This Week in Marin History
Archives
July 2009

Girls just want to have fun?

On July 22, 1920, a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle screamed, “Scenery Scandalized by Goings-On!” Lagunitas, it seemed, was filling up with “unsavory characters” discharged from passenger trains on weekends. According to one eyewitness, “…women wearing breeches who act like pigs, scampering half naked among the trees, conducting revels at night and starting fires…” Some thirty years before, the San Francisco Wave had reported that “the borders of Lagunitas Creek are lined with tents.” Campers (and scandalous revelers) largely disappeared from the San Geronimo Valley with the demise of train service.

Lagunitas train depot, c.1917.

Beloved father

On July 14, 1832, Padre Juan Amoros died at Mission San Rafael Archangel after managing it for 13 years. Indeed, it was under his leadership that Mission San Rafael gained official status as the 20th California Mission. Artisan and scholar, Father Amoros worked tirelessly on behalf of the resident Native Americans (he baptized some 2,000 of them), building workshops and teaching them carpentry and agricultural skills (the Mission was renowned for its pears). While his diet was allegedly sparse, he carried “grapes, raisins and figs in the sleeves of his robe for the children.” After his death, his “weeping charges” laid him to rest in the Mission church.

Illustration of what Mission
San Rafael Archangel might have looked like, c. 1830s.

Happening hotel

On July 8, 1891, the Sausalito News poked fun at the social swirl going on in neighboring Mill Valley. At the center of the frivolity was the Blithedale Hotel, which featured parties, plays and such activities as fishing and burro rides up Mt. Tamalpais. (“Fashionable” guests included the Sutros, Astons and Monteagles.) Years before San Francisco physician Dr. John Cushing had homesteaded 360 “lost” acres between John Reed’s rancho to the east and William Richardson’s land to the west, where he built a sanitarium and a large home he called Blithedale--after Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Blithedale Romance.” His heirs opened the summer resort hotel after his death in 1879.

Dr. John Cushing, c. 1850. MHM, Joseph Seminario Collection

Old salt

On July 4, 1861, Alfred Easkoot married Amelia L. Dumar of Philadelphia, and ten years later settled on land he owned at Stinson Beach—then known as Willow Camp. Squint-eyed and weather-beaten, Easkoot spent much of his life at sea and then served as Marin County’s first surveyor. After retiring to the beach, he rented tents to tourists and charmed their children, letting them look through his telescope at the Farallones. After his wife died, however, the grizzly old captain became a recluse—brandishing a shotgun when anyone came near his home. A creek running through Stinson Beach bears his name, and a New England-style house he built for Amelia still stands today.

Alfred Easkoot's house at what is now called Stinson Beach, c.1949.