Interpreting history is sometimes like assembling IKEA furniture. After an unexpected amount of sweat and cussing you've finally got the thing put together and it looks okay - but then you discover an overlooked part which seems as if it must be important. So back you go, pouring over the documents to figure out where the hell it fits in. And that, Gentle Reader, is how we have arrived at the puzzle of Santa Rosa and its hoboes. They had a significant presence here (albeit usually an unwanted one) for decades; where do they fit into the Santa Rosa story? Why and when did they arrive?
Before diving into that history, however, comments on Facebook and other social media about my previous article, "THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HOBOES," suggest many are comparing those 1931 hoboes and their hobo jungle with today's homeless and their encampments on the Joe Rodota trail and elsewhere. The situations could hardly be more different.
First, the hoboes never considered themselves homeless. Living a rootless life under the sky was theirs by choice; this point came across strongly in the profile of the Santa Rosa hoboes as it does in other primary writings, such as the (highly recommended!) Tales of the Iron Road. They chafed when forced to stay under a roof because of weather or infirmity, itching to get back to the camp fire world they loved.
Despite the hardships, their attraction to hobo life was being part of an extended community where acceptance was unconditional as long as you honored their rules and customs. Since it appears most were cast away at a young age or suffered some form of parental abuse or abandonment, becoming a hobo was like joining the Club of Lost Boys. The far-reaching hobo network became a new family, and many of those men spent most (or all) of their adulthood in the comfort of being part of that.
Our modern homeless do share one thing with the hoboes of yore - Santa Rosa's cluster of "skid row" services on Morgan and Wilson streets.
Hoboing was at its heyday c. 1910 when an evangelical group started a rescue mission on Washington street, near the current location of the Catholic Charities homeless services center on Morgan. That was followed by a shelter for “down and outs” at 117 Eighth street, between Davis and Wilson. In the mid 1960s - even as the hobo life was on the wane - the Redwood Gospel Mission and House of Refuge opened in the same area, with the St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen and Catholic Charities following later. It made sense at the time for all those Good Samaritans to operate their charities there because the locations were only steps away from Santa Rosa's railroad yard, which was where all hoboes came and went.
Indulge me a moment to editorialize about how this is still causing problems today: It's now been a long time since trains were the hobo express, and continuing to offer those services in that neighborhood only tethers the homeless to the downtown area. Today everyone concerned would be better off if the charities there moved to a designated area where the homeless living in vehicles could park, others could camp and where meaningful humanitarian aid could be coordinated.
Theirs was a distinct American subculture that lasted roughly one hundred years, from the end of the Civil War to circa 1970. At its 1910 peak the hobo population was estimated at 700,000, large enough to make them the fourth largest city in the United States, should they all get an unlikely itch to settle down in a mondo hobo jungle.
In the early years tramps, vagabonds or "vags" were apparently rare in Sonoma county, although they were frequently the subject of little filler items in the local newspapers, usually jokey vignettes reprinted from East Coast journals. The gags were usually that a tramp is ignorant (trying to eat ice cream with a fork), rude (correcting his host's grammar after receiving a free meal) or deceitful (a haven't-eaten-for-days tramp begs for a penny and is told the person only has a silver dollar; no problem, says the vagrant, he can make change).
The first mention of drifters in the area came from the Santa Rosa paper in the summer of 1876, when a tramp attempted to sexually assault a 7 year-old girl south of Hopland (he wasn't turned over to the sheriff, but members of the family beat the man severely). There was an influx of unemployed men the following year when the Long Depression hit California and caused massive unemployment, and the Democrat made the point that these fellows were different that the usual vagabonds found around here: "Many of them are now in this section of the State seeking work, and they are generally designated 'tramps.' From the fact that there are every year some persons strolling about the country pretending to be hunting work but really trying to make a living without having to work for it, the name of tramp has become one of opprobrium..." (Transcriptions of this and assorted other articles follow at the end.)
After that the Santa Rosa newspaper was mostly silent about tramps for nearly a decade - but come 1886, there was plenty to report. "The question, 'What shall be done with the tramps,' has been frequently asked," began one story in the Democrat. A reporter counted fifty living in the seasonally-dry bed of Santa Rosa Creek.
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
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