Feb. 28th: The Broderick-Terry duel, monument(s) #3.

This was the site on which they held the duel, early in the morning of September 13th, 1859. It is, if anywhere can be said to be so, a lovely place to die. Perhaps even more than a velvety lawn of a golf course in a streetcar suburb of Sacramento, this sheltered glen evokes all the natural mythology of wild California.

The dispute between David Colbreth Broderick and David Smith Terry was personal more than it was political: Terry was a Lecompton Democrat, which is to say he supported the proslavery constitution adopted by a convention at Lecompton, Kansas prior to that state's admission to the Union. He also wanted California to legalize slavery. Broderick, a Free Soiler, was opposed to both of these things.

There were other aspects to what was going on, of course. Senator Broderick's senior colleague in the US Senate, William Gwin was also a Lecompton Democrat. By some reports, Broderick's dispute was more with Gwin than it was with Terry, and lay in the fact that Broderick, as an anti-slavery Democrat, was increasingly isolated within his own party. Still, it was Terry's speech at a political rally in Sacramento that prompted the immediate duel challenge.*

Which was a shame, in some respects. The two men had once been friends, and Broderick had even defended Terry publicly when the latter had been tried for attempted murder by the Vigilance Committee of 1856.

Terry's post-duel career was not particularly distinguished. He served in the 8th Texas Cavalry in the Civil War, trying as best he could to preserve and protect an economy based upon the bodily exploitation of human chattels. After the war, and subsequent to his first wife's death, he married the mistress of Bill Sharon (who made his fortune gaming Comstock Lode stock as Nevada branch manager of the Bank of California). This, after losing what we would now call a palimony case on her behalf.

The judge who heard that case -- Senior Justice of the Federal Circuit Court for California Stephen J. Field -- had also been a friend of Broderick's, back in the day. He ruled against the Terrys on appeal.

Some months later, and perhaps in an attempt to restage his moment of glory thirty years prior, Terry came upon Field at a train depot in Lathop** and slapped him. That gesture was at one time understood to be provocation to a duel. By the 1880s, however, the semiotics of personal violance were interpreted elsewise, and Judge Field's bodyguard reacted badly, gunning Terry down where he stood.

The widow Terry died as a ward of the state, at the insane asylum in Stockton.

Broderick, on the other hand, was not exactly as fresh as a daisy, despite what we tend to think of those martyred for the cause of freedom. He made his fortune striking debased coinage in San Francisco, in the days before they got around to establishing a mint precisely in order to prevent that sort of thing. The fact that he was on Terry's side during the disputes of 1856 should give you some sense of his personal character. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, the most fabulously corrupt politician to grace the state in the years before the Gilded Age. He is credited with bringing a Tammany-style machine to San Francisco, and with perfecting the art of farming out public offices to bidders at set fees.

He died of his dueling wound at the age of 39. He had no immediate survivors, having never married.

After his services, he was interred at Lone Mountain Cemetary (later Mt. Laurel, now UCSF) in San Francisco. The state paid for his monument, which was relocated to Colma when they cleared all the cemetaries in the City.

Though California was never in any real danger of legalizing slavery, nor of joining the rebellion after the firing on Fort Sumter, still his death is credited with shifting public opinion in the state decidedly toward the cause of abolition, and Union.

In case you are curious, I am standing where Broderick stood, while the picture was taken from Terry's vantage.

*This speech linked Broderick, in a _very_ old school phrase, to "Black Douglas." This was meant to refer to Frederick Douglass, or perhaps Stephen Douglas, but in any event _not_ the 14th-century Scottish knight, supporter of Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn and thorn in the side of Edward II of England.

**If the name of this town seems familiar, it is because it was featured recently in various newspapers as the ne plus ultra of the recent housing bubble.

Feb. 28th: The Broderick-Terry duel, monument #2.

It is a little unclear why this is here, except perhaps as a sighting-post on the little trail that leads from the official marker to the actual site of the duel.

This post was donated, apparently, by a Mr. Elio Fontana. I have been unable to find out anything about Mr. Fontana, except that (a) he is almost certainly not the current member of the Italian Parliament (Christian Democrat party), though (b) he may be the man for whom the football field at Jefferson High School in Daly City is named.

Feb. 28th: The Broderick-Terry duel (no. 19).

This is our last site. It will have three posts, because there are really three monuments. This is the first, official, marker.

March 31st: Walerga Assembly Center (no. 934)

This was where they rounded up all the Japanese-Americans in Sacramento, in preparation for shipping off to concentration camps in the interior.

The plaque reads, in full:

LEST WE FORGET

"Walerga Assembly Center was established by the United States at the outset of World War II to assemble and temporarility detain, without charge or trial, 4739 Sacramento residents solely because of their Japanese ancestry. Approximately 120,000 persons were uprooted from their West Coast homes and interned in ten War Relocation Centers. Over two-thirds were American citizens by birth. Given the opportunity, many thousands left the ten centers to work on farms and in war industries or to serve with valor in the armed forces. Their acts and deeds gave living rpoof that Americanism is a matter of mind and heart, not a matter of race or ancestry. May this memorial remind all Americans to be alert so that such injustices never recur.

Camp Kohler succeeded Walerga Assembly Center with the departue of the last Japanese American internees in late June, 1842. After being taken over by the Army Signal Corps, the camp's facilities were greatly expanded to house and train military personnel. Camp Kohler became one of the Corps' three principal training centers during World War II.

Dedicated by the Japanese American Community Sacramento in cooperation with Sunrise Recreation and Park District. February 1987."

The Camp, and later park, were once much greater in extent then they are today. I-80 was punched through here, and ate up a great deal of the real estate. What is left is a pocket park surrounded by streets named after inventors, fruit trees, and the wives and daughters of land developers.

March 31st: The William Land Park golf course, where C.K. McClatchy went to his reward.

"Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay."

Robert Frost

On April 16th, 1989* C.K. McClatchy dropped from a heart attack near this spot. If it can be said of anywhere, this is a lovely place to die.

C.K. was the editor of the newspaper founded by his great-grandfather (of the same name), an affable editor/publisher of the old-school Ben Bradlee/Katherine Graham/Arthur Sulzberger mold and a liberal of the Stevenson model. He once won a libel suit brought by US Senator Paul Laxalt (R-Nevada) for publishing that which everyone already knew: Laxalt's parents had run a casino and brothel when he was a kid.

McClatchy's grandmother was a Briggs, one of those families that came over the passes in covered wagons.

The old family manse is now a branch of the city library.

The high school named for his great-grandfather is about two miles north of where this picture was taken.

1300 people came to his service, which was held in Exhibit Hall B of the Community Center.** Large swaths of the state's political class showed up, including former Governor Pat Brown, and later governor Gray Davis. It was the biggest memorial service in this town since anyone could remember.

I was taught to memorize this poem as an exercise in drama class around this time, which is why I brought it up here. It was the first time I'd ever been taught to appreciate the symbolism of death.

Four weeks after the memorial service, the LA Times reported what the Bee never did: when McClatchy died, he was HIV-positive.

* Incidentally, this was also my 15th birthday.

** Two years later, my senior prom would be held in this same space. 21 years later, Roy Ashburn would be arrested for drunk driving in front of the building. There are times when Sacramento feels really, really small.

March 31st: Sacramento City Cemetary (no. 566).

The cemetary is closed on Wednesdays, which is why I had to take this picture through the bars of the gate.

Everyone who wasn't buried at Sutter's cemetary (which we saw at the beginning) was buried here. Including Sutter's son, J.A. Jr.

March 31st: Frank "Marbletop" Merriam.

Just in case you were curious.

March 29th: The Senator Hotel.

The original smoky back room. It was on this verandah that Artie Samish, the original poor boy made good, a guy that went from East LA to a position at the DMV, and from thence to a glamorous career as the lobbyist to beat them all, held court.

It may, in fact, have been from a phone brought to him on these very steps that he called up Governor Frank Merriam, across the street. Merriam, as you may remember, is the fellow whose election victory over Upton Sinclair Samish had personally orchestrated. In any case, this is what Mr. Samish is reported to have said when Merriam didn't do some petty favor or other:

"Listen here, you bald-headed son of a bitch, I put you into the governor's chair, and I can take your fat ass out of it if I want!"

The airport ticket office to which Didion refers in "Notes From a Native Daughter" is now gone, replaced by the California State Pipe Trades Council. Same point, different embroidery.

This does not count towards the total.

March 31st: Posey's.

The second smoky back room. It might have been here, if it wasn't at Fat's, that Jesse "Big Daddy"* Unruh said:

"If you can't take their money, drink their whiskey, screw their whores, and still vote against them, you ain't got no business in the Legislature."

Or words to that effect.

This does not count towards the total.

*According to a completely unreliable source on the interwebs, Mr. Unruh did NOT, I repeat, NOT earn this nickname from Raquel Welch.

March 29th: Fat's.

Ever wondered where the "smoky back room" really is? We're going to see three of them.

Frank Fat emigrated to Sacramento in 1930, after stops in Cleveland and Chicago. He worked first for his uncle at the Hong King Lum, now Zokku sushi lounge. He opened up his own restaurant in 1939 at this location. It remains the flagship for a regional resturant empire.

They serve absolutely _killer_ food at this place. We love it so much we had the rehearsal dinner for our wedding here. I recommend the banana cream pie, in particular.

Frank's oldest son, Wing, went to my high school. His second son, Ken, is my family's dentist. If you want an introduction to Chinese cuisine, you could do worse than start with Lina's (Ken's wife) cookbook.

This does not count towards the total.

March 29th: The site of Little Jimmy Costa's arrest for solicitation.

In August 1986, Jim Costa, a then-State Assemblyman, was arrested at this corner for soliciting an undercover prostitute, offering her $50 to do a threeway with a hooker he already had in his car. For this offence he was placed on three years' probation and fined either $160 or $255, depending on which account you read. He was also ordered to stay away from massage parlors, not to register in a hotel under anything other than his own name, and not to pick up hitchhikers.

The case was heard by Municipal Court Judge Earl Warren, Jr. Yes, that be the son of that Earl Warren. Because Sacramento really is that small.

In the next election, Costa's opponent put out a hit piece calling him "a filthy, immoral, perverted lackey." Costa handily won-relection. His opponent's name has been lost to history.

Costa is now a member of the US House of Representatives, for Fresno. He voted for health-care reform, if you are curious.

And, yes, that lovely mission-revival building in the background is a school. Technically, the administration building for the North Sacramento Elementary School District (now part of Twin Rivers Unified).

But no, this does not count towards the total.

March 29th: The site of Art Torres's first arrest for DUI.

We are bipartisan in this town. I thus felt moved to include some Democratic pecadillos as well. Art Torres was a Democratic representative for LA back in the 70s and 80s. He was -- prior to a mid-life crisis that involved (a) divorce, (b) multiple arrests for DUI, and (c) being slightly injured in a crash caused by a drug-addled chauffeur after a night out clubbing in the City -- sometimes mentioned as a possibility for California's first Hispanic governor since the days when this was Mexican territory.

Anywho, that all came to a halt when he plowed into the back of a stopped police cruiser (that had its lights flashing, even) at this intersection, back in 1987.

Two years later he was busted again for DUI -- blowing a 0.21 this time -- while driving with his headlights off, down a residential street. That he was headed towards a well-known cruising ground (back behind Sutter's Landing, if you are curious), went unremarked even within the gutter press.

It would take him until 2009 to come out of the closet.

Clearly, this does not count towards the total.

March 29th: The site of Roy Ashburn's arrest.

Early in the morning of March 3rd of this year, former California State Senator Roy Ashburn made a new friend at Faces. He and his gentleman friend -- whose name has not been recorded in the history books -- then got into then-Senator Ashburn's car.

They made it approximately 6 blocks before being pulled over by the cops somewheres on this stretch of L St. Roy-boy blew a 0.18.

This does not count towards the total.

March 29th: Roy Ashburn's favorite bar.

As promised, I am including a series of visits to sites of local notoriety, places that are not officially commemorated but which nevertheless provide the opportunity to spin a good yarn.

This is the bar where Roy Ashburn, former Republican member of the California State Legislature for the Bakersfield district, and "sponsor" of Proposition 8, picked up his tricks.

This does not count towards the total.

March 31st: Camp Union Sutterville (no. 666).

This was where the 5th Infantry Regiment (California Volunteers) mustered out for service in the Civil War in the fall of 1861. They joined the California Column, marched across New Mexico and occupied a little town called Franklin, Texas. Their commanding officer was George Washington Bowie -- evidently no relative of David -- who died in 1901 and is buried in Martinez.

Martinez, by the by, is the birthplace of Joe DiMaggio. Not to mention the martini.

Franklin, Texas is now better known as El Paso.

March 31st: Nisipowinan Village (no. 900).

A ghost monument. The precise location of the village has been restricted, according to a state law dealing with the preservation and protection of Native American artifacts and sites. However, according to most sources, this village was the largest community of Maidu in the area.

March 31st: The State Capitol (no. 872).

I will assume that my readers are well aware of this building's significance.

March 29th: Dorothea Puente's house.

This was the site of Sacramento's worst mass murder spree.

Ms. "Puente" -- even her name is somewhat disputed -- had, so far as anyone can reconstruct, a youth of Steinbeckian awfulness. The historical record, unfortunately, is a tissue of speculation and falsehoods, the product of a lifetime of criminality.

She appears to have been born to alcoholic cotton-picking okies in Redlands -- or in any event somewhere in San Bernardino County -- who both died before she was ten (her father of TB and her mother in a motorcycle accident). She was put into an orphanage before being picked up by some relatives in Fresno. Other sources put her teen years in Olympia, working as a soda jerk and a hooker.

She married three times, the first time to guy with a scotch last name, and the second time to a Scandihoovian. In a sequence of events lifted straight from a James M. Caan novel, the Scotsman abandoned her after three years, two kids, and one miscarriage, and their kids were split up amongst his relatives. The Swede, however, stuck around for awhie -- maybe because there were no kids. But it was the third marriage that gave her the last name by which she is best known.

In 1981, after a checkered career that include charges of brothel-keeping, vagrancy, and passing bad checks, she bought this lovely little Victorian in a run-down neighborhood hard by the Governor's Mansion (just 4 blocks away), a neighborhood known variously as "Mansion Flats," "Alkali Flats," or "La Valentina" -- depending on the ethnicity of the speaker.

In this Victorian she took in boarders. California has an interesting state law, to the effect that cities cannot regulate homes that board up to 6 unrelated adults at the same time. This allows for all kinds of legitimate purposes -- old-age boarding homes, which was Puente's metier, or foster care homes, the scandal du jour of the past year -- but also all kinds of illegitimate purposes, of which brothel-keeping was the historic prototype.

Puente took in retired boarders, usually veterans (much like her first two husbands), and then kindly, carefully, cashed their checks at the neighborhood minimart. She built up such trust that she was even able to co-sign the checks.

This method secured her a reliable, untaxed, income of, by one report, $5000/month (in 1988 dollars).

Her preferred method of murder was, according to police report, a barbituate milkshake.

Her preferred method of burial was in the dead of night, in the side yard. This is now paved over, as you can see. It has always been a little unclear how someone of Ms. Puente's size and stature could get away with what she did. She could manhandle corpses -- or, more gruesomely, the simply comatose -- down a flight of stairs and into a grave, without attracting the attention of passersby. And this in a not-exactly-out-of-the-way neighborhood.

She grew prize-winning tomatoes, by the by. That is not such a feat in this town, which is rather known for its tomatoes.

She was also known around town as a reliable donor to the Democratic Party.

This does not count towards the total. Even if the house is for sale, as you can see.

March 29th: The Squatter's Riot.

This was the site of the Squatter's Riot of 1850, an event which is baffingly unmemorialized. Especially given that it marked basically the first exercise of municipal force by what is now the City of Sacramento.

The story goes like this: after Mr. Brannan went and started yapping his pie-hole to all and sundry about little Jimmy Marshall's find on the American, "the world rushed in" as Holliday so aptly put it. Trouble was, when those thousands upon thousands disembarked from the steamships upon the I Street levee, to punch their ticket for the stage coach line in the lobby of the What Cheer House, they found that others had been there before. And not just massacreable Indians and disposessable Mexicans (who, remember, the Americans had quite recently soundly trounced in a war that involved the transfer of fully 1/3 of what was once Mexico to American sovereignty).

No, who had been there before were Americans. White Americans.

Remember Donner? Some of them survived. And there were others, too, who had come over just early enough to purchase land from Sutter. These people -- people with last names like, oh, Schallenberger, or Didion, or Briggs, say, just to pick an example or two at random -- were not pleased when a bunch of yahoos showed up and began building houses on land for which they had paid good money.

So, in accordance with the only civil law (i.e., Mexican) in effect at the time – for California had not yet been organized as a state -- a bunch of landowners got together and organized a city council. They elected a fellow by the name of A.M. Winn as president. One of their first actions (in December of 1849) was to demolish a house built by Dr. Charles Robinson (who, just to confuse you, was not related to the Henry Robinson who built the "Brannan House"). A few months (May, 1850) later they started proceedings to demolish another house, built by a guy named Madden on land owned by Messrs Rodgers and Burnett.

By August of 1850 -- the courts were then, as now, not precisely quick -- the court case was running in favor of the landowners, and the squatters were so pissed they called a meeting. This assembly, held on the levee on the 11th of August, was a contentious affair, with much badinage about "soft soap" (i.e., lyes, and lyeing) and "the general integrity of the Anglo-Saxon race." Not surprisingly, things went rapidly downhill from there, and the result was that those present resolved to defend Mr. Madden's shack by force of arms. Which they did.

One presumes that, given who was actually making money in these parts in those days, that much liquor was involved. Just sayin'.

One of the people at that meeting was a fellow by the name of James McClatchy. Perceiving, perhaps, which way the wind was blowing -- and knowing that there was a warrant out for his arrest because he had been involved in the defense of the shack --McClatchy check himself in with the police. Which had the convenience of ensuring that he was out of the way when the sh*t went down.

Which it did, a couple days later (8/14/50) Led by Dr. Robinson, forty squatters got together and marched around town. They went from Front and I, down to 3rd, then took a right and rounding the corner here onto J st., went up one block, basically to where the Wong Building is now (if you remember the picture of the volunteer fire department, it was the tall apartment block just beyond the Denny's. This picture is taken across the street from there).

There they were faced down by Mayor Bigelow, accompanied by the sherriff (Joe McKinney), who told them to give up their arms and disperse. They did not.

Instead, they began shooting. The first to go down was Mayor Hardin. He survived. The second to go down was the City Assessor, Mr. Woodland, unfortunately shot so seriously in the groin that he died on the spot. A squatter by the name of Morgan, aiming at the mayor, was instead shot through the neck. Another squatter, named Maloney, had his horse shot out from under him and, endeavoring to escape through an alley, instead received a bullet through the head. A young boy by the name of Rodgers -- apparently a bystander -- was wounded.

Three others, whose names have not passed down to us, also died that day.

The squatters dispersed. Their leaders were rounded up and arrested -- one of them (Henry Caulfield), not far from Five Mile House.

Dr. Robinson, who had been wounded in the fracas, was also arrested and placed in prison. While behind bars, he ran for a position in the state legislature.

The titles of those who had purchased land from Sutter were confirmed. Mayor Bigelow went to San Francisco for treatment, but died from cholera. This plaque implies that he died of wounds sustained during the riot, which is incorrect.

Three weeks after the riot, Congress admitted California to the Union.

This is a Clamper monument, and so does not count towards the total.

March 14th: Gold Run (Chinese railroad workers).

See, if only I had taken the time to read the non-official historical markers, I wouldn't have made my egregious error earlier regarding who it was, precisely, who provided the muscle to built the Transcontinental Railroad.

Let this be a lesson to you: always read the marker. Even when it's not official. Among other things, you learn that most of the workers came from Kwantung Province, or in modern parlance, Guangdong (also known by the Portuguesicized Canton).

Oh, and if you're wondering why we didn't pick this up on our earlier visit to this flyspeck of a town they call Gold Run, it's because this is actually at the rest stop down the road aways.

This does not count towards the total.

Feb. 27th: The State Fair (no. 861).

Yes, this was the site of the first state fair. For those of you who are not even remotely interested in agricultural fairs, I suggest that you either (a) skip to the next entry, or (b) start humming "The Girl From Ipanema" in your head.

So, yeah, this was the site of the first state fair. It was put on by the State Agricultural Society, itself chartered by the State Legislature in an effort to promote commerce, agribusiness, industry, etc.

The fair moved around for a few years -- much like the Capitol -- before settling on Sacramento, where it was held on a site not a stone's throw from my house. There it stayed for fifty years, before the pressures of land development grew too great, and in an oft-echoed pattern here and elsewhere, the land was subdivided and sold off as a residential tract.

From there it moved down the road aways, to a site on Stockton Boulevard, about a rifle shot from where I went to high school. That fair lasted there for another (almost) fifty years, broken only by the war, when the land was deployed for other uses.

In 1968, then-Governor Reagan opened the new Cal-Expo site, across the river near Arden Fair. It has been held there ever since, though it may not make the 50-year mark of the other two. Word on the street is that it may move yet again, to what is now the Kings Arena in North Natomas.

Feb. 27th: Mission Dolores (no. 327).

I apologize that this is out of order. I'm sure you all know pretty much everything there is to know about Mission Dolores. Except to say that it was named for a nearby creek (long since culverted) which, for reasons that are lost to us, was regarded as sorrowful by those who first named it.

Feb. 27th: The Hudson's Bay Company (no. 819).

Betcha didn't know that La Baie had a branch here in the City, didja?

Governor McLoughlin, west coast agent of the HBC, sailed down from what is now Portland OR to what was then Yerba Buena, in the bark Cowlitz in the spring of 1841. They bought some land, set up a store, and ensconced the Governor's son-in-law (William Rae) as resident agent. He did a thriving business in hides, tallow, and English manufactured goods for the next four years.

Rae was fond of whist and wrestling; he was good at the former, but evidently over-proud of his abilities regarding the latter. Among others who beat him at it was Don Jose Joaquin Estudillo, of San Leandro.

Betcha didn't see _that_ one coming, did you?

In 1845, Mr. Rae was discovered in adultery with a local Californio lady. In his shame, he shot and killed himself. The HBC send down another agent to close out the business. No word on what happened to Mrs. Rae (nee McLoughlin) and her three children.

Feb. 27th: Old Saint Mary's (no. 810).

The first building "erected as a cathedral" in the state.

Sigh. Why do these plaques make such a hash of their distinctions? Why can't they just admit that Monterey was the original seat of the diocese of "both Californias" (in, yes, Mission Carmel, starting in 1840*), and that St. Mary's came after?

At least this is better than another site, which states that "while Monterey Cathedral is the oldest, St. Mary's is the first!" Now _that_ is some jesuitical reasoning, I warrant you.

More interesting -- or at any rate less deceptive -- is the fact that these bricks came around the Horn as ships' ballast, and they survived the '06 fire. The granite blocks came from...wanna guess? Yup, China.

*If you are curious, the mission fathers answered to the Bishop of Sonora in the years before secularization and the conversion of the missions to parishes.

Feb. 27th: El Camino Real (no. 784).

The plaque notes that this is the road "as Father Serra knew it and helped blaze it."

I have simply no idea what they were trying to get across, since surely the good padre (excuse me, the "Blessed" padre, since he is now beatified) would not recognize the corner of Dolores and 16th AT ALL.

Feb. 27th: Headquarters of the firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell (no. 696).

Just when you thought you had seen the last of them, you turn around and IT'S ANOTHER PONY EXPRESS MONUMENT.

Feb. 27th: The What Cheer House (no. 650).

Wait, haven't we been here before?

No, you're thinking of the Sacramento establishment of the same name. This one was so well-regarded that it too got a marker -- whether despite or because it served only men but no liquor is unclear, though maybe it had something to with the onsite library and museum.

The one in San Jose, bizarrely, does not get a marker. Why? Who knows, 4th grade, etc.

Then-Captain Ulysses S. Grant once stayed here, in an (unsuccessful) effort to dry out after having been sacked -- evidently for drinking on duty -- from his position with the 4th Infrantry, up the coast at Fort Humboldt.

Dude. If I had been assigned to an army station in _Eureka_ in 1854, I would've been on the sauce too.

Feb. 27th: First [sic] "public" school (no. 587).

In April 1848, a public school was opened near here. For those of you who are paying attention, this would be _before_ Mr. Marshall discovered gold (the fall of that year), but almost two years _after_ California had transferred to American control (b/c of the Mexican-American War).

San Francisco at that time had a population of under 1000, but in an editorial in the California Star, some yappy Mormon by the name of Sam Brannan complained about all the rug-rats that infested the town's streets (there were apparently 5 dozen or so of them. Kids, that is, not streets). As a result of this cantankerously public-minded rant, an election was held for school trustees, monies were appropriated for a building and instructor's salary, and a teacher hired.

The teacher was Tom Douglass, a Yalie. His salary was $400/year. Public education was not at that time free, however, and so in addition to his salary (payable in two installments at six-month intervals) the courses he offered were set at the following rates:

- Reading, Writing, and Geography, $5/quarter

- Arithmetic, Grammar, and Composition, $6/quarter

- Science, Chemistry, History, and Natural Philosophy, $8/quarter

- Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry, Astronomy, Surveying and Navigation, $10/quarter

- Latin and Greek, $12/quarter.

Mr. Douglas abandoned his post in the fall and headed upcountry to the gold fields. No word on if he collected his first salary payment. The school was shut down. He disappears at that point from the history books.

The first _free_ public school in the city was commissioned two years later (it had been in operation for a year, located at the Baptist Church).

Sticklers for historical fine points will note that Mr. Douglass was preceded by a Ms. Olive Isbell, who was teaching in Santa Clara by late 1846. However, her position was not supported by public subscription. Thus, the credit goes to the Eli-come-lately who abandoned his charges in his cupiditas pro aurum.

Feb. 27th: Eastern terminus of the Clay Street Railroad (no. 500).

This was the first cable car. It is one of the many, many things that began or ended in Portsmouth Plaza. The line ran for almost 70 years, ending operations in 1942.

Feb. 27th: First Jewish services in the city (no. 462).

On Sept. 26th, 1849 (5610), forty children of Abraham celebrated the Day of Atonement in a building that once stood here.

Feb. 27th: Sherman's Bank (no. 453).

William Tecumseh Sherman, terror of Atlanta, was among the few men to discover that one of the three nearly-sure-fire ways of making money out of the gold rush was to open a bank.* He ran this branch (or lent his name to it, or oversaw construction of the building, or something; the history books are a little unclear on this point) for four years. At which time the business was "discontinued" -- whatever _that_ means.

In a side-note that will, I trust, be interesting to those of you who are still paying attention, Sherman was the foreman of the jury that acquitted Judge Terry of the murder of Senator Broderick.

In a note that should be completely extraneous and uninteresting even to those of you who _are_ still paying attention, Tecumseh's (the Shawnee chief) mother's maiden name was Bayliss.

And if you think I'm joking, you can look it up yourself. I dare you.

*You have already been told the other two. If you don't remember, you will be asked to stay after school and clean the erasers.

Feb. 27th: The Masons (no. 408).

A needlessly mysterious site, in my humble opinion. Apparently here occured the first meeting of the Freemasons in California. Since their charter, when granted (by the Grand Lodge of DC), was no. 13 (since changed to no. 1) either I am confused, the history books are confused, or there's some cabalistic wierdness going on.

And that's leaving aside the fact that the whole place is now under wraps, as you can see.

Feb. 27th: Long Wharf (no. 328).

Another shoreline site. Here docked the Pacific Mail steamers, bringing news around the Horn in the days before the Pony Express Boys got into the business.

We are a full six blocks from the current shoreline, by the by. At the end of this street is the Ferry Building -- showing if nothing else a strange continuity of history, even amongst all this change.

Feb. 27th: The Jenny Lind Theatre (no. 192).

A friend of mine dared me to find a plaque commemorating a brothel. Now is his time to pay up, because this is it.

They loved theatre so much in this town, they commemorated not just one, not just two, but FIVE, count 'em FIVE "theatres."

This plaque stands in for four of the "the most famous hotel and gambling resorts around San Francisco in the early 1850s": Denison's Exchange, The El Dorado, Parker House, and the Jenny Lind. It was the purchasing of the latter by the city, for conversion to a new City Hall, that prompted a protest rally in Portsmouth Plaza.

Jenny Lind never performed in San Francisco. But you probably already guessed that.

I may, if some generous donor would like, later add some officially uncommemorated former brothels to the list (I can think of two right off the top of my head). However, I will not add officially uncommemorated current brothels: if you want that, I suggest you go to the suburbs yourself and look in the yellow pages for massage and/or "tubs for 2" type operations.

The Jenny Lind is now, as you can see, a Hilton.

Feb. 27th: Portsmouth Plaza (no. 119).

Everything happened here. Like, dude, everything. You can read all about it -- note how big the plaque is -- but you have to step over the doggie do and around the bushes.

Among the many things that occured on this site, I would name just a few:

- In 1846, Captain Montgomery raised the American flag over what had been the Mexican customs-house.

- In 1848, Sam Brannan yapped his pie-hole about "thar's gold in them thar hills!"

- In 1850, the city held a party when the news came round the Horn that California had been admitted to the Union as a free state.

- In 1852, an "indignation meeting" was held to protest the purchase of the Jenny Lind Theatre for use as City Hall.

- In 1859, a funeral oration before the assembled crowds was delivered over the body of Senator Broderick, slain in a duel by Judge Terry.

Now, it is probably the best place to spend an afternoon watching retired Chinese men play mah-jong.

Feb. 27th: Fort Gunnybags (no. 90)

Remember that post about the assassination of Mr. King of William by Supervisor Casey?

This would be where he was tried and executed.

It was an unprepossessing two-story warehouse, erected in the early 1850s and known prior to the events of 1856 as "the Sacramento Block." Upon the murder of Mr. King of William, the Sacramento Block was secured by means of a six foot high wall of gunnysacks filled with sand. A Committee of Vigilance was formed by parties convinced that (a) the city was manifestly descending into chaos, with elected officials gunning down newspaper editors (also, as we shall see, state supreme court justices stabbing people in the neck), and therefore (b) that the wheels of justice had to re-appropriated.

And boy were they ever re-appropriated, those wheels. Between May 20th (the death of Mr. King of William, and the execution of his assassin, Supervisor Casey) and July 29th the following persons were broken on the rack of Lady Justice within these walls:

- Francis Murray, a.k.a Yankee Sullivan. World champion boxer. Arrested on May 20th for ballot-box fraud. He was promised leniency by the Committee in return for exile from California. Instead, he asked for a glass of water, broke it, and slashed his wrists. He was given an honorable burial in the Mission cemetary (no. 327).

- Joseph Hetherington. On July 24th, he was arrested for the murder of a Dr. Randal (apparently in a dispute over a mortgage debt). He was hanged on the 29th of July, along with Philander Brace (evidently his real name), a convicted murderer who had been in custody for some time.

- Justice of the State Supreme Court David Terry was arrested on June 2nd by the Vigilance Committee, for the attempted murder of Sterling Hopkins. The latter event happened during an altercation associated with the arrest of an unnamed "political trickster," and involved (in the colorful words of H.H. Bancroft) "Terry...leaving his duties at the capital had come to drag his already soiled ermine in the demagogical slums of San Francisco." Although Justice Terry was with 150 of his nearest and dearest friends, all armed to the teeth, at the time of his arrest, the convincing nature of the cannon pointed in their general direction was enough to force surrender. Justice Terry was detained by the Vigilance Committee, tried, and (upon the recover of Mr. Hopkins from his knife wound to the throat) released. He was evidently deemed too politically powerful to be treated as a common criminal. We shall hear more of Mr. Terry anon.

In addition to this, 27 persons were summarily ordered to leave the City upon pain of death. Some shipped out to Hawaii, others "fled to the interior," the rest to ports unknown. According to Bancroft, an additional 800 "malefactors and vagabonds" voluntarily left the City.

In case you were wondering, other authorities took a dim view of what was going on. On June 2nd, Gov. Johnson (no, not that Johnson, the previous one: J. Neely) ordered General Sherman (yes, that Sherman) to muster 150 volunteers to preserve order, since the City of San Francisco was manifestly in a state of riot, disorder, and insurrection. General Sherman tendered his resignation to this assignment five days laters.

All the history I could dig up on this site had a profoundly Whiggish tone. Usually when such vigilance committees are formed, the first folks to hang are poor, politically vulnerable, and of color. It is not clear whether this occured in this instance. Bancroft states (in a footnote) that "the abused Chinese received protection," though he makes this statement without the usual documentary evidence. Other authors suggest -- without a whole lot of backing -- that the affray of 1856 had a "sectional" character to it. Who knows? Perhaps, 4th grade, etc.

Oh, and by the way? This is now a CVS.

Feb. 27th: The founding of the San Francisco SPCA.

Apparently, in April 1868, Mr. James Sloan Hutchinson (banker) "witnessing nearby an act of cruelty to animals, a condition all to common at that time, was aroused to put a stop to the offense."

What a faxkinating phrase, that last bit: "was aroused to put a stop to the offense."

Anywho, you have to go to the SFSPCA's website to figure out the precise nature of this unspeakable offense. It consisted of two fellows dragging a hog, presumably with butcherous intent.

No word on the eventual fate of the boar.

This Hutchinson, in case you were wondering, was evidently NOT related to Lincoln and James Sather Hutchinson, brothers and founding members of the Sierra Club.

You _were_ wondering that, weren't you?

This does not count towards the total.

Feb. 27th: The Parrott Block (no. 89).

A ghost monument. If you go to the state's website, you will be told only that this building was 3 stories tall, constructed of granite quarried in China, survived the '06 quake, and was torn down in 1926.

This being not so interesting, I did a little investigating to try and liven up our narrative. So:

According to Kirker (1959), Parrott Building was the "earliest major commercial construction in California" as well as the the "first international building project in the West."

Now that is, at best, a flat-out lie. I would submit that Fort Ross (constructed by Russians, on ostensibly Spanish land, in 1812; the guns and other improvements were purchased by a Sutter [a Swissman] when the Ruskies abandoned their little colony in 1841) almost certainly qualifies as a prior candidate for "first international building project" in the Bay Area, if not the West. But to return to our narrative.

At various times the banking houses of Page, Bacon and Company, as well as Wells, Fargo and Company, were HQ'ed here. The bricks that formed the internal structure were probably produced locally. They were laid by "occidentals" at a wage-rate of $20/day. The granite stone, however, was quarried in China, dressed in Hong Kong, and then shipped out with each block individually labeled for piecing together on-site. Because the architect (Stephen Williams) did not read Chinese, and because "the coolies" brought over to lay the stones (at an unknown wage-rate, but certainly nowhere near $20/day) were themselves illiterate, Mr. Williams evidently had to bring in "a great Chinese architect" to solve the puzzle.

The unnamed Chinese architect discovered that the blocks had been cut to size and arranged on the assumption that the building would be raised on the _opposite_ side of the street from where Mr. Parrot owned his lot. This was bad feng shui, but nothing was done to rectify the situation and the building went up.

Page and Bacon went bankrupt two years after moving into the building, by the way. I'm sure it had nothing to do with bad feng shui.

One wonders why someone had to go to China for stone, when there was perfectly decent granite to be had in the Sierras. Civic Center, City Hall, and the new City Library are all built of Sierra granite, for instance. But perhaps the relative costs of labor and transportation in the "pre-globalization" era of international trade had something to do with it.

Anywho, as you can see, there is now a shmance hotel on this site.

Feb. 27th: The Niantic (no. 88).

One of my contributors challenged me to find a building that was built on the remains of a ship. This is it.

People were so eager to get to the gold that they abandoned their vessels, or converted them to other uses. Certainly once people arrived in California they weren't soon interested in leaving.

The Niantic first served as an office, then after the fire of 1851 consumed everything in this part of the city that _wasn't_ submerged in water, it was used as the foundation for a hotel (also called the Niantic) raised on a landfill of trash, burned buildings, abandoned ballast, etc. The hotel stood for approximately 20 years.

My apologies for the blurriness. My loyal photographer was a wee bit peckish by this point in the afternoon; I attribute the shakiness of low blood sugar (rather than, say, orneriness).

Feb. 27th: The first branch mint in California (no. 87).

They needed some way to convert all that gold into coins, ya know.

The first assayer was Agoston Haraszthy, founder of Buena Vista vineyards, and credited with popularizing the winemaking possibilities of the California climate. Also credited with being the first Hungarian immigrant to the US, which I find difficult to believe. His sons married into the highest ranks of the Californio gentry: one of his descendants is named Vallejo Haraszthy.

After an incredibly industrious and largely honorable career, he was eaten by alligators in Nicaragua (no joke: look it up on the interwebs if you don't believe me).

Feb. 27th: The California Theatre (no. 86).

Not the first theatre (no. 136), nor the first theatre building built as a theatre (no. 595), but for 19 years (1869-1888) the pinnacle of San Francisco's legitimate stages. Founded by William Ralston (who, you may remember, also founded the Bank of California). Listed as having performed here are a bunch of people I've frankly never heard of, with the exception of Edwin Booth (son of Junius Brutus Booth and elder brother of, well, that other Booth fellow you've probably heard of). Because I was curious, I went to the trouble of figuring out who all of these formerly famous stage-folk were:

Charles Couldock (1815-1898; died of dropsy): known as a character actor, made his debut as Othello (in London), appeared in an 1858 production of "Our American Cousin" in New York. Unclear in what capacity he played San Francisco.

Edwin Adams (1834-1877): toured with Edwin Booth's company. His last public appearance was at this theatre; he "possessed a voice of wonderful richness, strength, and melody" according to Appleton's dictionary of biography.

John Brougham (1814-1880; died of Bright's disease): Apparently something of a spendthrift, he died penniless. He probably performed here in the inaugural season. His name is misspelled on the monument.

Edwin Booth (1833-1893; buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetary, in Cambridge MA). According to a completely unreliable source I found on the interwebs, he was not able to make a name on his own until he performed in Sacramento. He is reported to have been the best Hamlet of the 19th century.

Barton Hill (unclear when he was born or passed). Had his first starring engagement in, you guessed it, "Our American Cousin" (in a production in Montreal in 1862), and was offered the management of the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia when Edwin Adams resigned. He managed this establishment in its early years.

Walter Montgomery (1827-1871): made his debut as, you guessed it, Othello. Married Laleah Burpee Bigelow, rumored to be a bigamist (her, I mean) and shot himself the day after the wedding. He played the California Theatre in its first or second season.

Mrs. D.P. Bowers (1830-1895): Also ran the Walnut Street Theatre, and toured with Edwin Booth in the 1879-80 season. No word on when she played here.

Adelaide Neilson (1848-1880): born out of wedlock to a "strolling actress" (hunh, that's a new one on me), died while riding in the Bois du Boulogne. Spent most of her career in England; unclear when she toured California. So far as I can tell, no known connection to Edwin Booth, "Our American Cousin," or the Walnut Street Theatre.

Lotta Crabtree (1847-1924): The only local girl of this whole gang, she born in New York, but raised in Grass Valley. Tutored in dancing by none other than Lola Montez. Got her start playing banjo in mining camps up and down the state. Her mother managed her finances, quite well apparently: she gave a fountain to the city of San Francisco (it's at Market and Kearny), a dorm to UMass-Amherst, and left an estate of $4 million. According to yon previously mentioned unreliable source, "she was described by critics as mischievous, unpredictable, impulsive, rattlebrained, teasing, piquant, rollicking, cheerful and devilish." She never married.

Now don't you feel edified?

Feb. 27th: The Mechanic's Monument.

This is a fabulously pre-ironic monument to the (cough) hard muscle that built San Francisco.

It was commissioned by James Donahue in memory of his father, Peter. Donahue, Sr. founded (among other businesses), the San Francisco Gas Company, part of the corporate lineage of today's PG&E.

Astonishingly, no-one associated with Wikipedia has seen fit to investigate the provenance of this statue (seriously: someone builds a page to the West Sacramento Ziggurat but not to this? What gives?). No-one, so far as I can tell, has yet seen fit to engage in probably groundless speculation regarding the precise reasons as to why Mr. Donahue, Jr. was moved to erect a large bronze facsimile of a metal punch operated by a whole gang of men with, well, such prominent glutes.

Tragically, this does not count towards the total.

Feb. 27th: The original shoreline (no. 83).

Montgomery's landing place is nowhere near the present shoreline, due to a combination of (a) the accumulated effects of hydraulic mining upstream, (b) the wholesale abandonment of masses of ships and ballast in the fever to get to the goldfields, and (c)aggressive landfill efforts (mostly with rotten ship timbers and ballast) for the express purpose of creating new real estate. This marker is at the corner of Bush and Battery, across from where Market hits 1st St (1st street? oh right!), a full five blocks from the present shoreline.

That's a lot of currently quite expensive real estate.

Feb. 27th: Landing place of Captain John B. Montgomery (no. 81).

Ever wondered for whom Montgomery Street was named? This fellow, the guy that raised the Stars and Stripes at Portsmouth Square (his ship's name, in case you were curious) on July 9th, 1846. This ended the so-called "Bear Flag Revolt," in concert with Captain Montgomery's seizure of said Bear Flag for the U.S. Navy. As part of the general chaos attendant upon the American victory over Mexico in the Mexican-American War (including a bunch of battles between forces of the two nations, most of them down near LA and San Diego), this was a key event in the transfer of California into American control.

The B, in case you were wondering, stood for Berrien.

Feb. 27th: Montgomery Block (no. 80).

Sadly, my spouse would not allow me to try and sweet-talk my way past the guard.

This was San Francisco's first fireproof building (it even escaped the '06 conflagration). In 1856, only a few steps from where this picture was taken, James King of William, editor of the San Francisco Bulletin and early muckraker against municipal corruption, was gunned down by James Casey, member of the City Board of Supervisors.

Mr. King of William took his last name, in case you are curious, by appending his father's first name to his own. In other words, in another time, or another place, he might have been dubbed James King FitzWilliam.

In addition to being an elected City Supervisor, Mr. Casey was (and this was a fact which Mr. King of William had publicized in the pages of his paper) a former inmate of Sing Sing.

Casey was launched into eternity six days later from a second floor window of "Fort Gunnybags" by the Vigilance Committee, of which you will be hearing a great deal more. As you may gather by the relatively short lapse between the assassination and the hanging, the latter was accomplished without benefit of an extended trial. The jury, in fact, consisted entirely of members of the Vigilance Committee.

The funeral and the hanging occured on the same day. Both events were witnessed by crowds reported to be in the thousands.

The Montgomery Block is now the TransAmerica Pyramid.

Feb. 21st: Gold Run (no. 405)

For 13 years they aimed hoses at the hills here, washing away the muck, and the trees, and the rocks, and pretty much everything in site, to reveal the gold. $6 million of it (in 1870 dollars) out of this here town alone -- not a bad haul. That is, until "a court decision made hydraulic mining unprofitable" (what the guidebook says) or when a "state law was passed prohibiting hydraulic mining."

Damned meddling gubmit beeyoorowcrats.

In a related note: both Suisun Bay and San Pablo Bay were substantially larger, and deeper, prior to, oh, the 1870s. Anywho...

This rock monument surrounding the plaque was placed there by the "Lord Sholto Douglas" chapter of the Clampers. I have been unable to confirm the precise identity of "Lord" Douglas. He was certainly not the 9th Marquis of Queensbury, John Sholto Douglas (surely you know him? The inventor of the Queensury Rules of boxing? Father to "Bosie" Douglas? Illiterate slanderer of Oscar Wilde?) However, he may have been that gentleman's brother, who was arrested (but released) in Portland (ME) in 1906 on suspicion of bigamy and five years later (mistakenly) identified by "an actress" (Mrs. May Noble) as a suicide in the Hotel Astor. When queried as to the truth of this charge, the Marquis (which is to say, the pugilist) replied that his brother was "out West" someplace, where he apparently really did commit bigamy with an actress whose name Ms. Noble declined to recall, and pursued a somewhat successful career in vaudeville in locations ranging from Marysville to Creston (BC). Said vaudeville evidently consisted largely of putting his wife on stage, where she entertained audiences in ways that have, sadly, not come down through the history books.

The real suicide, in case you were curious, had a chinese dragon tattoed on his left forearm, and was variously identified as "Maurice Stewart" (an actor) or "Roland Stuart," brother to the Duke of Sutherland.

Dude, it's like I've always said: Sholto, Stuart, whatever. All these Scotsmen look the same to me.

References: New York Times, 8/2/1906 ("Prisoner says he is Lord Sholto Douglas, not the American 'Lord Douglas' wanted for bigamy"); New York Times 11/9/11 ("Hotel Astor suicide not Sholto Douglas"); and Gary Meier, "The Gold Camp of Foolery".

Feb. 21st: Emigrant Gap (no. 403).

Why do I look hunched over and cold? Because it was a SLEETING WHITEOUT.

That's how much I love history.

On days unlike the one on which this picture was taken, you might be able to look over the cliff on which this vista point sits, and down the face of which the pioneers lowered their wagons, by rope, so eager were they to get to California.

Thanks to the wonders of modern engineering, we no longer have to do that: US 80 crosses a ridge here and goes down by a different river valley.

Feb. 21st: Overland Emigrant Trail (799-2).

This is another spot on the trail down which the Donner Party was headed. It is now a U.S. Forest Service ranger station. I should imagine that in fair weather the ranger might even point out the rocks which, according to the marker, "still bear the marks of wagon wheels."

Gang fights, ditches, and now this: literally, ruts in the road.

Feb. 21st: Where the Sierras REALLY begin (according to "Crazy Judah") (no. 780-8)

So, it turns out that one of Theodore Judah's lasting achievements consisted of moving the crest of the Sierras several dozen miles west of where they (ahem) naturally occur.

How did he accomplish such an amazing feat of engineering prestidigitation, you might ask?

By doing what engineers do best, namely fudging the numbers and then laughing when silly civilians come along and wonder at what in the name of Sam Hill they're trying to do.

On a more generous note: the terms of the authorizing legislation specified different loan terms for construction undertaken in "mountainous" terrain versus construction undertaken on what any idiot could see what quite manageably easy and flat. Since the muckety-mucks in Washington would never be around to slap down a level and check Teddy's angle of repose, he decided to place the beginning of the foothills here, in the middle of what is now a municipal golf course, instead of some miles east, in the middle of what are now strip malls, cul-de-sacs, and white people in Escalades.

Did I mention that I have admired Mr. Judah enormously, ever since I attended his namesake elementary school a quarter-century ago?

The people that ran the pro shop here had no idea -- literally, no idea -- of the existence of this monument. They tried to tell me about some plaque commemorating the landscape architect of the course, but honestly, unless it's a marker to the memory of James Ben Ali Haggin (the course's namesake , and quite bizarrely uncommemorated, in my humble opinion), I frankly wasn't interested. Especially after an afternoon of navigating the hazards of cul-de-sacs, strip malls, and white people in Escalades, etc.

There is, by the by, a mysterious marker (720-7) that is now, apparently, gone. It was in Lathrop, and commorated the completion of the TR-RR at what is now the epicentre of real-estate derivative hell on earth (Location: West. Orlando, needless to say, takes the honor for Location: East). If anyone knows of the location of this marker I will visit it, purely for the glory of commemorating something or somesuch.

Feb. 21st: The Transcontinental Railroad in Sacramento (no. 780).

"Here" -- which is say, somewhere nearby, since we are in the middle of the Old Sacramento Railroad Museum and probably at least a couple feet above what may or may not have been the original ground level in 1863 -- Governor Stanford turned the first spade of earth to begin the construction of the transcontinental railroad. It would take six years, and at least 1000 lives (mostly of Chinese laborers, not Japanese, as a reader who clearly benefitted from the 4th grade curriculum so helpfully pointed out) before the ribbons of steel would be knit together in Promontory Point, UT.

That mural in the SP station, which is all that remains of China Slough? That mural commemorates the events that supposedly took place on or about this spot on Jan. 8th 1863.

You want to know what else happened on that day? General McClelland objected to the Emancipation Proclamation. And President Lincoln told him, in no uncertain terms, that "being made, it must stand."

I had to sweet-talk a guard to get to this spot, by the way. Just sayin'.

Feb. 21st: The Auburn Hanging Tree (no. 404).

This marker, which sits next to a fountain on the corner of the block on which sits the Placer County Courthouse, is quite precisely why Da Spouse and I are afeared of getting out of the car anywhere between about Soda Springs and, say, Arden Fair Mall.

Feb. 21st: Auburn Transcontinental Railroad (no. 780-4).

This is somewhat down the hill from our previous stop. According to the terms of the Congressional appropriation, government loans only really became available after the UP had laid 40 miles of track. That auspicious event occured four miles west of here.

This is now a real estate agency, in case you were wondering. Which I am sure you were.

Feb. 21st: Colfax Transcontinental Railroad (no. 780-5):

This is the next in the series of TR-RR (I'm sorry, I just can't be bothered to spell that out) markers. This would be the one in Colfax.

Colfax is... well, a nothing little burg, really. It was named by Leland Stanford for Schuyler Colfax, one of Ulysses S. Grant's more fabulously corrupt minions. Mr. Stanford was, not to put to fine a point on it, recognizing the lead author of the bill that paid for the construction of the railroad that made his fortune.

Colfax, bless his heart, was at least an Odd Fellow. Credited, in fact, with founding the Lady Odd Fellows, which is to say, the Daughters of Rebekah.

If I were were Rep. Colfax, and I had this town named after me, I would be insulted.

If we have time, we may see more Odd Fellow monuments on our tour.

Or not. I can understand if you have more pressing needs.

Feb. 20th Truckee Transcontinental Railroad (no. 780-6):

This begins a series of transcontinental railroad markers. I won't spend too much time on these; they commemorate something which is standard to most public school curricula in these United States, even for those of us who skipped 4th grade.

This is the last one in California, the last one after the workers had conquered the really hard bits, the bits that had led the Donners and the Breens to eat their own dead.

The workers, as anyone raised in this state should be able to tell you, consisted of conscripted Japanese.

Feb. 20th: Donner State Park (again).

This was the site of the Schallenberger cabin. Which is to say, the cabin built by an 18-year old immigrant German and two others in the winter of 1844. Moses's friends abandoned him to his fate -- which may have something to do with why their names have not come down to us -- when the snow started flying.

He survived.

His cabin provided shelter for an ill-fated group of emigrants -- the Breen family, of the Donner party -- two winters later.

It is one of the odder aspects of historical monuments that sometimes what they commemorate is, in fact, entirely unnoted on the plaque.

This does not count towards the total.

Feb. 20th: Donner State Park (no. 134).

No pilgrimage to California State Historical Markers would be complete without a visit to the Pioneer Monument at Donner Summit.

You remember the Donner Party, surely? Even I, who skipped 4th grade, know of them and their "ill-fated" ways. These are the folks who, depending on how the story is told (a) were so eager to get to California (alternatively, to leave the South) that they stopped at nothing to get there, (b) were so naive that they took a cutoff suggested by fellow with the ironic name of "Hastings," (c) were just cursedly unlucky to be hit with the worst winter in a century (note how this marker emphasizes how high the snow was. When this picture was taken it was only two feet deep, a mere tenth of the memorial column), and/or (d) nothing more than bone-lazy layabouts -- that "flawed, peculiar strain," in Didion's more forgiving view -- who couldn't make an honest living at farming in the rich bottomlands of Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, etc. which were even then open for the taking to white settlers in the 1840s.

Notice how the monument helpfully notes that "most" people died of starvation and exposure.

Feb. 20th: The Lake Tahoe outlet gates (no. 797).

It's a dam. Basically developed to regulate the flow of water downstream -- which is to say, to Truckee and, eventually, Reno.

Feb. 20th: Theodore Judah monument (Truckee).

This monument lies next to the Amtrak station. Which is to say, the old SP terminal.

I do not know why everyone chooses to include his middle name on the monuments. Perhaps it is to emphasize his WASP-iness. Despite what one might think given his last name, his father was actually an Episcopal minister.

Again, this does not count towards the total.

Feb. 12th: The Theodore Judah monument (Old Sacramento).

Theodore ("Crazy") Judah was the guy who, so we are told, did all the scut-work of putting together the plans for the transcontinental railroad, only to die before he could reap any of the profits.

He was the chief engineer for the Sacramento Valley Railroad (we've seen the site of their terminal, as you may remember). He surveyed the route over the Sierras which the railroad would take, lobbied Congress to subsidize its construction, and organized what we would now call venture capital (i.e., the Big Four: Huntington, Hopkins, Crocker, and Stanford).

Soon after the passage of the Congressional subsidy, he was pushed aside by the investors, who put Crocker in charge of construction (you remember him: we saw his mansion). Judah decided to try his luck at raising some Eastern capital to buy out the Big Four. On his journey to back to New York -- he sailed with his wife, crossing at Panama -- he contracted a fatal case of yellow fever.

There are no official California State Historical markers to Judah's memory. Instead there are Clamper plaques. And this, which was put together by subscription from the employees of the Southern Pacific, the primary competitor to Judah's former employers, the Central Pacific.

The text, in case you are curious, reads as follows:

"That the West may remember Theodore Dehone Judah, pioneer civil engineer and tireless advocate of a great transcontinental railroad -- America's first -- this monument was erected by the men and women of the Southern Pacific Company. Who, in 1930, were carrying on the work he began in 1860. He convinced four sacramento merchants that his plan was practicable and enlisted their help. Ground was broken for the railroad January 8, 1863, at the foot of K Street, nearby. Judah died November 2, 1863. The road was built past the site of this monument over the lofty Sierra -- along the line of Judah's survey -- to a junction with the Union Pacific at Promontory, Utah, where on May 10th, 1869, the "last spike" was driven."

Three random facts to take home with you:

a.) I went to Theodore Judah elementary.

b.) My half-brother's great-grandmother was the first female telegrapher for the Southern Pacific.

c.) May 10th also happened to be the Judahs' anniversary.

This does not count towards the total.

Feb. 12th: The Sacramento History Museum.

In that same essay by Didion quoted in the previous post, she makes some rather astute observations about "the children of the aerospace engineers" and their disregard for history.

Sometime after she wrote that essay, this museum was dedicated in a building that reproduces the first City Hall. Funding was provided by, among others: McClatchy Newspapers, a bunch of corporations, various non-profits,

And Aerojet General.

Thus does history continually confound our expectations.

This does not count towards the total.

Feb. 15th: The Gable Manson (no. 864).

There is a marker, trust me. It just happens to be on the porch, behind the fence. I was not willing to engage in trespassing, not even for charity.

I could not really discern why this was commemorated, other than that it is 9000 s.f. of fantabulous Victorian gewgawgery.

I am reminded at this point, for no particularly good reason, of a passage from Didion:

"A few miles out of town is a place, six or seven thousand acres, which belonged in the beginning to a rancher with one daughter. That daughter went abroad and married a title, and when she brought the title home to live on the ranch, her father built them a vast house -- music rooms, conservatories, a ballroom. They needed a ballroom because they entertained: people from abraod, people from San Francisco, house parties that lasted weeks and involved special trains. They are long dead, of course, but their only son, aging and unmarried, still lives on the place. He does not live in the house, for the house is no longer there. Over the years it burned, room by room, wing by wing. Only the chimneys of the great house are still standing, and its heir lives in their shadow, lives by himself on the charred site, in a house trailer."

This house, the Gable house, was built in 1885 for Amos and Harvey Gable, brothers. They had 8500 acres. It is now owned by a different family (the Barrows), but is periodically open for tours, usually to raise money for charities such as the Red Cross.

If you have ever drunk R.H. Phillips wine, by the by, it may have been grown on land once owned by the Gables.

Feb. 15th: The Woodland Opera House (no. 851).

A vaudeville theatre in a small Valley town. What more can I say?

Helena Modjeska -- or to use her un-americanized name "Modrzejewska" -- once performed here, as did John Phillip Sousa and Gentleman Jim Corbett.

Feb. 12th: Pioneer Mutual Vounteer Firehouse (no. 612).

It was "200 feet NE of the intersection of 3rd and J," which is to say, right smack dab in the middle of this particular Denny's. This was the "the oldest fire company in California," an assertion which I can neither confirm nor deny. As with most such symbolic claims -- the crowning glory of which comes in the form of Minerva, embodied on the Great Seal -- it does seem rather to dismiss out of hand anything that might have gone before. Such as, oh, I don't know, anything the Spanish or Mexicans accomplished. But who am I, etc.?

Feb. 12th: The original site of the Sacramento Bee (no. 611).

The Bee, which still exists, was relatively late on the scene (1857). It cannot boast such famous contributors as Mark Twain, but they still do a solid business of reporting the news even today, despite occasional lapses into full-on "public-sector unions are the IMP OF SATAN" mode, usually matched with some version of "Kevin Johnson is DREAMY, just DREAMY. Did you know he used to be a Famous Basketball Player? Isn't that DREAMY? Go Kings!" On a more relevant note, they also serve as the flagship paper for the McClatchy chain. You may hear more about the McClatchys (the family, not the corporation), depending on space/time constraints.

Anywho, so the score is:

Sacramento Union original building: still standing.

Sacramento Union most recent building: razed to the ground and lain barren for a decade.

Sacramento Bee current building: lording it over the intersection of 21st and Q.

Sacramento Bee original building: now a homeless encampment.

Thus does history confound our expectations.

Feb. 12th: The Overton Building (no. 610).

So far as I can tell, no-one really knows anything about this place other than that it once housed state offices. It is now, as you can see, a parking lot.

Feb. 12th: The Bank of D.O. Mills (no. 609).

Yet another in a long series of "gee, what appeared to be worth commemorating in the 1950s was torn down 20 years later to build a freeway" monuments.

The Bank of D.O. Mills (the D.O., in case you were wondering, stands for "Darius Ogden.") once stood here. Mr. Mills, believe it or not, _failed_ in Sacramento's prime business of the 1850s (yes, that's right, selling booze to miners). So instead he opened up a bank. At this he was so successful that when the time came to create an entity named "The Bank of California" he was named president. Note: he wasn't the founder of the latter bank. The credit for that goes to a fellow by the name of Ralston. Mills served successfully as president for a little over a decade, and then decided to step down. Sadly, the minute he did, there was a run on the bank and it damn near collapsed. Poor Mr. Ralston was so distraught he decided to go for a swim in San Francisco Bay and never came back. Mills then picked up the pieces, which proved so profitable that he was able to retire back east (New York, which is where he was from to begin with).

SFO, according to a completely unreliable source I picked up off of the web, is built on the site of his estate.

Feb. 12th: The Orleans Hotel (no. 608).

Mark Twain stayed here once in 1866, where he apparently woke up late, missed breakfast, and was overcharged for lunch. Which he then saw fit to complain about in a column for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.

It was torn down long ago, but recently rebuilt. It now houses a shmance wine bar and, as you can see, lofts.

Feb. 12th: Adams and Co. Building (no. 607)

A whole bunch of businesses ran out of this building in the 1850s and 60s. Including Wells Fargo, who served as agents for the Pony Express for five months. Why five months only? Because the Alta Telegraph Co., and then its successor, the California State Telegraph Co. (which, despite the name, was a private enterprise), apparently hashed the job during the eleven months they had responsibility for it. It was, as ever, hard to find a good agent. Or something. As I've had the occasion to say more than once before: 4th grade, etc.

It is now "The Leather Works." Where, despite what you might think, you will not find hand-tooled chaps for riding through the chapparal. Instead you will find fedoras, bags, and aprons.

Feb. 12th: original site of the Sacramento Union (no. 605).

The Union was, for many years, one of the two main papers in tow. It claimed, with some justification, to be the oldest daily in the West. Contributing writers included Mark Twain and Bret Harte.

It folded when I was in college (1994). For all of my youth it had been a cantankerous paranoiac rag, owned by Richard Mellon Scaife (the man who really was at the center of Hillary's "vast right wing conspiracy") and then by a guy named Benvenuti (a local developer). It tended to run stories inveighing heavily against homosexuals and abortion clinics but in favor of semi-automatic rifle ownership. Had it survived, it would surely be trumpeting the rise of the tea-baggers.

It later moved to a site on 4th and Capitol, which has been an empty lot for something like ten years now.

Feb. 12th: Brannan House (no. 604).

Sam Brannan was the fellow who, spying James Marshall conferring with the assayist, couldn't keep the secret and so rode his horse through town screaming "Gold! Gold! Gold! on the banks of the American River!"

Or at least that's the story, anyway. Other tidbits about Brannan: he was a jack-Mormon and a real estate speculator -- he put together the first spa at the hot springs at the upper end of the Napa Valley. At the inaugural festivities he apparently got so drunk he declared that it would the "Calistoga of Sarifornia."

All of which has nothing, really, to do with this building. Which was built by a gent named Robinson on land owned by Brannan, and served as the meeting site for some group or other.

Feb. 12th: The Lady Adams Building.

God love the Clampers. I'm so glad somebody else sees the humor in commemorating former "rooming houses."

For the locals: this is now the site of Evangeline's.

For the out-of-towners: looking for books of fart jokes, ice molds in the shape of shot glasses, whoopie cushions, or edible underwear? Look no further, but get thee to this joint -- they have everything you could possibly want.

Feb. 12th: Ebner's Hotel (no. 602)

A competitor to Land's operation down the street. Apparently Captain Sutter stayed here.

It is perhaps better known as the former site of The Time Zone, an arcade in which I (a) spent many happy summer afternoons out of the heat, and (b) kissed my first and only girlfriend.

What is being built here will evidently be a reproduction of both Ebner's and its neighbor, the Empire.

Feb. 12th: Terminal for the stages and the Sacramento Valley Railroad (no. 598).

The SVRR moved their terminal from R street to here (actually just behind where I was taking the picture) in the late 1850s, mainly to facilitate transfer of passengers from the steamboats arriving from downriver. The passenger ticket office was in the What Cheer House, across the street.

What's pictured here was the first terminal for the Central Pacific, which is to say the transcontinental railroad.

Feb. 12th: The Western Hotel (no. 601).

William Land -- for whom a large park in the city is named -- came to Sacramento in 1860 at the age of 23. He worked as a busboy in this hotel, saving enough money so that 11 years later he bought the place.* It burned in 1875, but he immediately rebuilt; it was then the largest in the city, with 4 floor, 252 rooms, the first elevator and the first fire extinguishers. He helped to found the Chamber of Commerce and served as mayor (running as a Republican, he only sat for one term).

The site of his first hotel (he ran two others, later) is now, as you can see, a pedestrian walkway underneath I-5.

*Bussing tables, like selling booze to miners, has long proven a good way to get a start in this town. Frank Fat did it, when he emigrated from Canton. And the author did it, at the Silver Skillet on West El Camino, as a member of Local #49, HERE.

Feb. 12th: The What Cheer House (no. 597).

Apparently this was a "celebrated" hotel. Why? Who knows.

Perhaps they cover this in 4th grade, etc.

Feb. 12: Store and home of Newton Booth (no. 596).

Governor (later Senator) Booth was one of the more progressive elected officials during this period (1870s) in California. He supported a graduated income tax, the right to collective bargaining, and antitrust laws.

Like most everybody else who got famous in this town in this years, he made his money not from gold mining but instead from selling booze (etc.) to miners. This is the store out of which he sold his booze. It is also, as you can see, where he held his inaugural ball.

In a more random note, his nephew (Booth Tarkington) wrote _The Magnificent Ambersons_.

Feb. 12th: the Eagle Theatre (no. 595).

In an act of utterly fabulous fabrication, I like to term this the great-great-granddaddy of VAPAC.

If you only read what's on the state parks website, you'll find that this was the first building "built as a theatre" in California. If you read the fine print in their very helpful discursis on the bulletin board out front, however, you will find that the Eagle Theatre was the first one built for "legitimate drama productions," since some outfit out of Monterey staged (ahem) "dramatic stage shows" in a combination Saloon and Boarding House.

That would be their emphasis with the upper-case, not mine.

Both accounts dismiss the bear-baiting pits and rodeo corrals built by the Spanish and Mexicans, which served much the same role socially. But never mind that.

In any event, the building was constructed in September 1849 out of lumber and sails (for the walls) salvaged from ships that had been abandoned in the Sacramento River (people were really, really eager to get to the gold fields, you see). Three months later the city flooded, and the cast had to abandon a show halfway through because of the heavy rain. They immediately went to San Francisco and continued their run there. The show must go on, after all.

No word on what the play was, sadly.

The company couldn't get back for two months because of the floods. When they did, they sold this lot and built a new theatre a block away. That one lasted a year and a half before burning.

The current building, as you can see, is precisely as old as this author, having been constructed by the good ladies of the Sacramento Junior League in 1974.

I have never had the honor of meeting Mr. Hagle, "impressario."

Feb. 12th: Pioneer Telegraph Station (no 366).

This was a the office of the State Telegraph Co. (that would be the people who put the Pony Express out of business), and then their successor, Western Union.

It is now empty.

Feb. 7th: Burial place of John Brown, a.k.a., Juan Flaco (no. 513).

This is a somewhat tortured tale, one that has come down in various versions. The basics are these: In September 1846, at the height of the Mexican-American war, some guy named John Brown -- but known around LA as "lean John"* -- took a note from Marine Captain Gillespie, of "Fort Hill" in Los Angeles, that the latter was under siege by Commander Flores of the Mexican garrison. The "note" consisted of a package of cigarettes with the stamp "believe the bearer." John was to ride hell for leather to Commodore Stockton (in Monterey, or in other versions of the story, San Francisco) to apprise him of the situation and raise reinforcements.

His ride took four days (in other accounts, five), for which he was awarded the moniker "Paul Revere of California."

The ride was, at the end of the day, unsuccessful. Gillespie did not receive his reinforcements, and Mr. Brown did not receive the $500 that Captain (in other accounts, Lieutenant) Gillespie had promised him.

Bancroft notes very little information on Mr. Brown, except to say that he may have been a Swede, and claimed to have served both in the English navy and under Bolivar. In any case, he died in 1859, in Stockton, and was buried near this monument.

What was his burial place is now a vacant lot in a pretty seedy and run-down end of town.

* i.e., Juan Flaco; by the by, the dictionary contains some rather unfortunate connatations: "Flaco" suggests not just lean, but meagre, flaccid, frail and weak of resolution.

Feb. 7th: Temple Israel Cemetary (no. 765).

Stockton, unlike Sacramento, does not bulldoze its Jewish cemetaries and put up bars.

Though I will say that stopping to take this picture involved...well, a certain frisson of Lynchian fright. Between the unchained pit bulls, the adult men riding around on child-size tricycles, and the children riding around on adult-sized wheelchairs, I was definitely a little wierded out.

Feb. 7th: Weber Point (no. 165)

After the Indians offed poor Tom Lindsay, Charles Maria Weber (born Homburg, 1814. Unclear if any relation to Max. Unclear if any relation to Mr. Grill) managed to finagle a grant (Rancho del Campo de las Franceses, or in modern parlance, French Camp) encompassing most of what is now Stockton.

This is where he built his house. The house, as you can see, is now gone. Instead what we have is a rather impressive gate, guarding the entrance to what might generously be called a "promenade" along the Port of Stockton.

The gate, in case you were wondering, was donated by the Holiday Inns of America.

I could not make this sort of thing up if I tried.

Feb. 7th: Lindsay Point, Site of the First Building in the Present City of Stockton, a.k.a., Stockton City Hall (no. 178).

Ah, Stockton. What can one say about this plucky little port-town?

Well, let's see....

Hm, hm, hm....

Dum de dum....

Oh, right! You were waiting for _me_ to tell you something interesting about Stockton.

Well, it was the terminus for the Siskiyou Trail, a route established by the Hudson's Bay Company (yes, _that_ Hudson's Bay Company), coming down from Fort Vancouver. Which, just to confuse you, is nowhere near what is now Vancouver, but was actually just across the river from Portland (OR).

It was near here that Tom Lindsay, a trapper, built a hut out of tule reeds. For which efforts the spit of land on which City Hall sits is named for him. He was later murdered, and is buried somewhere nearabouts.

Which proves you can get a historical monument for pitching a tent. As long as it happened a really, really long time ago.

Feb. 7th: What I did on my winter vacation instead of looking at California State Historical Markers.

Yes, that is Half-Dome. And yes that is 18 inches of fresh powder from the storm the night before.

No, this does not count towards the total.

Feb. 4th: Big Oak Flat (no. 406)

Those logs you see behind the grate are, in fact, the remnants of the big oak. Which "was undermined in 1869" (by what is left disturbingly unstated), and then burned in 1890. Not enough, one gathers, so that these chunks might not be preserved for posterity.

Why do people keep around logs from a tree that burned 50 years prior to when the monument was erected, and then keep said logs carefully preserved for an additional 60 years?

More to the point, why would you give up a perfectly fabulous town name like "Savage Diggings" for the utterly banal "Big Oak Flat?"

I can only hope these sorts of questions are covered in the fourth grade curriculum.

Oh, and as you can see, Mark Twain and/or Bret Harte apparently slept here.

Feb. 4th: Jacksonville (no. 419)

This monument commemorates a town now drowned under the waters of Don Pedro Reservoir. It was evidently founded by a fellow named Julian Smart (or Julius, or W.S., the sources are unclear on this point), who rather than dig for gold found it far more profitable to plant potatoes and fruit trees and sell them (at $1/pound in 1850 dollars) to the miners. This was a method later perfected by the Big 4 (Messrs. Stanford, Huntington, and Hopkins in particular), who realized there was far more money to be made in importing shovels than there was to be made by using said shovels to dig up auriferous muck.

Don Pedro, in case you were wondering (What? You weren't? Too bad. I'm going to tell you anyway) was Pierre Sainsevain, a French carpenter who came over to California in 1836. After selling wines for his uncle (Don Luis del Aliso, of Los Angeles) for a couple years, he was granted the Canada del Rincon Rancho near Santa Cruz. When the gold rush came, he first served as a delegate to the constitutional convention, then set himself up as a booze merchant in Stockton. He sold enough groceries to the miners over the next 6 years that he was able to buy his uncle's vineyards. Sometime later he retired back to Bordeaux with his wife, the daughter of Antonio Sunol.

Feb. 4th: Chinese Camp (no. 423).

Another picturesque mining town. Happily, the highway runs right through town. Unhappily, there is not much to see. Except for this monument, and a stone Odd Fellows Hall. According to the marker, the state's first tong war was fought near here, between the Sam Yap and the Yan Woo Tongs.

Yes, you heard it here first, kiddiroos. California will memorialize anything, from ditches to gang fights. As long it occured at least 100 years ago.

The extra folderol around the edges of this monument are apparently meant to signify that Bret Harte and/or Mark Twain once slept here.

Feb. 4th: Knights Ferry (no. 347).

A "picturesque" mining town. The charms of which are not, I am afraid, exactly discernable from this perspective. In particular, the wooden bridge -- California's longest, purportedly designed by President Grant himself, and which consequently merits its own State Historical Park, by the by -- is not visible from here. The highway bypasses town.

:-(

Apologies for the blurriness. It was a blustery day and I had just been chasing yon Coke bottle when it fell from my hands.

Jan. 31st: Prairie City (no. 464).

A placer-mining boom town which "at the height of its prosperity" (which is to say, July 1853) claimed 10 "boarding houses."

Is _that_ what they called them in the 1950s? There will, I am sure, be more examples of (ahem) "boarding houses" in the cavalcade of CSHMs.

This marker lies in the shadow of Folsom High's football stadium. More to the point, it sits across a six-lane divided suburban trunk road from the Folsom office of Intel.

In "Notes from a Native Daughter," Didion made some very astute observations about Sacramento's takeover by the children of the aerospace engineers. Intel, unlike Aerojet (the company to which she primarily referred) does not produce rockets. And yet the effect of this company on the local social fabric is surely much the same.

Jan. 31st: Silverfork, a.k.a., Wesbster's, a.k.a. Sugar Loaf House (no. 706)

Not just another Pony Express station, this was also a stage-coach stop for folks headed up the hill to the Comstock.

Jan. 24th: First salmon cannery on the Pacific Coast (no. 1040).

The building which now occupies this site currently houses the California Department of General Services. It was formerly the headquarters for the Money Store, and is best known locally as "the Ziggurat."

Someday, perhaps when I am very, very bored, I may investigate just what, precisely, the "cooker-boiler method" involved. Long before that day comes, however, I will do something more along the lines of creating a Wikipedia page on the Ziggurat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ziggurat).

Jan. 23rd: When I say everybody gets a piece of the action at Jack London Square, I mean _everybody_. It is, for instance, one of only three, count 'em, three, places to be graced by a "Cheemah, Mother of the Spirit-Fire" monument.*

The actual text is worth reading. If you want to know more, you can visit www.cheemahproject.org, or even the campanion site, www.mariproject.org.

God love Oakland, is all I can say. Well, except that the next time I feel like engaging in profanity I'm totally appropriating the phrase "mother of the spirit-fire!"

And no, this does not count towards the total.

*There are plans to deposit eight of these beauties around the world. So far they've been planted in Oakland, Hamburg, and Majorca.

Jan. 23rd. Everybody -- including the Masons -- wants a piece of the action in Jack London Square, it seems.

Everybody except whoever's running the show at the State Historical Resources Commission. So...still doesn't count towards the total.

Jan. 23rd. This would be a monument to a bar. Heinhold's First and Last Chance Saloon, to be precise. According to the plaque, everybody who was anybody drank at this place, which was built out of salvaged timbers (from a whaling ship) and was an SRO/bunkhouse before it became a saloon.

And yet, bafflingly, not an official California State Historical Monument.

The plaque, as you can see, was donated by a Budwieser franchisee.

So, not part of the total. :-(

Jan. 23rd: this is the accompanying Clamper monument that sits beside the cabin.

Obviously, this does not count towards the total.

Jan. 23rd: Despite what you might think, there are no official CSHMs to Jack London in Alameda County.* Not even in Jack London Square. I find this somewhat curious. But then again, as said by Oakland's other great literary offspring for whom no official monument exists in the city, "there is no there there."

Instead what we find are Clamper-type monuments and reconstructed

half-copies of what may or may not have been his cabin when he was prospecting for gold in the Klondike. According to the plaque, this cabin's authenticity was verified by an Oakland Police Department forgery expert, on the evidence of graffiti carved into the ceiling. It was then disassembled and half was shipped here while the other half went to Dawson City, Yukon.

Amazingly, this does not count towards the total.

*There are monuments in San Francisco and Sonoma, however.

Jan. 23rd: First Unitarian Church of Oakland (no. 896). Noted both for its Richardsonian Romanesque design and for, I quote, its "arching redwood spans, the widest at that time west of the Rockies."

I cannot for the life of me parse that phrase. Does this mean that some church east of the Rockies had wider redwood spans? Or does it mean that some other church west of the rockies had wider straight redwood spans?

For that matter, what the hell is a redwood span anyway?

I can only hope they take care of this mystery in the 4th grade.

Jan. 23rd: Coast Guard Lightship WLV 605 - Relief (no. 1036). Apparently, in some places where it was impractical to build an actual lighthouse -- such as Cape Mendocino -- the Coast Guard used semi-permanently moored lightships. This was one of those.

It was, sadly, closed on the day that we visited it.

Jan. 23rd: Site of the College of California (no. 45). This, apparently, is where the University of California started. It operated on this site for 4 years (1869-1873) before moving uptown.

Jan. 23rd: The Estudillo homestead (no. 279). This was the home of Jose Joaquin Estudillo, the grantee of Rancho San Leandro, covering land just south of Rancho San Antonio (the Peralta Grant). Jose Joaquin was the son of Jose Maria and the elder brother of Jose Antonio -- confused yet? -- who together feature prominently in the history of San Diego.

Okay, yeah, even I'm bored by that. Here's a random tidbit for ya, then: Saint Leander, for whom San Leandro was named, was the brother of Isidore of Seville, credited with converting the Visigoths from Arianism to what we now know as Catholicism.

Nope, still bored. Okay, I'll try better next time.

Jan. 23rd: The Shellmound (no. 335). This was, apparently, a gathering and midden site for the local Ohlones. At the time of European contact there was a mound of shells here -- mussels, clams, abalone -- several hundred thousand square feet in extent.

There is no word on what happened to the shells. My guess is that they were burned to make lime, which was then used to make reinforced concrete structures all over the East Bay.

Now, as you can see, there is a simulacrum of a shell mound of much smaller dimensions (it's behind the minivan), surrounded by a shopping mall that includes several hundred thousand square feet of prime retail space.

It was raining, by the by, which was why this picture is taken from the inside of the car.

Jan. 22nd. I have always wanted to know who the Guy West of Guy West Bridge fame was. Now I know. He is not, in fact, the former Australian chess champion. No word on if he's related to Adam.

See what you learn when you read historical markers?

This does not count towards the total.

Jan. 22nd. Five Mile House, a.k.a., the Guy West Bridge at Sac State. (no. 697)

The Pony Express pony-changing stations never end.

Jan. 22nd. Some things remain unofficially commemorated in local memory.

This is what remains of the old Alhambra Theatre, a 1920s movie palace. When it was torn down for a Safeway in the early 70s, they left a fountain, and this quote.

While I was taking this picture, I engaged in some literary exegisis with the nice municipal worker who was cleaning the waterworks. He and I agreed that the most straightforward interpretation of these lines was "dude, life is hard. Let's get drunk."

This does not count towards the total.

Jan. 22nd. This was the actual site of the synagogue (the sign is across the street, more visible for being on a major thoroughfare). This used to be the California State Department of Education. It is now the Department of Rehabilitation.

There may be some symbolism in the figures lining the first story. There is, sadly, no helpful explanatory plaque.

A funny little story about this building. When I was a senior in high school, I won what was one of the three most prestigious prizes in the gift of the principal. This prize was named for Adolphus McGee, the second black principal of the school. At the time I received the award, Dr. McGee had moved upward in the hierarchy, and was serving as the assistant superintendant in charge of special education. He was therefore the spokesperson for the district when it was sued by a group of parents who wanted their children mainstreamed (i.e., taught for at least some portion of the day alongside non-special ed students). The hearings on this case were held in this building. When the district lost, some unfortunate, totally unnecessary, and frankly quite bizarre comments were made about the coincidence between the religion of the lead plaintiffs and the site of the hearing.

Jan. 22nd: The site of the first synagogue owned by its congregation on the Pacific Coast (no. 654).

I wouldn't have thought they'd have to add the whole "owned by its congregation" disclaimer, but who am I to question the awesome authority of the historical monument?

The physical building was a clapboard pre-fab built in Baltimore and shipped around the Horn to house the Methodists. That congregation (which is now at 21st and J, and is my father's church) sold the structure to the Children of Israel in 1852. B'nai Israel now offer services in a lovely modern building on Riverside Drive.

Monument #2 at the water tower.

I never knew until I saw this plaque the obscure sense of deprivation that comes with the realization that I have never found a seahorse in my tapwater.

This is what's behind the bar -- just in case you thought I wasn't looking hard enough in the rain for this monument.

When I was in middle school this building was reputed to be the blood bank. It is, in fact, a water tower.

I'm totally counting this one, by the by (no. 654-1).

Jan. 22nd: A third ghost monument. According to the guidebooks, this was the site of Sacramento's first Jewish cemetary (Chevra Kaddisha, Home of Peace). It would make sense for it to be here -- we're across the street from Sutter Middle School, site of Sutter's cemetary -- but as you can see, there is nothing here but a bar.

A rather good bar, by the way. Just sayin'.

Jan. 22nd: China Slough (no. 594). Another ghost monument (we really had terrible luck today). According to the guides, this was the site of China Slough.

Yes, the California State Parks Department apparently found it worthy to commemorate a _ditch_. Said ditch was filled in, and on it was built the Southern Pacific depot, which now serves as the Amtrak station.

I suppose it is at least possible that the "China Slough" monument was a stalking horse for commemorating the Southern Pacific -- which even as late as the mid-80s was in dubious odor in this town.

In any case, this mural is high up on the eastern wall of the waiting room. The actual site of this events depicted is somewhat to the west of where I was standing; it will almost certainly serve as a later post.

The Native Daughters monument at the back (which is the say the former) entrance to the museum.

This most certainly does not count towards the total.

Jan. 22nd: The State Indian Museum (no. 991).

The monument is gone, but the building is still officially listed as a CSHM. To quote the long-lost monument: "The State Indian Museum was built fifty years ago as California's first state-run museum devoted to Indian cultures. It continues to serve the same purpose today, displaying an updated (1984) major exhibit on California's Indian peoples."

Anytime someone complains about NAGPRA, I make sure to tell the following little anecdote: The "updated" major exhibit of which the monument spoke included, as I recall, a box full of bones for elementary-age children to play with.

Rumor has it that the museum will soon relocate to West Sac; likely to be greatly expanded.

Jan. 22nd. California Almond Grower's Exchange (no. 967).

It took some doing to get to this one, I will tell you. We were defeated by the steel gates and the concertina wire, but managed to sweet-talk the security guard (twice now on this adventure I've had to negotiate with guards -- who would've guessed this was such a 007-type operation?).

The full text of the monument is worth quoting in full, if only for its repetition of the thunderingly obvious:

"The California Almond Growers Exchange, founded in 1910, was the first successful grower-owned cooperative for marketing California almonds. It pioneered in many fields, including almond production, mechanization, and marketing. The first structure on this property was built in 1915 and was designed to mechanize almond processing. This shelling plant was one of the earliest structures of its type, and contained the world's first mechanical cracker."

See, this is where I really take issue with some of the grandiose statements made by historical markers. As anyone in my family will tell you, the almond growers have no right to make that final claim. The world's first mechanical cracker was, in fact, my great-great-grandfather, Edmund Napoleon Camp.

Jan. 22nd. Putative site of First Congregational Church in Sacramento (no. 613).

As you can see, there is no monument. Not only is there no monument, there is no Bank of the West on the site where the church may or may not have sat (they've moved, as they so graciously inform us with that torn note).

But the story gets murkier yet: the non-existent monument apparently claimed that this was the site of the first church in Sacramento. A bold claim, and probably not technically true. St. Paul's Episcopal was somewhat imprecise about the date of their founding, but they likely had the good Congregationalists beat by about 4 weeks.

The descendant of this congregation is the church in which my spouse and I celebrated our marriage.

Some random notes: the founding minister was one Joseph A. Benton, a Yalie. He later served as president of Pacific Theological Seminary. He was not, evidently, related to Jessie Benton Fremont.

Jan. 22nd: Site of the first and second capitols at Sacramento, a.k.a., the first county courthouse, a.k.a., the current county jail (no. 869).

Note the phrase "at Sacramento." The capital moved around a lot at the beginning: Monterey, San Jose, Benicia. OMG I just realized I could have been raised in _Benicia_. What a horrifying thought.

The current building (the county jail) was, briefly, the most interesting high-rise in town, excepting (as always) the Darth Vadar tower.

While we were taking this picture, a delightfully friendly lady in mustard tights mistook us for tourists. She helpfully provided directions to the marker for the First AME Church (see post immediately below).

Jan. 22nd: First AME Church on the Pacific Coast (no. 1013). Formally organized in 1850, admitted to the denomination as a member congreation in 1851, site of the first statewide convention of the California Colored Citizens in 1855.

First known at Bethel, the congregation later changed their name to St. Andrews. They still offer services, in a lovely building at 8th and U.

Jan. 16th: The Carson Emigrant Trail through Kirkwood Ski Resort.

This would be the high sierras version of a "grubby goddamned camellia tree."

This does not count towards the total. For those of you keeping score at home, the official tally is: 20 monuments. A fifth of the way there.

Jan. 16th: Old Emigrant Road (no. 661).

Greater love hath no man than that he get out of the car on a state highway in the freezing cold to take pictures of buried historical monuments.

This was the site of one of the trails which, if the Donner Party hadn't taken their cutoff, they might not have had to do what they supposedly did.

Jan. 16th: Kirkwood's (no. 40).

I know this looks like a Clamper monument, but there is in fact a CSHM buried nearby in the snow.

I recommend this place for pie and coffee after a nice afternoon of cross-country.

Jan. 17th: Friday's Station, a.k.a. Stateline, a.k.a. Harrah's (no. 728).

You may now make all the jokes you want regarding horses' patooties.

Jan. 15th: Yank's Station, a.k.a. Meyers, a.k.a. the parking lot of Lira's market (no. 708).

Though technically the last PE stop in California, this will not be the last PE-related historical marker in our current adventure.

And you don't have to just trust me that this really is the right marker. I have witnesses.

Jan. 15th: Strawberry (no. 707).

And...yes, Virginia, this is another PE stop.

You may be wondering about the skip in the numbering. We couldn't find Sugar Loaf House in the dark.

Jan. 15th: Riverton (no. 705).

Yet another horse-changing station.

Jan. 15th: Sportsman's Hall/12 Mile House (no. 704).

One of the many horse-changing stations on the Pony Express route.

Jan. 15th. The Governor's Mansion (no. 832).

This is the house for which almost everything I could hope to say has already been said, by Didion, in her essay "Many Mansions."

Except this: the house was built Albert Gallatin (no, not the one you're thinking of, though he was "distantly" related to President Jefferson's Treasury Secretary). He was a quite successful businessman, working as managing partner for Huntington and Hopkins Hardware, then as a junior managing partner for the Big 4, then as the president of the Sacramento Electric Power and Light Company (see the bit about Folsom Powerhouse Sacramento sub-station, below; he participated in those events).

This house would figure prominently in any therapeutic work-up of what my spouse would charitably (ahem!) describes as my "fetish" for California history. The State Parks office have dutifully maintained, over the years, the clawfoot tub the toenails of which Bernice Brown may or may not have painted red one evening. They have carefully restored the bust of Shakespeare and the figure of Columbia the Gem of the Ocean in the library. And they have preserved, almost as one might a shrine, the bedroom in which our current Attorney General stayed when he returned from New Haven to study for the bar.

What they have not retained, to my consternation and deep sadness, is the "nice old table with a marble top" that was the highlight of the tour when I was a child. I do not know where this table went, and I did not receive a satisfactory answer from the docent when I asked.

What a house. Oh hell, I can't help myself. I have to quote the master: "The bedrooms are big and private and high-ceilinged and they do not open on the swimming pool and one can imagine reading in one of them, or writing a book, or closing the door and cying until dinner. The bathrooms are big and airy and they do not have bidets but they do have room for hampers, and dressing tables, and chairs on which to sit and read a story to a child in the bathtub. There are hallways wide and narrow, stairs front and back, sewing rooms, ironing rooms, secret rooms." (J. Didion, 1977. "Many Mansions," pp.71-72 of _The White Album_).

No Governor since Ronald Reagan has lived in this house. Our current Governor does not reside in this house. Instead, when he is in town, he stays in the penthouse suite of the Hyatt Hotel. The Stanford Mansion (see below) is now reserved for ceremonial occasions. I believe that Maria gets some of the credit for making that landmark the showpiece it now is.

Jan. 15th. SMUD memorial. Because everyone deserves a historical marker, especially the folks who keep the lights on. This is in the sidewalk literally beneath my feet in the previous picture (they provide the lights for the Pony Express statue).

And no, SMUD is not a racial epithet. It stands for Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

Jan. 15th. Old Sacramento Pony Express Monument.

Believe it or not, this does not count towards the total.

Note the freeways. Built there in part to clear the slums. As an unintended side effect, the Roma Bakery that once stood roughly 250 east of where this picture was taken relocated (renaming themselves in the process) to within walking distance of my house. They have a passable selection of donuts.

Jan. 15th. The passenger terminal of the Sacramento Valley Railroad (no. 526). From here it went to Folsom, ferrying people and goods up the hill to the mines.

We couldn't get the usual shot because there was a "for lease" sign in front of the building.

Jan. 15th. Sacramento Station of the Folsom Powerhouse (no. 633-2). Apparently, this was "the first distribution point of electricity for a major city."

Right.... Then again, who am I to question the awesome authority of the historical marker? Especially seeing as I missed the memo, as it were, in 4th grade.

Jan. 15th. The Stanford Mansion (no. 614). This served as the State Capitol during Leland Stanford's tenure as governor. Leland and Jane later donated the building to the Roman Catholic Diocese, to serve as an orphanage. Because, as they so eloquently put it, they wanted to adopt all the children of California as their own.

The steps are said by some to resemble a cowcatcher on a locomotive. I am somewhat skeptical of this notion, though there are many other train-related architectural elements inside.

My father and I once hazed a docent here.

Jan. 15th. The Crocker Mansion (no. 599). This would be the home of the brother of the "big 4" Crocker (Charles). This Crocker (E.B., or Edwin Bryant) served as lawyer for the Central Pacific, among other accomplishments (chair of the California Republican Party, State Supreme Court Justice, etc.). The house was formerly owned by B.F. Hastings.

The collection is, sadly, quite forgettable. The best piece by far is "Sunday Morning in the Mines," which until recently could be seen to somewhat better advantage as a mural on the side of the Masonic Temple at 12th and J.

Jan. 15th. Mrs. Anthony J. Kennedy, herself.

This also does not count towards the total.

Jan. 15th. The Sophie Comstock Committee. These would be the good people whom we should thank for the commemoration of the Pony Express. Why a failed business model (18 months before they went bankrupt in the face of faster technology) is particularly worthy of commemoration is never something I've understood. Maybe they explain this in the 4th grade? Who knows.

In any case, I would draw the reader's attention to three names:

a.) Genevieve Didion (aunt of the author),

b.) Phil Isenberg (the first candidate whose campaign I can remember working on, 6 years after the dedication of this monument), and

c.) Mrs. Anthony J. Kennedy, the chair of the committee. This would be Justice Kennedy's mother.

This does not count towards the total.

Jan. 15th: The B.F. Hastings Building (no. 606). An office building for all kinds of endeavors, large and small. Including the Pony Express, of which you will be hearing quite a bit more.

Note the background. This particular wall has rather the appearance of a side chapel in an Anglican church. Which is probably the point, I guess.

Jan. 15th: Old Sacramento (no. 812). This was a day to capture some of the "low-hanging fruit," as it were, of the 58 or so monuments in Sacramento. This particular plaque commemorates what was once known as the worst slum west of Chicago (like all such claims, this should be taken with a large grain of salt), but is now better known as a place to purchase gag gifts, salt-water taffy, paste jewelery, tailored leather goods, smoked fish, and kites.

All this, and you can learn about history, too. This particular plaque tells one that Sacramento was laid out by John Sutter, Jr. (the son), which is only sort of true.

Jan. 8th: pioneer monument in the park near Sutter's Fort.

I am reminded here of a line from Didion's _Run River_: "She and his father were going to be pretty surprised if and when they ever woke up to the fact that nobody in Sacramento any more had even heard of the McClellans. Or the Knights. Not that he thought they ever would wake up. They'd just go right along dedicating their grubby goddamn camellia trees in Capitol Park to the memeory of their grubby goddamn pioneers."

This also does not count towards the total.

Jan. 8th: the man, the myth, the legend.

This does not count towards the total, by the way

Jan. 8th: New Helvetia cemetary (no. 592). Buried here were all sorts of folks, from Sutter's native laborers (i.e., peons) to Mayor Hardin Bigelow. When the site was declared a city park, the local tongs paid to have 1009 bodies shipped back to China. Everyone else was reburied in what is now East Lawn.

I went to middle school here; it was not, to my knowledge possessed. Though rumor had it that one of the teachers kept a skull in his desk.

Jan. 8th: the Coloma Road (no. 745). From here the road went up the hill to Sutter's logging operations, where John Marshall spied that bright shiny bauble in the mill-race in January 1848. It later became the first stage-coach line, and is now better known as Folsom Boulevard.

Jan. 8th: Sutter's Fort (no. 525). According to the museum's diorama, this was "California's first shopping mall."

No really, that's what they say. I jest you not.