![]() The story goes like this: Andrew Hallidie once saw a team of horses, while pulling a tram up the Clay Street Hill, fall to the cobblestones, exhausted and injured. Deeply moved by the incident, Hallidie became determined to develop a system to save the noble beasts from further fatal exertion. Voilá (so the story goes)! The Cable Car is born. Evidence: Hallidie's first cable car descended the Clay Street Hill at 5:00 am (so no one would get hurt in case it didn't work) on the morning of August 2nd, 1873 (well recorded in newspapers of the time). But what really happened here? Things you should know: • Andrew Smith, the mechanical genius who originated cable r..... |
• Carleton Watkins - Photographing Early California ![]() Carleton Watkins was an early photographer who captured the Western landscapes, new cities, and industries. He photographed burgeoning San Francisco, land baron estates, Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Pacific coast, and mining and rail operations. His photographs of Yosemite, seen by few people at the time, encouraged Abraham Lincoln to sign a bill which was the forerunner for the National Park System. Considered one of the best landscape photographers, he made thousands of majestic images. However, Watkins had financial problems, and many of his photographs (including many in the San Francisco History Center collection) are attributed to other people who acquire..... |
• West side known as city's playground ![]() (Reprinted from the Sunset Beacon, August 2014) The Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods are often seen as sleepy, quiet communities for families, immigrants, surfers and college students. People from outside the area rarely visit for entertainment unless they are attending a concert in Golden Gate Park or spending the day at the beach on a rare warm day. However, this part of the City has changed dramatically since San Francisco's early days. At one point, it was a hotbed for amusement and leisure. On the evening of July 15, the SF Public Library hosted a lecture at the Anza Branch about the area's history. Presenting a slideshow titled "The Outside Lands: A History of Ent..... |
• San Francisco's Old Clam House on the Lost Waterfront ![]() The Old Clam House, opened in 1861, is one of the oldest restaurants in San Francisco. Located on the corner of Bayshore Boulevard and Oakdale Avenue, it has also been called the Clam House and Oakdale Bar. When it opened, the restaurant was on the waterfront, sitting on Islais Creek which flowed into San Francisco Bay, and surrounded by a shallow marshy estuary. At that time, the restaurant was connected to downtown San Francisco by two wood-planked roads. Within ten years the marsh was filled in, more than 100 buildings were constructed on piles over the creek, and the area became known as New Butchertown. After the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, even more debris was dumped into the marsh. ..... |
![]() The Mark Twain Papers and Project at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library is converting the works of Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens) into HTML files, making Twain’s work available electronically and for web searches. The Twain Project is translating all of Mark Twain's surviving private papers and published works, including notebooks, letters, unpublished manuscripts, drafts, deleted chapters of published books, essays, newspaper columns, editorials, and speeches. There are approximately 27,000 letters, 150 books from his library (many with notes written in the margins), clippings, scrapbooks, interviews, bills, checks, and photographs. The Project is converting not only items in the ..... |
![]() Of the many dreamers, promoters, and con men who built Gold Rush San Francisco, perhaps none was as hard-working and well-liked as Henry “Honest Harry” Meiggs. Born in 1811 in New York, by his mid-twenties Harry had managed, through his own energy and abilities, to purchase a lumber mill in present-day Brooklyn. Caught by a business downturn in the 1840s, Meiggs joined the throngs heading West. But before departing, the resourceful lumberman used his remaining funds to purchase a sailing vessel and load it up with lumber to ship around the Horn. Arriving in San Francisco in January 1849, he fetched a fabulous price for his cargo. With his profits he built a sawmill and a small wharf..... |
• Adolph Sutro Arrives in SF (Part 4) ![]() City Guide Jack Leibman, a volunteer at the Sutro Library, has been sharing with GuideLines readers descriptions from the letters of German immigrant Adolph Sutro about his 1850 journey from New York to San Francisco. The previous installment featured Sutro’s description of his dreadful passage across the isthmus of Panama. In this fourth and final installment, Sutro, after further adventures, at last reaches his destination. After six steamy, disagreeable days in Panama, on November 1, 1850, for $300, Adolph boarded the California bound..... |
• Talbot Green and His Green Street ![]() Running from the Embarcadero to the Presidio, Green Street was named in William Eddy’s 1849 survey of San Francisco. But just who is the Green of Green Street? Like many of San Francisco’s earliest settlers, he was not who he seemed. Talbot Green came west in the spring of 1841 in the first immigrant party to travel over the Sierras to California. The arduous journey of this group of forty-eight settlers who set off together from Independence, Missouri, was chronicled in the diary kept by their secretary, John Bidwell. After surviving the grueling journey, Green traveled to Monterey and joined Thomas Larkin as a junior partner, conducting business on Larkin’s behalf in Los Angeles and ..... |
• Goats on Goat Island in San Francisco ![]() Goat Island – now called Yerba Buena Island – is located halfway between San Francisco and Oakland. This piece of land has had a number of names, most referring to its inhabitants. José de Canizares, believed to be the first European to sail through the Golden Gate, named it Isla del Carmen in 1776. Apparently that name never stuck, because the locals referred to it as Sea Bird, Wood, and Yerba Buena (for the mint plant growing all over the island). When people started settling in California after the Gold Rush, there were a large number of goats brought to the island by squatters – hence the name Goat Island. The first California legislature, when passing an act establishing t..... |
![]() June 29, 1776—just a few days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence a continent away in Philadelphia—is celebrated as the official birthday of San Francisco. It was on this date that the Spaniards celebrated their first mass under a temporary shelter at the site of the future Mission Dolores. In March of that year, a Spanish scouting party under Captain Juan Bautista de Anza had determined the sites for a future presidio overlooking the entrance to the bay and, in a sheltered valley to the southeast, a mission. They named the small stream and lake where the mission was to be built Arroyo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (Lake of our Lady of Sorrows). De Anza’s advance..... |
• Diana Statue in Sutro Heights Park ![]() Diana the Huntress…Artemis. If you have been on our Lands End: Sutro Highs and Lows tour, you have seen this statue at Sutro Heights, the park located in the northwest corner of San Francisco near Ocean Beach. It was once the home of Adolph Sutro, Comstock Silver Baron, San Francisco mayor, land developer, and builder of Sutro Baths and the second, most grandiose Cliff House. Sutro loved statues, and at one time had 200 surrounding the grounds and niches on the cliffs above Ocean Beach. Only two original statues remain--the Stag and Diana the Huntress. In addition, gracing the entrance gates are copies of the original Lions that were replaced after they deteriorated. Sutro collected thes..... |
• San Francisco Armory in the Mission City Guides offers three different tours in the Mission. None venture remotely near the hulking ugly pseudo-Moorish Armory building at 1800 Mission Street. With clinker brick exteriors, four octagonal towers, and 200,000 square feet of space, this forbidding structure was built in 1912-14 as an arsenal for the US National Guard, replacing one in the Western Addition destroyed in 1906. Its ultimate cost, including land, was $500,000. Besides its official function as a military training and storage facility, it was used frequently for sporting events and prizefights. Said to be the largest building of architectural importance in the Mission, it has the largest unsupported enclosed volu..... |
I am the granddaughter of four Irish immigrants. They all came to the United States in the early 1900s, part of the wave of Irish immigrants who came to the United States because of the political unrest in Ireland during her struggle for independence from England. My mother’s parents first settled in Oakland and later in San Francisco, and my father’s parents lived in Los Angeles. They all came to California by way of the transcontinental railroad. They were sponsored by relatives who were already living here, and when they were able, they themselves sponsored other relatives from Ireland. I grew up in San Francisco very conscious of my Irish roots. We would celebrate St. Patrick’s..... |
• San Francisco Coffee Roasters ![]() Coffee is one of the most exported commodities in the world. It originated in Yemen and by the 1400s trading brought it to Africa, Arabia, and the Mediterranean. After achieving popularity in Europe in the 1600s, “the Wine of Araby” traveled to America, where by the end of that century it overtook beer as the favorite breakfast drink. During the Mexican-American War in 1846, it was a ration for soldiers. Traders spread coffee to other hot climate growing areas, including the East and West Indies. And just like the Gold Rush immigrants traveling to California, green coffee beans also came by ship. San Francisco became a center for coffee roasting businesses, with coffee a main part of t..... |
![]() The following are excerpts from Rand Richards’ newest book, Mud, Blood and Gold - San Francisco in 1849. All throughout the year 1849, thousands of people poured into San Francisco “like bees to a swarming.” One of those was John White Geary. Geary, for whom Geary Boulevard and Street are named, spent only three years in San Francisco but he looms large in the City’s early history. picture1left300 Geary was born in western Pennsylvania in 1819. His penniless father died when he was 14, forcing young Geary to leave school to work to support his widowed mother. He put himself through college and studied law and civil engineering. During the Mexican War, he served as a ..... |
• Stockton and Kearny, Ending at Mason ![]() There is no such intersection. Stockton and Kearny, like their street names, pursued parallel courses - but eventually collided and ended at odds. Both streets start at Market Street, but Kearny ends at Telegraph Hill, while Stockton, befitting its namesake, runs to the Embarcadero. Unlike their streets, the two men did intersect rather uncomfortably and ignominiously during the taking of California, and later at the sensational court-martial of John Frémont in Washington. Commodore Robert Stockton arrived in Monterey to replace the retiring Commodore Sloat, who had just occupied Monterey. This was a crucial moment in California history in July 1846, shortly after the declaration of war ..... |
• A Trip to California in 1856 - Part 1 ![]() Isabelle Walton Lusk wrote her memoir in the 1920s, when she was in her 90's, about traveling to California. Her great-grandson, Eric Bennion, heard from his mother that Isabelle was looking for her lost father who disappeared somewhere near Nicaragua on the journey back to Bangor, Maine. Other relatives intimated that she was actually not looking for Dad, but for treasure he supposedly buried in California. More likely, thinks Eric, she just did not want to be the daughter who was assigned caretaker of her mother - and took her opportunity to escape Maine. Her memoir will be published in GuideLines in installments. Part 1 - Isabelle Prepares to Travel On October 16..... |
• A Trip to California in 1856 - Part 2 ![]() This article is a continuation of Isabelle Walton Lusk’s memoir. She journeyed from Bangor, Maine to the California Sierras. In Part 1, Isabelle described herself and her trip preparations. Part 2 - Isabelle Meets her Chaperon and Travels to New York So with my two trunks, my [several] hundred dollars, [I traveled over the Maine countryside] on the 23rd of November 1856 for California. I took a steamer to Belfast where I met my chaperon, Mrs. Lucille Barnard.(1) She with her two bo..... |
• A Trip to California in 1856 - Part 3 ![]() In the first two parts of Isabelle Walton's memoir, she traveled from Maine to New York City, and was separated from her chaperon on the way to their hotel. She mistakenly went to the luxury hotel Astor House, while Lucille Barnard was at another hotel. Part 3 - Isabelle dines at the Astor House, meets her future husband I sat a moment and said do you think it is possible they took Mrs. Barnard to another hotel? That might be, or my coach took me to another hotel. I asked quickly what hotel is this? "Why, this is the Astor House," [said Mrs. Ashley]. [I thought], I suppose their coach will take me to the [steamer]. [She also said], "The city is full of ..... |
• A Trip to California in 1856 - Part 4 ![]() Twenty-one year old Isabelle Walton traveled from Maine to California, and wrote this memoir in her 90s. In Parts 1-3, Isabelle wrote about preparing for her trip, meeting her traveling companion, dining in New York, and meeting Mr. Salmon Lusk. You can see the earlier parts on the City Guides website. Part 4 - Boarding the Ship People were falling over Mrs. Barnard's carpetbag and jostling us right and left trying to find their staterooms [on the steam ship]. I found ours at last. We were so far in, what is called the aft.(1) Light filtered through from a small porthole in the side of the ship. |
• A Trip to California in 1856 - Part 5 ![]() In her 90s, Isabelle Lusk wrote about her journey from Maine to California. At the time of her writing, she had lost her sight and much of her hearing. As she wrote her memoir on a manual typewriter, using onionskin paper, she often did not hear the carriage return bell. She typed over many of her remembrances and parts of this memoir are lost. In Parts 1-4, Isabelle described her background and trip preparations, meeting her traveling companion, and finding her way to the steamship. You can find the earlier installments on the City Guides website. Part 5 - Off to Panama When the dinner bell rang, Henry was sound asleep but little Charley was wakeful. I told [Mrs. Barnard..... |
• A Trip to California in 1856 - Part 6 ![]() Over the last year GuideLines has been publishing the memoir of Isabelle Walton Lusk. She traveled from Maine to California when she was 21, and wrote this memoir in her 90s. You can read the previous installments on the City Guides website where she describes meeting her chaperon Mrs. Lucille Barnard, arriving at the wrong hotel in New York, and being rescued from a hooped skirt mishap by the man who would become her husband (she refers to him as My Knight.) In this part, Isabelle has boarded the steamship that will take her to the Panama Railroad. Part 6 - Life on the Ship It seemed we were overloaded. Our steamer was only allowed nine hundred passengers a..... |
• A Trip to California in 1856 - Part 7 ![]() In earlier episodes Isabelle traveled by steam ship from Bangor to New York City, freshened up (accidentally) at the exclusive Astor Hotel, and met her future husband while getting stuck in her hooped skirt exiting a coach (apparently one of the reasons this fashion never really took hold.) From that point on she refers to Mr. Lusk as My Knight. In the last episode she described her traveling companions on the steam ship to Panama; and she continues in this part. You can read Parts 1 - 6 on the City Guides website. In 1856 more women and children were traveling to California. One man stated during this period, "The greatest annoyance on board the ship is the number of babies and ch..... |
• A Trip to California in 1856 - Part 8 ![]() This article is a continuation of Isabelle Walton Lusk's memoir about traveling from Maine to California. Even though steam ships did not depend on wind, weather was still important for smooth traveling. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of his trip on a steamer. "I was in the forward part of the vessel where all the great waves struck and broke with voices of thunder. In the next room to mine, a man died. I was afraid that they might throw me overboard instead of him in the night."(1) Part 8 - Coal Stop in Kingston, JamaicaWe soon [traveled] down to where it was beginning to be hot, and poor Mrs. Bernard almost suffocated w..... |
![]() Well…..we are all embarrassed about this. The Mission Dolores Neighborhood and Mission guides held a special workshop with Christopher Richard. He is the Associate Curator of Aquatic Biology at the Oakland Museum of California, and has researched what he thinks is the story of the San Francisco mission founded on the shores of a "now-vanished" lake. Guides have all been telling our walkers about this lake on the Mission tours. He thinks it is a misconception. In his research, Christopher has come to the conclusion that there was no lake where Mission Dolores was founded. He has arrived at the position that:
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• Pied Piper Returns to Palace ![]() Public reaction was swift and vocal when the Palace Hotel in March announced plans to sell its Maxfield Parrish painting “The Pied Piper” at Christie’s auction house. Twitter feeds streamed, online petitions popped up, and the hotel switchboard began buzzing relentlessly. Even San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee called, asking hotel management to reconsider. picture1left600 How could a “mere” painting generate such passion and affection? The main reason probably is its longevity. It’s been hanging behind the bar at the hotel since 1909, with a brief interruption during Prohibition when it moved to a ballroom after the bar was closed. The painting returned to the bar a..... |
• Literary Industries: Chasing a Vanishing West ![]() Hubert Howe Bancroft is primarily remembered today as the originator of the world-renowned Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Voracious bibliophile, avid historian, and self-taught man of letters, Bancroft (or “H. H.” as he is familiarly known) followed an adventurous youth with a literary career that sought to chronicle and preserve the early history of California and the American West. In Literary Industries, edited from H. H.’s autobiography by his direct descendent Kim Bancroft, we encounter the dynamic personality who, with the aid of his assistants, achieved this impressive goal. Literary Industries will be published by Heyday in January 2014. T..... |
• Mrs. A.S.C. Forbes and the Bells of El Camino Real! ![]() picture1left200 First in a series of articles about extraordinary women in California history. From www.mysfpast.com, used with permission. The El Camino Real was a trail blazed by early Spanish soldiers and missionaries in the 1700s, connecting the 21 California missions. By the 1850s, much of the El Camino Real had become overgrown and the missions were falling into decay. Around 1900, two women’s groups, the Native Daughters of the American West and the California Federation of Women’s Clubs joined forces to preserve the California missions and mark the historic El Camino Real. Mrs. Armitage Suton Carion Forbes (she preferred using her husband’s name) helped design the be..... |
• Rivet Rivet: The Birth of Blue Jeans ![]() Merchant Levi Strauss could sell, and tailor Jacob Davis could sew. Working together they received the first U.S. Patent for blue jeans in 1873. The Levi Strauss & Co Archives, located at the company’s headquarters, 1155 Battery Street, records the birth of blue jeans using thousands of posters, photographs, and garments. Designers from around the world visit the collection, called The Vault, for inspiration. It’s open from 8 am to 7 pm Monday through Friday, and 10 am to 5 pm on weekends. Donations are welcome. ..... |
• The Cliff House: Celebrating 150 Years ![]() Built in 1863 by Senator John Buckley and C.C. Butler, the Cliff House was a destination for the wealthy, to enjoy fine food and views. As high society gave way to the hoi poloi, Adolph Sutro, whose estate overlooked it, purchased the Cliff House in 1883, hoping to restore its grandeur and exclusivity. On Christmas Day, 1894, the Cliff House was gutted by fire. Undaunted, Sutro rebuilt it bigger and better, as a French chateau eight stories tall. It burned to the ground again, in 1907. The third Cliff House was built in 1909 by Sutro’s daughter, Dr. Emma Merritt, with support from John Taft and several investors. The most recent restoration was by restaurant owners Dan and Mary Hountalas and..... |
• The Beat Goes On: City Lights at 60 ![]() picture1right300 Eat. Sleep. Read. Provoke. So says one of many eye-catching signs at City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The independent bookstore, located at 261 Columbus Avenue, is a popular stop on North Beach tours. Step inside and you’ll find plenty to feed your mind. City Lights was co-founded in 1953 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin as the first all paperbound bookstore in the country. From the start it was a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals. The bookstore became known as a gathering spot for the Beat poets, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, in the 1950s. In 1956, Ferlinghetti was arrested on obscenity charges for publishing Ginsberg’s ..... |
• History of the Historic Ship, Alma ![]() picture1right300 Built in a Hunters Point shipyard in 1891, the Alma was named for the granddaughter of shipbuilder Fred Siemer, a German immigrant. She’s had several renovations over her long life. In 1918, Siemer’s son-in-law and the real Alma’s father, James Peterson, removed her masts and used her as a barge to tow sacks of salt up from South Bay ponds. In 1926, a new owner Frank Resech installed a gasoline engine. Resech and his wife lived and worked aboard Alma, using her to dredge for oysters and haul containers of the shells up to Petaluma to be ground up for chicken feed. She was sold again in the 1940s to Peter John Gambetta who used her as a dredger until he retired in 1957. Th..... |
• Sweet Treats: Chocolate and Chocolate Makers Chocolate Tired of making the same old resolution year after year? Lose 10 pounds. Floss. Exercise. Eat more fruits and vegetables. This year, how about making a resolution you’ll want to keep? Support Bay Area artisans. Shop local merchants. Eat more chocolate. Chocolate has been part of San Francisco history since the Gold Rush. The two oldest chocolate companies in the U.S. -- Ghirardelli and Guittard -- both started in San Francisco and still make their chocolate here in the Bay Area. Inside this issue, we’ll share the history of these two iconic companies and their founders. But today, San Francisco is attracting a new breed of chocolate artisans. We visited se..... |
![]() Three Chocolatiers: Charles, Recchiuti and XOX picture1right200In 2004, Charles Chocolates was launched by Chuck Siegal who started making chocolate creations in the kitchen of San Francisco’s Jewish Community Center. This was actually Siegal’s second venture into the chocolate world; he started his first chocolate company at age 25 with the help of Joseph Schmidt, but later sold it. Charles Chocolates soon moved to larger space in Emeryville using Guittard chocolate to make their hand-decorated bon bons and signature bars embedded with organic fruits and nuts. Now the company is back in San Francisco, where their selection includes edible boxes made of so..... |
![]() San Francisco is the birthplace of two of the oldest chocolate makers in America: Ghirardelli and Guittard. Both have their roots in the Gold Rush. Both their companies still make their chocolate in the Bay Area today. Here are the stories of these two pioneer companies and their founders. picture1right200Ghirardelli The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company is the oldest chocolate company in America. Domingo Ghirardelli was born in Italy, near Genoa, the son of an importer of exotic food. At age 20, Domingo went to South America to work in the coffee and spice trade. He opened a store in Lima, Peru selling coffee, cocoa powder and spices. Domingo’s neighbor in Li..... |
• Love, Love Me Do: Finding a Mate Out West ![]() WANTED:
From the 1870s through the turn of the century, matrimonial catalogs and periodicals flourished in America, full of ads that brought hundreds of lonely hearts together on the new frontier. Single women from the East, including Civil War widows, and eligible men living out West placed or responded to notices in Matrimonial News, a weekly paper printed in San Francisco and Kansas City. In Object Matrimony: The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the Western Frontier, author Chris Enss reports: “A code of..... |
• Mother of San Francisco: Juana Briones 1802-1889 ![]() picture1right180 No diaries of Juana Briones exist to tell her story, but testimonies of people she doctored, fed, and gave sanctuary to speak volumes. One of the first residents of Yerba Buena, Juana has been called the “Mother of San Francisco.” Compassionate and resourceful, she was renowned for caring for the sick and for the medicinal tea she made from the Yerba Buena plant. She had learned healing practices from her Native Californian friends, and later became expert as both a bone-setter and midwife, training others including her nephew who became the first doctor in Bolinas. Historians have compared her to Clara Barton, the Civil War nurse who founded the Red Cross. The sketch on..... |
• The Emporium: Grand Dame of Market Street ![]() Many native San Franciscans have fond memories of the “Big E.” It was the place where you got your first grown-up jacket, did your back-to-school shopping, and rode the big slide on the roof or, at Christmas time, the train. Christmas also meant a visit with Santa and a photo. A trip downtown was something special that you dressed up for, and in the 1950s that meant gloves and a hat. picture1left350 The Emporium aimed for a middle-class clientele, and for over 100 years after its founding in 1897 it not only succeeded but thrived, despite near total destruction in the 1906 earthquake. The Union Square stores — Magnin, the City of Paris, and the White House — catered to the hig..... |
• PPIE100: San Francisco’s 1915 World’s Fair and the Dawn of Championship Auto Racing ![]() This year we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the international debut of the Miller Engine, an event that would completely revolutionize the aviation, marine and automotive industries, determine the identity and international relevance of American motor sports, and usher in a Golden Age of championship auto racing. The 1915 American Grand Prix and Vanderbilt Cup Race, held in conjunction with the Panama- Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, were seminal events in the history of auto racing. They occurred at a critical juncture in motor sports, when the automotive industry was growing at an exponential rate, and right before racecar design changed hands from big auto manuf..... |
![]() At a time when urban development in San Francisco is more visible than it has been in generations, it's easy to forget nature. Yet the built environment, from building types and heights to locations and angles of streets, reflect physical constraints linked to the original natural conditions of our landscape. The Seep City Map of Water Explorations, a trove of technical data disguised as an art poster, was installed in March in an eight-by-eight-foot display on Divisadero Street at McAllister. It’s been a magnet for explorers, especially those interested in water and history. The Green Earth food store has provided the exhibit space. The purpose of the project, which is presented by Th..... |
The following are excerpts from Rand Richards’ newest book, Mud, Blood and Gold - San Francisco in 1849.
All throughout the year 1849, thousands of people poured into San Francisco “like bees to a swarming.” One of those was John White Geary. Geary, for whom Geary Boulevard and Street are named, spent only three years in San Francisco but he looms large in the City’s early history.
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