Trees the Answer to Global Warming?” Mercury News, July 6, 2016; http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_30094332/weapon-against-global-warming-california-redwoods-store-more 

Save the Redwoods League; http://www.savetheredwoods.org/ 

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America (New York: Curtis Publishing, 1962) 

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Read more in our series A Mirror of Us: CHS Celebrates the National Park Service Centennial:
Death Valley National Park; http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-mirror-of-uschalliss-gore.html
Joshua Tree National Park; http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-mirror-of-us-chs-celebrates-national.html
Pinnacles National Park, http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-mirror-of-us-chs-celebrates-national.html
Lassen Volcanic National Park, http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-mirror-of-us-chs-celebrates-nps-and.html
Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-mirror-of-us-chs-celebrates-nps-and.html
Redwood National and State Parks, http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-mirror-of-us-chs-celebrates-nps-and.html  
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Today the National Park Service cares for 409 park sites spread over more than 84 million acres (131,250-plus square miles) in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories.

Learn more about the NPS Centennial Initiative
http://www.nps.gov/nava/learn/management/centennial-initiative-2016.htm


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History Keepers: Traversing Los Angeles L.A. Exhibition Brings This Multifaceted City to Us

July 26, 2016, 4:34 pm
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Copter Tested as Traffic Director, 1953 
Los Angeles Times Photographic Archives, UCLA Library Special Collections 

They are history keepers. They research, organize, store, repair, and care for historical artifacts and make them available to us online, at exhibitions, through publications, or in their homes.

This summer’s “History Keepers” exhibition in downtown Los Angeles displays objects from collections around Southern California that address the theme “Traversing Los Angeles.” These items—real or imagined landscapes; urban planning and architecture; travel, tourism, and mapping; airways, railways, roadways, and freeways; tunnels, canals, and bridges; cityscapes and streetscapes—are a cornucopia of Los Angeles’s geographical, environmental, cultural, and historical landscape. Should we ever forget or lose sight of our past, we need only return to these primary source materials to discover again where we came from and perhaps even where we are going. 

From August 5 to August 27, the California Historical Society celebrates Los Angeles’s history keepers in this exhibition at the historic El Pueblo National Monument (see below for more information).  

For our online visitors, we offer a sample of objects in the exhibition in a series of forthcoming blogs: 

 Knife and Trunk of Tiburcio Vásquez, c. mid-1800s 
History Keeper: San Fernando Valley Historical Society  


In the mid-1800s the legendary, controversial Tiburcio Vásquez—son of a prominent Californio family—traversed the passes and foothills of the state, robbing and terrorizing inhabitants and romancing others. Remembered for his womanizing and crimes purportedly committed in the name of justice for his people, the bandido/outlaw—and folk hero to some—traveled with this trunk packed with his personal effects. This knife is all that remains of its contents.

Home Backyard Incinerator, 1946–55 
History Keeper: Nat Isaac 

“As all historians know, you don't just pass up on a treasured relic of the past, especially one such as this that tells the story of LA’s trashy past full of issues ranging from environmental protection to traffic, to organized crime to mayoral politics,” explains History Keeper Nat Isaac.
California Centennial Transportation Plate, 1949 
History Keeper: Phyllis Hansen 
 
For California’s centennial of statehood in 1949, the Los Angeles pottery company Vernon Kilns produced a series of commemorative plates. This transportation-themed plate depicts illustrations of historical modes of traversing Southern California. Perhaps most unique of all is the one about the camels that arrived in Los Angeles in 1858.
Looking from Wall Street between 8th and 9th Streets, 1932 
History Keeper: California Historical Society 
 
In 1932 a German PhD student arrived in Los Angeles. Anton Wagner wanted to determine how this American city and its environs had become a booming metropolis of two million people from a small, dusty mid-nineteenth-century town. Wagner researched the region’s history, critically examined its geography, interviewed its civic and business leaders, and covered the area of greater Los Angeles on foot.
Souvenirs from Southern California’s Orange Empire, 1910–40: Orange Inn Roadside Stand 
History Keeper:  David Boulé California Orange Collection 
In the early 1900s, leisure travel was an adventure only for the hearty or the wealthy. However, as railways, automobiles, and roads developed and improved, more people could visit, explore, and see the wonders of a place where oranges grew beneath mountains covered with snow.



Shelly Kale 
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager 
skale@calhist.org 

_________________________________________________________________________________
An exhibition by the California Historical Society and LA as Subject 
Presented in partnership with El Pueblo Historical Monument and the El Pueblo Park Association 

El Tranquilo Gallery & Visitor Center 
634 N. Main Street (entrance on Olvera Street, W-19) 
El Pueblo de Los Ángeles Historical Monument, Los Angeles, California 
Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 am–3:00 pm 
Saturday and Sunday, 9:00 am–4:00 pm 

Opening reception: Friday, August 5, 2016, 6:00–8:00 pm 


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Photographing Yosemite: Rondal Partridge's Pave It and Paint It Green

July 27, 2016, 9:00 am
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Rondal Partridge, Pave It and Paint It Green, signed gelatin silver print, c. 1965 
Gift of Rondal Partridge / California Historical Society
Beginning in his early twenties, Rondal Partridge operated the renowned photographer Ansel Adams’ darkroom in Yosemite Valley. From 1937 to 1939 he helped produce prints of Adams’ idealistic Yosemite photographs for tourists. Thirty years later—during an era of political, social, and environmental awareness and upheaval—he captured tourism’s impact on the park with his best-known photograph, Pave It and Paint It Green. Today it is a reminder of the fragility of our National Parks and the imperative that we always preserve them. 

As a tribute to Rondal Partridge, we offer an essay by Shelly Kale—published in the California History journal by the University of California Press in association with CHS—about a man and the image that captured not only his spirit but that of a generation.

Pave It and Paint It Green

I don’t have any preconception of what is valuable as a photographic subject. A view, a snake—I never know what will catch my eye. I shoot it, print it, and wait for fashion to catch up with my eyes.
—Rondal Partridge, 2002 (1)


When Rondal Partridge (1917—2015) took this photograph of a congested parking lot in Yosemite National Park, it was the impact of tourism that caught his eye. “I went to Yosemite with a producer from KQED to make a film,” Partridge recalled in 2002. “All he saw was falling water, tall cliffs, and happy people…I saw congestion, destruction, erosion.” (2)

Partridge was the son of the renowned photographer Imogen Cunningham (1883—1976) and in his younger years assisted the celebrated photographers Dorothea Lange (1895—1965) and Ansel Adams (1902—1984). As photographs curator Jennifer A. Watts noted, in the 1960s and 1970s Partridge was one of “a new generation of up-and-coming photographers” who were “redefining photography’s function in Yosemite…This new school of photographers discovered and depicted a Yosemite unimagined by Adams. They framed their shots on the valley floor rather than the craggy vistas favored by Adams.” (3)

Unlike Adams’s emphasis on Yosemite’s purity, Partridge saw the interrelationship between the park’s human imprint and its natural beauty. In his photograph, the sprawl of cars across the foreground and the majestic Half Dome framed by trees seem to have equal billing. Partridge, art historian Sally Stein observed, “resisted compartmentalizing nature as a thing revered for its very apartness. Rather, in his view, we are part of nature and, for better and worse, it is yoked to us.” (4)

As “photography’s ‘grand laboratory,’” Yosemite has inspired photographers since Charles Leadner Weed (1824—1903) entered Yosemite Valley in 1855. The 1861 images of Carleton E. Watkins (1829—1916) had far reaching effects: they provided the visual evidence for Yosemite’s preservation that led to passage of the 1864 Yosemite Grant Act. That piece of legislation set aside the Yosemite Balley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias for protection by the State of California “inalienable for all time,” paving the way for our national park system. (5)

Following Watkins’s lead, generations of landscape and tourist photographers alike focused their lenses on Yosemite’s geological wonders and inspirational splendor. But like the painter Chuira Obata (1885—1975), whose artworks of Yosemite in the late 1920s brought a fresh perspective to the park’s visual record, Partridge broke with this traditional approach. And like Eadweard Muybridge (1830—1904), whose daring feats over the landscape to reach the best viewpoints produced astonishing photographs of Yosemite, Partridge was intrepid. At the Camp Curry parking lot, “I got up on the top of the car and took the shot and was blasted by a bullhorn from a ranger. He demanded I get off the car. He wanted to arrest me, and I said I refused to be arrested. I convinced his supervisor that I had obtained permission to photograph, and that I could shoot from wherever I wanted.” (6)

By the mid-1960s, when Partridge trained his camera on Half Dome, the automobile’s destructiveness was apparent. As National Park Service historian David Louter recounted, one critic observed that the automobile “had brought more downgrading changes to Yosemite Valley than the previous five thousand years of erosion. Each day it was cramming a medium-sized city into a valley meant for a hamlet.” (7)

As the decade ended, the motto “Parks Are for People” was a rallying cry to address the problem. In 1980, automobiles were recognized in the National Park Service’s General Management Plan as “the single greatest threat to enjoyment of the natural and scenic qualities of Yosemite.” (8) Each year, the plan noted, approximately thirty miles of roadway accommodated a million trucks, cars, and buses. Decades later Partridge would state, “Automobiles are a main concern of mine. They’ll cover the world ten feet deep in the next fifty years. I have dozens of photographs of parking lots.” (9)

Today—as we mark the hundredth anniversary of the National Park Service and evaluate the success of its conflicting mandates, use and preservation—automobiles are still at home in the Camp Curry parking lot. (10) As Yosemite photographer Howard Weamer described, “The lot is slightly more organized now, with parking in rows perpendicular to the camera, and always full.” (11).

Would Partridge have found the accommodation worthy of his camera’s eye?

NOTES

1. Elizabeth Partridge and Sally Stein, Quizzical Eye: The Photography of Rondal Partridge (San Francisco: California Historical Society Press, 2003), 134.
2. Ibid., 136.
3. Jennifer A. Watts, “Photography’s Workshop: Yosemite in the Modern Era,” in Yosemite: Art of an American Icon, ed. Amy Scott (Berkeley: University of California Press in Association with the Autry National Center, 2006), 129–130.
4. Sally Stein, “‘Everything but the Grand Gesture’: Tradition and Irreverence in the Photography of Rondal Partridge,” in Partridge and Stein, Quizzical Eye, 24–25.
5. Watts, “Photography’s Workshop,” 115; Thirty‐Eighth Congress of the United States of America, An Act Authorizing a Grant to the State of California of the “Yo‐Semite Valley,” and of the Land Embracing the “Mariposa Big Tree Grove,” June 30, 1864, http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/library/Yosemite_Park_June_30_1864.pdf.
6. Partridge and Stein, Quizzical Eye, 136.
7. David Louter, Windshield Wilderness: Cars, Roads, and Nature in Washington’s National Parks (Seattle: University of Washington Press), 21.
8. U.S. Department of the Interior, Yosemite National Park: General Management Plan, Visitor Use/Park Operations/Development (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980), 3.
9. Bob O’Brien, “A Vision Sustained,” National Parks 76, no. 5–6 (July/August 2002), 44; David T. Page, Yosemite and the Southern Sierra Nevada: An Explorer’s Guide (Woodstock, VT: The Countryman Press), 67; Louter, Windshield Wilderness, 176; Partridge and Stein, Quizzical Eye, 137.
10. With the 1916 Organic Act, Congress authorized the National Park Service “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” See “Robin Winks on the Evolution and Meaning of the Organic Act,” The George Wright Forum 24, no. 3 (2007), http://www.georgewright.org/243winks.pdf.
11. Howard Weamer, e-mail message to the author, October 16, 2015.

Shelly Kale is Publications and Strategic Projects Manager at the California Historical Society. Formerly Managing Editor of California History, she has held editorial and administrative positions in academic, museum, educational, electronic, and trade and mass-market publishing.
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This article originally appeared in Spotlight, a feature of the California History journal (Vol. 93, #2), published by the University of California Press in association with the California Historical Society. Conceived by former journal editor and historian Janet Fireman as a last-page photographic feature that itself would evoke a lasting image for journal’s readers, Spotlight draws from CHS’s vast and diverse collection of California photography and photographic history.
California History, Vol. 93, Number 2, pp. 64–66, ISSN 0162-2897, electronic ISSN 2327-1485. ©2016 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.


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Olympics! July 30, 1932: The Summer Olympics Opens in Los Angeles

July 30, 2016, 9:00 am
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(Detail), Official Poster of the Xth Olympiad in Los Angeles, 1932 
Courtesy Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games 

On August 5, the 2016 Summer Olympics officially begins in Rio de Janeiro. Though Los Angeles lost the bid to host this year’s games, California’s City of Angels welcomed the world in the summers of 1932 (X Olympiad) and 1984 (XXIII Olympiad) and won the American candidate city for the 2024 Summer Olympics (XXXIII Olympiad). 

As we anticipate the start of “Rio 2016” (XXXI Olympiad), we look back to the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The times were financially difficult—the world was in the midst of the Great Depression—and Southern California was considered geographically isolated, driving up travel costs. Nevertheless, from July 30 to August 14, the number of tickets sold to visitors eager to watch 1,332 athletes from 37 countries compete in the games totaled about 1.2 million—approximately the same number as the city’s 1930 census. Thousands of children attended the games, made possible by a low price of 50 cents for all events and half-price season tickets. 

Anton Wagner (Photographer), Looking from Wall Street between 8th and 9th Streets, 1932 
California Historical Society 

Color Map of Olympic Events in Southern California, 1932 
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library 

Los Angeles, Olympic City, 1932 
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library  
Though participation was the lowest since 1904, the 1932 games brought a number of innovations and distinctive features to Olympics history—including the introduction of the Olympic Village to the games (for male athletes), the first use of the 3-level victory podium to award medals, the largest crowd (about 100,000) to attend the Opening Ceremony, and the largest stadium (Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, renamed Olympic Stadium).  

Olympic Village, Baldwin Hills, 1932 
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library  
Shape
Olympic Fencing Champions on Victory Podium, 1932 
Courtesy of usfencingresults.org 
(Left to right) Heather Guinness (Great Britain, silver), Ellen Preis (Austria, gold), and Erna Bogen (Hungary, bronze); 
(left to right) Joseph Levis (USA, silver), Gustavo Marzi (Italy, gold), and Giulio Gaudini (Italy, bronze)
Opening Day at Olympic Stadium (Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum), July 30, 1932 
Games of the Xth Olympiad, Los Angeles 1932, Official Report, 1933 
The City of Los Angeles rose to the occasion, enlarging the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and establishing a complete transportation system for the athletes and Olympics officials, a traffic control program every day of the events, and a public relations campaign boasting the city’s many attributes. A major thoroughfare in Los Angeles—Tenth Street—was renamed Olympic Boulevard in honor of the games.  

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (Olympic Stadium), c. 1932 
Courtesy of www.lacoliseum.com 
Members of the Japanese Olympic Team Arrive at Olympic Village, 1932 
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library 

Olympic Games Promotion, 1932 
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library  
It can be said that the 1932 Olympics helped shape Los Angeles’s metropolitan identity. As Mark Dyreson and Matthew Llewellyn have proposed, “Los Angeles used the 1932 games to put itself on the global map” and “provided the basic template for modern Olympic mega-productions.” 

Children with a Sheep Draped in Olympic Flag, 1932 
California Historical Society Collections at USC Libraries 


Shelly Kale 
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager 
skale@calhist.org 

Sources 

“80 Years Ago This Week: Los Angeles Welcomes (and Transports) the World to the 1932 Summer Olympics,” July 24, 2012; Primary Resources, Metro Transportation Library and Archive, http://metroprimaryresources.info/80-years-ago-this-week-los-angeles-welcomes-and-transports-the-world-to-the-1932-summer-olympics/4156/   

1932 Olympic Games, Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games; www.sccog.org 

Mark Dyreson and Matthew Llewellyn, “Los Angeles Is the Olympic City: The 1932 and 1984 Olympic Games,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 25, no. 14 (2008): 1991–2018 

The Games of the Xth Olympiad, Los Angeles 1932, Official Report (Xth Olympiade Committee of the Games of Los Angeles, U.S.A., 1932, Ltd., 1933) 

“Los Angeles 1932: Highlights of the Game,” https://www.olympic.org/los-angeles-1932 
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50 years ago today: the Mysterious Death of the 'Mayor of the Fillmore'

August 1, 2016, 8:05 pm
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Charles Sullivan
Fifty years ago today, businessman and music promoter Charles Sullivan died in San Francisco. His death remains a significant and controversial mystery. However, what is undeniable is that Sullivan played a critical role in San Francisco’s cultural life during the mid-1960s and paved the way for some of the most significant music events in California history.

From left: Charles Sullivan, known as “the mayor of the Fillmore”; Ralph J Gleason, jazz and rock critic for the San Francisco Chronicle; Lionel Hampton wearing Wesley Johnson’s 10-gallon Stetson hat; two unknown men at Wesley Johnson’s Texas Playhouse. Photo: Wesley Johnson Jr Collection
Sullivan was born on a farm in Monroe County, Alabama, but ran away at the age of thirteen. Making his way to California, he arrived in Los Angeles in 1928 at the age of eighteen, and washed cars while going to night school to become a machinist. He worked his way up to the position of journeyman machinist, only to be refused admission to local unions because he was black so he came to San Francisco at the height of the Great Depression. When Sullivan found Northern California unions also closed to minorities, he began working as a chauffer and mechanic for George Nicholls, Jr.—a Hollywood film director living in Hillsborough.

He and his first wife, Iola, scrimped and saved for six-odd years, and opened a hamburger stand in San Mateo in 1939. He soon purchased a bar in Pacifica for $7,000 solely to acquire its liquor license and expand Sullivan’s Cafe. Sullivan was getting his first taste of success, but not everyone was pleased with his triumph. San Mateo residents initially petitioned City Hall to block the transfer of the liquor license. Sullivan claimed the move was motivated purely by racism.   Ultimately, Sullivan prevailed and, in June of 1944, he was issued a permit to put a “dark room” in his pool hall and café. He expanded Sullivan’s to include a card room, becoming the first black man to own a gambling license on the Peninsula, and set his sights on opening a “colored USO” to accommodate America’s unserviced servicemen.

In addition to the aforementioned enterprises, he also worked as a machinist in the shipyards throughout the World War II—allegedly admitted to a union that previously refused him following the personal intervention of President Roosevelt. With his Café running soundly, he opened a jukebox rental business called Sullivan’s Music Co., and later rented cigarette vending machines. Soon, the son of illiterate Alabama farmers was living in a comfortable two-story house near Alamo Square in San Francisco.

In the city, Sullivan continued his reign of success and earned the nickname “Mayor of the Fillmore.” The Fillmore was a bustling neighborhood in San Francisco’s Western Addition district that would soon be known as “Harlem of the West” for its numerous jazz clubs and African-American businesses. Sullivan bought the Booker T. Washington Hotel and also acquired a liquor store, renting rooms above in his newly renamed Sullivan Hotel. In 1949, a local musician named Slim Gaillard borrowed money from Sullivan to open a chicken and waffles joint. Named Vout City, the club and Gaillard were immortalized by Jack Kerouac in On The Road; in the novel, Kerouac recalled “a little Frisco nightclub” where “great eager crowds of young semi-intellectuals sat at his feet and listened to him on guitar, piano and bongo drums…he does and says anything that comes to his head.”

Bop City
When Gaillaird chose greener pastures in Los Angeles, Sullivan convinced John “Jimbo” Edwards—the first black car salesman working in downtown San Francisco—to take over the joint. Sullivan paid the first three months of his rent to help establish him, and Edwards opened Jimbo’s Waffle Shop. Local musicians would come by for food after shows downtown and an unused room in the back soon became a well-known jam space. To capitalize on this, Edwards installed a stage, brought in a piano, and renamed the spot Bop City after a recently closed club by the same name in New York City. Local musicians came by after work and shared the stage with big-time acts like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday thanks to Edwards’ friendship with big band leader Billy Eckstein.

Fillmore Street, looking south from Post Street, taken late 1940s. Photo: David Johnson
Sullivan had the Midas touch. In 1952, he became the master lease-holder of The Ambassador Dance Hall at 1805 Geary Boulevard. By the 1950s, The Ambassador had already been through many changes. Built in 1912 as an Italianate-style dance hall by Emma Gates Butler, it was originally known as the Majestic Dance Hall & Academy and the venue hosted socials and masquerade balls. The name changed to the Majestic Ballroom and then the Ambassador Dance Hall, which hosted big bands in the 1930s, and was operated as a roller rink from 1939 through 1952. Throughout the venue’s lifespan, “people of color” were allowed to perform at but not to attend the shows until Sullivan took over the lease, and changed the name to something more familiar to contemporary concertgoers, something that better reflected the neighborhood: The Fillmore Auditorium.

Although he did very little to promote The Fillmore, distributing a few handbills in the neighborhood and running a short commercial on black radio station KSOL, he drew a huge, integrated audience. He wore a suit and tie every day, and insisted that his performers always looked sharp—often picking up their suits after shows to personally ensure they were cleaned and pressed for the next. In addition, he was known to carry a large roll of cash in this pants pocket to use “whenever he needed to take care of somebody.” He booked the biggest and brightest acts of the era, from James Brown to Ike & Tina Turner—whose band included a young guitarist named Jim James, known better today as Jimi Hendrix. But jazz was on the way out by the 1960s, and venues began to close as audiences swayed towards electrified rock-n-roll. The Fillmore District was also changing as the city moved forward with drastic redevelopment plans that would decimate the physical and cultural landscape in a few short years.


To stave off both of these encroaching forces, Sullivan, the Mayor of the Fillmore, allowed white promoters to use his venue in the hopes that it would save the building from redevelopment. In December 1965, Sullivan allowed an up-and-coming promoter named Bill Graham the use of his dance hall license to hold a benefit for the San Francisco Mime Troupe at The Fillmore. A success, Sullivan thereafter allowed Graham to book the venue’s off nights along with another promoter, Chet Helms—a generous act that effectively started a legendary Bay Area rock music rivalry. However, residents of the neighborhood took issue with the new music these new promoters brought to the neighborhood, and Sullivan encouraged Graham to apply for his own license under pressure from officials who, in turn, encouraged Sullivan to stop subleasing The Fillmore. In early 1966, Graham and Sullivan came to an agreement: Graham secured a contract for all open dates at The Fillmore that year, and a four-year lease option on the Auditorium if anything unforeseen happened to Sullivan.


The Fillmore Auditorium
On August 1st of that year, Sullivan returned to San Francisco from Los Angeles with $6,000 in receipts from a Southern California gig. After driving a female companion home to Oakland, Sullivan crossed the bridge and exited the freeway in San Francisco at 5thStreet, instead of taking Fell Street to his west side home. For reasons unknown, he turned left into what was then an industrial district, and was never seen alive again. Charles Sullivan was found shot to death in the early morning hours of August 2nd, sprawled on the street next to his rented Chevy near 5th and Bluxome Streets. The car headlights were left on, his empty valise and keys were found in the open trunk, and Sullivan had a single .38 through the heart—the gun resting on the ground beside his hand. Finding a black man dead from a weapon still on the scene in South of Market, the San Francisco Police ruled Sullivan’s death a midnight suicide. The City coroner ruled it a 2:00am homicide, and Sullivan’s wife, Fannie, and brother, Marion, believed he had been robbed and murdered for the contents of his valise: the missing $6,000; although, newspaper reports at the time noted the police later found the missing cash. Other acquaintances of Sullivan agreed with the family and City coroner, and stated Sullivan was too selfish to commit suicide.

To this day, the case remains unsolved. Homicide inspector Jack Cleary stuck with the suicide theory, despite Diane Feinstein’s attempts to convince him otherwise. The African-American newspaper, Sun-Reporter, assigned Belva Davis to investigate the story, and she was told that powerful interests were behind Sullivan’s murder…before she was pulled of the story and the newspaper stopped covering it. Sometime later during a raid of Marion Sullivan’s speakeasy, a participating police officer made the family connection and told Marion he knew who killed his brother, but Marion was too afraid to follow up on the officer’s claims.

So what happened to Charles Sullivan? Perhaps the better question is: what wouldn’t have happened without Charles Sullivan? Without Charles Sullivan, San Francisco would have been short a few essential after-hours jazz clubs, and Jack Kerouac may never have been inspired to stay and think and write his signature bop prosody. The Majestic Ballroom might have remained a derelict (and segregated) roller rink, certainly wouldn’t have been renamed The Fillmore Auditorium, and would never have given rise to “The Fillmore Sound” that became synonymous with the Summer of Love. For a man who ran a dozen eponymous businesses and was crowned the Mayor of the Fillmore, very little is left to mark his presence on the neighborhood—largely due to the San Francisco Redevelopment Authority’s wrecking ball. The Fillmore survived a stint as a Black Muslim Temple and a punk club called The Elite before the Sullivan name was restored but associated with one of the most famous names in rock and roll. Graham always credited Sullivan with paving the way for his success. “Had that not happened, I would have done anything Charles wanted,” Graham said. “Just out of gratitude.”

Nicole Meldahl
CHS Intern

Sources

·         The Two Underdogs: Sly Stone & The Great Fillmore Whitewash by Chris Stroffolino: https://web.njit.edu/~newrev/3.0/stroffolino3a.html
·         “Western Addition: A Basic History” by Gary Kamiya: http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Western_Addition:_A_Basic_History
·          “Who Shot the Mayor of Fillmore” by Gary Carr, The New Fillmore, 4 September 2014: http://newfillmore.com/2014/09/04/who-shot-the-mayor-of-fillmore/
·         “Permits for June 7, 1944,” The Times (San Mateo), 8 June 1944: https://www.newspapers.com/image/38868002/?terms=Charles%2BSullivan 
·         Landmark Designation Report, Landmark No. 266: Marcus Books / Jimbo’s Bop City, 1712-1716 Fillmore Street, 18 September 2013: http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/Preservation/landmarks_designation/Final_Adopted_LM_DesignationReport_266_Marcus.pdf
·         “Obituary of Marion Floyd Sullivan,” San Francisco Chronicle, 21 February 2014 : http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?pid=169766483
·         “Jim Edwards: In remembrance”: http://users.rcn.com/jazzinfo/v10n01May00/FinJimbo.html
·         Contemporary Jewish Museum Complete Wall Text for “Bill Graham and the Rock & Roll Revolution”: http://www.thecjm.org/storage/documents/Exhibitions/2016/03_Mar/2_BillGraham_CompleteWallText.pdf
·         “Council Hears Protest Over Colored USO,” The Times (San Mateo), 8 August 1944: https://www.newspapers.com/image/38869898
·         “Sullivan’s Death Probe,” The Times (San Mateo), 3 August 1966: https://www.newspapers.com/image/52513696/
·          “About”, The Fillmore, http://thefillmore.com/about/
·         “Fillmore History,” The Fillmore: Heart and Soul of San Francisco, http://www.thefillmoredistrict.com/history4.html
·         “Blues for Charles” Indiegogo Campaign Website, https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/blues-for-charles#/
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History Keepers: Knife and Trunk of Tiburcio Vásquez

August 3, 2016, 9:00 am
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Knife and Trunk of Tiburcio Vásquez, c. mid-1800s
San Fernando Valley Historical Society  
They are Los Angeles’s history keepers. They research, organize, store, repair, and care for historical artifacts and make them available to us online, at exhibitions, through publications, or in their homes. This summer, from August 5 to August 27, the California Historical Society celebrates Los Angeles’s history keepers with an exhibition at the historic El Pueblo National Monument: History Keepers: Traversing Los Angeles. This month, several objects from the exhibition will be featured through a series of blogs. We begin with the story of an infamous Californio bandido.

Tiburcio Vásquez 
Tiburcio Vasquez, c. 1874
Reproduction, California Historical Society

In the mid-1800s the legendary, controversial Tiburcio Vásquez—son of a prominent Californio family—traversed the passes and foothills of the state, robbing and terrorizing inhabitants and romancing others. Remembered for his womanizing and crimes purportedly committed in the name of justice for his people, the bandido/outlaw—and folk hero to some—traveled with this trunk packed with his personal effects. The knife is all that remains of its contents.
 

Knife and Trunk of Tiburcio Vásquez, c. mid-1800s
San Fernando Valley Historical Society 
Active in the Antelope Valley, Vásquez left the trunk with the first settler in the region, Timothy Nava of Barrel Springs, near Pear Blossom. He never returned for his possessions. He was captured (a woman was reputedly his downfall) at an adobe in the San Fernando Plains (present day Melrose Place in West Hollywood), and hanged for murder on March 19, 1875, at age 39, at the Santa Clara County jail in San Jose. Vásquez Rocks in the Antelope Valley, one of the bandido’s hideouts, and other landmarks bear his name today. 
  

Benjamin Truman Cummings, Map of the Scene of Vasquez’ Capture, 1874 
“Tiburcio Vasquez, The Life, Adventures, and Capture of the Great Californian Bandit and Murderer”; http://www.lamag.com/


Invitation to the Hanging of Tiburcio Vásquez, 1875 
California Historical Society

Shape
Noose used at Vasquez' Execution and the Cravat He Word, which was removed to accommodate the Noose, 1875
California State Library. Tiburcio Vasquez Collection


Vasquez Rocks Natural Area County Park, Agua Dulce, California, 2009 
Courtesy Rennett Stowe
Timothy Nava’s granddaughter, Mrs. Lastenia Tapia Weatherwax of San Fernando, an artist with early California roots, preserved the trunk and the stories passed down by her grandfather. She donated the trunk (with portraits of President and Mrs. McKinley on the inside lid) to the San Fernando Valley Historical Society.  
 

Trunk of Tiburcio Vásquez, c. mid-1800s
San Fernando Valley Historical Society

History Keeper: San Fernando Valley Historical Society 
The San Fernando Valley Historical Society serves as caretaker of the historic Andrés Pico Adobe in Mission Hills and the Pioneer Cemetery in Sylmar. The society’s mission is to share and make known the organization’s significant archive and collections of San Fernando Valley history. 
Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

Sources 

John Boessenecker, “Bandido: The Countless Love Affairs of Tiburcio Vasquez,” California State Library Foundation Bulletin, no. 102, 2012; http://www.cslfdn.org/pdf/Bulletin102.pdf  

Tiburcio Vasquez, Agua Dulce/Vasquez Rocks; http://www.scvhistory.com/scvhistory/aguadulce.htm 

______________________________________________________________________________ 
An exhibition by the California Historical Society and LA as Subject 
Presented in partnership with El Pueblo Historical Monument and the El Pueblo Park Association 

El Tranquilo Gallery & Visitor Center 
634 N. Main Street (entrance on Olvera Street, W-19) 
El Pueblo de Los Ángeles Historical Monument, Los Angeles, California 
Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 am–3:00 pm 
Saturday and Sunday, 9:00 am–4:00 pm 

Opening reception: Friday, August 5, 2016, 6:00–8:00 pm 


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History Keepers: Backyard Residential Incinerator

August 10, 2016, 9:00 am
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Backyard Residential Incinerator, 1946-55
Courtesy of Nat Isaac


They are Los Angeles’s history keepers. They research, organize, store, repair, and care for historical artifacts and make them available to us online, at exhibitions, through publications, or in their homes. This summer, from August 5 to August 27, the California Historical Society celebrates Los Angeles’s history keepers with an exhibition at the historic El Pueblo National Monument.

A series of blogs brings our online visitors a sample of objects in the exhibition. In this blog, research into the city’s history of refuse collection and disposal leads one history keeper to acquire this old backyard incinerator—and successfully find it a home in a permanent collection.

By Nat Isaac, Los Angeles Sanitation Historical Project

As all historians know, you don’t just pass up on a treasured relic of the past, especially one such as this that tells the story of L.A.’s trashy past full of issues ranging from environmental protection to traffic, to organized crime to mayoral politics.

In the 1940s Los Angeles was searching for ways to minimize the costs of rubbish collection and disposal as well as reduce smog levels. Burning refuse was then a standard method of disposal in municipal incinerators and several open pits on the outskirts of the city. In 1944 the city’s main incinerator fell into disrepair and was permanently closed. This led to a crisis in the refuse industry. Home backyard incinerators, a firmly established practice since the turn of the twentieth century, became an even more popular method of disposing trash.

While burning trash meant less garbage trucks—and less traffic—on the streets of the city, it also meant more pollution in the air.


Burning Dump, 1945
Los Angeles Public Library, Herald-Examiner Collection
“Like a miniature Vesuvius,” the Herald-Examiner reported on August 2, 1945, “this open dump belches forth clouds of eye-irritating smog to pollute the atmosphere of the entire Los Angeles County. Scores of open dumps like this one would be eliminated through a county-wide incinerator and rubbish collection system.”

In the fall of 1954, the city council approved an increase in the daily hours of rubbish burning from four hours to seven hours. Rubbish could now be burned from 6 am to 10 am and from 4 pm to 7 pm. Although only a small contributor to Los Angeles’s overall smog, backyard incinerator smoke was very visible and its odors persisted for quite some time. As a result, residents began attributing high smog levels and poor health quality to the smoke from these units and complained to the air control district, local councilmen, and county supervisors about them. 


End of the Backyard Incinerator, 1954
Los Angeles Public Library, Herald-Examiner Collection
“Backyard incinerator with a large black bow with the letters ‘R.I.P’ on it marks the end of the backyard incinerator in Los Angeles,” noted the Herald-Examineron October 20, 1954.


Backyard Incinerator Ban, 1954
Los Angeles Public Library, Herald-Examiner Collection
“W. G. Ney and Loy E. Moore, owners of the Peerless Incinerator Company, 1854 W. Washington Blvd., display their inventory of backyard incinerators as they hear reports of banning all incinerators,” the Herald-Examinerreported on October 20, 1954.

The County of Los Angeles addressed these complaints in 1955 with a phased-in ban on backyard incinerators. To Los Angeles Mayor Norris Poulson, the writing was on the wall. If the ban were applied city-wide, the garbage would have nowhere to go but to privately-owned dumps, which were known to be corrupt through involvement with organized crime.

Poulson immediately requested the county to delay implementation of the ban pending discussions on a more efficient garbage collection system for the city. He then began investigating private waste haulers and dumps for racketeering violations while at the same time proposing a new tax-funded municipal garbage collection program for the entire city that would ensure city-owned landfills and collection trucks for years to come. Such a municipal collection program, he saw, would avoid the need for dirty backyard incinerators, corrupt haulers, and privately-owned dumps. 

Hearing Conducted by Mayor Poulson, 1955
Los Angeles Public Library, Herald-Examiner Collection
At a hearing conducted by Mayor Norris Poulson and his investigation into rubbish collection racketeering, reported the Herald-Examiner on June 20, 1955, “The crowd heard testimony that threats have been made against persons who tried to dump their own rubbish. This was described as “a customary threat.”

As the mayor continued holding hearings on organized crime’s involvement with garbage collection haulers throughout 1955, public sentiment shifted in favor of his proposed municipal collection program. However, without adequate funding for such a program and with an expected increase in rubbish from the city-wide ban on backyard incineration, Poulson found himself in a difficult position.

By the summer of 1956, the city had started to phase in trash collection in areas where incinerator use was being slowly phased out. Poulson brought the proposed municipal collection program to a City Council vote on June 15, 1956. However, the council deadlocked, with six in favor and six opposed.

Ban on Residential Incinerators, 1957
Los Angeles Public Library; Herald-Examiner Collection
“All refuse burning will end October 1 when Air Pollution Control District’s ban on residential incinerators becomes effective,” reported the Herald-Examineron July 1, 1957.

The mayor had no choice but to put the matter to a vote by the public, and on April 2, 1957, the residents of Los Angeles approved a new tax to fund a municipal garbage collection program for the city. Poulson won the battle against privately-owned haulers and dumps while enabling the ban on backyard incinerators to move forward. Later that year, on October 1, 1957, a total ban was placed upon incinerators by the county’s Air Pollution Control District, establishing the current way the city handles trash.

City Starts Combustible Rubbish, 1957
Los Angeles Public Library; Herald-Examiner Collection
“Loader Fred Mosely and driver Henry Lind are shown at Washington Boulevard and Arlington Avenue with one of 57 new garbage trucks put in use today as the City starts its combustible rubbish collection,” reported the Herald-Examineron April 8, 1957.”

Residential Incinerator, 1960
Los Angeles Public Library, Herald-Examiner Collection

As the Herald-Examiner reported on June 25, 1960: “Patrolman Terzo explained to a new resident that incinerator burning has been banned within the Los Angeles basin since Sept. 30, 1957, and that the fire should be extinguished immediately.”

I first came across the old incinerator (depicted above) at an estate sale for a house that was listed for sale in mid-city Los Angeles in June 2007. It looked exactly like the images I had seen in my historical research on the collection and handling of trash in Los Angeles as part of my 26 years of work at Los Angeles Sanitation (LASAN). Unfortunately, the incinerator was not part of the estate sale, but rather a fixture of the house. Nevertheless, I was determined to get it as a potential item in LASAN’s collection. The only question was how? As my wife and I were already in the market to purchase a house and this one had a nice charm to it (as well as an incinerator), we purchased the house. Since then, the incinerator was carefully cleaned, disassembled, and reassembled after which it will patiently await a final resting place in the LASAN collection located in the Los Angeles City Archives.


History Keeper: Los Angeles Sanitation Historical Collection
Los Angeles Sanitation Historical Collection encompasses a history of and historical records related to municipal collection programs for refuse, recyclables, dead animals, and yard trimmings throughout the City of Los Angeles from its inception to the present day. The collections are located in the Los Angeles City Archives.

_________________________________________________________________________
An exhibition by the California Historical Society and LA as Subject
Presented in partnership with El Pueblo Historical Monument and the El Pueblo Park Association

El Tranquilo Gallery & Visitor Center
634 N. Main Street (entrance on Olvera Street, W-19)
El Pueblo de Los Ángeles Historical Monument, Los Angeles, California
Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 am–3:00 pm
Saturday and Sunday, 9:00 am–4:00 pm



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I See Beauty In This Life: A Photographer Looks at 100 Years of Rural California

August 12, 2016, 7:16 am
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(Left) Lisa M. Hamilton, Jesús, Junior Livestock Show, Alturas, Modoc County, 2011
Courtesy Lisa M. Hamilton
(Right) Charles C. Pierce, Young Chemehuevi Indian Man Holding a Coyote, c. 1900
Courtesy California Historical Society

"I always wanted people to understand what was going on in the rural routes. And that there certainly should be some regard for the people there. Because I see beauty in this life, I don’t think it is lonesome. And I don’t think it is dumb." 
- Modoc County rancher and poet, Linda Hussa, 2011

How do we make history relevant? One way is by engaging in a dialogue with the past. Curating California, a California Historical Society initiative, invites artists and scholars to collaborate with our extensive collections and curate some aspect of the Golden State’s history.

Since 2012, CHS’s inaugural Curating California exhibition I See Beauty in This Life: A Photographer Looks at 100 Years of Rural California has been traveling the state, bringing a dialogue about rural California and its impact on California to exhibition venues in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Riverside, and now Merced (opening August 9th at the Merced Multicultural Arts Center). In curating the show, Lisa M. Hamilton, a writer and photographer, has drawn from her multimedia project, Real Rural—a photographic investigation of the state’s rural areas — and historic photographs from the CHS photographs collection. Together they tell a complex—and sometimes humorous — story of the many different individual lives and landscapes comprising the vast mosaic that is the Golden State.


Photographer unknown, California License Plate, c. 1960
Courtesy California Historical Society, California Wool Growers Association Photograph Collection

The following image groupings reflect not how the photographs appear in the exhibition but rather this author’s own interpretation of the show’s visual dialogue between past and present. 

Joe Rosenthal, Jack Roddy Bulldogging, c. 1969 
Courtesy California Historical Society

Lisa M. Hamilton, Ashley, Riata Ranch Cowboy Girl, Tulare County. 2011 
Courtesy of the artist

Lisa M. Hamilton, Bella, Citrus Fair. Cloverdale, Sonoma County, 2011
Courtesy of the artist


Photographer unknown, Renee Cotta, Kings District Fair, Received a Red, 1966 
California Historical Society 

Lisa M. Hamilton, Michael Preston. Winnemem Wintu Tribal Land, Shasta County, 2011 
Courtesy of the artist 


Charles C. Pierce, Paiute Indian Acorn Cache or Granary in Yosemite Valley, c. 1901
California Historical Society Collections at the University of Southern California 

Lisa M. Hamilton, Dennis Leonardi. Ferndale, Humboldt County, 2011 
Courtesy of the artist 

Photographer unknown, Les Bruhn, Bodega Bay, with "Queen,"won 2nd place, 26th annual Fox Western International Sheep Dog Trials at California Ram Sale, Sacramento, 1964 
Courtesy California Historical Society

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Visit the Exhibition
Curated by Lisa M. Hamilton

August 9, 2016 – October 1, 2016
Merced Multicultural Arts Center
645 W. Main Street, Merced, CA 95340

Opening reception: August 11, 2016

The California Historical Society and the California 4-H Foundation thank the Henry Mayo Newhall Foundation for its support in bringing this exhibition to the Merced Multicultural Arts Center. This exhibition was originally mounted at the California Historical Society in 2012 and is made possible by the following CHS sponsors: Stephen and Barbara Hearst; Sherwin-Williams; California Department of Food and Agriculture; California Rangeland Trust; Bill Lane Center for the American West; and Julie and Craig McNamara.

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History Keepers: California Centennial Transportation Plate

August 17, 2016, 9:00 am
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California Centennial Transportation Plate, 1949
Private Collection of Phyllis Hansen

They are Los Angeles’s history keepers. They research, organize, store, repair, and care for historical artifacts and make them available to us online, at exhibitions, through publications, or in their homes. This summer, from August 5 to August 27, the California Historical Society celebrates them with an exhibition at the historic El Pueblo National Monument.

A series of blogs brings our online visitors a sample of objects in the exhibition. Here we explore a unique object that commemorated Los Angeles’s centennial featuring a depiction of an unusual mode of transportation in the late nineteenth century.

California Centennial Transportation Plate, 1949
History Keeper: Phyllis Hansen

California Centennial Transportation Plate (detail of back), 1949
Private Collection of Phyllis Hansen

In 1949, California celebrated its centennial of statehood. Vernon Kilns, one of Los Angeles’s premier pottery companies at that time, produced a series of themed commemorative plates for the occasion. There were six in the series, all in brown on white.

The plates were a creative collaboration between Mrs. Armitage S. C. Forbes—the “Bell Lady” of El Camino Real and “Mother of the Campo de Cahuenga”—and California artist/historian Orpha Klinker, who did the renderings.

“Wedding Party Arriving Home in Carreta,” detail,
California Centennial Transportation Plate, 1949
Private Collection of Phyllis Hansen

The transportation-themed plate depicts a wedding party on an oxen driven, wooden wagon, also known as a carreta, an early method of transport during the mission period. Surrounding this central image are other depictions of historical modes of transportation unique to Southern California. Perhaps the most unique of all the depictions are the camels that arrived at the Drum Barracks in Wilmington in January 1858.

“Ship of the Desert”: The U.S. Camel Experiment, 1856–1866
As a mode of transportation, few would guess that camels in California would qualify. Yet, in 1857, due largely to the efforts of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, 75 camels were imported from Egypt to the United States as an experiment in serving the U.S. Army in the Southwest. One group of camels was selected to pack supplies from Los Angeles to Fort Tejon in California; others to transport military supplies to forts in Utah, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico.

Gwynn H. Heap (illustrator), Loading the Camels for Transport to America, 1857
Published in Report of the Secretary of War, Communicating, in Compliance with a Resolution of the Senate of February 2, 1857, Information Respecting the Purchase of Camels for the Purposes of Military Transportation (Washington: A. O. P. Nicholson, printer, 1857)
Courtesy National Archives

“Camels Secured for a Gale, page 180 of Report of the Secretary of War (1857),” 1930
Published in A. A. Gray, Francis P. Farquhar, and William S. Lewis, Camels in Western America 
(San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1930)

In January 1858, the first train of pack camels arrived in Los Angeles. Their task was to carry supplies and provisions to Fort Tejon in the Tehachapi Mountains. As a 1902 historical record of Southern California noted, “For a year or more afterwards it was no uncommon sight to see a caravan of these hump-backed burden-bearers solemnly wending their way single file through the city.” 

Encampment with the Camels on the Descent towards Carson Valley, c. 1860
Vischer’s Pictorial of California (View No. 47)
California Historical Society

Camel at Drum Barracks, San Pedro, California, during the Civil War, c. 1863
Attributed to Rudolph D’Heureuse; courtesy of the Drum Barracks Garrison & Society


“Camels arrived in California in 1858 at Drum barracks, Wilmington, Calif.,” detail,
California Centennial Transportation Plate, 1949
Private Collection of Phyllis Hansen

The Camel Experiment ultimately failed. The camels’ eccentricities—unfamiliar and untrainable by its riders—and with their incompatibility with horses confined them to the forts in the Southwest. The onset of the Civil War led to the end of the Camel Corps, which disbanded in 1863.

In California, camels were brought to the military reservation at Benicia, where they were lodged and later auctioned off. Today the Camel Barns at the Arsenal house the Benicia Historical Museum. Still others were turned loose, to roam at will over the region. As the writers of the 1939 WPA Guide to California: The Golden State observed:

Within recent years a camel frisked about the neighborhood of Banning, making such a nuisance of himself that he was hunted down by a posse and shot. This was undoubtedly an aged survivor of the government caravans that cross the desert prior to the Civil War. . . . Some wild camels were sighted on the desert as late as 1980, and even now newcomers [to Banning] are solemnly assured they can expect to run into them at any moment.


Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

Sources

Jefferson Davis, Reports upon the Purchase, Importation, and Use of Camels and Dromedaries to Be Employed for Military Purposes (Department of War, 1857)

Francis P. Farquhar, “Camels in the Sketches of Edward Vischer,” California Historical Society Quarterly 9, no. 4 (Dec., 1930): 332–35

Federal Writers’ Project, The WPA Guide to Los Angeles: The Golden State (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2013)

Walter L. Fleming, “Jefferson Davis’s Camel Experiment,” Popular Science Monthly, 174 (Feb. 1909): 141–52.

A.A. Gray, “Camels in California,” Quarterly of the California Historical Society IX, no. 4 (December 1930): 229–317

J. M. Guinn, “Camel Caravans of the American Deserts,” Publications of the Historical Society of Southern California and of the Pioneers of Los Angeles County, 5 (1900–1902): 146–51
James Miller Guinn, Historical and Biographical Record of Southern California(Chicago; Chapman Publishing company, 1902)

Michael K. Sorenson, “A Most Curious Corps,” Military Images Magazine (March/April 2006)

______________________________________________________________________________
An exhibition by the California Historical Society and LA as Subject
Presented in partnership with El Pueblo Historical Monument and the El Pueblo Park Association

El Tranquilo Gallery & Visitor Center
634 N. Main Street (entrance on Olvera Street, W-19)
El Pueblo de Los Ángeles Historical Monument, Los Angeles, California
Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 am–3:00 pm
Saturday and Sunday, 9:00 am–4:00 pm



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History Keepers: Souvenirs from Southern California's Orange Empire

August 22, 2016, 9:00 am
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Orange Inn Roadside Stand
David Boulé California Orange Collection  

They are Los Angeles’s history keepers. They research, organize, store, repair, and care for historical artifacts and make them available to us online, at exhibitions, through publications, or in their homes. This summer, from August 5 to August 27, the California Historical Society celebrates Los Angeles’s history keepers with an exhibition at the historic El Pueblo National Monument.

A series of blogs brings our online visitors a sample of objects in the exhibition. Here we illustrate how Southern California’s Orange Empire was not only an economic powerhouse, but also a major tourist draw for almost a hundred years.

Souvenirs from Southern California's Orange Empire, 1910—40
History Keeper: David Boulé


Orange crate label, Yokohl Brand, Schmidt Litho. Co., 
Crate, can, and bottle label collection, Kemble Spec Col 08, 
courtesy, California Historical Society, Kemble Spec Col 08_039.jpg

“California is a fine place to live, if you happen to be an orange.”
Fred Allen (American comedian, 1894—1956)

Cloaked in mystery and available only to the elite until modern times, the orange has been known as the fruit of the gods, the food of emperors, a token of gratitude and a symbol of health, wealth and love. The idea of California has been of a place of plenty, of potential, of personal opportunity. The orange became a glowing symbol of this dream.

In his book The Orange and the Dream of California, David Boulé takes a lively, literary and extraordinarily visual look at this colorful and captivating history and reveals the tremendous impact of the orange on the culture and development of California, and how these two entities have built on one another to feed the imagination and conjure a compelling fantasy.

A third generation Californian, Boulé has a lifelong fascination with the history, culture, achievements and uniqueness of the region. “The enduring image of California as paradise and the orange as unique among all fruit is because, partially, these things are true. These traits have then been magnified by poets and boosters, artists and hucksters, songwriters and bureaucrats—with both artistic and commercial motivation—to appeal to people’s continuing desire to believe that such exceptional perfection can really exist,” he says.

Union Pacific, "California Calls You" Brochure
Courtesy California Historical Society

Boule’s collection began after he attended his first paper ephemera show and found himself particularly drawn to the images with “the quintessential iconic image: snow-capped mountains, a beautiful sky, a manicured orchard, a lovely home…” What began with around 600 postcards expanded to include photographs, periodicals, brochures, books, posters, educational materials, advertising and marketing materials, souvenirs, pins, badges and objects from the California citrus industry. 

“It is hard to overemphasize how big the California orange industry was in 1895,” Boule said in interview with KCET, “Riverside, California, from growing oranges, had the highest per capita income in America. And in 1920... the number two revenue source in the entire state of CA--only behind oil--was oranges.” 

Indeed the orange industry experienced a boost with the development of railways, automobiles and roads in the late 1890s. Prior to these, leisure travel was an adventure reserved for the hearty or the wealthy. Now more people could visit, explore, and see the wonders of a place where oranges grew beneath mountains covered with snow.


Touring in the Orange District
David Boulé California Orange Collection

The Pacific Electric Railway, also known as the Red Car, was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s, even extending into the Southern California Orange Empire. For those touring Southern California by car, stands offering fresh-squeezed orange juice were a welcomed sight. As historian Kevin Starr writes in Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era, an “ambience of a Mediterranean idyll conferred on parts of Southern California . . . offset the realities of the American present with a charm that was enthusiastically exported on the orange crate labels sent East as the very image of Southern California.”

Pacific Electric Railway Brochure
David Boulé California Orange Collection

Old photographs of orange crate label pastoralism provide evidence of the peak in citrus culture. As Starr writes: “The groves themselves first and foremost, extending from seashore to mountain range, and the great packing sheds adjacent to them, sweeping, open structures, forcefully aesthetic in their utility, banked by stands of eucalyptus trees which channeled the breezes to an advantageous angle as the fruit remained piled high in storage preparatory to packing; and within these sheds, the work of sorting, washing, wrapping each fruit in specially decorated tissue paper, tasks performed in the main by young women, who regard us today from the pages of old magazines, their hands folded atop white aprons in a moment’s repose as the photographer asked them to cease work so that he might record the scene.”

Orange Blossoms by Duvinne Perfume Dispenser
David Boulé California Orange Collection

Miniature Orange Crates
David Boulé California Orange Collection

The enticing labels pasted upon orange crates made the selling of California along with oranges, as an image in the national imagination even more explicit. Nearly a hundred years later, the orange-inspired graphic ambitions still leap from the pages they were first printed on. In the 1890s, Starr writes, the custom grew up of individual packing houses labeling their orange crates with a specific brand name and trademark. Until Max Schmidt, a San Francisco printer who spun the orange crate label into a significant genre of folk art, the labels had little, if any California reference. With staff artists such as Othello Michetti and Archie Vazques, Schmidt Lithograph Co. issued orange crate labels that glowed with colors that went beyond nature and spoke directly to fantasy. Schmidt encouraged each grower to collaborate in the creation of an individualized label that involved an idealized California landscape.

Orange Crate Labels, Schmidt Litho. Co., Kemble Special Collection
Courtesy California Historical Society

The idealized California landscape, and its deliberate assertions of a romanticized Southern California, found channels in tourist hotels like the Del Coronado. Like the agricultural colonies, they were statements of an ideal and bore utopian overtones. Writer Henry James, “felt that the blood of Southern California’s civilization ran thin and enjoyed the Del Coronado, finding it an idealized garden of the South,” Starr observes. The tourist hotel brought the East and Easterners to Santa Barbara, to Pasadena, San Diego, and Long Beach, setting a tone and creating an ambience for developing communities. 

Hotel Del Coronado Brochure
Courtesy California Historical Society

Starr continues: “Many immigrants from the East had their first exposure to Southern California as tourists, a fact conferring on the hotel the role of colonizing agent. They were for the few, not the many; but because the immigrant of the 1880s and 1890s was quintessentially middle class—and thus capable of being impressed by the habits and styles of privilege—the tourist hotel did more than pleasure its wealthy clientele.”



Thus the Southern California Orange Empire was not only an economic powerhouse, but also a major tourist draw for almost a hundred years. Oranges went east, and people came west. Souvenirs helped people send a little bit of the Golden State to family and friends across the country.

According to the California Agricultural Statistics Review 2013–14, California is one of the nation’s largest fruit producing state and accounts for over half of the harvested fruit acreage in the country. Counties leading the production include: Tulare, Kern, Fresno, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura. Ninety-nine million cartons of oranges were produced in the crop year 2013–14 and 166,000 acres of land were harvested for oranges. In the 2014 statistical review for the total U.S. export, “Oranges and Products” were valued at $1.179 billion.

Union Pacific, "California Calls You" Brochure
Courtesy California Historical Society

As Boulé says, “California entered history as a myth, named by the Spanish for the fabled tribe of Amazons under the command of Queen Calafia. The orange, too, has been cloaked in mystery since migrating from its origins in China, becoming the fruit of gods, the food of emperors, a token of gratitude and a symbol of health, wealth and love. . . . The promotion of California as a unique agrarian paradise, a place of unlimited possibility and where personal reinvention was possible, has been cultivated by governments and song writers, politicians and poets, marketers and philosophers. . . . The orange continues to be a symbol—a logo, even—for this California dream.”

Southern Pacific, "California"
Courtesy California Historical Society


Sarah Lee
Intern
California Historical Society

Sources

  1. Starr, Kevin. Inventing The Dream. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Print.
  2. California Agricultural Statistics Review 2014-15. Sacramento 2015. https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/PDFs/2015Report.pdf
  3. "Fruit and Nut Crops," California Agricultural Statistics Review 2013-14. Sacramento 2015. https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/pdfs/2013/FruitandNut.pdf 
  4. Geisseler, Daniel and William R. Horwath. Citrus Production In California. Davis: California Department of Food and Agriculture Fertilizer Research and Education Program (FREP), 2016. https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Citrus_Production_CA.pdf 
  5. Boulé, David. The Orange and the Dream of California. Los Angeles: Angel City Press, 2014
  6. Monomania L.A.: David Boulé And The California Orange. Los Angeles: KCET, 2015. video. https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/monomania-la-david-boule-and-the-california-orange
Images
  1. "California Calls You," Pamphlet Collection, California Historical Society 
  2. "California" Southern Pacific Folders, Business Ephemera, California Historical Society 
  3. "Hotel Del Coronado" California Counties, San Diego County, California Ephemera Collection, California Historical Society
  4. Orange crate label, Navajo Brand, Schmidt Litho. Co., Crate, can, and bottle label collection, Kemble Spec Col 08, courtesy, California Historical Society, Kemble Spec Col 08_042.jpg
  5. Orange crate label, Victoria Brand, Schmidt Litho. Co., Crate, can, and bottle label collection, Kemble Spec Col 08, courtesy, California Historical Society, Kemble Spec Col 08_041.jpg
  6. Valencias crate label, Weaver Brand of Piru, Schmidt Litho. Co., Crate, can, and bottle label collection, Kemble Spec Col 08, courtesy, California Historical Society, Kemble Spec Col 08_040.jpg.
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An exhibition by the California Historical Society and LA as Subject
Presented in partnership with El Pueblo Historical Monument and the El Pueblo Park Association

El Tranquilo Gallery & Visitor Center
634 N. Main Street (entrance on Olvera Street, W-19)
El Pueblo de Los Ángeles Historical Monument, Los Angeles, California
Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 am–3:00 pm
Saturday and Sunday, 9:00 am–4:00 pm



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