I See by the Papers...

The menu for SantaRosaHistory.com now has a "RANDOM" option which randomly picks any of 700+ articles about Santa Rosa and Sonoma County history.

Other ways to explore the offerings include the search field (also in the menu) and the tags beneath each article headline, which function as a topic index. There are also two "best of" compilations - there's some overlap between the lists, but not much:

650 KISSES DEEP (2018)

and

THE BEST OF THE BLOG, CHAPTER 500 (2014)



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Santa Rosa has a history of making regrettable decisions, lord knows, and this series, "YESTERDAY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER," delves into just the cascading series of failures leading up to construction of the shopping mall, which was the ultimissimo mistake. But in our big book of blunders there's one small chapter where the town didn't embrace a terrible, irreversible option - although it wasn't for a lack of trying.

The project we were trying so hard to screwup was (once again) Courthouse Square, and this attempt started in 1966, the same year we tore down the courthouse. Immediately following that we stabbed a four-lane street through the middle and declared that the western sliver of what remained would now be called “Old Courthouse Square.” That part of the story was explored in the previous article, "TEARING APART 'THE CITY DESIGNED FOR LIVING'".

All of that had been done under the authority of Santa Rosa's Urban Renewal Agency (URA), an unelected five member body which had broad powers for redeveloping all of downtown Santa Rosa, as also discussed in that article. As a first step that year the county had sold all of Courthouse Square (plus the county garage and jail) to the URA for $400k, but the county only expected to be paid half of that, considering the new street and west side of the Square as a donation. To raise the remaining $200k, the plan was that the city would sell the east side of the Square to a developer. "For Sale: 26,000 sq. Feet," read the URA marketing blurb, with an asking price of $305k.

But a year passed with only a single bid: Eureka Federal Savings offered $260k (can't have enough massive bank buildings squatting on prime downtown locations). Potential buyers found the city's right to sell the property was...uncertain, to say the least.

This was hardly the first time questions about ownership of the Square were raised; you could say it was Sonoma County's oldest parlor game, going back to just after the Civil War (see sidebar).



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

Riiinnng! Hello? Why, it's aunt Ginny in Peoria! How are you, au- What's that you say? We're a bunch of naked perverts undermining the war effort?

There were probably lots of calls from angry aunties on that morning of July 6, 1944, as an AP wire story hit the pages of newspapers nationwide: "At least 200 members of a vast nudist retreat in the Valley of the Moon were called on the office of price administration carpet today to explain how they reached the place on 'A' ration gasoline, some from as far away as Oregon and southern California."

Even without the nudity angle, this would still have been a major story at the time. Gasoline rationing during WWII was a hot-button issue; nobody liked it but cheating was viewed as awfully selfish and unpatriotic. For fuel efficiency and preservation of rubber tires, the national speedlimit was 35 MPH and anyone caught going faster not only got a fine but their name in the paper - and repeat violators could lose their gas coupons for the duration of the war, however long that might be. For some of these people to be driving hundreds of miles to visit Sonoma county strongly implied they were tapping into the black market.

Headline editors were surprisingly restrained (Kingsport Tenn. Times: "Nudists Must Give OPA The Bare Facts") with the most sensationalistic being our own Press Democrat: "Professional Men, Housewives Found Flitting About Hilltop Elysium From All Over State". While the San Francisco Examiner printed a fuzzy photo of naked people on a volleyball court, the PD also published the most salacious account:

...Surprise arrival of the agents at first sent an array of 'nudies' of all ages, sizes and descriptions scurrying for cover, disappearing into the array of cabins or into the bushes. But before it was over the nudists apparently said 'what the heck' or its equivalent and returned to their games of volley ball, croquet, swimming, and dancing to a boogie-woogie piano...As one young lass, standing unabashed with her curves, moaned: "Heavens! My husband doesn't know I've been using our car to come here. What will he say?"

That "Hilltop Elysium" was the Sun-O-Ma nudist colony, which is currently on the market for $11.3M and redubbed the "Castle Road Estate," in the hills above the Bartholomew Park Estate Vineyards - and therein lies the nut of our tale.

Those vineyards are the remnants of Agoston Haraszthy’s historic Buena Vista winery. Stories about what became of the ranch after he was (supposedly) eaten by alligators have appeared here twice before: Kate Johnson built a 40-room "castle" in 1885 (see "THE MAKING OF A CRAZY CAT LADY") which the state purchased to create the California Industrial Farm for Women (see "THE DELINQUENT WOMEN OF SONOMA"). After the castle burned down in 1923 there were several proposals made for the state to build some sort of new institution, but aside from the infirmary building becoming an unofficial annex of the nearby Sonoma State Home at Eldridge, the grand estate - which was once often compared to Golden Gate Park - went to rack and ruin for a decade. Then arrived the nudist's nemesis, Frank Bartholomew.




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