Charles Botts and “Old Saucelito”

By Larry Clinton, President
The following account is excerpted from Jack Tracy’s book, Moments in Time.

William Richardson always dreamed of a city that would spring up in Sausalito. Charles Botts actually did something about it. Botts, born in 1809, son of a prominent Virginia lawyer, came to California with his wife Margaret in 1848 on the ship Matilda. He became the naval storekeeper in Monterey, a position of considerable influence and prestige. During the gold rush, he set up law offices in San Francisco.
Botts raised $35,000 in gold to purchase 160 acres in Sausalito’s cove from financially desperate William Richardson in 1849. Botts was also a delegate to the California Constitutional Convention that same year, where he was one of the more vocal participants.
During the 1850s, Botts sold portions of his Sausalito holdings, being careful to retain water rights on the property.  
After Mare Island was selected as the United States Navy shipyard for the West Coast [over Sausalito], Botts lost interest in his local real estate venture and sold his remaining property to others. In 1858 he moved to Sacramento where he tried his hand in the newspaper business and also became a judge in Yolo County.
In 1862 a traveler passed through what was left of Charles Botts’s “Old Saucelito.” William Henry Brewer recorded these observations in his diary:
“... It was long after dark before we found Sausalito where we stopped at an Irish hotel. We ate a hearty supper, then sat in the kitchen and talked.
“Hogarth never sketched such a scene as that. The kitchen with furniture scattered around, driftwood in the corners, salt fish hanging to the ceilings and walls, lanterns, old ship furniture, fishing and boating apparatus, Spanish saddle and riata — but I can’t enumerate all. Well, we stayed there all night and for several hours the next morning, then took a small boat for San Francisco along with a load of calves and pigs piled in the bottom.”
Brewer also couldn’t resist a dig at Sausalito in general:
“Sausalito is a place of half a dozen houses once destined to be a great town ... $150,000 lost there; City laid out, corner lots sold at enormous prices, ‘water fronts’ still higher ... for a big city was bound to grow up there and then these lots would be worth money. The old California story, everybody bought land to rise in value but no one built. No city grew there. Half a dozen huts and shanties mark the place and ‘corner lots’ and ‘water fronts’ are alike valueless.”

Moments in Time and other local historical books are available at the Ice House (780 Bridgeway) and at the Historical Society’s headquarters on the top floor of City Hall.



The earliest known photograph of Sausalito, c. 1852, shows Charles Botts’s metropolis at its zenith, with perhaps thirty inhabitants.  The center of the little cluster of buildings is located where Second and Main are today.
Photo courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society.