Timeline California 1923-1961
Return to home
1923 Jan 1, The
Angelus Temple, a spiritual palace in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los
Angeles, was dedicated by Canadian-born evangelist Aimee Semple
McPherson (1890-1944), organizer of the Int’l. Church of the Foursquare
Gospel.
(WSJ, 6/2/07,
p.P9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Semple_McPherson)
1923 Feb 22, 1st successful
chinchilla farm established in US was in LA, Calif.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1923 Sep 8, Seven of the 15 ships
of Destroyer Squadron 11 were wrecked on a rocky point on the Santa
Barbara County coast. 23 sailors were killed.
(SFC, 9/9/98, p.D2)
1923 Sep 17, In Berkeley a fire
began in the Wildcat Canyon and in 2 hours engulfed 584 structures.
(SFC, 9/17/98, p.A20)
1923 Oct 25, The Teapot Dome
scandal came to public attention as Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana,
subcommittee chairman, revealed the findings of the past 18 months of
investigation. His case would result in the conviction of Harry F.
Sinclair of Mammoth Oil, and later Secretary of the Interior Albert B.
Fall, the first cabinet member in American history to go to jail. The
scandal, named for the Teapot Dome oil reserves in Wyoming, involved
Fall secretly leasing naval oil reserve lands to private companies. The
administration of President Warren G. Harding was rocked by the Elk
Hills Scandal-also known as the Teapot Dome Scandal or Oil Reserves
Scandal. In 1921 and 1922 Harding’s secretary of the interior, Albert
B. Fall secretly granted Mammoth Oil exclusive rights to California’s
Teapot Dome oil reserves and portions of the Elk Hills and Buena Vista
Hills reserves to American Petroleum, in exchange for some $300,000.
Supervision of the oil reserves had been transferred from the Navy to
the Department of the Interior in 1921. Fall was imprisoned for
accepting a bribe in the Elk Hills case and the Supreme court ruled
Harding’s transfer illegal.
(HN, 10/25/98)(HNQ, 4/19/99)
1923 Jack Wilkinson Smith painted
his impressionist work: "Crystal Cove State Park."
(SFC, 3/18/99, p.C9)
1923 The O’Shaughnessy Dam on the
Tuolumne River was completed. The first Hetch Hetchy water began
flowing to the Bay Area in 1934.
(Ind, 3/11/00, p.5A)(SFC, 9/15/02, p.A20)
1923 In Los Angeles the Vista
Theater at 4473 Sunset Dr. was built as a film and vaudeville house. It
had a fanciful Egyptian revival-style interior.
(USAT, 10/8/97, p.4D)
1923 The Dow Villa Hotel In Lone
Pine, Ca., was built.
(SFEC, 8/17/97, p.T3)
1923 The 450-foot-long,
45-foot-tall "Hollywood" sign was erected on Mount Lee as a promotion
for the Hollywoodland subdivision in Beachwood Canyon, Ca. In 1949 the
"land" was dropped and the sign was declared a historical monument in
1973 and restored in 1978.
(SFC, 11/13/96, p.E5)
1923 The Army proved a point when
Lieutenants Kelly and Macready flew the first non-stop continental
flight from New York to San Diego.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1923 Porter Blanchard (1886-1973),
a Massachusetts silversmith, moved to Burbank, Ca. He soon opened a
studio featuring silver and pewter work that became part of the
California Arts and Crafts movement.
(SFC, 5/9/07, p.G7)
1923 Wells Fargo merged with Union
Trust Company and stayed solvent through the depression.
(SFC, 6/9/98, p.A10)
1923 The Rios-Caledonia Adobe and
6 acres was sold to Charles Dorries. Plans were made to restore the
building and open it up to the public. He built a gift shop in 1938.
(SB, 3/28/02)
1923 The Sierra, a wooden-hulled
lumber carrier, sank near the Farallones.
(SSFC, 1/20/02, p.A27)
1924 Mar 17, Four Douglas army
aircraft left Los Angeles for an around the world flight.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1924 Mar 31, Leo Buscaglia, "Dr.
Hug", psychologist (Love), was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1924 May 17, In Santa Cruz, Ca.,
the Giant Dipper roller coaster opened to the public. It was built by
local resident Arthur Looff. It cost $50,000 and took 47 days to
construct. It was declared a Historic Landmark in 1987.
(CG, #205, 1991)(SFEC, 3/14/99, DB p.71)
1924 Jul 5, The SF Playground
Commission opened the 328-acre family recreation center called Camp
Mather in Yosemite. It had 35 old bunkhouses from its days as a sawmill
operation.
(SFEC, 7/4/99, Z1p.5)
1924 Nov, In Salinas the Lincoln
Elementary School opened. For years it followed a tracking system with
white children from prominent families in class A, others in Class B,
and Latino children of farm workers and other minorities in class C.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.A12)
1924 The Santa Barbara Harbor was
built to provide parking space for the yacht of Max Fleischmann, the
yeast magnate.
(Via, 3-4/99, p.42)
1924 In Sacramento the building at
926 J. St., later known as the Poverty Palace, was constructed. It
acquired the name for providing low rents to under-financed non-profit
and public interest groups. It was also nicknamed the "Ban Roll-On
building for its resemblance to a stick of deodorant.
(WSJ, 9/3/97, p.CA1)
1924 In Petaluma 32 million eggs
were produced.
(SFEC, 1/9/00, p.T6)
1924 14 Buffalo were brought to
Catalina Island for the filming of the silent movie "The Vanishing
American." In 2001 there were 350.
(SFC, 12/6/01, p.E6)
1924 Architect Willis Polk died.
He had designed the Filoli estate on the Peninsula and the
glass-fronted Hallidie Building on Sutter St. The Filoli House, an
elegant Georgian house west of Redwood City, was built by mining
millionaire William Bourn.
(SFC, 12/19/96, p.A21)
1925 Feb 21, Sam Peckinpah, film
director (Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs), was born in Fresno, CA.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1925 May 25, Jeanne Crain, actress
(Man Without a Star), was born in Barstow, CA.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1925 Jun 29, An earthquake
destroyed much of downtown Santa Barbara, California, causing millions
in property damage.
(Via, 3-4/99, p.40)(HN, 6/29/98)
1925 Aug 18, The Hetch Hetchy
power plant at Moccasin Creek began operating. PG&E distributed the
power and profits went to SF.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1925 Dec 12, Arthur Heinman opened
the first motel, the "Motel Inn," in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1925 Jepson’s "Manual of the
Flowering Plants of California" was 1st published.
(SFC, 7/4/01, p.D4)
1925 In Hollywood Jack’s
Steakhouse opened at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Formosa
street. It was renamed the Formosa Cafe in 1939 and became a hangout
for gangsters.
(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A14)
1925 Sumitomo Bank was founded in
California to service the Japanese immigrant population. By 1996 it was
California’s 5th largest bank.
(WSJ, 12/30/96, p.A1)
1925 Emporium acquired the Fairfax
property in Marin for an employee retreat.
(SFC, 5/29/98, p.A19)
1925 The Copco 2 dam was
constructed on the Klamath River in northern California just a
quarter-mile downstream of the original dam. [see 1918]
(www.friendsoftheriver.org/Publications/RiversReborn/klamath.html)
1926 Jan, Walt and Roy Disney
moved to their new studio at 2719 Hyperion in Los Angeles.
(www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/disnehis/disn1926.htm)
1926 May 18, Evangelist Aimee
Semple McPherson vanished while visiting a beach in Venice, Calif.; she
reappeared a month later in Mexico, claiming to have been kidnapped.
She had really ruin off with a married man to Carmel.
(AP, 5/18/97)(SFEC, 4/25/99, Z1 p.5)
1926 Jun 1, Actress Marilyn Monroe
(d.Aug 5, 1962), (born as Norma Jean Mortenson, later Norma Jean
Baker), was born in Los Angeles. "I don't mind living in a man's world
as long as I can be a woman in it."
(AP, 6/1/97)(AP, 8/5/99)(HN, 6/1/01)
1926 Jul 6, Clara Phillips, the LA
hammer murderess, celebrated her birthday at San Quentin where she was
serving time for the murder of Alberta Meadows.
(SFC, 7/6/01, WBb p.8)
1926 Jul 31, Highway 140, the
"All-Year Highway, to Yosemite opened.
(SFEM, 10/12/97, p.39)
1926 Aug 7, Stan Freberg,
satirist, ad executive, cartoon voice (Bertie), was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1926 Aug 12, John Derek, actor,
director (10, Annapolis Story), was born in LA, Calif.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1926 A collection of US roads from
Chicago to Los Angeles were improved and formed what would be
designated as US 66. It was later replaced by 3 interstates, I-55 in
Illinois, I-44 in Missouri and Oklahoma, and I-40 to LA. Route 66 was
decertified in 1985. In 2006 Arthur Krim authored “Route 66:
Iconography of the American Highway.”
(WSJ, 6/17/06, p.P8)
1926 The paddle-wheeled Delta
Queen was built in California using a steel hull constructed in
Britain. She first ran between Sacramento and SF. During WW II she was
turned into a floating barracks for soldiers and as a ferry in the SF
Bay. After that she was towed through the Panama Canal and up to her
new home port in Cincinnati, Ohio, from where she made excursions on
the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
(Econ, 7/19/08, p.43)
1926 The Antioch Bridge, a 21-foot
wide span with a lift section for ships traveling up the San Joaquin
River to Stockton, was constructed. It was the Bay Area’s first toll
bridge.
(SFC, 2/2/98, p.A16)
1926 The La Valencia Hotel opened
in the La Jolla section of San Diego.
(SFEC, 8/20/00, p.T6)
1926 The Benbow Inn opened in
Benbow, Ca. The hotel was built by architect Albert Farr, famous for
his Wolf House, the Jack London home in Glen Ellen.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, p.T6)(www.benbowinn.com/history.htm)
1926 Julia Morgan was commissioned
by Margaret Stewart, a SF hotelier, to design a manor, guest house and
carriage house along the Eel River in Garberville. Morgan had designed
Hearst Castle and was the first woman admitted to study architecture at
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She was also the first woman
licensed as an architect in California. Sara Boutelle authored "Julia
Morgan Architect."
(WSJ, 2/10/99, p.CA4)
1926 Luther Burbank, Santa Rosa
horticulturist, died at age 77.
(SSFM, 4/29/01, p.11)
1926 George Sterling, Carmel (Ca.)
poet, swallowed cyanide and died at the Bohemian Club.
(SFC, 12/9/03, p.D1)
1927 Jan 15, The Dumbarton Bridge
opened in San Francisco carrying the first auto traffic across the bay.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1927 Feb 17, The death toll
reached 24 with some 3,000 left homeless after a fierce storm hit the
Pacific Coast.
(SFC, 2/15/02, p.G8)
1927 Mar 1, Edward R. Bohner began
serving as prohibition administrator for Northern California under
National Prohibition Commissioner J.M. Doran. Bohner resigned June 18,
1929.
(SFC, 6/18/04, p.F2)
1927 Mar 1, Bank of Italy became a
National Bank. California’s laws prohibiting branch banking changed and
A.P. Giannini consolidated his banking properties into the Bank of
America of California.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.B4)(SC, 3/1/02)
1927 May 10, US aviator Charles
Augustus Lindbergh (1902-1974) picked up his plane, “The Spirit of St.
Louis,” in San Diego and flew it to St. Louis. The next day he
continued to New York using railroad maps that he picked up in a
drugstore for 50 cents each. The plane was powered by an air-cooled
Whirlwind engine built by Ryan Aeronautical Company. Charles Fayette
Taylor (1895-1996) worked on the engine design team. Taylor later
authored "The Internal Combustion Engine in Theory and Practice."
(WUD, 1994, p.832)(SFC, 6/23/96, Z1 p.2)(SFC,
6/30/96, p.B6)(ON, 2/08, p.2)
1927 Mar 31, Cesar Chavez
(d.1993), California union leader of agricultural workers, was born.
(SFEC,10/19/97, p.C3)
1927 May 18, Impresario Sid
Grauman opened his Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA.
(SFC, 11/5/98, p.E6)(SC, 5/18/02)
1927 May 27, The Carquinez Bridge
opened over the Sacramento River between Crocket and Vallejo. The
cantilever bridge was built by American Toll Bridge Co. A 2nd was added
in 1958.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A1)(SSFC, 6/2/02, p.A18)(SFC,
6/24/02, p.B3)
1927 May 27, The cargo steamer
Indiana Harbor ran aground on the northern California Humboldt coast.
Radio operator Joseph E. Croney remained at his post for 72 hours while
the ship was pounded.
(SFC, 8/29/03, p.E3)
1927 Jun 1, The Delta King
steamboat made its maiden voyage from SF to Sacramento, Ca. Its twin,
the Delta Queen, followed the next day. The 81-mile trip took nearly
all night. Stan Garvey later authored "The King and Queen of the
River." The last Sacramento River voyages were made in 1940. In 1969
Tom Horton (1940-2006), a columnist for the Sacramento Union, led a
band of civic pirates to bring the languishing boat back from Stockton
to Sacramento, where it was transformed to a waterfront hotel, theater
and restaurant.
(SSFC, 6/2/02, p.A18)
1927 Jul 6, Janet Leigh (d.2004,
film star, was born as Jeanette Helen Morrison in Merced, Ca. MGM named
her Janet Leigh.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.A2)
1927 Jul 14, The Ahwahnee Hotel in
Yosemite Valley opened. It was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood of
Los Angeles.
(SFEM, 10/12/97, p.39)
1927 Oct 29, In Fresno, Ca., Babe
Ruth and Lou Gehrig led an exhibition baseball game as part of an
18-state tour to promote major league baseball.
(SFC, 1/17/03, p.D3)
1927 Nov 24, Troops battled 1,200
inmates after Folsom prisoners revolted. On Thanksgiving Day there was
a prison break at Folsom. One prisoner was shot in the ensuing uprising
and five others were later hung.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.B4)(HN, 11/24/98)
1927 Dec, The Yosemite annual
Christmas pageant at the Ahwahnee Hotel was begun by a Stanford Univ.
administrator and Ansel Adams. The pageant was set in England at
Bracebridge Hall at the time of King George III and based on characters
created by Washington Irving.
(SFC,10/18/97, p.A19)
1927 Upton Sinclair published his
novel "Oil," based on the development of oil in southern California.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, BR p.7)
1927 William Wrigley, gum magnate,
staged a swimming race between Catalina Island and the California
coast, which measured over 20 miles. George Young (17) of Canada won.
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W4)
1927 The Pickwick Hotel, a Gothic
Revival structure, opened in San Diego, Ca. It was later renovated and
re-opened as the Sofia Hotel.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.G4)
1927 The Biltmore Hotel was built
in Montecito.
(Via, 3-4/99, p.43)
1927 The Biltmore Four Seasons
Hotel in Santa Barbara, Ca., was built.
(SFEC, 5/4/97, p.T7)
1927 The Fresno and the Santa Rosa
were 2 of 6 steel-hulled car ferries built for the SF Bay Area.
(SFC, 12/19/06, p.C4)
1927 The Pacific Borax Co. opened
the Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley as a luxury resort in Death
Valley.
(SFEC, 1/3/99, p.T5)
1927 A Romanesque bridge to the
new UCLA Westwood campus was built across an arroyo.
(CG, #206, 1991)
1927 The Loomis Museum was
established at Mt. Lassen. It was named after photographer B.F. Loomis,
who took photos of the 1914 eruptions.
(SFEC, 8/13/00, p.T9)
1927 The State Bar of California
was founded as an independent and nonpartisan organization by the state
Legislature.
(SFC, 6/6/96, p.A23)(SFC, 6/26/96, p.A14)
1927 Catalina Pottery was founded
on Santa Catalina Island. In 1937 it was sold to Gladding, McBean and
Co.
(SFC, 12/30/98, Z1 p.2)
1927 The California Legislature
authorized the state attorney general to act on behalf of Indians to
sue the federal government for losses. It took 16 years to reach a
settlement.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.5)
1927 Oakland formed the state’s
first independent port commission.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W27)
1927 California’s laws prohibiting
branch banking changed and A.P. Giannini consolidated his banking
properties into the Bank of America of California.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.B4)
1927 In California Harry Hill shot
and killed state Sen. Charles W. Lyon of Los Angeles inside the state
capitol building, for engaging in a relationship with Marybelle
Wallace. Hill, a Sacramento lobbyist, then shot and killed himself.
Wallace was Hill’s mistress and an employee of Sen. Lyon.
(SSFC, 10/27/02, p.A16)
1927 Roy Cloud, chief of the
Redwood City schools, began a new career as Executive Secretary of the
California Teachers Assoc. He held this position until 1947 and
successfully brought forth 30 bills to benefit teachers and education.
(Ind, 9/30/00,5A)
1927-1931 Clement Calhoun Young served as governor.
(SFEC, 12/20/98, p.T6)
1928 Feb 7, Paul Rubio, convicted
SF rum runner, was kidnapped from private detectives by friends between
San Diego and San Juan Capistrano.
(SFC, 2/7/03, p.E3)
1928 Mar 12, In Santa Paula,
Ventura County, Ca., the 3-year-old St. Francis dam collapsed just
before midnight. By the next day some 450 people were killed.
(SFC, 9/22/01, p.A3)(PCh, 1992, p.791)
1928 Mar 13, In California
hundreds of people died when the San Francisquito Valley was inundated
with water after the St. Francis Dam burst just before midnight on
March 12.
(AP, 3/13/08)
1928 Apr 14, The first air service
from SF to Los Angeles began. Mines Field opened in LA on a 640-acre
portion of the 3,000-acre Bennett Rancho, which had become a popular
landing strip for area aviators.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, Z1 p.4)(Hem, 9/04, p.34)
1928 May 19, The 1st annual "Frog
Jumping Jubilee" at Angel's Camp, Ca., drew 51 frogs.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1928 Jun 5, Robert Lansing, actor
(12 O'Clock High, Equalizer), was born in SD, Calif.
(MC, 6/5/02)
1928 Dec 5, California Sec. of
State Frank C. Jordan issued a certificate of incorporation to the
Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District. The next step in the new
bridge campaign would be to appoint 12 directors.
(SFC, 12/5/03, p.E13)
1928 Dec 6, Workers blasted
through the last barrier of rock in the 16-mile tunnel in the foothill
division of San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy water project.
(SFC, 12/5/03, p.E13)
1928 The Los Angeles City Hall at
First and Spring streets was built. It was the city’s tallest building
until the late 1950s. It was Renaissance tower atop a Greek temple
supported by a classical base.
(USAT, 10/8/97, p.4D)
1928 The 30-foot cast-iron Point
Montara Lighthouse, shipped in from Cape Cod, was rebuilt at Point
Montara in San Mateo Ct.
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T3)(Ind, 3/31/01, 5A)(SFC,
6/14/08, p.B2)
1928 Mission San Miguel was
returned to the Franciscan Padres.
(SB, 3/28/02)
1928 In Moraga the campus of St.
Mary’s College opened.
(SFC, 10/7/98, p.A16)
c1928 The first Artichoke Queen
was crowned in the Salinas Valley.
(SFC, 3/13/98, p.A23)
1928 Agricultural workers in the
Imperial Valley earned as much as 75 cents per hour for picking
cantaloupe. The rate dropped to 15 cents 4 years later.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.4)
1928 Nearly 2,000 people died on
California highways.
(SFC, 8/13/04, p.F4)
1929 Jan 13, Wyatt Earp died in
Los Angeles, CA.
(MesWP)
1929 May 16, Hollywood staged an
experimental publicity stunt for the movie industry at the Hollywood
Roosevelt Hotel that grew to become the Academy Awards extravaganza.
The first Academy Awards were presented during a banquet at the
Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The movie "Wings" won best production while
Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor were named best actor and best actress.
The first ceremony gave out a 2nd best award that went to F.W. Murnau’s
"Sunrise."
(WSJ, 3/21/97, p.A1)(SFEC, 3/23/97, DB p.54)(AP,
5/16/97)
1929 May 29, Armgaard Karl Graves,
notorious int’l. war spy, was arrested in Los Angeles on bunko charges.
(SFC, 5/28/04, p.F9)
1929 Oct 18, The Pardee Dam in the
Mokelumne canyon, California’s largest concrete dam, was officially
dedicated.
(SFC, 10/15/04, p.F13)
1929 Oct 23, First
transcontinental air service began from New York to Los Angeles.
(HN, 10/23/98)
1929 Oct 25, Former US
Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall was convicted of accepting a $100,000
bribe in connection with the Elk Hills Naval Oil Reserve in California.
This conviction was in addition to the one he received for accepting
kickbacks in conjunction with the Wyoming Teapot Dome Scandal. Fall
served under Pres. Warren Harding, but it is unclear if Harding was
aware of any wrongdoing. [see Oct 25, 1923]
(AP, 10/25/97)(SFEC, 3/8/98, BR p.7)(SFEC, 7/11/99,
p.D9)
1929 Oct 28, Universal Pictures
joined with Transcontinental Air Transport to offer moving pictures for
air passengers bound for California.
(SFC, 10/29/04, p.F11)
1929 The Santa Barbara Courthouse
was dedicated.
(Via, 3-4/99, p.42)
1929 Hangar 1, the first modern
air terminal of LA, was completed at Mines Field in Spanish Colonial
Revival style. In 2005 it was still part of LAX.
(Hem., 5/97, p.70)(Hem, 9/04, p.34)
1929 Pistachios were brought to
California from Persia (Iran).
(SFCM, 9/30/01, p.26)
1929 A golden altar that had been
brought from Barcelona, Spain, and intended for the Los Angeles
Cathedral was assembled from 396 pieces and installed into the chapel
at Mission San Juan Capistrano.
(HT, 3/97, p.58)
1929 William Randolph Hears
commissioned Julia Morgan to design a ranch house for his San Antonio
Valley property. The Milpitas Ranch House later became known as the
Hacienda Guest Lodge."
(SSFC, 8/5/01, p.T5)
1929 An agreement entitled
California to 4.4 million acre-feet per year from the Colorado River,
most of it for agriculture. One acre-foot is 325,000 gallons.
(SFC, 3/18/97, p.A15)
1929 The California Highway Patrol
was created.
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.A10)
1929 Harry Cobden (d.1999 at 95),
while working as a mule packer and mountain guide, climbed Mount
Conness in Yosemite with Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII.
Cobden later co-designed the steel Quonset Hut for the Navy in Quonset,
R.I.
(SFC, 6/23/99, p.C2)
1929 A fire in Mill Valley
destroyed 1,000 acres and 115 homes.
(SFC, 10/30/03, p.A1)
1930 Apr 28, Astronomers at
California’s Lick Observatory recorded a solar eclipse.
(SFC, 4/22/05, p.F3)
1930 May 20, University of
California dedicated $1,500 to research on the prevention and cure of
athlete's foot.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1930 Jul 17, A natural gas
explosion in the Mitchell ravine tunnel of the Hetch Hetchy water
project in California killed 12 men. 35 other workers quit charging
that carelessness and lack of equipment was responsible for the tragedy.
(SFC, 7/15/05, p.F6)
1930 Jul 28, Darryl Hickman, actor
(Human Comedy, Tea & Sympathy), was born in Hollywood, Cal.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1930 Sep 10, A Santa Fe passenger
train killed over 600 sheep near Stockton, Ca. T. Urrizola Escalon, the
herder, was believed to have driven the sheep onto the track and
committed suicide. He left a note that said “Farewell, you will never
see me again.”
(SFC, 9/9/05, p.F5)
1930 Oct 30, The California-based
Pacific Gas and Electric announced that the company’s system was now
officially interconnected with the recently purchased Great Western
Power Co. and the San Joaquin Light and Power Co. The new $600 million
consolidated company now covers 45 counties.
(SFC, 10/28/05, p.F3)
1930 Nov 13, In California the
Fresno Bee reported that Al Capone, Chicago gangland leader, had banned
the sale of grape juice concentrates in Chicago. The order was said to
be a warning to California grape farmers that they need his approval to
sell their products in certain markets.
(SFC, 11/11/05, p.F7)
1930 Nov 19, Bob Mathias,
decathlon athlete (Olympics-gold-48), was born in Tulare, Calif.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1930 The Academy Awards were held
in Los Angeles at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.D5)
1930 Amadeo P. Giannini, founder
of the Bank of America, donated $500,000 to UC Berkeley.
(SFC, 12/30/96, p.A15)
1930 The Yosemite Park Service
began to build a small village in the valley for Yosemite Indians.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, Z1 p.4)
1930 James R. Rolph, "Sunny Jim,"
was elected governor of the state and served one 4-year term.
(SFC, 3/16/98, p.A14)(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.B8)
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 19 mule dear were introduced
to Catalina Island as a hunting resource. In 2001 there were 850. Their
numbers had reached 2000 in the 1950s.
(SFC, 12/6/01, p.E6)
1930 The last California Mutsun
Indian, Dona Ascension Solorzano, died.
(SFEC, 3/12/00, p.T4)
1930 James D. Phelan, former mayor
of SF (1897-1901), died. In 1914 he was elected and served a single
term in the US Senate. His unsuccessful 1920 campaign used the slogan
"Keep California white.’
(SFC, 11/7/00, p.A15)
1930s Anne Loftis in 1998
published "Witnesses to the Struggle: Imaging the 1930s California
Labor Movement."
(SFC, 6/19/98, p.D5)
1930s Adolph Parducci founded his
winery in Ukiah, Ca. The family sold the business in 1972. In 2004 it
was bought by the Mendocino Wine Co.
(SFEM, 10/27/96, p.40)(SFC, 9/8/06, p.F4)
1930s Upton Sinclair began his
popular "End Poverty in California" campaign.
(SFC, 6/19/98, p.D5)
1930s Eugene S. Elkus Jr. (d.1999
at 93) founded the Elkus Paper Co. with his father and younger brother.
The company pioneer the use of pink paper for wrapping meat and blue
paper for laundered shirts.
(SFC, 5/10/99, p.A19)
1931 Jan 6, James Rolph Jr.,
former mayor of SF, was inaugurated as the 27th governor of California.
(SFC, 1/6/06, p.F6)
1931 Jan 9, A cave in at
California’s Hetch Hetchy Coast Range tunnel trapped 20 men
underground. They were all rescued the next day.
(SFC, 1/6/06, p.F6)
1931 Jan 30, Gene Hackman, actor
(Bonnie & Clyde, Under Fire, Superman), was born in Calif.
(MC, 1/30/02)
1931 Jul 1, Ice vending machines
were introduced in LA.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1931 Aug 21, Nancy Hadley, actress
(Love That Jill, Joey Bishop Show), was born in LA, Calif.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1931 The Art-Deco-style jail in
Lincoln Heights, LA, was built over the site of a jail constructed ten
years earlier. It later acquired the name "Gray Bar Motel." It housed
prisoners to the late 1950s and was again used during the 1965 Watts
riots and again closed the same year.
(SFC, 9/24/97, p.C14)
1931 The Commonwealth Club of
California established its California Book Awards to foster and
recognize literature in the Golden State,
(SFEC,11/2/97, BR p.13)
1931 Highway 1 connected Big Sur
to the rest of California.
(SSFC, 6/16/02, p.A17)
1931 The 1st successful case for
desegregation in schools was Roberto Alvarez vs. the Board of Trustees
of the Lemon Grove School District in San Diego.
(SFC, 4/12/04, p.E8)
1931 California made Calaveras Big
Trees into a State Park.
(CVG, Vol 16, p.31)
1931 F.W. Murnau (42), German film
director, was killed in a car crash in California.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, BR p.6)
1932 Jul 30, The Summer Olympic
Games opened in Los Angeles. The US won 41 gold medals, Italy was 2nd
with less than a third of that. Bill Miller of Stanford won a gold
medal in the pole vault when he cleared 14'-1 ¾". Later in the
year he set a world record at 14'-1 7/8". Babe Didriksen (21) of Texas
won 2 track gold medals and a silver. Track events in this summer’s
Olympics were timed with manual stopwatches.
(SFC, 7/14/96, Par p.4)(AP, 7/30/97)(NG, 8/04,
Geographica)(WSJ, 8/23/04, p.C3)
1932 Aug 4, Luigi Beccali
(1907-1990), Italian athlete, won Olympic gold in the 1500 meters. He
gave a Fascist salute at the winners’ podium.
(WSJ, 4/12/08, p.R2)(http://tinyurl.com/6al4up)
1932 David Alfaro Siqueiros
completed his controversial La America Tropical mural in Los Angeles.
The 80x18 foot mural on Olvera Street was painted over following
completion. In 2006 LA and the Getty Foundation began a $7.7 million
project to restore the work.
(SFC, 8/4/06, p.E7)
1932 The Academy Awards were held
in Los Angeles at the Biltmore Hotel.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.D5)
1932 The Pacific Grove Municipal
Golf Links opened its first nine holes, designed by Chandler Egan. The
back nine were designed by Jack Neville in 1960.
(SFEC, 9/26/99, p.T6)
1932 William F. Knowland, son of
Joseph R. Knowland of the Oakland Tribune, became a state Congressman
by appointment from Earl Warren.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, BR p.5)
1932 Pari-mutuel betting on horse
racing was legalized and racing resumed at Tanforan.
(Ind, 8/17/02, 5A)
1932 San Diego was the suicide
capital of the country.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.1)
1932-1998 In 1999 Paul Vangelisti and Evan Calbi put
together the anthology "L.A. Exile: A Guide to Los Angeles Writing."
(SFEC, 12/12/99, BR p.3)
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 Mar 10, In Long Beach a
6.3-6.4 earthquake killed 115 people.
(SFEC, 10/17/99, p.A3)(WSJ, 6/21/00, p.A1)
1933 Apr 15, Elizabeth Montgomery,
actress (Samantha/Serena-Bewitched), was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1933 May, Saudi Arabia gave
Standard Oil of California exclusive rights to explore for oil.
(www.chevron.com)
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 29, The two men who had
kidnapped and killed Brooke Hart, heir to a San Jose department store
fortune, were taken by a mob from the county jail. They were lynched in
a park and their bodies were set on fire. Gov. Rolph said that if
anyone was arrested for the lynching, he would pardon them.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.4)
1933 In Santa Monica the Georgian
Hotel was built on Ocean Ave.
(SFEC, 6/4/00, p.T6)
1933 Carroll Melbin (1900-1997)
helped to organize the Northern California branch of the American Civil
Liberties Union. Ernest Besig, NY civil liberties lawyer, also helped
organize the union following the 1934 SF maritime strike. Besig later
went to Humboldt Ct. to defend lumber strikers after 3 were killed and
8 wounded by company guards.
(SFC, 1/7/97, p.A17)(SFC, 11/21/98, p.C2)
1933 Pres. Hoover declared Death
Valley a national monument.
(SFEC, 1/3/99, p.T5)
1933 Gov. James Rolphy 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 California voters approved a
constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds vote by legislators for
budgets. The requirement was extended to tax increases as part of
Proposition 13 in 1978.
(SFC, 2/25/09, p.A1)
1933 Northern California’s
4,350-acre Castle Crags state park was created thanks to land purchases
by private citizens. The adjacent federal wilderness area, covering
another 10,500 acres, was established in 1984.
(SSFC, 5/14/06, p.G8)
1933 California passed an
anti-lynching law. Lynching was broadly interpreted to cover vigilante
mob action to punish a prisoner. California law defined lynching as
"the taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of
any peace officer."
(SFC, 6/17/99, p.C4)
1933 The California state
legislature approved the Central Valley Project which included the
Shasta and Friant Dams. It became a federally built water system to
sustain California agriculture. The Friant dam was completed in 1944.
(SFC, 12/29/99, Z1 p.1)
1933 California began a sales tax
to pay for public schools.
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.A10)
1933 Ernst and Julio Gallo founded
the Gallo winery in Modesto.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.B3)
1934 Jan 7, The Radio Church of
God under Herbert W. Armstrong began broadcasting in Pasadena, Ca. His
program was called "The World Tomorrow" and his magazine was called
"The Plain Truth."
(WSJ, 2/120/00, p.A1)
1934 May, Union workers in SF went
on strike for a 6 hour day and a hiring hall to replace the company
operated Blue Book Union on the waterfront. The Int’l. Longshoremen and
Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), headed by Australian immigrant Harry
Bridges, went on strike. Strike breakers were housed in ships to avoid
getting beat up by the dock workers.
(SFEM, 3/2/97, p.21)(SFC, 8/4/97, p.E5)(SFEC,
5/2/99, Z1 p.4)
1934 Jul 5, During the West Coast
maritime strike police in SF fired into a crowd of strikers at Stewart
and Mission streets and killed 2 men and wounded 109. Police had tried
to escort scabs to the docks. The General Strike was led by Harry
Bridges. Civil liberties attorneys Ernest Besig (d.1998 at 94), and
Chester Williams were called in to from new York. They founded a local
American Civil Liberties Union and sued SF and Oakland for failure to
protect striker’s First Amendment rights.
(SFC, 10/13/97, p.A23)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W31)(SFC,
11/21/98, p.C2)
1934 Jul 9, In SF a parade of
15,000 was held on Market Street for the 2 men killed on Jul 5. The
funeral was followed by a general strike. SF Mayor Angelo J. Rossi and
Gov. Frank Merriman blamed the strike on Communists.
(SFEM, 1/18/98, p.6)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W31)(SFEC,
5/2/99, Z1 p.4)
1934 Jul 13, The general strike
ended after 4 days and went into arbitration. In the fall arbitrators
gave the union a hiring hall, a 6-hour day and a small wage increase.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.4)
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. Alcatraz, previously
used only for American military criminals, received its first group of
civilian prisoners. Federal convicts from McNeil Island Prison in
Washington joined a small number of military prisoners, left over from
the island‘s time as a U.S. Army prison. The facility had been used as
a military prison since 1859, but was redesigned in the 1930s to be a
high-security penitentiary for the "most dangerous" prisoners. Gangster
Al Capone arrived at Alcatraz later that August.
(SFC, 5/19/96,City Guide, p.7)(AP, 8/11/97)(SFEC,
3/8/98, p.W30)(HNQ, 7/10/00)(MC, 8/11/02)
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 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 under
the direction of Bill Kyne (d.1957). Gov. Frank Merriam christened the
one-mile track. 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.
(Ind, 5/13/00,5A)
1934 The Bonfante family opened
the first Nob Hills Food store in Morgan Hill, north of Gilroy. It grew
to a 27-store chain and then sold out to Raley’s in 1997.
(SFC,12/17/97, p.B4)
1934 Theodore Groth opened his
Fireproof Garage in Livermore. It later became the Groth Brother
Chevrolet dealership.
(SFC, 11/7/98, p.D1)
1934 The governor of Arizona
called out the state militia and navy (2 ferryboats) to halt
California’s construction of the Colorado River Aqueduct. It took an
act of Congress and a Supreme Court decision to get the project
restarted.
(SFC, 5/26/00, p.A5)
1934 Upton Sinclair, muckraker and
socialist, ran for governor of California and wrote "I, governor of
California and how I ended poverty: A true story of the future." It
spoke of his utopian scheme called EPIC (End Poverty in California). He
was defeated by Frank Merriam (1865-1955). In 1992 Greg Mitchell
authored “The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for
Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics.”
(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.5)(SFC, 1/12/05, p.E3)
1934 Will and George Climes
founded Will-George pottery in Los Angeles, Ca. By 1948 the business
had moved to San Gabriel and renamed to Claysmiths. It closed in 1956.
(SFC, 10/24/07, p.G2)
1934 Lucky Lager was first
commercially introduced. The brand was founded by General Brewing in
California. Lucky Lager Brewing opened a second brewery in Azusa,
California in 1949, and bought smaller breweries in Vancouver,
Washington in 1950 and in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1960.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Lager)
1935 Feb 12, The 785-foot USS
Macon, the last US Navy dirigible (ZRS-5), crashed on its 55th flight
off the coast of California, killing two people. After takeoff from
Point Sur, California, a gust of wind tore off the ship's upper fin,
deflating its gas cells and causing the ship to fall into the sea. Two
of Macon 's 83 crewmen died in the accident. The U.S. Navy lost the
airships Shenandoah in 1925 and Akron in 1933. Some considered airships
too dangerous for the program to continue at that point, and work on
them in the United States halted temporarily.
(HNQ, 2/7/99)(SFC, 9/27/06, p.B1)
1935 The new Los Angeles Times
building was completed. In 1910 a union-member bombing killed 21
nonunion pressman and linotype operators at the LA Times.
(WSJ, 9/16/08,
p.A23)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times_bombing)
1935 The Griffith Observatory
opened in Los Angeles. It was donated to the city by Col. Griffith J.
Griffith and designed by architects John C. Austin and F.M. Ashley. In
1976 it was designated a city historic-cultural monument. In 2002 it
closed and re-opened in 2006 after a $93 million makeover.
(SSFC, 12/14/08, p.B6)
1935 The California Field
Act set construction standards for school buildings and endorsed
earthquake drills.
(WSJ, 6/21/00, p.A1)
1935 California began taxing
personal income.
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.A10)
1935 California reduced the duck
hunting bag limit to 10 birds per day. In 2002 the limit was 4. Limits
had begun in 1901 with 50 birds per day.
(Ind, 2/23/02, 5A)
1935 In Pasadena, Ca., R. Stanton
Avery (d.1997 at 90) began selling self-stick labels made from a
machine he invented using a washing machine motor, sewing machine parts
and a saw. By 1996 the Avery Dennison Corp. annual sales reached $3.2
billion.
(SFC,12/15/97, p.A20)
1935 The Raley’s food and general
merchandise stores began operating. The store became a Sacramento-based
chain of 88 by 1997 when it bought out Gilroy’s Nob Hill Foods.
(SFC,12/17/97, p.B1)
1935-1939 The Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles
at the Biltmore Hotel.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.D5)
1936 Apr 10, A 200" mirror blank
arrived in Pasadena for Mt. Palomar.
(MC, 4/10/02)
1936 Jun 2, Sally Kellerman,
actress (M*A*S*H, Back to School), was born in Long Beach, Cal.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1936 Sep 11, President Roosevelt
dedicated Boulder Dam (now Hoover Dam) by pressing a key in Washington
to signal the startup of the dam’s first hydroelectric generator in
Nevada. The Dam was completed ahead of schedule. It was the first and
most important link in a chain of dams, canals and aqueducts built to
harness the Colorado River. The colossal mass of concrete is wedged
into Black Canyon on the Arizona-Nevada border, 32 miles SE of Las
Vegas. Paul L. Wattis, headed the construction company that built
Boulder Dam.
(AP, 9/11/97)(HNQ, 4/3/02)(SFC, 6/6/02, p.A22)
1936 The first US fitness club
opened in California and pioneered such exercises as the jumping jack.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)
1936 In Santa Cruz the Santa Cruz
Surfing Club was founded. The group later established a surfing museum.
(CG, #205, 1991)
1936 Marjory B. Farquhar (d.1999)
became the first woman to climb the Higher Cathedral Spire in Yosemite.
Her oral history is on file at UC Berkeley.
(SFC, 1/25/99, p.A20)
1936 A delegation from Los Angeles
went to Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region of Russia, to present
a souvenir pamphlet, the fate of the delegation was unknown.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, p.7)
1936 A long and violent
agricultural strike by the lettuce shed workers occurred in Salinas, Ca.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.D6)
1937 Jan 19, Howard Hughes flew
from Los Angeles to New York in seven hours and 22 minutes.
(HN, 1/19/99)
1937 Mar 23, Los Angeles Railway
Co. started using PCC streetcars. PCC's are streetcars that were
originally designed under the direction of the Electric Railway
Presidents' Conference Committee, in an attempt by 25 U.S. and Canadian
transit companies to develop a standardized streetcar whose many
improvements would help to reverse the decline in transit use that had
begun in the 1920's. The committee's efforts began in late 1929, and
the first cars were put into service in New York in October 1936.
(SS, 3/23/02)(Internet)
1937 May 27, The newly completed
Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County, Calif.,
was opened to pedestrian traffic. The bridge was designed by Joseph
Strauss. Over 200,000 pedestrians walked across on opening day. The
bridge towers stood a record 750 feet.
(AP, 5/27/97)(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.6)(SFC, 10/30/99,
p.C3)(SSFM, 4/29/01, p.11)
1937 Jul 3, The new Del Mar Race
Track, built by Bing Crosby and friends opened 20 miles north of San
Diego. High Strike, a Crosby gelding, won the inaugural race.
(WSJ, 8/28/00, p.A17)
1937 Aug 18, Robert Redford, actor
(Sting, Candidate, Natural, Great Gatsby), was born in Calif.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1937 In California the Fresno
Municipal Sanitary Landfill opened. It was the nation’s 1st true
sanitary landfill, where garbage was compacted and buried each day. The
waste later polluted groundwater. In 1987 145-acre dump was closed. In
1989 it was named a Superfund toxic site by the EPA.
(SFC, 8/29/01, p.A3)
1937 The Caldecott Tunnel opened
with 2 bores under the Oakland-Berkeley Hills.
(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A21)
1937 In California Highway 70
opened along the Feather River Canyon.
(SSFC, 4/29/01, p.T9)
1937 In California the Devil’s
Slide stretch of Highway 1 opened.
(SFC, 9/18/07, p.A1)
1937 The 1st Crosby golf
tournament was played at Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club in San Diego County.
This phase of the tournament lasted to 1942.
(SSFC, 1/21/01, DB p.37)
1937 The state Legislature named
the native redwood as the State Tree of California. In 1951 the coastal
Sequoia sempervirens and the Sierra Sequoia gigantea were said to both
qualify as the state tree.
(SFC, 10/26/01, WB p.7)
1937 California’s San Quentin
Prison opened its gas chamber for executions and hanging ceased at
Folsom Prison.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.B4)
1937 The first McDonald’s opened
in Pasadena, Ca. [see 1955]
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1937 Jack and Teresa Harris
founded their original Harris Ranch near Coalinga in the Central Valley
of California. In 1987 they added the Inn with 88 rooms, which later
expanded to 153 rooms. By 2006 the ranch had become a corporate
operation covering 18,000 acres.
(SSFC, 5/21/06, p.G10)
1937 Rollin P. Eckis (d.1999 at
94), geologist, discovered the Kern County oil field near Bakersfield,
Ca.
(SFC, 11/19/99, p.D8)
1938 Mar 2, Landslides and floods
cause over 200 deaths in Los Angeles, CA.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1938 Apr 7, [Edmund G] Jerry Brown
Jr, (Gov-D-Cal, Mayor of Oakland), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1938 Aug 15, Maxine Waters,
congresswoman from California, second African-American woman to be
elected to congress, was born.
(HN, 8/15/98)
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 Nov, The "Ham and Eggs" plan
to give every older Californian a pension was defeated in the general
election by a narrow margin.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.5)
1938 Dec
2, Albert Kessel became the 1st person to die in California gas
chamber. Robert Lee Cannon and Albert Kessel were convicted of the
murder of Warden Clarence Larkin. Four other inmates were also executed
in connection with this murder, three within two weeks.
(www.corr.ca.gov/CommunicationsOffice/CapitalPunishment/key_events.asp)
1938 The Aero Theater in Santa
Monica, Ca., was built by aviation impresario Donald Douglas. It was
renovated and reopened in 2005.
(WSJ, 6/7/05, p.D8)
1938 The Mission Reds ball team
left Seal Stadium in SF to become the Pacific Coast League’s Hollywood
Stars.
(SFEC,12/797, Z1 p.4)
1938 The Del Mar Race Track held a
$25,000 winner-take-all race between Seabiscuit and Ligaroti, a South
American import. Seabiscuit won by a nose.
(WSJ, 8/28/00, p.A17)
1938 The village of Palm Springs
was incorporated.
(SFCM, 3/28/04, p.34)
1938 The city council of Pacific
Grove enacted a law protecting the Monarch butterflies that annually
visit the city.
(SFEC,12/21/97, p.T6)
1938 Ernest Batchelder founded a
2nd tile works, the Kinneloa Kiln, that used native California clay.
(SFC, 9/9/98, Z1 p.3)
1938 Culbert Olson, state senator
from Los Angeles, was elected governor.
(SFC, 12/25/99, p.A8)
1938 Georges de Latour, owner of
Beaulieu Vineyard in Napa Valley, Ca., hired French-trained enologist
Andre Tchelistcheff to oversee the maturation of his Private Reserve.
(SFC, 10/10/08, p.F3)
1938 William Hewlett, as a student
at Stanford, built a prototype for an audio oscillator. It measured
sound and was the first product of the Hewlett Packard Co. and was used
in the Disney film "Fantasia."
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.C3)
1938-1944 Eugene O’Neill, playwright, lived at the
Tao House in Danville with his 3rd wife Carlotta Monterey. Carlotta was
Miss California in 1907.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, Z1p.1)
1939 Jan 7, Tom Mooney
(1882-1942), California imprisoned labor leader, was pardoned by newly
elected Democratic Governor Culbert Olson (1876-1962). Mooney had been
convicted and imprisoned for over 22 years for the SF Preparedness Day
Bombing of 1916.
{Labor, SF, USA, California}
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mooney)(www.atheists.org/Atheism/roots/olson/)
1939 Oct 19, Benita Valente,
soprano (Pamina-Die Zauberflote), was born in Delano Calif.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1939 Nov 16, Al Capone was freed
from Alcatraz.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1939 The Errol Flynn film
"Adventures of Robin Hood" was filmed in Bidwell Park, Chico, Ca.
(SSFC, 8/26/01, p.T5)
1939 Frank Fat (d.1997 at 92)
bought his steakhouse restaurant at 806 L St. in Sacramento. The former
skid-row speakeasy became a favored meeting place for state politicians.
(SFC, 4/7/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 12/20/98, p.T7)
1939 The attorney general of
California ruled that dog racing was illegal.
(GTP, 1973, p.112)
1939 Foster Farms was begun on an
80-acre ranch near Modesto by Verda and Max Foster. Its poultry
business grew to become a $1 billion operation.
(SFC, 9/30/99, p.A31)
1939 The state Division of Fish
and Game, concerned about dead fish in Northern California, launched a
study and found a creek downstream from Iron Mountain getting 2,876
pounds of copper a day. The state told mine operators to reduce metals
and acid drainage.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1939 Apricot pickers in Contra
Costa county earned 25 per hour.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.4)
1939-1943 Earl Warren served as the attorney general
of California.
(SFEC, 12/19/99, Z1 p.5)
1939-1996 John Register, California realist painter.
His work included: "Waiting Room" (1982), "Desert Restaurant" (1986),
and "Mojave Bus Station" (1978).
(SFC, 1/21/99, p.D1)
1939-1971 California maintained a Senate fact-finding
subcommittee on Un-American Activities. Files on some 20,000
Californians were declared still closed to the public in 1998.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.A20)
1940 Jul 23, Don Imus, later radio
personality, was born in Riverside, Ca.
(SSFC, 4/21/02, Par p.22)
1940 Dec 30, In California the
Arroyo Seco Parkway, connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena, officially
opened as the first freeway in the Western US.
(AP, 12/30/97)(SFC, 3/7/98, p.A18)
1940 The photography book
"California and the West" was written by Charis Wilson with photos by
Edward Weston. It was the first really successful book of photographic
reproductions.
(SFEC, 7/5/98, BR p.7)
1940 The Prado Dam opened 50 miles
southeast of LA. Heavy rain in 2005 caused seepage.
(SSFC, 1/16/05, p.A7)
1940 Ronald Reagan married actress
Jane Wyman (26).
(SSFC, 6/6/04, A14)
1940 The Academy Awards were held
in Los Angeles at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.D5)
1940 Madeleine Haas Russell
(d.1999 at 84) founded the Columbia Foundation, dedicated to
environmental, cultural and social causes.
(SFC, 4/7/99, p.A19)
1940 Gov. Earl Warren of
California signed a $2 million appropriation for Moffitt Hospital, a
teaching facility in San Francisco. It was completed 16 years later at
a cost of $24 million. [Warren was attorney general at this time and
was elected governor in 1942].
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-10)
1940 Roger Traynor was appointed
to the state Supreme Court.
(SFC, 3/9/99, p.A22)
1940 The Los Angeles city council
blocked games of professional women’s football. The LA team went to
Mexico and played before a filled stadium.
(SFC, 2/7/03, p.D13)
1940 Georges de Latour, owner of
Beaulieu Vineyard in Napa Valley, Ca., died. BV Burgundy was renamed by
his wife and released as Georges de Latour Private Reserve Cabernet
Sauvignon, California’s first private reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.
(SFC, 10/10/08, p.F3)
1940 Walnut Creek had 1,578
residents.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.4)
1940s The Associated Sportsmen of
California repeatedly warned of damage to the salmon population in the
north and urged the government to release water from Shasta Lake to
dilute the poisons from Iron Mountain.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1940s In Los Angeles adolescent
Mexican-Americans known as los pachucos established the zoot suit dress
style. The War Production Board outlawed the zoot suit. The "Sleepy
Lagoon Murder" of several Americans of Mexican descent led to the Zoot
Suit Riots where American sailors stripped and beat zoot suiters as
white LA police stood by. Luis Valdez later authored the play "Zoot
Suit."
(WSJ, 7/111/00, p.A24)
1940s The Henry Bergh troop
carrier ran aground near the Farallones.
(SSFC, 1/20/02, p.A27)
1941 Feb 26, Cowboys' Amateur
Association of America was organized in California.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1941 Apr 20, Ryan O'Neal, actor
(Peyton Place, Paper Moon, was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1941 May 6, Bob Hope (b. May 29,
1903) began broadcasting his first USO radio show from March Field at
Riverside, CA.
(SFC, 5/28/97, p.D5)(HN, 5/6/98)
1941 May 12, Anthony Newman,
harpsichordist, organist (Bhajeb), was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1941 Oct 2, Gilbert Gable, mayor
of Port Orford, Ore., announced with some pals that they were fed up of
being neglected by legislators in Salem and Sacramento and began
promoting a 51st state named Jefferson with Yreka as the capital.
(SSFC, 6/3/01, p.A26)(AH, 2/05, p.20)
1941 Nov 27, Jefferson seceded
from Oregon and California. Jefferson was the winning name for a new
state made of California’s northern Siskiyou, Del Norte and Trinity
counties along with Oregon’s southern Curray County. California’s Gov.
Culbert L. Olson was soon informed that until roads were repaired,
Jefferson would be forced to rebel every Thursday. In 2008 calls for a
Jefferson state gained steam and included an additional 5 counties in
southern Oregon and 2 more in northern California.
(AH, 2/05, p.21)(SSFC, 10/5/08, p.A11)
1941 Dec 4, In Yreka, Ca., the new
state of Jefferson elected John C. Childs (71) as its 1st governor.
(AH, 2/05, p.22)
1941 Dec 8, A US tanker was
shelled by a Japanese submarine off Cape Mendocino.
(Ind, 1/27/00, 5A)(Ind, 2/2/02, 5A)
1941 Dec 23, The 440-foot tanker
Montebello was sunk off the California coast near Cambria by a Japanese
submarine. The crew of 38 survived and in 1996 it was found that the
4.1 million gallon cargo of crude oil appeared intact.
(SFC, 11/30/96, p.A19)
1941 Dec, Two American ships were
sunk and 5 more severely damaged by Japanese submarines inside
California coastal waters.
(Ind, 2/2/02, 5A)
1941 The film "Sea Wolf" premiered
in Sonoma, Ca. It starred Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan, Alice Talton,
Edward G. Robinson, and John Garfield.
(SFEC,12/14/97, BR p.7)
1941 The Berelson Co. under
William E. Berelson (d.1997 at 90) initiated the commercial freezing of
strawberries in Cal.
(SFC, 5/15/97, p.A26)
1941 The first diversions of water
from Mono Lake began. Los Angeles began diverting water from 4 of the 5
streams that feed Mono Lake.
(NH, 9/96, p.62)(PacDis, Summer ’97, p.39)
1941-1942 The Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles
at the Biltmore Hotel.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.D5)
1941-1943 In the US the government classified some
600,000 residents of Italian descent as enemy aliens. In Pittsburg,
California, some 2,000 of 7,000 residents were forced to move.
(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.C13)
1942 Jan, A Japanese submarine
rammed a US merchant ship 30 miles off the Golden Gate.
(Ind, 1/27/00, 5A)
1942 Feb 2, A Los Angeles Times
column urged security measures against Japanese-Americans, arguing that
a Japanese-American "almost inevitably... grows up to be a Japanese,
not an American."
(AP, 2/2/99)
1942 Feb 23, A Japanese submarine
shelled an oil refinery at Ellwood, near Santa Barbara, Calif., the
first Axis bombs to hit American soil.
(HN, 2/23/98)(MC, 2/23/02)
1942 Mar 23, During World War II,
the U.S. government began moving Japanese-Americans from their West
Coast homes to detention centers.
(AP, 3/23/97)
1942 May 3, Executive Order 9066,
signed by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, was issued by Lt. Gen’l. John
DeWitt from his headquarters in the SF Presidio. It called for the
evacuation of Japanese-Americans from Los Angeles effective May 9. Some
110,000-112,000 Japanese-Americans were settled in 10 relocation camps,
the first of which was in Manzanar in Owens Valley, Ca. In the Bay Area
most Japanese-Americans were sent to the Tanforan racetrack where they
were put up in stables and later relocated to Topaz, Utah. Soon after,
the War Relocation Authority hired Dorothea Lange, a photographer
already well-known for her striking Depression-era photos of migrant
workers, to document the internment process. Lange's poignant photos
reflected her disagreement with government policy and brought her into
conflict with her employers.
(SFC, 10/30/96, p.C2)(SFEC, 4/13/97, Z1 p.6)(SFC,
11/19/96, p.A17)(HNPD, 4/24/99)
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 cAug 1, Jose Diaz, a young
Mexican national, was killed in southern Ca. His death was associated
with a brawl between the Downey Boys and the 38th Street gang. 24 young
men from the 38th Street neighborhood were indicted in the Sleepy
Lagoon murder case and a dozen men served 21 months in prison before
their convictions were overturned. The vent formed the basis for a play
by Luis Valdez and the film "Zoot Suit."
(SFC, 5/23/01, p.C5)
1942 Sep 1, A federal judge in
Sacramento, Calif., upheld the wartime detention of Japanese-Americans
as well as Japanese nationals.
(AP, 9/1/97)
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 Nov 18, An AT-7 Beechcraft
military training plane crashed in the Mendel Glacier in California’s
Kings Canyon National Park. The 4-member training flight left Mather
Field in Sacramento, Ca., and was never heard from again. On Sep 24,
1947, a hiker discovered wreckage of the plane on a glacier in Kings
Canyon. On Oct 16, 2005, a climber on the Mendel Glacier discovered a
body believed to be one of the crew members. He was later identified as
Leo M. Mustonen (22) of Brainerd, Minn. The others were John M.
Mortenson (25) of Moscow, Idaho, William R. Gamber (23) of Fayette,
Ohio, and Ernest G. Munn of St. Clairsville, Ohio. A 2nd body was found
under receding snow in 2007 and was identified Ernest G. Munn.
(SFC, 10/20/05, p.A14)(SSFC, 10/23/05, p.B2)(SFC,
11/12/05, p.A1)(SFC, 2/9/06, p.A4)(SFC, 8/21/07, p.B2)(SFC, 3/10/08,
p.B2)
1942 The Silent Movie Showcase was
opened in Los Angeles by John Hampton and Dorothy Hampton. It closed in
1979 and was re-opened by Laurence Austin in 1991. It closed again on
Jan 17, 1997 when Austin was shot dead and the cashier seriously
wounded. A 19-year-old gunman was later caught and identified James Van
Sickle, the projectionist and Austin's live-in lover, as the instigator
and insurance beneficiary for $1 million.
(SFEC, 2/2/97, p.C11)(SFC, 11/5/99, p.C5)
1942 Earl Warren was elected
governor. A 1997 biography was written by Ed Cray: "Chief Justice: A
Biography of Earl Warren."
(SFEC, 6/8/97, BR p.1)
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 California purchased the site
of gold discovery and much of the town of Coloma from Pearley Monroe,
whose grandmother had crossed the plains as a slave by wagon.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, p.T3)
1942 Fred Korematsu (1919-2005)
challenged the exclusion orders following his arrest for refusal to go
to an internment camp. In 1944 the US Supreme Court upheld the
conviction. His conviction was later overturned.
(SFC, 4/1/05, p.B7)
1942 Max Friedman opened The Marin
Town and Country Club on property purchased from the Emporium in 1940.
(SFC, 5/29/98, p.A19)
1942 Warren Goodrich (d.2002 at
88), SF Chronicle artist, created the "Little Man" icon for use in
reviews. The original 4 little men sat snoozing, staring, smiling and
clapping. An empty chair was later added.
(SFC, 1/25/02, p.A32)
1942 Construction began on the new
Friant Dam near Fresno, Ca. Completion of the dam in 1944 ended the
salmon run on the San Joaquin River. Legislation in 2008 hoped to
restore the river’s salmon run.
(SFC, 5/8/08, p.B1)
1942 The first Hewlett Packard
factory was built in Silicon Valley.
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.C3)
1942-1945 The Manzanar Internment Camp in Inyo County
was one of ten that held some 120,000 Japanese-Americans during this
period. The Tule Lake Segregation Camp was another. In 1999 Marnie
Mueller, born in the Tule Lake camp, published the novel "The Climate
of the Country," set at Tule Lake in this time. In 2000 Lawson Fusao
Inada edited "Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese-American
Internment Experience." In 2000 Kimi Kodani Hill edited "Topaz Moon:
Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment."
(SFC, 7/29/97, p.A18)(SFEC, 5/2/99, BR p.5)(SFEC,
10/1/00, BR p.5)
1943 Jun 4, Race riots took place
in LA.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1943 The Academy Awards were held
in Los Angeles at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.D5)
1943 Maxine Reams (d.1997 at 79)
became the first female staff photographer for the LA Times.
(SFC, 9/29/97, p.A23)
1943 In California Cesare Mondavi
purchased the Charles Krug winery in Napa Valley and began making wine
with his sons Robert and Peter. Robert Mondavi (1913-2008) persuaded
his parents to buy Charles Krug Winery. Robert became the salesman and
his brother Peter the winemaker.
(USAT, 6/17/98, p.2D)(SFC, 5/17/08, p.A7)
1944 Feb 24, Barry Bostwick, actor
(Rocky Horror Show, Megaforce), was born in San Mateo, Ca.
(MC, 2/24/02)
1944 May 14, George Lucas, writer
and director, was born in Modesto, Ca. He is best remembered for his
Star Wars trilogy.
(HN, 5/14/99)(MC, 5/14/02)
1944 May-Jun, At the US Military
Interrogation Center at Byron Hot Springs Hotel in Stockton, Ca.,
German seaman Otto Stengel, suffering under acute appendicitis,
revealed the names of 6 fellow seaman (ages 22-26) who participated in
the murder of Vernard Drechsler, a fellow seaman turned spy.
(HC, 1/29/98)
1944 Jun 11, James "Ox" D A Van
Hoften, astronaut (STS 41C, STS 51I), was born in Fresno, Calif.
(SC, 6/11/02)
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 Sep 1, Leonard Slatkin,
conductor, was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1944 Aug 9, 258 black American
sailors based at Port Chicago, Calif., refused to load a munitions ship
following the Jul 17 explosion of another ship that killed 320 men,
two-thirds of them black. The sailors were court-martialed, fined and
imprisoned for their refusal.
(AP, 8/9/04)
1944 Dec 17, The U.S. Army
announced the end of its policy of excluding Japanese-Americans from
the West Coast.
(AP, 12/17/97)
1944 Violet Kazue de Cristoforo
(1917-2007), California poet, authored “Poetic Reflections of the Tule
Lake Internment Camp.” She was interned from 1942-1946.
(SFC, 10/9/07, p.B5)
1944 Linda Stirling (d.1997) was
signed by Republic Pictures to make serial pictures that included "The
Tiger Woman" and "Zorro’s Black Whip." She appeared in some 2 dozen
Westerns and feature films that included "The Cherokee Flash," "The
Sheriff of Cimarron," "Topeka Terror," "The Mysterious Mr. Valentine,"
"The Invisible Informer," "The San Antonio Kid" and Vigilantes of Dodge
City." After her film career she taught English literature at Glendale
College for 27 years.
(SFC, 8/11/97, p.A15)
1944 The 319-foot Friant Dam was
completed in Fresno County. It flooded the town of Millerton and backed
up 520,000 acre-feet of the San Joaquin River. The old Millerton
Courthouse (1866-1874), was dismantled and moved to Mariner Point
overlooking the lake.
(SSFC, 11/28/04, p.F8)
1944 California Indians were
awarded $17 million that was promised in treaties nearly a century
earlier. $12 million was deducted for goods and services already given.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.5)
1944 The Newport Balboa Press was
purchased by Ben Reddick and another reporter. Reddick assumed full
ownership in 1947 and expanded the business into what became the
Newport Harbor News Press.
(SFC,10/28/97, p.A20)
1944 Norman Chandler, the son of
Harry Chandler, officially took over as publisher of the LA Times.
(WSJ, 6/14/01, p.A18)
1944 Dr. Curtis Springer founded
Zzyxx Mineral Springs and Health Resort in Soda Springs in the Mohave
Desert. He recruited workers from Skid Row in Los Angeles and built a
60-room hotel with a cross-shaped pool on his Boulevard of Dreams. He
broadcast religious and health messages until 1974, when tax
authorities closed him down for tax evasion.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.T6)
1944 A 186-acre ranch at Pacific
Palisades was donated to the state by the family of Will Rogers
(d.1935). It became the Will Rogers State Historic Park. Later a large
portion of maintenance funds were used for a horse-boarding operation
geared to the rich.
(WSJ, 9/6/01, p.A1)
1944 The first US viral
diagnostic laboratory was established in Berkeley.
(SFC,12/17/97, p.A2)
1944 State officials blamed the
pollution from Iron Mountain for killing a third of the salmon run
before they could spawn.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1944 Vintner Samuele Sebastiani
died.
(WSJ, 4/16/97, p.CA1)
1944-1946 The Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles
at Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.D5)
1945 Feb 9, [Maria] Mia Farrow,
actress (Rosemary's Baby, Purple Rose of Cairo, was born in LA.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1945 Feb 11, The 1st gas turbine
propeller-driven airplane was flight tested, at Downey, Ca.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1945 Jul 15, Gov. Earl Warren
signed a bill that made Columbia, the gold rush town in Tuolumne
County, a state historic park. Warren made Columbia the state’s capital
for one day.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T5,11)(CVG, Vol 16, p.33)
1945 Nov 21, The last residents of
the US Japanese-American internment left their camps.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, Z1 p.6)
1945 Brainerd Jones (1869),
Petaluma architect, died.
(SFC, 2/18/06, p.F4)
1945 Ella Jorgensen, Tomales
photographer, died.
(SSFC, 11/16/03, p.C6)
1945-1966 Frederick Terman served as the provost of
Stanford Univ.
(SFEC,11/2/97, BR p.6)
1945-1970 Some 47,000 55-gallon drums of radioactive
waste, from US government research programs, was dumped near the
northern California Farallon Islands.
(SFC, 7/8/05, p.F2)
1946 Jan 5, Diane Keaton, actress
(Annie Hall, Little Drummer Girl), was born in LA.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1946 Mar 20, The Tule Lake
Segregation Camp in northern California was closed. It had housed
Japanese internees who refused to swear a loyalty oath to the US or who
caused disruptions at other camps.
(SFC, 2/18/06, p.B2)
1946 Jul 4, Michael Milken,
partner (Intl Capital Access Group), was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 7/4/02)
1946 Nov 10, Baldassare
Forestiere, creator of the Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno,
Ca., died in Fresno.
(WSJ, 8/28/08,
p.D11)(www.forestiere-historicalcenter.com/Forestierebio.html)
1946 Nov, Richard Nixon (33) was
elected the Republican Congressman from the 12th District.
(WSJ, 8/9/99, p.A16)
1946 Dec 3, The Oakland General
Strike shut down the city for 2 days when 2 large department stores
resisted a unionized workforce.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, Parade p.6)
1946 Dec 25, W.C. Fields, comic
actor, died in Pasadena, Calif., at age 66.
(SFEC, 11/3/96, DB p.56)(AP, 12/25/97)
1946 Mine Okubo authored "Citizen
13660," an illustrated account of her experiences at Japanese
internment camps in California and Utah.
(SFC, 2/26/01, p.A24)
1946 The Claremont Men’s College
was founded in southern California by Donald C. McKenna (d.1997 at 90)
and others for returning veterans with an emphasis on business and
public affairs. The college began admitting women in 1981. George C.S.
Benson (d.1999 at 91) was the first president of the school. The name
was changed to Claremont McKenna College in 1981.
(SFC,11/27/97, p.B8)(SFC, 3/25/99, p.C3)
1946 Helen Cahagan Douglas beat
Frederick Madison Roberts for representation of the 14th Congressional
District.
(SFEC, 1/16/00, p.C6)
1946 A US district court case in
Orange County, Ca., Mendez vs. Westminster, ruled that race-based
housing restrictions were illegal. State law had allowed segregation
against Mexican Americans. Restrictions after WW I had confined blacks
in LA to the south and east sides creating near-ghettos in areas such
as Watts, Inglewood and Compton. The Mendez case was upheld on April
14, 1947, and was used to support the 1954 Supreme Court decision in
Brown vs. Board of Education.
(Econ, 7/23/05, p.29)(SFC, 5/9/07, p.A15)
1946 The first African American
switchboard operator was hired by Pacific Telephone.
(SFC, 1/11/99, p.A18)
1946 David Barham (1913-1991)
founded Hot Dog on a Stick at Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, Ca.
(WSJ, 2/3/07,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Barham)
1946-1949 The arroyo at the Westwood UCLA campus was
filled in and essentially hid the 1927 Romanesque bridge that crossed
it.
(CG, #206, 1991)
1946-1952 Richard Nixon served in the US Congress as
Congressman and Senator from California. In 1999 Irwin F. Gellman
published "The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years, 1946-1952."
(WSJ, 8/9/99, p.A16)
1946-1992 Charles Hillinger worked for the Los
Angeles Times. He was assigned as a roving reporter in the early 50s
and by 1969 expanded to a world beat. His 1998 "Hillinger’s California:
All 58 Counties" was one of 2 books compiled from his 6,000 plus
columns.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, p.D1,8)
1947 Jan 15, A grisly,
still-unsolved murder case came to light in Los Angeles as the
mutilated remains of 22-year-old aspiring actress Elizabeth Short,
known as the "Black Dahlia" for the dark outfits she wore, were found
dumped in a vacant lot. Her body was severed at the waist, drained of
blood and fully posed in a vacant lot. The Black Dahlia murder case
remained unsolved even though 500 hundred men confessed to the murder.
In 1977 John Gregory Dunne authored "True Confessions," a novel based
on the case. In 1987 James Ellroy authored "The Black Dahlia." In 2003
Steve Hodel authored "Black Dahlia Avenger," in which he held that the
killer was Dr. George Hodel, his own father.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, BR p.3)(SFEC, 4/5/98, p.C16)(AP,
1/15/01)(NW, 4/21/03, p.59)(SFC, 1/2/04, p.D1)(SFC, 4/16/04, p.B7)
1947 Apr, Frank Sinatra in Palm
Springs slugged columnist Lee Mortimer, who had written stories linking
the singer to the Mafia.
(SSFC, 6/2/02, p.C5)
1947 May 25, Karen Valentine,
actress (Love American Style, Room 222), was born in Santa Rosa,
CA.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1947 Jun 10, Gov. Earl Warren
signed a measure that gave each county the authority to regulate its
own air pollution.
(SFEC,11/10/97, p.A10)
1947 Jun 19, The first plane
(F-80) to exceed 600 mph (1004 kph) was flown by Albert Boyd in Muroc,
California.
(DTnet, 6/19/97)
1947 Jul 4, "Wino Willie" Forkner
(d.1997) led his South Central LA Boozefighters motorcyclists to
Hollister for a weekend of beer-drenched fun. They were all veterans of
WW II. He was said to have been the model for Marlon Brando in the film
"The Wild One." 3,000 motorcyclists spilled over into Hollister from a
nearby racetrack. [see Jul 7]
(SFC, 6/26/97, p.A17)(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.A1)
1947 Jul 7, A made-up photo in
Life magazine featured a biker in Hollister, Ca. In 1997 bikers
returned to Hollister for a 50-year anniversary and began an annual
tradition. [see Jul 4]
(SFC, 7/4/02, p.A18)
1947 Aug 23, An audience at the
Hollywood Bowl heard President Truman's daughter, Margaret, give her
first public concert as a singer.
(AP, 8/23/97)
1947 Aug 25, Marion Carl, Navy
test pilot, set a world speed record of 651 mph at Muroc Field (later
Edwards AFB), Ca. He was shot to death in Oregon by a house robber in
1998 at age 82.
(SFC, 6/30/98, p.A3)
1947 Nov 19, A 200" mirror arrived
at Mt. Palomar observatory.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1947 A summer music festival was
begun in Ojai.
(WSJ, 6/16/98, p.A17)
1947 California’s racial laws were
abolished. Gov. Earl Warren signed legislation that ended
“separate-but-equal” school segregation.
(SFEC,10/19/97, p.C3)(SSFC, 5/16/04, p.E5)
1947 June D. Schnacke (d.2000 at
80) was appointed as the state’s first woman district attorney by the
Santa Cruz County Board.
(SFC, 6/12/00, p.A24)
1947 Sacramento took over local
electric services.
(SFC, 2/12/01, p.A17)
1947 California founded a state
forest system with sustained yield as a goal. The Dept. of Forestry and
Fire Protection assumed responsibility for a cutover area near Fort
Bragg that became the Jackson Demonstration Forest.
(SFC, 11/28/02, p.A27)(SSFC, 4/4/04, p.E3)
1947 Prisoners at the Folsom
Prison began producing license plates.
(SFC, 9/21/98, p.A24)
1947 Bert J. Brock of Ohio bought
a pottery manufacturing plant in Lawndale, LA County, and incorporated
it as B.J. Brock and Co. The firm, which produced high quality
tableware and ovenware care Brock Ware, closed doors around 1955.
(SFC, 5/4/05, p.G5)
1947 Herbert Magidson (d.1977) and
his wife Shirley Magidson (1925-2008), industrial designers from
Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology, moved to Los Angeles and
set up shop as Metric products Inc. They made wire axles for Mattel
toys and later underwires for bras. From this they expanded to
manufacturing molded cups for bras and swimsuits. Both were active in
social affairs and supported numerous social causes.
(WSJ, 7/19/08, p.A5)
1947-1971 In southern California Montrose Chemical
Co. manufactured DDT during this period and released about 2,000 tons
of the pesticide into sewers that flowed to the ocean. In 2007 fish
caught off Los Angeles County's coast still contained high levels of
DDT, banned since 1972, decades after a manufacturer dumped tons of the
pesticide into sewers, creating a toxic plume on the ocean bottom.
(AP, 1/28/07)
1948 May 11, Edward Ricketts (Doc
Ricketts, 51), marine biologist and friend of John Steinbeck, died in
Monterey, Ca., after his car stalled on railroad tracks and was struck
by a Del Monte Express. He authored "Between Pacific Tides."
(SFC, 2/22/02, p.A21)
1948 Jun 3, The 200-inch
reflecting telescope at the Palomar Mountain Observatory in California
was dedicated. The nearly 5.1 meter Hale telescope was operated by
Caltech.
(AP, 6/3/97)(SFEC, 4/23/00, p.C14)
1948 Jun 9, Nathaniel Rosen,
cellist (Tchaikovsky-gold-1978), was born in Altadena, Ca.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1948 Oct 1, The California Supreme
Court voided a state statue banning interracial marriages.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1948 Mar 20, "Gentleman’s
Agreement" won the Academy Award for best picture of 1947, as well as
best director (Elia Kazan); Ronald Colman won best actor for "A Double
Life," and Loretta Young won best actress for "The Farmer’s Daughter."
The 20th event was held at the Shrine auditorium in LA.
(AP, 3/20/98)(SFC, 3/13/02, p.D1)
1948 In Hollywood a building on
Vine opened as the home of the Don Lee Mutual Broadcasting Co. In 2000
it was purchased by the Academy of Motion Pictures for $20 million and
was renamed the Pickford Center. It then became the home of the Academy
archives.
(SFC, 3/26/03, p.D8)
1948 Marilyn Monroe was proclaimed
Artichoke Queen in Salinas when she visited for a diamond promotion.
(SFC, 3/13/98, p.A23)
1948 Burt Baskin (1913-1967) and
Irvine Robbins (1917-2008) combined their ice cream parlors in Glendale
and Pomona, Ca., to form the Baskins-Robbins ice cream chain.
(WSJ, 5/10/08,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Baskin)
1948 Porfirio Delgado (d.1999 at
age 85) and his brother Candelario founded Candelas Guitars in East Los
Angeles.
(SFC, 8/3/99, p.A20)
1948 Richard (d.1998 at 89) and
Maurice McDonald (d.1971) started the McDonald's chain of fast food
restaurants in San Bernadino, California. Ray Kroc purchased the chain
in 1955.
(SFC, 7/15/98, p.A20)
1948 Henry (d.1976) and Esther
(1920-2006) Snyder opened In-N-Out Burgers in Baldwin Park, LA County.
They numbered 152 stores in 2001 as their 1st SF outlet opened. By 2006
the chain numbered 202 restaurants.
(SFC, 3/3/01, p.D1)(SFC, 8/15/01, p.B1)(SFEC,
3/23/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 8/12/06, p.A6)
1949 Mar 25, UC Pres. Robert
Gordon Sproul proposed a faculty loyalty oath. The Univ. of Calif.
Board of Regents voted in April 1950 to require all employees to sign
an loyalty oath.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
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.
(SFC, 4/7/99, p.A21)
1949 Jul 4, Time Magazine issued a
special on Los Angeles.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.4)
1949 Sep 27, HUAC held hearings on
alleged communist infiltration of the Radiation Laboratory at UC
Berkeley.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1949 Oct 21, Hal Wright (d.2000 at
96) put out the 1st issue of the Sierra Booster. It was published
fortnightly at Loyalton. In the 1960s the paper was credited with
initiating "Grandparent’s Day," set on the 2nd Sunday of September.
(SFC, 7/3/00, p.C2)
1949 Nov 8, Bonnie Raitt, country
singer (Green Light, The Glow), was born in Burbank, Ca.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1949 Nov 24, Alexander C. Cushing
(1914-2006) opened the Squaw Valley Development Company with his wife
Justine Bayard Cushing (d.2003 at 85). The new Lake Tahoe area ski
resort opened with a double chairlift and 2 rope tows.
(SFC, 8/21/06,
p.B1)(www.squaw.com/winter/history_overview.html)
1949 Tom Waits, musician and
actor, was born in Whittier. In 2001 Jay S. Jacobs authored "Wild
Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits." Ruth Carol authored the
biography "Tom Waits."
(SSFC, 4/15/01, BR p.7)
1949 Ross Macdonald (d.1983)
authored his detective novel "The Moving Target." His character Lew
Archer solved crimes in what everyone understood was Santa Barbara.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, BR p.1,6)
1949 Toshio Mori, a 1st generation
Californian, authored his 1st novel: "Yokohama California." In 2001 His
collection of stories, interviews and collected letters on life in
California was reprinted as "Unfinished Message."
(SSFC, 2/4/01, BR p.8)
1949 The bookmobile "Parny" (named
for the Greek god Parnassus) made its debut as part of the Los Angeles
Public Library System.
(LAT, 9/29/97, p.B2)
1949 Fantasy Records was founded
by Max and Sol Weiss and Saul Zaentz in Oakland, CA.
(SFEM, 3/23/97, p.28)
1949 The coastal Esplanade
neighborhood of Pacifica, south of SF, was built. It immediately
reported problems with erosion.
(SFC, 3/6/98, p.A17)
1949 Norman B. Livermore donated
40 acres to help start the Robert Louis Stevenson State Park that later
stretched across over 5,000 acres of Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties.
(SFC,11/25/97, p.A12)
1949 The Pacific Electric Railway
asked to convert 11 of its 17 street car routes in LA to buses.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.4)
1949 Mervin Morris opened the
first Mervyns department store in San Lorenzo, Ca.
(WSJ, 9/4/08, p.B6)
1949 Vernon C. Genn (1922-2006),
founder of West Coast Engine and Equipment Co., pioneered the
development of diesal engines to provide reliable cooling for
refrigerated railroad cars.
(SFC, 5/3/06,
p.B7)(www.history-magazine.com/refrig.html)
1949-1954 In Sacramento an annex was added to the
Capitol and Capitol Park was reconfigured.
(SFEC,12/28/97, p.A10)
1949-1967 Clark Kerr covered this period of Univ. of
California in a 2002 memoir titled "The Gold and the Blue: A Personal
Memoir of the University of California 1949-1967, Vol. 1: Academic
Triumphs." Kerr served as chancellor at Berkeley from 1952-1958, and as
president of the UC system from 1958-1967.
(SSFC, 2/17/02, p.M6)
1950 Feb 6, Natalie Cole, vocalist
(Pink Cadillac, Miss You Like Crazy, Mona Lisa), was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1950 Feb 10, Mark Spitz, Modesto
Calif, swimmer (Oly-9 gold/silver/bronze-68,72), was born.
(www.thisdaythatyear.com/feb/people10.htm)
1950 Apr, UC began to require a
special loyalty oath from all employees. It was voted out Nov 17, 1951.
(SFC, 11/16/01, WB p.G4)
1950 Jun 30, The Napa Valley
Vintner’s Association dedicated their "Welcome to Napa Valley" sign.
(SFEC, 12/22/96, BR p.5)
1950 Sep 26, The state legislature
passed a bill requiring state employees to sign a loyalty oath.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1950 Franklin Walker authored "A
Literary History of Southern California.
(SSFC, 2/11/01, BR p.4)
1950 The Mattachine Society, the
first openly gay organization in the US, was founded in Los Angeles.
Henry Hay (d.2002 at 90) was one of the original founders and won the
1999 vote to serve as grand marshal for the SF Pride Parade. In 1990
Stuart Timmons authored the biography "The Trouble with Harry Hay."
(SFEC, 6/13/99, DB p.35)(SFC, 10/25/02, p.A21)
1950 Colin Hampton (1911-1996) and
Margaret Rowell founded the California Cello Club. He was a member of
the 36-year-old Griller Quartet, renowned in England for playing noon
concerts at the National Gallery while bombs were falling on London.
(SFC, 8/15/96, p.C4)
1950 Richard Nixon ran against
Helen Gahagan Douglas for the US Senate. The race was documented in the
1998 book: "Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady" by Greg Mitchell.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, BR p.3)
1950 A.P. Hamann (Dutch Hamann)
became the city manager of San Jose (population 95,000) and began an
aggressive policy of annexing adjacent land.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.4)
1950 There were some 200 dairy
farms in Marin County.
(SFEC, 2/13/00, p.D1)
1950 Major floods hit northern
California. In Modesto the Tuolumne River crested at 69 feet, 9 feet
over flood level.
(SFC, 1/4/97, p.A1)
1950s In Santa Cruz Jack O’Neill
began producing wet suits for surfers.
(CG, #205, 1991)
1950-1960 The Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles
at Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.D5)
1951 Apr 7, The 3rd District Court
of Appeal ruled that the special loyalty oath of the Univ. of
California is invalid. 18 professors were ordered reinstated.
(SFC, 4/6/01, Wba p.4)
1951 May 26, The UC Board of
Regents voted to reinstate 18 professors who had refused to sign the
anti-Communist loyalty affirmation.
(SFC, 5/25/01, WBb p.2)
1951 Jun 7, The fact-finding Burns
committee led by California state Sen. Hugh M. Burns released a
291-page report that claimed UC had aided and abetted the int’l.
communist conspiracy. UC Pres. Robert Gordon Sproul denied the charges.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
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 Aug 14, Newspaper publisher
William Randolph Hearst (b,1863) died in Beverly Hills, Calif. In 2000
David Nasaw authored "The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst."
W.A. Swanberg was the author of the biography "Citizen Hearst." In 2002
Louis Pizzitola authored "Hearst Over Hollywood: Power, Passion and
Propaganda in the Movies." In 2009 Kenneth Wyle authored “The Uncrowned
King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst.”
(SFEC, 8/11/96, p.A19)(AP, 8/14/98)(SFC, 8/7/99,
p.A9)(WSJ, 6/16/00, p.W8)(SFEC, 7/2/00, BR p.1)(SFC, 3/27/02,
p.D5)(SSFC, 1/11/09, Books p.1)
1951 Nov 10, Direct-dial,
coast-to-coast telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of
Englewood, N.J., called his counterpart in Alameda, Calif.
(AP, 11/10/97)
1951 Nov 15, Gov. Earl Warren
declared himself a candidate for US president in 1952.
(SFC, 11/9/01, p.G3)
1951 Nov 17, The UC Board of
Regents voted to drop the special loyalty oath required of all
employees since April 1950.
(SFC, 11/16/01, WB p.G4)
1951 Dec 19, The State Toll Bridge
Authority sold a new $21 million issue of revenue bonds and ensured
that commuters would continue paying tolls on the Bay Bridge for 10
more years.
(SFC, 12/14/01, WB p.G8)
1951 William R. Bright (d.2003 at
81) founded Campus Crusade to spread Christianity to students at UCLA.
By 2003 the organization had a staff of 26,000 with revenues of $374
million.
(SFC, 7/22/03, p.A19)
1951 The California state
Legislature authorized what became the State Water Project and
appropriated funds for detailed studies.
(CSWP, brochure)
1951 The ship Independence, used
in 1946 atomic bomb tests, was sunk near the Farallones.
(SSFC, 1/20/02, p.A27)
1951 Three US Coast Guardsmen were
killed when their boat capsized after they left the St. George Reef
Lighthouse near Crescent City.
(SSFC, 4/21/02, p.A27)
1951-1966 PG&E released chromium into the
environment of Hinkley in San Bernadino Ct. over this period. Residents
suffered from numerous illnesses and were not informed until 1987. [see
Brockovich 1993]
(SFC, 3/16/00, p.A17)
1952 Jan, A harsh blizzard
stranded the City of San Francisco train at Yuba Gap with 221 people
aboard. Art Hoppe of the SF Chronicle filed an exclusive report.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.B10)
1952 Mar 4, Ronald Reagan and
Nancy Davis were married in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los
Angeles.
(AP, 3/4/98)
1952 Mar, California state Sen.
Hugh M. Burns arranged for every California college to appoint a
"contact man" to help his committee screen faculty.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1952 Apr 12, A telephone strike
was settled in Michigan but continued in Northern California for a 5th
day.
(SFC, 4/12/02, p.G6)
1952 May 15, California’s Central
Valley Regional Water Pollution Control Board issued resolution No. 127
barring entry of perchlorate and 8 other chemicals into local
groundwater and the American River. Medical researchers soon published
that perchlorate blocks the uptake of essential iodide into the
thyroid. Aerojet Corp., a rocket fuel manufacturer, objected and
continued untreated discharges.
(WSJ, 12/16/02, p.A9)
1952 May 18, Listener supported
KPFA radio increased its radiating signal to 52,000 watts.
(SFC, 5/17/02, p.G8)
1952 May 24, The AFL Sailor’s
Union ordered a 3-day walkout to tie up the Pacific Coast shipping to
help in wage demands.
(SFC, 5/24/02, p.G8)
1952 Jul 21, A 7.7 earthquake
destroyed the town of Tehachapi near Bakersfield.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.B10)
1952 Aug 3, Jay North, actor
(Dennis the Menace, Maya), was born in North Hollywood, Calif.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1952 Aug 5, In LA, Ca., 14
Communist leaders were convicted of conspiring to overthrow the US
government. 6 of the defendants were from SF, one was from Oakland.
(SFC, 8/2/02, p.E4)
1952 Oct 18, The California state
Supreme Court outlawed the UC special loyalty oath, but upheld the
Levering Act, which imposed a loyalty pledge on all state, county and
city employees.
(SFC, 10/18/02, p.E2)
1952 Nov 19, The California Wine
Institute reported shipments of 11 million gallons for September, a
22.71% increase over Sep, 1951.
(SFC, 11/15/02, p.E2)
1952 Antone Martin (d.1961),
sculptor, established Desert Christ Park sculpture garden in Yucca
Valley, San Bernadino County, to display his concrete religious statues.
(SSFC, 3/28/04, p.D7)
1952 The film "High Noon" with
Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly was filmed in Columbia, Tuolumne County.
(TMC, 1994, p.1952)(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T5)
1952 The first Mondavi visitor’s
wine tasting room at Krug Winery in Napa Valley was converted from an
old storage shed.
(SFEM, 10/25/98, p.44)
1952 In Monterey, Ca., the US
Naval Postgraduate School, formerly in Annapolis, Md., moved onto the
site of the former Hotel Del Monte.
(SSFC, 5/18/08, p.A15)
1952 A state hunting license cost
$3.00. In 1996 it was $47.50.
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.C9)
1952 In California Ernest O.
Lawrence (1901-1958) founded what would later be known as the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory.
(SFC, 1/11/03, p.A18)
1952 The hospital ship Benevolence
was dynamited by the military off Ocean Beach.
(SSFC, 1/20/02, p.A27)
1952 A 7.7 earthquake destroyed
the Kern County town of Tehachapi and killed 14 people.
(SFC,12/9/97, p.A9)
1953 Mar 19, The Academy Awards
ceremony was televised for the first time; "The Greatest Show on Earth"
was named best picture of 1952. Gary Cooper & Shirley Booth won for
best actor and actress.
(AP, 3/19/99)(MC, 3/19/02)
1953 May 18, Jacqueline Cochran
became the first woman to break the sound barrier as she piloted a
North American F-86 Canadair over Rogers Dry Lake, Calif.
(AP, 5/18/97)
1953 May 25, Rich Alves, singer
(Pirates of the Mississippi-Fred Jake), was born in Pleasanton,
CA.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1953 May 29, Danny Elfman,
composer (Simpson Show Theme), was born in Los Angeles, CA.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1953 Jul 14, The freighter Jacob
Luckenbach from SF rammed the Matson freighter Hawaiian Pilot near
Point Montara, 17 miles from the Golden Gate. The Luckenbach sank while
the Hawaiian Pilot limped to SF. Oil leaked from the Luckenback later
killed numerous birds. In 2002 a $3.5 million plan for cleanup was
begun. A $19 million cleanup ended in Sep.
(Ind, 3/31/01, 5A)(SFC, 2/5/02, p.A15)(SFC, 5/8/02,
p.A22)(SFC, 10/1/02, p.A13)
1953 Sep 30, Pres. Eisenhower
named California Gov. Earl Warren (62) Chief Justice of the US Supreme
Court. Lt. Gov. Goodwin J. Knight succeeded Warren.
(MC, 9/30/01)(SFC, 9/26/03, p.E8)
1953 Oct 23, The State Supreme
Court ruled against the SF Housing Authority in its attempt to continue
segregating blacks, Chinese Americans and whites and its public housing
projects.
(SFC, 10/17/03, p.E9)
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.
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.E10)
1953 Bud Browne (1912-2008),
completed his first surf film, “Hawaiian Surfing Movies,” in Santa
Monica, Ca. He was later considered the father of surf films.
(AP, 7/29/08)
1953 The state Brown Act required
that meetings of city councils, county supervisors, schools districts
and other local agencies be open to the public.
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.A10)
1953 A California state law called
for a loyalty declaration for organizations seeking property tax
exemption. In 1955 a Superior Court in Alameda, Ca., upheld the right
of a church to refuse to sign the loyalty declaration.
(SFC, 8/19/05, p.F5)
1953 Mabel Monahan, wealthy
Burbank widow, was murdered. Barbara Graham, John Santo and Emmett
Perkins were convicted later for her murder. They were executed at San
Quentin in 1955.
(SFC, 5/20/05, p.F9)(SFC, 6/3/05, p.F2)
1953-1958 Harold J. "Butch" Powers (1900-1996) was
lieutenant governor. He had served as a US senator from 1934-1953.
(SFC, 10/17/96, C2)
1953-1965 Assemblyman Ed Gaffney was the last
card-carrying union member to hold office in Sacramento. Before OSHA he
guided most every law on industrial safety to the governor’s desk.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, EM p.19)
1953-1969 Keith Elkins Klinger (d.1998 at 87) headed
the LA County fire department. He worked with Bell labs to help develop
the 911 system as a member of Pres. Nixon’s Fire Commission. Under his
tenure fire trucks increased from 80 to 113.
(SFC, 3/8/98, p.C5)
1953-1973 Sascha Brastoff (1918-1993) designed
ceramics, plastics and decorative accessories and enamels on copper in
West Los Angeles during this period. His firm was called Sascha
Brastoff of California, Inc.
(SFC, 4/7/99, Z1 p.7)
1954 Jan 5, Walter Edward Scott
(b.1872), Death Valley con man, died. He was supported for much of his
life by millionaire Albert Johnson (d.1948).
(ON, 3/04, p.8)(
http://mojavedesert.net/walter-scott/)
1954 Jan 26, Ground breaking began
on Disneyland.
(MC, 1/26/02)
1954 May 2, Walt Disney and
associates announced plans to build a $9 million Disneyland on a
160-acre tract, once part of the Rancho San Juan Cajon de Santa Ana, in
Orange County.
(SFC, 4/30/04, p.F5)
1954 May 14, The US military
unveiled a Nike guided missile at the SF Presidio. Plans were to ring
13 critical areas in the US with such missiles.
(SFC, 5/14/04, p.F5)
1954 Sep 11, The Miss America
pageant made its network TV debut on ABC; Miss California, Lee Ann
Meriwether, was crowned the winner.
(AP, 9/11/97)
1954 Oct 31, Harry Lunderberg’s
AFL Sailors refused to report to work to unload freighters at a number
of West Coast ports.
(SFC, 10/29/04, p.F11)
1954 Dec 5, A 25-day strike by 70
locomotive engineers on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad’s 276-mile
run from Tiburon to Eureka ended.
(SFC, 12/3/04, p.F8)
1954 Sabato "Simon" Rodia, Italian
immigrant and cement finisher, completed his Watts Towers project,
begun in 1921, and deeded the property to a neighbor. Ownership
eventually passed to the state. The property was closed in 1994 due to
Northridge earthquake and reopened in 2001.
(WSJ, 10/16/01, p.A24)
1954 Harold Powers was elected
lieut. governor.
(SFC, 10/17/96, C2)
1954 Sherwood Johnson (d.1998 at
73) opened the first pizza parlor in Sacramento. It grew into the
int’l. chain known as Shakey’s.
(SFC, 11/4/98, p.C7)
1954 A catastrophic flood in the
winter of this year caused the levees to fail at Bull Island on the
Napa River where grain and potatoes had been raised.
(SFC, 4/7/97, p.A13)
1954 The Highway 101 freeway
opened at Mission San Miguel.
(SB, 3/28/02)
1955 Jan 18, Kevin Costner, actor
(Dances With Wolves), was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1955 Mar 4, The State of
California banned publication of any books or articles by inmates of
San Quentin’s Death Row.
(SFC, 3/4/05, p.F3)
1955 Mar 6, A US Atomic Energy
Spokesman said a cloud from the atomic blast at Nevada’s Yucca Flat
passed over the Central California coastline.
(SFC, 3/4/05, p.F3)
1955 Apr 28, Stephanie Bryan (14)
failed to return home from school at Willard Jr. High in Berkeley, Ca.
She was allegedly kidnapped by Burton Abbott, a married accounting
student at Cal. Abbott was convicted and executed at San Quentin in
1957 just minutes before Gov. Knight called for a stay. In 1995 Keith
Walker authored “A Trail of Corn,” covering the case. [see Jul 20]
(SFEC,12/28/97, p.D5)(SSFC, 5/2/04, p.A2)
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 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 17, Walt Disney’s
Disneyland opened to the public in Anaheim, Calif.
(SSFC, 5/1/05, p.F3)(AP, 7/17/08)
1955 Jul 20, The body of Stephanie
Bryan was found in Trinity County, Ca., 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. [see Apr 28]
(SFC, 12/2/97, p.D5)(SFEC,12/28/97, p.D5)
1955 Sep 5, The 1st SigAlert, a
traffic alert system, was broadcast in Los Angeles. The system was
invented by Loyd C. Sigmon (d.2004).
(SSFC, 6/6/04, B5)
1955 Sep 30, Actor James Dean,
best known for his role as a restless teen in Rebel Without a Cause,
died in a high-speed two-car collision at the corner of Highways 46 and
41 in Cholame, near Paso Robles, Ca. In 1950, he had made his acting
debut in a Pepsi commercial, for which he was paid $30. Dean gained
fame after a lead role on Broadway in 1952 and appearances on
television and in movies. His first major film role was in East of Eden
in 1954. Just days after filming Giant the next year, Dean was driving
his silver Porsche, called "Little Bastard," to a race with his
mechanic when he collided head-on with another car. He was 24 years old.
(SFC,1/22/97, p.E1)(AP, 9/30/97)(HNPD, 9/30/98)(HN,
9/30/98)
1955 Oct 18, University of
California discovered the anti-proton.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1955 Dec 22-1955 Dec 26, A "storm
of the century" caused a devastating flood in northern California and
left 76 people dead. Damages were estimated at $125 million.
(SFC, 1/4/97, p.A14)(SFC, 1/10/96, p.A21)(SFC,
12/23/05, p.F2)
1955 Dec 24, A levee break on the
Shanghai Bend of the Feather River south of Yuba City, Ca., killed 38
people.
(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.C1)(SFC, 11/17/99, p.E7)
1955 The Santa Cruz Chinatown fell
victim to a flood and was later redeveloped into a shopping complex. In
2003 the book "Chinatown Dreams: The Life and Photographs of George
Lee" depicted the community founded in the 1860s.
(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.M4)
1955 Marion Hewlett Pike (d.1998
at 84), portrait artist, had her first one-artist show at the Palace of
the Legion of Honor. She was also named Woman of the Year by the Los
Angeles Times. Later portraits included that of Ronald Reagan and Coco
Chanel.
(SFC, 2/9/98, p.A19)
c1955 The old city hall in
Petaluma was torn down.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A11)
1955 Ben Ridder (d.1983) became
publisher of the Pasadena Independent & Star News.
(SFC, 6/17/02, p.B5)
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 Cistercian-Trappist monks
purchased the old Stanford Vina Ranch on the Feather River north of
Marysville. They later acquired stones from the 12th century Santa
Maria de Ovila monastery, originally purchased by William Randolph
Hearst, and planned a reconstruction at the ranch.
(SFC, 8/22/00, p.A1,6)
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 A large number of dead
fingerling salmon and several hundred thousand king salmon were killed
in a few hours. Many swallows were reported dead by the river in
northern California near Iron Mountain.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1956 Nov 1, Walter Brattain, John
Bardeen and William Shockley were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics
for the invention of the transistor. The trio invented the transistor
in 1948 at the Bell Laboratories. William Schockley, co-developer of
the transistor, founded Schockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Palo Alto
this year. Two of his hires, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, later went
on to start Intel Corp. Tim Jackson in 1998 published "Inside Intel."
(SFEC, 8/17/97, BR p.4)(WSJ, 2/13/98, p.A13)(HNQ,
12/23/99)
1956 Gov. Goodwin J. Knight named
Catherine C. Hearst (d.1998 at 81) to the University of California
Board of Regents.
(SFC, 1/1/99, p.A16)
1956 The state’s Short-Doyle Act
established local mental health services. it was formulated by a
committee of the California Medical Association led by Dr. Alfred
Auerback (d.1997 at 81).
(SFC, 3/20/97, p.A24)
1956 Chuck Williams opened the
first Williams-Sonoma store in Sonoma.
(SFEM, 8/10/97, p.21)
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 There were major floods in
the state.
(SFC, 9/4/97, p.C4)
1956-1972 Large industrial corporations legally
poured some 35 million gallons of industrial waste into the
Stringfellow Acid Pits near Glen Avon. The dumping was halted when it
was noticed that pollutants were leaking into the ground water. In 1978
a large rainfall forced the release of more than a million gallons of
polluted water into the Pyrite Canyon, which drained into a creek bed
that flowed through the community of Glen Avon. In 1982 Stringfellow
was declared a Superfund site.
(WSJ, 4/14/99, p.CA1)
1957 Feb 22, A skull was found by
a crew digging a trench for an air conditioning system in downtown LA.
The site was later planned to be used for a new Roman Catholic
cathedral. An anthropologist identified the skull onsite as
characteristic of native Americans prior to the Spanish arrival. Native
Indian groups later contended the site a possible ancient burial ground
and held up the construction plans. In 1997 the skull was reported
lost. The Natural History Museum of LA soon reported that it had the
skull.
(SFC,10/27/97, p.C2)(LAT, 9/29/97, p.B1)
1957 May 30, In California Santa’s
Village, a Christmas theme park, opened in Scotts Valley. It filed for
bankruptcy in 1977 and finally closed in 1979.
(SFC, 5/31/08,
p.B2)(www.santasvillage.net/santas.village.scotts.valley.html)
1957 Jul 12, Santa Susana in Los
Angeles County began receiving the nation’s first commercial
electricity from a small, civilian-owned, nuclear reactor. It was shut
down in 1964 and scientists later reported that the plant might be
responsible hundreds of cancer cases. PG&E had teamed with General
Electric to establish the Vallecitos atomic energy plant, the world’s
1st privately owned and operated nuclear facility.
(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A5)(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)
1957 The 29th Academy Awards were
held at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Ingrid Bergman won for her
role in Anastasia.
(SFC, 3/15/02, p.D1)
1957 Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges
(d.1998) began as a TV series. It ran to 1961. It was mostly filmed at
the Marineland of the Pacific in LA.
(SFC, 3/11/98, p.A4)
1957 Gordon Schaber (d.1997 at 69)
at age 27 became the dean of the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento.
He expanded the school from one building to a 22-acre campus over his
34 years as dean.
(SFC,11/8/97, p.A22)
1957 Pacifica, south of SF, was
incorporated.
(SFC, 3/6/98, p.A17)
1957 Nikita Khrushchev, USSR chief
of state, visited California and Lester Lloyd (1908-1996), printer and
type founder, created a special Southern Pacific dining car menu in
Russian.
(SFC, 10/19/96, A22)
1957 A state law was passed that
banned bullfighting. It allowed for bloodless bullfighting in
connection with religious celebrations or festivals.
(SFEC, 5/24/98, p.A10)
1957 California state prison
guards formed the California Correctional Officers Association, mainly
as a social organization. The group became politically active in the
1970s and in 1982 formally organized as a labor union.
(SSFC, 9/14/08, p.A7)
1957 Remco Hydraulics was
established in Willits by chief backer Bob Harrah (d.1993 at 77). In
1963 the company began chrome plating closed down in 1995. A toxic
legacy was left behind with toxic chemicals in the local groundwater
and numerous residents with unusual illnesses.
(SFC, 3/31/00, p.A1,8,9)
1957 Iron Mountain mine owners
blamed the federal government for fish kills. They held that the Shasta
federal dam caused the buildup of pollutants and that previously flows
from Spring Creek were rendered harmless by dilution in the Sacramento
River.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1958 Feb 7, Brooklyn Dodgers
officially became the Los Angeles Dodgers, Inc.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1958 Apr 29, Michelle Pfeiffer,
actress, was born in Midway City, Calif.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1958 Aug 17, Belinda Carlisle,
(GoGos lead singer, Heaven on Earth), was born in Hollywood.
(SC, 8/17/02)
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 Nov 12, Warren Harding
(d.2002 at 77), Wayne Merry and George Whitmore scaled the "nose" of El
Capitan in California’s Yosemite Valley. They had spent 47 days of
climbing over 16 months to reach the top of the 2,99 foot cliff. In
1970 Harding and Dean Caldwell spent 27 days climbing another route up
El Capitan. Harding later authored "Downward Bound."
(SFC, 3/9/02, p.A24)(SSFC, 11/9/08, p.B6)
1958 Dec 24, Alex and Phyllis
Madonna opened the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo opened with 12
rooms.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.T3)(SSFC, 6/16/02, p.C1)
1958 Jimmy Lyons directed the
first Monterey Jazz Festival and featured Louis Armstrong, Gerry
Mulligan, Turk Murphy, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Dizzie
Gillespie. Radio host Jimmy Lyons and Chronicle jazz critic Ralph
Gleason came up with the idea. In 1997 William Minor and Bill Wishner
wrote: "Monterey Jazz Festival: Forty Legendary Years."
(SFC, 6/30/96, B9)(SFEM, 9/15/96,
p.6)(SFEC,12/14/97, BR p.7)
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,12/26/97, p.A1)(SSFC, 6/2/02, p.A18)(SFC,
6/24/02, p.B3)
1958 Charles E. Dederich (d.1997
at 83), dentist, founded Synanon in northern California. It was a
communitarian scheme to rehabilitate drug addicts based on the 12-step
Alcoholics Anonymous program. It used an encounter session called "The
Game" to work out problems with group pressure and venting.
(SFEC, 3/3/97, p.A21)(SFEM, 4/13/97, p.32)
1958 The Brooklyn Dodgers moved to
Los Angeles.
(WSJ, 4/7/99, p.B1)
1958 Nov 4, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown
was elected as democratic governor of California.
(SSFC, 1/30/05, p.C1)
1958 Alan Cranston was elected
state controller, the 1st Democrat to hold the post since 1890.
(SFC, 1/1/01, p.A5)
1958 Glenn Anderson won the
election for lieut. gov.
(SFC, 10/17/96, C2)
1958 Nuclear submarines began to
home-port in San Diego.
(SFC, 8/25/98, p.A20)
1958 William F. Knowland gave up a
shoo-in re-election campaign for senator in a disastrous bid for the
governorship.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, BR p.5)
1958 Backyard incinerators were
banned.
(SFC, 9/19/00, p.A6)
1958 A plaque was placed near
Morro Rock in San Luis Obispo, Ca., that recounts its history.
(SFC, 10/12/97, p.T3)
1958 The Iron Mountain mine owner
built a small treatment plant to capture copper and halt the killing of
salmon.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1958 The Basic Vegetable Products
processing plant in King City opened.
(SFC, 11/12/99, p.A19)
1958 Joe Coulombe established
Pronto Markets, a string of convenient stores, in Los Angeles, Ca. He
expanded the chain in 1967 to include gourmet foods and changed the
name to Trader Joe’s. In 1979 he sold the company to Theo and Karl
Albrecht of Germany.
(SFC, 6/6/06, p.C2)
1958 Mobster Johnny Stompanato was
stabbed to death by Cheryl Crane as her mother, Lana Turner, watched in
horror. Stompanato and actress Lana Turner had been lovers.
(SFEC, 3/16/97, z1 p.4)(USAT, 10/8/97, p.4D)
1959 Jul 26, There was a nuclear
reactor meltdown at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory 30 miles
northwest of downtown Los Angeles. A report in 2006 said it may have
caused hundreds of cases of cancer in the community, and that chemicals
threaten to contaminate ground and water.
(AP,
10/6/06)(www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/PHA/santa/san_p1.html)
1959 Aug 17, A 7.1 quake struck at
Yellowstone National Park.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1959 Oct 23, "Weird Al" Yankovic,
parody singer (Eat It, UHF, Naked Gun), was born in California.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1959 Dec 21, Florence Griffith
Joyner, runner (Olympic-3 gold-1988), was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 12/21/01)
1959 Lawrence Lipton authored "The
Holy Barbarians," a guidebook to the beat scene in Venice, California.
(SFC, 4/13/02, p.A21)
1959 The Mendocino Art Center was
founded by Bill Zaccha.
(SFC, 9/26/00, p.A21)(SSFC, 8/12/01, p.T5)
1959 An Act of Congress deemed the
Petaluma slough a river.
(SSFC, 6/1/03, p.C1)
1959 Pat Brown became governor and
served to 1966. During his tenure he commuted 23 death sentences and
allowed 36 convicts to die.
(SFC, 4/26/99, p.A15)
1959 The state Supreme Court ruled
that Los Angeles must pay taxes on its land, hydro-electric plants and
dam that it owns in Mono and Inyo counties.
(SFC,12/19/97, p.B6)
1959 California created the Fair
Employment Practices Act to prohibit racial discrimination in the
workplace.
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.A10)
1959 The California Legislature
passed the Burns-Porter Act, which authorized $1.75 billion in bonds to
build initial projects. The State Water Project included construction
of the Oroville Dam and the California Aqueduct to carry water from
north to south. Voters approved in 1960.
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.A10)(CSWP, brochure)
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 Gov. Brown appointed Helen
Ewing Nelson (1914-2005) as the state’s 1st consumer counsel.
(SFC, 4/6/05, p.B7)
1959 The US Fish and Wildlife
Service recommended that Iron Mountain mine owners seal mine tunnels or
collect mine drainage in a reservoir to halt the killing of salmon.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
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 Coyote Valley Dam was
constructed and created Lake Mendocino in California’s Mendocino County.
(SFC, 1/21/06, p.B1)
1960 Feb 18, The Eighth Winter
Olympic Games were formally opened in Squaw Valley, Calif., by Vice
President Nixon.
(AP, 2/18/98)
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 Feb 27, The U.S. Olympic
hockey team defeated the Soviets, 3-2, at the Winter Games in Squaw
Valley, Calif. The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.
(AP, 2/27/98)
1960 May 2, Caryl Chessman (39),
convicted sex offender and best-selling author, the Red Light Bandit,”
was executed at San Quentin Prison in California. He became a
best-selling author while on death row. SFC crime reporter Bernice
Davis (d.2002 at 97) later authored “Desperate and the Damned,” an
account of the Chessman case.
(AP, 5/2/08)(SFC, 2/8/02, p.A25)(SFC, 4/20/02, p.A23)
1960 Jul 13, Massachusetts Sen.
John F. Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination at his
party's convention in Los Angeles.
(AP, 7/13/97)
1960 Oct 29, Chartered C46
carrying Cal State's football team crashed and 16 people were killed.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1960 Nov 12, Discoverer XVII was
launched into orbit from California’s Vandenberg AFB.
(HN, 11/12/98)
1960 Ruses Solomon founded Tower
Records in Sacramento, Ca., by selling records out of his father’s
drugstore. In 2006 the 89-store company was sold for $150 million, with
creditors owed $200 million.
(SFC, 10/7/06, p.C3)
1960 In Novato the Nave Lanes
bowling alley opened. It was demolished in 1999 in favor of retail
outlets.
(SFEC, 8/29/99, p.D1)
1960 California ordered smog
control devices on cars. It was the first such law in the country.
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.A10)
1960 Voters narrowly approved the
$1.75 billion State Water Project.
(SFC, 2/12/00, p.A7)
1960 Otis Chandler (32),
great-grandson of Gen. Otis Chandler, became the 4th publisher of the
LA Times. In 2001 Dennis McDougal authored "Privileged Son: Otis
Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the LA Times."
(SSFC, 6/24/01, DB p.66)
1960 Wells Fargo was acquired by
the American Trust Company, which shifted the bank’s focus to retail
banking. Wells at the time had 12 offices in California, while American
Trust had 102. The Wells Fargo name was kept.
(SFC, 6/9/98, p.A10)
1960 SF State College became one
of several under a state Master Plan for Higher Education.
(SFEC, 3/21/99, Z1 p.4)
1960 Martin Ramirez (b.1885 in
Mexico), outsider artist, died in a state mental hospital. He was
picked up in LA in 1930 and locked up for the rest of his life. He
began to draw around 1948 with any material he could get and was
discovered in 1954 by a prof. of psychology at Cal State in Sacramento.
His pencil-and-crayon drawings became some of the highest-priced works
in the field.
(WSJ, 3/11/98, p.A18)
1960s UC Berkeley received a $1
million donation from the Isadore Zellerbach family for whom Zellerbach
Hall was named.
(SFC, 12/30/96, p.A15)
1960s Large portions of the Arcata
Redwood Corp. lands were detached to form sections of Redwood National
Park. The land was initially assembled by Michigan timber baron Arthur
Hill. His son, Harry Hill, built the French Renaissance townhouse that
is now the Italian consulate.
(SFC, 9/9/97, p.A19)
c1960-1980s Norton Simon, the owner of Hunt Foods,
Canada Dry and McCall's Publishing, assembled a collection of old
master’s paintings, as well as more modern works, and housed them in
the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.D7)
1960-1982 Leo R. McBrian (d.1998 at 78) published the
Ripon Record. He sold the paper and ended his family’s 70-year
ownership.
(SFC, 11/4/98, p.C7)
1960-1990s Peter Schrag, retired editor of the
Sacramento Bee, published in 1998 the book "Paradise Lost: California’s
Experience and America’s Future." In it he brought together the
disparate political and social events of the last four decades in the
state.
(SFEC, 2/22/98, Z1 p.3)
1961 Jun 12, A state Senate
fact-finding sub-committee of Un-American Activities issued a report
that charged UC Pres. Kerr "had opened the campus gates to communists."
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F4)
1961 Jul 2, Jimmy McNichol, actor
(Fitzpatricks, California Fever), was born in LA, Calif.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1961 Jul 25, Katherine Kelly Lang,
actress (Brooke-Bold & Beautiful), was born in LA, Calif.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1961 Nov, India’s PM Jawaharlal
Nehru visited with Walt Disney in Disneyland.
(SSFC, 5/1/05, p.F3)
1961 Dec 31, The Beach Boys: Carl,
Dennis and Brian Wilson with cousin Mike Love and friend Alan Jardine,
made their first public performance on New Year’s Eve at the Long Beach
Municipal Auditorium.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.D8)
1961 Judge Arthur Marshall
(d.1999) authored "California Probate Procedure."
(SFC, 11/26/99, p.B9)
1961 John Hunter Thomas (d.1999 at
71) presented his Stanford doctoral dissertation "Flora of the Santa
Cruz Mountains."
(SFC, 8/11/99, p.C5)
1961 The new LAX Airport was
dedicated by Pres. Lyndon Johnson. The facility included a modern
central structure called the "Theme Building" with an elevated circular
restaurant.
(CG, #206, 1991)
1961 The new Interstate 5 bypassed
Dunsmuir.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.T6)
1961 In Pleasanton the Contra
Costa Center shopping mall was built.
(SFC, 7/5/99, p.A16)
1961 Dr. L. Martin Griffin, Stan
Picher and Aileen Pierson created Audubon Canyon Ranch, a nonprofit to
operate wildlife refuges on Bolinas Lagoon and Tomales Bay. In 1998
Griffin published "Saving the Marin-Sonoma Coast: The Battles for
Audubon Canyon Ranch, Point Reyes, & California’s Russian River.
(SFEC, 9/6/98, BR p.4)
1961 Rodney Strong (d.2006),
dancer-turned winemaker, purchased a 160-acre vineyard in Healdsburg,
Ca. He started Sonoma Vineyards and later renamed it Rodney Strong
Vineyards.
(SFC, 3/7/06, p.B5)
1961 Pres. Kennedy appointed Cecil
F. Poole (d. 1997) to serve as the US attorney for the Northern
district of California.
(SFC,11/14/97, p.D7)
1961 The Point Reyes National
Seashore Foundation was created.
(SFC, 12/7/00, p.A27)
1961 Dr. Edgar Wayburn became
president of the Sierra Club.
(SFCM, 4/25/04, p.18)
1961 George Jackson (19) was
sentenced 1 year to life for stealing $70.20 from a gas station in LA.
(SSFCM, 8/19/01, p.7)
1961 PG&E announced plans for
an atomic reactor at Bodega Bay, the picturesque promontory near the
southern end of Sonoma County, Ca. The Public Utilities Commission
okayed the permit, subject to approval from the Atomic Energy
Commission. PG&E started digging a 70-foot shaft for the reactor
and put up signs announcing "The Atomic Park." In 1963 the PUC, after
significant local opposition, turned down their request. PG&E ended
up selling all its headlands holdings to the California Dept. of Parks
and Recreation for a token $1.
(www.monitor.net/monitor/12-3-95/bodegapge.html)
1961 In California a Kansas City
company opened a manufacturing plant in Merced to fabricate cooling
towers for industrial use. In 1969 the plant began treating the wood it
used with chromium 6, arsenic and copper to combat insects and
bacteria. In 1975 Baltimore Aircoil Co., a subsidiary of Merck &
Co., bought the plant. In 1985 Merck sold its subsidiary and the plant
to Amsted Industries. In 1986 a consultant found evidence of chromium
and arsenic contamination at the site. In 1989 state regulators noted
high levels of chromium 6 and arsenic in the water of a drainage pond
and reported that storm water flowed from the pond into a canal running
by homes in the Beachwood area of Merced. Chromium use continued until
May 1991. In February 2007 the regional water board mailed notices to
residents saying the plant had caused significant chromium and arsenic
pollution. As of 2008 some 20 people were dead or dying of cancer in
the Beachwood area. A $38 million cleanup effort was in progress. Merck
and Amsted faced a lawsuit.
(SSFC, 12/14/08, p.A14)
1961-1965 Larry Margolis (1923-1997) served as top
aide to Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh.
(SFC, 1/8/96, p.A17)
1961-1968 The Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles
at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.D5)
1961-1973 Samuel W. Yorty (1909-1998) served three
terms as mayor of Los Angeles.
(SFC, 6/6/98, p.A5)
Go to 1962