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18 • JUNE 2015
THE PETALUMA POST
Skip Sommer has restored historic
properties in Sonoma and Marin
Counties, including The Great
Petaluma Mill, The River House and
Larkspurs famed Lark Creek Inn. He
has been credited with initiating restoration of Petaluma's historic downtown. Skip is an honorary life member
of Heritage Homes of Petaluma, a life
member of The Petaluma Museum
and recipient of Petaluma’s Good Egg
of the Year award. He contributed to
the book: "Celebrating Petaluma".Email: skipsommer@hotmail.com.
L
ast April, it was
announced that
S M A RT, w h i c h
will run our soonto-be-commuter trains,
wanted to give away the
1904 railroad swing-bridge
over the Petaluma River and
replace it next September,
with a new $16 million dollar
model. Our present one,
they reflected, was a “good
old bridge”.
In 1904, the Petaluma
Argus headlined that the
“good old bridge” was a
“wonderful engineering feat”
which had, (then), replaced
the old 152-foot wooden
bridge with a forged steel
300,000 pound 182-foot
swing-bridge. The final day
of installation drew a large
crowd of onlookers. While,
…. in other ’04 RR news,
a Petaluma freight train
had tumbled off the tracks
into our Creek, causing…..
“consternation”.
Petaluma was still a
small town in 1904, as the
Argus announced in April,
that “Citizens appeared
before the City Board with
strong protests against the
hog pens on Western and
Baker Sts.” (The pig stys were
removed just 12 days later,
as we were becoming soooo
sophisticated). …One local
ad suggested that, if you had
a toothache, or a sick cat,
you could go to “Dr. Ralph
Mazza, Veterinary Surgeon
and Dentist”, to get both
fixed. ….(I Wonder if he
sterilized his instruments?)
That month, it was also
advertised that “Norris &
Rowes Big New Shows with
2-RINGS-2 ” would be
playing the baseball grounds
here and featuring,…..
(Are you ready for this?):
“Elephants, camels, lions,
tigers, hyenas, tapirs, llamas,
buffalo, kangaroos, elk, deer,
ponies, goats, ostriches,
monkeys and educated
seals” ! (Hopefully, not all
in the same ring, at the same
time). (Anyhow, what would
P.E.T.A. say?)
In 1904, you could get
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PETALUMAPOST.COM
Stories from the Past
The Bridge at Haystack Landing
by History Editor Skip Sommer
a roast beef sandwich in
Petaluma for 5 cents. And, if
such dining-out had become
a ‘chubby’ problem for you,
you could purchase a “Nemo
Self-Reducing Corset, just
$3.00 at Phillips and Tough,
under the clock tower“… to
encase your problem with
rubber.
And, if you were
interested in real estate, this
ad from Conley & Lamb
would get attention: “3 acres
in City. Good house. Cow.
650 hens. 14 chicken houses.
2 incubators. $2,900.”(That
was IN Petaluma !)
You could ride over to
s e e t h a t p ro p e r t y i n a
horseless carriage, if you
were one of the very few,
fortunate enough to own one
at that time.
And, on May 24th 1904,
it was announced: “A. B.
Hill to wed Miss Fairbanks”.
Thus, merging two of
Petaluma’s founding families.
Their fathers, Hiram
Fairbanks and William Hill,
had both struck it rich in
1849 and brought their gold
to the Petaluma Valley, to
found competing banks and
feed mills. (The Fairbanks
mansion, still one of the
largest homes in Petaluma,
has three stories and seven
bedrooms on the corner of
8th and ‘D’ Sts.)
Speaking of ‘founding
fathers’: On May 24th 1904,
our paper said: “The McNear
Company to construct a
two story brick building
on Kentucky Street for
mercantile purposes”. It
was to sport a “Massive iron
front, the first in the city,
on the Main Street side“….
It’s now McNear’s Bar and
Grill…. (Petaluma was
just getting public sewers in
1904, but you can bet that
Mr. John McNear, Esq. had
hooked-up early-on).
Nationally, it was a heck
of a year. Albert Einstein had
just published his Theory of
Relativity, The Dow Jones
Industrial Average had just
broken 100 ! (now 1,8000+),
the first motion picture had
been released, Wilbur Wright
had just flown the first
aircraft, the United States,
under Teddy Roosevelt, had
taken over the construction
of the Panama Canal and,
on February 5th, the U.S.
had ended its occupation
of Cuba.
In San Francisco, in
1904, The Bank of Italy
h a d b e e n f o u n d e d . ( It
would eventually become
t h e Ba n k o f A m e ri c a ).
Also, in “The City”, China
Town was finally recovering
from a disastrous four-year
stretch of the Bubonic
Plague, which had take 113
lives there.
No one knew then, that
an incredible earthquake
was just 16 months away….
It would change everything,
but… the “good old bridge”
would be unaffected and
live-on for another 111+ years.
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