Marin County CA Archives History - Books .....VI The Town On Shark Point: Tiburon 1958 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/copyright.htm http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/ca/cafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com April 11, 2007, 12:58 am Book Title: Shark Point - High Point VI The Town on Shark Point: Tiburon IF EVER A TOWN was a reflection of one man, Tiburon once was such a town. In order to have a station for his new railroad branch, Peter Donahue literally brought in a town. From the banks of Petaluma Creek in Sonoma County, Donahue floated down the entire community of Donahue's Landing, except for the track, the wharf and the people. He floated down the two-storied Sonoma House Hotel, four twelve-room houses for his employees, the depot, the round house, and the engine house. Barges brought in new rails. The move was completed by 1884. On May Day of that year the James M. Donahue brought several hundred guests from the city for the official opening. The North Pacific Coast Railroad had brought its narrow gauge into Reed Station (behind present-day Bel Aire) in 1875 but not until after the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad had extended lines to San Rafael in 1879 was it practical to build the branch line into Tiburon. Many years before the railroad came, Tiburon furnished water for San Francisco. According to Arthur H. Dakin, engineer and long-time resident of Tiburon, there was a big tank on Mar East built in 1846 near what is now called Waterspout Point. It was filled with water from springs in the hills by means of half-logs which were hollowed out and used as flumes. Ships anchored offshore to fill oak barrels and take them back to the city. Main Street, which at first was just a narrow spit of land with water on both sides, was the business center of the entire area for about seventy years. Old pictures taken in the 1890s and early 1900s show a busy street with wooden awnings over the false fronts of the stores and saloons, and big ferry boats tied up at the dock. It was a tough waterfront street in its day, and there are stories of shootings, rowdy week-ends, and rum-running. Three times the business section was burned down and each time it was re-built. There was no traffic problem then, with the horses and buggies and wagons. But as more people moved to the peninsula, after World War II, the stores became outgrown and there was not enough room for cars. Then the Boardwalk Shopping Center was built in 1955 and the drug store, bank and post office moved there to have more space. On September 24-25, 1955, local artists and other citizens painted all the old buildings to "save" the street. Mrs. Palmer Field originated this "paint-up". One of the leaders of the project was John Falter, whose Saturday Evening Post covers include several local scenes and people. Even before this, it had been noticed that the street was becoming sort of a tourist center, with specialty shops, restaurants and professional offices gradually replacing the groceries and other small businesses. In 1956 Fred W. Zelinsky, who had been a weekend resident of Belvedere for many years, bought much of the Main Street property. He put in more shops and a theater, the Tiburon Playhouse. On the corner where Peter Donahue's Sonoma House once stood, Musso's Bakery still attracts customers from far and wide. As we have mentioned before, in the early days the lagoon waters lapped at the back doors of Tiburon's Main Street, and Beach Road was a narrow strip of land. Then the Corinthian Yacht Club, Israel Kashow (see chapter on Belvedere) and the Belvedere Land Company agreed to pump out mud with a suction dredge in front of the Tiburon ferry slips, the yacht club and in Belvedere Cove. The pumping was done by the San Francisco Dredging Company in 1928. The area from the foot of Reed School to Corinthian Island is a result of this fill. After the mud settled (a process which took several years), the state put in a road from the Alto Wye to Tiburon. It was completed in 1930. Before the highway was built, cutting across the peninsula from Highway 101, the main access to Tiburon by road was over the San Rafael Avenue "spit", a natural sand spit, and through Belvedere. According to Britton Rey (named for his famous grandfather's partner, Joseph Britton - of Britton & Rey, lithographers) Belvedere city manager and life-time resident of the area, this was originally a military road built for access to Angel Island via Tiburon. The road was built by a Major Hawthorne of the U. S. Army Engineers, for whom Hawthorne Terrace is named. Earlier there was a winding road into the present Lyford's Cove area around Red Hill, above the Recreation Center and St. Hilary's Church. It connected with Vistazo Street. Present-day residents recall that Hugh Boyle Jr., from whom they bought their property, told them that Vistazo followed an old road, and he called it the Old Spanish Trail. Vistazo was one of the streets laid out by Dr. Lyford, who also built many rock walls. Dr. Lyford was the first to envision a real estate development in this area. He called his development Hygeia, after the goddess of health, and set it out on the Tiburon peninsula. Dr. Lyford wanted to make the peninsula a model community which would be a paradise of health. The wall which was to encircle the community was never completed, though the stone tower which was part of one of the original gates still stands on Paradise Drive. Gustav Behrnd, who came from Germany, was Dr. Lyford's architect. The streets of Hygeia were to be sixty feet wide. They followed the natural contour of the land so accurately that modern Tiburon very nearly matches the Hygeia plan. Some of his names were Vistazo (Vast View), Mar Street (Street by the Sea), Centra (Center between Vistazo and Mar), Solano (Sunshine), and Diviso (Dividing Street). Something of Lyford's dream can be read in his pamphlet, "Hygeia", published in 1895: "When we contemplate the pure water, pure milk, and balmy invigorating air, our vista of coming years will be largest in any land or among any people. . . It is a prophecy that is being verified: that San Francisco would be the connecting link between the Orient and the Occident and become the largest and most populous city in the world". Lyford used great care in selecting the grantees and only those of unimpeachable character were given deeds to lots in Hygeia. On Mrs. Charles A. Kircher's deed (one of the oldest deeds from Lyford) we saw clauses forbidding smoking, drinking, or kissing on the property. In his brochure he said he wanted to keep out the "vices and vampires". A Mr. Tilley was refused his grant to the Tiburon property several times - once because he brought a check as payment, once because Dr. Lyford said he had changed his mind about selling. Finally, after counting out the gold in the bank pouch, Lyford gave Tilley the grant. Older Tiburon residents remember the tall, white-suited figure of the doctor in his high silk hat and cape. He was blind in later life, and always demanded payment in U. S. gold eagles. The stone tower on Paradise Drive formed part of an archway leading to the Lyford estate and "Hygeia". According to one story, as late as 1907 there was a steel plate door across the roadway where on Sundays Dr. Lyford himself would stand guard and collect a fee of twenty-five cents per person for those who wished to picnic on his estates. Other older residents do not place the gate at the tower or remember that he collected a fee. Instead, they say, keys were given to friends. "It has been the purpose of the builder of this Hygeia", wrote Dr. Lyford, "as a crowning act of his life to build a city at Point Tiburon that would be . . . the abode of the strong, healthy and happy community, and in this connection to establish a higher plane of existence and work out a very interesting social and physiological problem for mankind". In a sense, the Tiburon Peninsula is Dr. Lyford's dream for it, a stable but growing community, convenient to but remote from the city of San Francisco. Lyford's theories are too numerous to quote in their entirety. He designed a revolutionary sewage system for San Francisco, for example. But his ideas on the healthy climate are most interesting and deserve quotation here: "While more money cannot restore health, science, aided by money does aid the valetudinanian in building up his wasted frame, and by increased modes of communication with the remotest parts of the earth science has investigated and tested the climatic conditions in thousands of places. [This is] a climate that seems to be the acme of perfection, due mainly to the Kiero-Seive or Pacific Ocean flowing along the coast with an accompanying stream of warm air and to the coast and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges. Both are equal modifiers and equalizers of temperature and rainfall. The ocean factor determines generally the direction of atmospheric motion over the state, and charges the air with moisture, raising low and depressing high temperatures; altitude, topography and proximity to the ocean and mountains are the principal causes of variation between sections." His final justification for the healthy suburban community is this: "In all great cities the various gases that exude from decomposition and especially during the night, foster disease, lessen vitality, and are the primal causes of the great mortality in centers of dense population." Located at the east end of Tiburon is Keil Cove, a beautiful estate of thirty-eight acres now owned by Russell D. Keil. He inherited it from his uncle, Hugo Keil, whose father, David, bought the property from Dr. Lyford. It is said that they saw the property while looking for a site for what is now the Corinthian Yacht Club, and that Lyford may have refused to sell any land for a yacht club. Lyford had an old frame building there known as the Rose Cottage, where he conducted mysterious scientific experiments. David Keil was from Germany and came to California via New York in the Gold Rush days. He tried his hand at Pony Express riding and gold mining, and drove the first stage over the Stockton-Sonora route. The story of the Tiburon school is told in another chapter. Perhaps its most famous graduate is Sam Chapman, major league baseball player for many years. He is a graduate of Tamalpais High and the University of California as well as Tiburon Grammar School, and at Cal was also an ail-American football player. In baseball he played for Philadelphia and Cleveland as well as the Oakland Oaks and Tiburon Pelicans. Sam Chapman's uncle, William V. Beyries, who had a grocery store on Main Street for many years (as his father did before him) played with professional teams in the East and Midwest. George and Fred Mantegani were Tiburon stars, as were Johnny Simontacchi, Lloyd Bird and Frank Mulane, to name a few. Tiburon is known as a baseball town, and it is also a railroad town and a commuter town. There are many reasons why visitors come to Tiburon - to see the view, fish off the point, visit Main Street, take out a boat from Varney's, or tie up at the dock at Sam's Anchor Cafe. Favorite subjects for artists and photographers are old St. Hilary's Church and boats coming through Raccoon Strait on regatta days. As we have already observed, much of the history of our peninsula started with the San Francisco Bay commercial and pleasure boats in these waters. Tiburon and Belvedere Coves have sheltered many boats of all kinds and sizes. On week-ends people from San Francisco and all parts of the bay area come and anchor here just to get away from it all. There are no other coves quite like these: easy to navigate, easy to reach from any part of the bay, but off the commercial fishing lanes. Another part to the story of the coves is that of the herring runs. Every year about the first of January, a large school of silver herring enters the coves. During the year these fish have lived in deeper waters, moving in groups that would probably number into the millions. But they come into coves once yearly to lay their eggs. The signal that the herring have come is the circling of the gulls and hundreds of other water birds. The seals and the sea lions, thus warned, head in too. For days you can hear the sharp, yelping barks of the sea lions and the squeaking cry of the gulls. Now you will find only a few people fishing when the herring come in. But because the fish are valuable food as well as frozen bait for cod, this wasn't always the picture. It used to be that for these two weeks of the month the commercial fishermen would come into the coves about 5 o'clock every night for their appointment with the herring of the "run". They would lay out their great gill nets and keep watch until early morning when the hauls were made. Sea lions would try to get the fish and get tangled in the nets. The fishemen, angry at this damage to the nets, would turn spotlights on the sea lions and then shoot them. By 2 a. m. the catch would be taken into Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Between the barking of the seals, the spotlights and the shooting, Belvedere and Tiburon residents got little sleep. At first they outlawed shooting at night. But the fishermen just began harpooning by spotlight. So laws were finally passed outlawing any commercial fishing in these waters. Additional Comments: Extracted from: Shark Point - High Point An Illustrated History of TIBURON & BELVEDERE IN MARIN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA BY EIGHTH GRADERS OF THE REED SCHOOL CLASSES OF 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958 PUBLISHED BY THE REED SCHOOL DISTRICT PARENT-TEACHER CLUB BELVEDERE-TIBURON MCMLVIII Designed by Lawton Kennedy, San Francisco 3000 Copies Printed by R. G. Fontana & Son, San Anselmo File at: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ca/marin/history/1958/sharkpoi/vitownon516nms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/cafiles/ File size: 14.1 Kb