I See by the Papers...

Santa Rosa was filled with bums; there were panhandlers on Fourth street and drunks hanging out in the park, there were petty thefts and burglaries and vegetable gardens raided. The Press Democrat said the Police Chief and Sheriff were working together on "a new drive to rid the city of all 'undesirables,' especially the canned heaters." Uh, "canned heaters?" Everyone knew that was what you called the worst screwed-up addicts - in 1931.

If there's any year in Santa Rosa's history to NOT visit in your time machine, it's 1931 (see sidebar). Prohibition was still very much a thing and that year about 800 people were arrested in Santa Rosa, more than half of them for something to do with booze. Money was tight and pockets were empty; farmers and chicken ranchers were lucky to break even and only prunes and Gravensteins made any profit at all. In the Press Democrat's classifieds, the Help Wanted section was usually entirely missing - while the Real Estate section filled several columns. ("For Sale at foreclosure: 5 acre; modern 5-rm house, chicken equipment. Near town, $3,800.")

Add a few more points to the misery index because of the influx of hoboes that spring. There were several well-established "hobo jungles" along the railroad tracks in Sonoma County: on Lakeville in Petaluma, near Cotati, under the Healdsburg Railroad Bridge, by the Laguna in Sebastopol and close to Fulton. But the best known jungle of all was in Santa Rosa - and that's where many hoboes went in March, after a murder in the Petaluma jungle led to a police crackdown. The same month Marin authorities ordered every jungle in that county cleared out "for keeps" after a robbery at the San Rafael railroad station. The PD reported that sent about 150 denizens headed north.




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