This Week in Marin History
Archives
December 2008

Gangsters in Sausalito?

In December of 1934, Sausalito resident John Paul Chase was captured near Mt. Shasta after he and friend Lester Gillis—aka Baby Face Nelson—killed two FBI agents in a shootout near Chicago.  Nelson also perished in the gun battle, and Chase was eventually found guilty of murder. The two men’s friendship was forged in Sausalito, a haven for bootleggers during Prohibition. Nelson, already a notorious gangster, settled there with his wife and son (they lived on Turney St.), helping Chase smuggle “hooch” into San Francisco via the Sausalito ferry terminal. The two men then crisscrossed the country on a crime spree, until that fateful November day in 1934. After his sentencing, Chase was sent directly to Alcatraz, where he served out a 26-year term.

Postcard of Alcatraz Island, c.1900. (Jeff Craemer Collection)

Christmas bear with all the trimmings

In the 1840s, the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais were a hunter’s paradise, and there was at least one Christmas dinner rich with wild game. Some reminiscences of Charles August Lauff, who had gone hunting with William Richardson, owner of the Sausalito Rancho: “In a few minutes we thought bedlam broke loose. Bears, deer, lions, wild cats and coyotes darted out in all directions…. Mr. Richardson and myself singled out a big brown grizzly and the first shot put him on his haunches… The Indians skinned the bear and after taking about fifty pounds of the choicest cuts for our Christmas dinner, we returned to Sausalito. It was the most exciting bear hunt I ever experienced.”

Mt. Tamalpais, c.1920s.
(Jeff Craemer Collection)

Not all sweetness and light

In December 1870, the Point Reyes Lighthouse transmitted light for the first time to help ships navigate the treacherous Pacific coastline. In one of the foggiest areas in North America, the lighthouse’s rotating beam could be seen for 24 nautical miles, emitted from a 3-ton lens comprised of more than 1,000 hand-cut prisms shipped from France. But manning the lighthouse wasn’t an easy job: Isolation, hard labor and extreme weather conditions drove a few attendants to “incidents of insanity, alcoholism, violence and insubordination.” According to the National Park Service, which now owns the lighthouse, one lighthouse keeper even took to drinking the alcohol shipped for cleaning the lens. Today the lighthouse is automated.

Postcard of Point Reyes Lighthouse, c. 1950s.

How the mighty have fallen

On December 6, 1887, borax was removed from the national list of commodities protected by tariff, sending William T. Coleman into ruin. Coleman, developer of San Rafael, Vice President of the San Francisco and North Pacific Railway and founder of the Marin County Water Company, gained much of his wealth from shipping and sugar. Then he bought a vast amount of property in Death Valley, the mother lode of borax (used to make everything from soap to enamel). He even invented a new method to process the mineral, also named colemanite in his honor. But when Grover Cleveland, who Coleman had talked about running against for the Presidency, took borax off the duty free list, it pushed Coleman into bankruptcy.

Portrait of William T. Coleman, c.1880s.

Fearless hometown hero

On December 1, 1917, Lytton Plummer Barber became the first citizen of Mill Valley to die during service in World War I. A Tamalpais High School athlete and charter member of Mill Valley’s Troop One, one of the oldest Boy Scout troops in California, the 18-year-old then went on to enlist in the aviation service. He was never deployed for battle—he died of meningitis 17 days after reporting to Camp Lewis in Washington. Described by his brother as a fearless hometown hero, on Memorial Day in 1918 Lytton Square (on Throckmorton between Miller Avenue and Corte Madera Avenue) was named in honor of the teenager, with a plaque commemorating the town’s first casualty of the Great War.

Located at present day Lytton Square, train depot in Mill Valley, c. 1920s.