How Issaquah Dock Developed

By Annie Sutter

As newcomers and young people continued to congregate on the Sausalito shores, many left a permanent imprint on the waterfront to come. One was Joe Tate, who arrived on the scene in the mid-1960s. He was a musician, a creative scrounger who could envision possibilities for renovation in the most unlikely flotsam and jetsam, and, as it states on his business card, an expert in "advanced finagling." Joe and a group of musicians formed a band called the "Red Legs" which became the nucleus of the rowdy community that was quickly growing from Gate 3 to Gate 6 at the shore's edge -- as well as in the mud at low tide. Their story is told in the film Last Free Ride. Here's a first-hand account from Joe about how these little communities sprang up and grew.

Hodgepodge surrounding Whitey’s Marina and the Oakland (center).
Photo by Charlotte Von Segesser, courtesy of Joe Tate

"We were able to get rehearsal space on an old sunken potato boat called the Oakland, at Gate 6. It was ideal for us and we were able to create the core of our original music there. There was a big WWII sub chaser sunk next to the Oakland and both hulks together formed a large island with a walkway connecting to the shore. One winter there was a big storm with violent winds. A huge section of floating dock broke loose from Kappas Marina, just north of Gate 6. The thing was drifting near Strawberry Point when we spotted it and we immediately went out and towed this giant hunk of flotsam back to the Oakland. With these floating docks tied to the Oakland, we had an instant marina, which filled up with small boats right away. We named it Whitey's Marina, after a cat, and painted a big sign on the side of the sub chaser that said WHITEY'S MARINA.  Persons of authority would show up asking to see Whitey. Nobody ever knew where he was. And, of course, Whitey didn’t know either."

Paradise, perhaps, but home building proceeded with no regulations, no codes, no order -- the waterfront residents had formed a community within themselves. By the 1960s this hodgepodge extended from Gate 3 where the Arques shipyard hummed with activity related to building houseboats and concrete hulls, to Gate 6 where the ferryboat Issaquah lay. And to add to the jumble, owners seeking to fill the marshlands to increase their usable waterfront land went far and wide in the search for fill. Decaying barges were towed in from around the Bay area and from the Delta, and buried under what later would become the major thoroughfare connecting Yellow Ferry, Kappas and Waldo Point Harbor. Eucalyptus stumps were hauled down from the hills above and laid under what would become parking lots. Quarry tailings, rocks, soil from the construction of Highway 101, telephone poles, mattresses, and pilings salvaged from dismantled piers in San Francisco were used as fill. Cement was poured into sinkholes, aging vessels and vehicles were sunk into the mud. It was rumored that a Mercedes disappeared into the muck by accident. 

This unsightly jumble offended some of Sausalito's citizens who complained to the Marin County Board of Supervisors and requested them to clean up the area. This led to the first physical confrontation between the houseboat dwellers and the authorities. In 1971 the County sent in police and sheriff's deputies with tugboats and bulldozers ready to clear and tow away two boats. Only one boat was boarded, for when the waterfront dwellers discovered the police in their midst, they rallied with a small flotilla of assorted vessels armed with oars, 2 x 4s, boathooks, and bags of sand, and rammed the police boats trying to tow one of their neighbors away. The law withdrew. More violence was to come, and it had become clear that something had to be done. If Waldo Point didn’t clean up its own act, the County would, (at least) try.

It's hard to follow the endless legal wrangling, the court orders and lawsuits between the land owners, the developers, the City of Sausalito, the county of Marin and the denizens of the waterfront community regarding codes, regulations, and ordinances, and the conflicts that followed. On one hand was Donlon Arques, landowner, trying to get permits to build a marina to clean up the very problems concerning the officials representing the "hill folk" of Sausalito. On the other hand were the agencies trying to enforce the rights of land owners and of developers, versus the residents of the waterfront community who did not want to see their way of life threatened by order, neatness, authority, conformity and higher rents. But these rebellious souls were only a small yet highly visible portion of the community. Most of the established residents of the waterfront were responsible people, artists and craftsmen and boat builders and construction workers who paid their rent, respected property rights, raised families and worked for a living. The stories of the labyrinthine politics and special interests at work in the time of the harbor development are best left to historians and politicians. But it is safe to say that once Waldo Point Harbor Corp. was formed, and permits were in place, management faced a long and tumultuous battle, huge expenses, endless negotiating and fierce local resistance before the project was finished. 

What a difference a half-century makes! See how the Gates community has changed by taking in the 30^t Annual Floating Homes Tour on Saturday, Sept. 12.  For information and reservations, go to http://floatinghomes.org/tour/tour-info.

Sausalito in the news – August 27, 1954

By Billie Anderson Sausalito Historical Society 

Firemen respond to fires on Sunday

A furnace fire, which scorched a unit in Building 5 of the Marin Dormitories, was subdued within 15 minutes by the Sausalito Fire Department Sunday morning. The fire was reported at 9:49 a.m.

Forty-six minutes later, three Marin City fire trucks were dispatched to a fire which consumed a half acre of grass on a ridge above Marin City. It was doused by 11:28 a.m.

Women’s federation discusses plans

Club women visiting from foreign countries have evinced interest in the entire Bay Area. It will therefore be the duty of Mrs. Rixford and Mrs. McGeorge to be “ambassadors of good will” to visitors. Mrs. Lightbody, civil defense chairman, was appointed to represent the County Federation at the forthcoming Disaster Workshop at Phoenix Lake, September 18, under the auspices of the Red Cross. The first regular meeting of the new season will be held on Wednesday, October 13 at the Sausalito Woman’s Club.

Orphanage all-year project

The Albertinum School and Orphanage at Ukiah will become a year-round project of a newly organized auxiliary of Star of the Young Ladies Institute (YLI). Due to the orphanage’s extreme poverty, the Sausalito YLI decided to assist it throughout the year, announced Mrs. Peter Fugina, president. Members expect to visit the orphanage in the near future to ascertain its needs. Any contributions of children’s clothing will be gratefully accepted by the auxiliary.

Handy checklist for gardeners

Water the lawn with a stationary sprinkler so that the water penetrates at least five inches. Don’t forget roses during the summer time. Water and spray regularly and fertilize at monthly intervals. Lift Gladiolus bulbs after the tops have turned yellow. Dust with DDT or lindane and store in shallow trays until Spring.

Support for State Liquor Board

“The State Liquor Board members have been subject to influence by the very people they were supposed to regulate” stated Paul Leake of Ukiah. “Passage of this bill will enable the Board of Equalization to return to its proper province, the collecting and reassigning of one billion dollars yearly of your tax money. When you, as voting citizens, force the Board to function as it was designed to function, you are not just doing a favor for yourselves. You are carrying out an obligation to your State.”

What’s he doing?

You might not guess it, but those men are going to school. They’re learning how to climb telephone poles safely and to string lines that will carry your calls. Such training gives telephone people the skills they need to do their jobs faster, better, cheaper and more safely, too. Thus, they’re better able to bring you good telephone service that’s low in price. Pacific Telephone works to make your telephone a bigger value every day.

How long has it been since you heard the voices of far-away loved ones and friends you haven’t seen for ages? A visit by long distance is the next best thing to being there in person. It means so much and costs so little. You can call coast to coast —clear to Boston for example for only $2.00 plus tax. That’s the rate for a three-minute “station” call.

On This Date – August 1954

8-29– San Francisco International Airport (SFO) opens

8-31–Hurricane Carol Kills 70 (East Coast)

9-1 – Hurricane Carol Kills 70 (New England)9

9-2 – Hurricane Carol Kills 20 (First Storm Name To Be Retired)

Birthdays

– Derek Warwick, Race Car Driver

–John Lloyd, England Tennis Star (Former husband of Chris Evert)

– Mike Kelly, Wayne Michigan Artist

 

When Rumours Came True in Sausalito

By Larry Clinton

Celebrated Living, the inflight magazine of American Airlines, recently ran an article detailing how the spirit of Sausalito contributed to the hugely successful Fleetwood Mac album, Rumours. Back then, says the unsigned article, Sausalito’s harbor “was regularly filled with rock and movie stars of the 1970s, many of whom saw Sausalito as a high­end getaway where they could at once be afforded luxury accommodations appropriate for their wealth and a hedonistic nightlife that suited their indulgent lifestyles.”

Fleetwood Mac’s visit to Sausalito was legendary not just because it produced the 26th­best album of all time according to Rolling Stone – but, as Celebrated Living states: “because of what the band went through personally, how that infused the album and led to brilliance, and how the town gave the members the focus and the energy to see them through it all.”

Christine McVie wrote in Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album: “I thought I was drying up when we started recording Rumours. Then, one day in Sausalito, I sat at the piano, and my four­and­a­half songs on the album are a result of that.” The album went on to sell more than 40 million copies. In 1978, it received a Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

When the band arrived in Sausalito, “they were in relationship turmoil,” according to the magazine. “During the recording sessions, the fault lines would widen between Christine and John McVie, who were divorcing after eight years, and between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. A few weeks into the recording, Mick Fleetwood found out about his wife’s affair. The women in the band rented their own apartments in the Sausalito harbor to get away from the men, who stayed (for the most part) in a studio­provided home in the nearby Marin County hills.”

Several band members have said they think if they’d tried to make the record in L.A., the band might have broken up. The isolation made them deal with the emotions directly, and that found its way into the songs. Comparing Sausalito’s culture to the band’s home town, Los Angeles, Buckingham recalls, “Sausalito, as an extension of San Francisco and the music scene up there, was a smaller community that had far more idealistic underpinnings.”

The Record Plant’s “dark lighting and narrow wood­lined hallways led musicians and studio staff into a labyrinth punctuated by small recording rooms,” notes the magazine. “The studio had no windows, so even though it was situated in this sunny waterside resort, it gave the feeling of being a timeless vault, not unlike the effect of a casino.”

“The music was my only escape,” Fleetwood says in hisautobiography, Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac.

The Plant - SausalitoThe article continues: “Buckingham — whose songs ‘Second Hand News’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’ had a darker edge when addressing the aftermath of a breakup than did Nicks’ — acknowledges the importance of the Record Plant’s psychedelic and spiritual prisonlike mojo in shaping the emotions on display in the album.

“But, he says the town of Sausalito itself was just as important to the record’s emotional foundation as was the studio. ‘There was a great history to the Record Plant, sure. A lot of people had done great work,’ Buckingham says. ‘And the people working there were sort of an extension of the town and its tight community. It’s an interesting thing because I think the community was something that was nurturing to us.

But because we were our own little community and there was so much humanity to what we were doing with the album and in the studio, I think our presence during those few months was felt by the community of Sausalito as well’.” One spot they gravitated to was The Trident, which, says Celebrated Living, “was to Northern California what Studio 54 was to New York City. It was the place where, from the mid­’60s until later that year in 1976, would be the epicenter for stardom and excess, for ’70s free love and mind­altering experiences.” Buckingham and his wingmen also found a nearby bar, the short­lived Agatha’s Pub (now Angelino’s Italian restaurant), and made it their home base. Celebrated Living notes that “Buckingham soon began dating a waitress from the pub throughout his stay there, trying to move on from his ongoing breakup with Nicks.”

The best part of the spirit of the ’70s subculture was the kind of freedom which, the magazine reports, “can still be felt along the streets and bayside enclaves of the town today. Not the drug culture so often celebrated as essential to that freedom. Even the band members say they succeeded despite that. No, it’s the freedom you feel when you deal with the pain of the last days of a relationship and come out the other side of the tunnel stronger. It’s the freedom afforded you when your vacation to Sausalito runs for a leisurely weekend or for 10 weeks of creative tension. It’s the freedom you feel when you walk along the wharfs with your headphones, hit play on ‘The Chain,’ and let the ghosts of Sausalito’s past move you again.”

The cover of Rumours features a stylized shot of Fleetwood and Nicks

John Read, Ferry Pioneer

By Larry Clinton

The first English­speaking settler in what was then called Saucelito was Capt. John Read (aka Reed), who came here in 1826, and is said to be one of the first, if not the first Irishman who ever located permanently on the Pacific coast. Shortly after arriving, Reed applied to the Mexican Government for a grant to the Saucelito Rancho. While awaiting his land grant, he established a San Francisco Bay ferry service using a sailboat.

According to and early 20 CALIFORNIA, “This was doubtless the first ferryboat on the bay, which now counts them by the dozens, and the first in the State. When we compare this mere pigmy of a sail­boat making its one or more trips a week, with the palace steamers which now pass to and fro over the same track more than a dozen times each day, we can form some conception of the magnitude of the changes which have occurred in the past half century.”

The service didn’t last long, because, in the words of the Chronicle’s Peter Hartlaub, “The American Indians, who paddled across the bay, were faster and more reliable.” After Read’s land grant application was refused, on the grounds that this tract had been reserved for government purposes, he went up to Sonoma County, then back down to San Rafael where he served as major domo of the mission.

Read came back to Saucelito permanently, in 1832. “He located on the Saucelito ranch,” the book reports, “near where the old town stood, hoping now to be able to get a grant for it, but, like many other matters entrusted to friends to be done, when the papers arrived they were not in his name.” William Richardson, following in Reed’s footsteps, also applied for a grant to Saucelito Rancho (after marrying the Presidio commander's daughter), and that application was approved in 1838. Two years later, Read was given a grant to Rancho Corte de Madera del Presidio, encompassing what is now southern Corte Madera, Mill Valley, the Tiburon Peninsula, and Strawberry Point.

After Richardson had lost control of his holdings, the town began growing under the auspices of the Sausalito Land and Ferry Company. Beginning in 1868, these developers used the ferryboat Princess to lure prospective buyers from San Francisco, and the popularity of the concept created a boom in ferry service all over the Bay.

The completion of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 led to the demise of Sausalito’s ferry service until the 1970’s when it was reborn, ironically, by the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.





The century report in the book HISTORY OF MARIN COUNTY, The Princess led the boom in ferry travel on the Bay.

Photo courtesy of Bancroft Library

Creative Scrounging on the Waterfront

By Annie Sutter

Beginning in the 1950s, the area from Gate 3 to Waldo Point, already an established waterfront community of artists and craftsmen, working people and families, became inhabited by people seeking a new life, or at least, a different one. Once called bohemians and beatniks, then hippies, young people heard about the scene in Sausalito where it was said “the living was free and easy.” 1967, the year of the “Summer of Love” in San Francisco, brought the flower children from the Haight­Ashbury scene, creative and footloose, to Sausalito. College dropouts, already rebels before they arrived, decided to hang out, a gal who came to visit liked the scene stayed, an engine mechanic or an out­of­work boatwright found lots of jobs available, paid and unpaid. A seemingly endless supply of materials left from Marinship, abandoned vessels lying on the shore, their owners gone or disinterested, provided the perfect venue for finding an alternative lifestyle. Slowly the newcomers moved in, left pretty much alone by the accommodating landowner, Donlon  Arques. They arrived in droves and settled in at Gates 3, 5 and 6. They built homes, or shacks, or just flop houses on top of anything that floated. And there were many things that floated to choose from.

Bizarre Building Materials

The newcomers floated new/old abodes on unfinished hulls, barges, tugboats, camels, lifeboats, landing craft; on Styrofoam blocks, net buoys lashed together, floats, scaffolding for servicing ships, pilings tied together. Even boilers from one of the ferryboats served as flotation. Living quarters placed atop the various flotation materials were built from construction boxes, old cars, motor homes, abandoned trailers, a VW bus, pilot houses from utility barges, the crow's nest from a crane barge, and even a chicken coop was put into service. An aging sailing vessel was fitted out with telephone poles for masts as it was being readied for a sea voyage.

Little communities sprang up, linked by loyalty to one another, and by labyrinthine walkways, rickety docks, and single board gangways. A loose confederation of groups and sub groups gathered around certain barges or piers and were often separated by intricate systems of catwalks, drawbridges and gates. A common feature was wacky architecture, dangling electric wires, pilfered electricity, and no sewage facilities.

Differing opinions of this growing community are not hard to find. From the Marin Scope in 1968:

“Waldo Point is an alternative community that came into being through a mixture of collective aberrations and spontaneous events. A warren of ramshackle junks, arks, hutches, rotting barges, battered ferryboats,...where the tidewaters slush over a graveyard of shattered hulls, abandoned marine gear, discarded bedsprings, tires, refrigerators, broken pots and rotting timbers.” A far more pleasant scene ... “Smaller boats gathered around the ferry, side tied and connected by planks or rickety walkways. Families with kids, dogs and cats and chickens were part of the little groupings tied alongside Issaquah. Activities included music, sea chanteys, puppet shows, mask making, boatbuilding, herring fishing,” and “sailing boats were floating playgrounds as kids shinnied up and down the lines to the tops of the masts.”

This story is excerpted from a forthcoming book by Annie Sutter titled “The History of Issaquah Dock.”



A tiny floating home perched atop a landing craft.

Photo courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society