To understand the origin of the rivalry between Santa Rosa and Petaluma, think of the relationship between the Smothers Brothers.
In their classic comedy routines Dick (the one who plays bass) is the smarter of the pair, cool and sometimes smug; Tommy usually plays the man-child, a dumb cluck who becomes flustered and petulant when Dick deflates his goofy ideas. (Yes, I know Tom is actually older than Dick, was the genius behind their legendary TV show, these are just their comic stage persona, &c. &c. so don't start blasting angry tweets.)
I don't want to press this analogy too far, but in the late 1850s Petaluma was something like Dick Smothers, needling his kid brother when he would screw up or begin crowing as if he were cock of the walk. And Tom/Santa Rosa would usually be on the defensive, sometimes getting a bit whiny about not getting his due respect even though he was trying really, really, hard.
Santa Rosa was voted to be the county seat in 1854, although at the time it was little more than a camp staked out at a muddy crossroads with only about eight actual houses. The place had no purpose to exist other than to be a county seat; the numerous squatters in the surrounding area needed a centralized courthouse for pressing their shaky homestead claims. For more background on all that, see "CITY OF ROSES AND SQUATTERS."
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| Sonoma Democrat, May 5, 1859 |
Petaluma had a two-year head start. While Santa Rosa was mapping out its first streets in 1854, Petaluma was already an established community with several hundred residents. They had stores and hotels, churches and meeting halls. A sketch of the town from the following year shows a mix of single and two story buildings, simply built - but not shacks, either.
Part of the deal for Santa Rosa to become the county seat required it to provide a courthouse before the end of the year. This courthouse issue would become the town's Waterloo - or maybe a better comparison might be an albatross around Santa Rosa's neck. (Arguing whether a bad situation is more like a dead bird or a lost battle would actually be a great setup for a Smothers Brothers routine, but enough of analogies within analogies.)
Santa Rosa's first actual courthouse was a rush job - a temporary building later described as "a small wooden building built of rough up-and-down boards and 'battened'" on Fourth street close to D st. Meanwhile. planning began for a permanent courthouse and jail at the current location of Exchange Bank.
Work on the courthouse/jail began in the summer of 1855 and finished just after Christmas. The Board of Supervisors called a special meeting afterward where they refused to pay the contractor, claiming the building didn't meet specs. "Both sides got mad," Robert Thompson wrote with considerable understatement in his history, "Central Sonoma." After weeks of arguing the Board agreed to accept the work, albeit at a much reduced price.
Now shift forward a couple of years: The 1858 county Grand Jury declared the nearly-new courthouse was unsafe, dangerous and a "public nuisance," with the roof leaking and walls cracked. Those drips and cracks foreshadowed a decade of woes ahead; later repairs and do-overs would about triple the cost of the original construction.1
By now Santa Rosa had its own weekly newspaper, the Sonoma Democrat, which charged the Grand Jury had "an unnecessary amount of spite at the courthouse." Sure, the roof leaked, but it could be repaired. While there really were big cracks in the walls, "...we sincerely congratulate our county that they remained standing long enough to save the invaluable lives of this Grand Jury, and thereby reserved to future generations the vast amount of wisdom contained in their heads, and which thus far has been so sparingly imparted to their less favored fellows."
While Democrat publisher/editor E. R. Budd pretended to laugh off the building's problems, the Grand Jury's findings clearly rankled; two years later - after many had likely forgotten all about it - he dredged it up again, griping their courthouse remarks were written by "two or three Petaluma men" on a subcommittee.
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| The Hall of Records and Courthouse with the jail between them, 1875. View from Third street overlooking the west corner of the original plaza. Main photo Sonoma County Library |
Mr. Budd appeared to be a fellow of unusually thin skin for a newspaper publisher as the Petaluma papers teased and taunted Santa Rosa. The same year as the Grand Jury report, the Courier ran a (probably fictitious) story about an out-of-towner visiting Santa Rosa and being unable to find anything that looked like a courthouse. Budd took the bait and reprinted it as part of an editorial titled, "Envy:"
| The following specimen of petty spleen, shows how bitterly envious some of the inhabitants of Petaluma are of the place chosen by the people of this county for the county seat...it is quite evident that some of the more selfish denizens of Petaluma have been unable to appreciate Santa Rosa, and would like to make those at a distance look upon it in a similar light... |
Budd also complained Santa Rosa was undermining itself. A bit later he wrote a lengthy editorial about his paper not getting the local support it deserved, carping that many local businesses "have not done their part" by taking out ads. There he also made a passing remark that, if close to true, provides valuable insight into how they lived at the time: "...one half the people composing this community go to Petaluma to trade." As Petaluma was probably 90 minutes away (at least) by buggy or wagon, that shows Santa Rosa was still mostly an outpost in 1858.
But Santa Rosa's fortunes began looking up the following year. We have an unofficial census of Santa Rosa from 1859 showing the town's population and an inventory of businesses. (There's a similar census of Petaluma from 1857, which enables us to neatly compare both towns at their five-year mark.)2
Primary among the new businesses was the Wise & Goldfish general store on the east side of the plaza - Santa Rosans finally had a real place to shop. "Dry Goods, Clothing, Boots, Shoes, Groceries, Hardware, Crockery, Glassware, Fancy Goods, Bonnets, and a general assortment of Ladies’ Goods," boasted their first ad in July, 1859. Their prices were also the lowest in the North Bay, they claimed. But now that Petaluma's hegemony over retail sales faced serious competition, the journalistic jibes from that town were no longer quite so brotherly.
Petaluma's Sonoma County Journal ran an article on that Santa Rosa census which is mostly transcribed below. Read it carefully and you'll find editor Henry Weston was actually damning Santa Rosa with faint praise.
The article slyly implied land titles in Santa Rosa might be disputed because of legal problems with its underlying Mexican land grant (in truth, the title situation here was among the cleanest in the state, beating Petaluma to approval by eight years). It exaggerated how much had been spent on the county buildings so far while pointing out "their present unfinished state." And the article noted "the population of the town proper is about 400," although the federal census the next year would show Santa Rosa was really four times larger after people in the surrounding township were included.
But the worst of it was their long list of Santa Rosa businesses, which included this bit: "...one shoemaker shop, one jeweler shop, eleven Jews, one paint shop..." (emphasis added).
Needless to say, the actual 1859 census did not include "Jews" as a business category (you can find the entire list in Thompson's history). This was sheer anti-Semitism by the Petaluma paper and clearly aimed at undermining the Wise & Goldfish store, which was owned by the only Jewish families in town. In the history books H. L. Weston has been admired as the godfather of the Argus and Petaluma newspapering in general, but this calls for his sterling reputation to be reevaluated.
Increasingly nasty potshots between the town papers continued the next year, with the Argus accusing that county taxes were being used to pay for civic improvements in and around Santa Rosa (one of these items can be found below). But the final salvo in this early skirmish was the 1861 effort to move the county seat to Petaluma.3
Very little was written about this at the time or since; it appears neither Santa Rosa nor Petaluma newspapers took it too seriously - and as everyone was preoccupied with the Civil War which had just begun, that's really not so surprising. The proposal popped up suddenly in California newspapers in March, 1861, as a petition was presented to state legislators. It's unknown exactly what it said or how long it was circulating. A counter-petition was quickly organized, arguing that it was "unnecessary, unwise and burdensome" to move. The "stay" counter-petition supposedly had far more signatures.
As Sonoma county then was deep in debt, the Santa Rosa paper argued taxpayers couldn't pay for a new set of buildings, and it was unlikely that Mr. Petaluma was going to open his purse for the honor. "It may be, however, that some wealthy citizen is about to immortalize himself by presenting some 'noble edifice' to his fellows! Happy thought! Toodles forever!" The Democrat also sneered Petaluma merchants were mistaken if they expected a windfall from providing "grub, liquor and lodging" to people coming to the county seat to appear in court.
There were no rallies for or against, as far as I can tell, and editorial support for the move in the Argus was tepid, particularly after it was mentioned some subscribers were so opposed to the idea they might boycott the paper. When it came to voting day the measure was soundly defeated, passing in only three of the county's 18 voting precincts (including Petaluma, natch).
And with that, the bell rang to end the first round of Petaluma vs. Santa Rosa. The next part of the slugfest saw the editors of the Argus and Santa Rosa's Democrat take off their gloves for bare-knuckle fighting over the Civil War, as told here in "A SHORT TRUCE IN THE (UN)CIVIL WAR."
Before wrapping up this survey of 1855-1861, my newspaper readings from those years also turned up some details that may shed light on an important but murky question in Sonoma county history: Why was almost everywhere outside of Petaluma so anti-Lincoln and pro-Confederacy before and during the Civil War?
In 1859 there was a meeting in Santa Rosa to organize a local Democratic party committee endorsing "popular sovereignty," which was the concept that every state and territory had a right to set its own laws and rules, even on slavery. While there were meetings like that nationwide with the general goal of getting pro-slavery delegates elected to state Democratic party conventions, here in Sonoma county it piggybacked onto the politically powerful settler's movement, which had its own definition of sovereignty - namely, it wanted California to declare the Mexican and Spanish land grants "fraudulent," in violation of the federal treaty with Mexico that ended the Mexican War. (Interested historians can read the full set of resolutions in the Sonoma County Journal May 20, 1859.)
This fusion of "settlerism" with "popular sovereignty" may help explain why Sonoma county overwhelmingly voted against Lincoln the next year in favor of the Southern Democrat candidate who wanted to uphold slavery as an absolute Constitutional right. Maybe it wasn't so much that the majority of the county was saying "we like slavery," as "we'll vote for any guy who might get us clear title to our land claims." This is an important distinction I've not seen historians discuss.
| 1 The courthouse construction in 1855 was just for the first story, not the two story building with cupola seen in all photos. In 1859 the top floor was built and again there was a fight with the contractor. His final bill included a whopping 75 percent cost overrun, presumably related to fixing structural problems with the underlying building. Again it went to arbitration, this time the contractor settling for about a quarter of what he asked. Problems with the original shoddy construction still were not over - the jail had to be torn down and completely rebuilt in 1867, just eleven years after it originally opened. |
| 2 In 1857 Petaluma encompassed about a square mile, with a population of 1,338. Santa Rosa in 1859 was still its original 70 acres, with 400 residents. The decennial federal census of 1860, however, shows Santa Rosa with the larger population: 1,623 compared to Petaluma's 1,505. This is due to counting people in the entire Santa Rosa Township, not just within city limits. The 1860 census of Santa Rosa proper was 425 residents. |
| 3 One legislator hinted the proposed move of the county seat to Petaluma was (somehow) part of a scheme to have Marin annex Petaluma away from Sonoma county, and just the year before Marin actually had asked the state to expand their border northward and make Petaluma their new county seat. Those two efforts are probably linked but I haven't found anything further on that angle, or who was behind either effort. It sounds like a good story, tho, and I'll write more about it should more info surface. |
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| Sonoma Democrat, May 5, 1859 |
SANTA ROSA--OUR COUNTY SEAT.-- To those who have only heard of Santa Rosa as the county town of Sonoma county, and as being one of the most beautiful and thriving places in the State, the following facts and figures, condensed from the Santa Rosa Democrat, may be interesting:
The town of Santa Rosa is built on the fertile valley or plain of the same name, and on the old Santa Rosa "grant," midway between Petaluma and the flourishing town of Healdsburg, on Russian River. To the enterprise of Berthold Hoen is the site of the place, and much of its prosperity, due. The site was fixed by him, and by him surveyed and mapped in the spring of 1854. In the year 1855, it was declared the county seat, Mr. Hoen tendering the county a building gratuitously, to be used for county purposes. The entire cost of the county buildings will be about $35,000, and even in their present unfinished state, present an appearance in structure and design creditable to the rich county of Sonoma. When completed, they will, in elegance and design, be surpassed by but few such buildings in the State. The private residence are mostly one-story cottage buildings, and for neatness and comfort will vie with those of any other county village we have knowlege of. The soil of the valley is a rich alluvium...
...Beside the public buildings, there is a fine academy for males and females, (accommodating 250 pupils); a district school, (numbering over 60 children); two churches, two resident preachers, nine resident lawyers, five physicians, two notaries public, one printing office, from which two publications are issued, seventy-five private residences, nine dry goods and grocery stores, one drug store, one hardware store, two hotels, two restaurants, two drinking saloons, two daguerrean galleries, one saddler shop, one barber shop, one tailor shop, one shoemaker shop, one jeweler shop, eleven Jews, one paint shop, three carpenter shops, two butcher shops, one cabinet shop, six blacksmith shops, one pump shop, one bakery, and two first-class livery stables. The population of the town proper is about 400. The climate is mild and salubrious, not being troubled so much by fogs and head winds, as the towns bordering on the coast. The greatest drawback is the unsettled condition of land titles -- not peculiar to our own county -- and these are in process of adjustment.
- Sonoma County Journal, November 25 1859
...Below, we give a small specimen of this talk, taken from the Argus of the 13th Jan. The editor goes so far as to call his statement “the prevailing opinion in this section,” (Petaluma):
“That Santa Rosa and Santa Rosa interests are being built up and protected, at the expense of the whole County, and to the detriment of some particular sections. That this has been, and now is, the policy of the citizens of Santa Rosa, no observant man, with any regard for truth, will dare deny. The governing policy for the last four years, has been to concentrate everything at Santa Rosa. No roads could be made unless they centered there. No bridges built, unless they benefit Santa Rosa. No regard is paid to the wants of Sonoma, Petaluma, and Bloomfield. But if Santa Rosa wants anything, even to the fencing of the plaza, the door of the county safe is thrown wide open. It is time these outrages upon the people at large should cease—this squandering of the public money for the benefiit of a few property-holders in and about Santa Rosa.”
We believe that the statement that the above is “the prevailing opinion” in that section, is untrue. That there are a few discontents in Petaluma, who find fault with this, as they do with everything else in and about Santa Rosa, is quite likely ; and that these compose the associates and intimates of the editor of that sheet, is still more probable. But we have no reason to believe that he is ever entrusted with the opinions of respectable men, even of his own vicinity. The quotation above, contains as much bare faced untruth, as we ever saw distilled in so small a space...
[lists county officials from Petaluma and Healdsburg, the 1858 Grand Jury report was the work of "two or three Petaluma men" on a committee]
...It is indirectly assorted, that the county authorities have paid for the fencing of the Plaza. This, of course, is just as reasonable as any other assertion; and yet not one dollar, directly or indirectly, has ever been paid or asked for for any such purpose. Equally false is his assertion of the building of bridges and roads for the exclusive benefit of Santa Rosa. Not one of the kind has ever been made. Altogether, we regard these complaints as very remarkable, even as coming from Pennypacker — certainly, they could come from nowhere else. [J. J. Pennypacker was the first publisher of the Argus 1859-1960 - JE]
Notwithstanding all this Billingsgate we speak of, seems to come from Petaluma, we are happy in the belief that the community in and around that place are not chargeable with them, but that among the respectable portion of that locality, a more liberal feeling exists.
- Sonoma Democrat, February 2 1860
After ignoring opportunities to celebrate Santa Rosa's anniversaries that spanned 64 years, Tom Cox thought, "we should make something of it" in 1968. The real question, however, was whether they would be celebrating one of the events from the town's early history - or the ongoing obliteration of its past.
(This is part two about Santa Rosa's 2018 sesquicentennial. Part one covers the town's 1854 founding and 1868 incorporation, followed by its general indifference to celebrate either event.)
Cox was the long-time head of the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce and made that suggestion at a 1967 luncheon for the "Congress for Community Progress," a coalition formed five years earlier by the Chamber, which claimed the Congress represented as many as 445 separate groups. Given that the town's entire population was then only about 44,000, let us forgive any Gentle Readers who snort skeptically.
Much was made in the 1960s about the Congress, which held occasional all-day assemblies attended by hundreds of "delegates." While it was touted as an independent citizen's group, its sheer size made discussion unwieldy and its objectives almost always seemed to mirror Chamber of Commerce and developer's interests. The 1968 Congress report said Santa Rosa's highest priorities should be "Payroll and Industrial Needs" and "Downtown Futures and Potential" - way down in the basement was the preservation of parks and historical sites.
During the sixties Santa Rosa was wild about all things modern, and as with many communities, that meant enthusiastic approval of urban renewal projects. We were told it would mostly be paid for by Washington, our property values would skyrocket and we would end up with glorious cities of the future. In 1961 a scale model of a proposed Santa Rosa redesign circulated around several bank lobbies. The model ("as modern and carefully engineered as the latest model of a star-probing rocket" - PD) portrayed a downtown designed for pedestrians, with mini-parks, tree-lined boulevards and a greenway along both banks of a fully restored Santa Rosa Creek.
It was mostly bait and switch, of course. Prime locations owned by the city were sold to private developers; the Santa Rosa Urban Renewal Agency held sway over forty acres of supposed "civic blight" and much of it was scooped up by investors. Luther Burbank's old house and gardens survived the bulldozer, but the home he custom-built in 1906 on Tupper street - the one seen in all the pictures of him with Edison, Ford, Helen Keller and other celebs - was deemed worthless, as it was argued that the town had no need for two Luther Burbank landmarks.
By the time Thomas Cox spoke at that 1967 Congress for Community Progress lunch, great swaths of downtown was already scraped down to the topsoil and most of the rest would follow soon. The great courthouse was gone; the Carnegie library already had been replaced by what we have now. The parks were forgotten and their earth was destined to sprout bank buildings and metered parking lots. The lovely, free-flowing creek was entombed in a box culvert. Community Progress!
Cox's talk came a few days before the dedication of the "plaza on Old Courthouse Square." The Courthouse Square site had been already split by the street connecting Mendocino Ave with Santa Rosa Ave; what they then called the "plaza" was just the western section between that new street and the Empire Building block. The east side was slated to be sold to private developers for commercial buildings.
Adding insult to injury, Mayor Hugh Codding said the tiny plaza would make citizens "more aware and more proud of this historic center of the city of Santa Rosa," and a supervisor chimed in this "perhaps what was in the mind of Mr. [Julio] Carrillo" when he donated the land to the public. Uh, no, times two.
The sale of the east side of the plaza was successfully fought by a small band of preservationists - despite being told it must be sold in order to pay off the urban renewal bonds. Sadly, they lost another fight to stop the giveaway to developers of the sheriff's office and city hall, now the location of the U.S. Bank building. They had hoped one (or both) of the post-1906 quake buildings could be saved to create a Santa Rosa museum.
And now we come to the March 16, 1968 centennial, when Santa Rosa celebrated pretty much everything except its origins.
About 1,000 attended the ceremony in that little plaza. The city councilmen dressed in vaguely 19th century costumes and Mayor Codding introduced a man 100 years old. Some rode old bicycles or drove around in old cars and a barbershop quartet warbled, all more appropriate to a party for 1918 than 1868. State appeals court judge Joseph Rattigan told the crowd they would "shape the history of the future," and won the prize for awful speechifying that day by saying we should "live as Santa Rosans in every dimension of wisdom and skill."
Two time capsules were dedicated. (They were originally in front of the Empire building but now are facing the intersection of Third street and Santa Rosa ave). One was intended for 2068; the other was supposed to be opened on March 16, 2018. As our sesquicentennial event isn't scheduled until about six months later, it only makes the choice of a September date seem stranger.
(RIGHT: Pepper Dardon sitting in front of the time capsules, 1974. Photo: Michael Sawyer/findagrave.com; original Santa Rosa News Herald image via Helen Rudee)
That was just the "Centennial Day;" the "Centennial Week" was the Rose Festival in May, and there wasn't much of a nod to history there, either. There was a two-day "western extravaganza" at the racetrack with stunt riding and a race between a horse and a motorcycle, a tennis match and a little regatta on Lake Ralphine. A rock concert included local bands "Wonderful Mud" and "Bronze Hog." During the Rose Parade, the Marine Corps Reserve presented a bizarre little scene in front of the reviewing stand where they enacted flushing a Vietcong soldier out of a rice paddy and shooting him dead, right there on Fourth street. As I always say, these kind of events are really for the children.
I have to interrupt here and say that 1968 may have been a bust as a centennial year, but it was the definitely the year to celebrate Pepper, Santa Rosa's lovable or maddening downtown character (depending upon whom you asked and when). When she wasn't heckling hippies and jaywalkers, she was popping in to the backseats of cars waiting for the stoplight to change and expecting the driver to take her somewhere - the Pepper stories are legion.
But Pepper also collected quite a bit of money when local groups were having charity drives, badgering each passerby for spare change. That March she was the guest of honor at a Rotary luncheon and in October she was feted by the Lions Club.
In a Gaye LeBaron column - yes, she was writing a gossip column fifty years ago - she quoted a letter from a reader: “I have a suggestion for the Grand Marshall of the 1968 Rose Parade: Pepper! No kidding—when you stop to think of all the hard work she’s done for almost everyone I think you’ll agree that she’s as deserving as any chosen. If we all get on Pepper’s Bandwagon she just might be selected. Riding in an open car down Fourth street would perhaps repay her in some small way for all the time she’s donated."
She was not included in the parade (and someone wrote a letter to the PD complaining about that) but she sat in the VIP bleachers alongside Mrs. Luther Burbank. She was also made honorary town marshal for the Centennial Year, a position she undoubtedly abused with relish.
The time capsules are Santa Rosa's only real historic legacy from 1968 - and note that the one to be opened this year is mistakenly labeled "Bi-Centennial," showing no one noticed or cared that wasn't the right word for a fiftieth anniversary.
The March 17 edition of the Press Democrat offered a fat section of all things it deemed centennial-ish, and reflects the attitudes of the time quite well. The actual history section - meaning the 1906 quake and everything before - isn't very long and just a superficial rehash from the county history books. However there's some good wonky stuff about the development of city departments and such in the early 20th century along with some photos I've not seen elsewhere.
But then it rockets to the present day, celebrating the wonders of redevelopment and what a bright future awaited Santa Rosa. There's even a full-page article titled, "Foresight of Hugh Codding Helped Speed City's Growth." (Of course, not long afterwards, Mr. Foresight tied the city up in a decade-long lawsuit to forestall construction of the mall and other retail space, thus causing the downtown to further wither and die.)
So as it turns out, the judge who saw the centennial as "[shaping] the history of the future" probably did hit the right notes for 1968. And in kind of a Believe-it-on-Not! coincidence, we're grappling with very similar issues today, trying to wrestle with how the town will be reshaped in years to come because of the fires.
There's one more historic year to mention, for the sake of completeness: 2004, the real sesquicentennial of the year the town actually put down roots. A columnist for the PD complained "no one is celebrating," and that a fund drive to support the reunification of Courthouse Square was going nowhere.
Well, Courthouse Square is now glued back together. That columnist was Chris Coursey, now Santa Rosa's mayor. And like his predecessors, I'm sure he'll make the sesquicentennial more of a rosy view of our future than a reflection on our rougher past. The date will still be wrong on the time capsule, of course, but Chris could fix that - I'd even provide a little bit of duct tape and a magic marker to change the inscription to read September 9.
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| Time capsules in Courthouse Square |
Can someone please explain why we will be celebrating Santa Rosa's sesquicentennial on September 9, 2018? Because on that day 150 years ago, absolutely nothing happened here.
I suppose that date was selected because Sept. 9 is also Admission Day and a legal state holiday, like César Chávez Day (as Chávez was a great champion of education, it drives me nuts that we celebrate his birthday by closing libraries as well as state offices). While our 1850 statehood certainly was a noteworthy event, I seriously doubt the city was otherwise planning to throw a 178-year anniversary party.
But my gripe isn't really with that chosen day and not particularly with the month - we could celebrate the sesquicentennial year anytime between January and December. No, it's the year that rankles, because if you drill down to the core, we're actually commemorating a 1968 PR event which cheered that much of historic Santa Rosa was being destroyed in the name of progress.
Before we get to 1968, some historic background is in order:
It all really started in 1854, as explained earlier in "CITY OF ROSES AND SQUATTERS." Santa Rosa didn’t really exist as the year began; it had only two houses and five little businesses including a tavern. Yet despite its drawback of being almost non-existent, a group of men were about to make it the county seat.
After the state legislature gave approval for a vote on moving it away from Sonoma, Julio Carrillo and the other Santa Rosa promoters invited the entire county to an epic Fourth of July party that went on all night. The election was held September 6 and Santa Rosa won. When the voting results were announced there was another BBQ feast even more riotous than the July shindig, this event supposedly lasting two days.
Afterwards the Board of Supervisors met with "the proprietors of the town of Santa Rosa" (Carrillo, Hartman, Hahman and Hoen) who promised to build a courthouse and provide spaces for county officers within two months, with everybody crowding into Carrillo's place until then. The vote was certified by the Supervisors and the county records were moved to Santa Rosa.
There are three points to remember for the test: Nothing happened on September 9 of that year, either. Although Santa Rosa was now the county seat, it was still just the self-declared name of a crossroad settlement and not an officially recognized town. And not the least of it, there was lots'o partying by our ancestors in 1854 because they clearly believed all this was a significant event.
The other historic date was March 16, 1868, when the state approved Santa Rosa as an officially incorporated town. Here's how Santa Rosa's newspaper covered this milestone:
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| Sonoma Democrat notice of incorporation |
That's it - three itty-bitty lines (1½ actually) in the column of local news briefs. An item lower down the column which praised a new saloon in town, "The Snug," was five times longer. Needless to say, there was no blowout incorporation BBQ.
Let's zoom forward to the first big anniversary: Fifty years after Santa Rosa became the county seat.
"This is Santa Rosa’s Golden Jubilee Year - Should Have a Big Celebration," read a Press Democrat headline in March 1904.
A fifty year anniversary is also called a "semicentennial," and for reasons unknown there was no celebration at all; it could be because 1904 was a major election year both locally and nationally, with emotions running high. In Santa Rosa the “Old South” conservatives lost their grip on the town to Teddy Roosevelt progressives after months of shrill newspaper editorials on both sides; it seemed half the town wasn't speaking to the other half. What we did get on the Sept. 21 anniversary was a very reliable history of the 1854 events in the PD, including a first-hand account from Jim Williamson on how the county records were moved, as explored here in "THE FABLE OF THE STOLEN COURTHOUSE."
In March 1918 came the 50th anniversary of incorporation. No ceremony that year either, nor a single mention of it in the newspapers, as far as I can tell. They had a great excuse, however; the U.S. had entered WWI less than a year before and Santa Rosa - like every other place in the country - was preoccupied with war rallies, bond drives and all other things patriotic.
Okay, so Santa Rosa (mostly) ignored both golden jubilees in the early 20th century; I don't think we should make too much of that, given the distractions mentioned here, plus that our society generally doesn't put on the party hats for 50 year anniversaries. But centennials are usually a big deal, right? Right?
Thus in 1954 it was exactly one hundred years after Santa Rosa came into existence - plus hosting two legendary bacchanals, drawingits first map of the place and settling into its role as the hub of Sonoma county. All of that was memorable, and the Press Democrat offered several articles on the centennial...of the Mare Island shipyard. Not one word about their hometown's 100 years.
Our consistent indifference to the past changed on Sept. 19, 1967, when Thomas Cox suggested, "we should make something of it" at a Flamingo Hotel luncheon. "It" would be the 1968 centennial of incorporation.
THIS IS SANTA ROSA’S GOLDEN JUBILEE YEARSHOULD HAVE A BIG CELEBRATIONON SEPTEMBER 18, 1854, SUPERVISORS OF COUNTY DECLARED THIS THE COUNTY SEATHistorical Year in Santa Rosa and a Brief Glimpse of the History Connected with the Change
This is a year of historic importance in Santa Rosa, it is her golden jubilee year.
Santa Rosa should in some appropriate manner celebrate September 18, 1904, that date being the golden jubilee of the city’s existence as a county seat. On September 18, 1854, fifty years ago. the Supervisors of Sonoma county met in the City of Sonoma and having canvassed the votes polled at the election held to determine the matter, officially declared that Santa Rosa was legally the county seat of Sonoma county and after this formal action the county archives were brought to Santa Rosa in a four-horse wagon, and with them came the now venerable ex-Supreme Judge McKinstry, then district judge of Sonoma.
The final event of any importance in the county of Sonoma in the year 1854 was the passage of Bennet's bill authorizing the taking of a vote on the question of transferring the county seat from Sonoma to Santa Rosa. As the summer of that year half a century ago advanced, the fight between the partisans of the contending cities became very keen and finally the citizens of Santa Rosa made big arrangements for holding a barbecue on the Fourth of July. In speaking of the occasion the late Robert A. Thompson said;
“It was a master stroke of policy — the people came and saw, and were conquered by the beauty of the place and the hospitality of the people, who, on that occasion, killed the fatted calf and invited to the feast the rich and poor, the lame and halt and the blind -- in fact everybody who had, or who could influence or control, a vote. The smoke of the sacrifice of whole sheep and huge quarters of beef ascended to heaven freighted with the prayers of the Santa Rosans to dispose the hearts and ballots of the people in their favor, and, like the pious Greeks of old on similar occasions, when the smoke had ceased to ascend and the offering was cooked to a turn, they partook of the sacrificial meat -- the incense of which had tickled the nostrils, whetting at the same time their appetites and their devotion.”
At this Fourth of July barbecue some 500 people were present from all over the county and great enthusiasm prevailed. The oration was delivered by the Rev. A. A. Guernsey. The Declaration of Independence was read by James Prewett and the speakers were Joe Neville, John Robinson and Sylvester Ballou. The feast was held in an oak grove on Commodore Elliott’s place.
The Santa Rosa of half a century ago receiving the distinction of becoming the seat of government of the imperial county of the state was a far different place from what it is today. Then there was a Masonic hall, a store and two or three other buildings. Nevertheless there was great rejoicing, when on that fair eighteenth day of September the county fathers in meeting at Sonoma formally declared that Santa Rosa was to henceforth be the county seat.
At the golden jubilee celebration this year there will be a number of men gathered here who saw the transference of the county seat to Santa Rosa. It should be made a memorable occasion.
Just what form the jubilee celebration shall take will be a matter to be determined. Several prominent citizens who were seen Thursday were enthusiastically in favor of having an appropriate celebration of the day in Santa Rosa. September 18, 1854 was Santa Rosa's and Sonoma county’s "Admission Day” into the after progress and prosperity which is hers today and which will continue. Much could be made of such a celebration and its importance would be felt as a great, attraction towards advertising the products of Sononia county.
- Press Democrat, March 25 1904