Mission Pass

Except for several low-level passes, travel between east and south bay communities with California’s inland valleys has always been thwarted by the coastal range of hills. Dublin Pass through Castro Valley and Niles Canyon in Fremont are busy routes.  However, one of the Bay Area’s toughest commutes is Interstate 680 between Fremont and Pleasanton where motorists are funneled through Mission Pass and over the infamous “Sunol Grade”. Unaware of its storied history, tens of thousands of people travel this route daily connecting the valleys: Livermore, San Joaquin, Central, and Sacramento with the South Bay’s “Silicon Valley”, through the natural gap in Mount Hamilton Range near Mission San Jose.

The Ohlone people settled in this region thousands of years ago in permanent villages near marshes and springs, collected shellfish from the bay shores, hunted abundant migratory waterfowl and established a trail through the natural low-level pass below Mission Peak for trading with inland tribes. Spanish explorers Pedro Fages and Padre Juan Crespi were the first Europeans in 1772 to cross the Pass, later used for clandestine inland expeditions by Spanish soldiers. Jedediah Smith restocked supplies and made wagon repairs at Mission San Jose in 1827 before traveling east through the pass. Two years later Kit Carson traveled the same route after trading furs with the missionaries for fresh produce. John C. Fremont’s California Battalion camped at Mission San Jose and mapped Mission Pass in 1846, staying long enough to be enthralled by the region’s beauty and Mission Valley’s fertile soil, and making an unsuccessful attempt to purchase the entire region.

Following the discovery of a gold at John Sutter’s lumber mill in 1848, hordes of hopeful prospectors disembarked eastern sailing ships in San Francisco and made their way to the village of Mission San Jose where they purchased food and supplies for the trip through Mission Pass to Stockton, the jumping off place for reaching the gold camps of the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Automobile gas stations and garages began replacing buggies and blacksmiths in the early 1900’s and at least six Mission San Jose gas stations and several towing services served motorists heading east through the pass. Fig Tree Station, named for several of the vintage trees planted on the site by Spanish Missionaries, opened in 1925 with two outdoor gas pumps on the gravel roadside. A repair garage, covered fueling area, and restrooms were added in the 1940’s. Through the years the humble little roadside station has provided petroleum products from Mobil, Standard, Flying A, McMillan and Tidewater. Now a Chevron property, with roots in Mission San Jose for 99 years, it patiently serves the local community as well as anxious commuters backed up for miles, unaware that they are following in the footsteps of the Indigenous people, Spanish Missionaries, Trail Blazers, and 49’ers.

Historical Ramblings: Francis Marion Smith (1846-1931)

Chances are that you have never heard of Francis Marion Smith. It’s more likely that you are familiar with the names of Jack London, Robert Luis Stevenson, Domingo Ghibelline, Charles Crocker, Joaquin Miller and Anthony Chabot. All are East Bay pioneers that once called Oakland home.

 Smith was known as “Borax Smith”, the highly successful founder and owner of the company that produced 20-Mule-Team Borax, the household cleaner made famous as the sponsor of the popular Death Valley Days TV show. As a young man seeking mineral wealth, Smith discovered a high-grade deposit of borate in the Great Basin Desert in 1872 and with his brother staked claims and established a primitive borax processing facility.  

Within five years, Smith was regularly shipping thirty-ton loads of the cleaned and concentrated borax crystals in large wagons, pulled by the now famous 20-mule teams, to the nearest Central Pacific Railroad siding one hundred and sixty miles away. Over time financial success allowed Smith, the “Borax King” to buy out his brother, purchase additional productive properties in the region, and replace the slow and cumbersome mule shipments with his own railroads. 

 In 1893 he commissioned the construction of the Pacific Coast Borax Company refinery in Alameda, CA, the first reinforced concrete building in the country, to process the mineral into household and commercial products under the 20 Mule Team brand. With the surge of income from his Borax business Smith formed a partnership with Frank Havens developing projects including extensive Key System lines, an urban and suburban commuter train, ferry and streetcar system serving the East Bay. 

Smith and his wife Mary moved from the Nevada desert to Oakland in 1881 where he managed operations of his expanding business empire from their large estate, Arbor Villa. Located near MacArthur and Park Blvd. on thirty-five manicured acres, their three-story extravagant Oak Hall mansion contained forty-two rooms including fifteen bedrooms, a ballroom, bowling alley and attached conservatory. The grounds featured tennis and croquet courts, stables, a small zoo with deer and rabbits, greenhouses, a variety of guest houses, and a signature five story water tower and observation deck with views of the Bay and San Francisco. The Smiths were active in Oakland’s charitable and community events often making Arbor Villa available for fundraising activities, as well as supporting his first wife’s desire to provide homelike accommodations for orphaned girls by financing, constructing, and operating thirteen residential homes.

 After suffering a major stroke at the age of 82, Smith and his wife moved from their mansion to a smaller residence near Lake Merritt. He began selling off parcels of Arbor Villa, however the stock market crash of 1929 eliminated potential buyers and following his death in 1931 at the age of 85, his prized mansion was demolished. Francis Marion Smith, miner, business man, railroad builder and “Borax King”, buried along “Millionaires Row” in Mountain View Cemetery, is not well known in Oakland but has a 5,915-foot peak in the Amargosa Range of Death Valley named Smith Mountain in his honor.  

Roadside Distractions: Pee Wee Golf

Known in various parts of the country as Miniature Golf, Mini-Putt, Goofy Golf, Midget Golf, Crazy Golf, or Putt-Putt, my brother Jimmy and I knew the wacky offshoot version of the grown-up game of golf as “Pee Wee” Golf. Jimmy was so enamored with the game in the 1950’s that he transformed a portion of our Castro Valley backyard into his own Pee Wee golf course and earning himself a Boy Scout Merit Badge. Typically, the game requires hitting a golf ball through a collection of themed barriers, silly obstacles, revolving windmills or rising drawbridges to sink the ball in the shortest number of strokes. Jimmy’s backyard course was designed and constructed in contoured dirt and featured an arched cement bridge.

Claims of creating the silly game can be traced to China in AD945, France in the 1400’s, Scotland in the 1500’s, and England in the early 1900’s, however one of the first documented American themed Minigolf courses was located in Mrs. Garnet Carter’s 700-acre resort “Fairyland Inn & Fairyland Golf Club” on Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga in the 1920’s. Each of the resort’s buildings were themed after familiar fairy tales while her “Tom Thumb” miniature golf course featured carefully positioned Garden Gnomes and a life size stature of Snow White. Unwittingly, Mrs. Carter launched a national minigolf fad that flourishes to this day.

We can recall seeking out the Fantasy Land Golf Course on early trips to Disneyland that featured a collection of diminutive park attractions, pirate themed courses at Lake Tahoe, and Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk’s indoor nautical course.  Closer to home was the Mini Golf Course on E 14th Street next to the Roller Arena in San Leandro, and the colorful dragon has been standing guard since the 1950’s creating new memories at the Golden Tee Miniature Golf Course on Castro Valley Blvd. Jim is still at it seven decades later transforming a pond at their home in the Sierra foothills into a kid-sized putting green for the great-grandchildren to enjoy.

Fore!     

Historic Ramblings: East Bay Skies

Look, up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s super…. nope, it’s probably just a plane!  Seeing the steady stream of evenly spaced passenger aircraft lined up over Mission Peak on final approaches to busy Oakland Airport, I’m reminded that the skies over the East Bay have been the scene of many forms of flight since the mid-1800’s. Hot air balloon ascensions, experimental aircraft, gliders and daring barn stormers thrilled crowds at the turn of the last century. The Navy airships Akron and Macon based at nearby Moffett Field were a common sight over the South Bay. China Clipper seaplanes based at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay made the first commercial flights to Hawaii.  Charles Lindbergh and Jimmy Doolittle always created a stir when landing at nearby Oakland Airport, and was the departure location for Amelia Earhart’s fateful flight. World War I Ace Eddie Rickenbacker once landed his squadron of biplanes in a vacant field in Irvington.  

Local residents were probably most aware of the busy skies during the war in the early 1940’s with the arrival of a squadron of US Army’s P-38 Lightning aircraft assigned to Hayward for use in training combat pilots and defending the region from a potential attack. The unique distinctive twin engine pod design and central single seat cockpit aircraft were easy to hear and easier to spot. The P-38 was developed for the United States Air Corps as a fighter-bomber for use as long range escort for medium and heavy-duty bombers, aerial reconnaissance missions, as well as for combat roles against enemy aircraft.   

The United States entered World War II before the City of Hayward could move forward with plans to build a municipal airport on land at the intersection of Hesperian and Russell Road (now Winton) purchased in 1939. The US Army took control over more than five hundred acres of the former tomato fields in 1942 and built two parallel paved runways, offices, storage sheds and barracks for the Army’s 355th Fighter Squadron. The airfield was declared surplus at the end of the war and was turned back over to the City of Hayward in 1947. The skies remained busy when the California Air National Guard moved to adjacent land for the home of the 61st fighter Wing in 1949 and served various flight training functions up until 1980. 

The East Bay continues to make a significant impact on regional aviation with Oakland and nearby San Jose International Airports serving millions of passengers annually. The Hayward Executive Airport is a busy hub for private pilots as well as for commercial enterprises including charter flights, medical transport, courier services and Bay Area traffic monitoring.  

Federal Aviation Administration’s Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center in the Centerville District of Fremont, one of twenty two control centers in the United States,  is responsible for the sequencing and separation of arrivals, departures and routes of flights assuring safe and orderly flow of aircraft over sections of California and Nevada, while the adjacent Oceanic unit manages international flights over huge portion of the Pacific Ocean air space, the largest in the world covering nearly 10% of the Earth’s surface. 

Yeah, my guess it’s probably a plane.   

Historical Ramblings: It's All About the Dirt

For more than a century between the mid 1800’s and mid 1900’s the alluvial plane at the base of Mission Peak that drained Alameda and Mission Creeks was one of the richest farming areas in California. On the rich fertile land where olives, figs and palms were first planted by missionaries, John Horner harvested wheat and potatoes, A.O. Rix grew almonds and there were acres and acres of apricot and plum orchards. The Gallegos and Los Amigos wineries had extensive vineyards, the Gomes family grew tomatoes for Rancho Soup, the Irvington Packing Co. was kept busy in season canning pickles from locally grown cucumbers, the Driscoll Brothers began a strawberry empire in the rich soil and longest growing season in the country, and George Roeding established the California Nursery Company, at its peak the largest ornamental nursery west of the Mississippi.

When the old fish hatchery at Yosemite’s Happy Isles was demolished and replaced with a Nature Center a large window was installed facing an enclosed native flower garden, pond and collection of established trees. Inspired to replicate the tranquil scene with our own “Little Yosemite” front yard we built a fenced enclosure blocking the view of the street and neighboring homes. One of our first planting was spindly three-foot-tall Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) native to the foggy canyons along the Northern California Coast, not Fremont’s hot and dry summers. Planted in the rich soil a few feet in front of our living room window forty years ago, the three-foot-tall tree with a two-inch diameter has grown to more than sixty feet in height with a circumference of nearly ten feet.

 Unlike it’s slow growing Giant Sequoia cousins (Sequoiadendron giganteum) of the Sierra Nevada range that take thousands of years to reach their towering heights, Mission Valley’s moderate weather, long seasons, high water table and rich former farmland soil is responsible for the astonishing growth of our coast redwood, and at this rate…. potential future National Park.

 It’s all about the dirt.

Historical Ramblings: McIvor’s Hardware

A bustling village began growing up along the old Vallejo Road soon after the founding of Mission San Jose in 1797 providing services and goods to the nearby residents and wayfarers. Throngs of fortune seekers including John Fremont and Kit Carson passed through the village and over Mission Pass on their way to the gold fields in the mid 1800’s purchasing goods, and fresh Mission Valley grains, fruit and vegetables for their journey. By the end of the century Mission San Jose was providing a range of services including a hotel, general stores, boot makers, winery’s, an ample collection of Saloons, and horseshoe and wheel makers.  

The sounds of clanging and hammering from the forge at Frank Martin’s Blacksmith Shop on Washington Blvd., could be heard across the dirt street at the old mission and for blocks around. Burton and Maria McIver, newly arrived in Mission San Jose from Canada and sensing the need for the continuation of horseshoeing, the forging of rural agricultural implements and metal work on motorcars purchased Martin’s historic business in 1927.

Within two decades the smithing business had faded and the McIvor’s began a fledgling hardware department in the front of the shop creating “McIvor Hardware and Farm Tools”.  Son Bob joined growing family business in 1952 and encouraged his father to build a larger store next door and increase the hardware inventory to serve the newly formed city of Fremont and the growing number of contractors and do-it-yourself home owners. Bob and his wife Pauline ran the family business for nearly forty years before deciding to take the next step and create larger full-service Hardware business a block away on Ellsworth Street that was run by son-in-law Al Auer’s family in the final years.   

Frank Martin’s original Blacksmith Shop still exists on Washington Blvd. and is now home to Firestone Photography, the Blvd. And recently vacated former Mission Roasting Company building was McIvor’s second location, and their imposing stucco building on Ellsworth Street has been vacant since Blvd. And 2018, a victim of competition from nearby Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe’s. Sadly, the third and final location of McIvor’s ninety-one-year-old historic family business sits behind a chain link fence and is designated by the city ironically as “future residential housing”.

Historic Ramblings: Mission Olives ("Gifts of the Earth")

There are two parallel rows of olive trees wide enough for two wagons to pass along Mission Blvd in front of Ohlone College in Fremont’s Mission San Jose District. Surprisingly, the hardy trees have survived several centuries during the regions flourishing periods of agricultural, residential and commercial growth. Planted on the sacred ground by the Ohlone people under the direction of Franciscan friars in the late 1700’s, these remaining trees marked the original shaded approach to the fourteenth Spanish Mission for travelers from the mission at Santa Clara. The attractive and productive trees were grown at each of the Spanish Missions situated about a day’s walk from one another along California’s El Camino Real by Franciscan Missionaries from the Mission of San Diego de Alcala.

 Just over three hundred unattended original trees were still surviving when the Dominican Sisters arrived at Mission San Jose in 1891 when they began harvesting the rich oil for sale to Catholic parishes throughout the Bay Area. Cultivation that was paused in 1965 for nation’s 35 years and has been resumed by the Sisters who harvest the ripe fruit each October and November from two hundred flourishing historic Mission Olives trees, the largest number of any of California’s twenty-one Missions.

 “Many hands go into the tending, harvesting, and bottling the golden oil, an activity that engenders great appreciation for the gifts of the Earth.”  

The prized olives are cold pressed, bottled and labeled in Modesto in California’s Central Valley by the Sciabica family, the nation’s oldest producer of cold press products. Extra Virgin Mission Olive Oil from the historic trees at Mission San Jose that once shaded missionaries, the Ohlone people, gold seekers and wayfarers is sold each November at the Dominican Sisters Annual Holiday Boutique.