Sac History Happenings

In the spirit of May Preservation Month, check out Sacramento Heritage's list of self-guided walking tours of some of the best historic areas in the city. The annotated maps and brochures will help you plan your jaunts whenever you want to go.

Tours include architectural landmarks downtown, on J and K Streets, Oak Park, Curtis Park and Boulevard Park. Plus there are bungalow tours in Midtown and East Sacramento.

If you want to see many of these sites from the comfort of home, Sacramento Heritage has posted several photo collections on its Flickr page.

Sacramento Heritage, Inc. is a public/private partnership whose mission is to preserve and promote the city's historic architecture. The organization conducts surveys, sponsors workshops and provides grants and loans for preservation efforts.

PHOTO CREDIT: Elks Building, 11th and J Sts., part of the J and K Street Commercial Corridor Walking Tour. 2001 Sacramento Bee photograph by Jay Mather

Picture postcards are a window into history. And postcards made with "real photos" have double the historical value.

This month the California State Library is sharing some of the best images from the E.F. Mueller Postcard Collection, some 2,590 items donated by the Las Vegas businessman. According to an article by Robert Greenwood, the "real" photographs on these cards depict a wide variety of California scenes, including "towns, factories, celebrities, social events, parades, mines, baseball teams, railroad stations, hotels, floods, etc."

The Library's Tumblr site, Around California in 30 Days, displays a notable Mueller postcard each day of the month starting on April 1. The first card shows famed aviator Charles A. Lindbergh leaving San Diego in the Spirit of St. Louis (1927).

You can see more images from the collection by searching "E F Mueller" in the State Library's online picture catalog.

PHOTO CREDIT: Oak Park streetcar scene by the Kropp Company. Courtesy Tom Myers, Sacramento: Inside History Series.

Like many businesses using Facebook, The Sacramento Bee's Fan Page went public last Friday. As Anne Gonzales reported recently, local companies are using the new format to further brand themselves and promote their products and services.

The Timeline feature in particular offers newspapers a place to show off archival material in a chronological format. The New York Times, for example, loaded its fan page with a fascinating collection of images tracking its evolution as a company and as a journalistic enterprise. It starts with the front page of the first edition of "The New-York Daily News" (Sept. 18, 1851, price 1 cent) and moving through innovations in printing, editing and distribution, and finally arriving at the Internet era.

The Bee chose to post front pages and photos reporting many of the top news events of the century. Notable among the front pages are the end of WWII in the Pacific, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the John F. Kennedy assassination, the 1927 Folsom Prison riot and the Hindenberg dirigible disaster.

The Bee's historic photos evoke major developments in local history, such as the major floods of 1955 and 1986, the opening of the K Street Mall in 1969, the 1975 attempted assassination of President Ford in Capitol Park and the loss of game seven by the Kings to the Lakers in the 2002 NBA Western Conference Finals.

See other newspaper historical timelines on Facebook:
Los Angeles Times
Chicago Tribune
Miami Herald
Wall Street Journal

PHOTO CREDIT: Sacramento's Memorial Auditorium opened in 1927.

Photography was a new medium when the San Francisco firm of Lawrence & Houseworth began documenting the early development of Northern California and Nevada in 1852. For over 40 years the company produced hundreds of vivid landscapes, portraits and stenographs.

Many of these images were preserved by L&H in three catalog albums used for print sales. Fortunately for present-day historians digital scans are now available online in a photo database maintained by the Society of California Pioneers.

You can easily find items in the nearly 1,500-image collection via keyword searching or browsing. Browsing categories include topics, such as mining and railroads, as well as places such as Nevada and San Francisco. Sacramento is tagged on some 55 images (but note: some of these refer to Sacramento St. in San Francisco.) Included are some remarkable pictures of the city's riverfront, bridges, streets and buildings.

Founded in 1850, the Society of California Pioneers is the state's oldest historical organization. Today the group functions as "a not-for-profit museum, library, and cultural organization dedicated to advancing the knowledge and appreciation of early California history for the benefit of present and future audiences of all ages."

PHOTO CREDIT: Sacramento City from the new Capitol Building, looking northwest -- the Sacramento River in the distance, circa 1860-70. Lawrence & Houseworth collection. Courtesy Society of California Pioneers

Happy President's Day!

To help you get in the mood, take a look at The Bee's gallery of notable presidential pictures, some serious, some less-than-serious.

You'll see such memorable moments as: George W. Bush's visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln to declare "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, Jimmy Carter fighting off the "killer rabbit," Ronald Reagan demanding that Mr. Gorbachev "tear down this wall" in Berlin, and Harry Truman crowing over the Chicago Tribune erroneous election headline.

We couldn't include every picture we'd like (being limited to what's in the paper's wire collection). So some obvious things are missing. Tell us what you would have included in the comment section below.

PHOTO CREDIT: President Lyndon Baines Johnson displays the incision from his gall bladder surgery and kidney stone removal at a news conference at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington in this Oct. 20, 1965. Associated Press photograph by Charles Tasnadi.

Sacramento Magazine posted a brief item concerning National Spirit of '45 Day (second Sunday of August), a day of remembrance honoring the generation that lived through the Depression and World War II. Congress approved the observance in a 2010 resolution.

Keep the Spirit of '45 Alive, the organization promoting the event, is soliciting images from families to go into the "Times Square Kiss" mosaic that will debut on Aug. 14, 2012. The group wants wedding photos or other pictures of couples who married between 1941 and 1945.

In addition Keep the Spirit also requests service photos of WWII vets to go into its Wall of Honor Project,

PHOTO CREDIT: David and Jane Morse on their wedding day, May 2, 1943, outside the Methodist Church in Elk Grove. Courtesy of the Morse family.

PHOTO CREDIT: Old Sacramento New Year's Eve Sky Spectacular. Courtesy Mike Testa, Sacramento Convention & Visitors Bureau

PHOTO CREDIT: Victorian Christmas in Nevada City, 2009. Courtesy Jesse Locks

If you're a fan of old pictures of people, cars, buildings and streets, you're going to love two websites that "mash up" Google Maps with historic images (snapshots, postcards, etc.).

History Pin encourages users to upload images containing date and location information. They're then displayed as pinpoints on the interactive Google Map system. It's easy to browse to any location to see what's been posted. There's also a timeline filter that let's you narrow the search to specific time periods. In addition to the map-based images, History Pin features image collections with a large variety of themes, such as "Christmas," "Vintage Cars and Vehicles" and "My Grandparents are Better Than Yours."

What Was There also solicits photos and locates them on a Google Map. But it goes one step further and superimposes the old image atop the current Street View. This allows you to see the snapshot or postcard, then let it fade away to show the contemporary scene underneath. The two views don't always line up exactly, but the system is pretty cool nonetheless.

I checked both sites for items related to the Sacramento region. Not much there, unfortunately. But that's easily remedied. Folks here can join and post on both systems for free.

PHOTO CREDIT: Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament superimposed on 1045 11th St., Sacramento.

Have you been putting off scanning your family's old photos? Digitizing prints with a conventional scanner can be a mind-numbing, laborious process. Now there's a new iPhone app that may make the job a little easier. (Android version to come.)

It's called Shoebox. It uses your phone's camera as a miniature scanner. You can shoot a snapshot and the software finds the edges and corrects the perspective. You can also manually crop, straighten, rotate, caption and tag the image.

I tested the app by scanning a 3x5 inch glossy picture of Anne Rudin with an iPhone 4 camera (right). The process is easy and quick, and the software automatically crops pretty well. But there can be glare from an indoor light source -- something that won't happen with a flatbed scanner.

Items scanned with Shoebox are saved in the cellphone and sent automatically to 1000memories, a free social media site where individuals and families can post pictures and organize them in timelines and family trees. You can also send pictures directly to Facebook.

And while we're on the subject, The Bee wants your family snapshots. Not recent ones, but vintage photos of your ancestors. The pictures don't have to be set in the Sacramento region (though that would be nice). And they don't have to be professionally done. Just be evocative of a historic period (through period clothing, vehicles, buildings, etc.).

Take a look at Scott Craig's contributions to the Bee's History User Photo Gallery. His family has lived in the region for many decades and he uploaded some interesting examples from his collection. You can add yours, too. Just fill out the form below the gallery, browse to the scanned (jpeg) photo in your computer and hit "Upload File".

PHOTO CREDITS: (top) Former Sacramento Mayor Anne Rudin in 1969 when she served as a City Council member. Sacramento Bee archives. The Craig Family, circa 1930s. Courtesy Scott R. Craig.

The Eichler Homes blog scores another hit with a beautifully-illustrated posting on the history of the California State Fair when it was located at Broadway and Stockton. The Fair moved to that site in 1909 and left for Cal Expo in 1968.

Included in the piece are family snapshots, vintage color postcards and a newspaper advertisement for the Fair. There's also a Bee newspaper photo of a man blasting off in a Bell Aerosystems rocket belt. But the kicker is the video clip of two locomotives crashing head-on as "entertainment" at the 1913 State Fair.

You can view many more historic State Fair photographs using the Center for Sacramento History online catalog.

PHOTO CREDIT: Children sit atop one of the Golden Bear statues in front of the Agriculture Building at the old State Fair grounds. 1957 Sacramento Bee file photo

Today is the 74th anniversary of the grand opening of the Golden Gate Bridge linking San Francisco and Marin County. To celebrate Alexis Madrigal, senior editor at The Atlantic magazine, put together a neat online exhibit on the festivities of May 27, 1937.

It's got a brief historic video showing airplanes flying overhead, warships steaming by, the parade of cars, etc. There's also a slideshow of black-and-white photos documented the construction and celebration. Finally there's Golden Gate Bridge Fiesta, the official souvenir program that's filled with pictures, advertisements, schedules, and articles about the bridge's construction and the prominent movers and shakers who made it happen.

Worth a look.

PHOTO CREDIT: The Golden Gate Bridge is shown after catwalks spanned the north (top) and south towers at the end of 1935. Sacramento Bee file photo.

Our history-minded colleagues at the San Francisco Chronicle recently launched an appealing series of historic images selected from the newspaper's photo archives.

Let's Go to the Morgue! has appeared about weekly in the Chron's Baby Blog since February. Each gallery covers a fascinating aspect of Bay Area history. The latest posting illustrates The Birth of BART with photos from the 1960s and 70s of construction and early operation of the regional transit system.

Other galleries include:

* Four Decades of Nudists in the Bay Area (rated PG)
* Willie Mays and the Children of the Bay Area
* A hundred years of the Emporium in San Francisco
* The Japan Air Lines miracle water landing of 1968
* Looking back at Playland at the Beach
* Four decades of Bay Area baseball fans
* Skid Row in San Francisco through the years
* Six decades of roller derby in the Bay Area
* Remembering the 1973 oil crisis
* Historic snow photos

PHOTO CREDIT: A BART test train stops at the Lake Merritt Station en route to Hayward, 1973. Courtesy Bay Area Rapid Transit.

At the start of spring, the University of California Press released a new arts, culture, and history-based publication called Boom: A Journal of California.

The first issue features several scholarly articles which address California's economic and social difficulties (titles include "How to Fix a Broken State" by Joe Matthews and Mark Paul, and "Race and the Mythology of California's Lost Paradise" by Daniel HoSang.) A music-related article by Jesse Drew, Associate Professor of Technocultural Studies at UC Davis, addresses something slightly different.

The article, titled "Country Music's California Heart," discusses the musical genre's reputation as an art form steeped in traditional or conservative values, and the ways in which those values may be at odds with California as a place of "nontraditional lifestyles, radical protest movements and a rejection of the status quo." In the article, Drew considers where California Country music fits into the vast political spectrum.

"County Music's California Heart" features images obtained from the Center for Sacramento History and makes specific reference to longtime Sacramento resident Bob Wills, his western swing band, the Texas Playboys, and the bygone era of Wills Point (an entertainment venue located near today's I-80 off ramp to Auburn Boulevard.) Some Sac History Happenings readers may be surprised to know that country music has locally established roots...

Information regarding subscriptions to Boom: A Journal of California may be found at the following link: http://ucpressjournals.com/journal.asp?j=boom and details regarding Jesse Drew's current film project "Big Country: The Politics of Country Music" may be found through his website: http://www.jessedrew.com/ 

IMAGE CREDIT: Postcard of Wills Point, Courtesy of the Center for Sacramento History, City of Sacramento Collection, 2001/x-03/0126

The Allies were able to win World War II partly because the United States transformed its industrial capacity to produce the massive amount of weapons, ammunition and equipment needed by the troops. With so many men in uniform, women stepped up to fill the labor shortage in war industries. Richmond was the center of west coast ship building. By the end of the war one-third of the 90,000 workers there were women.

Calisphere, the University of California's catalog of digitized historical resources, celebrates Women's History Month with a collection of photos from the Richmond Shipyards. A few of these were taken by famed photographer Dorothea Lange. The most amusing image is a dress code poster that advises female workers not to come to work in high heels, jewelry and nylon stockings.

The contributions of "Rosie the Riveter" (or "Wendy the Welder," as she was known in California) are memorialized at the WWII Home Front National Historic Park in Richmond. The park has a terrific online exhibit filled with articles, photos, artifacts and oral histories of women shipyard workers. In 2000 The Bee published a story about the planning of the Rosie the Riveter memorial which later opened in 2003. The article includes an interview with Ollie M. Hawkins, an African American woman who started working in the shipyards at age 18.

PHOTO CREDIT: Richmond Shipyard welding crew. Courtesy of the Clem Family and the Rosie the Riveter Project

Frank Buckles, the last known living veteran of World War I, died on Feb. 27 at age 110. The 16-year-old Buckles enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1917 by convincing recruiters he was 21. He served in France as an ambulance driver.

To commemorate his passing, a student at St. Helena High School painted his portrait in watercolor. The artist, Georgia McCain, is a member of the WWI Research Institute at the school. The Institute, which began as an elective class in 2008, is a team of dedicated students who study the Great War under the guidance of a history teacher. The group maintains a permanent exhibit in the school library that includes uniforms, medals, diaries, letters, photos, scrap books and written memoirs. Their web site includes war photos, posters and brief articles related to the conflict.

IMAGE CREDIT: "In Memoriam: Mr. Frank Woodruff Buckles, February 1, 1901-February 27, 2011" by Georgia McCain.

The volatile weather has got folks wondering if it will snow overnight. Weather experts expect just a light dusting in the Valley.

The white stuff doesn't fall often in Sacramento, and the prospect reminds us of past snowfall in the city. When did it last snow appreciably? That's a matter of contention. According to Climate of Sacramento, California, NOAA's almanac of weather records, there have been trace amounts in 2002, 1996, 1988 and 1988. But you have to go back to Feb. 5, 1976 to get any accumulation (2 inches).

NOAA's climate records go back to 1879. In these 132 years snow fell in Sacramento only 42 times (and only 14 times with more than a trace). The biggest month in history was January 1888 when a total of 3.6 inches came down.

The Center for Sacramento History has some vintage Sacramento snow photos in its online catalog, mostly from the Jan. 30, 1922 storm.

PHOTO CREDIT: Chibi, the dog, has second thoughts about wandering around Land Park in the snow. Land Park pro Don Oreb braved the weather to give a putting lesson to 4 year old Rickey Gregson on Feb. 5, 1976. Leo Neibaur / Sacramento Bee

Calisphere, UC Berkeley's portal to the online resources of the California Digital Library, is commemorating Black History Month with five themed collections of photos illustrating the state's  evolving African American community from the Gold Rush through the 1980s:

Gold Rush Era to 1900
The Struggle for Economic Equality (1900-1950s)
Community Life (1950s-1980s)
Politics and Community (1970s-present)
Civil Rights and Social Reform (1950s-1970s)

Each theme is accompanied by a brief historical overview and suggested uses by teachers. In addition there are links to California-related pictures of famous African Africans such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Bunche, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X.

PHOTO CREDIT: Afro-American Council, 13th annual meeting, Oakland, 1907. Bancroft Library.

The Bee received an email from Phil Watts in Colorado asking if we might help him identify the origins of a silver teapot he bought last year at an auction. The teapot has an intriguing "Sacramento 6" logo superimposed on a clock face, and the silver mark on the bottom indicates the year 1925. (You can click on the images below to call up high-res versions.)

Watts is a railroad history buff. And because the teapot came with a conductor's bell punch, he strongly suspects the pot came from an old Sacramento train -- perhaps a parlor car of the Sacramento Northern Railway, an interurban electric rail line that operated in the first half of the 20th century.

One other possibility is that "Sac 6" was used on the SS City of Sacramento, a ferry that ran between Vallejo and San Francisco in the 1920s. Apparently the ferry line offered companion fares with the Sacramento Northern Railway. That could explain the connection between the teapot and the train conductor's bell punch.

Of course the teapot could have come from a local hotel or coffee house, but Watts is betting on the train. Now folks at the California State Railroad Museum weren't able to identify the piece. So we appeal to this blog's readers. If you have any insight into the origin of the teapot or the meaning of the "Sacramento 6" logo, let us know in the comments below.

Watts is also interested in hearing from people who have memories of the regional interurban trains of that period, particularly the opulent dining cars. It was a long time ago, but you never know. You can email him directly at: SSSGEN@aol.com.

If you "Like" the Facebook page for the Sacramento Public Library, you will receive the additional bonus of the Sacramento Room's Picture of the Month album. Each month, the Sacramento Room shares a new image from one of its many historical collections. The captions for each image include information about how to access the featured collection. In past months, the Library has highlighted Sacramento city directories, yearbooks, sheet music, the 1916 Carnegie library blueprints, photographs from the Sacramento Room's online digital collections, historical maps, and archival collections.

Visit the Sacramento Public Library Facebook page at www.facebook.com/saclibrary to learn more.

PHOTO CREDIT: Directory and color advertisement from the 1909 Sacramento City Directory, published by the Sacramento Directory Co.

Blogger, photographer and Sacramento Connect partner Kari Bluff needs your help. She's trying to identify any of the girls in the above photograph taken in 1928 outside a horse barn in Hagginwood. (Click on the image to see a larger view.)

Why is she interested? Well, Bluff says in her blog that this old barn, now a part of Craigmont Equestrian Center, used to house her horse, Moose. Out of curiosity she did some research and found online this vintage picture of the polo team, archived at the Sacramento Public Library's Special Collections.

Bluff would like to find any relatives of the girls pictured. She makes this request, which we pass on to you:

So I'm asking you a favor, dear readers. If you live in Sacramento, or have older family members who grew up there, would you mind passing this post on to them and see if they remember having a female relative who was a horse person when she was younger? We really would love to track down even one family of one of the girls in the above picture, and bring them out the barn. How cool would that be -- seriously? I love stories, and I'd love to help unravel this one.

If you have information, contact Kari Bluff at: kari@howiseelife.com.

PHOTO CREDIT: A July 2, 1928, photograph of the girls' polo team from the Sacramento Riding Association. The 15 members and 4 ponies pose in front of the barn in Hagginwood, which later became Barbara Worth Stables. Photo by Frederick-Burkett Foto Service. Courtesy of the Special Collections of the Sacramento Public Library.

A number of Sacramento archives and libraries are providing access to tens of thousands of historic photographs of Sacramento through online digital collections. Many years of work have gone into digitizing and describing these collections, and although they continue to grow, they still represent only the tip of the iceberg when compared to the physical resources preserved at local repositories. 

Here are just a few of the collections now available online:

Visitors can search and view nearly 20,000 California photographs, prints and drawings in the California State Library's Picture Catalog.  The images represent approximately 10% of the library's historic image collection.

The Center for Sacramento History has millions of photographs in its physical collections and its online Pastperfect database boasts over 50,000 images.

Thanks to generous support from the Sacramento Public Library Foundation, the Sacramento Room recently launched the Sacramento Room Digital Collections website.  The site currently features over 3,000 historic Sacramento photographs, menus and postcards.

Over 2,000 images of Sacramento transportation and agriculture are on display at Sacramento History Online.  Completed in 2004, the digitization project is a joint venture of the Center for Sacramento History, California State Library's California History Room, California State Railroad Museum Library and Sacramento Public Library's Sacramento Room.

Professional photographer Mark Zwahlen, who blogs at Living in Urban Sac, has sent us links to some beautiful images reflective of Sacramento's frontier past.

Take a look at Zwalen's gallery from the last Gold Rush Days, the annual Labor Day weekend festival that transforms Old Sacramento into an 1850s boom town. The district's historic buildings are the perfect backdrop for horse-drawn wagons, carriages and buggies; costumed re-enactors portraying soldiers, gunfighters, old-time musicians and pioneers; steamboats and old locomotives. The photos were taken Sept. 3 & 5, 2010.

Another gallery, Sacramento Urban Pleasures, contain many images of interest to local historians. Most of these are vintage buildings located downtown or close by, including: the Sacramento Grand Ballroom; Crest Theater; Memorial Auditorium; Amtrak Station; Citizen Hotel; Ruhstaller Building; Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament; and Capital National Bank Building. There are also some nice pictures of old homes in Curtis Park, Midtown, Land Park and other neighborhoods.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gold Rush Days, Old Sacramento, Sept. 2010. Photo by Michael Zwahlen.

History fans who also love gadgets will appreciate the mobile version of "Today's Document," a fascinating collection of 365 of the National Archives' most important and interesting holdings. The application, which has been available for Android phones, came last week to the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. You can download it free at the iTunes App Store.

When you launch the program you immediately see the day's featured item. This could be a historically significant photograph, painting, letter or document. Today the app shows "An act making an alteration in the Flag of the United States" by the Third Congress. Signed by President George Washington in 1794, the bill gave the flag 15 stripes and 15 stars to reflect the admission of new states Vermont and Kentucky. (Of course, the flag design did return to 13 stripes as more states joined the Union.)

You can also browse dates randomly, or select a specific date like your birthday. On Feb. 2 (my birthday), the United States and Mexico in 1848 signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican American War and ceded 55 percent of Mexico's territory (including California) to this country.

IMAGE CREDIT: Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. General Records of the United States Government, 1778-1992. U.S. National Archives.

To commemorate Jerry Brown's third inauguration, The Bee and the Center for Sacramento History collaborated on an online picture gallery of the state's chief executives (1848 to date). Most of these images come from the Center's photo archives. You can view more photos of Brown and other governors by searching the CSH web catalog, which contains some 50,000 images. (But note: not all of the Center's holdings are accessible in this database.)

And speaking of California chief executives, the California State Library recently revived its Governors' Gallery, which had been out of commission for several months. This is a handy source for brief biographies, official portraits and inaugural addresses.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jerry Brown tests a telephone powered by photovoltaic cells in 1979. (Center for Sacramento History. Sacramento Bee Collection. Photo by Michael Williamson.)