Don't be scared, but there may be strangers in your house.
Anyone lucky enough to inherit their family's photo album must have wondered about some of the folks in there. Are there unlabeled Victorian-era portraits where people look as stiff as statues? Maybe there are snapshots from a century ago of relatives posing with seemingly close friends - but could they be distant relations you'd like to know about? There may also be missing persons. Why do none of the photos with great-aunt Tilda include her husband Cornelius?
This is a quick trip through a collection of pictures left by a Santa Rosa family from around the turn of the century. Or rather, it's about forty images that were donated to the Sonoma County Library, which scanned them and placed them online. Not all of the set is interesting - about half are nameless, rigid-necked Victorians - but some are quite unusual and deserve attention. The final section of this article concerns the bigger question about what could be done to restore information missing from thousands of historical photos in our library's archive and elsewhere.
The first puzzle is figuring out which family we're looking at. The library's descriptions usually mention "William H. Hudson" or "part of a collection of Hudson family photographs" but that's a weak clue, as there were several unrelated Hudson clans in the North Bay at the time which included a William H. A few years ago the Sonoma County Historical Society wrote a piece on this and concluded a Santa Rosa businessman was the right guy.
But in the library collection three different men are identified as William H. Are their photos mislabeled or were these really the trio who shared the same name? And which one is the businessman we seek? Fortunately, he was vain enough to buy an entry in one of the local history "mug books" so we have an accurate reference of what he looked like, at least in his senior years.
That history book offers a detailed bio or you can read a condensed version at his entry on Find a Grave (although it presently uses photos of wrong Williams). Here I'm skipping most of the details except for those that apply to the photographs.
Overlooked was that William and his wife Percie had very private lives. Rarely were they mentioned in any of the local newspapers. Aside from a nice announcement in the paper where he once worked as a printer, their marriage was elsewhere a two-line notice in the Vital Statistic columns. There were no birth announcements for their children, even though she was part of a large and prominent Healdsburg family.
Their quiet profile extended to the family album. There's no wedding photo, nor baby pictures, nor portraits of their son in Army uniform as he went off to fight in WWI, nor picture of the son with his wife or of their children. (Think about that for a moment: Grandparents without a single photograph of their grandkids?!) I want to assume such images did exist and at some point a family member raided the album, but the Hudson's seeming desire to live behind closed doors does not lend great confidence.
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
When the history of Prohibition in Sonoma County is written, one name will appear more than any other: John W. Pemberton, County Detective - the nemesis of bootleggers and rum-runners and the scourge of anyone with a blind pig or backroom speakeasy.
Technically the County Detective was the investigator for the District Attorney but "Jock" Pemberton was like our resident G-man, on hand whenever federal Prohibition Agents conducted local raids (in the photo above Pemberton is the man on the right next to the feds). He also was often alongside the sheriff or Santa Rosa police chief during harrowing moments while they were trying to apprehend the most dangerous criminals.
Yet the most important moment of his career happened after his retirement, when he gave crucial testimony showing the California Attorney General was so corrupt he was running a protection racket out of his office.
In 1926, the peak year of Prohibition here, Pemberton was appointed County Detective although he seemed an unlikely prospect for the job. He was 49 when he took the position, with no background in investigating crime; his only experience in law enforcement being a dozen years as Santa Rosa constable, ending in 1923. He had the gregarious personality of a salesman, which is what he was before and after being constable (real estate, then autos). Jock held high rank in both the Elks and Eagles; he and wife Maude were constantly mentioned in the society columns for attending or hosting parties and whatnot.
Not long after being hired, though, he showed his worth. A 27 year-old man named Jasper Parkins was found dead in his bedroom with a bullet wound to his right temple. The sheriff pegged it as an obvious suicide, even though the dead guy didn't seem troubled and was about to take a walk along the railroad tracks with his brother and niece. Pemberton argued Parkins had his little target pistol in hand when he bent over to pick something up from the floor and bumped his elbow against the edge of the bed. The coroner's jury ruled it an accidental death.
A few weeks later came the bust of the most famous bootlegging operation in county history. In March 1927 Pemberton led a raid on the old Kawana Springs resort where he and the sheriff's department found the long-closed hotel had been retrofitted for a three-story copper still that produced 1,400 gallons of pure alcohol/day. The booze was then trucked to San Francisco and LA where it was processed and bottled as "genuine Gordon gin."
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
There's a tale Bill Soberanes loved to tell in his Argus-Courier columns that went something like this:
During Prohibition a lawyer was defending a man accused of bootlegging. When the prosecutor introduced a bottle of the moonshine as evidence the lawyer picked it up, put it to his lips and drank it dry. "That wasn't whiskey," he told the court. Case dismissed for lack of evidence.
Odds of that story being true are probably nil (or at least, I can't find anything close to it in the newspapers of the day) but it's the kind of thing people liked to say about Gil P. Hall. Most often he was called some riff on being "a colorful character" and people meant that in a nice way. During the 1910s and 1920s he was the top defense attorney in Sonoma county and rarely lost in court, particularly if it involved a jury trial. He was such a legal hotshot that courtrooms were packed when he defended a high-profile case. "There was only one Gil Hall, and I don't think there will ever be another like him," said the last surviving pre-Prohibition Petaluma bar owner in 1967. "Some of his cases would make Perry Mason look very tame."
In the 1920s Hall defended so many liquor scofflaws that he had a reputation as being the bootlegger's lawyer, but that's not really fair - it seems he took on any and all. While he's best known for high-profile cases his bread and butter was mundane legal work - representing people seeking a divorce, handling probate paperwork, and arguing a farmer had a right to dig a culvert under a county road.
He won an acquittal for Fannie Brown, who was charged with running a "house of ill-fame" at First and C streets in Petaluma. In the murder trial of two doctors charged with the death of a woman from an abortion ("the illegal operation") the courtroom spectators burst into prolonged applause when the jury found them innocent. Even when he lost he usually managed to salvage some kind of victory. The owner of Speedway Hotel in Cotati was caught red-handed selling 72 proof jackass brandy ("with a trace of fuel oil") and had to pay a fine, but Hall blocked the government from shutting down his business - which continued to be busted for selling hootch year after year.
A man who knew him, Petaluma Justice of the Peace Rolland Webb, said "he won most of his cases by outsmarting the young lawyers who came up against him," so it's a pity the newspapers didn't write up some of his Perry Mason-y courtroom arguments. The one sample we have comes from an unusual case - the county election of 1926.
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.
Imagine if the Golden Gate Bridge was never built - engineering issues couldn't be solved, perhaps, or maybe there were insurmountable economic hurdles, or just not enough political will. What would Sonoma County be like today?
The only way to get here from San Francisco is by ferry, for starters, so Santa Rosa is a much smaller place. There was no population boom after World War Two; it's a rural county seat somewhat like Ukiah, and the courthouse is still in Courthouse Square because they patched up the mostly cosmetic damage from the 1957 earthquake instead of tearing it down. Stony Point Road is the Highway 101 bypass, its two lanes swelling to three at the stoplights where there is cross traffic and turn lanes. Tourists clog the Redwood Highway on weekends because the winery events, resorts, spas and casinos in the countryside make this a popular getaway destination for the rest of the Bay Area, while the weekly Press Democrat is always pushing for year-round motocross and horse racing at the fairgrounds in order to draw visitors downtown. "Sonoma County? Sure, it's a nice place to visit, but no, I..."
Building the Bridge was never a sure thing, but it wasn't because there was formidable opposition. Yes, there were efforts to slow or stop the project but it wasn't ongoing, popping up only when the project neared a funding or construction milestone. None or those challenges posed serious threats, but were more like pesky nuisances.
Yet when the project launched in 1923 it seemed delusional to believe it would ever pass beyond the blueprint stage. Not only were there some engineers who thought it was folly to attempt constructing the longest bridge of its kind at that particular place, but its promoters had to run an incredibly complex political gauntlet, convincing Washington and Sacramento to back it enthusiastically - all before doing the basic studies which would prove the concept was viable. And even after construction began in January 1933, a retired geologist made a splash by predicting the south end could never be made stable, requiring months of further testing to prove him wrong.
All in all, it took almost 20 years to get to ribbon-cutting day. This is not the place to tell that whole story; the Golden Gate Bridge District has history pages for further details on the critical years of 1928 and 1930 (although some of the information on bridge opponents is wrong). A version of the original 1916 article proposing the idea is transcribed below.
Local folks probably know that the key part of the origin story concerns doings in Sonoma County by two men: Frank Doyle, president of the Exchange Bank as well as the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce, and Press Democrat editor/publisher Ernest Finley. Although Doyle modestly said he was "just one of the hundreds who helped to put the bridge over," he always will be remembered for kicking the project off by organizing the January 13, 1923 conference in Santa Rosa which brought together over 250 bankers, business leaders and politicians, which earned him his spot standing next to the governor and the mayor of San Francisco when the bridge was officially opened. Finley was the indefatigable champion for the cause, turning the Press Democrat into a soapbox for promoting funding and construction, cheering every nugget of good news and booing every bit of bad.
After Finley's death in 1942, however, the story shifted; it was said the newspaper suffered by losing subscribers because of its bridge advocacy and Finley was a warrior editor battling powerful railroad, logging and farm special interests opposed to the bridge. This version has taken root over the years in the PD and elsewhere; here's the version from the Media Museum of Northern California: "...In this particular crusade, which spanned at least two decades, Finley stood almost alone...he was opposed by nearly everyone. His business suffered as he lost advertising accounts and subscriptions. But he continued the campaign, insisting, 'Damn the circulation! The bridge must be built!'” That's now his legacy quote although it's probably apocryphal.1
The problem with that narrative is it's not really true.
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
What's the origin of the name, "Kawana Springs?" It's far easier to say where it didn't come from than to pinpoint its source or meaning. For example, if you think "Kawana" is an Indian word, you may be right - except the Indians who coined it were 3,000 miles away.
Let's start with the simple part: "Springs" is part of the name because it once was a mineral spring resort, with a hotel and bathhouse. A 49er named John S. Taylor had poor luck gold hunting but found his fortune here, homesteading 1,400 acres at the base of that mountain which came to have his name. John was quite the entrepreneur; he planted a large vineyard, raised livestock, and mined a small vein of coal that was discovered on his land. He saw the opportunity to cash in on the harness racing craze and built "Taylor's Driving Park" at his place, where the 1861 Sonoma County fair was also held. He owned most of the downtown block between Fourth and Fifth streets directly across from Courthouse Square. John Taylor was a rich and interesting guy about whom more should be written.
Taylor also saw $$$ in the stinky creek on his property. Mineral spas and resorts were a big deal on the East Coast and in Europe; people believed the water relieved arthritis and aches if you bathed in the stuff, and even that it could cure kidney disease and other ailments if you drank lots of it. He built a small hotel for guests and when that one burned in 1870, Taylor built a grander, two-story place with hot and cold running boy-does-that-smell-awful.
It's unclear what ambitions John Taylor held for his mineral water resort. He rarely advertised in the Northern California newspapers (at least, judging from the healthy sample of 19th century papers available online through the Library of Congress) and was leasing the operation out as early as the 1880s. Unlike owners of some other local hot spring retreats he didn't bottle his "curative" waters for sale. Then there was the potential problem with name confusion: Taylor called his place "White Sulphur Springs," and when he started there were already "White Sulphur Springs" in Solano (Vallejo) and Napa (St. Helena).
Why was everyone naming their place "White Sulphur Springs?" Because the original W.S.S. in West Virginia was recognized as the standard of excellence for resorts in the latter 19th century. It was the playground for the Washington D.C. elite; presidents took the waters there and Euro royalty, too. "White" apparently was intended to indicate the sulphurous water was clear and not sickly yellow, and it provided an opportunity for other West Virginia hot springs to exploit the name with sound-similars; there were nearby Blue Sulphur Springs, Green Sulphur Springs, Red Sulphur Spring and Salt Sulphur Springs. The water was apparently identical, or nearly so. (A 1870s analysis of Taylor's water found it contained bicarbonate, iron, magnesia, and, of course, sulphur.)
By the turn of the century, whatever days of sun Taylor's hotel enjoyed were certainly past. No ads can be found beyond 1899, although we know it remained open because it was still mentioned in the schedules for stage stops. When the 1906 earthquake hit, Taylor's White Sulphur Springs hadn't yet opened for the summer season. The hotel and bathhouse apparently escaped without serious damage, but not so the creek - the mineral water stopped flowing after the earth shifted. The place opened again for the 1906-1907 winter season, but that was it.
Come 1910 and the Press Democrat announced a pair of local men were going to reopen the resort, but not as White Sulphur Springs:
It was deemed advisable to change the name of the resort from White Sulphur Springs on account of the fact that there are already two resorts of that name in the state. Luther Burbank was appealed to in the matter of the selection of a name. He chose "Kawana," and his choice was accepted. The management would have liked to have named the place "Burbank Springs," but Mr. Burbank preferred not inasmuch as he had declined many offers for the use of his name for other places. |
Thus it came to be dubbed "Kawana Sulphur Springs," the ads shamelessly touting it was "Named by Luther Burbank." More on Burbank and the Kawana angle in a minute.The article and ads pointed to a new direction for the spa. It was promoted as the "Headquarters for automobilists and traveling men," and a clubhouse building was added. The ads also promised "Its waters are unsurpassed," but without the natural mineral spring working they had to be trucking the water in, or dousing the plain well water with chemicals. Two years later, ads announced "Kawana" (no Sulphur, no Springs mentioned) was under new management.
Kawana-anything disappears from the newspapers until 1927, when a Santa Rosa paper reported the "old Kawana Hotel, at White Sulphur Springs...has been untenanted for several years" as part of a news story about its very interesting recent tenants. It seems a professional bootlegging outfit had gutted the inside of the old hotel and constructed a three-story, 1,400 gallon still for making hootch. Police found the operation only after it was ready to move on, with a hapless steamfitter on the premises to dismantle the enormous rig. Officers were quoted as saying it was the largest bootlegging plant ever found in Northern California.
Old John Taylor was 99 years-old by that time, and the news about his old place must have been quite a shock. He died less than three weeks later and according to Gaye LeBaron's columns, his daughter, Zana, had the hollowed-out building demolished rather than attempt to repair the heart-breaking damage. In 1931 the ranch became a game reserve stocked with quail, deer and pheasant under a deal with the Sonoma County Sportsmen's Club. Zana fixed up the old bathhouse and lived there until her death in 1970. The year before, however, she discovered that the 1969 earthquake had jogged loose the creek's plug, and up to 1,000 gallons/day of mineral water was again filling the creek. An AP wire service story about this appeared in newspapers nationwide. Alas, the water soon again stopped.
Back to Burbank and "Kawana:" Note that the article stated Burbank "chose" the Kawana name "selection," which strongly implies someone else - the new tenants or John Taylor, probably - gave him a list of possibles after they couldn't get rights to use "Burbank Springs." But where did Kawana come from? First, Kawana is a family name in Japan, Hawaii, and elsewhere in the Pacific, and the Taylors had a Hawaiian connection because John Jr. was living there at the time. Maybe John Sr. heard the name and liked it.
Could Kawana be Native American? Some writers have claimed so, explaining it meant "healing waters" or similar. An anthropologist thought it possible it had Native roots, but "it sounded more like a fake Indian word that a PR person would invent."
If it were an Indian word, it doesn't come from the Southern Pomo dialect, where kawana means "turtle" (Barrett, 1908) and there are no turtles to be found in that section. And besides, Pomo locations weren't even named like that; a place would be called something like kawanakawi (turtle-water-place). Further, the "healing waters" nonsense is put to rest by the Taylor Mountain Park master plan, which determined "no sacred sites are known to be located on the property."
A final option will seem like a stretch, but hear me out. Recall John Taylor named his place White Sulphur Springs after the classy resort in West Virginia. The route taken to reach that famous place in the 19th century was the road known as the Kanawha Turnpike, which followed old Indian trails from Richmond to the Kanawha River Valley. (Believe it or not! Kanawha was considered in 1861 for the name of the new state that would be West Virginia.) Note that Kawana and Kanawha have only the second and third syllables flipped. How likely was it that Taylor would want another name very closely linked to the original resort? And would Taylor have even known about the White Sulphur Springs-Kanawha connection? Of the latter we can be certain: He was born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, which is at its farthest fifty miles from the old Kanawha Turnpike. He must have traveled it at least once during his boyhood, and certainly knew well the Kanawha name.
So there you have it: "Kawana" was a clever variation - or perhaps, the slight misremembering of an 82 year-old man - of a name created by the Piscataway, Delaware, or Shawnee tribes of modern-day West Virginia. Or it's Hawaiian. Or maybe it was mashed-up mumble of vowel sounds created by a marketing whiz who also dreamed up the phony "healing waters" legend. But this much is certain: You can search every inch around Kawana Springs and not find a single kawana.
Obl. Comstock House connection: Daughter Zana Taylor, who returned to the ranch and remodeled the old bathhouse, was a close friend of Anna May Bell, the young woman who was something of a godchild to Mattie and James Wyatt Oates. The Taylors threw more than one party in Bell's honor at their home at 512 Mendocino Ave (currently the Trek Bicycle Store). Zana's many doings at the Oates house can be found in our archives.
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| Detail of White Sulphur Springs postcard, c.1896. Courtesy Sonoma County Library |
UPDATE: There isn't much left of the old White Sulphur Springs/Kawana resort, so it's no great loss at the present time (2013) there is no public access to it without special permission. No sign of the hotel remains at all except for a few low stone retaining walls which terraced the grounds, as seen in the1896 postcard above.
The original gazebo, shown at right, still has the cradle-sized fountain basin from which the mineral water bubbled to the surface. The decorative icicles and fish scale shingles are typical of the Carpenter Gothic style popular in the 1880s. Note the railing is low enough to serve as a seat; those who believed drinking the warm mineral water was healthful would sip as much of it as they could bear over the course of a day.The bathhouse shown below is believed to have been built in 1876 and is surprisingly small, about 1200 ft. in a "T" floor plan. In front is a raised concrete fountain that probably offered another chance to drink the foul-smelling water before it was piped inside. Not shown to the left of the bathhouse is a stone-lined catchment with a rough pile of cemented stones in the center. The size and shape suggest a hot tub although its original use is unknown. Near the bathhouse is a dilapidated structure that may have been an automobile barn built around the 1930s which will not be preserved.
The county's plan for the area includes plans to convert the bathhouse into a small visitor center and possibly build a facsimile of the hotel as a bed and breakfast inn/hotel. Plans for the surrounding Taylor Mountain Park include an outdoor classroom/amphitheater, large picnic areas, camping grounds, a dog park, Frisbee golf park, and more.
TO REOPEN SPRINGS NEAR SANTA ROSAUnder Name of "Kawana Springs" the Old White Sulphur Springs Resort to Be Made Popular PlaceUnder Name of "Kawana Springs," the well known summer resort known for years as "White Sulphur Springs," owned by John S. Taylor, and which has been closed for a long time, is to be reopened and an endeavor made to regain the old time popularity the place once had and to add to its attractiveness.
The springs property, with the addition of twenty acres of fine timbered woodland, making the grounds forty acres, instead of twenty, has been taken over by "The Kawana Springs, Incorporated," headed by M. N. Winans and Thornton P. Preston. Mr. Winans is a well known insurance manager, who has made his home in Santa Rosa for some time, and enjoys an extensive acquaintance throughout the state, and Mr. Preston needs no introduction, as the former proprietor of the Hotels Lebanon and Overton in Santa Rosa, with a legion of friends among the traveling public.
Messrs. Winans and Preston have been negotiating for the acquisition of the Springs property for several weeks and have finally arranged the details. The big hotel building will be refurnished throughout and the grounds will be made most attractive. Another building in close proximity to the hotel will be fitted up as a clubhouse, and the bathhouses will all be remodeled and improved. In fact the gentlemen mean to have everything as neat and comfortable as possible for the accommodation of the large number of patrons they expect to entertain their this summer [sic]. Already they have a good-sized list of applications for accommodations and they expect to be ready to open the Kawana Springs resort on May 2.
Nature has been lavish and the place affords so many possibilities for the spending of a delightful vacation outing there, as well as its offering in the way of medicinal springs whose waters have been found to contain excellent curing qualities for various ailments. The analysis made by Dr. Winslow Anderson shows the Springs to be very valuable in the treatment of kidney diseases.
In addition [illegible microfilm] will also cater to the people of Santa Rosa and their friends by providing an excellent cuisine and other attractions. The Springs are located about two miles from the Court House and are of easy access over a well kept road, just a nice spin in an automobile or drive by carriage.
It was deemed advisable to change the name of the resort from White Sulphur Springs on account of the fact that there are already two resorts of that name in the state. Luther Burbank was appealed to in the matter of the selection of a name. He chose "Kawana," and his choice was accepted. The management would have liked to have named the place "Burbank Springs," but Mr. Burbank preferred not inasmuch as he had declined many offers for the use of his name for other places. It is needless to say that everybody wishes Messrs. Winans and Preston the greatest possible success in their big undertaking, and they mean to leave nothing undone to achieve success and make their place deservedly popular. The resort will be open winter and summer.
- Press Democrat, April 13, 1910
KAWANA HOTEL RAIDED: GIVES UP BIG STILL
A plant for the manufacture of illicit liquor, declared to be the largest ever uncovered in the north Bay region, was seized in a raid conducted by County Detective Pemberton and members of the sheriff's office late Tuesday, when the old Kawana Hotel, at White Sulphur Springs on Taylor mountain, was raided.
A still with 1400-gallon capacity was discovered in the place, along with 50 gallons of "jack," and boilers, mash tanks, cooling coils and other equipment. Two smaller stills were also taken in the same raid--one with a 250-gallon capacity and the other with a 150-gallon capacity.
George Darnell, 50, the only man at the place, was seized as operator. Darnell claimed that he was a steamfitter from San Francisco, and had been hired to clean up the works and dismantle the place. The mash tanks bore out his testimony, as they were clean and the still was not in operation.
Threaten Tear Bomb
Darnell at first barricaded himself in the attic and was only forced to come down when the officers threatened to throw tear bombs into his hiding place. Although they had no bombs with them, the ruse worked.
The main still was three stories high, and the seven 200-mash tanks were so connected up that the fermented mash could be pumped directly into the still. The plant was estimated to be worth $10,000.
In the opinion of the officers, the place belonged to a group of wholesale San Francisco bootleggers, who made the pure alcohol in the plant and turned it into gin for the San Francisco trade.
Short Time Only
Officers also believed that the plant was set up for only a short time in each place, a quantity of alcohol made and the plant dismantled and moved to another place before officers found it.
Pemberton has had the place under surveillance for some time, spending several nights in the vicinity in order to make sure of the activities before he staged the raid.
Kawana Springs was a well-known resort in the old days, but has been untenanted for several years, except for two or three short openings by minor companies, who could not make the place pay.
- Santa Rosa Republican, March 2, 1927
