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Christensen Alley

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California, Los Angeles County, Pasadena
Named for the family that founded the Penn Oil and Supply Company in 1903, the First Independent Firestone and Union Oil Dealership on the West Coast. In the early 1930s, G.C. Christensen opened the largest and most modern automotive service facility on the west coast at 100 West Union Street. The building was designed by J. Cyril Bennett who also designed many well known cultural, civic and commercial buildings in Pasadena.

(Notable Places) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Bonham Alley

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California, Los Angeles County, Pasadena
Named for Perry P. Bonham, a plumber who occupied 45 West Colorado Boulevard in the Hugus and Bonham Block. Today, the late nineteenth-century masonry buildings are grouped behind a two-story Spanish Colonial facade. Bonham served as a police commissioner from 1901-1902 and was on the Board of Trade (now Chamber of Commerce) in 1904.

(Notable Places) Includes location, directions, 7 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Welcome to the Sign Post Forest

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Yukon Territory, Watson Lake
In 1942, during the construction of the Alaska Highway, the United States Army Corps of Engineers erected mileage posts at their camps that listed places, distances and directions in the Yukon, other Canadian cities, cities within the United States of America and also other parts of the world. One of these posts was erected at the Wye, the corner of the Alaska Highway and the road to the Watson Lake Airport, where the Sign Post Forest stands today. The original post is the only mileage post of its type to survive from the Alaska Highway construction.
Carl Lindley, a homesick soldier, added his hometown to the army signpost and started a time-honoured tradition. People from all over the world continue to add their hometown signs to the Sign Post Forest on a daily basis in the spring, summer and fall.
In 1992, Carl Lindley returned with his wife, Eleanor, to Watson Lake for the first time since his departure in 1943. He was overwhelmed when he saw the size of the Sign Post Forest. At a sign re-enactment ceremony, he replaced the original Danville, Illinois sign that had rotted away long before.
The Sign Post Forest has been protected and nurtured over the years by ordinary citizens of what became Watson Lake, the Lions Club, the Hippie Club and finally the Town of Watson Lake. The Sign Post Forest is one of the best known attractions along the 2,414-kilometre highway from Dawson Creek, BC to Fairbanks, AK. At the end of 2004, signs in the Forest numbered almost 55,000.

“I had received an injury near the border of BC and Yukon, just North of Lower Post. My foot was smashed while building a platform to fill dump trucks. I was taken to the Company aid station at nearby Watson Lake where I spent the next three weeks recuperating. Not able to do much work the C.O. asked if I could repair and repaint the sign that had been run over by bulldozers. I asked if I could add my hometown sign of Danville, Illinois as I was homesick for my hometown and my girlfriend Eleanor...”
– Carl Lindley of Danville, Illinois was a soldier working on the highway with Company D, 341st Engineers in 1942.


(Entertainment • Roads & Vehicles • War, World II) Includes location, directions, 7 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Remnants of Rincon Hill

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California, San Francisco City and County, San Francisco
Look up First Street towards the remnants of Rincon Hill; in the 1850s it was the first fashionable residential neighborhood in the city. When the excitement of the Gold Rush subsided, San Franciscans looked around for the best place to build a house with a view from a sunny hill, out of the wind and fog, and yet within reach of the financial district and the waterfront – Rincon Hill took the honors. In the 1850s the hill was higher, with several summits at 120 feet. An abundance of springs provided water for the gardens that made the hill such a desirable place to live. Hawthorn, Essex, Dover, Vassar Place, and Laurel Place were names taken from the English countryside and transplanted on small streets lined with walled-gardens, just off of Harrison, Folsom and Bryant. Along these streets the capitalists and lawyers, sea-captains and bankers, editors and senators, foundry owners and canny real estate investors, as well as mining stock speculators and judges, settled their families in houses that reflected individual tastes.

Rincon Hill was first assaulted in 1869 when the notorious Second Street Cut dug a trench seventy feet deep along the width of fashionable Second Street from Bryant to Folsom, leaving houses teetering on the abyss. Gradually, in the 1880s and 90s, most of the larger houses became boarding houses with good addresses, or sanitariums, or Bohemian enclaves for artists and writers. The great fire of 1906 destroyed all of the homes on the hill. Some land holders put up post-fire flats for city workers. Others sold out to expanding city industries. Many lots stood vacant. In the 1930s the decision to locate the entrance to the Bay Bridge on the hill destroyed the working-class neighborhood that grew up after 1906. Construction of the Bay Bridge and its highway connections effectively erased any evidence of the day when Rincon Hill was the best address in San Francisco.

On the front of the podia

All that is left of once beautiful and imposing mansions crowned the brow of the cliff – Harles Stoddard, 1903

On the back of the podia

To each the city of his dreams – George Sterling, 1901

(Notable Buildings) Includes location, directions, 8 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

1946 General Strike

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California, Alameda County, Oakland
Site of the 1946 General
Strike when Woman
Retail Clerks fought
For the Right to
Organize a Union

(Civil Rights • Labor Unions) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Oakland City Hall

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California, Alameda County, Oakland
Begun in 1911 and completed in 1914, this is Oakland’s fifth City Hall. Its construction was funded with a $1.15 million bond issue passed in 1909. The Beaux Arts design was by the New York firm of Palmer and Hornbostel, winners of a national design competition for a building that would reflect Oakland’s arrival as a major metropolis.

For many years the tallest building in Oakland, it was reputedly the first city hall in the United States to combine the ceremonial aspects of government with the modern high-rise office tower. Its three-tiered design earned it the nickname of “Mayor Mott’s wedding cake.” The ten-story office tower and a 91-foot ornamental clock tower and cupola rise above a three-story base with the council chambers, hearing rooms and mayor’s offices.

The building is of steel frame construction clad in white California granite. Glazed terra cotta ornament represents the state’s agricultural abundance: grapes, olives, figs, and wheat. Structurally damaged in the 1989 earthquake, City Hall was completely renovated and retrofitted with an innovative base isolation system, with assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It was rededicated by Mayor Elihu Harris on September 15, 1995.

City Hall was designated an Oakland City Landmark in 1979 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

(Government • Notable Buildings) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The Blackstone

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California, Los Angeles County, Long Beach
The Blackstone was designed as an apartment hotel building in Renaissance Revival style. It was a prominent feature of Long Beach's fledgling skyline, belonging to a group of downtown "high-rise" residential structures built in the early 1920's that accessed the popular beach and amusement features.

(Notable Buildings) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The Sovereign

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California, Los Angeles County, Long Beach
The oldest remaining highrise on the ocean bluffs, this unique "own your own" apartment building has provided elegant seaside living at the center of resort activity.

(Notable Buildings) Includes location, directions, 6 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Monroe Street Bridge

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Michigan, Monroe County, Monroe

A covered toll bridge first spanned this section of the River Raisin in 1819. Destroyed by high water and ice in 1832, the bridge was replaced with a conventional wooden span, which lasted 30 years before being replaced in the late 1860’s.

“Ten dollars fine for riding or driving over this bridge faster than a walk,” read a sign suspended over the iron bridge constructed here in 1900. Due to heavy traffic demand, a wide steel-reinforced concrete bridge took its place in 1927, slightly to the west of the previous bridge.

One of the first of its kind designed and built by the Michigan Department of Transportation, the cantilever-style bridge outlasted each of the former structures here. During its 60-year life the bridge was recognized by the National Register of Historic Places.

Upon inspection in 1989, the Monroe Street Bridge was found to be beyond rehabilitation. Aware of the bridge’s historical significance, the Michigan Department of Transportation designed the features of the present bridge to resemble those of the previous structure. It was completed in June 1990 at a cost of about one million dollars.

(Bridges & Viaducts • Man-Made Features) Includes location, directions, 8 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Long Beach Unity Society of Practical Christianity Church

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California, Los Angeles County, Long Beach
Unity, a non denominational Church, was founded in Long Beach by the Reverends Louise and John Samuel Newman in 1923. A grass roots fundraising campaign led to the purchase of this site in 1933. Construction began in 1941. Architecture was inspired by traditional Mediterranean and Romanesque sources. The Church was dedicated on October 21, 1941.

Minister: Rev. John McCoid Bennett, DD. LT.

(Churches, Etc.) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The Esser House

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California, Los Angeles County, Long Beach
This duplex was built by William Esser, a successful Long Beach builder whose work included the now demolished but famous Pacific Coast Club. A fine example of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, it was completed in 1929 just prior to the Depression. The architecture evokes the romance of the Mediterranean and of Spanish California during the housing boom of the prosperous 1920's.

(Notable Buildings) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Villa Riviera

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California, Los Angeles County, Long Beach
When completed, the Villa was the tallest building on the Southern California Coast and its French Gothic design won an award in Paris. It survived the 1933 earthquake but was seismically strengthened and restored in 1989-90.

(Notable Buildings) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Long Beach Skating Rink

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California, Los Angeles County, Long Beach
This venue was built in 1929 as a multi purpose auditorium. In 1935 it opened as the Dunbar Skating Rink and served this function for many years. In 2001, after a period of vacancy, the Robert Gumbiner Foundation, through an adaptive reuse program, renovated this site as an artists' live work complex. The lamella ceiling is still visible inside and the Art Deco exterior has been extensively restored.

(Notable Buildings) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Latham Memorial Fountain Unveiled

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California, Alameda County, Oakland
Edith Latham and her brother Milton had been gathering the memory of their parents in drawers, cabinets and living rooms until there was no longer space. Their need for a permanent storage site and longing to share the memories led them to imagine a memorial fountain in the center of Oakland, the city James and Henrietta Latham had pioneered. The children wrote a letter to Mayor Mott requesting his assistance in exchange for the resources required and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to guide the humanitarian representation of the Lathams into the future. The children then began sifting through their memories, boiling them on the stovetop, and pouring the reduced contents into large basins.
They boiled Mr. Latham’s letters from the US-Mexican war, documents from his brokerage business, and his love of local zoological gardens. They boiled the vegetarian cookbook Mrs. Latham authored, her watercolors of California, and the stories she told of the gold rush. They boiled their parent’s early accounts of Oakland, their home on 17th and Jackson, and their animal rights activism. Finally, the boiled their father’s death while aboard a ship in 1876, their heartbroken expressions of their mother until her passing in 1909, and the routine answers Edith and Milton gave as to why neither one of them had ever gotten married. The water smelled of ink, compassion, and wrought iron until it was strained. Then it became clean drinking water that has the faint taste of memories, as water often does.
The morning the fountain arrived Mayor Mott admired its beauty and utility. There were bronze carvings of wheat and angels, four troughs of pink Maine granite, and drinking spouts for citizens, beasts and birds. Memory water for the fountain arrived by train from the children. The city integrated the liquid into the memorial’s system and all waited for the history to begin touring the streets from the mouths of current residents. On April 12, 1913 the Latham Memorial Fountain officially entered the landscape and the soft sounds of men and women, horses and birds sipping water concluded the dedication ceremony.

Block Gallery and the Downtown Oakland Association are pleased to present Latham Memorial Fountain Unveiled, a site-specific text installation by Kari Marboe. With a unique style, Marboe tells the story of how the fountain came to be in Latham Square using history form the Oakland Public Library. This work focuses on the structure of the memorial fountain artwork and how citizens are preserved within the city.
This is a free public installation, opening November 1, 2013 and will be on display until April 2014.

(Arts, Letters, Music • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 5 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Ranchos

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California, Los Angeles County, Long Beach

Los Alamitos • Los Cerritos
This plaque marks the dividing line between the two ranchos on which Long Beach was subsequently built. Originally a part of a Spanish land grant to Manuel Nieto in 1784. They were partitioned between the heirs by government in 1834.

(Hispanic Americans • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Wolfe Ranch

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Utah, Grand County, near Moab

John Wesley Wolfe settled here in the late 1800s with his oldest son Fred. A nagging leg injury from the Civil War prompted John to move west from Ohio, looking for a drier climate. He chose this tract of more than 100 acres along Salt Wash for its water and grassland – enough for a few cattle.

The Wolfes built a one-room cabin, a corral, and a small dam across Salt Wash. For more than a decade they lived alone on the remote ranch.

In 1906, John’s daughter Flora Stanley, her husband, and their children moved to the ranch. Shocked at the primitive conditions, Flora convinced her father to build a new cabin with a wood floor – the cabin you see today.

The reunited family weathered a few more years in Utah and in 1910 returned to Ohio. John Wolfe died on October 22, 1913, in Etna, Ohio, at the age of eighty four.

inset picture and text: John Wesley Wolfe
John Wesley Wolfe (right) and his family cared for this place for more than a decade. You can help preserve it by looking and thinking about the character of the original caretakers. Please do not touch the walls, do not enter the buildings, and do not leave marks or graffiti on the walls. Because of its importance in local history, this site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


inset picture: Esther and Ferol Stanley
Esther and Ferol Stanley, with their pet burro, in front of the cabin on Grandpa Wolfe’s ranch, 1907.


(Native Americans • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 12 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

John Stewart Barry

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Michigan, Saint Joseph County, Constantine


Here resided from 1835 to 1849
John Stewart Barry
Governor of Michigan, 1843-46; 1850-52
   He was born January 29, 1802, in Amherst, New Hampshire; came to White Pigeon in 1831; to Constantine in 1834; kept a general store and engaged in St. Joseph River transportation business; served in the Territorial Legislature; was a member of the convention which prepared the constitution upon which Michigan was admitted into the Union; a distinguished member of the State Legislature; twice presidential elector.
   During his administrations, general progress was made throughout the state. Educational, canal, highway, and railway projects were begun and promoted; the University of Michigan was liberally assisted; Michigan State Normal College was established; efficiency of common schools was improved; Michigan Central and Michigan Southern railroads were constructed; a new State Constitution was adopted.
   As delegate to the 1864 Democratic National Convention, Governor Barry performed his last public service. He continued his business at Constantine until his death January 14, 1870.

(Notable Persons) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Loop Fire

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California, Los Angeles, County, Sylmar
This park and memorial stand as a tribute to the young men who lost their lives on the Loop Fire, to those who survived, and to firefighters everywhere. Forever Honored - Those Who Lost Their Lives Raymond Chee - Age 23 • James Moreland - Age 22 • Michael White - Age 20 • John Figlo - Age 18 • William Waller - Age 21 • Joel Hill - Age 19 • Steven White - Age 18 • Carl Shilcutt - Age 26 • John Verdugo - Age 19 • Daniel Moore - Age 21 • Kenneth Barnhill - Age 19 • Fredrick Danner - Age 18 Never Forgotten Survivors Gordon King • Warren Burchett • John Moore • Richard Leak • Robert Chounard • Patrick Chase • Stephen Bowman • Jerry Smith • Glenn Spady • Joseph Smalls • Edward Cosgrove • Rodney Seewald • Thomas Rother • William Parshall • Charles Gibson • Franklin Keesling • Jerry Gunter • William Davidson • Thomas Sullivan

On November 1, 1966, the El Cariso Hot Shots, a USDA Forest Service Interregional Wildland Firefighting Crew working on the Loop Fire were trapped by flames in a steep canyon on a hillside directly in front of you.

The crew was constructing fireline downhill into a chimney canyon and were within 200 feet of completing their assignment when a sudden shift of winds caused a spot fire directly below where they were working. Within seconds, flames raced uphill, engulfing the firefighters in temperatures estimated to reach 2500 degree F. The fire flashed through the 2,200 foot chimney canyon in less than one minute, catching the crew while they attempted to reach their safety zones.

Ten members of the elite firefighting crew, the El Cariso Hot Shots, perished on the Loop Fire that day. Another two members succumbed from injuries in the following days. Most of those who survived were critically burned and remained hospitalized for some time. In the last 30 years, lessons learned from the Loop Fire tragedy have been shared with firefighters around the world, saving many lives.

Dedicated November 1, 1996

(Disasters • Horticulture & Forestry) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Historic Crossroad

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Michigan, Monroe County, Monroe

From the earliest days of Michigan settlement this corner has witnessed travel of many sorts signaling important events in the history of Michigan.

East lies Monroe’s port on Lake Erie where waves of immigrant traffic came from New England by ship in the early eighteen hundreds and adventured west in covered wagons.
During the earliest days of settlement an Indian trail led to the Maumee River at Maumee. It became a military road in 1812. Later, when Toledo was founded, southward traffic flowed to the new city, pioneering the way for the great highways of today.
North the trails, and the roads as they developed, led to Detroit. Stagecoach lines developed in the eighteen thirties north and south past this crossroad and west to Chicago. The Raisin River was first forded by travelers in the vicinity of the present bridge. A toll bridge was built in 1819. It was carried away by a flood March 6, 1832. The present bridge was completed in July, 1929.

(Native Americans • Roads & Vehicles • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 5 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Klebingat Recalls The City Front

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California, San Francisco City and County, San Francisco
Captain Fred Klebingat was 24 years old when the panorama at the right was made from the Ferry Tower. He had sailed into San Francisco in 1908, as a seaman-donkeyman on the S.N. Castle. In 1979, at the age of 90, he walked the city front recalling life through the years on what was East Street in his youth. He studied the four-part 1913 panorama: ”Well, it was like this, you see.” and the Captain was off on a fresh memory.
Over the years, starting in 1953, Karl Kortum, Director of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, listened intently to Captain Klebingat, setting down the captain’s detailed recollections of 57 years at sea – mostly in the Pacific, ”My home from home.” From seaman to captain of square-rigged vessels in the South Seas; he mastered a range of vessels, from Hollywood yachts to Liberty ships. Captain Klebingat died in Coos Bay, Oregon, aged 95 – his words set her in italic are the real thing - ”Well, maybe I was wrong 2% of the time.”

East Street Becomes The Embarcadero In 1909

San Francisco gave a week-long party – The Portola Festival _ to honor Gaspar de Portola’s discovery of San Francisco Bay in October, 1769. For three years the city had been hauling debris and rebuilding from the 1906 earthquake and fire. “Let’s give a party and invite everybody to San Francisco to see the city rebuilt.” To honor Portola, streets were dedicated: Portola Drive and the Embarcadero paid homage to the city’s Spanish roots. Mission Revival architecture placed red tile roofs on stuccoed police stations, on new pier facades and warehouses. Cool grey San Francisco fell in love with sunny Spain. East Street still appears on signs in this view and in the recollections of retired seafaring men.

View from the Ferry Tower, June 3, 1913

Around noon, on that Tuesday, a photographer climbed the tower steps up the 220 feet, set up his camera and loaded it with a seven-inch glass plate – not once but four times. Each time he shifted his camera’s tripod carefully to make and overlap for a panoramic view of the waterfront. What he captured was an ad man’s dream, the prime place to push your product. Where else could you be sure of reaching 60,000 people – not once a day, but twice. Twenty-three ferry boats made 180 trips a day, carrying a total of 12,000 fares every working day. Weekends carried half as many, but locals and tourists had a little money in their pockets. Such were the times, that it didn’t take much. At 16 Embarcadero (directly above) Yosemite beer, at 5 cents a glass is advertised in stained art glass. In 1913 prices stay in place long enough to only post them once.

Steam Beer – 5 cents a scoop – so was a good cigar

Captain Fred Klebingat recalled, ”San Francisco in those days was known all up and down the Pacific Coast as ‘The City’; the Embarcadero was known as East Street; and all this part of town was known as ‘The City Front’. It was here that the work of the city was done. If you walked in the Ensign Saloon and called “Captain” – half the men in the place would look up. If I was in the money, I’d get oysters at Herman Dree’s, washed down with lager, and have a steam-towel shave and shine on my boots. You’d know it was summer in this picture – June 1st was Straw Hat Day – but I never wore such a thing. It was like this – the big talk around 1913 was the Panama Canal – due to open in 1914. Think what it meant for San Francisco shipping, if you didn’t have to fight your way around Cape Horn with freezing seas over the deck.”

You could buy a house cheaper than a car

“Horses still did most of the heavy pulling on the waterfront,” Klebingat recalled. ”Big iron wheels made a terrible racket on the paving.” At Market Street, two buggies tear around the corner, as the sidewalk group admires the smart open roadster parked by the curb. The June 3rd Morning Call carries ads for “Six Passenger Torpedo Sports Car at 5,000” and “Comfortable Two-bedroom Cottage on Pacific Street at $3,500.” Also noted, “During April, emigration from Hamburg and Bremen is heavier than in years, 43,000 people left Germany for the United State.” ”Well,” said the Captain. ”I was only 16, when I left on the German ship D.J. Waljen, bound for Chile by way of Cape Horn in 1905. Sailed into San Francisco in 1908. I’m not one of those fellows with one foot in Germany and one in this country, what we used to call ‘white-washed Yanks’.”

“Boss of the Road” – City Front – A Man’s World

“No women on the Front,” Captain Kibbling recalled: “Women you saw in a stream morning and night, crossing from the Ferry Building to Market Street, and back again. But not many others around. A few Salvation Army lasses, beating the drum on the street corner at night, part of the band. Maybe a whore or two in the waterfront hotels, but mostly that class of women congregated on the Barbary Coast – some distance away. You were safe on East Street at any time. The San Francisco waterfront was not a riotous scene filled with drunken sailors, as some romantic writers would have it. San Francisco cops kept things in hand: they might pick up an inebriate, but let him go if he was not causing any trouble. They might say to a bystander, ‘You know that bird? You do! Well take care of him – get him out of my sight.’”

The Cosmopolitan Hotel: 20 cents a night

”I climbed the stairs with my shipmate Jack Van Barm;” Klebingat recollected, ”Into a big hall divided with a running partition about six feet high. This hall was a maze of alleyways, with a door leading to each cubicle; the strong stench of crowded humanity prevailed. Jack’s enclosure had a cot and a pillow and some blankets. ‘This is all I can afford,” Jack said, ‘Just this morning a head stuck up over this low wall and says to me, “What time is it?” All at once, I knew that it was a damn easy way to rob a guy.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘And you wearing that gold chain. Why not raise some money on it? I don’t have much, but I can lend you a few bucks. And you can raise money on that gold watch chain.’ Jack grabbed his bag, and we left. Later, I was told that they nailed chicken wire up, to stop the guests from climbing from one cell to another.”

”Even In My Time The City Front Was Changing”

“Some seafaring men moved further up town, looking for a furnished room with a family. People liked this kind of lodger; he was very seldom there, but he paid his rent to store his good clothes. The people you knew when you walked down East Street, or the Embarcadero – the new name – became less. It had been a maritime community; it was less so. And by now it has been replaced altogether. What you see there now are skyscrapers and a park.” Captain Fred Klebingat stood here in 1979 to search for remembered places. The entire block of businesses between Steuart Street and the Ferry Building had been dislodged by a park. A massive new hotel replaced the modest Terminal Hotel. All the small businesses between Drumm Street and the waterfront had made way for the Embarcadero Center, skyscrapers and fountain plaza.

On the front of the podia

San Francisco was the City, the Waterfront was where the work of the City was done – Captain Fred Klebingat

(Industry & Commerce • Waterways & Vessels) Includes location, directions, 6 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
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