We are pleased to offer Anne Homan's "Do You Remember?" series published in The Independent. Click on any article below to download that article in PDF format.
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Autograph books started in the mid-sixteenth century. Their
popularity died out with the publication of yearbooks; nowadays
students write good wishes on their yearbook pages. In autograph
books people wrote short poems or aphorisms, Biblical or literary
quotations, perhaps a prophesy; some just signed their names. Others
made drawings, occasionally elaborate ones.
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Before the days of refrigeration and supermarkets, housewives
shopped almost daily at their local butcher’s shop. The
cattle and sheep raised on the valley hills made for a plentiful
supply of local meat. Before refrigeration, ice was shipped in
by the railroads.
Peter McKeany came to Livermore in 1871 and opened the
City Meat Market in rented space.
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DOT SVETTS
Anne Homan - The Independent
September 27, 2007
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. . . if there
were a local hall of fame, she would be in it because of her leadership
with the Livermore Area Recreation and Park District. During
her 20 years as a recreation supervisor and administrator, she
established programs for all age groups, from tiny tots to seniors.
Svetts built LARPD into a living force in the community.” LARPD
named the new city tennis headquarters at 991 Loyola Way for
her: Dorothy Svets Tennis Center.
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Peter Catanich and his sister Catarina came to the United
States from Dalmatia in 1870, and he built the two-story frame
Morning Star Hotel at the southwest corner of First and L Streets
in Livermore four years later. |
JOESVILLE
Anne Homan - The Independent
September 13, 2007 |
The lead in a Livermore News article in 1955 said, “Joesville
is named after a man whose name isn’t Joe. But most people call
him Joe.” Today’s Rock House Sports Pub and Grill and the
Castle Rock Restaurant on Portola Avenue are on the old site of
Joesville, the legacy of a stonemason born in Lugano, Switzerland,
near the Italian border in 1887.
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Livermore's performing arts theater has a name: The Bankhead Theater. |
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It is said that the sensuous, grassy hills surrounding the Livermore
Valley have only two seasons — wet and dry. From October
until May, residents can expect a rainy day once in a while.
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The Young farmhouse was located in the hills between Patterson
Pass and the Altamont. |
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In 1850 California became a state, largely because of the
tremendous influx of Argonauts. In August 1896 another gold
discovery started a new stampede, this time to Alaska and the
Klondike, places of alien beauty more difficult to access. A
number of people from Livermore heard the siren call. The
Livermore Echo often published letters from Alaskan travelers.
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Thomas D. Carneal was born in the governor’s mansion in
Jackson, Mississippi; his grandfather, lawyer and lawmaker Henry
Stuart Foote, was governor, having defeated Jefferson Davis for
the post on a Union ticket. In November 1854, when Tom was 17
months old, he came with his grandfather and mother to California.
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The 1880 Alameda County census shows that the Irish were by
far the largest group of foreign-born settlers in Murray Township.
Often, they followed the usual custom of many immigrants by
sending travel money back to Ireland for their relatives and friends
to follow in their footsteps. Even the name of our township is
Irish, named for the first member of the family, Michael Murray,
who came in here in 1850 and bought property from José María
Amador.
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The first library in Livermore was organized by the Livermore
Library and Dramatic Association shortly before April
1875. Family membership was $3 annually or $20 for a life
membership.
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In the late 1960s, a 235-foot-high earth-filled dam was built
across the Arroyo del Valle to create a reservoir for the South Bay
Aqueduct system. The project employed a total of 279 people. A
Herald reporter described work being done on the dam even at
night: “A spectacular scene awaits visitors who drive to the observation
area after sunset.
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Livermore is the home of six world champions: Johnie
Schneider, Vern and Vic Castro, and Ted in the rodeo
world, Max Baer in boxing and Duane “Tiny” Benedix. Tiny
became California’s wrist wrestling champion at Petaluma in 1961,
and the world champion in 1963, 1968, and 1969. Tiny was
nearly 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 290 pounds. |
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The two-acre city block bounded by 7th and Eighth and Sough G and H Streets has been an important part of Livermore history since 1892 when it became the site of the original Livermore High School. |
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Beginning in the 1920s, emigrants from the Philippines began
coming to California in response to a demand for farm
workers. In 1920, 3,300 Filipinos were in the state; by 1930 the
number had risen to 30,000. Often, they were used as strike
breakers in the farmers’ attempts to keep wages down and organized
labor out of agriculture. Like the Chinese and the Japanese,
who had immigrated in large numbers earlier for “stoop”
labor, the Filipinos were discriminated against and stereotyped.
Their working conditions were generally the same as those
portrayed by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath: poor
housing, low pay, backbreaking toil. |
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I have been writing this column for the Independent for over
a year (I started on May 25, 2006). A number of you have written
with suggestions, with corrections, with praise, with new information,
and with requests for information. I have tried to answer
all of you. I want to share my column space today with some of
your words. |
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Before there was a town called Livermore, there was a little
settlement called Laddsville, or Laddville, near the intersection
of Junction Avenue and Old First Street. In the 1860s Junction
Avenue, then called the Dublin and Laddsville Road, was
part of the old Stockton stage road through the valley. |
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Before Brahma bulls became a part of the Livermore rodeo
program in 1927, the main function of the rodeo clown was to
entertain the audience. He usually had a set program. However,
the announcer could also call on him to amuse the crowd or ease
the tension on the spur of the moment when something happened
to interrupt the flow of the scheduled events: for example,
a chute becoming stuck or a contestant being injured.
Many of the early clowns also competed in rodeo events. |
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The Native Americans who were settled along the Livermore/
Amador Valley when Europeans arrived were all part of the Ohlone
(also called Costanoan) language group. They were small clusters
of hunter-gatherers, each tribe with probably fewer than 200
members, divided into several villages. |
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The train whistle blew two longs, a short and a long, and the bell
clanged as the railbus approached a crossing in Niles Canyon. A
wigwag signal high on a metal pole by the side of a road moved
back and forth. Members of the Tri-Valley History Council seated in
the restored Skunk car originally built in 1926 for the California
Western between Willets and Fort Bragg were enjoying the ride. Our
engineer that day was Doug Campbell, the conductor Stan Bringer
and the brakeman Ray Crist. Alan Frank, curator and chief of the
museum division of the Pacific Locomotive Association, acted as
the tour guide on our ride between Sunol and Niles. |
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Charles A. Wetmore was born in Portland, Maine, and came to
California with his family in 1856 when he was nine years old. His
father, Jesse L. Wetmore, built the family home at the corner of Vista
and Bonita Avenue in Piedmont. At the time it was one of only four
houses in Piedmont. According to the city of Piedmont’s web site,
the house “still looks just like it did over a hundred years ago.” |
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The Daly family—Lawrence, Nida and baby daughter Jeanne—
moved to the settlement of Altamont in 1931 and lived in one of the
railroad section worker’s cottages located between the Southern Pacific
and Western Pacific tracks. Lawrence had trained as a telegrapher
and worked for Southern Pacific. The family lived there until
1935 when the Summit Hotel, built in 1868, became available for
housing. They rented the hotel for 22 years from owners Tom and Joe
Egan. |
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John C. Stanley, like his older brothers, grew up on small, rocky
Orange County, Vermont farm. His brothers—George, Joseph, and
James—all came to California during the Gold Rush. John, however,
had stayed at home and at the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted
in the Seventh Vermont Volunteers. After the war in 1867, John came
west to join his brothers in the butcher business in Pleasanton and
Laddsville, an early Livermore settlement. |
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Al Ramirez, Livermore's oldest barber is still going strong, working a full-time schedule, though he's had to cut down on those 11-hour days. Albert Ramirez turns 82 on June 3. He received his barber's license in 1946 and has been in the business ever since, 61 years. He currently works at Rick's Classic Barber Shop, where he's been employed since 1973, when it was known as the Granada Barber Shop.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. Henry P. Mohr was a practical mechanic, able to fabricate parts needed for broken farm machinery in his blacksmith shop.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. Natural history is certainly a part of local history. Starting 9n 1996 a bald eagle pair at Del Valle Regional Park has raised one or two eaglets each year for almost a decade in a huge nest at the top of a pine.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. Exactly sixty-five years ago today, two Navy patrol bombers crashed in a heavy fog and 14 men died. The large amphibian planes of the PBY-5-A type were part of a squadron of five that left the Alameda Naval Air station on an undisclosed flight."
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. After Dr. John W. Robertson graduated from UC Berkeley in 1877, he continued there at the medical school and received his M.D. in 1880. By 1894 when he came to Livermore, he had become an internationally known psychiatrist. He bought the Livermore Collegiate Institute building on College Avenue from Professor James D. Smith in 1894 and later the neighboring mansion and grounds belonging to William M. Mendenhall. Robertson founded a sanitarium, a private 120-bed psychiatric hospital, at the site.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. Circus and Chautauqua Tents Before the railroad came through town, the circus arrived by horse and wagon. Probably Grizzly Adams came through alone with some of his menagerie, or with the Henry C. Lee circus en route to and from Stockton and San Francisco. The big top was set up on an empty town lot, and probably many Livermore area residents enjoyed the show.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. Born in 1855 in Maine, William Pitt Bartlett left as a young man to learn the printing business in Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. At age 22, he came to Livermore, bought the banrupt Livermore newspaper, the Enterprise and renamed it The Livermore Herald on February 1, 1877.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent Inman, Green, Summit, Harris, Townsend, Highland, Vista, Mocho, May, Midway, Arroyo Valle, Murray, Tesla, Rosedale, Vallecitos, La Costa, Sheridan - do any of those names ring a bell? Once upon a time, they used to ring a school bell, at least. These are the names of one-room schools . . . .
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. "This hill to the north of Granada High School campus was once the site of Livermore's first public cemetery."
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. When the Mexican-American War was over and California had become part of the United States. U.S. surveyors excavated a hole on Mount Diablo's southern peak in 1851 as the central survey point for land in northern and central California and Nevada.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. After his funeral in Livermore at Reimers' Funeral Parlor, the body of Dr. William Steward Taylor was buried in 1931 at Oak Knoll cemetery, where his tombstone attested to his long service to the Livermore community: "A physician in this valley 46 years."
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. While working in Libya, Ouis Gardella Jr. was invited to a coworker's home; Louis met his friend's sister, Evridiki Malafatoupou there. "We dated for about three months, going out every weekend to the hot spots in Tripoli, having a wonderful time." They have been married for 51 years. |
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. When Mayor Lou Gardella told Dorothy Hock of her appointment to the Livermore city clerk’s office, she was unsure about accepting because her mother was very ill. “I was in somewhat of a turmoil but in any case, they said, ‘you’re it, kid,’ so I was it.” Dorothy had been working in the clerk’s office since 1949 under Fred S. Young. She had taken typing, shorthand and bookkeeping at Livermore High School. When Fred Young died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1951, the city council appointed Dorothy to fill the position because of her familiarity with the office.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
In the 1850s and 1860s near what is now the intersection of Portola and North Livermore Avenue, a small settlement gradually grew called "Mexico," sometimes "Little Mexico." It was along the road running between Dublin and Laddsville, the precursor of Livermore. Mexico was a cluster of adobe homes that probably originally belonged to the Mexican and Indian workers at Robert Livermore's Las Positas Rancho.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
William M. Mendenhall was the founder of the City of Livermore. In 1865 Mendenhall acquired plot 18 of the Rancho el Valle de San José in Alameda County, most of which became the town he named “Livermore.” Mendenhall offered 32 acres of downtown property to Central Pacific to encourage the railroad to come through Livermore. He also donated land for a grammar school, a college, a flour mill, two churches and a cemetery.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
Agustin Bernal owned the southern part of the rancho below today's Pleasanton. He allowed Indians to have a rancheria, a small settlement, below what is now the Castlewood Country Club. The rancheria was called Alisal, meaning "The Alders."
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Lea Blevins article in the January 13, 2007 issue of the Tri-Valley Herald. The city's history has reached the end of an era — both in the story itself and the person cataloging it. Longtime Livermore resident Barbara Bunshah, former curator of the Livermore History Center, died Jan. 4. Born in 1926, Bunshah is best known for her thorough records of Livermore newspapers from 1874 up to recent years. Dubbed the "Bunshah index," her work includes the news printed in the Livermore Enterprise, Livermore Echo, Livermore Herald, Livermore News and The Independent. Areas covered include Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, Tracy and the old towns of Carnegie and Tesla. "It was the work of a lifetime," said friend Muriel Dean. "It was her masterpiece." |
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
As curator for the Livermore Heritage Guild, she cheerfully guided grade school students and adults alike to discover the past life of Livermore. |
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
Claudia Dutcher is a member of the fourth generation of her family to own a Livermore business. She owns a large collection of memorabilia of her great-grandfather, grandfather, and father, who were proprietors of Dutcher and late Dutcher & Son Hardware.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
"Moving pictures exhibitions" were shown in Livermore in the early 1900s at the Farmers' Union building at the northwest corner of Livermore and Railroad Avenues.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
Many significant early structures, from single-family homes to two-story commercial buildings, in Livermore, Sunol, and Pleasanton were designed and built by architect and contractor Julius Lars Weilbye.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
Despite precautions such as Livermore’s “mask law,” one in four Americans came down with influenza during the World War I era. Estimates vary, but probably 50,000 people died of it from 1918 to 1920. In October 1918 the California State Board of Health listed 56,396 cases in the state. Average life expectancy in the U.S. dropped by 12 years.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
From 1913 until its merger with Hexcel Corporation in 1968, the
Coast Manufacturing and Supply Company was a major employer in
Livermore. The company made safety fuses— twisted jute ropes that
slowed and controlled the burning of their blasting powder cores.
The exterior ropes were coated with water proofing.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
Today, the name Mountain House conveys to most Tri-Valley dwellers the large housing development going up near Tracy just north of I-580. The development planners have taken that name from an old combination tavern/hotel that was north of the town of Altamont near the Alameda/Contra Costa/San Joaquin County intersection.
At first this place was known as “Blue Tent,” for the establishment that housed a “house of entertainment” here. Early settlers during gold rush days used blue denim cloth to create easily portable, quickly constructed housing. This tent was erected by Thomas Goodall in 1849 on the old stagecoach road, later Highway 50, which led from the Bay Area to Stockton. |
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
On the 1880 census Graham gave his occupation as the town of Livermore’s Justice of the Peace. City clerk Elmer G. Still noted that Graham had been appointed Justice of the Peace in 1878 and held that position until his death in1887.
Deciding to become a mortician, Graham gave up his store and attended a special school in San Francisco, passed required tests, and received a license. His first “undertaking a specialty” local newspaper ads are extant from 1884. Susan was definitely an active partner in the firm of Graham Mortuary, which was located on First Street and later on the northwest corner of Second and South L. |
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
By 1897 about 300 acres in the old bolsa were covered with hop vines. That year the Pleasanton Hop Company, owned by the Lilienthal family, built a processing plant consisting of 12 hop kilns, each of them 60 feet high, plus three large warehouses. The facility was located west of Hopyard Road and south of Black Avenue.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent
Armistice Day, proclaimed a
holiday by Congress in 1926,
celebrated the signing of an armistice
by Germany and the Allies.
This signaled the official
end of World War I, at 11 a.m., on
the 11th day of the 11th month of
the year 1918. Congress changed
the holiday’s name to Veterans
Day in 1954, to encourage the
country to remember veterans of
all wars, not just World War I.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
Alameda County opened a sanatorium for tuberculosis cases on 258 acres in the foothills along the Arroyo Del Valle in February 1918. Named Arroyo Sanatorium, the hospital was five miles south of Livermore in an open woodland area.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. Throughout the Tri-Valley, Ohlone and Bay Miwok peoples have unintentionally left evidence of their existence with quern-stones—stone tools for hand-grinding. Their quern-stones were the rotary type, with a pestle acting as the mobile handstone and a mortar as the stationary quern. Women fed acorns or grass seeds into the mortar and pounded them into flour with the pestle. Sometimes the mortar used was a small, portable one; others remain in bedrocks scattered under the oaks. (PDF format)
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
The rugged arms of an enormous
valley oak are Jacquie Williams-
Courtright’s favorite view
from her second-floor office in
her new nursery building. Alden
Lane Nursery clusters bright, inviting
plant displays and garden
paraphernalia under 18 valley
oaks, which are estimated to be
300 years old. (PDF format)
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. Amador’s, Dougherty’s Station, Dougherty, or Dublin—the settlement with four different names had importance in early California because it stood at the hub of two important roads. One ran west/east from the Bay Area to Stockton and beyond it to the gold mines; the other north/south from San Jose to Martinez.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
Old Vines and a Yellow
Brick House On Friday last week the Zinfandel grapes in the Raboli
vineyard on Mines Road near Tesla Road were harvested. These vines are not
trellised but head trained. They are dry-farmed. They are considered “old
vines,” perhaps the oldest in the Livermore Valley. They were planted
before Prohibition, almost 90 years ago. All pruning and harvesting and
other field work must be done by hand, because the gnarled vines are
brittle.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. Ferdinand “Fred” Holdener, a native of Switzerland, bought the
Valley Dairy in Livermore in 1931.
The Valley Dairy, on Stanley Boulevard (then the Pleasanton
Road) just west of what is now the Valley Memorial Hospital, had
15 acres of open fields, with plenty of room for pasture. In the dairy
barn Holdener, his workers, and his sons milked the cows and processed
the milk—at first raw, and later, starting in 1936, pasteurized.
They delivered glass bottles of milk to stores and homes in Livermore,
Pleasanton, Dublin, and Sunol. (PDF format)
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. The Central Pacific Railroad began work in Niles Canyon in June 1865 with a force of 500 men, mostly Chinese, on a railroad to Stockton; they laid track through Livermore in 1868 and 1869.
After completion of the railroad, new gangs came through the Tri-Valley occasionally to continue upkeep. In January 1879, for instance, about 50 Chinese men were cleaning out ditches by the railroad tracks. They camped in tents near the Altamont depot. At the peak of its construction work, the Central Pacific Railroad employed more than 10,000 Chinese laborers, most of them recruited from China.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. “The Tri-Valley has played an extremely important role in the
history of roses in America,” said local rose expert David Lowell,
not only because of the quantity grown here, but the quality. Since
the awarding of “All-American” status for roses began nationally in
1940, almost a fourth of the honors have gone to men associated
with the Tri-Valley. (PDF Format)
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. Long before our valley had Las Positas College, it had a college. However, it was not a college as we know it today, but a private coeducational high school. At the time, neither Livermore nor Pleasanton had a public high school. Students who received a graduation diploma from their eighth grade class either traveled to a larger city like Oakland and boarded with friends or relatives to attend high school, or they could pay to attend the Livermore Collegiate Institute.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember series in The Independent. Early feminists who advocated clothing that gave women more freedom of movement had a detractor in one Livermore Echo editor in 1895. (PDF format) |
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
Virginia arrived in California the day before Pearl Harbor and stayed to work during the war as a cable splicer on airplanes at the Alameda Naval Air Station. She married Alfred "Sport" Fellingham in 1949. They moved to a ranch on Tesla Road in 1953. Sport was active in promoting the Livermore rodeo and served as president of the Livermore Rodeo Association from 1948 to 1957. Wells Fargo asked him to drive his antique coach at a bank opening in Hayward in 1958, and the Fellingham family's stage driving career began.
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent.
In downtown Livermore, on the south side of First Street between
J and K streets, brass letters spelling the word “brewery” are embedded
into the sidewalk in front of the store at 2127 First. In December
1873 Charles Schwerin and a Mr. Schobel founded the Livermore
Brewery. (PDF format)
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From Anne Homan's Do You Remember? series in The Independent. "The town of Sunol, plus Sunol Valley, Sunol Ridge, Sunol Regional Wilderness, and Sunol Grade, the I-680 commuters' nemesis, are all named for Antonio María Suñol, who owned the southern portion of the Bernal land grant, Rancho el Valle de San José."
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Another in the Do You Remeber? series by Anne Homan. "Often the name of a town is the name of its founder. However, when William M. Mendenhall laid out the streets for a new California settlement in October1869, he named it for the pioneering Livermore family." |
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Another in the Do You Remember? series by Anne Homan.
The disastrous unchecked fires following the 1906 earthquake provided stark evidence that San Francisco needed a better supply of water. ... The Tri-Valley became involved in the project when workers were needed to bore a tunnel through the Coastal Mountains to connect the pipeline coming from the Sierra and through the San Joaquin Valley with the pipeline traversing San Francisco Bay. |
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Written by Lea Blevins, Tri-Valley Herald Reporter.
A 5-acre farm surrounded by a suburban neighborhood in western Livermore may identify with a Bob Dylan song right now, for the times they are a-changin. ... The Hagemann Farm on Olivina Avenue is home to many historic buildings, including the oldest house in Livermore, built in 1836. ... But some people in town are concerned how much longer the Hagemann Farm will remain a historic site. |
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Another in the Do You Remember? series by Anne Homan.
The property for sale, on the east side of L Street between First and Second, holds an abandoned gas station but more significantly includes the rounded Donut Wheel and its accompanying little shops and parking lot.
The original structure on the site, another classic wooden hotel from the 1800s—the Washington Hotel—was torn down in May 1941 to accommodate a food market, newest of the Purity Stores then operating in Northern California. |
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Another in the Do You Remember? series by Anne Homan.
Years ago the Livermore-Amador Valley was well known for its fine horses raised for heavy work on farms, ranches, roads, and even in the nearby cities. Patrick Gleese ran a typical farm in Collier Canyon, producing wheat, barley, hay, hogs, poultry, butter, and—draft horses. The Livermore Echo reported in March 1897 Gleese had received good prices for three Norman horses that he had shipped to San Francisco. |
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Another in the Do You Remember? series by Anne Homan.
Autograph books started in the mid-sixteenth century. Their popularity died out with the publication of yearbooks; nowadays students write good wishes on their yearbook pages. In autograph books people wrote short poems or aphorisms, Biblical or literary quotations, perhaps a prophesy; some just signed their names. Others made drawings, occasionally elaborate ones. |
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Another in the Do You Remember? series by Anne Homan.
The doctors provided medical service to the Livermore community for 33 years, retiring in 1981. Dr. Grace, alone, estimates she delivered more than 800 babies.
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Another in the Do You Remember? series by Anne Homan.
Thirty years ago Livermore made the national news. School bus driver Ed Ray was on his usual route after a summer school outing with 26 children, ages 5 to 14, near the small farming community of Chowchilla, in California’s Central Valley, on July 15. About 4:00 in the afternoon, he saw a van pulled to the side of the road and stopped to offer assistance. The van driver and two other young men managed to abduct the entire busload by threatening them with a handgun and a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun.
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Another in the Do You Remember? series by Anne Homan.
The word “rodeo” originally referred to the biannual roundup held by early ranchos in California. In April vaqueros were sent out to collect cattle from the nearby hills and valleys. In those days, no ranchos were fenced. Neighboring owners met at an agreed-upon site to separate the cattle brought in by the vaqueros and mark their calves with brands and earmarks. Sometimes another rodeo was held in July.
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Another in the Do You Remember? series by Anne Homan.
Traditional Holy Ghost weekend celebrations in Livermore included a parade, bazaar, dinner, and dancing as well as church ceremonies. Downtown streets were decorated with banners and streamers. A participant recalled the 1940 event: “On Saturday night before the Sunday parade the Livermore Band would escort the Queen with the crown and her attendants to the chapel at the Holy Ghost grounds on North Livermore Avenue. … After the crown was placed in the chapel, there would be fireworks. The fire engine had to be close by because there were hay fields across the street.” |
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Another in the Do You Remember? series by Anne Homan.
Built 102 years ago, the building was financed by saloonkeeper John Sweeney and Ravenswood owner Christopher A. Buckley. Sweeney Opera House held an auditorium, 49 by 76 feet and a stage 28 by 32 feet; both auditorium and stage were larger than any in Alameda County at the time, outside of Oakland. Seating capacity was 800, with the “highest grade of folding opera chairs,” which were made of maple with a carved back and a hat rack beneath the seat. A gallery, or balcony, ran about two-thirds of the length of the auditorium, with seating for an additional 300 peoplE.
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GROWTH CAMPAIGNS CIRCA 1972
The Tri-Valley Herald
November 10, 2005 |
Written by community historian and frequently newspaper contributor Barry Schrader. This column is being written the day after the Nov. 8 election, so a comparison with the greatest growth control battle in the Valley's history seems appropriate. For those who didn't live here in the early 1970s, here's a history lesson. |
