Well sir, it's just past 800 articles at the little history blog halfway down on your bookmark list, so it's a good time to take a look around and see what's new in the neighborhood.
Our last cook's tour was five years ago (2018) in article # 650. Since that was just a few months after the Tubbs fire, the most read article was THE FORGOTTEN FIRES OF FOUNTAINGROVE AND COFFEY PARK, which described man-made fires in 1908 and 1939 that could have been catastrophic had the winds shifted towards Santa Rosa. That and other articles about historic fires are still the most popular and featured in the list below.
The only technical change to the site is the addition of the RANDOM option in the header, which works as described. It was created during the early days of the Covid lockdown and seems to be well used. I've even rediscovered several items I'd forgotten writing about.
The curated list found here mainly contains stories written over the last five years and a different list can be found in article 650 with one overlap. Articles now tend to be longer and more in-depth; there's a catagory below for multi-part series such as the 41,000 word, twelve part examination of the creation of Santa Rosa Plaza. The ever growing number of newspapers and journals available online has also made it possible to dive deeper into research beyond just the Sonoma County papers.
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
Labels: SantaRosaHistory.com
In another world Luther Burbank would be forgotten today; only in the most comprehensive county history books might you find mention about him as a wholesale purveyor of novelty seeds and saplings and cactus paddles.
In that same world the residents of the Bay Area would recognize Santa Rosa by name but think of it as a smallish county seat like Martinez, or a place you must pass through to go somewhere else.
Here's the executive summary of how it turned out instead: In the early 1900s, Burbank became one of the most famous people in America and tourists flocked to Santa Rosa for a look at his celebrated gardens.
There's lots more to the story, of course. It didn't happen overnight and followed years of hard work by Burbank to produce a steady stream of new hybrids. While Burbank's name was always well known to readers of gardening newsletters and farm journals, by the mid-1890s he was increasingly appearing in mainstream newspaper and magazines being described as a "wizard" of plants. And once he started being wizard-ized in those Sunday features, Burbank and Santa Rosa became famous together.
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