Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show

The entire Bay Area, and especially The Tri-City area is so historically rich!  We have become aware of some of that richness, thanks to Bill Ralph who gathers enticing, and little-known facts about events, historic spots, key persons, their dreams and hopes, and brings them to life for us to marvel at the courage, foresight, and results of some of our predecessors’ efforts. Since we have received many positive comments about those articles, we are featuring a column each month entitled “Historic Snippets.”

Cody’s advance staff traveled into the Bay Area weeks ahead of the Wild West Show caravan to begin obtaining licenses, and renting fifteen acres of open space for upcoming performances in San Francisco, Oakland and in San Jose. In addition to beginning publicizing the upcoming events, the staff also made arrangements for the purchase tons of flour, meat, coffee and other supplies for up to five hundred cast and crew members, hundreds of show-and-draft-horses, a couple of elephants and a small herd of buffalo. The epic show traveled from town to town with two trains, fifty flat cars loaded with wagons, box cars, cattle cars, sleeping cars, power and commissary cars. The outdoor traveling show also carried its own grandstands and acres of canvas-covering to seat twenty thousand spectators,

At its peak in the late 1890’s plainsman, scout and showman  William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show was making hundreds of performances a year and traveled over eleven thousand miles in the United States and in Europe entertaining millions of eager attendees. Cody traveled to Northern California with his extensive cast, crew and huge menagerie several times between 1877 and 1913.

As the orator boomed the script and Cody’s cowboy band created mood setting music in the huge outdoor arena, the stereotyped-cowboy and native American performers would kick-off their two-hour series of highly anticipated well-known skits, tableaux and demonstrations. The riding of the Pony Express, Indian attacks on wagon trains, stage coach robberies, a buffalo stampede and the grand finale re-enactment of Custer’s Last Stand were interspersed with shooting, roping and riding demonstrations by headliner star performers including the famous Annie Oakley. Following the elaborate show comprised of hundreds of costumed performers, trained animals and the appearance of Buffalo Bill Cody himself, the entire show would be struck, loaded back onto the trains and moved overnight to the next town where the complex choreographed operation would be repeated.

With the general fading of interest in the “old west”, smaller audiences, increasing costs and a four thousand dollar a day overhead, and the growing popularity of motion pictures and professional sports, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show made its final Bay Area appearance in 1913, just months before going bankrupt and disbanding. True to nature, showman and entrepreneur William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody immediately went about getting into the motion picture business by seeking backing to shoot and distribute The Indian Wars, a five-reel silent film.

Belvoir Springs Hotel

The entire Bay Area, and especially The Tri-City area is so historically rich!  We have become aware of some of that richness, thanks to Bill Ralph who gathers enticing, and little-known facts about events, historic spots, key persons, their dreams and hopes, and brings them to life for us to marvel at the courage, foresight, and results of some of our predecessors’ efforts. Since we have received many positive comments about those articles, we are featuring a column each month entitled “Historic Snippets.”

Nestled on the hillside above Mission Blvd. across from downtown Niles and hidden from view by trees and bushes is the Belvoir Springs Hotel, one of several hostels serving the busy Southern Pacific depot at the turn of the last century. Giles and Nana Chittenden purchased the one hundred- and five-acre parcel and flowing spring from Jonas Clarkin in 1884 and built a large three-bedroom farmhouse.

Over the years the Chittendens developed a profitable fruit and nut orchard, dairy, and vegetable farm west of Sulphur Springs Ranch and adjacent to John Rocks’ California Nursery Company.  

With the beauty of the surroundings and Nana’s welcoming charm, they added a summer camp for friends and travelers, and guest rooms in the farm house basement to board school teachers and railroad employees during the winter months. When a fire destroyed much of the original building the Chittenden’s took the opportunity to replace it with three-bedroom a twenty-two-room craftsman style hotel they named Belvoir Springs (French for “Beautiful View”).

Niles was a sleepy agricultural community when Gilbert “Broncho Billy” Anderson and the cast and crew from Chicago’s Essanay Film Manufacturing Company arrived in town in 1912 with many of the troupe temporarily staying in tents on the hotel grounds.

As they found permanent housing, a who’s who of silent screen stars continued to visit the Belvoir Springs Hotel for lunch or dinner. Marguerite Clayton, Anderson’s leading lady, lived at the hotel, while Anderson, Augustus Carney, Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler, James Gleason, Edna Purviance, Ben Turpin and Charlie Chaplin could be spotted making their way from the studio on Niles Blvd., crossing the Southern Pacific tracks and Hayward-Mission San Jose Road and strolling up the shaded driveway to the hotel to dine and unwind after long days of cranking out fifteen-minute westerns and comedies.

The Essanay Studios closed in 1916 after four short years and the troupe left town just as quickly as they had arrived. Nana Chittenden decided to retire the following year and the once flourishing hotel changed hands multiple times in succeeding decades. The acreage was sold off piecemeal and the hotel allowed to fall into disrepair.

In 1994 new owners undertook a major renovation of the historic Belvoir Springs Hotel and its remaining grounds to create an upscale special events and extended stay venue. However, as of this date the website appears to be abandoned and the ambitious venture unsuccessful. Now a private residence, the historic hotel with the “beautiful view”, sits on the hillside above Niles, out of view and unknown by passing motorists on Mission Blvd.

California Nursery Company

In 1884 John Rock and four business associates purchased the Jose de Jesus Vallejo Adobe located on five hundred acres of rich alluvial soil near Alameda Creek in Niles, and established the California Nursery Company. Rock was an experienced nurseryman with three successful operations on Coyote Creek in San Jose and planned to focus the new site on wholesaling grape vines, ornamental plantings, roses, fruit and nut trees to California’s flourishing agricultural industry. He worked with Luther Burbank and other West Coast plant breeders in introducing new horticultural hybrids and within a few years listed nearly five hundred varieties of fruit trees, seven hundred ornamental shrubs and two hundred and fifty roses in his widely distributed mail order catalog.

The booming California Nursery Company, an occasional location for Bronco Billy silent western films, was commissioned to landscape a portion of the grounds of San Francisco’s Pan Pacific International Exposition in 1915 by providing four hundred Canary Island Palms to line the fair’s grand promenade. CNC also received a gold medal for its immersive redwood forest exhibit, attracting the attention of William Randolph Hearst who selected the Rock’s Niles based operation to landscape the grounds of his fabled San Simeon castle.  

Ownership of the nursery changed hands several times after Rock’s passing, and in 1917 George C. Roeding, proprietor of Fancher Creek Nurseries in Fresno, purchased California Nursery Company. George Jr. took over management from his father in 1926 and at the time employed as many as one hundred fifty workers, reached annual sales exceeding $200,000, and had customers located around the world.  Roeding guided the nursery through the great depression by scaling the grounds back to two hundred and sixty acres and receiving the assignment of landscaping the approaches to the newly completed Golden Gate Bridge.  California Nursery Company became a destination for local gardeners and aspiring horticulturists in the 1940’s and 50’s with up to five thousand attendees to the Annual Spring Bulb and Summer Rose Shows. The City of Fremont restored the Jose de Jesus Vallejo Adobe in 1975 and began the creation of the twelve-acre California Nursery Historical Park at the corner of Niles Blvd. and Nursery Avenue that now attracts curious visitors to its informative entry plaza, heirloom rose garden, towering palm trees, eclectic forest, shaded pathways and rich history.

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.