USA > California > Sonoma County > History of Sonoma County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county, who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present time > Part 21
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BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF THEMIS.
But this could not end the "courthouse chapter" in Sonoma county history, and at the meeting of the board of supervisors, January 1, 1883, T. J. Proctor, member for Santa Rosa township, opened the old question of "a new court- house." Petaluma made her offer of a free lot and $100,000, and the mayor of Santa Rosa offered the city plaza to the county. Petaluma's proposition "went by the board"-went by the board of supervisors letting a contract for the construction of the new building on the plaza in Santa Rosa at a cost of
STREET SCENE IN SANTA ROSA
*
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$80.000. It was of stone, brick and iron, classic in design, surmounted with an imposing dome-which dome was its doom in the great earthquake of April 18, 1906. When in that quiet spring morning the state of California was suddenly awakened by the heave of the solid ground and the crash of her architecture, Santa Rosa saw her entire business quarter wrecked. The court- house, well-constructed, might have escaped with nominal injury, but this great steel dome with its heavy statue toppled, and crashing down on the roof shat- tered and ruined the structure beyond repair. There were whispers of county division and county scat removal, but the supervisors went on clearing away the wreck and studying plans and specifications for a new building. A bond issue was authorized to pay for a $280,000 building that would be as earthquake proof as structural steel and reinforced concrete could make it; and would be large enough for coming generations; moreover, would be a noble bit of archi- tecture, in keeping with Imperial Sonoma. And well have those vows been kept. To hold fast to the original estimated cost was impossible and the in- crease was added to the splendid pile as it arose from foundation to dome till the total cost reached almost $500,000. And it is well worth it. Sonoma's courthouse is one of the many "show-places" of California. Entering the city of Santa Rosa from the four cardinal points of the compass, the traveler sees arising before him, this great white Temple of Themis, the classic Goddess of Law and Order, the Divine Mother of Civilization. Mighty indeed must be the forces moving through the crust of the globe that will lift that pile from its foundations or shatter its walls bound as they are in bands of triple steel.
A SQUAD OF THE OLD GUARD.
To go back into the '50s, there came to Santa Rosa other men whose names yet live in the city, and the struggling village on the plain progressed from the labor of their strong hands. Such are the names of Thomas L. Thompson, Jackson Temple, William Ross, E. T. Farmer, W. B. Atterbury, B. Goldfish, Henry Wise, Jim P. Clark, W. H. Croweli, Fenwick Fisher, C. W. White, J. S. Van Dorn, W. A. Eliason, H. T. Hewitt, Clem Kessing, Dr. Hendley, Mel- ville Johnson, T. B. Hood, T. J. Proctor, George A. Johnson, A. Runyon, J. H. McGee, A. P. Petit, Z. Middleton, C. G. Ames, H. G. Parks, B. Marks, George P. Noonan, Jerry Claypool, T. N. Willis, D. S. Sacry, Murray Whallon, S. T. Coulter, J. M. Williams, Edward Neblett, G. T. Pauli, George A. Thorn- ton, Edward Whipple, A. Thomas, Isaac DeTurk, T. J. Ludwig, Guy E. Grosse, E. W. Davis, J. B. Armstrong, A. P. Overton, Dr. R. Press Smith, B. S. Young, J. H. Boyce, T. J. Brooke, C. S. Smyth, S. M. Godby, Frederick Kenyon, A. W. Riley, J. A. Hardin, John G. Pressley, J. M. Roney, Wesley Mock, W. H. Mead, George Pearce, John B. Davis, A. Korbel, C. G. Ames, E. H. Smythe, Melville Dozier. These compose a squad of the "Old Guard" that early located in Santa Rosa valley. Probably all of them to a man are over the Divide, but the result of their work is here.
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CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE CHANGES OF THE YEARS.
In 1868 Santa Rosa bestirred herself from the siesta she had been taking for ten or a dozen years. Railroad was in the air, and her quiet enjoyment of a country home was over. Several lines, all starting from tide-water on the south reaching to the wilds in the north, were proposed, and a vote on selection gave the Petaluma-Cloverdale plan the popular right of way. This called for a county donation of almost $300,000 and interest additional of nearly that amount, also gifts of land for rights of way, because railroads are for the people, and by the people, and of the people, and the promoters or managers thereof only construct them and operate them in the spirit of extreme altruism. The company was slow in getting to work and another corporation, The Cali- fornia Pacific of Vallejo, offered to build a line from the Napa county line to Petaluma thence to Santa Rosa, Healdsburg and Cloverdale, with branch to Bloomfield to cost the county a subsidy of $5,000 a mile. An election June 14, 1869, voted the subsidy, and this action stirred the first company-the Sonoma County Railroad Co .- to business, it knowing that the institution "first on the ground" would get the subsidy. Colonel Peter Donahue heard of the plan, and August 2, bought out the right of the existing company for $40,000, called the new concern "The San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad Company." By October roth, he had ten miles of grading completed from Petaluma north and five days later got the first installment of issued bonds-$50,000. By November 8, five more miles, between Petaluma and the town of Donahue, were finished, and $25,000 paid ; December 5, eight more miles-$40,000, and December 31, 1870, the rails were in Santa Rosa.
AND THE RAILROAD DIRT FLEW
Then the California Pacific of Vallejo, with its subsidy-on paper-up its sleeve, started in at Santa Rosa, and the dirt-all kinds of dirt-began to fly. That company commenced to grade, moving northward, paralleling the Donahue road, to the surprise and entertainment of the country folk to whom it seemed to be raining railroads. Of course it was only a bluff-one of the shelf-worn tricks in the railroad gamble, and which worked, although the Colonel easily read the cards of his rival. He compromised with the other com- pany to hold its hand till he finished his line to Cloverdale, after which he transferred it to the troublesome competitor. When the Central Pacific absorbed the California Pacific, Charles Crocker strangely failed to see any value in the Sonoma line, and returned it to Donahue. The line was continued south through Marin county to Tiburon on the bay, and a branch was constructed from Ignacio up through Sonoma valley to Glen Ellen. On the coast a narrow gauge road was built, beginning at Sausalito crossing Marin and entering Sonoma county near the town of Valley Ford, the northern terminus being Cazadero in the red- wood belt. These two lines eventually became a part of the great California
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Northwestern Pacific, which is destined to cover the coast field from San Fran- cisco bay to the Columbia river. It was not in the nature of the Southern Pacific Railroad company to let such rich territory and such rich opportunity go to "waste." without effort to avert the calamity. It proposed a line from Santa Rosa eastward threading Sonoma valley, Napa and Solano to the main line at Suisun. Sonoma county people were asked only to interest themselves in the matter of the rights of way across their lands and $50,000. Just consider the glittering possibilities of the thing-enough to take one's breath away- direct All-Through-Line over the American Continent, tapping the Atlantic seaboard, reaching across oceans, gathering in Europe and the Far East, wring- ing rich commercial tribute from Oceanica-all, all this for Santa Rosa. The "hat was passed around," and a picnic, oration, poem, and the usual "last spike" that is always religiously driven into the fanciful final tie of a finished railroad, were the chief features of the celebration that marked the coming of the South- ern Pacific Railroad to the town. Without attempting to minimize the general benefits of railways there is a healthy belief locally extant that Santa Rosa paid at a maximum mileage rate for all she ever received from her two steam roads. Passenger and freight charges are record breakers in the matter of altitude, although the business increases year by year. The scenic features of the route attract annually hosts of tourists-travelers accustomed to the modern luxurious transportation facilities of the world, yet the passenger coaches at their service in Sonoma county are on par with the second-class cars in any state of the Union.
But the trolley wires that are electrifying the country, are rapidly rele- gating the steamers to the scrapheap. The little trains connect the towns, even the ranches together and with the market, and the country becomes a part of the great system of civilization. The pioneer electric road is the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway, via Sebastopol, with a line extending northward through the rich Green Valley to Forestville. Another electric line between Santa Rosa and Lake county is now in process of establishment. This road will bring a large railroadless area of territory out of its primitive wilds and will introduce the world of travelers to practically an undiscovered region.
AND THE PRINTERS CAME ALSO.
With the early immigration to Santa Rosa came representatives of that humble pilgrim band which appears in the van of civilization. They are the printers, the alphabetic craft that passes knowledge along. October 16, 1857, the Sonoma Democrat presented itself to the reading public, with A. W. Russell its editor. In 1860 T. L. Thompson become owner and editor, and from 1868 to 1871 the managers of the paper were Peabody, Ferrel & Co., Mr.
Thompson having sold his interest in the institution. He repurchased the property in 1871 and continued actively in its management for many years, a portion of that time associated with his brother, R. A. Thompson. Santa Rosa and Sonoma county owe much to Thomas Larkin Thompson. He was easily the "first citizen" and as publisher, State Secretary, Congressman and United States Minister to Brazil was a true man of the people. Soon after his death in his Santa Rosa home by suicide while suffering from ill-health, the Democrat passed into the hands of Ernest L. Finley and Charles O. Dunbar, proprietors
11
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and publishers of the Evening Press. The two papers were merged and issued as the morning Press Democrat. The great earthquake and fire totally des- troyed the property, but it was quickly succeeded bv a more modern and com- plete plant. Attached to it is a full book-binding plant which is in constant operation. The Press Democrat has a large circulation. Herbert Slater is the city editor.
The Evening Republican of Santa Rosa began its existence in 1875 as the Times, G. H. Marr, publisher. Three years after it was purchased by J. W. and T. N. Ragsdale. Colonel J. B. Armstrong and E. W. Davis for several years owned an interest in the property. In 1887 Allen B. Lemmon arrived from Newton, Kansas, and purchased the paper. The new owner, a journalist of wide experience, soon improved the paper. After the fire, which left the Republican a pile of ruins, a new plant took the place of the old. J. Elmer Mobley who had learned the mechanical part of the newspaper work on the Republican, purchased an interest in the paper and holds down the desk of city editor. Ross Campbell, a local attorney, recently purchased the Windsor Herald, which he removed to Santa Rosa, and now issues as the Weekly Sonoma County Herald.
HOP CULTURE.
Among the varied growths in Sonoma fields is the hop vine. Like the grape, it is of antiquity and like that kindred plant is of the early east. The brewing of beer and other mild beverages of this class by ancient people must have necessitated the use of hops as a flavor and preservative. The Egyptians brewed from their barley fields that bordered the Nile, and legendary Germany introduced King Gambrinus of Brabant as the Bacchus of their beer. The hop vine as a culture first appears in the Germanic provinces about the year 768 A. D. A few vines were tried in Green Valley, Sonoma county, in the latter part of 1857, by John Bushnell and Samuel Dows. The soil and general tem- perature was found suitable and the plants grew healthy and strong. Otis Allen did much to introduce the cultivation of the lively "humulus" in this portion of the state : a steady increase in the tract planted has taken place until the acreage in this county amounts to about four thousand acres with an aver- age annual yield of 30,000 bales. Furthermore, Sonoma hops, like Sonoma grapes, have a world wide reputation, in fact, the local product is in greater demand among the brewers of high grade beer in England and the United States. The places best adapted for this culture are the rich bottom-lands of the Santa Rosa and Mark West creeks and of Russian river. The most modern methods of cultivation, harvesting and drying, or curing, are here resorted to. The total annual income from this county is about $800,000. During the three weeks harvesting season probably 12,000 pickers are employed and these- men, women and children-make an outing, a picnic, of the period in the green arbors of the aromatic vines. The expense of harvesting probably amounts to $250,000. Considerable speculation prevails among growers and dealers and short-selling and contracting in advance are in evidence at all times. The grower who contracts to deliver his coming crop at a stated price sometimes does so to his advantage, and often to his disadvantage, catching himself de- livering his hops at a lower price than his neighbors-better guessers-are get- ting. Ten to eleven cents a pound, equivalent to about $20 per bale, have been
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the ruling prices, though frequently a flurry in the market sends the figures up to thirty and forty cents. The prominent local growers are, Raford Peterson, C. V. Talmadge, T. B. Miller, George Hall, Harry Hall, J. I. Jewell and J. E. Clark. The principal dealers are, William Uhlman & Co., C. C. Donovan, Mil- ton Wasserman, W. M. Richardson and B. F. Hall.
UTOPIAS OF SONOMA COUNTY.
The rare Santa Rosa valley has long been the object point not only of the practical farmer home hunter, but for the Utopia seeker also. Intellectual pil- grims pressing into the higher plane of living have sought here a place where they could amid fitting surroundings practice the unselfish tenets of their so- cialistic creed. The followers of Edward Bellamy, working along the lines of the life dream of the great economist, established their Altruria on Mark West creek, just where the beautiful stream falls from its mountains onto the level vale. The colony existed for awhile and ceased to be, passing away like all communistic institutions-excellent in theory, deficient in practice. Near this place, or a few miles north from Santa Rosa, is the noted 400 acre farm and vine- vard of Fountain Grove. It was located in 1875 by Thomas Lake Harris, a native of Stafford, England. At an early age Harris evinced strong religious tendencies and poetic imagination. He was first an ardent Calvinist, then a Universalist, and finally organized a society which he called, "Independent Christians." In philosophy he was a Platonist, in spiritual science leaning to Swedenborgian and its heavenly revelations and celestial sociology. Harris says in one of his many books, "I inhale with equal ease the freedom and at- mosphere of either of the three heavens, and am able to be present without the suspension of the natural degree of consciousness, with the angelic societies, whether of the ultimate, the spiritual, or celestial degree." He also affirms that he had visited those regions and gave accounts of his remarkable visits. In his socialistic teachings he adopted theories of Fourier and sought through a spiritualism to turn public interest along an upper range of thought. The society which once numbered several thousand members scattered over America, Great Britain, India and a mere fragment in Japan, was or is without creed or covenant, only held together by the principles of fraternity and by an inspir- ation working through internal respiration from the divine spirit. Salvation. they hold, is neither by natural progression nor philosophical self-culture, nor justifying faith, but that man only becomes free from evil through self-renun- ciation and a life of unselfish labor for humanity and by such both spirit and body may become regenerate and pure.
A "WORD" CREATION.
The Harris version of creation, given in his "God Manifest in Creative Energy," which was published in 1852, is a word-storm of amazing violence. Notwithstanding he was a man of much culture, his books exhibiting an author- ship of no inferior grade, he chose to appear in the guise of an intellectual charlatan, and notwithstanding the superfluity of verbiage, the confusing clangor of sounds, the reader will hear behind them the simple, sublime utterance of the Almighty from which Thomas Lake Harris "lifted" bodily his tale of crea- tion. Because of his prominence for years as the head and master-spirit of the exclusive cult, so little known to the countryside, and colony so near Santa Rosa, a portion of his version of Genesis I-a verbal curiosity-is here given :
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"In the beginning, God the Life, in God the Lord, in God the Holy Pro- cedure, inhabited the dome, which burning in magnificence primeval, and, revolving in prismatic and undulatory spiral, appeared, and was the pavilion of the spirit : in glory inexhaustible and inconceivable, in movement spherical, unfolded in harmonious procedure disclosive."
The simple Mosaic original is-"In the beginning God created heaven and earth." Thomas Harris continues :
"And God said let Good be manifest ! and good unfolded and moral-mental germs, ovariums of heavens, descended from the Procedure. And the dome of disclosive magnificence was heaven, and the expanded glory beneath was the germ of creation. And the Divine Procedure inbreathed upon the disclosure and the disclosure became the universe."
The Bible version is, "And God said, 'Let there be light."" God evidently is a personality of fewer words than Harris. But the Seer of the New Life exhales his limitless vocabulary when he serves notice on the world concerning the creation of Day and Night, and as in a disregard for sentence formation, he thus pours out a flood of language that overtops Babel and sweeps that his- torical tongue-mixer out of existence. Here is the awful thing :
"And God made two great lights to rule the Zodiac, and to be for creative disclosure, disclosive manifestation, manifest glory, glorious radiation, inter- pretative aggregation; and thence vortices, solariums, vorticle panetariums. planets, floral universes, universal paradises. heavens of spiritual universes, celestial heavens, seraphic habitations, seraphimal universes, cities of heavenly seraphima, and final consociative universal intelligence in unity of innumerable individuality, in triunity of unfolding universes, adoring and ascending in beau- tification unto eternal lfe."
REMAINS OF THE FAITH THAT FAILED.
A number of prominent people joined the society, among whom were Lady Oliphant, a writer of considerable note, and her son, Laurence Oliphant, mem- ber of Parliament, distinguished English traveler and author and religious en- thusiast. During one of his periods in America he was private secretary to Lord Elgin, governor-general of Canada, and subsequently visited China and Japan with the English diplomat. In Japan Oliphant was badly wounded by a Japanese fanatic and was obliged to resign his position in the British diplo- matic service. About this time he met with Harris and the spiritualism of the new cult appealed to him. The Oliphants invested considerable money in the society, which fund was afterwards the bone of contention when the inevitable break was on and the Brotherhood became anything but brotherly. Albeit, after the Oliphants extracted themselves and their interests,-what was left- Laurence fell into moody and abstracted habits, making his home in Palestine, when he published a number of works of a religious cast and of no importance. Another prominent member of the Harris cult is Kanaya Nasagawa, a native of Japan. Unlike the Cliphants, he did not let the New Life dogma dull his sense of business, and being a practical agriculturist he did not let the occult mysticism of the east, grafted onto the cloudy spiritualism of the west, take up his time. He sought out ways and means of making the fine tract of grain and grape lands pay, and succeeded. Fountain Grove is now a buzzing Japanese colony, the property owned by Mr. and Mrs. H. E. Hart and Kanaya Nasagawa.
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CHAPTER XXXIV.
THOROUGHBRED HORSES OF SONOMA COUNTY.
Cattle on a thousand hills, the favorite phrase of the wide, open west, was coined in California, where the great Spanish ranchos were crowded with live- stock. In the mild climate of this "southland," with its broad sweep of grassy plain, the bands quickly bred into countless numbers. Too numerous and too valueless for branding they roved the unfenced ranges virtually free, obeying 10 call except that of their native wilds. And they obeyed that call, as the herds of ownerless hoofs wandering over this portion of the continent bear testimony. A steer had some table-value, but the price of hide, horns and tallow was all that sent him to the open market. The swarthy vaquero spurring the flanks of his mustang to ribbons and riding the life out of his unshapely body cared not a centavo for the horse whose ancestor may have borne a king through the courts of the Alhambra. The restocking of the ranches was the first labor of the final settler and that decade saw American horses, lithe and powerful, American cattle, short-horned and sleek-coated, a part of the equipment of the California farms. The heavy ox at last got his neck out of the yoke, and the sturdy horse from Normandy did the work much better. The burro-slave of all the ages- was freed from the cart or carriage when the slim thoroughbred with a pedigree of speed took his place. The mild queen of the dairy from over the seas-from Holstein, Durham and Jersey-came to create and run a local milk route. The Spanish cow had never been asked to make this contribution to the productive wealth of the state, and the word "butter" had melted from the language. Her tigress-disposition, especially with her calf in the corral, generally made any at- tempt to milk her so near-suicidal that Pedro or José, instead, milked the goat. Robbing Nanny's kid was easier and safer. Alta California was full-ripe for a change when the gringo came.
Whether the horse appeared as a centaur, with the whiskered-head and broad shoulders of the homo reared on his own graceful torso, or as a unicorn, that fabu- lous freak of heraldry, rampant, always exhibited as just intending to horn a lion, or as a hipparion, the three-toed fossil what-is-it of the post tertiary period, this page pleads silence. But from a far hour to the present the horse has lived and died ever faithful to humanity. There is no bar sinister in the record of his loyalty. He has suffered himself to be bound to labor, and in car and furrow he has toiled for his master. Bred and schooled for flight he has sprung away, tense with the life that burns through his being, mad in desire to lead, to conquer, to wear the victor's ribbon-the mere fading color of an instant's triumphant. The bugle * call to battle-his master's battle -- calls his natural savagery from the wilds to match the natural savagery of man, and they plunge together, vibrant to destroy. down the red ways of death. Whatever the hand on his rein, he is. No greater tribute can be given this incomparable beast clothed in the flame-trappings of war, than in these sublime lines of Job where the Almighty speaks :
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"Hast thou given the horse strength ? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder ?
"He paweth the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength; he goeth on to meet the armed men.
"He mocketh at fear and is not afrightened; neither turneth he back from the sword.
"The quiver rattleth against hini, the glittering spear and shield."
The sacred writers of all creeds have set him among the stars-Pegasus the winged steed of the gods, orbing through the systems of blazing suns ; or in the great hereafter, glorious and eternal, harnessed to the flame car of Deity. When man stands in the presence of this noble creation, he may well render salutation as to a contemporary, an equal, a comrade, whom it is an honor to honor. In true nobility of spirit, the horse, the real king of the ani- mal kingdom, is not inferior to man himself.
LOU DILLON, EMPRESS OF THE EQUINES.
It has been the mission of the horse to give Sonoma another high record in the scale of excellence, and where Lou Dillon, empress of the equines, has flung her silver heels she has carried the name and the color of her nativity before all others. Wherever the yet unbeaten "1:581/2" of this peerless trotter is known, Santa Rosa is known, Santa Rosa, where horses grow, and speed and beauty are in the bone and sinew of them. A royal race of racers have here learned to kick the miles behind them, and kick the time below them. since Anteeo years ago started record-breaking among the local flyers at 2:161/2, to be continued by his grand-filly, Sonoma Girl at 2:051/2. If the queenly Lou should now turn up on her home track at the Santa Rosa Stock Farm, where Frank Turner licks the speed youngsters into shape, and call the colts of her big blue-blooded family to muster, what a band of horse 400 would come at her neigh. All are of the line of sire Sidney-all true in gait and go as well as in name : Dollie Dillon, 2:0634 ; Katie Dillon, 2:0734; Ruth Dillon, 2:151/4; Sadie, Lottie, Helen, Martha, Martiana, Carrie, Eveline, Gertrude, Edith, Fan- nie, Rebecca, California et al .- sounds like finishing school roll call. Then as companions to that bevy of equine beauties, Guy Dillon, Stanley, Linwood, Millard, Harry, Adoo, Major, Lord and other Dillons: from every part of the compass would trot in the breed to that grand rodeo.
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