In Sonoma county, the most important outcome of election day 1912 wasn't who would become president; it was whether voters would kill the roadhouses.
Before launching into this topic, I need to offer a mea culpa; a few articles here regarding the year 1912 are being updated. Accuracy is important (or should be) to anyone who cares about history, and events that happened around New Year 1913 shine a different light on some earlier stories. My small consolation is those late developments even caught local newspapers by surprise, as you'll read below.
In June 1912, voters in the unincorporated parts of the second district elected to go “dry” (the second district was then a north-south strip west of the Laguna, from the Russian River to Petaluma). Saloons were still allowed in the towns of Sebastopol and Petaluma but country roadhouses were forced to close, or at least stop serving alcohol. While the temperance movement was locally gathering steam in 1912 and 1913, both Santa Rosa newspapers expected the law to pass because roadhouses were harming property values and reducing productivity of farmworkers.
There were only about a dozen places in rural West County impacted by the closures, but the roadhouse scene was expanding closer to the county's more urban areas. It's not hard to understand why; more people had cars to escape the city, roads were being improved for autos, and towns (particularly Petaluma) were discouraging - and even banning - dancing to popular music. At the country roadhouse, anything goes.
Churches loudly condemned the roadhouses but community leaders only wrung hands. The Press Democrat lamented, "The number of saloons and road-houses in the Sonoma valley is out of all reason. No self-respecting community could be expected to continue forever to put up with conditions such as exist there." As a speaker in a series of talks called "What's the Matter with Santa Rosa?," attorney Thomas J. Butts complained the town was not growing as fast as it could "because of our surrounding roadhouses."
But as 1912 rolled on, nearly every week brought stories in the Bay Area papers about serious accidents, even deaths, because of roadhouse drunks "joy riding." Women were found to be drinking in public (horrors!) and some were prostitutes who were arrested. And on July 1, the governor of Oregon declared martial law as a platoon of cops laid siege to a pair of particularly notorious roadhouses outside Portland. Increasingly counties around the state were banning roadhouses.
Thus it was no great surprise to read the announcement of an "Anti-Roadhouse League" being formed here to get an item on the November ballot calling for prohibition throughout all parts of the unincorporated county. "The league is formed solely for the purpose of eliminating the road houses from the county," read the statement in the Santa Rosa Republican, "and is not dominated by any religious sect or temperance organization, and does not propose to interfere with licenses now held by hotels or summer resorts now in business or which may hereafter desire a retail license." This was the text of the proposed ordinance:
| No person, corporation, firm or association shall sell, or engage in the business of selling, offering for sale or giving away distilled, fermented, malt, vinous or other spiritous or intoxicating liquors or wines or beers in any portion of Sonoma county lying without the corporate limits of any city or town of said Sonoma county, except such person, corporation, firm or association engaged in the business of conducting a bona fide hotel, having at least thirty-five separate sleeping apartments properly furnished for the accommodation of guests, and having dining room at which meals are served at regular hours to boarders and the traveling public. |
That was at the end of August. Over the next two months before the vote, I can't find a single op/ed in either Santa Rosa paper concerning the proposal, pro or con. Make of that what you will; my interpretation is that they didn't think it had a chance in hell of passage. Unlike the earlier second district vote where ballots were cast only by those who lived within the affected rural areas, this was to be decided at a high-profile, November election where every voter in the county could have a say. And the city folk liked saloons (or at least the menfolk, who were allowed to drink inside, did).
Surprise! The ordinance passed easily - thirteen points, 56 to 43. All of the towns voted for it by a comfortable margin including Santa Rosa.
But actually that was only the first surprise; no one knew how to implement the new law, or whether it was really legal. A few days later, the Press Democrat offered an article headlined, "ANTI-ROAD HOUSE ELECTION NOW HELD TO BE INVALID." The Presiding Justice of the Appeals Court said it violated the "local option" law, where only a community could choose to make itself "wet" or "dry," as happened in the earlier second district vote. Towns had no say on the matter; Petaluma voters, for example, couldn't set the rules for distant Geyserville.
"The anti-roadhouse ordinance, carried at the election held in Sonoma county a week ago last Tuesday, is null and void," the PD declared, "there is no doubt whatever but that the election in this county on the matter is invalid." There were still no op/eds on the matter in either Santa Rosa paper, which is why I was lulled into presuming this really was not a Big Deal.
District Attorney Clarence Lea filed two complaints to test the ordinance in Superior Court. One was against Everett N. Ellsworth, who had a commonplace roadhouse just two blocks north of Santa Rosa city limits at the corner of Mendocino and Carr avenues, right across from today's SRJC. (Obl. Comstock House connection: A few years later, John A. Comstock, the divorced husband of Nellie and father of Hilliard Comstock et. al. would live in this house as a border with the Fisk family.)
The other suit was against John D’Arcy Connolly, an Irishman who had been on the Board of Supervisors in the 1880s and served as U.S. Consul in Auckland for eight years in the 1890s. Connolly owned the Hotel Altamont in Occidental, which was the nexus of West County social life.
(RIGHT: Hotel Altamont in Occidental, c. 1914. J. D. Connolly is to the right of man in white shirt and vest. Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library)The Hotel Altamont was a challenge to a very particular part of the ordinance, requiring a place to be a "bona fide hotel, having at least thirty-five separate sleeping apartments properly furnished for the accommodation of guests, and having dining room at which meals are served at regular hours." The Altamont qualified in every way - except it did not quite have the 35 guest rooms required. One has to believe the Anti-Roadhouse League chose that very precise, arbitrary number because they knew no place had that many beds.
A week before Christmas, the Connolly case was presented to Superior Court Judge Denny in a courtroom packed with an audience representing both sides. Denny ruled in favor of the ordinance immediately after arguments in order to expedite it proceeding to the California Supreme Court.
Confusion reigned. Most (all?) liquor licenses were to expire in just a few days, on January 1. The Board of Supervisors had stated no licenses would be issued "until the courts have passed upon the validity" of the ordinance. Since the matter was still headed to the State Supreme Court, was the law in effect or not?
District Attorney Clarence F. Lea declared on Dec. 28 that the ordinance would be followed. No new liquor licenses for roadhouses. No alcohol to be served after midnight on New Year's Eve anywhere outside of a handful of towns in the central part of the county. D.A. Lea would have been reckless if he didn't request a police guard that night.
All of this is prelude to the fallout in the following year, which will unfold in the following item. It's the wildest political story I've encountered for Sonoma county - emotions ran high on both sides. I'll close with this teaser: Six days into the new year, the Board met to consider the "injury being done to the legitimate business in the county." This was followed by a motion granting liquor licenses to fourteen country saloons who had filed affidavits with the county clerk swearing their hotels indeed have the required 35 rooms. One of the licenses went to J. D. Connolly - apparently he somehow discovered over the Christmas holidays the Altamont had enough rooms after all, and the Supervisors were more than happy to take his word for it.
It was the best of places it was the worst of places, somewhere everyone said they had fun, somewhere others said everyone sinned; it was close enough to town you could count on meeting friends, it was far enough away from town hopefully no one would recognize you; it was a legal business routinely caught breaking the law; loved and hated, tolerated and intolerable, it was any of the hundred-plus Sonoma County roadhouses in the early Twentieth Century.
Up to this point roadhouses have been peripheral to issues explored in this journal. Women weren't allowed to drink liquor or even enter a saloon so it was an interesting news item in 1907 when a roadhouse in the Sonoma Valley was closed after a party of men and women were spotted drinking together and cussing. Some places were also shut down for selling alcohol to Indians because under the strict 1908 county law there was a fine of $500 and six months in jail for selling booze to anyone with just one-fourth Native American blood. And in 1912, the sheriff raided a Fulton roadhouse because they were holding a dance where hipsters were breaking out those new, obscene "ragtime" dance steps.
(RIGHT: A roadhouse south of the Sonoma Plaza at the intersection of Broadway and Napa Road, c. 1900. There were at least two other roadhouses called One Mile House in early 20th century Sonoma County, west of Forestville and north of Healdsburg. Photo courtesy Western Sonoma County Historical Society )
Roadhouses were more than a saloon in the country. Sometimes they had a few bedrooms and it was claimed to be a hotel; sometimes food was served and the place called itself a restaurant, even if the only thing on the menu was a plate of saltine crackers (a couple of dives in Santa Rosa were busted in 1907 for serving up such a "meal"). But usually there was no pretense about the place; it could be an old farmhouse or shack, with a flat wooden board for a bartop, a few tables and chairs - and a liquor license.
Around 1910 most Americans probably lived only a few minutes away from a roadhouse (and maybe more than one) but that was nothing new. Here in Sonoma County, the 1877 county atlas shows three places a farmer could wet his whistle between Sebastopol and Santa Rosa and at least two were between Petaluma and Cotati, the most famous being Washoe House.
Being in the county, these were little fiefdoms ruled by the will and whim of the proprietor. Did saloons in town have to be closed on Sundays? Thirsty men could head out to the roadhouse, which was nearly always open. "Ragging" was outlawed in Petaluma in 1912 and Santa Rosa was under pressure to ban it as well, but there were no prudish rules about close contact dancing at the roadhouse (while there was no country ordinance against dancing, the deputy in Fulton apparently believed there was other monkey business afoot).
From at least 1910 on, the roadhouse and its offshoots take more of a central role in Sonoma County history. Some of the reasons were unique to where we are and who we were; some were more in common with other places in America. Certainly the advent of automobiles brought more traffic to roadhouses everywhere, but in Sonoma County we shouldn't make too much of it. At the time there was a popular electric trolley connecting all of central county as well as light rail going down the Sonoma Valley. There was probably a roadhouse only a few steps away from every rural train platform. And that's not even considering the booming playland along the Russian River which began to emerge after 1910, when the railway coming up the coast from San Francisco finally connected with the little train that rattled along the river. Every year new places popped up, making it a nearly continuous party scene. It would not be surprising to discover most money coming into the county by 1940 was tied directly to drinking and dancing along River Road.
Roadhouses always had a reputation for skirting the law, which was part of their rough appeal. Yes, there were arrests for selling liquor to Indians and women (plus allowing them inside) and come the years of Prohibition there was no better possible training for running a speakeasy than having owned a roadhouse. But increasingly activities in the unincorporated parts of Sonoma County would be tied to more serious crimes, including prostitution. And Santa Rosa may be to blame for some of that.
As longtime readers know, Santa Rosa had a major tenderloin district around the intersection of First and D streets, with at least a dozen houses operating. The city curbed prostitution somewhat in 1909, forcing the bordellos to be more discreet about their business and apparently pushing some of the traffic out into the countryside (MORE BACKGROUND). Soon after the crackdown a pair of "brothel agents" were arrested in El Verano, where they were apparently planning to setup a house. A few years later, a large bordello outside of Sebastopol was raided and closed. Never before had the Santa Rosa newspapers mentioned problems with prostitution in rural areas.
By 1912 the Sonoma Valley road was also glutted with roadhouses, causing the Press Democrat to lament something must be done to curtail them:
| There are so many saloons and road houses there that the district has become notorious. Much of the indignation aroused has been occasioned by the fact that practically every resort of this character is located right on the main county road, where it and the conditions it creates are constantly flaunted in the faces of the passers-by. Most of these places do not even have an excuse for existence, but are road-houses and nothing else...Present conditions in the beautiful Sonoma valley should never have been allowed to develop. Not all, but most of the road-houses there are cheap, unattractive places that have been established in the near vicinity of popular summer resorts in the hope of diverting trade that rightfully belongs to the institutions upon which they hoped to prey like leeches, they live off the blood created and furnished by somebody else. The number of saloons and road-houses in the Sonoma valley is out of all reason. No self-respecting community could be expected to continue forever to put up with conditions such as exist there. |
That led to the county trying to kill the roadhouses outright (or at least seriously hobble them), which created a political mess that will be unpeeled here later. Next, however, we're going to lurch forward more than twenty years to look at the aftermath of all this in El Verano, with the long residence of infamous madam "Spanish Kitty" and Sonoma County's claim to gangster fame with the stopover of trigger-happy Baby Face Nelson.
SALOON AND RESORT MEN FAVOR PROPER REGULATIONPresent Petition To the Board of Supervisors
"Whereas Residents and property owners of Agua Caliente and El Verano precincts have presented a written petition to this Board asking for additional regulations, concerning the issuance of retail liquor licenses, and the conduct of saloons, it is therefore
"Resolved, That no new or additional liquor licenses he issued for such business in either of said precincts, also that no license for any new saloon be granted until the number of saloons in said precincts become less than twelve, and that the number of such licenses be limited to twelve for both such precincts.
"It is also the sense of this Board that the ordinances governing the sale of liquor and the conduct of saloons be rigidly enforced, and that for the first offense a fine sufficient to have a deterrent effect be imposed, and for the second offense, in addition to any fine, this Board revoke the license of the offender."
At the meeting of the Board of Supervisors on Monday the Board was asked to adopt the above resolution, and the desire to have all the members of the board present when action was taken, resulted in its being deferred for that purpose. It is practically certain that the Supervisors will grant the prayer of the petitioners.
A petition from Agua Caliente and El Verano precincts, signed by about a hundred taxpayers of these districts, asking the Supervisors to take the action set forth in substance in the resolution mentioned above was presented to the Supervisors. The plan was suggested and brought to a head by the owners of summer resorts in the places mentioned, and they were here Monday in Supervisors' hall...
- Press Democrat, February 6, 1912
SONOMA VALLEY'S ROAD-HOUSES
It is reported that the people of Sonoma Valley are preparing to take determined steps to get rid of some of the road-houses which infest that region--that is, if such a thing be possible. They plan to do this by means of a special election. If such an election is held and results successfully, it will probably mean the closing of all the saloons now operating in the valley. The viticultural interests there are so extensive and so important that the idea of declaring for absolute prohibition is not [illegible microfilm]
Under the circumstances, it would seem that the relief asked for should come from the Board of Supervisors, who have the right to revoke as well as to grant the licenses under which these places are conducted closing up the objectionable road-houses and enforcing strict regulation of those resorts that are allowed to continue in business would probably remove all just cause for complaint, and at the same time it would allow the fairminded people of the valley a dignified way out of the perplexing situation which now confronts them.
That the residents of Sonoma Valley have just cause for complaint, no reasonable person can deny. There are so many saloons and road houses there that the district has become notorious. Much of the indignation aroused has been occasioned by the fact that practically every resort of this character is located right on the main county road, where it and the conditions it creates are constantly flaunted in the faces of the passers-by. Most of these places do not even have an excuse for existence, but are road-houses and nothing else. Others are part of reputable and well-established summer resorts--the kind that represent large investments and really attract people to such a community during the summer time. Comparatively few people have any serious objection to a resort of this character being allowed to conduct a bar or club-house in connection provided the same be properly managed and its existence not unduly emphasized.
Present conditions in the beautiful Sonoma valley should never have been allowed to develop. Not all, but most of the road-houses there are cheap, unattractive places that have been established in the near vicinity of popular summer resorts in the hope of diverting trade that rightfully belongs to the institutions upon which they hoped to prey like leeches, they live off the blood created and furnished by somebody else. The number of saloons and road-houses in the Sonoma valley is out of all reason. No self-respecting community could be expected to continue forever to put up with conditions such as exist there. The Board of Supervisors more than anybody else are responsible for these conditions, which have developed gradually and perhaps without full realization upon anyone's part of the ultimate consequences. The time has now come when there must be a change. This can be accomplished without any of the bitterness that is invariably engendered by a hard-fought prohibition campaign--a struggle that arrays neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, brother against brother. The authorities responsible should remedy the conditions complained of, and at once. It will not do to merely adopt "resolutions of intention."
- Press Democrat, February 7, 1912
A NEW VOTER WRITES LETTERDiscusses the Conditions in the Sonoma Valley
Editor REPUBLICAN: Allow me a little space in your paper to express some views on the coming extra election, in which we will have to vote for "wet" or "dry" in this Supervisorial District...
...I have lived here for almost a quarter of a century, and have friends and neighbors in both factions. On both sides are bad and good arguments. Let us consider some of these from a financial and moral standpoint.
First the financial: Up to about ten years ago this valley was dead. Land near Sonoma, El Verano and along the valley could hardly be sold at any price; settlers were few and far between. Within the last decade there has been a great increase in population and real estate values. In the last five years Sonoma has forged ahead more than it did in the twenty-five previous years--with her court house, the water, light and sewer systems. The valley has also good electric light and telephone systems. What brought all this prosperity to the valley? The summer people.
...This valley is emphatically a summer resort and dependent on that alone for its prosperity. It creates a demand for hotels, such as Boyes, Fetters, Richards and the many other hotels throughout the valley; it creates a demand for small holdings for summer homes; it creates a home market for farm products; hence the demand for small farms and the rise in real estate values. The land, which could not be sold for $100 an acre, in selling fast now for $250 an acre.
Next the moral: Every decent person must and does object to the way (it is claimed) some of the road houses are run. There are plenty of laws regulating such matters. Why are they not enforced? And who is to blame? Why do not some of these people who are clamoring so loudly about the vileness of the places not go to headquarters with facts and data so that their license could be revoked? ...
A NEW VOTER. Glen Ellen, February 13, 1912
- Santa Rosa Republican, February 15, 1912