Who’s Waldo?

By Larry Clinton, President

If you’ve ever wondered who the Waldo Tunnel, Waldo Grade and Waldo Point were named after, here’s one theory. The source is Louise Teather’s 1986 book, Place Names of Marin.

“A street called Waldo appears on the first map of the Sausalito Land & Ferry Co. in 1869. It is believed to have been named for Waldo, Oregon, then a prosperous mining town where gold had been discovered in 1852.

“Waldo was located just over the state border. Until 1854 the miners there thought they were in California so they named the town for William Waldo, Whig Party candidate for governor, and voted for him.”  In 1853, Waldo had campaigned in Sailor's Diggings, mistakenly believing the town to be part of California. Official records noted that the names Sailor Diggings and Waldo were used interchangeably.

“The town thrived until after World War I,” according to Teather, “and then gradually died. By the late 1930's most of the townsite was mined away. Today it is a ghost town with only a marker placed by the Josephine County Historical Society to remind visitors of its past. In Sausalito, Waldo Street has disappeared from the map, but the name is perpetuated with Waldo Point, at the foot of Waldo Grade; Waldo Court in Marin City; and the Waldo Tunnels. During the days of the railroad a station called Waldo stood opposite the point.”

Place Names of Marin is part of the collection of the Sausalito Historical Society, and may be perused during the Society’s public hours, Wednesdays and Saturdays, between 11 AM and 1 PM.

William Waldo: his name lives on in Sausalito

The Nunes Brothers Boat and Ways Co.

By Annie Sutter

The Nunes brothers, Manuel and Antonio, came from the island of Pico in the Azores. They emigrated to California in the late 1800s and began boatbuilding on the Sacramento river circa 1898. In 1925 the brothers made the move to Sausalito, taking over the Reliance Boat and Ways Co. at Second and Main. Over the next 35 years they designed and built a great variety of vessels. Power cruisers, sailing yachts, luxury yachts, fishing boats, large commercial vessels, runabouts and race boats were launched regularly.

In 1927 they built the yawl Truant, a 66-foot racing yacht. In 1928 they took on the construction of two huge tuna clippers, the 112-foot Funchal and Greyhound. In 1929 they were commissioned by the banker, Templeton Crocker, for a yacht so large it had to be built in the street alongside the shop, the 127-foot schooner Zaca.

The son who would eventually carry on the business was Ernie, who was 15 when the yard moved to Sausalito. He built his own boat, a 30-meter racing sloop Teaser, and raced in regattas with Myron Spaulding, Joe McAleese, and Herb Madden, to name only a few of the Sausalitans competing on the bay in the early 30s. Star Boats, Bird Boats and Golden Gates were popular.

It was during the ‘30s that most of their successful class racing boats were designed. First was the 23-foot Bear; the boat was immediately popular and remains active in class competition today. The company brought out a larger version, the Big Bear; only a few were built, and it would be redesigned into the popular 30-foot Hurricane. In 1938 Ernie designed the Mercury, which would become a great success a decade later. Only a few were built at that time, for the war made production of pleasure craft impossible. Production continued, but it took a new direction; Coast Guard vessels, government contracts, and two 88-foot tugs were constructed for the U.S. Army.

After the war, the yard expanded to include a “do it yourself” area, and it was then that the building of Bears and Hurricanes began. Sailors could buy a boat in any of a number of stages of completion and finish it in the yard. The yard laid the keel, and then the builder followed the design from a mold. Two sailors who built Bears there recall: “You’d buy the hull and the mold — for $10 a month you’d get the use of your space and the use of tools. They were the most generous people with help and equipment. If there was ever anyone who helped people to go sailing it was them — they’d sure give you advice if you had the sense to ask for it.”

It must have been a busy scene in the mid ‘40s. The long narrow shop had expanded to include a shed to the south where Bears were built, and another shed on the beach for Hurricanes and repair work. There was an office in the front of the long building, and a machine shop with a big, powerful band saw. Manuel’s design loft was upstairs.

Launchings were an excuse for a party. “They’d blow the whistle and everybody’d drop what they were doing and come running,” one wag reported. Fishermen docked at nearby piers always came running for the parties, too. Parts of the movie “Lady from Shanghai” with Orson Welles were filmed there.

In 1946 Ernie set up his own shop across the street in a large tin shed at Second and Main and went into production of Mercuries — the boat he had designed in 1938. It was a kit boat, built of plywood. The purchaser bought the plans and precut plywood pieces and put it to together himself. It was a very popular design, and Mercury fleets sprang up all over California.

In the mid 1950s they built a harbor in the cove. They drove pilings and installed piers and slips, and for breakwaters towed in barges that had been used as navy targets. Unfortunately winter southerlies are common at the cove, and they played havoc with the harbor. One winter a barge got loose, and the Coast Guard had to tow it back. The harbor was fated to be short-lived, and by 1962 the boats were all gone. In 1959 the yard closed. A complex of apartments called Portofino rose on the site. Across the street at Second and Main Ernie continued a limited production of Mercuries. He closed that shop in 1962, and all that remains today are the rusting shed and a few signs.

Today at high water, waves lap at the front of the Portofino apartments, and at low tide you can see the old ways on the beach looking like railroad tracks going into the water. The pier at Valley Street used by the fishermen is gone. Two of the old target barges are still there, and at low water their twisted and rusted spikes are visible. The old Nunes pier sags and tilts, and it’s fenced and off limits. That’s all that’s left of the yard — but there are a lot of yachts sailing on the bay today to stand as testimonial to the quality of workmanship and the skill of the builders at the Nunes Brothers.

Richardson’s Bay: What Could Have Been

By Mitch Powers

Can you imagine Coney Island in Richardson’s Bay?  It might have happened if Joseph Strauss had his wish. This and other off the wall bay development schemes are described in Mitch Powers’ new book, “A brief history of Sausalito and Richardson’s Bay.”  Here are some excerpts:

In December 1935 Joseph Strauss, chief engineer for the Golden Gate Bridge, proposed filling in the northern half of Richardson’s Bay to create an amusement park, coliseum and airfield, among other things. Fortunately this idea never materialized. Prior to the 1939 World's Fair officials considered dumping fill in a large section of the northwestern bay, thinking that once filled and leveled the area could be used for an airport after the fair. In the end, they selected Goat Island shoals next to Yerba Buena Island, filled the area in and created Treasure Island.

In 1912 there was a proposal to cut a four mile channel from Tennessee Valley Cove (the channel being located on the west side of Richardson’s Bay Bridge) over to Richardson’s Bay, thus creating a backdoor shipping canal into the Bay. This idea came up again in 1936 when the Navy was eyeballing Richardson’s Bay as a potential submarine base. The idea was to avoid the treacherous Potato Patch off the coast as well as the fog drenched entrance at the Golden Gate. The Sausalito City Council liked this idea because for some time they had wanted to dredge out a deeper channel so ships could travel farther up into Richardson’s Bay In conjunction with building the canal the Navy would also have to dredge a deeper route along the waterfront. However, the Navy scrapped the whole plan.

One reason for the construction of the Bay Model in 1957 was that in the 1940s John Reber, a local theater producer, devised the Reber Plan to build two dams in the Bay to create freshwater reservoirs. The dams were to be built where the San Rafael Richmond and Bay Bridges are today. Congress allotted $2.5 million to study the proposal. The Bay Model, at a cost of $400,000, was constructed to run tests to help determine the validity

of the Reber Plan. Reber died in 1960 before the tests were finished in 1963, determining his plan unfeasible.

Mitch Powers’ book is currently available at the Ice House.  It also contains tour itineraries of the Sausalito waterfront, either by foot, by car, or by boat.

Joseph Strauss

Photo courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society

The Last of the Lassen

By Annie Sutter

This story is from the MarinScope of 12-20-83 - a time when the old Sausalito waterfront was rapidly changing.

Two pieces – literally pieces – remnants of Sausalito's old waterfront were hauled out of the water’s edge where they resided and placed back on shore in the little stone enclave at the foot of Johnson St. that houses the remains of the old lumber schooner Lassen. In this case, it wasn’t a wrecker or a developer that took away yet another of our historic old ships; the storm and high tides of Dec. 3 tore the stern apart, floated the decking away and flung the pieces into the mud at the bay's edge. Volunteers with tow trucks winched the remains of the bow up on shore at high tide and they will be imbedded in concrete to prevent their being carried away again.

Built in 1917 at Hoquiam, Washington, the 180' Lassen was the second built of a new type lumber ship, one with an oil-driven engine which revolutionized the steam driven engine of the standard wooden coastwise lumber schooner. For years, the Lassen carried lumber up and down the coast for her owners, quietly and uneventfully going about her business. In 1932, in Oakland, there was a fire in engine room, serious enough to end the lumber schooner’s working career, and she was towed to the Arques Shipyard at Johnson Street, to the place where the remains lie today.

 Then began the Lassen's nearly three decades as waterfront home and headquarters for an art community born when Ed and Loyola Fourtane, who were to become renowned for their exquisite jewelry, chartered the Lassen in 1936. "Chartered," for then she was still considered a sea-going vessel, one of many old ships in the Bay area destined to be dismantled, scrapped, burned or sunk. But then in the 1930s, historic vessels had been beached all over Sausalito. The bay went further inland than it does today, and Sid Foster's yellow harbormaster's office stood like a tiny train station across from today's Flynn's Landing restaurant, and you could cross a plank to a long shed and walk out through the boatyard to a motley and wonderful assemblage of houseboats and aging vessels; a happy community with geraniums, snoozing cats; sculpture and driftwood and a comfortable assortment of dockside debris, flotsam and marine junk.

The Fourtanes set up shop to make and show hand-made jewelry. They used the pilot house on the old ship for a showroom, with their workroom below. It took no time for discerning buyers to find them, and the rickety wharf and salty surroundings only added to the glamour. Since there were lots of spaces on board the ship, they soon had other artists working aboard. The Lassen became like an early day art commune... lots of space, delightful sea surroundings and friendly camaraderie. One of the artists who lived on board described the lifestyle, “I lived in the focs’l  - at high tide I could drop a line through a hatch and catch a fish – there were so many perch their backs were sticking out of the water," he said. "The Lassen became a gathering place for artists and waterfront people …very impromptu parties, everyone brought a jug. Living was cheap, and artists stayed as long as it remained so. There were a great many painters, but no one seemed to be making much of a living. When tourists come here today they ask 'where are all the artists?' They suppose that artists will be lined up at their easels wearing berets. It was never like that.”  

In 1959 the City began condemnation proceedings, but the sea was taking its toll from Lassen. By the late 50s, storms had broken her back and the stern had begun to droop. Still, life on board went on. A rickety plank gangway occasionally dropped a tenant into the mud; holes in the hull became large enough to fish through; furniture slid sideways as the sagging increased and the forepeak filled with water at high tide. But in spite of   condemnation efforts, the Lassen remained right there and the tenants continued to move on and off until the mid 1960s when she became uninhabitable. In 1968 another fire finished most of what remained.

In the late 60s the muddy place that had been a shipyard was filled in, and today it’s a parking lot with pleasant landscaping. Old pieces of the Lassen lie sprawled at the water’s edge, thanks to the volunteers who thought it was a piece of our past worth saving. And so we still have those historic old pieces to look at; the last remnants of a working lumber schooner of 50 years ago, and a reminder of our own past when artists (who didn’t wear berets) created, partied, drank jug wine and lived an easy lifestyle that was too soon to pass.

The Marin Fruit Company: A Peek into the Past

by Annie Sutter

This story ran in the Marin Scope in 1998 when the store closed after 83 years in Sausalito.

Last week a Sausalito landmark, the Marin Fruit Company, closed its doors, and its owners bid their customers and friends an emotional goodbye. "We are retiring" read the announcement taped to the window, "after all these years it is with great sadness to end an era of 83 years of a family run business. Please join us for a good-bye tea to reminisce, January 31, 1998. Nathan - Theodora Yee and Laura Jen. "And the people flocked to the store to say good-bye. Even before the tea began, well wishers began arriving, bringing cookies and scones and little sandwiches and a huge cake inscribed with "we will miss you." Trays of canapes donated by local restaurants, chocolate covered strawberries and tarts and flowers piled up on top of the freezers and the check out counter. People strolled past the bins where produce once was stacked, now filled with photos, newspaper clippings, memorabilia of several lifetimes. A big shiny cash register "not for sale, we've had it since the 30s," presided at the check out counter, still ringing up purchases throughout the day.

After 83 years of doing business in the same location, things can pile up. And what a "peek into the past" these things afforded those who passed through the store that day. The Yees displayed items found while they were cleaning out, saved and hidden in all the little out of the way places that things sneak into over the years. Bottles, boxes, tins, containers, and cartons on the rear shelves contained Wings Cigarettes, McCorrrick gelatin, Phenix bouillon cubes, and Schrader's ant powder. A grim female face frowning from the label of "Mrs. Stewart's Liquid Blueing" indicates that one must be serious, indeed, to spend time "blueing," the bottle cost 26 cents. We find that Major's Cement "is good" for repairing, among other things, "bisque statues and for tipping billiard cubes." Fifty cents will get you a can of Swift's Cleanser, $1.25 for a carton of cigarettes, 15 cents for a loaf of bread. Nathan's memory spans many a company change. "These are the tops of Uneeda cracker box tins - that became Nabisco, here is a Lucas Dairy milk bottle, that became Stornetta, and this one, a Marin City Milk Company bottle, was before my time" said Nathan. He pointed out a package of Ivory Snow showing a mother cuddling her baby, "a collector's item," he said, "because that's Marilyn Chambers, the Ivory Snow girl." Chambers, you may recall, went on to find fame in a very different field.

Alongside the register were stacks of receipts. In 1933 Aschoffs Bakery billed $14.25 for 95 loaves of bread - and 40 cents for two dozen rolls. Mondavi Burgundy delivered by the case in 1967 had a suggested retail of 45 cents a bottle - the price had escalated by 1970 to $1.89 a bottle.

People kept dropping in, and soon the wake-like atmosphere brightened as they moved through the store, admiring a little embroidered grocer's apron made by Nathan's mother when he was a boy, seeing two clocks that must've spent decades on the rear wall, one advertising Dad's Root Beer, and a Proctor & Gamble clock featuring "electric time." There was the ever familiar Coke sign, stacks of wooden milk cartons, rows and rows of red packaged boxes 'American fruit jar rings for canning,  and a large sign warning that "this store is equipped with Theft Detector Equipment."

People shared memories from over the years. "I remember a pole with a grabber on top that they used to reach high on the shelves, Willie would do that." And then Willie's daughter, Jackie Yee Choy, heard that and added, "It had a hook on top and a string, and you had to maneuver the box so you could get the hook on it and then squeeze the box. My father invented that contraption." A couple came in and handed Theodora a pink rose and said that they bought a basket of strawberries twenty years ago and took it across the street to eat, and that night he proposed to her, and she said "it's all because of you, and we're still together." The Ward family's recollections of the store span many generations. Ann Ward said that her mother-in-law remembers Yee Toc Chee, the Yee's grandfather, walking the streets selling produce from a basket on his shoulders, and Ann said that her son Jay "hung out there after school." What constitutes hanging out? I inquired. Jay answered, "Oh, sitting on the stool, twirling around, filling our faces with candy, bothering Willie. It was really special to be invited into the back room and see the old guys sitting around a card table." Another former schoolboy remembers a big fiber drum out on- the sidewalk full of dog biscuits - about five flavors designated by color. I'd walk by on the way home from school and dip into the barrel on the run, hoping to bring up my favorite color (it was charcoal, so I tried to grab a black one) but you had to go by fast so Willie wouldn't catch you." Then I asked him if the family was so poor that he had to eat dog biscuits, and he said "oh no, I just didn't have a Baby Ruth in my pocket."

Those who couldn't attend the tea sent notes, and they were taped to the front window. This one says it all. "I have tears in my eyes as I write this. Willie was so good to us. We all relied on him to carry us - sometimes months at a time when we were too broke to pay him. The closing of the store is like a death in the family to us. The last remnant of the golden age of Sausalito."