Timeline of the San Francisco Bay Area: C 1930-1975
Return to home
1930 Jan 6,
Aviator Douglas Campbell, the 1st American ace of WW I, visited C.A.
“Mother” Tusch at 2211 Union St. in Berkeley, Ca. Tusch’s home was
known s the “Hangar” because it was one of the most complete
privately owned aviation museums in America.
(SFC, 1/7/05, p.F6)
1930 Jan 22, The concrete
freighter Palo Alto arrived at Aptos. She was drawn up toward the
beach and converted into a cabaret and amusement center. The
435-foot, cement ship was beached as a tourist attraction. By 1978
it was breaking up and sinking into Monterey Bay.
(Ind, 11/25/00, 5A)(SFC, 1/24/03, p.E3)
1930 Jan 27, Mayor Rolph urged
California to make all of SF and San Mateo counties into one game
preserve after Supv. Thomas Hickey of San Mateo argues that the
Spring Valley lands surrounding the water reservoirs should be made
a sanctuary for wildlife.
(SFC, 1/28/05, p.F7)
1930 Feb 1, A Loening Air Yacht
of Air Ferries made its first passenger run between San Francisco
and Oakland, California. Amphibious airplanes offered frequent
six-minute flights between San Francisco and Oakland in 1930.
(HN, 2/1/99)
1930 Mar 11, An escape attempt
from Alcatraz by 3 soldier convicts ended as a guard crew pulled
them from the water as they struggled to reach the Marin shore.
(SFC, 3/11/05, p.F8)
1930 Mar 25, Hayward’s Mayor
John Lee Wilbur led a groundbreaking ceremony and parade for a new
city hall on Castro St.
(SFC, 3/25/05, p.F8)
1930 Mar 26, SF Mayor Rolph
helped inaugurate air ferry service between SF and Vallejo.
(SFC, 3/25/05, p.F8)
1930 Apr 3, Stanford students
retrieved their Stanford ax from UC students, who stole it in 1899.
(SFC, 4/1/05, p.F8)
1930 May 8, The Richfield Oil
Company tanker Richfield wrecked on the rocks off Point Reyes, Ca.,
with a cargo or 25,000 gallons of high-test gasoline.
(SFC, 5/6/05, p.F3)
1930 May 15, Ellen Church, the
first airline stewardess, went on duty aboard an Oakland-to-Chicago
flight operated by Boeing Air Transport (a forerunner of United
Airlines).
(HN, 5/15/98)(AP, 5/15/07)
1930 Jun 1, In SF the Royal
Theater on Polk St. was dynamited. In October police discovered an
explosive device at the Alhambra Theater. Both theaters were owned
by the Nasser Brothers.
(SFC, 10/14/05, p.F6)
1930 Jun 10, In the 1st night
baseball game on the Pacific Coast the Sacramento club beat Oakland
3 to 0 at Moering Field.
(SFC, 6/10/05, p.F4)
1930 Jun 21, The Rainbow
Ballroom opened on the freighter Palo Alto in Aptos. It accommodated
3,000 people and attracted some of the big bands of the time.
(Ind, 11/25/00, 5A)
1930 Jun 23, The US Coast Guard
Cutter Tingard captured the trawler “5048” also known as the Dora,
and confiscated 400 cases of imported whiskey in Drake’s Bay, Marin,
Ca.
(SFC, 6/17/05, p.F5)
1930 Jun 27, It was reported
that E. John Magnin and Grover A. Magnin have signed contracts for a
new $1.2 million, 4-story, I. Magnin store at the northwest corner
of 20th and Broadway in Oakland.
(SFC, 6/24/05, p.F7)
1930 Jul 24, California State
Dept. of Public Works estimated a $72 million cost for a
double-decked SF Bay Bridge.
(SFC, 7/22/05, p.F3)
1930 Jul 27, Ebee Landre (12),
Oakland’s champion tree-sitter, passed his 240th hour tree-sitting
and planned to come down the next day.
(SFC, 7/22/05, p.F3)
1930 May 1, Anton J. Anderson,
a Sausalito fisherman, returned to port in SF, Ca., towing 2 boats
and carrying the bodies of Allen Curry (29), a deputy fish and game
warden, and James Burke (48), a former game warden. Anderson himself
was wounded and explained that he had shot the 2 men in self defense
after they tried to confiscate his nets. Anderson was not indicted
and returned to fishing. He died mysteriously 3 years later off the
Mendocino shore.
(SSFC, 8/17/08, DB p.58)
1930 Sep 13, Gasoline in SF was
raised a penny to 21 cents a gallon.
(SFC, 9/9/05, p.F5)
1930 Sep 26, SF Chief Engineer
M.M. O’Shaughnessy predicted the Sunset District could grow to
support 250,000 people from the current 40,000 in the area.
(SFC, 9/23/05, p.F3)
1930 Oct 21, UC Berkeley
dedicated 2 new campus buildings: Giannini Hall and the Ernest V.
Cowell Memorial Hospital for students.
(SFC, 10/21/05, p.F6)
1930 Oct 22, Robert Grodon
Sproul was inaugurated as president of the Univ. of California.
(SFC, 10/21/05, p.F6)
1930 Oct 31, Southern Pacific
Co.’s $12 million double-track bridge across Suisun Bay was formally
dedicated. This marked the end of train ferries across Carquinez
Straits.
(SFC, 10/28/05, p.F3)
1930 Nov 7, In California a
band of 6 gunmen, using machine guns and dynamite, stopped an
eastbound train in Alameda County and escaped with $60,000 from a
mail car.
(SFC, 11/4/05, p.F6)
1930 Nov 15, St. Mary's of
Moraga (the Mad Magicians of Moraga under coach Slip Madigan)
defeated Fordham Univ. (the Seven Blocks of Granite) in a major east
vs. west football game 20-12.
(SFEC, 6/13/99, p.C1,18)
1930 Nov 18, The Stanford Univ.
football team defeated UC Berkeley 41-0 in the Big Game. UC coach
C.N. Price resigned Nov 24 following the most lopsided loss in the
rivalry.
(SFC, 11/18/05, p.F2)
1930 Aug, The International
House in Berkeley opened its doors. It was founded by Harry Edmonds.
It was the 1st interracial, coed-educational housing in the US west
of NYC.
(SFC, 9/7/01, p.A25)
1933 Oct 12, The US Army left
Alcatraz Island. In 1934 it reopened as a federal penitentiary.
(OAH, 2/05,
p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatraz_Island)
1930 In Oakland, Ca., the Ninth
Avenue Terminal building was built. It was doubled in size to
180,000-square-feet in 1951.
(SFC, 3/16/07, p.B5)
1930 Villa Montalvo in
Saratoga, a 175-acre estate of former Sen. James Phelan, was
officially bequeathed to California for the encouragement of the
arts.
(SSFC, 2/20/05, Par p.4)
1930 George Hearst purchased
the Hillsborough Uplands (Montes Robles) house from Charles
Lindgrin. He hired Julia Morgan to redesign it. She turned it into a
22-room Georgian colonial similar to the Washington White House. The
Hearsts never moved in due to divorce.
(Ind, 5/6/00,5A)
1930 Edgar Wakefield McLellan
retired from his Burlingame flower business that boasted some
324,000 square feet of glass houses. He had pioneered the shipment
of flowers to cities across the US. The operation was taken over by
his son Roderick and moved to a 61 acre site in Colma.
(PI, 1/24/98, p.5)
1931 Feb 20, Congress allowed
California to build the Oakland Bay Bridge.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1931 May, Federal agents raided
the J.R. Roberts Soda Works in South San Francisco and uncovered the
largest illicit distillery ever found in California. It was owned by
the South San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
(Ind, 4/21/01, 5A)
1931 Jul 20, The trial of
Constance May Flood Gavin, an alleged illegitimate daughter, began
in San Mateo, Ca., for a daughter’s share in James L. Flood estate.
Before closing arguments Judge George Buck ordered a directed
verdict in favor of the Flood family. 10 jurors refused to sign the
verdict. Buck lost elections the following year to Maxwell McNutt,
the lawyer for Constance. Gavin later received a $1.2 million
out-of-court settlement.
(SMMB)(SSFC, 2/8/04, p.A28)
1931 Aug, The Sisters of the
Holy Cross opened St. Matthew’s Catholic School in the former San
Mateo home of Walter Hobart. Tuition started at $2 per month for the
140 students.
(Ind, 8/24/02, 5A)
1931 A new Berkeley Public
Library was designed by James Plachek.
(SFC, 4/4/02, p.A15)
1931 The Paramount Theater in
Oakland was built as a movie house. It was restored in 1971 as a
multiuse arts center.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, DB p.36)
1931 Celia Tobin Clark,
Hibernia Bank heiress, had her House on Hill completed in
Hillsborough. It was designed by David Adler as a Cotswold-style
Tudor.
(Ind, 11/25/00, 5A)
1931 The Sisters of Mercy moved
out of the Kohl mansion in Burlingame to newly built facilities. The
mansion became Mercy High School.
(Ind, 1/19/02, 5A)
1931 Charles Crouch and 4 other
investors opened 6 grocery stores on the Peninsula called Peninsula,
Ltd.
(SFC, 3/24/98, p.B1)
1931 The Levy brothers opened a
new store in San Mateo on 3rd Ave. across from the Benjamin Franklin
Hotel.
(Ind, 11/7/98, p.5A)
1931 Orchard Supply Hardware
began operating on San Jose, Ca., as a farmer’s buying cooperative.
In 1996 the hardware chain was acquired by Sears. In 2012 Orchard
began trading as a public company.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchard_Supply_Hardware)
1931 Ernest Lawrence tested the
first cyclotron at UC Berkeley, Ca. The device measured 30cm in
circumference.
(Econ, 9/13/08, p.87)
1931 David Starr Jordan, the
founding president of Stanford Univ., died.
(Ind, 4/12/03, 5A)
1932 Janet Lewis (d.1998)
published "The Wife of Martin Guere," a historical novel on about
16th century France. The story was turned into an opera in 1961 with
music by William Bergsma. In 1984 a French film version was released
"The Return of Martin Guere." An American version, "Somersby," was
made in 1993 set during the Civil War. Lewis was born in Chicago but
moved to California and lived in Los Altos.
(SFC, 12/5/98, p.C2)
1932 In Oakland, Ca., the
Morcom garden was built as a Works Progress Administration (WPA)
project. The 8-acre park included a lily pond and a cascading
waterfall.
(SFC, 9/21/09, p.D2)
1932 International House,
designed by George Kelham, opened in Berkeley.
(SFCM, 11/9/03, p.8)
1932 The Alameda Theater opened
in Alameda, Ca. The screen went dark in 1979. In 2005 the city of
Alameda used eminent domain to take it over as part of a $30 million
redevelopment plan.
(SFC, 5/21/05, p.B1)
1932 The 18-hole Sharp Park
Golf Course opened in Pacifica, Ca. SF park superintendent John
McLaren had hired Alister MacKenzie to design the course on land
donated by sugar magnate Adolph Spreckels.
(SFC, 8/31/09, p.A1)
1932 Pari-mutuel betting on
horse racing was legalized and racing resumed at Tanforan.
(Ind, 8/17/02, 5A)
1932 Trader Vic’s began in
Oakland as Hinky Dink’s. The Mai Tai was invented there in 1944. A
San Francisco branch opened in 1951 at 20 Cosmo Place, but closed in
1994 when it morphed into le Colonial. In 2004 it reopened in SF.
(SFCM, 1/16/05, p.31)
1932 Sea Cliff Amusement Co. in
Aptos went bankrupt.
(Ind, 11/25/00, 5A)
1932-1936 Charles Templeton Crocker financed and
led 6 expeditions for the California Academy of Sciences to the
Galapagos Islands and the South Seas aboard his yacht Zaca.
(Ind, 7/14/01, 5A)
1933 Jan 5, Work on Golden Gate
Bridge began on the Marin County side of SF Bay.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1933 Feb 26, Ground was broken
for the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Russell Cone was hired
to oversee the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. He had
already worked on the Philadelphia-Camden (Ben Franklin) Bridge, the
Detroit-Windsor Ambassador Bridge and the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge.
(HN, 2/26/98) (SFC,12/20/97, p.A21)
1933 Apr 12, The $ 5 million
Naval Air Station Sunnyvale opened in Mountainview. It was later
renamed Moffet Field after Rear Admiral William Moffet, who was
killed in the wreck of the USS Akron.
(Ind, 1/27/01, 5A)
1933 Jul 4, Work began on
Oakland Bay Bridge.
(Maggio, 98)
1933 Aug 5, Harry V. Hill (50)
drowned off Yerba Buena Island becoming the 1st fatality in the
construction of the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge.
(SSFC, 8/4/08, DB p.54)
1933 Oct 16, Some 50,000 people
gathered to watch the Macon land at the Sunnyvale Naval Air Station,
later named Moffet Field. Hangar One opened to house the 785-foot
Macon airship, a dirigible 10 times the size of a blimp.
(SFC, 2/12/99, p.C1,9)(Ind, 1/27/01, 5A)
1933 Oct 19, Dallas Egan,
condemned slayer, was executed at San Quentin after California Gov.
James Rolph agreed to allow him 8 ounces of good Kentucky bourbon
whiskey.
(SSFC, 10/19/08, DB
p.58)(www.freeotrshows.com/otr/c/Calling_All_Cars.html)
1933 Nov 9, Brooke Hart (22)
was abducted from the parking lot of the family-owned department
store in San Jose, Ca. The 1943 novel “Against a Darkening Sky” by
Janet Lewis was based on the lynching of his accused abductors. The
abductors, who killed Hart, were later captured after police traced
their calls arranging a $40,000 ransom. [see Nov 26]
(SFC, 12/5/98, p.C2)(Ind, 4/28/01, 5A)(SFC,
9/13/05, p.B3)
1933 Nov 26, In California a
mob attacked the Santa Clara County Jail and dragged out John M.
Holmes and Thomas H. Thurmond for the kidnapping and murder of
Brooke Hart (22), heir to a San Jose department store fortune. The 2
men were hung and stripped from 2 sycamores at St. James Park, one
of which Pres. McKinley had stood under in 1901 to deliver a speech
on American liberties and the US Constitution. Gov. Rolph said that
if anyone was arrested for the lynching, he would pardon them. [see
Nov 9]
(Ind, 4/28/01, 5A)(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.4)(SFC,
9/13/05, p.B3)
1933 In Martinez the Contra
Costa County Courthouse was completed.
(SFC, 1/9/99, p.A15)
1933 In Petaluma the D Street
drawbridge was completed over the Petaluma River for $77,000 to
replace one of the last remaining "swing bridges."
(SFC, 8/18/00, p.A25)
1933 Gov. James Rolph signed a
bill authorizing the creation of a regional park district for the
East Bay. The East Bay Regional Park District was formally
established in 1934 and in 1936 it logged its 1st acquisition from
EBMUD -- 2,166 acres in what became Tilden Regional Park and the
Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve.
(SSFC, 8/15/04, p.A14)
1933 George and Mary Fabbro,
immigrants from northern Italy, established a bar that grew into
Fabbro's Restaurant and Bar in Redwood City at 2915 El Camino. It
reportedly housed the first off-track betting machine in the state.
(SFC, 4/21/99, Z1 p.6)
1933 A fire broke out at the
Oakland Pier of the Key System. One building was destroyed and the
Peralta ferry was heavily damaged. It was soon sold to the Black
Ball Line in Seattle.
(SFC, 12/26/98, p.A24)
1933 Two killers were lynched
in San Jose in St. James Park. The story was covered in the
1992 book "Swift Justice" by Harry Farrell.
(SFEC,12/28/97, p.D5)
1933-1934 Wakefield Taylor (1912-2005) served as
student body president at UC Berkeley. He and the Stanford student
body president agreed that the Axe would serve as the perpetual
trophy for the Big Game winner.
(SFC, 4/12/05, p.B5)
1934 Jan 1, Alcatraz officially
became a federal prison. The first prisoners arrived in August. [see
Aug 11, 1934]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatraz_Island)
1934 Mar 3, It was reported
that Alf Haraldsen had found some 150 pounds of ambergris on the
shore of Bolinas, Ca. The material, formed in the intestines of
whales and used in the manufacture of perfume, was estimated to be
worth $75,000.
(SSFC, 3/1/09, DB p.50)
1934 Aug 11, The US government
opened a maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco
Bay and the first federal prisoners arrived. From the time it opened
to 1937 there was no talking by prisoners allowed. Federal convicts
from McNeil Island Prison in Washington joined a small number of
military prisoners, left over from the island‘s time as a US Army
prison. The facility had been used as a military prison since 1859,
but was redesigned to be a high-security penitentiary for the "most
dangerous" prisoners. The prison closed in 1963.
(AP, 8/11/97)(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W30)(HNQ,
7/10/00)(OAH, 2/05, p.A6)
1934 Aug 20, Gangster Al Capone
and 42 other prisoners traveled in steel barred railroad coaches to
Alcatraz after being transferred the federal penitentiary in
Atlanta, Ga.
(SSFC, 8/9/09, DB p.46)
1934 Sep 29, In Vallejo, Ca.,
the body of Joe soon (40), a member of the Hop Sing tong, was found
dead in the Vallejo business district with a hatchet wound between
the eyes and 4 bullets in his torso. The murderers were believed to
be hatchetmen from San Francisco’s Chinatown.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.50)
1934 Oct 12, Michael
O'Shaughnessy, SF chief engineer, died, just 12 days before Hetch
Hetchy water began flowing to the Bay Area. [see Oct 28]
(Ind, 3/11/00, p.5A)(SFC, 9/15/02, p.A20)
1934 Oct 28, In Redwood City,
Ca., a crowd of 20,000 people gathered at the temporary Pulgas Water
Temple to witness the first Sierra water begin to empty into Crystal
Springs Lake. The Pulgas Water Temple near the Crystal Springs
Reservoir was modeled after the Sunol Water Temple designed by
Willis Polk. This marked the end of the 20-year SF water project led
by engineer Michael O'Shaugnessy (d.10/18/34) [see Oct 12].
(SFC, 12/19/96, p.A21)(SFC, 9/27/97, p.A24)(Ind,
3/11/00, p.5A)
1934 Nov 4, The new $400,000,
6,500-seat, Bay Meadows horse racing track opened in San Mateo, Ca.,
under the direction of Bill Kyne (d.1957). Gov. Frank Merriam
christened the one-mile track, which opened on the grounds of an old
airfield. Jockey George Burns rode 5 winners, three of them in a
row. The track featured the new $250,000 totalizer machine to
display bets and payoff. The last day of regular racing was May 11,
2008. A final racing was scheduled for the 2008 county Fair, August
6-18.
(Ind, 5/13/00,5A)(SFC, 3/23/07, p.A1)(SFC,
5/10/08, p.A4)
1934 Nov 17, Victor J. Bergeron
(1903-1984), aka Trader Vic, opened Hinky Dink’s, a small
food-and-beer joint at 65th and San Pablo in Oakland, Ca. He
expanded his business and in 1951 opened Trader Vic’s in SF at 20
Cosmo Place.
(SSFC, 10/11/09, DB p.46)
1934 The film "Broadway Bill"
with Myrna Loy and Warner Baxter was shot at the Tanforan Race
Track.
(PI, 3/21/98, p.5)
1934 The San Mateo county jail
was built. A new jail was to replace it by 2003.
(Ind, 5/13/00,8A)
1934 The US Justice Dept. took
over Alcatraz from the War Dept. and reopened it as a federal
penitentiary.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W38)
1934 The California Parks
Commission acquired the concrete freighter Palo Alto in Aptos for
use as a fishing pier. A storm soon broke the hull in two. The bow
section broke off during a 1963 storm.
(Ind, 11/25/00, 5A)
1934 The East Bay Regional
Parks District was established.
(SFC, 6/25/04, p.F6)
1934 Spenger's Fish Grotto
opened in Berkeley. It was taken over in 1998 under a 25-year lease
by Bill McCormick and Doug Schmick and reopened in 1999.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.C1)
1934 Ford Motor Co. opened an
assembly plant in Richmond. The plant produced tanks during WW II
and was later shut down. In 2002 new plans proposed a film complex
for the site.
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.A21)
1934 UC Berkeley shut down The
Razzberry (“uncensored and untrammeled”), a student publication that
satirized the faculty.
(SFC, 3/23/07, p.B9)
1935 Apr 29, It was reported
that live rabbits were being sewn onto dog-track racing machines in
the San Francisco Bay Area counties of San Mateo and Santa Clara.
(SSFC, 4/25/10, DB p.54)
1935 Jul 2, SF Bay Bridge
riveter Michael E. Markey (31) fell 290 feet to his death at Yerba
Buena Island. Fellow bridge workers quit for the day in accordance
with custom.
(SSFC, 6/27/10, DB p.46)
1935 Jul 27, Eleanor Louise
Christenson (d.1983), the daughter of deceased millionaire Edwin A.
Christenson, married Christian de Guigne III at Christenson
Hillsborough residence on summit Drive.
(Ind, 1/04/03, 5A)
1935 Nov 22, Pan Am inaugurated
the first transpacific airmail service, San Francisco to Manila. The
Pan Am China Clipper took off from Alameda Point bound for the
Philippines. It was the company's first trans-Pacific flight. The
plane was a 25-ton Martin M-130 flying boat with a wingspan of 130
feet, and was the largest aircraft in world service.
(HFA, ‘96, p.18)(HN, 11/22/98)(Ind, 5/1/99, p.5A)
1935 Nov 24, Ronald V. Dellums
was born in Oakland. he later became a US Congressman and served for
28 years. In 2000 Dellums and H. Lee Halterman authored the
memoir "Lying Down With the Lions: A Public Life From the Streets of
Oakland to the Halls of Power."
(SFC,11/18/97, p.A2)(SFEC, 2/13/00, BR p.1)
1935 Dec 25, Albert Joost (57),
SF Bay lighthouse keeper, died of injuries from a fire at the
Southampton lighthouse between Angel Island and Richmond harbor.
(www.rudyalicelighthouse.net/CalLts/Smptn/Smptn.htm)(SSFC, 12/26/10,
DB p.46)
1935 Gertrude Stein returned to
the site of her former 10-acre home in Oakland and remarked:
"there’s no there there."
(SFC, 5/3/02, p.A20)
1935 The cornerstone of the
Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland was laid by Earl Warren. It was
built in classical and art deco style.
(SFC, 4/13/02, p.A17)
1935 The Dominican Sisters of
San Rafael built their Santa Sabina retreat.
(SFCM, 8/29/04, p.4)
1935 The marquee of the Art
Deco Fox Theater at 18th and Telegraph in Oakland, Ca., established
in 1928, was replaced. The theater folded in 1965. In 2006 plans
were made to reopen it for live entertainment at an estimated cost
of $45 million.
(SFC, 12/6/00, p.A24)(SSFC, 4/23/06, p.A1)
1935 The San Mateo County
Historical Association was established.
(LaPen, 12/86, p.2)(Ind, 9/21/02, 5A)
1935 Roderick McLellan
developed gardenia production and became the world’s largest
gardenia grower with 80,000 plants cultivated under glass. He also
had begun experimenting with orchids.
(PI, 1/24/98, p.5)
1935 Charles Crouch and 4 other
investors expanded their Peninsula Ltd. grocery store chain to the
East Bay and named the new Berkeley store at Shattuck and Bancroft
"Lucky."
(SFC, 3/24/98, p.B1)
1935 Jack and Bill Dozier
founded Fybate Lecture Notes to help students at UC Berkeley. The
operation went out of business in 1976.
(SFC, 12/7/01, WB p.G9)
1936 Feb 11, Pumping began for
the creation of Treasure Island in SF Bay.
(www.treasureislandfestival.com/island.php)
1936 Mar 22, In Alameda, Ca.,
Chief Engineer George W. Alberts was found murdered aboard the
freighter S.S. Point Lobos. District Attorney Earl Warren prosecuted
the case and 4 defendants were convicted and sentenced to prison.
(SFEM, 6/1/97, p.16-21)
1936 May 22, Alexander Mackay
and Joseph Kristy were hanged at San Quentin prison. Mackay and
Kristy had once kidnapped prison officials in an escape attempt.
(SSFC, 5/22/11, DB p.46)
1936 Jun 5, SF Bay Bridge
worker George Zink (40) of 325 Capistrano Ave. plunged to his death
becoming the 22nd man killed on the transbay bridge construction.
(SFC, 6/5/11, p.42)
1936 Jun 25, Convict James C.
Lucas stabbed Al Capone in the back as Capone worked in prison
laundry at Alcatraz. Capone was marked for refusing to participate
in a mutiny several months earlier. The wound was not serious.
(SSFC, 6/26/11, DB p.42)
1936 Sep 12, Bill Sam (34) was
hanged at San Quentin Prison for the murder of his wife in Stockton
2 years earlier. The Chinese man said he killed her to spare his son
the stigma of having estranged parents.
(SSFC, 9/11/11, DB 46 p.46)
1936 Oct 21, The first 6
passengers on the Pan Am China Clipper paid $1,438.20 for round trip
tickets to the Philippines.
(Ind, 5/1/99, p.5A)
1936 Nov 12, The San
Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened. It cost $78 million and was the
longest bridge ever attempted. 23 men died during its construction.
(SFC, 11/11/96, p.A13)(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.5)(MC,
11/12/01)
1936 Nov, Seabiscuit, owned by
millionaire Charles S. Howard, arrived at Tanforan Park. In 2001
Laura Hillenbrand authored "Seabiscuit: An American Legend." Over 6
years the horse won 33 victories with record earnings of $437,730.
(WSJ, 3/9/00, p.W9)
1936 Dec 5, Albert Walter Jr.
(22) was executed by hanging at San Quentin, Ca. He had admitted to
strangling a girl in San Francisco nearly 6 months earlier.
(SSFC, 12/4/11, DB p.46)
1936 Dec 24, The 1st
radioactive isotope medicine was administered in Berkeley, Ca.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1936 A poetry movement called
“the Activists” began in the SF Bay Area. It was led by Lawrence
Hart (1900-1996). The movement faded with the rise of the Beat Poets
in the 1950s.
(SSFC, 9/4/05, p.F3)
1936 In Marin county Ca., the
Tudor-style Mill Valley City Hall and firehouse opened thanks to a
federal job-creation program.
(SFC, 9/1/08, p.A12)
1936 The Richmond Art Center
(RAC) was started in Richmond, Ca., by Hazel Salmi. In 1951 the
center got a permanent home at 2540 Barrett Ave.
(SFC, 3/25/11, p.F1)(http://www.therac.org/)
1936 St. Matthews of San Mateo
opened a new school building and the former Hobart mansion was
converted to exclusive use by the Sisters of the Holy Cross.
(Ind, 8/24/02, 5A)
1936 Al Zampa (d.2000 at 95), a
worker on the Golden Gate Bridge, survived a fall during
construction. In 2003 a new Carquinez Bridge was named after him.
(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.I3)
1936 William Bourn, president
of the Spring Valley Water Co., died. His Filoli estate on the
Peninsula was purchased by William P. Roth.
(SFC, 12/19/96, p.A21)(Ind, 12/26/98, p.5A)
1936 Timothy Hopkins, adopted
son of Mark Hopkins, died.
(Ind, 8/25/01, 5A)
1937 Feb 14, Sarah Althea Hill,
former mistress of William Sharon (d.1885), died in a Stockton
asylum, where she had lived the last 45 years of her life.
(Ind, 7/1/00,5A)
1937 Feb 17, Nearly at the end
of the four years of construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, 10
construction workers lost their lives when a section of scaffold
fell through a safety net. When construction began on the
35-million-dollar bridge spanning the Golden Gate Strait between San
Francisco and Marin County, Chief Engineer Joseph B. Strauss was
determined to use the most rigorous safety precautions available.
Protective hardhats and glare-free goggles were required and special
diets were developed to combat dizziness. But it was the safety net
strung under the bridge during construction that saved the lives of
19 men who became known as the "Half-Way-to-Hell" Club. Until
February 17, 1937, only one life had been lost during construction.
The Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicular traffic on May 28, 1937.
(HNPD, 2/17/99)
1937 Feb 17, A platform broke
on the Golden Gate Bridge and 12 men plunged 250 feet into the bay.
Of 3 survivors two men were picked up by a fishing boat and a third
man caught hold of a bridge beam. Evan C. "Slim" Lambert (d.1998 at
87) was won of the 2 men in the bay who swam to the fishing boat
with a dead companion.
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.A19)
1937 Apr 28, A ceremony marked
the driving of the last rivet into the Golden Gate Bridge. A rivet
gun destroyed a symbolic gold rivet and a steel rivet finished the
job.
(SSFC, 4/22/12, DB p.46)
1937 May 27, The newly
completed Golden Gate Bridge connecting SF and Marin County, Calif.,
was opened to pedestrian traffic. The bridge was designed by Joseph
Strauss (d.1938). Over 200,000 pedestrians walked across on opening
day. The bridge towers stood a record 750 feet. In 2007 Frank Stahl
and Daniel Mohn authored “The Golden Gate Bridge, Report of the
Chief Engineer, Vol II.” They gave credit to engineer Charles Ellis
of the Univ. of Illinois for much of the technical and theoretical
work that went into the bridge. He was fired by Strauss before
construction began.
(AP, 5/27/97)(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.6)(SFC,
10/30/99, p.C3)(SFC, 5/11/07, p.A1)
1937 Jun, The Bayshore Highway,
between SF and San Jose, was completed. It was designated as US 101.
(Ind, 6/10/00,5A)
1937 Aug 24, Treasure Island in
SF Bay was completed after 18½ months. All told 20 million
cubic yards of sea bottom had been dredged, dug, dumped and poured
inside the rocky walls.
(www.treasureislandfestival.com/island.php)
1937 Eugene O'Neill,
playwright, built his Tao House in Danville, Ca., following his 1936
winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
(SFC, 5/16/03, p.E8)
1937 William Wurster, Berkeley
architect, designed a 1,400-square-foot home at 1650 La Vereda Road.
It was later hailed as an early example of modernist architecture.
(SFC, 11/11/04, p.B5)
1937 The Caldecott Tunnel
opened with 2 bores under the Oakland-Berkeley Hills.
(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A21)
1937 On Angel Island a chapel
was built.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W39)
1937 The 1915 Claremont Hotel
was virtually rebuilt.
(SFEC, 11/19/00 p.T6)
1937 The Berkeley Rose Garden
was created.
(SFC, 5/10/97, p.A17)
1937 An unfenced government
canal was built that ran for 57 miles in Contra Costa County. In
1953 the county called for an investigation of some 33 drownings in
the canal.
(SFC, 11/21/03, p.E4)
1937 Alcatraz prison officials
abandoned a silence rule in effect since the prison opened in 1934.
The rule had forbidden prisoners to speak while working.
(SSFC, 12/20/09, DB p.46)
1938 Sep 16, Cal Gov. Frank
Merriam rode a ceremonial test Key Route train across the Bay
Bridge.
(SFC, 9/4/98, p.S25)
1938 In northern California
more military artillery was installed in the headlands of the Golden
Gate and Fort Cronkhite was established near Rodeo Beach.
(SFC, 6/13/08, p.A22)
1938 The San Rafael Theater
opened. It was later remodeled, renamed the Rafael Film Center and
adopted as the showcase for the Mill Valley Film Festival.
(SFEM, 9/12/99, p.18)
1928 May 12, Brothers Joe and
Tom Longs opened their first store on Oakland’s Piedmont Ave. In
1993 Longs acquired Bill’s Drugs, a 20 store chain in northern
California. In 2008 Longs Drugs was acquired by CVS Caremark for
$2.9 billion.
(SFC, 8/14/08, p.C3)
1938 William Hewlett and David
Packard began their Hewlett Packard Co. in a one-car garage at 767
Addison in Palo Alto with $538. As a student at Stanford, Hewlett
built a prototype for an audio oscillator. In 1939 it became their
first product to be sold. Walt Disney used it in making the film
"Fantasia." In 2007 Michael S. Malone authored Bill & Dave.”
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.C3)(SFC, 3/3/99, p.A11)(SFEC,
6/6/99, p.T7)(WSJ, 6/6/07, p.D7)
1938 Albert Seeno Sr. (d.2000
at 84) started the Albert D. Seeno Construction Co. which went on to
build over 30,000 homes and dozens of shopping centers in Pittsburg
and Contra Costa County.
(SFC, 1/24/00, p.A15)
1938 Levi Strauss & Co.
registered its cloth pocket tab as its trademark.
(SFC, 11/1/02, p.E7)
1938 The Byron Hot Springs
Resort closed down. In 2005 a fire badly damaged a brick hotel built
there in 1914. Previous hotels had burned down in 1901 and 1912.
(SFC, 7/26/05, p.B3)
1939 Jan 1, The Hewlett-Packard
partnership was formed and a coin toss determined the order of the
company name.
(SFC, 3/3/99, p.A11)
1939 Feb 18, The Golden Gate
International Exposition opened on Treasure Island in the SF Bay.
Pan American transferred its headquarters to Treasure Island and its
Clipper flights took off from Clipper Cove.
(HN, 2/18/98)(SFC, 2/18/99, p.D10)(Ind, 5/1/99,
p.5A)
1939 Sep 3, Bing Crosby
appeared at the Temple Compound on Treasure Island just before the
close of the Golden Gate Int’l. Expo.
(SSFC, 1/21/01, BR p.10)
1939 Sep, The Ocean Shore
Highway opened. It reduced the old 98-mile drive to Santa Cruz to 75
miles. It was the only recreational road between SF and the beaches.
(Ind, 2/6/99, p.5A)
1939 Dec, Ground was broken for
the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory next to the Navy base at Moffett
Field.
(SSFC, 8/10/03, p.I1)
1939 Treasure Island on San
Francisco Bay was created with 29.5 million cubic yards of sand and
gravel. The 403-acre island was built to host the Golden Gate Int’l.
Exposition. Jacques Schnier, sculptor, designed art works for the
world’s fair on Treasure Island. Pacifica, the 80-foot-tall theme
statue of the Int'l. Expo, was created by Ralph Stackpole (d.1973 at
88).
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.A15)(SFC, 5/9/97, p.E2)(SFC,
10/17/98, p.C2)(Ind, 1/23/99, p.5A)
1939 In Berkeley, Ca., the UC
Printing Plant on Oxford Street was built with New Deal stimulus
funds. In 2010 it was selected as the new home for the Berkeley Art
Museum and Pacific Film Archives.
(SFC, 3/8/10, p.C2)
1939 The new SF Transbay
Terminal, designed by Timothy Pflueger, opened. It served as the
port of entry for electric-powered trains that went back and forth
from the East Bay on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge.
(SFC, 8/7/07, p.A6)
1939 The Federal style annex of
the San Mateo County Courthouse was built. The original Corinthian
pillars in front were removed.
(SMMB)
1940 Apr 1-3, Contents of the
15-acre El Cerrito estate on the line between San Mateo and
Hillsborough went up for auction following the divorce of St. Cyr
and Helen Strong Carter. Contractor David D. Bohannon acquired the
property and planned to subdivide what he called El Cerrito Park.
The mansion was destroyed within hours of the auction.
(Ind, 5/31/03, p.5A)
1940 May 25, The Golden Gate
International Expo reopened.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1940 Sep 29, The Int'l.
Exposition on Treasure Island closed. During its 2 seasons some 17
million people visited the 404-acre man made island.
(Ind, 1/23/99, p.5A)
1940 Nov 1, The Iceland skating
rink opened in Berkeley, Ca., with an appearance by Sonya Henie, the
former Olympic champion and Hollywood actress. The facility closed
in 2007.
(SFC, 1/19/07, p.B2)
1940 In Hillsdale development
began for 2,500 new homes. Much of the material came from the Dolly
Varden Lumber Co. of David D. Bohannon north of Arcata, Ca.
(Ind, 11/30/02, 5A)
1940 Clark Shaughnessy, coach
of the Stanford football team, invented the "T-formation" and led
the Wow Boys" to a 10-0 season with a 21-13 Rose Bowl win over
Nebraska.
(SFC, 12/28/99, p.A11)
1940 The Immigration and
Naturalization Service abandoned its Angel Island Station after a
fire destroyed the administration building.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W39)
1940 San Mateo County Parks
Dept. purchased 727 acres of Coyote Point.
(Ind, 12/30/00, 5A)
1940 Some 13,575 cows grazed in
San Mateo County.
(Ind, 10/7/00,5A)
1940s Sally Stanford operated a
cat house at 1144 Pine St, SF, Ca. It was called "The Fortress" by
vice cops because it was so difficult to penetrate. Stanford later
authored "A House Is Not a Home" and a personal memoir in 1966. In
1976 she became mayor of Sausalito.
(SSFC, 12/8/02, p.D6)
1940s-1974 In the Antioch area the park district
took over the 3,700-acre area encompassing the old coal and silica
mines.
(SFC, 3/4/99, p.A21)
1941 Jan 29, Frank M. Stanger
(b.1887), a Michigan-born farm boy, opened a small San Mateo museum
in a classroom at San Mateo Junior College.
(Ind, 9/21/02, 5A)
1941 Jan, The Southern Pacific
railroad opened its Palo Alto station.
(SFC, 3/23/01, p.A19)
1941 Mar 2, Bechtel received a
telegram from the US Maritime Commission concerning a new shipyard
on the West Coast. Bechtel picked the Sausalito waterfront and
signed a contract ten days later to deliver 34 ships.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, Z1 p.4)
1941 Mar 28, Ground was broken
for the Marinship yard in Sausalito.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, Z1 p.4)
1941 Apr 1, US Navy took over
Treasure Island in SF Bay.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1941 Apr, Henry J. Kaiser at
his shipyard in Richmond had the keel of his first ship laid. The
1st order called for 30 identical ships for the British.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, Z1 p.4)
1941 Apr, Bechtel built Marin
City to house workers for its Marinship yard. It was planned out in
3 days and built in a few weeks.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, Z1 p.4)
1941 Jun 27, Bechtel laid the
keel of its first ship at the Marinship yard.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, Z1 p.4)
1941 Sep 26, Bechtel launched
its first ship from the Marinship yard. A total of 18 Liberty ships
were built by Bechtel. The engines were made at the Joshua Hendy
Iron Works in Sunnyvale and shipped in by rail.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, Z1 p.4)
1941 El Cerrito High was built
in the art deco style. In 2005 it was scheduled for demolition and
replacement to meet current standards.
(SSFC, 4/14/02, p.30)(SFC, 5/9/05, p.B1)
1941 San Bruno staged its first
"Tournament of Posies" parade dedicated to children. The Posy Parade
was based on the earlier Admission Day festivities from the 1920s
and set for the 1st Sunday in June.
(SFC, 6/3/00, p.A18)
1941 The San Mateo County
Historical Association established the San Mateo County Historical
Museum located on the campus of the College of San Mateo.
(LaPen, 12/86, p.2)
1941 The Belgian American
Educational Foundation donated a carillon to the Hoover Institution
at Stanford for famine relief efforts during and after WW I. The
bells were placed atop the Hoover Tower.
(SFC, 9/4/99, p.A23)
1941-1945 During WW II some 368 underwater mines
were placed to guard the entrance to the Golden Gate.
(G, Winter, p.2)
1941-1945 Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, who
helped build the Hoover and Grand Coulee dams, established bay area
ship yards that were able to launch a "Liberty Ship" every 24 hours.
He expanded a health plan begun on his earlier dam projects that
grew to become Kaiser Permanente, the world’s largest health
maintenance organization. The Kaiser Richmond yard built 747 ships.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W31)
1941-1945 Henry Doelger offered his services to
the Army Corp. of Engineers. He was assigned to build defense
housing in the Bay Area and built some 3,000 units in Oakland and
South San Francisco.
(GTP, 1973, p.108)
1942 Jan 18, The transfer of
Treasure Island to the Navy was approved.
(Ind, 1/23/99, p.5A)
1942 Jan 22, The statue of
Pacifica was pulled down by the Navy.
(Ind, 1/23/99, p.5A)
1942 Jan, A Japanese submarine
rammed a US merchant ship 30 miles off the Golden Gate.
(Ind, 1/27/01, 5A)
1942 Feb 24, Some 1,600
Pittsburg residents of Italian descent were evacuated.
(SSCM, 10/21/01, p.11)
1942 Apr 27, The 1st convoys of
Japanese detainees arrived at the Tanforan detention center. The
assembly center remained in operation for 169 days after which
detainees were transferred to relocation camps. Most of the Tanforan
detainees were transferred to Abraham, Utah.
(Ind, 2/2/02, 5A)
1942 Apr, Workers arrived at
the 119-acre Tanforan race track to begin construction of barracks
and 13 mess halls to house a potential 8,000 Japanese detainees.
(Ind, 2/2/02, 5A)
1942 Jun, Merchant Marine
training began on a 26 acre area of Coyote Point.
(Ind, 12/30/00, 5A)
1942 Aug 16, The US Navy L-8
patrol blimp crash-landed at 419 Bellevue St., Daly City, Ca., after
drifting in from the ocean. The ship’s crew, Lt. Ernest Dewitt Cody
(27) and Ensign Charles E. Adams (38), were missing and no trace of
them was ever found.
(GDCH, 1986, p.17)(Ind, 5/3/03, p.5A)
1942 Sep, Japanese detainees
from the California assembly center at Tanforan race track began
their transfer to Abraham, Utah, 140 miles south of SLC.
(Ind, 2/2/02, 5A)
1942 Moffet Field received its
1st squadron of blimps, non-rigid airships.
(Ind, 1/27/01, 5A)
1942 Saunders Samuel King
(d.2000 at 91), Oakland gospel singer, made a hit with "S.K. Blues."
It was the same year that his wife, Margie King, killed herself.
(SFC, 9/4/00, p.B4)
1942 The Stanford basketball
team won the NCAA championship.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A1)
1942 The US Army dog training
facility, Dogtown, the War Dog Reception and Training Center, was
established in San Carlos.
(Ind, 6/14/03, p.5A)
1942 Max Friedman opened The
Marin Town and Country Club on property purchased from the Marin
School for Boys in 1940.
(SFC, 5/29/98, p.A19)(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A24)
1942 Roderick McLellan began
selling orchids and by 1998 over 3,000 orchids were registered with
the Royal Horticultural Society in England.
(PI, 1/24/98, p.5)
1942 Thousands of Mexican
arrive in the Bay Area to work on agricultural and railroad jobs
under the Bracero Program.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.5)
1942 Kaiser Shipyards in
Richmond set a ship construction record by building the Robert E.
Peary Liberty Ship in 4 days and 15 hours. A total of 747 ships were
built at the Richmond facility. The improved Victory ships were
developed late in the war and in 1998 the Red Oak Victory cargo ship
was de-mothballed for exhibit at the Richmond Point Molate Naval
Station.
(SFC, 7/13/98, p.A12)
1942 Fred Korematsu, a shipyard
welder from Oakland, refused to obey the US government internment
order. He was arrested, convicted of a felony and interned in Utah.
He reopened the case in 1983 and got his conviction reversed.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W27)
1943 Construction workers in
Millbrae uncovered elephant bones that dated back 100,000 years.
(Ind, 9/21/02, 5A)
1944 Jul 17, An explosion at
Port Chicago, now the Concord Naval Weapons Station in Ca., killed
320 seamen when a pair of ammunition ships exploded. 10,000 tons of
ammunition exploded. 202 of the victims were black enlisted men. The
Navy court-martialed 50 black sailors for refusing to go back to
work after the catastrophe. They were released from prison in 1946
with dishonorable discharges and reductions in rank. The story was
later described by Robert Allen in his 1989 "The Port Chicago
Mutiny." In 1999 Pres. Clinton issued a pardon to Freddie Meeks, one
of the last living convicted African American sailors.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, z1 p.3)(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A15)(SFC,
12/24/99, p.A1)(SSFC, 2/6/05, Par p.6)
1944 Nov 9, The 455-foot Red
Oak Victory ship was launched from Richmond. It was named after an
Iowa town with the highest number of casualties per capita in WW II.
The Victory ships were successors of the Liberty ships.
(SFC, 9/16/98, p.A20)
1944 Nov 30, A US Navy
reconnaissance plane crashed into the south face of Mount Tamalpais,
in Marin County, Ca. 8 Navy fliers were killed.
(SSFC, 11/29/09, p.A1)
1944 The US Navy built the
Midway Village housing complex in Daly City, Ca., next to the former
PG&E gas plant site off Bayshore Blvd. Plant residues were used
to fill the marshland of the complex site.
(SFC, 1/19/00, p.A4)(SFC, 3/2/09, p.B1)
1944 Seaport opened in Richmond
as a cluster of apartments to house war workers. It bordered the SF
Bay and a Stauffer’s chemical plant. In 1956 it was torn down to
make way for commercial development and I-580.
(SFC, 8/31/04, p.A11)
1944 The first US viral
diagnostic laboratory was established in Berkeley.
(SFC,12/17/97, p.A2)
1944 Pan American seaplane
operations moved to a lagoon at San Francisco Airport.
(Ind, 5/1/99, p.5A)
1944 Roderick McLellan
registered his 1st hybrid orchids with the Royal Horticultural
Society in England.
(SSFC, 7/7/02, Par p.14)
1945 Nov 9, FBI agents staked
out a house in Berkeley to watch George Eltenton, a suspected Soviet
spy. In 1946 Eltenton admitted that he had tried to obtain secret
data on Berkeley’s radiation lab. Eltenton moved to Britain in 1947.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1945 Oct, Henry and Ellis
Stoneson formulated plans to build Broadmoor Village, one of the 1st
major post-war subdivisions. The 1,500 homes were surrounded by
Colma and Daly City.
(Ind, 11/30/02, 5A)
1945-1946 Al Ruffo (d.2003 at 94) served as mayor
of San Jose. He helped launch the SF 49ers football team in the
All-American Football Conference in 1946. The team joined the NFL in
1949.
(SFC, 2/12/03, p.A24)
1946 Mar 23, Gilbert N. Lewis
(b.1875), UC Berkeley chemist, died in his lab while working on an
experiment with liquid hydrogen cyanide. In 1916 Lewis discovered
the covalent bond.
(SFC, 8/5/06,
p.B5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_N._Lewis)
1946 May 2-1946 May 4, A
two-day riot [3-day siege] at Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay
ended after five people were killed. Six inmates took 9 guards
hostage. Inmate Joe Cretzer shot the 9 hostages but killed only one.
He and 2 compeers were later shot and killed. 2 inmates were
executed for their part and one served out a life sentence.
(AP, 5/4/97)(SFC, 8/11/97, p.A12)(G, Winter, p.3)
1946 Nov 7, Willis Linn Jepson
(b.1867), “Profound Scholar, Inspiring Teacher, Indefatigable
Botanical Explorer,” died in Berkeley, Ca. “In the ordered beauty of
nature he found enduring communion.”
(http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/history/biog/jepson/jepson_the_botany_man.html)
1946 Accordionist Joe Smiell
(b.1925), born in Pittsburgh, Pa., put together a brass band in the
SF Bay Area to play traditional music of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. His son Joseph joined the band in 1972.
(SFC, 9/14/10,
p.D1)(www.buttonboxmusic.com/Pages/JSmiell.html)
1946 In northern California the
coast batteries around the SF Bay were deactivated.
(SFC, 6/13/08, p.A22)
c1946 After the war Henry
Doelger built homes along MacArthur Blvd. between Oakland and San
Leandro.
(GTP, 1973, p.108)
1946 Rev. Carl Anderson (d.2000
at 82) founded his St. John Missionary Baptist Church at 14th and
Magnolia.
(SFC, 9/16/00, p.A22)
1946 Pan American removed its
flying boats from operations.
(Ind, 5/1/99, p.5A)
1946 Rod McClellan parachuted
thousands of gardenias to patrons of the Bay Meadows race track.
(Ind, 7/6/02, 5A)
1946 William E. Moore
(1917-2004) founded Kelly-Moore Paint in San Carlos, Ca., with
William Kelly, his former retired boss at Glidden.
(SFC, 11/25/04, p.B5)
1946 Edgecourt, the
Hillsborough home of George Pope (d.1942), was destroyed by fire.
(Ind, 6/7/03, p.5A)
1947 Sep, Classes at San Mateo
Junior College moved to the Merchant Marine buildings at Coyote
Point.
(Ind, 12/30/00, 5A)
1947 The 1st families began
moving into Broadmoor Village.
(Ind, 11/30/02, 5A)
1947 In Oakland Harry Yaglijian
began operating a hot dog stand, later known as Original Kaspar’s
Hot Dogs, on a triangle of land bounded by 46th St., Shattuck and
Telegraph. In 1998 his son used a handgun to fend off robbers.
(SFC, 1/31/98, p.A15)
1947 The Hewlett-Packard
Company was incorporated and reported revenues of $1.5 million.
(SFC, 3/3/99, p.A11)
1947 Nick De John was found
stuffed in the trunk of his car in a mob-related murder.
(SFC, 2/1/02, p.G6)
1947-1962 Robert Koshland served as the president
of the Peninsula Hospital District.
(Ind, 10/3/98, p.5A)
1948 Jul 1, Charles D. Harrold,
radio pioneer, died in Oakland, Ca. He broadcast the 1st radio
entertainment program in 1912.
(TV)
1948 Dec 3, Sam Shockley
(b.1909) and Miran Edgar Thompson (b.1917), 2 Alcatraz inmates, were
executed at the San Quentin gas chamber for a 1946 escape attempt in
which 2 guards and 3 prisoners were killed.
(SFC, 6/27/09,
p.B4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatraz_escape_attempts)
1948 Dec 12, Charles Templeton
Crocker (b.1884), multi-millionaire grandson of the Central Pacific
(and Southern Pacific) railroad magnate and banker, Charles Crocker
(1822-1888), died. He authored "The Cruise of the Zaca" in 1933.
(http://researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/library/special/findaids/Crocker.html)
1948 The Tilden Merry-Go-Round
began operating in the Berkeley Hills of the SF Bay Area. The
carousel was built in 1911 in Tonawanda, NY, and operated in Urbita
Springs, Ca., from 1912-1920. It then moved to San Diego for 10
years, then to Long Beach for 2 years and Los Angeles for 3 years.
It then went into storage until it was moved to Tilden.
(SSFC, 8/14/11, p.C2)
1948 Henry and Ellis Stoneson
began construction of the SF Stonestown shopping Center.
(Ind, 11/30/02, 5A)
1948 Dr. Gordon F. Williams
(d.2002 at 84) founded the Menlo Medical Clinic in Menlo Park.
(SFC, 2/1/02, p.A31)
1948 H. Myrl Stearns
(1916-2006) joined the founding team of Varian Associates in San
Carlos, Ca. Sigurd Varian (1901-1961) had co-invented the klystron
tube with his brother, Russel.
(SFC, 10/19/06, p.B5)
1948 Foundations were laid for
the $2 million Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City. It was completed in
1951.
(Ind, 11/30/02, 5A)
1948 Francis J. Violich
(1911-2005) and T. J. Kent, co-founders of Telesis, laid the
groundwork for the creation of UC Berkeley’s Dept. of City and
Regional Planning. With Telesis they tried to integrate principles
of social activism into new approaches to city planning.
(SFC, 8/26/05, p.B7)
1948 Al Ross founded Doggie
Diner in Oakland, Ca., on San Pablo and 19th Ave. Its iconic
dachshund head was designed by Harold Bachman in 1965. The chain
grew to 30 diners including 13 in San Francisco and was sold in
1979. The chain closed down in 1986.
(SFC, 10/6/05, p.B7)(SFC, 4/5/10, p.C6)
1948 A Point Reyes landowner
purchased some fallow and axis deer from the SF Zoo and released
them in West Marin. In 2005 the National Park Service released plans
to eliminate them by 2017.
(SFC, 2/4/05, p.A1)
1949 Jan, Electric streetcars
quit operating along the Peninsula.
(Ind, 1/9/99, p.5A)
1949 Apr 15, The Berkeley radio
station KPFA-FM began broadcasting over on a 550-watt surplus
government transmitter. Lewis Hill made the first broadcast over the
first listener-supported radio station in the US. Eleanor McKinney
(d.2000 at 81) helped found KPFA-FM in Berkeley. In 1966 McKinney
authored "The Exacting Ear: The Story of Listener Sponsored Radio."
(SFC, 4/7/99, p.A21)(SFC, 8/24/00, p.A23)
1949 Apr 20, Jockey Bill
Shoemaker won his 1st race, in Albany, California.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1949 May 7, Diane Hobart
Crocker married John Redington at St. Matthews in San Mateo. Diane
was the great-granddaughter of railroad builder Charles Crocker.
John was the grandson of John Hoby Redington, founder of the
pharmaceutical house Redington & Co.
(Ind, 2/27/99, p.5A)
1949 Jul, Henry Doelger began
construction of Westlake’s first 32 homes. The 1st model listed for
$9,000, and sold in 1950 within 30 minutes on the market. Edward
Hageman (b.1916) designed the Westlake homes. Over his career with
Doelger he designed some 5,000 homes.
(Ind, 11/30/02, 5A)(SFC, 7/16/05, p.F1)
1949 Sep 27, HUAC held hearings
on alleged communist infiltration of the Radiation Laboratory at UC
Berkeley.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1949 Nov 22, Russian born
Maestro Aaron Sten (Stankevich: 1910-1994), recently moved to San
Carlos, conducted the first concert of the Peninsula Symphony at the
Sequoia High School auditorium.
(Ind, 10/24/98, p.5A)
1949 George R. Stewart authored
"Earth Abides," a novel that imagined the SF Bay Area after humans
are driven away by plagues.
(SSFC, 10/27/02, p.M1)
1949 David D. Bohannon began
construction of the 41.5 million, 140-unit, 11-story Da Sabla
apartments at Baldwin Ave. and el Camino.
(Ind, 11/30/02, 5A)
1949 The first Eichler
prototype homes were built in the Bay Area. Architect Robert Anshen,
a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed the initial homes for
developer Joseph Eichler.
(SFC, 9/29/99, Z1 p.7)
1950 Sep 2, In Oakland the
Children’s Fairyland opened at Lake Merritt. 6,000 children streamed
through the instep of Old Mother Hubbard's Shoe. Walt Disney based
his theme park on Fairyland and stole away the first director,
Dorothy Manes, with a higher salary. It was reconstructed in 1998.
(SFEC,12/21/97, p.B5)(SFC, 3/18/98, p.A15)(SFEC,
10/31/99, p.C1)
1950 Sep, A secret US Army and
Navy experiment spread Serratia marcescens bacteria, because of its
red pigment, and Bacillus globigii, because of its formed spores
similar to anthrax, off the coast of San Francisco Bay from a mine
laying ship for 6 days. The bacteria was thought to be harmless, but
the germs sent 11 people to hospitals and killed one person. Edward
J. Nevin, from a heart infection. In 1977 Senate subcommittee
hearings the Army revealed that it had staged the mock biological
attack.
(SFC, 2/21/98, p.A15)(WSJ, 10/22/01, p.A1)(AH,
6/03, p.49)
1950 The Jepson Herbarium was
founded at UC Berkeley for the study and collection of California
flora.
(SFC, 7/4/01, p.D4)
1950 Morris Ross (d.1997 at 87)
opened his first retail store, The Ross Department Store, on San
Mateo Ave. in San Bruno. It was the precursor of the Ross
Dress-For-Less discount chain.
(SFC,12/5/97, p.B8)
1950 Countess Lillian Remillard
Dandini, the divorced daughter of an Oakland brick maker, purchased
the Chateau Carolands. She kept it for 2 decades and called it the
Chateau Remillard.
(Ind, 2/26/00, p.5A)
1950 Evangelist C. Thomas
Patten (d.1958) was convicted of defrauding followers. He served a 3
year sentence for 5 counts of grand theft. His wife Bebe Patten
(d.2004) continued the Pentecostal ministry and in 1961 moved 4 of
their institutions from downtown Oakland to the Fruitvale
neighborhood.
(SFC, 1/28/04, p.A17)
1950 Berkeley, Ca., 1st noted
smog damage to vegetation.
(SFC, 2/18/05, p.F4)
1950s Federal officials
returned the former PG&E plant side east of Cow Palace to
PG&E. The military housing was deeded to San Mateo County.
(SFC, 3/10/98, p.A14)
1951 Apr 13, Edward Joseph
Carrigan, US Marshal, was arrested for accepting a $2,000 bribe from
millionaire auto dealer Phil Davis of Oakland. Davis hoped to buy a
soft jail term.
(SFC, 4/13/01, WBb p.3)
1951 May, A Teamsters Union
dispute with 14 Northern California dairies led the Associated
Farmers group to block delivery of milk to Alameda County. The
boycott was lifted Oct 26.
(SFC, 10/26/01, WB p.7)
1951 Jun 9, The Navy transport
Clymer dropped anchor in the Bay and severely damaged the underwater
transbay cables of Pacific Telephone and Telegraph.
(SFC, 5/24/02, p.G8)
1951 Jul 21, Some 9,000
telephone operators in Northern California went on strike including
5,000 at PT&T in the Bay Area.
(SFC, 7/20/01, WBb p.7)
1951 Jul, David D. Bohannon
released plans for a $15 million, 200-store shopping complex in
Hillsdale.
(Ind, 11/30/02, 5A)
1951 Sep 1-10, The 40-person
Soviet delegation to the peace treaty signing in SF stayed at the
Uplands mansion in Hillsborough.
(Ind, 9/8/01, 5A)
1951 Oct 5, The World Series
was telecast on the West Coast. The NY Giants defeated the NY
Yankees 5-1.
(SFC, 10/5/01, WB p.6)
1951 Oct 5, A preliminary plan
for an underground parking garage at Civic Center Plaza called for a
$5.78 million 2,075-car garage.
(SFC, 10/5/01, WB p.6)
1951 Oct 6, Construction began
on a new $6.77 million south terminal at the airport.
(SFC, 10/5/01, WB p.6)
1951 Nov 3, All Bay Area
Chinese lotteries halted operations because of a new federal
gambling tax that required 10% of gross receipts for the government.
(SFC, 11/2/01, WB p.6)
1951 Nov 18, Two 4-engine
Korean airlift planes collided above Oakland Municipal Airport. One
plane crashed and the crew of 3 were killed. The other made an
emergency landing at SFO.
(SFC, 11/16/01, WB p.G4)
1951 Dec 1, A tempest raged
over SF and forced the first-ever closure of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The bridge closed for 3 hours.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.A1)(SFC, 11/30/01, WB p.G8)
1951 St. Ann’s Chapel in Palo
Alto was built by diplomat Clare Booth Luce as a memorial to her
daughter, a Stanford student, who was killed in a car crash.
(SFC, 8/12/98, p.A19)
1951 A 42-acre canyon park near
Canada College was donated to Redwood City by the Morris Stulsaft
Foundation. The city allowed a company to mine mercury ore from the
site during the 1950s and 1960s after which a playground was
erected. The grounds were closed in 1999 due to high levels of
mercury and chromium.
(SFC, 1/26/99, p.A17)
1951 In Walnut Creek, Ca., the
Broadway Plaza opened.
(SFC, 4/17/12, p.A1)
1952 Feb 6, The SF Chronicle
reported that Tom Keen, manufacturer of racetrack tote boards, was
blown to bits gangland style at his San Mateo home when he pushed
the starter on his Cadillac Fleetwood sedan.
(SFC, 2/1/02, p.G6)
1952 Feb 17, Residents of the
SSF Southwood district voted 174 to 28 to exclude Sing Sheng (25)
and his Chinese American family from the all white area. Sheng
suggested the vote following objections to his purchase of a house
on West Orange Ave.
(SFC, 2/15/02, p.G8)
1952 Feb 20, Gov. Earl Warren
sent a letter to Sing Sheng and his family denouncing the vote of
the Southwood residents to exclude them.
(SFC, 2/15/02, p.G8)
1952 Apr 1, Some 12,000 AFL
carpenters in SF, Alameda, San Mateo and Marin went on strike
(SFC, 3/29/02, p.AG4)
1952 Jun 8, Oakland celebrated
its 100th birthday with a parade that stretched for 15 blocks.
(SFC, 6/8/02, p.G8)
1952 Jul 1, Clark Kerr was
appointed to be the 1st chancellor for UC Berkeley.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1952 Sep 13, John Melville,
federal housing administrator, announced that all adults living in
San Francisco Bay Area federally aided public housing will be asked
to sign a loyalty affidavit under the Levering Act. Refusal would be
grounds for eviction.
(SFC, 9/13/02, p.E2)
1952 Dec 11, Stanford scientist
demonstrated the new $1,750,000 linear electron accelerator. Its
200-foot barrel fired electrons at 99.99% the speed of light.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1952 Dec 11, The outbound
Norwegian ship Fernstream was sliced open by the inbound SS Hawaiian
Rancher under heavy fog inside the Golden Gate. The Fernstream sank
in 30 minutes but all passengers escaped.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1952 The Sausalito Arts
Festival started with some 2 dozen artists. Voters shifted
responsibility for the city-funded show to the Chamber of Commerce
in 1981.
(SFEC, 9/3/00, p.C3)
1952 Stanford asked Prof. John
Herriot (d.2003 at 87) to lead a new Computation Center following
the acquisition of its 1st computer, an IBM Card Programmed
Calculator.
(SFC, 4/14/03, p.A1)
1952 David and Alice Schwartz
started Bio-Rad in West Berkeley. They created custom methods of
separating proteins and other contents of living cells from each
other. They took the company public in 1966. In 2005 revenue reached
$1.2 billion.
(SFC, 2/18/02, p.E1)(SFC, 8/22/06, p.E4)
1952 The Levy brothers opened a
new San Mateo store at 4th and B St. with the 1st up escalator in
the country.
(Ind, 11/7/98, p.5A)
1952 Roy Cloud, educator, died
at age 75.
(Ind, 9/30/00,5A)
1953 Feb 12, An explosion at
the Hercules Powder Co. near Pinole, Ca., killed 12 employees.
(SFC, 11/21/03, p.E4)
1953 Mar 22, UC Pres. Robert
Gordon Sproul addressed a Charter Day banquet and contended that
faculty members who support the Communist Party do not deserve
membership in a university faculty.
(SFC, 1/21/02, p.E3)
1953 Apr 29, Joseph Magnin
(87), pioneer SF merchant, died in Hillsborough.
(SFC, 4/25/03, E4)
1953 May 2, Twenty new Alcatraz
inmates rioted for 2 days. They objected to being placed opposite or
adjacent to cells housing black convicts.
(SFC, 5/2/03, p.E3)
1953 Jul 17, Stanford
University's trustees voted to move the Medical School from SF at
Clay and Webster to the Stanford campus in Palo Alto.
(SFC, 7/11/03, p.E6)
1953 Oct 29, A British airliner
with 11 passengers and 8 crew crashed into Kings Mountain, 10 miles
west of Redwood City, Ca., and all aboard were killed. William
Kapell (b.1922), genius pianist, died in the crash. He was returning
from a tour in Australia when his airplane crashed into a mountain
outside San Francisco. A set of his 1944-1953 recordings was
released in 1998 by RCA. In 1999 BMG released "The William Kapell
Edition," a nine-disk set.
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.E10)(SFEC, 11/29/98, DB
p.44)(WSJ, 2/1/99, p.A19)(WSJ, 5/24/08, p.W12)
1953 Nov 6, Albert Croxson (35)
and Donald Hogan (35) were killed when their 25-ton steel and timber
scaffold tore loose from beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. They were
part of a 28-man crew installing lateral bracing beneath the roadway
of the bridge.
(SFC, 11/7/03, p.E3)
1953 Nov 21, Over 3 tons of
blasting powder exploded at the Hercules Powder Co. near Pinole,
Ca., and 2 men were killed.
(SFC, 11/21/03, p.E4)
1953 Nov 21, The Univ. of
California football team tied Stanford 21-21 in the Big Game before
a crowd of 92,500 at Stanford.
(SFC, 11/21/03, p.E4)
1953 Nov 22, The Ford Motor Co.
planned to spend an estimated $40 million to build an assembly plant
in Milpitas, Ca.
(SFC, 11/21/03, p.E4)
1953 Alfredo Santos (26), San
Quentin inmate, won a contest to paint murals on dining hall walls.
He completed 6 murals of California history over the 2 years and was
paroled in 1955.
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A25)
1953 Mario Gaidano (1914-2003)
designed the Marin Joe's restaurant in Marin, Ca.
(SFC, 9/20/03, p.A20)
1953 The McLellan flower
business was renamed to "Acres Of Orchids."
(PI, 1/24/98, p.5)
1953 The House Committee on
Un-American Activities held hearings in the Bay Area. Paul Sidney
Chown (d.1997 at 80), a supporter of the old Independent Progressive
Party, defied the committee and described its witnesses as "paid,
professional, hopped-up informers."
(SFC, 6/23/97, p.A22)
1953 In California Roberts
Regional Recreation Area opened in the Oakland Hills.
(SFC, 6/1/07, p.B9)
1953 W.W. Dixon (b.1883),
storybook home architect, died. Most of his homes were built in the
East Bay of the SF Bay Area.
(SFC, 8/20/05, p.F1)
1954 Jan 24, A winter storm
brought snow to the Bay Area Hills.
(SFC, 1/23/04, p.E3)
1954 Feb 6, A US Air Force
4-engine RC-121 Super Constellation, one of the new flying radar
stations, crashed in the shallows of San Pablo Bay. All 13 crew
members survived.
(SFC, 2/6/04, p.E12)
1954 Feb 15, The 1st bevatron
went into operation in Berkeley, California.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1954 Mar 1, Peninsula Hospital
and Medical Center opened after 2 years of construction. It was
build over 23 acres of the old Mills estate.
(Ind, 10/3/98, p.5A)
1954 Apr 23, It was reported
that the US Army Corps of engineers planned to spend $5 million on
secret projects in the Bay Area. It was presumed that this included
Nike Guided Missile defense installations.
(SFC, 4/23/04, p.F5)
1954 May, The US Coast Guard
began around the clock patrols outside the San Francisco’s Golden
Gate to guard against ships that might smuggle nuclear bombs into SF
Bay. The patrols were made public in Feb 2, 1955.
(SFC, 1/28/05, p.F7)
1954 Jun, The Darius Ogden
Mills mansion burned down.
(Ind, 10/3/98, p.5A)
1954 Jul 1, The Round-Up Club
of Rodeo published “The Round Up of Rodeo History.”
(SFCM, 5/30/04, p.4)
1954 Jul 8, The raft Lehi with
5 amateur sailors was towed out of SF Bay to attempt a 2,200
drifting voyage to Hawaii. Mormon elder DeVere Baker (38) led the
expedition. The freighter Metapan rescued the crew on July 14.
(SFC, 7/9/04, p.F5)
1954 Sep 25, Jack La Lanne,
professional muscleman from Oakland, became the 1st man to swim the
Golden Gate underwater. He crossed in 45 minutes using flippers, a
rubber suit and air tanks.
(SFC, 9/24/04, p.F9)
1954 Nov 4, Frank “Lefty”
O’Doul announced that he will return to the Bay Area from San Diego
and manage the Oakland Oaks for owner C.L. Laws in 1955.
(SFC, 11/5/04, p.F7)
1954 Nov 6, Marion Olson swam
the 6 and 7/8-mile Gold Gate in a record 25 minutes and 42 sec. The
old record was set in 1917 by Katherine Flaherty.
(SFC, 11/5/04, p.F7)
1954 cNov 9, The San Mateo
County Supervisors voted to allow the coastal communities Linda Mar,
Pedro Valley and rockaway Beach to cast ballots for or against
incorporation.
(AP, 11/6/04)
1954 Nov 19, The Univ. of
California defeated Stanford 28-20 in Berkeley in the 57th Big Game.
(SFC, 11/19/04, p.F2)
1954 Dec 3, The Public Housing
Administration announced rent increases in federally owned war
housing throughout the Bay Area. Average cost including utilities
would be $49 a month.
(SFC, 12/3/04, p.F8)
1954 Dec 23, Safeway stores in
the Bay Area announced they will stop welling comic books and
pocket-size books due to their emphasis on horror, crime and sex.
(SFC, 12/24/04, p.F2)
c1954 John Diebenkorn,
California artist, painted his work "Berkeley." It sold for $1.8
million in 1998.
(WSJ, 5/15/98, p.W12)
1954 US missile silos were
built in the Marin, Ca., headlands. They were decommissioned in
1974. In 1975 the area became home to the non-profit Marine Mammal
Center.
(SFC, 9/2/08, p.E1)
1954 Greenmeadow, a development
of 270 homes by Joe Eichler, opened off San Antonio and Alma in Palo
Alto.
(SFCM, 8/22/04, p.4)
1954 Sturgeon fishing re-opened
in SF Bay for sport anglers with rod and reel.
(SSFC, 10/19/03, p.A22)
1955 Feb 3, AFL grocery clerks
struck against the 400-members of the Retail Grocers Association and
began picketing 2 stores in SF. Negotiations had broken down over
union demands for $3 per week wage increase. An employer’s lockout
soon closed at least 100 stores.
(SFC, 2/4/05, p.F9)
1955 Apr 28, Stephanie Bryan
(14) failed to return home from school at Willard Jr. High in
Berkeley. She was kidnapped by Burton Abbott, a married accounting
student at Cal. [see Jul 20]
(SFEC,12/28/97, p.D5)
1955 Jun 3, Barbara Graham was
executed at San Quentin. John Santo and Emmett Perkins were executed
later the same day. They had been convicted in the 1953 murder of
wealthy Burbank widow Mabel Monahan.
(SFC, 5/20/05, p.F9)(SFC, 6/3/05, p.F2)
1955 Jun 28, It was reported
that Henry J. Kaiser had agreed to purchase the 7-acre site of the
College of Holy Names overlooking Lake Merritt for $2,560,000. He
planned a new headquarters for his industrial empire.
(SFC, 6/24/05, p.F7)
1955 Jul 8, Gov. Goodwin Knight
signed legislation creating a 6-county SF Bay Smog Control District.
(SFC, 7/8/05, p.F6)
1955 Jul 8, Plans were
announced for a double-decked section of the Eastshore Freeway along
Cypress Street in Oakland. The $7 million job was expected to be
finished in 2 years.
(SFC, 7/8/05, p.F6)
1955 Jul 9, Gov. Goodwin Knight
vetoed an omnibus park and recreation bill. This prompted Santa Cruz
Lumber Co. to begin intensive logging operations in the Butano
forest, the last stand of virgin giant redwoods in the Bay Area.
(SFC, 7/29/05, p.F7)
1955 Jul 10, Jack LaLanne in
handcuffs swam from just south of Alcatraz to Fisherman’s Wharf in
56 minutes, where he knocked of a dozen one-handed pushups.
(SFC, 7/8/05, p.F6)
1955 Jul 15, Georgia Abbott, a
beautician, found Stephanie Bryan’s red purse in the basement of her
Alameda home. Police and FBI dug up the basement floor the next day
and found Stephanie’s books, glasses and a brassiere. Burton Abbott
still denied any knowledge of the crime.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W20)
1955 Jul 20, The body of
Stephanie Bryan was found in Trinity County where Burton Abbott
owned a fishing cabin. Burton W. "Bud" Abbott, an ex-GI, was later
convicted and executed for her murder. The story is covered in the
1997 book: "Shallow Grave in Trinity County" by Harry Farrell.
(SFC, 12/2/97, p.D5)(SFEC,12/28/97, p.D5)
1955 Jul 22, Burton Abbott was
arraigned in Berkeley for the murder of Stephanie Bryan (14).
(SFC, 7/22/05, p.F3)
1955 Jul, Weldon Kees, poet,
painter and artist, jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge. Kees had
recently completed a short film called “Hotel Apex,” which showed
the destruction of a hotel near his home in Point Richmond.
(SFC, 6/8/06, 96 Hours p.41)
1955 Aug 12, William Grami
(28), AFL Teamsters Union official, was kidnapped, bound and beaten
near Sebastopol, Ca. He was leading a drive to organize apple plant
workers in the area.
(SFC, 8/12/05, p.F3)
1955 Sep 12, A new toll
schedule, effective Sep 30, on the SF Golden Gate Bridge charged 25
cents for vehicles and 10 cents for bicyclists and pedestrians.
(SFC, 9/9/05, p.F5)
1955 Sep 26, The Bay Area Rapid
Transit Commission (BART) called for a billion-dollar network of
rapid transit facilities.
(SFC, 9/23/05, p.F3)
1955 Oct 9, The Federal Bureau
of Roads approved plans for a new California freeway down the center
of the SF Peninsula, around the Bay and north through Dublin and
Walnut Creek to Vallejo.
(SFC, 10/7/05, p.F2)
1955 Oct 14, In SF, Ca., a US
Navy attack bomber crashed on the eastern shore of Yerba Buena
Island. Pilot Gilbert David Reeve died in the wreck.
(SFC, 10/14/05, p.F2)
1955 Oct 16, In SF, Ca., Dick
Poe (9) swam the Golden Gate channel in 38 minutes accompanied by
his father Rupert Poe.
(SFC, 10/14/05, p.F6)
1955 Oct 17, Federal narcotics
agents in California arrested Oakland grocer Chin Yick Gee after
discovering 100 bundles of opium concealed in a rented room.
(SFC, 10/14/05, p.F6)
1955 Oct 18, Ernest O.
Lawrence, Univ. of California Radiation lab. director, announced the
discovery of the existence of an anti-proton, an atomic particle
postulated in 1928.
(SFC, 10/14/05, p.F6)
1955 Oct 23, A 4.5 Richter
scale earthquake hit the SF Bay Area.
(SFC, 10/21/05, p.F6)
1955 Nov 4, August Vollmer
(79), father of modern police science, shot himself to death in
Berkeley, Ca. He was afflicted with Parkinson’s Disease late in
life, and also cancer, and he refused to be bedridden or a burden to
others. Vollmer was a pioneer in the use of radio and fingerprints
for police work.
(SFC, 11/4/05,
p.F6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Vollmer)
1955 Nov 18, The Stanford Univ.
football team defeated UC Berkeley 19-0 in the 58th Big Game. This
tied the series with 24 victories and 10 ties each.
(SFC, 11/18/05, p.F2)
1955 Dec 30, Snow covered the
SF Bay Area peaks but quickly melted after sunrise.
(SFC, 12/23/05, p.F4)
1955 Joseph Eichler created the
$10 million Eichler Highlands west of San Mateo.
(Ind, 11/30/02, 5A)
1955 The Burlingame Club moved
to its 5th quarters at New Place, the former mansion of William H.
Crocker.
(Ind, 5/12/01, 5A)
1955 Gov. Goodwin J. Knight
vetoed a bill to purchase the 12,000 acres of the Butano forest in
southern San Mateo County. 1,200 acres were declared a State park in
1961.
(Ind, 9/22/01, 5A)
1955 William Schockley,
co-inventor of the transistor, arrived in Silicon Valley in 1955
with funding from Beckman Instruments.
(SFEC,12/14/97, p.A12)
1955 Prof. John Herriot (d.2003
at 87) began teaching Stanford's 1st programming course, Math 139:
Theory and Operation of Computing Machines.
(SFC, 4/14/03, p.A1)
1955 Pasteurized potting mix
first appeared in the McLellan catalog. It was developed in joint
research with the Univ. of Calif. and was later named "Supersoil."
(PI, 1/24/98, p.5)
1955 Los Altos High School
opened.
(SFCM, 5/8/05, p.8)
1955 The US Navy turned over
the Midway Village, Daly City, site to San Mateo County, Ca., for
public housing and schools.
(SFC, 1/19/00, p.A4)(SFC, 3/2/09, p.B1)
1955 The synthetic element
mendelevium, atomic number 101, was constructed atom by atom by a
team at UC Berkeley. The team included Albert Ghiorso, Glenn T.
Seaborg, Gregory R. Choppin, Bernard G. Harvey, and Stanley G.
Thompson (team leader).
(SFC, 7/3/10,
p.C4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendelevium)
1956 Jan 5, Engineering
consultants recommended the construction of a 123-mile network of
high-speed electric trains to serve the Bay Area. The 6-county BART,
the SF Bay Area Rapid Transport system, was estimated to cost $716.5
million.
(SFC, 12/30/05, p.F2)
1956 Jan 23, Fremont, Ca.,
became a city of 22,000 residents following the incorporation of 5
separate townships, Irvington, Mission San Jose, Centerville, Warm
springs, and Niles.
(SFC, 1/23/06, p.B5)
1956 Jul 9, Tom Hanks, actor
(Bossom Buddies, Forrest Gump, Phila), was born in Concord, Calif.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1956 Jul 9, Fred (d.1983) and
Pat Cody (d.2010 at 87) opened Cody’s bookstore in Berkeley, Ca. In
1977 they sold the operation to Andy Ross. In 2005 Ross planned to
open a store in Union Square, SF. In 2006 Ross sold the company to a
Japanese firm. Cody’s closed its last store in Berkeley on June 20,
2008.
(SFC, 1/7/05, p.C1)(SFC, 6/23/08, p.A7)(SFC,
6/23/08, p.A7)(SFC, 10/6/10, p.C5)
1957 Aug 1, Lewis Hill (b.1919)
committed suicide in Duncan Mills, Sonoma County, Ca. He had helped
found Pacifica Radio (KPFA).
(SFC, 7/22/99,
p.E5)(www.ringnebula.com/folio/Issue-12/Conversation_Joy_Hill.htm)
1956 Aug 20, The Republican
Convention opened at the Cow Palace.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.4)
1956 Aug 22, President
Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon were nominated for second terms
in office by the Republican National Convention in San Francisco.
(AP, 8/22/97)(Ind, 11/3/01, 5A)
1956 Sep 1, The Richmond-San
Rafael bridge was opened and the Richmond-San Rafael Ferry Co. went
out of business.
(SFC, 8/8/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.4)
1956 Oct 14, The San Carlos
Babylon Club was burned down. It had begun as the Ohio Building in
the 1915 SF Panama-Pacific Expo and was towed to San Carlos in 1916.
(Ind, 6/30/01, 5A)
1956 Joe’s of Westlake was
built in Daly City.
(SFC, 3/28/01, Food p.5)
1956 Cubberley High School
opened in the Greenmeadow development of Palo Alto. It closed in
1979.
(SFCM, 8/22/04, p.4)
1956 Most of the Folger estate,
Hazelwood Hills, was sold to Martin Wunderlich, a Danish contractor.
His plan to subdivide the property derailed due to the proximity of
the San Andreas fault. He later deeded the property to San Mateo Ct.
for use as a public park.
(Ind, 5/26/01, 5A)
1956 William Schockley,
co-developer of the transistor, founded Schockley Semiconductor
Laboratory in Palo Alto. Two of his hires, Robert Noyce and Gordon
Moore, later went on to start Intel Corp.
(SFEC, 8/17/97, BR p.4)
1956 Lockheed Corp. began
moving engineers to Sunnyvale, Ca., lured by offers of land and
talent from Stanford Univ.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.D3)
1956 Edward (d.1984) and Violet
(d.2002) Daly moved the headquarters of World Airways to Oakland
Int’l. Airport from New Jersey. They had purchased the airline in
1952.
(SFC, 2/2/02, p.A18)
1956 Stanford began developing
a shopping mall in Palo Alto, Ca. Major interest was sold to Simon
Property in 2003 for $333 million.
(SFC, 7/2/03, p.B1)
1957 Mar 15, Burton Abbott was
executed in San Quentin’s gas chamber for the 1955 murder of
Stephanie Bryan (14). Burton claimed innocence to his death.
(SFC, 12/2/97, p.D5)
1957 Mar 22, An earthquake,
centered in Daly City, Ca., hit the SF Bay Area and caused extensive
damage to Mary’s Help Hospital.
(Ind, 8/11/01, 5A)(CW, Winter 04, p.45)(DCFD,
Centennial, 2007)
1957 May 3, A low flying Navy
bomber, while practicing evasion maneuvers, sheared two high-voltage
lines in the East Bay of San Francisco causing a power outage in SF
and the Peninsula.
(SFC, 5/4/09, p.B2)
1957 Sep 19, Eight engineers,
who had recently left Shockley Semiconductor, signed papers to form
Fairchild Semiconductor in Santa Clara County. Jean A. Hoerni
(1925-1997) was one of the "Fairchild Eight." He was credited with
building the bridge from the transistor to the integrated circuit.
Eugene Kleiner (d.2003), another co-founder, helped found the
Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers venture capital firm in 1972. The
other engineers included Julius Blank (1925-2011), Jay Last, Victor
Grinich (d.2000 at 75), Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Sheldon
Roberts. NYC bankers Arthur Rock and Bud Coyle helped the engineers
start Fairchild Semiconductor.
(SFC, 11/11/00, p.A26)(SFC, 11/26/03, p.D1)(SSFC,
9/30/07, p.F1)(SFC, 9/24/11, p.C3)
1957 Nov, William E. Schirmer
(b.1891), SF Bay Area architect, died in a car crash along with his
wife when a drunk driver crossed a center line.
(SFC, 8/2/08, p.F6)
1957 Stanford Prof. Edward
Gintzton (d.1998 at 82) wrote his textbook "Microwave Measurement."
He was a pioneer in the development of medical linear accelerators
for the treatment of cancer and co-founded Varian Associates (1948).
(SFC, 8/18/98, p.A18)
1957 The Gothic St. Matthew
Episcopal Church in San Mateo, designed by Willis Polk, was pulled
apart to allow for 160 more pews.
(Ind, 9/1/01, 5A)
1957 Rev. Cecil Osborne (d.1999
at 94), pastor of the First Baptist Church in Burlingame, founded
Yokefellows Inc., a group counseling center. Osborne wrote 13 books
2 of which were best sellers: "The Art of Understanding Yourself"
and "The Art of Understanding Your Mate."
(SFC, 3/31/99, p.C2)
1957 In northern California the
Almaden Air Force Station was established on Mount Umumhum, a
44-acre site just south of Los Gatos. The site had played a role in
the creation story of the local Amah Mutsun Indians. The base was
decommissioned in 1979. In 2010 a cleanup of toxic paint and
asbestos began under a $3.2 million federal grant.
(SFC, 7/10/10, p.A1)
1957 Lloyd Neale Cobbledick Jr.
(d.1997 at 75) helped form the Glass Management Association designed
to negotiate fair contracts with the Glaziers Union.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.D8)
1957 San Mateo County voters
approved a bond issue for a new San Mateo Junior College campus.
(Ind, 12/30/00, 5A)
1957 Alvin Leonard (d.2008 at
90) began serving as the public health director of Berkeley, Ca.,
and continued there until 1970.
(SFC, 5/29/08, p.B5)
1957 Coastal residents in north
San Mateo County incorporated as the City of Pacifica.
(Ind, 1/23/99, p.5A)
1957 The Hewlett-Packard Corp.
went public and began operating its new site at Stanford Research
Park.
(SFC, 3/3/99, p.A11)
1957 In South San Francisco
Alphonse Seubert (1916-2006) began planting trees on the southern
slope of San Bruno Mountain. He continued for 40 years and
ultimately oversaw the planting of some 35,000 trees.
(SFC, 4/11/06, p.B5)
1957 Bernard Maybeck (.b1862),
architect, died. Most of his Arts and Crafts style homes were done
in Berkeley, Ca., where he lived.
(SFC, 1/29/03, p.F7)
1958 Feb, Anna Cucchiara opened
Ann's Café on Fruitvale Ave. in Oakland. Frances Bienati, her
daughter, continued to run it until 2000.
(SFC, 2/17/00, p.A17)
1958 Apr 19, The last Key
System train left Oakland for SF. Ferry service from the Ferry
Building ended the next day when the Southern Pacific "Eureka" made
its last crossing from SF to Oakland.
(SFC, 8/10/98, p.A5)(SFC, 9/4/98, p.A25)(SFC,
8/7/07, p.A6)(SFC, 4/18/08, p.B1)
1958 Apr 20, The last Key
System train left San Francisco for Oakland. Ferry service from the
SF Ferry Building ended when the Southern Pacific "Eureka" made its
last crossing to Oakland. Train tracks were taken off the lower deck
of the Bay Bridge and the lanes were paved in for car traffic.
(SFC, 8/10/98, p.A5)(SFC, 9/4/98, p.A25)(SFC,
8/7/07, p.A6)(SFC, 4/18/08, p.B1)
1958 Apr 27, Billy Graham began
a 6-week Bay Area crusade at the Cow Palace in Daly City, Ca. Some
18,000 crowded inside as another 5,000 stood in the parking lot.
Graham began a 3-day revival crusade at the Cow Palace that drew
nearly 700,000 people.
(SFC, 10/1/96, p.D1)(SSFC, 4/27/08, DB p.58)
1958 Sep 29, Clark Kerr (47)
was inaugurated as UC’s 12th president after serving 6 years as
chancellor.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1958 The "Film Quarterly" began
publishing from UC Berkeley under editor Ernest Callenbach. In 1999
Brian Henderson and Ann Martin edited "Film Quarterly: Forty Years -
A Selection."
(SFEC, 3/7/99, BR p.3)(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.5)
1958 The El Cerrito Plaza was
completed.
(SFC, 3/29/02, p.A17)
1958 A 2nd eastern Carquinez
Bridge opened over the Sacramento River between Crocket and Vallejo.
The 1st cantilever bridge was built by American Toll Bridge Co. in
1927.
(SFC, 1/29/00, p.A19)(SFC, 6/24/02, p.B3)
1958 Pres. Eisenhower gave the
green light for the Corona project, which would create satellites to
spy on the Soviet Union. The new Lockheed Corp. facility in Palo
Alto, Ca., quickly became involved in the program, which remained
classified until 1995. Satellites equipped with parachutes kept tabs
on the Eastern Bloc from 1960-1972.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.D3)
1958 T. Jack Foster, a land
developer from Texas, purchased Brewer Island and several square
miles of march for $200,000. He dredged the wetlands for 6 years to
form 230 acres of lagoons and pumped 18 million cubic yards of mud
and sand on to the island, raising it slightly above sea level. He
planned a SF Bay Area, scientifically controlled community that
became known as Foster City. George Gatter served on the planning
team for Foster City. By 2006 Foster City had grown to some 29,000
residents.
(Ind, 8/4/01, 5A)(SFC, 8/31/06, p.B7)(SFC,
6/14/09, p.H2)
1958-1970 Jeffery Cohelan served as congressman
from the Oakland-Berkeley district.
(SFC, 2/18/99, p.C4)
1959 Jan 16, Brennan’s
Restaurant opened in Berkeley near the foot of University Ave. John
P. Brennan, contractor, opened it to cater to the working man.
(SFC, 11/2/04, p.B5)(SFCM, 1/23/05, p.4)
1959 Mar 3, A SF Bay Area
earthquake measured 5.5 on the Richter scale in Berkeley.
(SSFC, 3/1/09, DB p.50)
1959 Mar, In California 22
college kids of St. Mary’s in Moraga stuffed themselves into a
telephone booth. Their effort was captured by a Life Magazine
photographer. A South African team had set the world record of 25
1958. In 2009 St. Mary’s students attempted to break the campus
record, but failed when a plexiglas wall popped.
(http://tinyurl.com/c9et4a)(SFC, 3/27/09, p.F2)
1959 Jun 5, In the San
Francisco Bay Area 40 teachers were subpoenaed by the House
Un-American Activities Committee. Hearings were to open on June 17.
The ACLU said it would do everything it can to block the San
Francisco hearings.
(SSFC, 5/31/09, DB p.50)
1959 Aug 5, Eugene A. Doran, a
Hillsborough police officer, was gunned down during a traffic stop
at Bunker Hill Drive. Alexander Robillard XIV, was convicted and
executed 2 years later. In 1969 the high bridge over I-280 near the
Crystal Springs Reservoir was named in his honor.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A11)(Ind, 6/24/00,5A)
1959 The band "The Blue
Velvets" made their debut performance at a sock hop at El Cerrito
High. The John Fogerty band went on to become the Golliwogs and then
Credence Clearwater Revival.
(SSFC, 4/14/02, p.30)
1959 Patrick Henry (d.1999)
founded the Bay Area KJAZ-FM radio. He sold the station to Ron Cowan
in 1980 and it went off the air in 1995 when Cowan sold the
frequency to KZSF, a Spanish language station.
(SFEC, 12/12/99, p.C6)
1959 William Wurster
(1895-1973), American architect and teacher, co-founded the College
of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley, Ca.
(SFC, 4/9/10,
p.D3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wurster)
1959 Moe Moskowitz opened Moe’s
Books on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley, Ca.
(SFC, 10/3/08, p.C3)
1959 A state law identified the
state highways forming El Camino Real, which included Highway 1,
Highway 101 and Highway 82.
(SFC, 4/10/99, p.A19)
1959 The Reichardt Duck Farm on
Old Mission Rd. was forced to close for development of the El Camino
High School. The farm was moved to Petaluma.
(Ind, 4/17/99, p.5A)
1959 William Emerson Ayer
(d.1998 at 76) founded Applied Technology Inc. of Palo Alto, Ca. He
established success with a device that warned combat pilots when
they were under enemy radar surveillance.
(SFC, 2/14/98, p.A21)
1959 The new Shane Telescope
was installed at the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton under
director Albert E. Whitford (d.2002 at 96). The Whitford Reddening
Curve quantified the interstellar absorption of light and helped map
the distribution of stars in the Milky Way.
(SFC, 4/4/02, p.A19)
1960 Feb 9, The Angelo Petri,
the world’s largest wine tanker, foundered outside the San Francisco
Golden Gate. It carried a capacity load of 2,383,000 gallons of wine
and vegetable oil. In 1946 the vessel had broken in two near
Honolulu.
(SSFC, 2/7/10, DB
p.42)(www.navsource.org/archives/11/0103.htm)
1960 Feb 19, UC Regents
retracted the following question from an English aptitude test for
high school applicants: "What are the dangers to a democracy of a
national police organization, like the FBI, which operates secretly
and is unresponsive to public criticism." FBI director J. Edgar
Hoover had organized a covert public relations campaign and put
pressure on Gov. Brown to retract the question.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F3)
1960 Mar 2, FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover received a 60-page report on the "political complexion"
of UC Berkeley.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F3)
1960 May 2, Convicted sex
offender and best-selling author Caryl Chessman was executed at San
Quentin Prison in California. SFC crime reporter Bernice Davis
(d.2002 at 97) later authored "Desperate and the Damned," an account
of the Chessman case.
(AP, 5/2/97)(SFC, 2/8/02, p.A25)
1960 May 13, Bill Mandel was
brought before a committee at SF City Hall concerning his broadcasts
at KPFA radio and KQED TV about press and periodicals of the Soviet
Union. His TV show was cancelled but he continued broadcasting at
KPFA.
(SFEC, 7/26/98, p.D1,4)
1960 Sep 20, David Park
(b.1911), a SF Bay Area figurative painter, died at 49. His work
included: "Man in a T-Shirt" and "Untitled" (1958), "Torso"
(1959). He made the 1st serious break with Abstract Expressionism in
his 1950 painting "Kids of Bikes." In 2012 Nancy Boas authored
“David Park: A Painter’s Life.”
(SFEC, 12/1/96, DB p.21)(SFC, 8/23/97,
p.A20)(SFEM, 9/21/97, p.31)(WSJ, 12/3/01, p.A17)(SSFC, 5/6/12, p.F7)
1960 Nov 3, The first Arhoolie
LP (Long Play, 33 1/3 rpm record) arrived from the pressing plant:
250 copies of Mance Lipscomb’s “Texas Sharecropper and Songster.”
Chris Strachwitz founded Arhoolie Records in Berkeley, Ca.
(www.arhoolie.com/about-us.html)(SFC, 1/25/11,
p.E1)
1960 The US Army completed
Capehart Housing, some 30 duplexes in the Marin Headlands.
(SFCM, 10/3/04, p.14)
1960 The Woodside Community
Church was built in Woodside, Ca. It was designed by Donn Emmons
(d.1997 at 87).
(SFC, 9/3/97, p.A20)
1960 The new King Estates
Middle School opened in Oakland, Ca.
(SFC, 10/31/00, p.A1)
1960 Ralph Stackpole presented
the new city of Pacifica, Ca., with 2 working models of his 1939
Expo statue of the same name.
(Ind, 1/23/99, p.5A)
1960 The Oakland Raiders began
play in the fledgling American Football League at Youell Field,
Kezar Stadium and the new Candlestick Park.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W39)
1960 The SF Bay was reduced to
548 sq. miles by silting, diking, draining and filling.
(SFC, 11/4/98, p.A29)
1960 Developer T. Jack Foster,
to finance the development of Foster City, persuaded California
state Sen. Richard Dolwig (R.-Redwood City) to pass a bill creating
the Estero Municipal Improvement District, which was authorized to
issue over $85 million in bonds through 1967.
(SFC, 6/14/09, p.H2)
1960 A fire swept the old
Madden & Lewis boatyard in Sausalito, Ca., and devastated the
studio of David Morris (d.1999 at 88). Morris had served as the head
of the arts section of the WPA in the 1930s.
(SFC, 2/25/99, p.C2)
1960s-70s Developers dodged rattlesnakes and
bulldozed farmland in Pinole to make way for new subdivisions.
(SFC, 11/16/98, p.A17)
1961 Mar 8, The San Mateo Board
of supervisors signed a contract for the construction of a $100,000
museum at the new campus of San Mateo College. In 1998 the museum
was moved to the old San Mateo County Courthouse.
(Ind, 9/21/02, 5A)
1961 Apr 26, Alexander
Robillard XIV was executed for the 1959 murder of Hillsborough
police officer Eugene A. Doran.
(Ind, 6/24/00,5A)
1961 Jun 12, A state Senate
fact-finding sub-committee of Un-American Activities issued a report
that charged UC Pres. Clark Kerr "had opened the campus gates to
communists."
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F4)
1961 Jul 28, Mickey Cohen, Los
Angeles gangster, arrived at Alcatraz. Three weeks earlier he was
sentenced to 15 years in prison for income tax evasion.
(SSFC, 7/24/11, DB p.42)
1961 Dec 3, In the SF Bay Area
Francis Patrick Kennedy jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and landed
on the ground near Lime Point in Marin County. He survived the
200-foot leap and doctors gave him a 50-50 chance of pulling
through. Kennedy died 10 days later.
(SSFC, 12/4/11, DB p.46)
1961 The development of the
land for Foster City began with the leveling of Brewer Island.
Dairyman Frank M. Brewer had drained and diked the land at the turn
of the century and used it for pasture.
(Ind, 8/4/01, 5A)
1961 The Association of Bay
Area Governments was formed following the efforts of UC Prof. Victor
Jones (d.2001 at 92).
(SFC, 4/12/01, p.A25)
1961 Sylvia McLaughlin, Kay
Kerr (d.2010 at 99) and Esther Gulick (d.1995) founded the Save the
Bay Association in an effort to stop plans by the city of Berkeley
to create 2,000 new acres by filling in shallow bay waters. Their
efforts led to the 1965 McAteer-Petris Act, which placed a
moratorium on filling the SF Bay.
(SFCM, 10/5/03, p.13)(SFC, 5/10/04, p.B5)(SFC,
1/3/11, p.C4)
1961 John Houlihan was elected
mayor of Oakland. In 1966 he was indicted for embezzlement.
(SFC, 2/12/03, p.A25)
1961 The Oakland Zoo moved to
its new Knowland Park location.
(SFC, 4/6/98, p.A17)
1961 1,200 acres of the Butano
forest in southern San Mateo County were declared a state park.
(Ind, 9/22/01, 5A)
1961 The Audubon Canyon Ranch
was established in Marin County. Aileen Pierson (d.2003 at 91) was a
co-founder.
(SFC, 2/6/03, p.A20)
1961 Dr. Leo Postman (d.2004)
founded the Institute of Human Learning at UC Berkeley and served as
director until 1977. His books included “The Psychology of Rumor.”
(SFC, 5/7/04, p.B7)
1962 Jan 21, Snow fell in the
SF Bay Area and accumulated to about 3 inches in Daly City and San
Francisco. This was the heaviest local snowfall since 1887.
(SFC, 2/23/11, p.A10)(SSFC, 1/22/12, DB p.42)
1962 Mar 5, California Lt. Gov.
Glenn Anderson said Alcatraz should be abandoned as a prison site
and the island turned into a “place of culture and recreation.”
(SSFC, 3/4/12, DBp.42)
1962 Mar 23, Pres. John F.
Kennedy visited San Francisco and spoke at UC Berkeley on the 100th
anniversary of the Morrill Act. “For this university and so many
other universities across our country owe their birth to the most
extraordinary piece of legislation this country has ever adopted,
and that is the Morrill Act, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in
the darkest and most uncertain days of the Civil War, which set
before the country the opportunity to build the great land grant
colleges of which this is so distinguished a part. Six years later
this university obtained its Charter.”
(http://tinyurl.com/6fbdog)
1962 Mar 30, M.C. Hammer,
[Stanley Kirk Burrell], rapper (Hammer Time), was born in Oakland,
Ca.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1962 Jun 11, Frank Lee Morris,
John Anglin and Clarence Anglin escaped from Alcatraz and
disappeared into the SF Bay. Their fate was never resolved. The 1979
film "Escape From Alcatraz" with Clint Eastwood was based on this
event.
(SFC, 7/9/96, p.A20)(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W38)(SFC,
12/1/98, pA3)
1962 Joel Hedgepeth
(1912-2006), marine biologist, authored “Introduction to Seashore
Life of the San Francisco Bay Region.”
(SSFC, 8/13/06, p.B6)
1962 The Marin Civic Center in
San Rafael, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Aaron Green (d.2001
at 84), was completed.
(SFEM,10/19/97, p.22)(SSFC, 6/10/01, p.A27)
1962 In Berkeley, Ca., 4
Protestant seminaries formed the Graduate Theological Union. In 1964
theologian John Dillenberger (1918-2008) became its first president.
(SFC, 2/19/08, p.B3)
1962 Ground was broken for the
new Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford Univ., Ca. Atom
smashing began in 1966. [see Dec 11, 1952] US Congress had approved
funds in 1961. The project was led by Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky
(1919-2007).
(SFC, 9/30/02, p.A5)(SFC, 9/26/07, p.B7)
1962 Alameda and Contra Costa
counties got their own Catholic diocese and bishop.
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A22)
1962 John Patrick Whooley
(d.2003 at 82) founded the Irish Herald, a monthly newspaper for
Irish immigrants to the West Coast of the US.
(SSFC, 6/28/03, p.A31)
1962 Boyd Stewart, a Marin,
Ca., cattleman, helped create the Point Reyes National Seashore on
70,000 acres of grassland.
(SFC, 1/1/05, p.A14)
1962 The Richardson Bay
Foundation was created to purchase and preserve tidal marshes
threatened by development. It was spearheaded by Dr. David
Steinhardt (d.2005) and effectively stopped plans, drawn up in the
1950s, to fill in Richardson Bay for housing development.
(SFC, 12/7/00, p.A27)(SSFC, 7/17/05, p.A25)
1962 A surprise snowfall hit
the region.
(GDCH, 1986, p.14)
1963 Mar 21, The Alcatraz
federal prison island in San Francisco Bay was emptied of its last
inmates at the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
(SFC, 6/29/96, p.E4)(SFC, 5/19/96,City Guide,
p.7)(SFC, 8/11/97, p.A12)(AP, 3/21/97)(HN, 3/21/98)
1963 Jul, Home construction
began on Foster City. The masterplan called for 5,000 single family
homes to sell for between $20,000 and $28,000, 1,600 apartments,
1,000 town apartments, and 1,000 garden apartments.
(Ind, 8/4/01, 5A)
1963 Oct 22, Brian Boitano,
figure skater (Olympic-gold-1988), was born in Mountain View, Calif.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1963 Angel Island was declared
a state park.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W37)
1963 Al Davis (33) took over as
head coach of the Oakland Raiders.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W39)(SFC, 1/22/03, p.A10)
1963 Cal State Hayward opened
its ridgetop campus in Hayward.
(SFC, 10/7/04, p.B1)
1963 The new San Mateo Junior
College opened.
(Ind, 12/30/00, 5A)
1963 GM opened a 380-acre
assembly plant in Fremont, Ca., GM closed the plant in 1982.
(SSFC, 2/28/10, p.D1)
1963 The Proctor & Gamble
Company purchased the SF based Folger Coffee. In 1994 P&G closed
the Folgers plant in South San Francisco, the brands last presence
in the Bay Area.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.D2)(SFC, 6/5/08, p.C2)
1963 Herb Sandler, a NY lawyer,
and Marion Sandler, a Wall Street analyst, bought the 2-branch World
Savings and Loan Association (later Golden West Financial corp.) of
Oakland, Ca., for $3.8 million. They sold the company in 2006 to
Wachovia for $24.2 billion.
(SFC, 5/9/06, p.C1)
1964 Mar 9, A group of 5 Lakota
(Sioux) Native Americans occupied Alcatraz Island in a peaceful
protest. They declared that it should be a Native American cultural
center and university.
(SFC, 5/19/96,City Guide, p.7)(G, Summer ‘97,
p.4)
1964 Apr, In Marin County, Ca.,
Danny Nowell (11) was caught by the hand on a hot-air balloon rope
and went airborne for about 10 minutes and 2 miles before
being rescued.
(SFC, 10/20/09, p.A1)
1964 May 7, A disturbed man
entered the cockpit of a Pacific Airlines flight and killed pilot
Ernie Clark (52). All 44 people aboard the Fairchild F-27A died as
the plane crashed in San Ramon, Ca.
(SFC, 10/9/09,
p.D12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Air_Lines_Flight_773)
1964 May, Gertrude Kavesh Jones
(43) went missing in Mill Valley, Ca. Bruce Jones, her husband
(d.1987), reported her missing and soon showed up with a new wife
from Tahiti. In 2008 DNA testing identified her bones, found in a
shallow grave near her home.
(SFC, 4/10/08, p.B1)
1964 Aug 12, Charles Ogle, land
investor, vanished after flying out of Oakland, Ca., en route to
Reno, Nevada.
(SFC, 9/10/07, p.A1)
1964 Sep 14, UC Berkeley
officials announced a new policy prohibiting political action at the
campus entrance at Bancroft Way and Telegraph.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F5)
1964 Oct 1, The Free Speech
Movement was launched at the University of California at Berkeley.
Mario Savio (1943-1996), UC Berkeley physics student, began the Free
Speech Movement to fight prohibitions against students distributing
political brochures and other materials such as civil rights. The
incident began when police arrested Jack Weinberg for setting up an
unauthorized table in Sproul Plaza. Students surrounded the police
car in a standoff that lasted 32 hours. In 1998 a Free Speech
Movement Cafe was planned. In 2002 Robert Cohen and Reginald E.
Zelnik edited "The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in
the 1960s."
(SFC, 11/6/96, p.B2)(AP, 10/1/97)(SFC, 4/30/98,
p.A18)(SSFC, 12/29/02, p.M5)
1964 Dec 2, Mario Savio
(d.1996) made a speech on behalf of the Free Speech Movement that
caused hundreds of students to take over Sproul Hall in Berkeley.
Gov. Pat Brown ordered police to arrest students occupying Sproul
Hall. Police moved in the next day and arrested 780, which prompted
a student strike. "There comes a time when the operation of the
machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you
can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got
to put your bodies on the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the
levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve go to make it stop." In
2002 Robert Cohen and Reginald E. Zelnik edited "The Free Speech
Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s."
(SFC, 12/3/97, p.A21)(SSFM, 4/29/01, p.13)(SSFC,
6/9/02, p.F5)
1964 Dec 3, Police arrested 824
students at the University of California at Berkeley, one day after
the students stormed the administration building and staged a
massive sit-in as part of the Free Speech Movement. It was the
largest mass arrest in US history.
(AP, 12/3/98)(SSFC, 12/29/02, p.M5)
1964 Dec 4, Some 10,000 people
attended a protest rally at Sproul Hall, UC Berkeley, and speakers
included Willie Brown and John Burton.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F4)
1964 Dec 7, UC Pres. Clark Kerr
held an unprecedented campus-wide meeting at the Greek Theater
to propose a compromise that fell short of campus free speech
demands.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F4)
1964 Dec 18, The UC Regents
affirmed that university rules should follow the US Supreme Court
decisions on free speech.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F4)
1964 In Martinez the 12-story
Contra Costa County McBrien Administration Building opened. In 1998
it was slated for demolition when supervisors learned that it would
cost more to repair than to replace.
(SFC, 1/9/99, p.A15,17)
1964 A third bore was opened
for the Caldecott Tunnel under the Oakland-Berkeley Hills.
(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A21)
1964 The US Berkeley Wurster
Hall, a high-rise housing the College of Environmental Design, was
constructed.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)
1964 The US Berkeley Barrows
Hall was constructed.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)
1964 The 1st homes of Foster
City were completed. The Charles Zerbe family were the first to me
in at 613 Pilgrim.
(Ind, 8/4/01, 5A)
1964 The SF Bay Area city of
Tiburon, Ca., was incorporated.
(SFC, 12/14/05, p.B7)
1964 In California the prison
gang Aryan Brotherhood was founded at San Quentin State Prison.
Members held the credo “kill or be killed.” In 2006 the US Justice
Dept. hoped to destroy the organization through capital
prosecutions. On July 28, 2006, 4 leaders were convicted for using
murder and intimidation to protect their drug-dealing operations
behind bars.
(SFC, 3/14/06, p.A1)(SFC, 7/29/06, p.A3)
1964 KCSM Channel 60 was
licensed to the San Mateo County Community College District. The
analog signal ended in 2004 due to increased transmitter costs.
(SFC, 6/5/04, E1)
1964 David Glickman, attorney
turned Bangkok gem salesman, purchased the 6-acre Red Rock Island
near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, for $50,000. In 2001 the island
went on sale for $10 million.
(SFC, 6/7/01, p.A19)
1964 Thomas W. Ford (d.1998 at
77) acquired 16 acres at the top of Sand Hill Road near the proposed
Highway 280 and began his Ford Land Co.
(SFC, 12/1/98, p.A18)
1964 The Tanforan racing
complex burned. Work on a new shopping center at the site began in
1969.
(Ind, 8/17/02, 5A)
1965 Jan 3, UC Berkeley
officials announced a new campus policy that allowed political
activity on campus.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F5)
1965 Mar 12, The SF FBI sent
bureau headquarters a secret 33-page report on Mario Savio, leader
of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
(SFCM, 10/10/04, p.18)
1965 Aug 31, The Beatles stayed
at the 8-story Cabana Hotel in Palo Alto. It was later renovated as
the Crowne Plaza Cabana Palo Alto and in 1999 Room 810 was set aside
as the Beatles Room.
(SFC, 8/30/99, p.A17)
1965 Oct, The submarine Mariano
G. Vallejo was built and launched from Mare Island. It was the 40th
of the Polaris/Poseidon missile submarines for a fleet that was
called "Forty-One for Freedom." It was decommissioned in 1995.
(SFC, 7/3/99, p.A16)
1965 Nov, In California the
Marin County Board of Supervisors approved a development project for
a new community of 20,000 people located in the hills around the
Golden Gate. Lawyers filed suit and the Marincello project was put
on hold. In 1972 the Nature Conservancy got an option on the
property and the development project ended.
(SSFC, 10/24/10, p.A2)
1965 Dec 10, The Warlocks band,
renamed as the Grateful Dead, made their debut under the new name at
the Fillmore Auditorium. The band began life as a Palo Alto area jug
band and moved to the Haight Ashbury in 1966.
(SFEC, 5/23/99, Z1 p.4)(SFEC, 8/29/99, BR p.6)
1965 Dec 10, The Kamehameha
submarine, launched at Mare Island in Jan 1965, was commissioned. It
was decommissioned in 2001.
(SFC, 9/7/01, p.A21)
1965 Dick Cavett performed as a
young stand-up comedian at Enrico Banducci’s "hungry i."
(SFEM, 9/24/00, p.12)
1965 Ken Kesey, author of
"Sometimes a Great Notion," and 13 pals, that included Neal Cassidy,
were arrested in La Honda for growing Marijuana.
(SFC, 5/24/97, p.A8)
1965 India-born Eknath Easwaran
(d.1999 at 88) founded the Nilgiri Press in Berkeley. In 1978 he
published "Meditation." His 8-point meditation program was taught by
the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation established in 1961 in
Tomales.
(SFC, 11/1/99, p.A23)
1965 The US Army returned the
land leased for the Benicia Arsenal and gave most of the rest to
Benicia.
(SFEC, 8/29/99, p.A14)
1965 The SF Bay Conservation
and Development Commission (BCDC) was established by the state
legislature as a regional agency by the McAteer-Petris Act and was
charged with minimizing landfill in the bay and safeguarding public
access to the water.
(SFC, 11/4/98, p.A29)(SFEC, 2/27/00, p.B3)
1965 There was an unsuccessful
proposal to slice off the top of San Bruno Mountain for airport
landfill. 200 million cubic yards from the mountain were proposed to
fill in the Bay for airport expansion. This led to the founding of
the Committee to Save San Bruno Mountain.
(Ind, 4/27/99, p.A1,11)
1965 In Berkeley, Ca., a groups
of native plant enthusiasts banded together to save a Berkeley
native plant botanic garden from being sacrificed for development.
This gave birth to the California Native Plant Society (CNPS),
dedicated to the preservation and enjoyment of native plants.
(www.ebcnps.org/)
1965 Carr Jones (b.1885), SF
Bay Area architect, died. His work was rooted in the 19th century
Arts and Crafts tradition.
(SFC, 9/13/03, p.E1)
1966 Feb 20, Chester W. Nimitz
(80), US admiral (WW II), died at home on Yerba Buena Island
(Treasure Island) in SF Bay.
(MC, 2/20/02)(Ind, 11/9/02, 5A)
1966 Mar 30, The Union City
6-screen drive-in theater opened at the intersection of I-880 and
Alvarado-Niles Rd. In 1998 it closed to make way for a 25-screen
"Union Landing" multiplex with seating for 5,000.
(SFC, 3/7/98, p.E1)
1966 May 12, Ronald Reagan told
a crowd at the Cow Palace that a 153-page report by the Burns
committee accused UC Pres. Kerr of fostering an atmosphere that
turned the university into a haven for protesters and sex deviants.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F6)
1966 May 21, The new $114
million Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford Univ., Ca.,
began smashing atoms.
(SFC, 9/30/02, p.A5)(SFC, 9/26/07, p.B7)
1966 Jul 24, Oakland-born
golfer Tony Lema (32), while flying with his wife Betty to an
exhibition match in Chicago, Illinois, crashed on the seventh hole
of a golf course in Lansing, Illinois, after their chartered
twin-engine Beechcraft Bonanza ran out of fuel. All four people on
board were killed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Lema)
1966 Aug 18, The Japanese
Garden at San Mateo’s Central Park was dedicated.
(SFC, 8/2/01, p.D3)
1966 Aug 20, Ronald Reagan
announced a plan for a new anti-crime academy to be located in
Berkeley.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F6)
1966 Oct 15, The Black Panthers
wrote their Ten Point Program at the Office of Economic Development
Corp. in Oakland, Ca. It called for adequate housing, jobs,
education and an end to police brutality. The Black Panther Party
was founded by Merritt College students Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
In 2006 Flores A. Forbes authored “Will You Die With Me: My Life and
the Black Panther Party.”
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W31)(SSFC,
7/9/06, p.M1)
1966 Oct 16, Joan Baez and 123
other anti-draft protestors were arrested in Oakland.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1966 Artist Frank Cieciorka
(1939-2008) created his image of a black panther, which became a
symbol for the Black Panther Party, formed in Oakland, California.
The image first appeared in the SNCC’s newspaper, the Movement.
(SFC, 5/19/96, p.C-9)(SFC, 11/29/08, p.B5)
1966 The Oakland Ballet Co. was
founded by Ronn Guidi. The company closed in 2006.
(SFC, 2/8/06, p.E1)
1966 The US Berkeley Hildebrand
Hall, home of the chemistry labs and offices, was constructed.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)
1966 The Oakland Coliseum
Complex opened under public ownership. It included a 62,500 seat
stadium and a 19,200 seat indoor arena. Robert Nahas (d.2002) was
the driving force behind it and getting the Oakland Athletics to
come from Kansas City in 1968.
(SFC, 5/28/98, p.A1)
1966 Stephen Edward Epler
(1909-1997) founded Ohlone College in Fremont.
(SFC, 7/25/97, p.A18)
1966 John Reading (d.2003),
Oakland City Council member, was appointed mayor after Mayor John
Houlihan was indicted for embezzlement. Reading was later elected 3
times until defeated by Lionel Wilson in 1977.
(SFC, 2/12/03, p.A25)
1966 The US Navy submarine
"Vallejo" was christened at Mare Island.
(SFC, 2/24/99, p.C4)
1966 In Berkeley, Ca., police
raided the first lab of Owsley Stanley and confiscated a substance
they said was methedrine. It turned out to be something else and
Owsley sued for the return of his lab equipment. It was later
estimated that his Bear Research Group made 1.25 million doses of
LSD between 1965-1967, essentially seeding the psychedelic movement.
During this period he also served as the sound engineer for the
Grateful Dead. In the 1980s he moved to northern Australia.
(SFC, 7/12/07, p.A13)
1966 Alfred Peet (1920-2007)
opened Peet's Coffee and Tea on Vine St. in Berkeley. He expanded to
5 shops and sold the operation in 1979. Baldwin and Bowker of
Starbucks then acquired Peet's in 1983.
(SFEM, 8/1/99, p.8)(SFC, 9/1/07, p.C2)
1966 Lucius Beebe, social
commentator and writer, died in his Hillsborough home at 804 Vista
Way.
(Ind, 6/29/02, 5A)
1967 Jan 20, Clark Kerr,
president of the UC system, was fired by Gov. Reagan and the UC
Regents for being too soft on student protesters at Berkeley. In
2003 Kerr authored vol. 2 of his memoir: "The Gold and the Blue: A
Personal Memoir of the Univ. of California.
(SSFC, 2/17/02, p.M6)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F6)
1967 Oct 29, In Oakland, Ca.,
police made a traffic stop on Black Panther leader Huey Newton
(d.1989). In a gun battle Newton was wounded and police officer John
Frey was killed. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter but
the conviction was overturned. Gene McKinney (d.2000 at 58) and
Newton had driven out for takeout feed following a Black Panther
Party fundraiser when they were pulled over. McKinney commandeered a
passing car to get Newton to a hospital.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)(SFC, 9/23/00, p.A19)
1967 Oct, John Lion (d.1999 at
55) staged "The Lesson" by Eugene Ionesco as his UC thesis project.
The play moved to the Steppenwolf Bar in Berkeley and inspired Lion
to open his Magic Theater.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, DB p.43)(SFC, 8/4/99, p.E1)
1967 Sly & the Family Stone
released the first of their 8 albums. The group was led by Sylvester
Stewart, aka Sly Stone, an African American from Vallejo, Ca. In
2008 Jeff Kaliss authored “I Want To Take You Higher: The Life and
Times of Sly & the Family Stone.”
(SFC, 11/24/08, p.E2)
1967 In Oakland, Ca., the
16-story Lakeside Regency Plaza was constructed at 1555 Lakeside
Drive. It was designed by Michel Marx.
(SSFC, 7/11/10, p.C2)
1967 The new San Mateo-Hayward
Bridge was constructed.
(SMBP, 2004)
1967 The Sunvalley Shopping
Center opened off I-680 in Concord.
(SFC, 12/14/04, p.B1)
1967 In Oakland, Ca., H. James
Schlader (d.1010 at 96) and his wife, Harriet, co-founded the
Woodminster Summer Musicals at the WPA-built Woodminster
Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park.
(SFC, 5/14/10, p.C6)
1967 The Mill Valley Center for
the Performing Arts was founded by Sali Lieberman and performed in
the Mill Valley Golf Club clubhouse.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W29)
1967 The Renaissance Pleasure
Faire was first held. Its last season at Black Point in Novato was
in 1998.
(SFC, 7/22/98, p.D1)
1967 In Oakland 3 museums
merged to form the Oakland Museum and J.S. Holliday was hired as
executive director.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, DB p.39)
1967 In Marin County,
California, Donald McCoy (1932-2004), a houseboat developer, used
inheritance money to lease a 700-acre estate at Rancho Olompoli and
recruited others, including activist Frank Cerda (1913-2007), to
join him at a 22-room mansion there. Commune leaders became known as
“the Chosen Family.”
(SSFC, 10/24/04, p.B7)(SFC, 8/4/07, p.B5)(SFC,
1/14/09, p.B12)
1967-1982 Pete McCloskey served in the US House of
Representatives for the San Francisco peninsula. He was co-chairman
of the first Earth Day in 1970 and co-wrote the Endangered Species
Act of 1973. In 1972 he ran against Richard Nixon for the Republican
nomination for president.
(Econ, 6/3/06, p.30)
1968 Apr 6, Black Panther
member Bobby Hutton (17) was killed in a gun battle with police in
West Oakland, Ca., and Eldridge Cleaver was arrested.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15) (SFC, 4/25/98, p.A13)
1968 May 8, Catfish Hunter of
the Oakland Athletics pitched the first perfect game in the American
League in 47 years before a crowd of 5,000 at the Oakland Coliseum.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W39)
1968 May, The Lawrence Hall of
Science opened in the Berkeley Hills. It was built in honor of
Ernest Orlando Lawrence, who developed the cyclotron. The octagonal
shape represented the 8 branches of physical science.
(LHS, 2/12/1998)
1968 Oct 30, Luis W. Alvarez
(1911-1988) of UC Berkeley won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his
work on the bubble chamber.
(SFC, 10/10/96,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Walter_Alvarez)
1968 Nov 5, Ronald Stanley
Bridgeforth (24) fired on South San Francisco police officers who
tried to arrest him for credit card fraud at a discount store.
Bridgeforth (67), a councilor and faculty member at Washtenaw
Community College in Michigan, surrendered in 2011. On March 23,
2012, Bridgeforth was sentenced to a year in county jail, 3 years
probation, 300 hours of community service and a fine of $8,500.
(SFC, 11/11/11, p.C1)(SFC, 11/22/11, p.A11)(SFC,
3/24/12, p.C2)
1968 Nov 17, NBC outraged
football fans by cutting away from the final minutes of a New York
Jets-Oakland Raiders game to begin a TV special, "Heidi," on
schedule. The jets led 32-29 with one minute remaining. Viewers were
deprived of seeing the Raiders come from behind to beat the Jets,
43-to-32.
(AP, 11/17/98)(SFC, 11/14/03, p.I8)
1968 Dec 20, The first known
murder by the Zodiac killer took place. Two teenagers, David
Farraday and Betty Lou Jensen, were shot to death in a parked car on
Lake Herman Road outside Vallejo, Ca. The California Zodiac killer
later identified himself with a letter to the Times-Harold in
Vallejo. After that he claimed to have killed 37 people but the
police connected him to only five deaths.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac_Killer)(SFEC, 3/1/98,
p.W20)(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A19)(SFC, 4/7/04, p.A7)
1968 Edwin Hawkins recorded his
arrangement of “Oh Happy Day” on a 2-track tape machine for the
Northern California State Youth Choir. An album was made with
Century Records to help finance a trip to a church youth conference
in Washington DC. In 1969 Abe Kesh at KSAN-FM began playing the
song, which featured the voice of Dorothy Morrison. The album was
soon re-issued by Buddah Records.
(SFC, 10/23/09, p.F1)
1968 The Berkeley Repertory
Theater was founded by Michael Leibert on College Ave.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W29)(WSJ, 5/8/01, p.A24)
1968 The Hillbarn Theater,
co-founded by Robert Brauns (d.2001 at 87) opened on East Hillsdale
Blvd in Foster City. The original outdoor theater, had been in the
corral of the old Pingrey estate overlooking El Camino Real near the
Belmont city line.
(SFC, 3/31/01, p.A21)
1968 David “Moses” Berg of
Oakland, Ca., founded the Children of God. He combined the free love
of the sexual revolution with the fervor of the American evangelical
movement [see May, 2, 1978].
(SSFC, 2/27/05, p.A1)
1968 Yusuf Bey (d.2003) created
“Your Black Muslim Bakery” in Oakland, Ca.
(SFC, 11/30/05, p.A16)
1968 The Industrial Center
Building at 480 Gate Five Rd. in Sausalito, Ca., became a haven for
artists.
(SFEM,11/30/97, p.10)
1968 Mary Moore (d.2001 at 73)
founded Mandrake’s nightclub at University and 10th St. in Berkeley.
The club folded in 1974.
(SFC, 12/28/01, p.A34)
1968 Canãda College
opened in Redwood City, Ca.
(SFEC, 3/15/98, p.W20)
1968 US Federal agents raided
the Marin, Ca., home of Frank Werber (1929-2007), the original
manager of the Kingston Trio, and seized 258 pounds of Mexican
marijuana. He served a 6-month sentence in Marin County, Ca. In 1972
he retired on 160 acres of wilderness in New Mexico.
(SFC, 6/8/07, p.B7)
1968 Myth has it that the
Nuestra Familia prison gang was organized after a stolen shoe
incident at San Quentin prison. It set the Mexican Mafia, a gang
rooted in East Los Angeles, against the Familia based in San Jose.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, Z1 p.1)
1968 Architect Henry Schubart
(d.1998 at 81) moved his family to Salt Spring Island in British
Columbia due to his opposition to the Vietnam War. He had designed
the campus buildings of the Dominican College in Marin, Ca., the St.
Louis Bertrand Church in Oakland and the Holy Names Church in SF
among other works. In BC he introduced the use of skylights.
(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A23)
1968 Sears Point Raceway began
operating in Marin County, Ca.
(SFC, 12/15/99, p.A21)
1968 The Kansas City Athletics
under owner Charlie Finley moved to Oakland, Ca., and began playing
in the new Oakland Coliseum.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W39)
1968 The last of the hog farms
in Colma, Ca., closed. Some 10,000 garbage-eating pigs were raised
along the Hillside Blvd. farm
(Ind, 7/15/00,5A)
1968 T. Jack Foster, the
developer of Foster City, Ca., died. His sons continued his project
and sold out to Centex Corp. in 1970.
(Ind, 8/4/01, 5A)
1969 Jan, A 50-cent one-way
toll became permanent on the Golden Gate Bridge following efforts to
reduce congestion by Bruce Goecker (1919-2006), former mayor of
Corte Madera. Soon toll bridges around the world began following
suit.
(SFC, 9/14/06, p.B5)
1969 Feb 2, In Marin County,
Ca., a fire destroyed a 22-room mansion at Rancho Olompali occupied
by members of “the Chosen Family” led by Donald McCoy (1932-2004).”
(SSFC, 10/24/04, p.B7)(SFC, 1/14/09, p.B12)
1969 Feb 4, John Madden was
named head coach of NFL's Oakland Raiders.
(MC, 2/4/02)
1969 Apr 6, In Oakland there
was a shootout between Black Panthers and 2 police officers. David
Hilliard was convicted for assault in 1971 and served time in state
prison. In 2000 he ran for a seat on the Oakland City Council.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, p.D6)
1969 Apr, The reef and beach at
Moss Beach became part of the San Mateo County parks and Recreation
Division.
(Ind, 7/1/00,5A)
1969 Apr, A university owned
lot was turned into People’s Park.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F7)
1969 May 15, Univ. of
California officials fenced People’s Park and planned to build
dormitories. This prompted some 3,000 protesters to try to seize it
back. Gov. Reagan placed Berkeley under martial law and dispatched
tear gas-spraying helicopters and riot police who shot and killed
one man.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F7)
1969 May 26, An open house was
celebrated for the newly completed Eugene A. Doran Memorial Bridge
on I-280 over San Mateo Creek.
(Ind, 6/24/00,5A)
1969 Jul 4, Darlene Ferrin
(22), a waitress, was shot and killed at the Blue Rock Springs Golf
Club in Vallejo. She was parked with Michael Mageau (19), who
survived the shooting. The Zodiac killer reported the shooting
within an hour from a pay phone.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W20)(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A19)
1969 Jul 31, The Zodiac killer
sent a poorly-spelled letter to the SF Chronicle, Examiner and
Vallejo Times-Herald and took responsibility for the July 5
shootings along with a portion of a cipher.
(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A19)
1969 Sep 27, The Zodiac killer
pulled a gun on two teenagers, Brian Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard,
picnicking at Lake Berryessa. He stabbed them repeatedly and killed
the girl.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W20)
1969 Sep 22, Susan Nason (8) of
Foster City, Ca., was bludgeoned to death. Her body was found 2
months later near Crystal Springs. In Dec 1989 Nason's neighbor and
schoolmate, Eileen Franklin-Lipsker, told police that she suddenly
remembered seeing her father batter her friend and hide the body. In
1990 George Franklin was convicted in the first case to use
recovered-memory testimony. Franklin was released after 6 1/2 years
when a federal judge ruled a mistrial. DNA evidence showed Franklin
was not responsible.
(SFC, 2/4/00, p.A21)(SSFC, 2/8/04,
p.A28)(http://tinyurl.com/9hl2at)
1969 Oct 11, The Zodiac killer
shot and killed SF cab driver Paul Stine (29) at Cherry and
Washington in Presidio Heights. This was his last known murder. His
last authenticated communication was in 1974.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W20)(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A19)
1969 Oct 13, The SF Chronicle
received a letter containing a bloody swath of Stine’s shirt along
with a threat to shoot children on a school bus.
(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A19)
1969 Oct 29, Researchers sent
the first inter-node message between two sites on ARPAnet. The first
e-mail message crossed the Arpanet as a team under Professor Leonard
Kleinrock of UCLA communicated with a team under Douglas Englebart
at Stanford. The US Dept. of Defense’s Advanced Research and
Projects Agency (ARPANET) launched a self-healing computer network
with TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) [see
Sep 2].
(http://tinyurl.com/lpq766)(WSJ, 1/14/99,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET)
1969 Nov 9, A group of American
Indians occupied Alcatraz Island. The story is told in the 1996 book
"The Occupation of Alcatraz Island, Indian Self-Determination and
the Rise of Indian Activism" by Troy R. Johnson.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p. H2)(SFEC, 1/5/97, BR p.8)
1969 Nov 10, The SF Chronicle
received a letter from the Zodiac killer containing detailed plans
for a "death machine" to blow up a school bus.
(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A19)
1969 Nov 20, A group of 80
Native Americans, all college students, seized Alcatraz Island in
the name of "Indians of All Tribes." The occupation lasted 19
months. They offered $24 in beads and cloth to buy the island,
demanded an American Indian Univ., museum and cultural center, and
listed reasons why the island was a suitable Indian reservation.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W38)
1969 Nov, Moss Beach was
designated as the James V. Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. Fitzgerald was
the president of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors
instrumental in winning the reserve status.
(Ind, 7/1/00,5A)
1969 In Marin County, Ca., the
Mill Valley Public Library was built. It was designed by Donn Emmons
(d.1997 at 87).
(SFC, 9/3/97, p.A20)
1969 In San Mateo County, Ca.,
work on the new Tanforan Shopping Center began. It replaced the race
track the 1st opened in 1899. The center opened in 1970.
(Ind, 8/17/02, 5A)
1969 The 43-acre Shelter Creek
development in San Bruno, Ca., was constructed. In 1999 water mains
to the complex began breaking.
(SFC, 2/2/99, p.A14)
1969 Credence Clearwater
Revival put out its "Willy and the Poorboys" LP. The cover featured
a photo of the band in front of the Duck Kee Market in Oakland, Ca.
(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A19)
1969 In northern California the
Concord Jazz Festival began.
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.D3)
1969 Loni Kuhn (d.1997 at 65)
started her school, Loni Kuhn’s Cook’s Tour in SF. Her
great-grandfather started the San Jose Normal School (now San Jose
State Univ.) and her grandfather helped found the First National
Bank of San Jose (now Bank of the West).
(SFC, 6/26/97, p.A22)
1969 The medical volunteer
organization Interplast, specializing in reconstructive surgery, was
founded at Stanford Univ. by Dr. Donald Laub.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, Z1 p.1,4)
1969 In the SF Bay Area Nello
Bianco (1928-2006) was appointed to the BART board of directors. He
was re-elected 4 times and served a board president 3 times.
(SFC, 9/14/06, p.B5)
1969 Skyline College in San
Bruno, Ca., opened.
(SFEC, 3/15/98, p.W21)
1969 In northern California a
breach at the Sherman Island levee left part of Highway 160
submerged for 6 months.
(SFC, 1/10/05, p.B1)
1969 In the SF Bay Area the
Albany Bulb, east of Golden Gate Fields, began as a site for
industrial dumping. It later was turned into a public space area and
artists constructed numerous works from debris that washed ashore.
In 2007 plans called for incorporating it into the East Bay Regional
Park District and removing the art work.
(SFC, 4/13/07, p.B9)
1970 Feb 20, Students at San
Jose Univ., Ca., buried a brand new Ford Maverick as part of their
Survival Faire. The Maverick was exhumed one year later.
(SFC, 4/20/10, p.E1)(http://tinyurl.com/yyplgjc)
1970 May 1, The US troop ship
General John Pope came to rest at the Suisun Bay, Ca., reserve fleet
rest stop. It was launched in 1943 and served up to this time. In
2010 it was scheduled to be recycled at a Texas shipyard.
(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.A2)
1970 Jul 26, The SF Chronicle
received a letter from the Zodiac killer with an unsubstantiated
claim of killing 13 people.
(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A19)
1970 Feb 28, Bicycles were
permitted to cross the Golden Gate Bridge.
(www.goldengatebridge.org/research/dates.php)
1970 May, The US government
shut off power and stopped fresh water supplies from the Native
American Indians on Alcatraz Island. A fire broke out and each side
blamed the other.
(G, Summer ‘97,
p.5)(www.nps.gov/alca/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm)
1970 Aug 7, At a hearing for
the "Soledad Brothers," Jonathon P. Jackson (17), the younger
brother of George L. Jackson, attempted an armed rescue attempt at
the Marin Civic Center. A shootout in the parking lot followed and 4
people were killed and 5 injured. Among the dead were Jackson, Judge
Harold Haley, Black Panther James McClain, and convict William A.
Christmas. Angela Davis was charged with murder, kidnapping and
conspiracy, but was acquitted in 1972 after spending a year in jail.
An attempt by black militant James David McClain to escape his trial
in Marin County, California, ended in a shootout with police that
claimed the lives of McClain, two of three cohorts, and Judge Harold
J. Daley, one of several hostages.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W21)(SFC, 8/19/98, p.A18)(AP,
8/7/00)
1970 Aug 15, A ferryboat named
the M.V. Golden Gate made its maiden voyage from San Francisco to
Sausalito marking a revival of ferry service on San Francisco Bay.
It was retired from service on March 26, 2004. The Golden Gate Bus
and Ferry Transit system began operating with one ferry and 4 leased
busses. Ferry service to Sausalito was inaugurated. The ferryboat
Golden Gate was retired in 2004.
(www.goldengateferry.org/researchlibrary/history.php)(SFC, 12/2/99,
p.A36)(SFC, 3/26/04, p.A1)
1970 Aug 20, Ronald Tsukamoto
(b.1942), a Berkeley, Ca., rookie police officer, was shot and
killed. In 2004 Don Juan Warren Graphenreed (54) was arrested as a
suspect in the murder, but was released without being charged. In
2005 police arrested Styles Price (56), a retired Oakland
schoolteacher for the killing. Graphenreed was again arrested at
Corcoran State Prison, where he was held on a drug charge. Price was
soon freed and the case against Graphenreed was dropped due to
“insufficient corroborating evidence.”
(SFC, 5/26/04, p.B3)(SFC, 6/16/04, p.B5)(SFC,
8/11/05, p.B1)(SFC, 8/13/05, p.B1)
1970 Susan Lydon (1943-2005)
authored the feminist essay “The Politics of Orgasm” in the Rolling
Stone rock magazine.
(SSFC, 7/24/05, p.A19)
1970 Yasundo Takahashi
(1912-1996), professor at UC Berkeley, wrote his textbook "Control
and Dynamic Systems." It became a standard reference in the field of
control engineering, the study of how machines work.
(http://tinyurl.com/6qjaoo)(http://catalog.library.ksu.edu.sa/digital/153142.html)
1970 The submarine Drum was
launched at Mare Island in the SF Bay. It was the last ship produced
there.
(SSFC, 8/11/02, p.C5)
1970 The UC Berkeley Art Museum
on Bancroft Way was constructed.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)
1970 The Palo Alto Research
Center (PARC) of Xerox opened on the outskirts of Palo Alto. George
Pake (1924-2004) ran the center until 1978. It was founded by Dr.
Jacob Goldman (1921-2011).
(SFC, 10/25/00, p.D1)(SFC, 3/11/04, p.C5)(SFC,
12/28/11, p.C5)
1970 Madge Short (d.1998 at 80)
and Jane Saunders (50) co-founded The Body Shop in Berkeley, Ca. The
name was sold to Britain’s Anita Roddick in 1987 for $3.5 million.
(SFC, 1/5/99, p.A20)(SSFC, 5/16/04, p.F6)
1970 Ron Dellums (34) was
elected as representative of the East Bay’s 7th Congressional
District, Oakland, Ca. He was later re-elected by the 9th District
and stayed in Congress for 27 years.
(SFC,11/17/97, p.A1)
1970 A 10-cent walkway toll on
the Golden Gate Bridge was eliminated. In 1998 a $1 walkway toll was
proposed for pedestrians and bicyclists.
(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A19)
1970 Franz Schurman
(1926-2010), UC Berkeley sociologist and historian, co-founded the
Pacific News Service (PNS) with Orville Schell.
(SFC, 8/23/10, p.C4)
1970 The Marine Science
Institute was founded in Redwood City, Ca., to monitor the South
Bay.
(SFC, 7/22/03, p.A12)
1970s Eden Housing, a nonprofit
housing organization, began to purchase and renovate housing for low
income people in the San Francisco Bay Area.
(SFC, 2/25/99, p.A15)
1970s Melvin Carter confessed
to terrorizing over 100 women over 9 years in the College Terrace
rapes in Palo Alto, Berkeley and other cities before he was
arrested. He was paroled in 1994 to public outrage.
(SFC, 8/23/97, p.A1,15)
1970s "Stinky," the smelly
rapist of Berkeley, was never caught.
(SFC, 8/23/97, p.A15)
1971 Apr 9, Demonstrators
occupying the Stanford Univ. Hospital administration offices clashed
with police and 9 Palo Alto officers were injured. Police later
raided the Stanford Daily to recover photos of the demonstrators.
(SFC, 1/17/03, p.E8)
1971 Jun 10, Federal marshals,
FBI agents and special forces swarmed Alcatraz Island and removed
the Native American occupiers: 5 women, 4 children and 6 unarmed
men.
(www.nps.gov/alca/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm)
1971 Jul 12, Kristi Tsuya
Yamaguchi, figure skater, was born in Hayward, Cal. In 1992 she won
an Olympic gold medal.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristi_Yamaguchi)
1971 Aug 21, Three prisoners
and 3 guards were killed during an attempted prison escape at San
Quentin, California. George Jackson after meeting with his lawyer,
Stephen Gingham, pulled a hidden automatic pistol from his hair and
began to release other prisoners. Jackson’s prison letters were
published as "Soledad Brother."
(WUD, 1994, p. 1688)(SFC, 8/25/96, z1 p.5)
1971 Oct 21, Half Moon Bay,
Ca., held its 1st Art and Pumpkin Festival. The 1-day event was
thought up by Dolores Mullin to raise money for the Main Street
Beautification Committee to buy trees. John Minaidis of Half Moon
Bay won with a 132-pound pumpkin. Terry Pimsleur (d.2008 at
77), public relations executive, helped develop the fair.
(Ind, 9/29/01, 5A)(SFC, 10/10/06, p.B3)(SFC,
9/26/08, p.B9)
1971 The film "Harold and
Maude" with Ruth Gordon was produced. The opening scene was filmed
at in the music room of Rosecourt, a Burlingame, Ca., home built by
SF Chronicle publisher George Cameron for his wife Helen, a daughter
of Michael de Young.
(SFEC, 10/11/97, DB p.36)(PI, 3/21/98, p.5)
1971 The 14-story Great Western
Building went up in Berkeley, Ca.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A12)
1971 The Berkeley Evans Hall
was constructed at UC Berkeley, Ca. It was named after Griffith C.
Evans, chairman of mathematics from 1934 to 1949 who combined the
fields of mathematics and economics.
(SFC,10/24/97,
p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans_Hall_%28UC_Berkeley%29)
1971 The Int’l. Bird Rescue
Research Center was founded by Alice Berkner in Berkeley, Ca.
(SFC, 8/17/96, p.A17-18)
1971 The Berkeley-Oakland
Support Services program began. It was renamed in 1996 to Building
Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS).
(SFEC, 12/22/96, Z1 p.2)
1971 Sue Rugge (d.1999 at 58)
co-founded Information Unlimited, an independent research firm based
in Berkeley, Ca.
(SFC, 6/16/99, p.B4)
1971 The SF Bay Area Reporter
(B.A.R.), a gay community publication, was begun by Bob Ross (d.2003
at 69) and Paul Bentley.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A29)
1971 Phil Wood (d.2010 at 72)
founded Ten Speed Press in Berkeley, Ca. The publishing house was
named for its first book, a bicycle repair manual called “Anybody’s
Bike Book.”
(SFC, 12/20/10, p.C3)
1971 Journalist Don Hoefler,
editor of the Electronic News, coined the term Silicon Valley to
describe the technology base in the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
(SSFC, 10/30/05, p.J4)(Econ, 12/16/06, p.67)
1971 Alice Waters (b.1939)
opened Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, Ca.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W35)
1971 The SF Warriors moved to
the Oakland Coliseum Arena and changed their name to the Golden Gate
Warriors.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W29)(SFC, 4/26/10, p.A8)
1971 Foster City, Ca., was
incorporated. After 8 years of controversy the Foster City lagoon
was polluted and residents paid the highest property taxes in San
Mateo County to cover bond debt. Over developer’s objections,
residents incorporated and established a city council.
(Ind, 8/4/01, 5A)(SFC, 6/14/09, p.H2)
1971 Dominican College in San
Rafael, Ca., began to admit male students.
(SFC, 6/26/00, p.A17)
1971 Stanford Univ. opened up
about 700 acres for development and Hewlett-Packard was among the
earliest tenants.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W6)
1971 Stanford Prof. Philip
Zimbardo conducted a psychology experiment that randomly assigned
college-age men to roles as prisoners and guards. The experiment
turned into a nightmare and was soon called off. In 2007 Zimbardo
authored “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn
Evil.”
(SSFC, 4/29/07, p.M1)
1971 Mary Bowerman (1908-2005)
and Art Bonwell co-founded the Save Mount Diablo group and were
instrumental in expanding the boundaries of the northern California
Mount Diablo state park from 6,788 acres to over 20,000 acres in
2006. In 1944 Bowerman published her doctoral thesis: “Flowering
Plants and Ferns of Mount Diablo.”
(SFC, 8/25/05, p.B7)(SFC, 12/29/06, p.B1)
1971 Albert H. Bowker
(1919-2008), 8-year chancellor of City Univ. of New York, was named
chancellor of California’s UC Berkeley.
(SFC, 1/25/08,
p.B9)(www.nndb.com/people/673/000167172/)
1971 San Francisco Bay
Area cemetery workers went on a 4-month strike. Some 1800
coffins went unburied until union and cemetery workers reached
agreement.
(SSFC, 3/28/10, DB p.42)
1972 Jan 8, Kenneth Patchen
(b.1911), American poet, died in Palo Alto, Ca. He was bed-ridden in
his later years from a debilitating spinal injury. His works
included "Before the Brave" and "Hurrah for Anything."
(HN, 12/13/99)(SFC, 3/24/00,
p.D6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Patchen)
1972 Jul, Robert Metcalf
(b.1946) at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) combined packet
switching from the Arpanet and single wire broadcasting to lay the
foundations for computer networks. This system was called Ethernet
and marked the first Internet message. The IEEE committee 802.3
later defined the Ethernet standard. He later fixed May 22, 1973, as
the birthdate of Ethernet, a day on which he circulated a memo about
his ideas to PARC colleagues.
(WSJ,11/14/94, p.R26)(SFEC, 3/28/99, Z1
p.8)(Econ, 6/12/04, p.26)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.23)
1972 Oct 12, US House
Resolution 16444, establishing the Golden Gate National Recreation
Area (GGNRA), was passed by Congress and was signed by President
Richard Nixon 15 days later. The island of Alcatraz was incorporated
into this park. California Congressman Phillip Burton pushed through
legislation preserving thousands of acres of forested hills, valleys
and rugged shoreline. Burton got Congress to agree to transfer the
Presidio in San Francisco to the park service if the army ever
pulled out.
(www.sftravel.com/Alcatraz1950on.html)(SFEC,
6/27/99, Z1 p.1,4)(SFCM, 4/25/04, p.18)(SFC, 10/4/96, p.A21)
1972 Oct 22, The Oakland
Athletics beat the Cincinnati Reds 3-2 in a 7th game to win the
World Series, bringing home the first Bay Area’s baseball
world championship. It was the first of 3 in a row.
(SFEC, 3/1/98,
p.W39)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_World_Series)(SFC,
12/28/99, p.A1)
1972 Oct 27, Federal
legislation established the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in
the Bay Area of SF. The park was expanded from 870 acres in 1948 to
6,300 acres by 1972.
(http://usparks.about.com/library/miniplanner/blgoldengatenra.htm)(SFEC,
6/27/99, Z1 p.1,4)(SFCM, 4/25/04, p.18)
1972 Roy W. Fairchild (d.1998
at 77) co-founded the Lewis Marshall Lloyd Center for Education and
Counseling as an on-campus teaching facility at SF Theological
Seminary in San Anselmo, Ca.
(SFC, 12/17/98, p.C11)
1972 Kermit Lynch opened Kermit
Lynch Wine Merchant in Berkeley, Ca. He focused on importing
small-production French wines. In 2005 the French government
announced that he would be awarded the insignia of Chevalier de la
Legion d’Honeur.
(SFC, 12/22/05, p.F5)
1972 In northern California the
Marin Town and Country Club was closed after area residents passed a
ballot measure that required voter approval prior to any new
development.
(SFC, 5/29/98, p.A19)
1972 The See family sold their
South San Francisco, Ca., chocolate and candy business to Warren
Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Buffet named Charles
Huggins as See’s Candies top officer. Huggins retired at the end of
2005.
(SSFC, 1/15/06,
p.D6)(www.ifa.com/Library/Buffet.html)
1973 May 22, Robert Metcalf
(b.1946), at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), circulated a
memo about his Ethernet ideas to PARC colleagues. He later fixed
this day as the birthdate of Ethernet. Metcalf had combined packet
switching from the Arpanet and single wire broadcasting to lay the
foundations for computer networks.
(Econ, 12/12/09, TQ p.23)
1973 Oct, The US National Park
Service welcomed the first visitors to Alcatraz Island.
(www.alcatrazcruises.com/website/history-national-park.aspx)
1973 Nov 6, The Symbionese
Liberation Army (SLA) assassinated Marcus Foster, the 1st black
superintendent of the Oakland school district, and wounded Robert
Blackburn, his assistant. The SLA warned against a proposed student
ID program. Russell Little and Joseph Remiro were arrested following
a shootout in Jan, 1974. Little’s eventual conviction was reversed
Feb 28, 1979, due to errant jury instructions. Remiro was sentenced
to life in prison.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W22)(SFC, 1/23/01, p.A13)(SFC,
9/17/02, p.A20)(SFC, 11/14/02, p.A17)
1973 Richard and Christina
Milner authored “Black Players: The Secret World of Black Pimps.”
The book was the product of an anthropological study regarding both
the lifestyles and subculture of San Francisco Bay Area pimps and
their prostitutes.
(www.amazon.com/Black-players-Secret-World-pimps/dp/0316574112)
1973 Bananas, a nonprofit
organization dedicated to supporting families in northern Alameda
County, Ca., was founded.
(SSFC, 10/19/03, p.E1)
1973 BART (Bay Area Rapid
Transit) opened a station in downtown Walnut Creek, Ca.
(SFC, 7/17/06, p.B5)
1973 Santa Clara County, Ca.,
bought 2,455 acres of the New Almaden mine land and named it the
Almaden Quicksilver Equestrian Park.
(SSFC, 12/22/02, p.A26)
1973 American President Lines
moved from SF to the port of Oakland. The line became a subsidiary
of Singapore’s Neptune Orient Lines in 1997.
(SFEC, 11/22/98, p.B1)
1973 Dorothy Turner Everett
(1932-2007) started a barbecue business in Oakland, Ca., that grew
to become the Everett & Jones chain of barbecue restaurants.
(SFC, 10/12/07, p.B11)
1973 The Good Guys, a retail
store home entertainment products, was founded in Alameda, Ca. In
2003 the chain of 71 stores in California, Nevada, Oregon and
Washington was sold to CompUSA. In 2005 CompUSA announced the
closure of Good Guy stores in California and Hawaii due to waning
demand.
(SFC, 10/6/05, p.C1)
1969 Larry Lee Hillblom
co-founded DHL Corp. upon graduation from the Univ. of California,
Berkeley, at Boalt Hall law school. The original idea was to help
cargo ships save wharf charges by air-delivering freight documents
before the ships reached port. The D was for co-founder Adrian
Dalsey (1914-1994) and the L was for Robert Lynn.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A16)(SFC, 9/6/99,
p.A24)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DHL_Express)
1973 The first Magnetic
Resonance Image was published and the first study performed on a
human took place on July 3, 1977. Lawrence E. Crooks and Jerome
Singer, professors at UC in SF and Berkeley, invented Magnetic
Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology along with about 20 other univ.
employees.
(SFC, 12/2/97,
p.A18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_Resonance_Imaging)
1974 Feb 4, Newspaper heiress
Patricia Hearst (19) was kidnapped in Berkeley, Calif., by the
Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). Her boyfriend Steven Weed was
beaten. Patty Hearst ran away to join an underground revolutionary
group, the Symbionese Liberation Front.
(TMC, 1994, p.1974)(SFC, 2/8/97, p.A7)(AP,
2/4/97)(AP, 2/4/97)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W22)
1974 Feb 12, The SLA sent a
letter a tape with the voices of Patty Hearst and "general field
marshal Cinque" to KPFA. They demanded free food to the poor of the
Bay Area, prison reform and social justice. Symbionese Liberation
Army asked the Hearst family for $230 million in food for the poor.
(HN, 2/12/97)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W22)
1974 Feb 16, Rev. Cecil
Williams of Glide Memorial Church received a tape from the SLA
wherein Cinque said a "reasonable" food giveaway would be acceptable
as a condition for the release of Patty Hearst.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W22)
1974 Feb 18, In California
Randolph Hearst was to give $2 million in free food for the poor in
order to open talks for his daughter Patty.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1974 Feb 19, Randolph Hearst
announced a $2 million food program called People in Need.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W22)
1974 Feb, William F. Knowland,
former Cal. state senator and Oakland Tribune newspaper publisher
and editor, committed suicide. In 1998 Gayle B. Montgomery and James
W. Johnson, in collaboration with Paul G. Manolis, published the
biography "One Step from the White House: The Rise and Fall of
Senator William F. Knowland."
(SFEC, 5/17/98, BR p.5)
1974 Apr 3, A tape from the SLA
announced Patty Hearst’s decision to "stay and fight" with the SLA.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W22,23)
1974 Apr 15, SLA members
including Patty Hearst robbed the Sunset Branch of the Hibernia Bank
of more than $10,000. The wounded 2 passersby as they fled.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W23)
1974 May 16, SLA members
William and Emily Harris were identified with Patty Hearst in LA
during a shoplifting attempt at a sporting good store. They escaped
in a stolen van with an 19-year-old kidnapped victim.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W23)
1974 May 17, LA police and FBI
agents engaged in a gun battle with SLA members in a bungalow. The
house caught fire and 6 bodies were recovered that included Cinque
and William Wolfe. Patty Hearst was not there.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W23)
1974 Jul 8, The SF Chronicle
received the last verified letter from the Zodiac killer.
(SFC, 4/7/04, p.A7)
1974 Nov 24, Susan Murphy,
3-months pregnant, was killed in her Oakland home on her 19th
birthday. In 2002 DNA evidence identified and arrested Ellis Lorenzo
Lockett for the murder.
(SFC, 7/19/02, p.A23)
1974 Henry A. Rosso (d.1999 at
81) and his wife, Dottie, founded the Fund Raising School in San
Rafael. It later became part of the Indiana Univ. Center on
Philanthropy.
(SFC, 2/26/99, p.A25)
1974 The Disney film "Escape to
Witch Mountain" with Eddie Albert and Ray Milland was set at the
Peninsula School, the Menlo Park home of James V. Coleman.
(PI, 3/21/98, p.5)
1974 Oakland held the first
annual Black Cowboys Parade, the only one of its kind in the
country.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.6)
1974 Ken Behring, a Florida
land developer, and his partners agreed to donate 2,052 acres near
Danville to the state park system in exchange for the right to build
2,400 homes that became the Blackhawk community. The last 511-acre
parcel was transferred in 1999. In 1975 Dan Van Voorhis (1939-2005),
East Bay attorney, and Sandy Skaggs formed a new law firm to help
develop the Blackhawk project.
(SFC, 5/14/99, p.A21)(SFC, 3/17/05, p.B7)
1974 The FBI
counterintelligence program, known as Cointelpro, was directed
against Marxist and student-radical groups. Charles W. Bates (d.1999
at 79) led 8 full-time employees in the SF Bay Area and 22
informants worked the local campuses.
(SFC, 2/26/99, p.A25)
1974 Kathleen Smith (17), a
prostitute, was killed on a north Oakland street corner. Huey Newton
was later arrested and tried for the murder. In 1979 charges were
dropped following 2 mistrials.
(SFC, 9/24/04, p.F9)
1975 Mar 5, The Homebrew
Computer Club, founded by peace activist Fred Moore, held its first
meeting in Menlo Park, Ca. It was an outgrowth of the store-front
based People’s Computer Co. The meeting inspired Steve Wozniak (24)
to design and build the first Apple computer.
(SSFC, 4/23/05, p.B1)(Reuters, 9/27/06)
1975 May 25, The Golden Gate
Warriors won the NBA title in a 4-game sweep over the Washington
Bullets.
(SFC, 4/26/10,
p.A8)(www.nba.com/history/finals/19741975.html)
1975 Jun, In California Sonya
Higginbotham (19) was raped and stabbed to death in her 98th Ave.
Oakland home. DNA evidence in 2002 identified Charles Jackson, a
recently deceased Folsom inmate, as her killer.
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A10)(SFC, 9/30/05, p.B5)
1975 Aug, In, Oakland,
California, Ann Johnson (27) was raped and stabbed to death in her
Montclair District home. DNA evidence in 2002 identified Charles
Jackson, a recently deceased Folsom inmate, as her killer.
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A10)
1975 Sep 18, Police and FBI
arrested Patty Hearst, William and Emily Harris, and Wendy Yoshimura
in SF. Hearst was convicted of bank robbery and served over 22
months in federal prison. Pres. Carter commuted her sentence in
1979.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W23)
1975 The 12,400 seat Concord
Pavilion was built. In 2000 it was renamed the Chronicle Pavilion of
Concord.
(SFC, 3/21/00, p.A19)
1975 The Hospice of Marin was
founded to care for dying patients. It was the first hospice in
California. Connecticut founded the first hospice in the US in 1974.
(SFC, 8/2/10, p.E1)
1975 The Oakland Youth Chorus
was founded.
(SFC, 5/10/97, p.A17)
1975 The Elizabeth Terwilliger
Nature Education Foundation was founded in Corte Madera, Ca., to
provide nature programs for Bay Area schools. It was named after
environmental teacher Elizabeth Terwilliger (1909-2006).
(SFC, 11/30/06, p.B7)
1975 Visitacion Associates,
co-owners of 3600 acres of San Bruno Mountain with the Crocker Land
Co., proposed a major development of over 8,500 residential units
and 2 million square feet of office and commercial space. Residents
began lobbying county officials against the development.
(Ind, 4/27/99, p.11A)
1975 Beryl Buck,
philanthropist, left a $10 million estate to benefit "all mankind"
from a Marin base. By 1999 the trust had grown to $850 million and
The Buck Center for Research in Aging opened.
(SFC, 8/24/99, p.E1)
1975 Richard J. Elkus (d.1999
at 88) and his wife Ruth (d.1991) donated 630-650 acres in Half Moon
Bay to the Univ. of California Cooperative Extension with the
condition that it be used to educate children. Elkus was also the
author of "Alamos: A Philosophy in Living."
(SFC, 3/20/99, p.A21)(DCR, 3/20/99, p.6)
1975 Mrs. Roth, daughter of
Capt. William Matson, gave her 654-acre Filoli estate in Woodside,
Ca., to the National Trust for Historic Preservation along with $2.5
million. This included the Filoli orchard, established in 1919 by
William Bowers Bourn II. Capt. Matson was the founder of the Matson
Steamship Navigation Lines.
(Ind, 12/26/98, p.5A)(SSFC, 9/26/10, p.E2)
1975 The Marine Mammal Center
in Sausalito, Ca., began treating marine mammals rescued along the
California coast.
(SFC, 11/11/05, p.B3)
1975 The New Almaden mine south
of San Jose, Ca., was closed. It had mined mercury for over 120
years. In the 1980s it was placed on the state’s list of Superfund
cleanup sites.
(SSFC, 12/22/02, p.A26)
1975 Chiura Obata (b.1885),
Japanese-born Bay Area painter, died. He was a prof. of art at UC
Berkeley for 20 years.
(SFC, 9/25/00, p.F5)
1975-1983 In San Jose Janet Gray Hayes served as
the city’s first woman mayor.
(SFC, 7/19/97, p.A17)
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