california history c o n t e n t s From the Editor: Something in the Soil... 2 Collections... 3

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1 california history volume 87 number The Journal of the California Historical Society

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3 california history volume 87 number The Journal of the California Historical Society Executive Director David Crosson Editor JanET FirEMan Managing Editor Shelly Kale Reviews Editor JAMES J. rawls Spotlight Editor jonathan spaulding Design/Production sandy bell Editorial Consultants LARRY E. BURGESS ROBERT W. CHERNY JAMES N. GREGORY JUDSON A. GRENIER ROBERT V. HINE LANE R. HIRABAYASHI LAWRENCE J. JELINEK PAUL J. KARLSTROM R. JEFFREY LUSTIG SALLY M. MILLER GEORGE H. PHILLIPS LEONARD PITT c o n t e n t s From the Editor: Something in the Soil Collections California Legacies: James D. Houston, Californian By Forrest G. Robinson Sidebar: Farewell to Manzanar Luther Burbank s Spineless Cactus: Boom Times in the California Desert By Jane S. Smith A Life Remembered: The Voice and Passions of Feminist Writer and Community Activist Flora Kimball By Matthew Nye Notes Reviews Index Donors Spotlight on the front cover Spineless cactus at the Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, Santa Rosa Famed plant breeder Luther Burbank has shown us the way to new continents, new forms of life, new sources of wealth, declared California Governor George C. Pardee in When Burbank offered his new spineless cactus for public sale in 1907, after more than twenty years of experimentation, it was instantly hailed as a miracle crop that would transform desert ranching. Jane S. Smith reveals the little known but fascinating race to riches story of the spineless cactus craze in her essay, Luther Burbank s Spineless Cactus: Boom Times in the California Desert. California History is printed in Los Angeles by Delta Graphics. Editorial offices and support for California History are provided by Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. Photograph by photojournalist Debra Lee Baldwin, author of Designing with Succulents (Timber Press); 1

4 CALIFORNIA HISTORY, September 2010 Published quarterly 2010 by California Historical Society LC /ISSN $40.00 of each membership is designated for California Historical Society membership services, including the subscription to California History. KNOWN OFFICE OF PUBLICATION: California Historical Society Attn: Janet Fireman Loyola Marymount University One LMU Drive Los Angeles, CA ADMINISTRATIVE HEADQUARTERS/ NORTH BAKER RESEARCH LIBRARY 678 Mission Street San Francisco, California Contact: Facsimile: Bookstore: Website: Periodicals Postage Paid at Los Angeles, California, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER Send address changes to: California History CHS 678 Mission Street San Francisco, CA THE CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY is a statewide membership-based organization designated by the Legislature as the state historical society. The California Historical Society inspires and empowers Californians to make the past a meaningful part of their contemporary lives. In support of this mission, CHS respects and incorporates the multiple perspectives, stories, and experiences of California; acts as a respon sible steward of historical resources within its care; supports the work of other historical organizations throughout the state; fosters and disseminates scholarship to the broadest audi ences; and ensures that California history is integrated fully into the social studies curricula at all levels. A quarterly journal published by CHS since 1922, California History features articles by leading scholars and writers focusing on the heritage of California and the West from pre-columbian to modern times. Illustrated articles, pictorial essays, and book reviews examine the ongoing dialogue between the past and the present. Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life. The Society assumes no responsibility for statements or opinions of the authors. MANUSCRIPTS for publication and editorial correspondence should be sent to Janet Fireman, Editor, California History, History Department, Loyola Marymount University, One LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA , or jfireman@lmu.edu. Books for review should be sent to James Rawls, Reviews Editor, California Historical Society, 678 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA f r o m t h e e d i t o r something in the soil What produces a writer who, grounded so deeply in his native state, rousingly evoked the heights and depths of his characters hearts and souls commensurate with powerful portrayals of lofty mountains and the arc of the ocean waves? What nurtures the quirky genius of a New England immigrant whose imagination and unique skill in plant breeding were so productive and innovative that he was heralded by scientists and poets alike: a unique, great genius (the botanist Hugo De Vries) and the man who is helping God make the earth more beautiful (the poet Joaquin Miller)? What yields the steadfastness of an isolated, rural woman who promoted radical ideas about women s suffrage and financial independence, persevering and finally translating her commitments into effective civic activism, including becoming the first woman in the country elected Master of a chapter of the Grange, the influential farmers movement? For each of these extraordinarily creative and gifted individuals, California provided the challenge, environment, and inspiration to carve a distinctive niche and establish varying degrees of recognition and status in their own times. In this issue, Forrest G. Robinson sketches the life and labor of an author whose novels and nonfiction works replicated and memorialized his beloved California and his adopted second home of Hawaii. With James D. Houston, Californian, Robinson delineates Houston s status as a California Legacy. Jane S. Smith s Luther Burbank s Spineless Cactus: Boom Times in the California Desert is a witty telling of a fascinating experiment. With narrative as smooth as the spineless paddles of the un-prickled pear (Opuntia) cactus that the Wizard of Santa Rosa bred, Smith unveils the ingredients of the spineless cactus craze an agricultural bubble based on practicality, greed, science, and Burbank s own deliberate quest for fame, all generated by his development of countless horicultural feats. Matthew Nye brings to light for the first time A Life Remembered: The Voice and Passions of Feminist Writer and Community Activist Flora Kimball. Educator, writer, and influential advocate of equal suffrage for women, Kimball was a founder, with her husband and his brothers, of National City. Through her writings in the statewide Grange publication, the California Patron, she left a permanent record of her position on the equality of women, surely representative of thousands of her silent contemporaries. What spurred the exceptional accomplishments of Houston, Burbank, and Kimball? Could it have been something in the soil? Janet Fireman California Historical Society California History volume 87 number

5 c o l l e c t i o n s William A. Brewer Collection of California Bookplates, Kemble Collections on Western Printing and Publishing Ex Libris (From the Library of...) The bookplates of hundreds of individuals and organizations in CHS s Kemble Collections on Western Printing and Publishing are part of a long-standing tradition. Beginning in the fourteenth century, when books were rare, book owners glued decorative labels to the inside covers of their books to safeguard their possessions. As the popularity of bookplates soared between 1890 and 1940, the number of collectors in the United States grew to about 5,000. The CHS bookplate collection, which merges literature with art and typography, preserves this time-honored hobby and confirms its appeal. Its example can only hint at the satisfaction that comes from knowing a book s provenance and its owner s interests. After the 1950s, perhaps due to the introduction of the paperback book, bookplate production nearly disappeared. Today, with the advent of electronic book-readers, many people may never even know about, much less use them. The accompanying plates reveal varieties of self-expression and styles of art, as well as individual attitudes toward book ownership from a sketch club s warning to Drink deep or taste not to the claim, illustrated by bookplate artist Franklin Bittner, that Dog on it, this is my Book.

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8 c a l i f o r n i a l e g a c i e s James D. Houston, Californian By Forrest G. Robinson James D. Houston, known to his friends as Jim, placed a high value on order, stability, continuity, permanence. He spent virtually all of his adult life married to the same woman, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston; they lived together and raised three children in the same old house in Santa Cruz, a coastal town tucked into the northwestern end of Monterey Bay, about an hour and a half south of San Francisco on scenic Highway 1. The town itself pretty old, as such things go in this region is famous for its redwoods, its surfing, and its branch of the University of California. Jim loved northern California the land, the history, the culture and he especially loved the beautiful setting and slow-paced, unpretentious style of life in the seaside town that he and Jeanne made their home. It was here that Jim, over a period of nearly half a century, established himself as a writer, a musician, a teacher, a very visible and valued member of the local community, and a beloved friend to many. When he and Jeanne first moved to Santa Cruz in 1962, Jim recalled in a recent interview, We both agreed we wanted to live here.... There was no lucrative job calling us. It wasn t about professional advantage. Something about the locale itself had an appeal that turned out to be very strengthening. You might say I was sticking close to my natural habitat. 1 Jim was born in San Francisco in His parents were newcomers to California, recent arrivals from Texas who joined the Depression-era migration west in search of a better life. They weren t disappointed. The family moved only once more, just a short distance south to the Santa Clara Valley, where they put down roots. After finishing high school, Jim completed a B.A., studying drama at nearby San Jose State University. Here he met Jeanne Wakatsuki, the daughter of Japanese immigrants who were living in the area. They were married in Honolulu in 1957, then moved to England where Jim completed a three-year tour as an information officer with a tactical fighter-bomber wing of the U.S. Air Force. The young couple traveled extensively in Europe before returning to northern California and to a course of study leading to an M.A. in American Literature at Stanford University. California History volume 87 number

9 Alfred Russel Wallace Naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace ( ) is considered by many the codiscoverer, with Charles Darwin, of the theory of natural selection. During his lecture tour in America, Wallace explained the principles of evolution to American audiences from Boston to San Francisco. Later, his lectures were published in his signature work on that subject, Darwinism (1889). Among the noted individuals he met in California was pioneer environmentalist John Muir, to whom he presented this studio portrait, made in San Francisco, with a note of kind remembrances on the back. John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library; copyright 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust Few writers have more consistently addressed the enduring issues arising out of the California experience, wrote Kevin Starr about James D. Houston ( ). Finding inspiration in the state s natural environment, history, and culture, and empathizing with the human emotions they produced, Houston contributed to the California literary landscape with eight novels, numerous essays, and nonfiction books. This photograph, made circa 2000 in his studio in the cupola of his historic Santa Cruz home, provides an intimate glimpse of the man and his work: standing up to write, with drafts of pages displayed on a clothesline running across the length of his desk. Courtesy of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston; photograph by Thomas Becker

10 c a l i f o r n i a l e g a c i e s Once settled in Santa Cruz, just an hour s drive away, Jim returned to Stanford in 1966, this time as a fellow in the celebrated creative writing program directed by Wallace Stegner, who was a valued mentor and enduring influence. Jim supported his growing family and bought time for writing by teaching classical and folk guitar and playing bass in a local piano bar. His first book, Surfing: The Sport of Hawaiian Kings, which he coauthored with Ben R. Finney and which reflected his strong attraction to Hawaiian culture, appeared in A teaching stint at Stanford coincided with the publication of his first novel, Between Battles, in Teaching on a more permanent footing commenced at the new Santa Cruz campus of the University of California in A second novel, Gig, winner of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for Fiction presented by the San Francisco Foundation as an encouragement to new writers and dedicated with special thanks to Wallace Stegner, appeared in the same year. Jim s career as a full-time professional writer was now well launched. It is probably impossible to overstate the importance of place of northern California and the wide Pacific region it embraces in Jim s life and work. By place, he has written, I don t mean simply names and points of interest and identified on a map. Rather, it is the relationship between a locale and the lives lived there, the relationship between terrain and the feelings it can call out of us, the way a certain place can provide us with grounding, location, meaning, can bear upon the dreams we dream, can sometimes shape our view of history. 2 Drawn directly from Jim s personal experience, this credo for literature and life took reinforcement from his teacher Wallace Stegner s emphasis on a western geography of hope and echoes the views of his contemporary and friend Kevin Starr, preeminent chronicler of the California Dream. Jim s earliest published writing may appear, in retrospect, to be journeyman work in which he perfected his technical skills and at the same time sharpened his focus on the specific place, culture, and themes that came, in time, to define his literary identity as a modern realist and historical novelist of California and the Pacific Rim. Early Work Surfing is an enthusiast s overview of all aspects of the sport, with special attention to its antiquity and to its decline during the century of foreign incursions to the Hawaiian Islands culminating in the American takeover in This tragedy, which robbed the Hawaiians of their social, economic, and political independence, was accompanied by a sharp decline in the native population and in traditional religious beliefs and cultural practices. Against this grave background, Houston welcomes the twentieth-century revival of surfing, which spread from Waikiki Beach in Honolulu to the coast of California, and more widely after World War II to coastal sites around the world. Much of the wonder of the old Hawaiian order was lost forever. But the renewal and flourishing of this ancient sporting institution complete with clubs, championships, commercial importance, mountainous waves to generate modern myths, and worldwide romantic symbolism 3 is the source of evident gratification to a lover of natural beauty, sunshine, the sea, and time-tested expressions of human pleasure and solidarity. Between Battles draws on another major dimension in Jim s early life, his military service on an American air base in England. Though set in the historical period between battles of the late 1950s, the novel was written and published a decade later, as the Vietnam War escalated. It is everywhere alive to the comedy of incompetence and waste and tedium of military life. Some of its best writing surfaces in brief, wonderfully imagined takes on the all-too-human actors in a peacetime army. There is the colonel who resembled California History volume 87 number

11 Houston began writing in the Air Force while stationed in Britain, publishing his first story in 1959 in the London literary journal Gemini. Another early work won a U.S. Air Force short story contest. In this photograph from 1959, he and his new wife, Jeanne, look out the window of Hillcrest, their thatched-roof cottage in Finchingfield. Courtesy of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston 9

12 c a l i f o r n i a l e g a c i e s Orson Welles trying to imitate Curtis LeMay and Staff Sgt. Hart, a serious little man from Nevada, with the neck and face of a surprised turkey. 4 But with an obvious eye to the much more consequential realities of Vietnam, the novel offers itself as a cautionary tale about how good people can get caught up in the darkly seductive allure of modern warfare. Don Stillwell, a pilot whose plan to become an architect is cut short by a fatal crash, admits just before the book s end that his military career has been entirely senseless. He is sickened by the thought of training for years just to learn more efficient ways to destroy installations and cities with nuclear weapons, and looks forward instead to learning how to build cities for the future. Stillwell s message is not lost on the novel s narrator, Lieutenant Sam Young, a college graduate and fledgling writer from California clearly modeled on the novelist himself. Traveling across England by train after his discharge, he surveys the thatched rooves and tangled lanes and steeples poking over every country knoll and reflects that this world had often beguiled me. I too was drawn to things that lasted. 5 Jim s third book and second novel, Gig, is the first actually set in northern California. Written during the year of his Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship at Stanford, Gig draws directly on Jim s experiences as the bass player in a combo playing at a fashionable Santa Cruz restaurant. The novel s narrator and protagonist, Roy Ambrose, confines his story to the events of a single evening at the lounge where he entertains a large handful of patrons who gather to drink and socialize around his piano. Attentive in an evidently self-conscious way to the classical unities of time, place, and action, the narrative has a partial focus in what Roy describes as his invisible iron maiden, 6 the fear that he will somehow fail as an entertainer and lose his audience. Along with occasional traces of then fashionable existentialism, the novel demonstrates signs of impatience with the smug conservatism of American middle-class life in the late 1960s, a time when spending is the ultimate act of faith and people are dying of complacency and too much food. 7 Though well written and lively in its pacing, it is a rather slender performance, and feels at times like a linked sequence of literary exercises in plot management, characterization, and dialogue. Though none of these early books fully anticipates the more important work that would soon follow, viewed in the aggregate, Surfing, Between Battles, and Gig display many of the most prominent elements in that later writing. The key locations Santa Cruz, northern California, and Hawaii are all featured. So are many of the key players: young people, musicians, Hawaiians, surfers. There is the emphasis that would endure on ordinary people following their dreams in search of the good life as it is frequently imagined and sometimes realized in the golden West. Historical Quests for the California Dream It was clear from the start that Jim s writing would draw heavily on his own experience, and that it would form itself into realistic, often redemptive narratives strong on tolerance, humor, pleasure, and peace. Much of this would find expression in his favorite music, which figures prominently both in the lives of his characters and in the themes that dominate their stories. Indeed, Jim was aware from early on that music was definitive in his life, as a form of pleasure, as a profession, and as a range of preferred styles and techniques that situated him in time. Though he began to emerge as a novelist of note during the era of the Beatles and rock and roll, Jim s tastes ran to a wide array of earlier musical forms the Hawaiian slack-key guitar and Okie 1 California History volume 87 number

13 Houston s passion for music nurtured his writing and revealed his individuality. His Santa Cruz bluegrass band, the Red Mountain Boys shown here walking in an open field on the University of California, Santa Cruz campus circa 1972 was a popular mainstay of the area s music scene: (left to right) Jim Houston, Ron Litowski, Marsh Leiceter, Kent Taylor, and Page Stegner. Courtesy of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston songs that his father loved, traditional bluegrass, and the popular tunes, show music, and big-band sound that Gig s Roy Ambrose claims for people of his own generation, whose tastes and images were mainly shaped during the thirties and forties. Jim was certainly attuned to and supportive of the forward-looking ideals of young people in the 1960s and 1970s, but his musical tastes were part and parcel with his attraction to the values and lifestyles of ordinary people in an earlier, less sophisticated America. As Ambrose goes on to observe of his generation, we are afflicted with nostalgia and constantly look for ways to bring our past into the present. 8 The fictional narrator speaks clearly here for his maker, a novelist alive to the lessons of history and to the great value of things that lasted. Published just two years after Gig, A Native Son of the Golden West is a more ambitious installment on the theme of historical continuities. The novel is longer, formally more sophisticated, and more elaborate in matters of plot and characterization than anything that Jim previously had written. Hooper Dunlap, a young, footloose surfer from southern California, quits college and migrates to Hawaii, where he hopes to satisfy his yearning for adventure which he defines quite vaguely as something improbable we can take real pride in. 9 Hooper s character and quest are variations on a Dunlap family tradition, represented in the narrative by a series of flashbacks to generations of forebearers migrating from Great Britain to the United States in the eighteenth century and crossing the continent to California in the twentieth. But Dunlap habits of mobility are in tension for the young protagonist with the values of his father, a hardworking Christian fundamentalist 11

14 c a l i f o r n i a l e g a c i e s who has put down roots in California. In taking flight to Hawaii, Hooper has rejected religious rectitude and domestic stability for a life of aimless, sun-drenched self-indulgence in surfing, sex, booze, and music. His role model and adoptive father figure in Honolulu is Jackson Broome, an aging vagabond who owns the condemned boardinghouse where Hooper takes up temporary residence. They recognize their kinship almost immediately. Whenever that Hooper comes in here, Broome declares, he makes me want to cry. He s so much like me at that age, I can t hardly stand it. Not much idea what he wants to do. Just out here farting around. The way all of us wish we could do all our lives. Matter of what you can get away with. I ve always thought that was the main aim of damn near every man I ve ever run across, to fart around as much as possible. Sooner or later a woman ll come along, though, and throw you off course. 10 The old man proves prophetic; indeed, the woman who comes along to throw Hooper off course is Broome s niece, Nona, a beautiful young dancer who works at a hotel near the boardinghouse. She is soon pregnant, and looks to Hooper for commitments to herself, their child, and a responsible future. But he is indecisive. This is not what he had in mind when he left California. Events accelerate toward a crisis. Broome dies suddenly of a heart attack; Hooper and a friend transport his body in a sailboat out to sea for burial. But will he decide to go back for Nona? That question goes unanswered when Hooper is killed in a careless accident. The novel closes nearly two decades later, as his son leaves California on his own. Like father, like son. And yet in seeming to affirm Hooper s legacy, A Native Son of the Golden West represents the young man s dream of carefree wandering in a decidedly critical light. Though a talented and attractive character, Hooper is emotionally immature; he takes what he wants from others, but shares little of himself in return. I keep getting the feeling, Nona complains, that you don t care about me. 11 Her concerns are well founded. Hooper is enthralled by an image of himself engaged in endless new beginnings new places, new people, new experiences, with little that is constant save sunshine, music, sexual conquest, and the regularity of change itself. We can be sure that Jim Houston had a more than passing familiarity with his young protagonist s ideas about the good life. The proof is in the energy and plausibility of his writing about those ideas. But where Hooper succumbed in his early twenties to the consequences of his own carelessness, the rising novelist in his late thirties was preparing to settle down in one place with a wife and growing family. Cast in this light, A Native Son of the Golden West may be read as a meditation on two versions of the California dream, one of youthful indulgence in variety and change, the other of mature dedication to growth, continuity, and permanence. Jim s ambivalence about accelerating change in California takes humorous expression in The Adventures of Charlie Bates, first published in 1973 and reissued in slightly modified form as Gasoline in The slender volume is a gathering of seven darkly comical stories unified around the eponymous hero and his love/hate relationship with the modern automobile. In the course of his adventures, Charlie runs through several cars, as many fascinating females, several nearly global traffic jams and earth-shaking collisions, right into the madhouse. Cars are potently seductive fast, liberating, fun. But they are also the chrome-plated symptoms internally combustible metal monsters roaring at breakneck speed through toxic fumes on endless miles of concrete over hubcaps and tailpipes and humans and other debris of accelerating social lunacy. One of society s children, Charlie is literally car crazy. 1 California History volume 87 number

15 The stories trace the gradual deepening of Charlie s derangement. The first, Gas Mask, finds him at the numb stage. Ingenuous, utterly uncritical, he views a weeklong traffic jam as an interesting diversion. Charlie and his wife, Fay, pack sandwiches and a thermos, rent an apartment near the freeway, and calmly survey the spectacle through a pair of navy binoculars. After all, Charlie reflects, this was really the only civilized way to behave. But as one story succeeds another, Charlie s world becomes more chaotic and absurd. Against a background of squealing tires, collapsing bumpers, and the hiss of steam from twisted radiators, baffled motorists try in vain to find their way. Hey, what the hell s going on around here! 12 cries a red-faced man lost on the fifty-fifth floor of a hundred-story parking tower. There are no answers. The wreckage simply continues to pile up as more and more people disappear under it. Charlie survives, but only by retreating into a world of fantasy. The final story, The Odyssey of Charlie Bates, opens to the cacophony of a multicar collision outside a freeway tunnel. Bolting from what remains of his car, Charlie runs into Antonia, a fetching astrology freak. Together they wander into the tunnel, where hundreds of frenzied accident victims surrender to their animal urges. Naked bodies writhe; a mad bomber threatens; soldiers join in with guns and clubs. Reaching the far end of the long, narrowing tunnel, Charlie next teams up with Fanny, a vendor of griddle cakes. In a fanciful rebirth, they emerge from the darkness into a pre-automotive world of banjo bands and bicycles built for two. The only answer to the madness of the present, it appears, is nostalgic retreat to an imagined, idyllic past. Jim s next novel emphatically confirms that his imaginative treatment of the California dream runs readily and frequently to nightmare. Published in 1978, Continental Drift is the first of three novels centrally concerned with the lives and mingled fortunes of the Doyle family. The book s title refers to the massive fault line that runs like original sin right down the spine of California, always there, below the surface of the action, ready to unleash destruction. It cuts across the west side of the inherited, northern California family ranch of Monty Doyle and serves as a constant reminder that the dream of human possibility in this Pacific outpost of paradise is extremely fragile, just one major upheaval away from disintegration. Jim s writing is more confident than ever in Continental Drift, probably the best of the three volumes in the Doyle trilogy. It is a very complicated narrative, with lots of twists and turns through multiple strands and perspectives deftly coordinated to produce a maximum of suspense. In many of its episodes, and in its pervasive tone of imminent catastrophe, the novel is strongly reminiscent of the period and place in which it is set, Santa Cruz in the 1970s, with its backdrop of war, generational conflict, drugs, cults, and ghastly serial murders. You ever get the feeling that everybody in the whole wide world is going nuts? asks Monty s older son, Grover. It s more than a feeling, his father replies; I get an absolute certainty. 13 Geological instability is the natural correlative to major disturbances in the local community as they play themselves out in the Doyle family. In the broadest historical terms, such troubles are linked to those of all the fortune seekers who have come to California, dreaming of conquest, dreaming of ranches... unending waves of explorers, wizards, gypsies, visionaries, conquistadors, people who want to take what is here and turn it into something else. 14 Closer to home, tremors run through the family in waves of marital infidelity, sibling rivalry, and the bitter harvest of war. Monty s younger son, Travis, is just back from a tour of duty in Vietnam, an experience that has left him physically and emotionally handicapped. He places the blame for his suffering on his father, the old 1

16 Santa Cruz s 1894 courthouse renamed the Cooper House in the 1960s and destroyed by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was the scene for this 1973 assemblage of members of the Santa Cruz literary community: (windows, left to right) Morton Marcus, Peter S. Beagle, Anne Steinhardt, Robert Lundquist, James B. Hall, Steve Levine, Victor Perera, T. Mike Walker; (standing, left to right) James D. Houston, William Everson, Mason Smith; (seated, left to right) John Deck, Lou Mathews, Nels Hanson, George Hitchcock. Courtesy of Gary Griggs conquistador who now deeply regrets having let his son be crippled fighting another country s wars. It hardly helps that Monty lusts after Crystal, the pretty but promiscuous girl that Travis has brought home with him. She is a potent reminder of old fractures in Monty s marriage to Leona, his wife of many years and the intuitive, morally grounded center of gravity in the entire trilogy. Leona is attentive to the movements of Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, and to ominous turbulence around the dread ring of fire that encircles the Pacific Rim. The times are out of joint. Globally, nationally, locally, and right at home, Leona is witness to linked portents of an apocalyptic turning point in the near or distant future. 15 The domestic drama at the center of Continental Drift intersects with a gripping murder mystery that Monty who is a journalist when he is not tending to the ranch follows closely and finally helps to solve. It will not do to spoil the pleasure of future readers by summarizing the plot. Suffice it to say that the unraveling of the mystery brings the members of the Doyle family through a painful crisis to subsequent stages of clarification and real, if incomplete, resolution. The earthquake of their recent lives is restored to calm and sanity at the Tassajara hot springs, a remote Zen Buddhist retreat in the Ventana Wilderness east of Big Sur. Here, at novel s end, the Doyles rediscover what they love about California, the health and wholeness and union with nature that generously compensate for its faults. Travis 1 California History volume 87 number

17 makes the trip but draws back from the reunited family once they have arrived in order to explore the healing potential of Zen spirituality. We have not heard the last of his troubles. Jim returned to the Doyle saga with Love Life, published in It is a novel true to its title, mixing roughly equal parts of family drama, soul-searching dialogue, sex, whiskey, country music, and the mysterious tides of fate, all set in and around the family ranch in northern California. The domestic crisis is played out this time against a background of biblical flood reminiscent of the punitive deluge that swamped the region in the winter of In a strikingly formal departure, Jim elected to tell his story in the first-person voice of Holly Doyle, the thirty-two-year-old wife of Monty and Leona s older son, Grover. He succeeds admirably in creating a narrative around topics and in a tone that will strike many as distinctively feminine. Indeed, Love Life comes closer than anything else Jim wrote to being a popular romance. It is all about the trials and tribulations some serious, some decidedly humorous of sexually liberated modern love. The narrative is set in motion by Grover s infidelity. There is no little attention to women s liberation, to selfactualization, and to sexual experiment. There is a male within the female, Grover insists, and there is a female within the male. Until you are in touch with that, you are only living half a life. As if to acknowledge that her story tilts rather perilously toward pulp melodrama, Holly tells her friend Maureen that we were all acting like those people you hear about on the jukebox. No matter how hard you try, sooner or later you end up somewhere inside a country-andwestern song. 16 The natural fury unleashed by the storm of Grover s betrayal brings ordinary life to a standstill, and forces Holly and Grover into a week of isolation on their remote homestead. There, threatened by mudslides and on limited supplies, but thanks to the sage counsel of Leona and the lubricating influence of alcohol, they come to terms with some hard truths about themselves and their marriage. Down to earth and completely honest, Leona admits that she has made mistakes in raising her sons but nonetheless brings Holly to the recognition that her own doubts and fears have been major obstacles to the success of her marriage to Grover. Leona is more bluntly open with her son. Mothers always know what s going on, she warns, but only as the prelude to a tearful outpouring of maternal love. Strengthened inwardly by his mother s display of support, Grover comes in time to recognize that his own disabling fear of losing control has been an impediment to the fruition of his relationship with Holly. The storm has passed, and the novel ends, as Jim s novels tend to, with a renewal of clarity and with real, if measured, affirmations of home, family, continuity, and the informing influence of place. Fittingly enough, Hank Williams has what amounts to the last word: I can t help it if I m still in love with you. 17 The final volume in the Doyle trilogy, The Last Paradise, appeared in Like Continental Drift, it is a mystery novel, this time with a discernibly noir plot and tone. And like both of its predecessors, it follows a love story through multiple complications to a crisis and final resolution. The action of the novel has moved to Hawaii, though ties with northern California are clearly maintained, and there are constant reminders of geological, historical, and cultural continuities within the region defined by the Pacific Rim. Nature is again one of the principal dramatis personae, this time as the molten ring of fire encircling the entire Pacific and locally manifest in Pele, the mythological goddess of volcanoes, said to reside in the Halemaumau Crater at the summit of Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. Like the earthquakes and storms in the earlier novels, Pele is a force to be reckoned with, chastening foolish humans when they wander from the path of natural goodness. 15

18 c a l i f o r n i a l e g a c i e s Travis Doyle, last seen seeking the truth at Tassajara, is now thirty-two years old and still lost. His marriage is on the rocks, and he is an insurance claims adjuster on assignment in Hawaii, where a mainland company drilling for geothermal energy is locked in conflict with the local Hawaiians, who have had enough of outsiders exploiting and desecrating their sacred homeland. Travis has a special affinity for the Pacific. As his mother, Leona, later reveals to him, his touch point in life, the place of his conception, was right on the fault line. For a long time, she believed that his years of restlessness and roaming were directly linked to the fact that he was a natural-born son of earthquake country. But events persuade her that we have been looking in the wrong place for explanations. Instead of looking back to their ranch on the fault line, poised to break loose at any moment and float away, they should look straight ahead and think about this ring, this rim we are on.... Aren t we on the edge of some great big wheel here? 18 As it turns out, Travis s business trip to Hawaii is the beginning of a spiritual journey toward the hub of that wheel, the volcanic Pacific Rim, where he will discover his rightful place and people. It is entirely consistent with Leona s prophetic emphasis on hidden continuities that Travis s future should centrally involve a woman who emerges out of his past. He first met Evangeline his destined evangelist and literary descendant of the heroine of Longfellow s famous poem during a visit to Hawaii when he was just sixteen. While their fathers paid their respects at the national monument at Pearl Harbor, Travis and Evangeline commenced a passionate eightweek romance that lived on in his consciousness, not in words or remembered images but as a globe of honey-colored light. 19 Now, two decades later, they are fatefully reunited at a time of crisis in which their rekindled love nearly succumbs to the torque of competing affiliations. In time, however, Evangeline converts Travis to the teachings of Pele and enlists his support in the struggle to protect the native environment from the depredations of the mainland developers. Like Travis, Evangeline is a child of fire, having been baptized by her native Hawaiian great-grandmother in the name of Pele. In bringing Travis to the fire goddess, she restores him to his natal spirituality, and thus reaffirms the special force of the love that first drew them together. At novel s end, Travis returns to California, leaving Evangeline, who is pregnant with their child, temporarily behind. But we feel that their future as a couple is secure, aligned as it is with traditional spirituality and grounded in primordial continuities linking remote ancestors with the children of tomorrow. The mind forgets such things, Evangeline reflects, but the body can remember and hear that oldest calling. 20 farewell to Manzanar and nonfiction works In the course of his long, extremely productive career as a professional writer, Jim earned wide recognition as a regional novelist of the first rank. But he also made stellar contributions to the field of nonfiction. Most notably, perhaps, he worked together with his wife, Jeanne, in composing Farewell to Manzanar, the autobiographical narrative of her childhood years in a World War II Japanese American internment camp in the Owens Valley. First published in 1972 and adapted for a two-hour television production in 1976 the memoir broke important new historical ground and quickly established itself as a staple in high school and university courses across the country. Jim and Jeanne teamed up again in the singlevolume 1985 publication that combined her Beyond Manzanar: Views of Asian American Womanhood with his One Can Think About Life After the Fish Is in the Canoe, and Other Coastal continued on p California History volume 87 number

19 Farewell to Manzanar In the early 1970s, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston began to recall long-suppressed memories of her family s exile in an internment camp in Owens Valley during World War II. These encounters with her past produced a groundbreaking and compelling account of the wartime treatment of Japanese Americans, which was published in 1973 as Farewell to Manzanar. Co-authored with her husband, the book is now a California classic and standard reading in schools and colleges across the country. As James recalled in a 2007 interview, Not long after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese military in December 1941, an entire subculture was rounded up and evacuated to ten camps, remote and godforsaken places well inland, away from the coast 120,000 people, whole families and mostly native-born American citizens, my wife among them, her nine brothers and sisters, her mother and father. The book we wrote together is her story, her family s story. She was seven when the war started, eleven when they got out of Manzanar. Twentyfive years later we sat down in our living room here with a tape recorder and she began to voice things she d never talked about, not with me, not with anyone. 1 The cover of this edition of Farewell to Manzanar, published by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, features photographs of Jeanne and members of the Wakatsuki family during their internment, circa Houston also spoke of his writing in the contexts of California as a cultural crossroads and as a region of dreams, the ones that come true and the ones that unravel themes that ring true in Farewell to Manzanar. For me, he acknowledged, meeting Jeanne and her family, then working with her on Farewell to Manzanar was a huge awakening.... It was the beginning of an education... my first glimpse of another place, another way of being in this land, of a life and a history that reaches both ways across the water. 2 The following excerpts, paired with selections from the collection of Ansel Adams s photographs of Japanese American internment at Manzanar, housed in the Library of Congress, give a personal voice to a troubled era in California s history. The Editors Excerpts from Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston. Copyright 1973 by James D. Houston. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. We rode all day. By the time we reached our destination, the shades were up. It was late afternoon. The first thing I saw was a yellow swirl across a blurred, reddish setting sun. The bus was being pelted by what sounded like splattering rain. It wasn t rain. This was my first look at something I would soon know very well, a billowing flurry of dust and sand churned up by the wind through Owens Valley. 1

20 We drove past a barbed-wire fence, through a gate, and into an open space where trunks and sacks and packages had been dumped from the baggage trucks that drove out ahead of us. I could see a few tents set up, the first rows of black barracks, and beyond them, blurred by sand, rows of barracks that seemed to spread for miles across this plain. In Spanish, Manzanar means apple orchard. Great stretches of Owens Valley were once green with orchards and alfalfa fields. It has been a desert ever since its water started flowing south into Los Angeles.... But a few rows of untended pear and apple trees were still growing there when the camp opened, where a shallow water table had kept them alive. In the spring of 1943 we moved to Block 28, right up next to one of the old pear orchards. That s where we stayed until the end of the war, and those trees stand in my memory for the turning of our life in camp, from the outrageous to the tolerable. 1 California History volume 87 number

21 Before Manzanar, mealtime had always been the center of our family scene. In camp, and afterward, I would often recall with deep yearning the old round wooden table in our dining room in Ocean Park, the biggest piece of furniture we owned, large enough to seat twelve or thirteen of us at once.... Dinners were always noisy, and they were always abundant with great pots of boiled rice, platters of home-grown vegetables, fish Papa caught.... My own family, after three years of mess hall living, collapsed as an integrated unit. Whatever dignity or feeling of filial strength we may have known before December 1941 was lost. As the months at Manzanar turned to years, it became a world unto itself, with its own logic and familiar ways. In time, staying there seemed far simpler than moving once again to another, unknown place. It was as if the war were forgotten, our reason for being there forgotten. The present, the little bit of busywork you had right in front of you, became the most urgent thing. In such a narrowed world, in order to survive, you learn to contain your rage and your despair, and you try to re-create, as well as you can, your normality, some sense of things continuing. 19

22 c a l i f o r n i a l e g a c i e s Sketches. Jim s very readable Californians: Searching for the Golden State, a collection of brief travel narratives featuring exchanges with such notables as Luis Valdez, Steve Jobs, and Tom Bradley, appeared in Where Light Takes Its Color from the Sea, A California Notebook, published in 2008, is a kindred selection of memories and reflections highlighted by illuminating chapters on Wallace Stegner and Ray Carver. And there is more a substantial shelf of nonfiction that stretches to include Open Field (1974), a biography of 49ers quarterback John Brodie; The Men in My Life (1987), a volume of More or Less True Recollections of Kinship ; In the Ring of Fire (1997), the narrative of a journey through the Pacific Basin; Hawaiian Son: The Life and Music of Eddie Kamae (2004), a tribute to the legendary ukulele virtuoso; and numerous collections of West Coast writing, most notably volume 1 of The Literature of California, co-edited with Jack Hicks, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Al Young, published by the University of California Press in Snow Mountain PaSSage and LaTEr Works But Jim will be remembered best for his novels, the writing that most fully engaged his creative attention and talent. Doubtless the most memorable novel of them all is Snow Mountain Passage, the superb fictional re-creation of a defining chapter in California history, published to considerable acclaim in The inspiration for the novel lent great credence to Jim s sense that the important things in life happen for a reason. After inhabiting their Santa Cruz Victorian for several decades, all the while employing its lofty cupola as his study, Jim discovered, apparently quite by chance, that Patty Reed, one of the children who survived the infamous Donner Party tragedy of , had lived in the house until the end of her long life. Her father, James Frazier Reed, was one of the principal organizers of the ill-fated wagon train and a protagonist in the conflicted events that left the party trapped for the winter in the frozen Sierra. For a novelist interested in history, family, and continuities of time and place, and who believed, as Jim certainly did, that old voices are always in the air, in the towns and in the soil, waiting to be heard, this was a story he was destined to write. In Where Does History Live? his essay on the novel s fateful provenance Jim describes his surrender to the potent attraction of the project and his sudden, startling access to the characterizing words and cadences of Patty Reed s voice. I would not call it an actual sound in my head, he recalls; nor was it the quaver of ghostly sentences rising out of shadowy cobwebs at the far side of the attic. Rather, it was the distinct sense of a certain way of remembering, a way of speaking as the elderly woman Patty Reed might have spoken in the years when she lived here, before she died in the bedroom downstairs. It was the advent of that voice, he goes on, that gave me a way into this novel. 21 There can be no question that Jim s empathic ingress to Patty s sensibility is integral to the success of Snow Mountain Passage. She is a sturdy but forgiving moralist who does not shrink from the appraisal of her father s very consequential character flaws and errors in judgment. I cannot excuse him, she admits; yet neither is it my place to judge him, as others have, or to judge the way he contended with the trials of that crossing. Her father attracted enemies, she recalls, in her vigorous western vernacular, like an open jar of jam will gather ants and blowflies. This cannot be denied. 22 Patty is a woman made wise before her years by the terrible events of her childhood. By age nine, she reflects, I had come to see that each hour of my life was a wonder. But we approach the deep human center of what Patty Reed has taken from her experience in the novel s extraordinary opening, an extract from the fictional trail notes that Jim created as the vehicle for her California History volume 87 number

23 Approximately half of the members of the Donner Party who were trapped in the Sierra Nevada during the deadly winter of perished. Among those who survived, the Reed family settled in San Jose. Later, Patty Reed ( ) lived in the Victorian house overlooking the East Cliff beaches of Santa Cruz that became home in 1962 to Houston and his wife, Jeanne. Patty posed for this photograph circa 1920 at the house, from which Houston envisioned her recollections of the Donner saga in Snow Mountain Passage. Following the book s publication, Houston recalled: I can still sit in the rocking chair Patty Reed sat in eighty-five years ago. I can look into a beveled mirror she once looked into, above the oak-paneled fireplace. From the verandah I can regard her view of Monterey Bay, which still glitters and beckons, and consider that on the day we moved in, back in 1962, her story, her family s story, was already waiting here, inside the house. Courtesy, History San José unique voice. Describing a dream in which she sees her mother, Patty writes, She was speaking words I could not hear. I ran through the snow, while her mouth spoke the silent words. I was young, a little girl, and also the age I am now. For a long time I ran toward her with outstretched arms. Finally I was close enough to hear her soft voice say, You understand that men will always leave you. I stopped running and in my mind called out to her, No. It isn t so! Her mouth twitched, as if she were about to speak again. She wanted to say, Listen to me, Patty. She was trying to say it. I woke up then and spoke aloud. Women leave you too. I was speaking right to her, and I waited, expecting to hear her voice in my ear, as if she were close by me in the dark. I whispered, Don t you remember? But she was gone. 23 Too soon and too painfully for a child, that long, desperate winter in the Sierra taught Patty that there are no sure things in life, no durable stays against the sense of defenseless isolation and vulnerability that overtakes many people, usually at some later stage in their allotted time. When she needs them most when her child s reality is suddenly exposed to extremes of danger, deprivation, and the grossest human degradation both parents, responding to the necessities of the crisis, leave her to face the nightmare on her own. Mortal diminishment and panic in the face of encroaching anomie is the novel s defining theme. Bereft in the midst of a treeless desert, the pioneers are strangers again, more estranged than before they met, estranged and abandoned. 24 Unfairly judged and then banished from the wagon train, James Frazier Reed imagines himself marooned upon the lonesome face of a far-off planet, a hundred million miles out into space, looking back upon this rolling speck, as small as the smallest pinpoint in the vault of stars. All such images have their affective center of gravity in Patty s shattering childhood encounter with parental betrayal at a time of crisis. I don t have to tell you what it felt like, she writes, evidently confident that we will understand, to be that age and have both your mother and your father disappear into country that seemed to have no beginning and no end. 25 1

24 This photograph of Truckee Lake, where Patty Reed and sixteen other members of the Donner Party were rescued, was taken from Frémont Pass in 1868 as the Central Pacific Railroad reached completion. The areas inhabited by the emigrants became known as Donner Pass, Donner Lake, and Donner Peak. In Snow Mountain Passage, Patty observed: When I was a girl there were no trains anywhere yet out here. When we came through the mountains there was hardly any trail. Where the train cuts through the Sierra Nevada now, we made that trail. What a long road we have traveled. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Central Regional Library, A. J. Russell Collection Taking a cue from Grace Paley, Jim has acknowledged that in order to finish his novel he had to supplement Patty Reed s voice with a second narrative, one which comes rising up next to the first, or sometimes comes rising up inside it, and it s the telling of the two together that makes the story. This second formal and thematic ingredient integral to the success of Snow Mountain Passage is the omniscient treatment of the larger story of the star-crossed migration from Illinois, through the horrific winter in the Sierra, and down at last to the promised land in California. The featured player in this half of the drama, and the counterpoint to Patty s strong and contemplative presence, is her father, who embodies the restless male urge to pull up stakes and make the headlong continental crossing. 26 Like so many others who risked the dangerous journey, James Frazier Reed comes to California following a dream of a fresh start in a new land. He wants adventure and opportunities for leadership. Most of all, he looks forward to the day when his family will settle and prosper in a place of beauty and abundance, a place like the orchard land adjacent to an abandoned mission near San Jose. He covets this land as a sanctuary whose possession will answer a deep human California History volume 87 number

25 craving felt most profoundly by his daughter Patty for security, permanence, and repose. In his mind, Reed sees the year turn, he sees the pruned limbs sprout new buds. He sees the pears and plums spring forth, burdening the limbs. He sees his children climbing among the branches, and scurrying between the rows to gather windfall fruit. 27 This, surely, is something worth fighting for. But in the course of achieving his dream, Reed and his fellow pioneers help to wrest power from the resident colonials and to violently dispossess the much larger indigenous population. By the terms of conquest, security and abundance for the conquerors are the yield on terrible deracination and penury for the conquered. While her father fights valiantly for control of the territory, Patty, clinging to life in the snowbound Sierra, discovers another hero standing in reserve. His name was Salvador. 28 In token of his loyalty to the forsaken child, the young Indian guide gives her his adobe amulet to wear around her neck. Later on, as circumstances grow increasingly dire, poor Salvador is killed and cannibalized by other members of the party. At novel s end, his surviving brother, Carlos, turns up at the mission orchard that the victorious Reed has now claimed as a home for his family. Carlos recognizes the amulet and demands an account of his brother s fate. As the terrible truth spills out, Patty realizes that Salvador s family, the sons, the father, the mother too, a family much like ours, had until very recently made their home on the mission orchard. Carlos gives voice to a low groan that The reunion of Patty and her father, James Frazier Reed, is imagined in this sketch from an 1849 account of the California and Oregon territories. Through Patty s voice in Snow Mountain Passage, Houston described James at the start of their journey a depiction that was inevitably altered by the tragic events that followed: He was a dreamer, as they all were then, dreaming and scheming, never content, and we were all drawn along in the wagon behind the dreamer, drawn along in the dusty wake.... Sometimes very early, before it gets light, I will still see him the way he looked the day we left Illinois. In his face I see true pleasure and a boyish gleam that meant his joy of life was running at the full. J. Quinn Thornton, Oregon and California in 1848, vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1849), 196; California Historical Society

26 c a l i f o r n i a l e g a c i e s soon swelled to a howling wail of grief for his brother and for the many thousands more whose lives were destroyed by the conquest. 29 In this powerfully moving denouement, Jim draws into sharpened focus the sense of imminent, retributive catastrophe that runs through his earlier novels. All those restless, conquering dreamers and adventurers and settlers are prey to the nameless, unshakable melancholy, rooted in historical guilt, which hangs over places like California, where innocent people have been made homeless so that others might claim a new place in the world. This is the deeper moral significance of those recurrent earthquakes and floods and volcanic eruptions. Patty recognizes that the faithful Salvador, truly her savior, was sacrificed to the fruition of her father s dream of possession, continuity, and prosperity. She sees that her long, stable, abundant life has its roots in Salvador s lonely grave. Here, then, is the source of the chastened gratitude and melancholy that run through Patty s story. If only we could find a way to inhabit a place without having to possess it, she broods; it s possession that divides us. 30 The formal and thematic elements that combine so successfully in Snow Mountain Passage reappear in Jim s last complete novel, Bird of Another Heaven, which was published in Sheridan Brody, a young radio talk show host in San Francisco, is unexpectedly contacted by a long-lost grandmother who puts him in touch with his remote Hawaiian and Native American roots. The theme, once again, is history, this time with a special emphasis on racial diversity and on the grave injustices wrought by nineteenth-century American expansion in California and the Hawaiian Islands. Sheridan s program, which reaches out to a highly diverse audience, is dedicated to letting the past speak to the present, 31 not least of all by renewing and strengthening ties between generations. Locating the self in space is also important, as the novel s leading characters scrutinize complex genealogies in order to find their proper homes in the sprawling geography of the Pacific Rim. For Nani Keala, Jim s mixed-race great-grandmother, identity runs deeper than ownership, deeper than boosterism or patriotism.... Hers was an ancestral bond rooted in bedrock not made of documents. 32 Finally, like Snow Mountain Passage before it, Bird of Another Heaven unfolds in two narratives that run along parallel tracks toward a final, clarifying resolution. Sheridan s story, related in the first person, is an attempted reconstruction of the mysterious events surrounding the 1891 death of the Hawaiian King Kalakaua in San Francisco s Palace Hotel. At intervals, meanwhile, Sheridan s greatgrandmother s intimate role in the mystery she was the king s distant cousin and lover is set forth by an omniscient narrator. The partial solution to the mystery emerges from the convergence of the two narratives at the novel s end. Quite in spite of these important similarities, the two novels differ dramatically in tone and overall effect. Snow Mountain Passage is grounded in well-documented history. It enhances our sense of the past not by expanding our knowledge of what happened, but rather by imagining with extraordinary empathy how those events might have felt to a vulnerable young person caught up in them. So persuasive and so profound is Jim s insight into Patty Reed s ordeal that we come away from the novel with an enhanced appreciation of what it means to be human. By comparison, Bird of Another Heaven builds on a very slight historical foundation, the death of the king of Hawaii in San Francisco. The rest, except for intermittent references to the American takeover, is mostly invented. The paired strands of narrative that Jim erects on this base are both extremely intricate, involving a cast of characters bridging several generations, scattered across numerous locales, and engaged California History volume 87 number

27 in a wide variety of activities. True, there is a measure of clarifying convergence at the novel s conclusion, but the overall journey has a diffuseness that contrasts with the focused forward thrust of Snow Mountain Passage. The realism of the parallel narratives of Patty Reed and her father is plausible and compelling; we never doubt that these events happened in this way and with this impact on the actors involved. Bird of Another Heaven, by contrast, with its emphasis on mystery and conspiracy, its exotic settings, improbable alliances, breathless sexuality, and heavy reliance on coincidence, has the feel of a romance, complete with the resolution of conflict in a concluding marriage. The pleasures to be derived from fiction constructed along such lines are many, to be sure, especially when the workmanship is as skillful as Jim s. Yet it seems likely that some and perhaps many of his most devoted readers will continue to gravitate to Snow Mountain Passage for the sterner but more bracing and durable satisfactions that it affords. At the end of his life, Jim left behind the wellconstructed first draft of a substantial portion perhaps a quarter or a third of a kind of sequel to Bird of Another Heaven. Titled A Queen s Journey, it is the story of King Kalakaua s sister and successor to the throne, Queen Liliuokalani, who labored strenuously but ultimately in vain to obstruct the 1898 American annexation of the Hawaiian Islands. The novel, cast in the same literary mold as its predecessor, is narrated by a New Englander who has loved the queen since their first meeting in Honolulu in 1868 and who now, thirty years later, serves as her personal secretary during a lobbying mission to Washington, D.C. It is, of course, a narrative moving with historical inevitability toward ultimate defeat. Equally clearly, however, the plans for its unfolding made ample provision for romance, mystery, and intrigue. 33 A Native Son of the GolDEn West Jim Houston, husband, parent, musician, teacher, and professional writer par excellence, was a native son of the golden West, genus californianus. But if he was a superb example of a human type often represented in his writing, he was also something more. In his books, as in his life, Jim never lost sight of the larger world stretching from Europe across the Atlantic, westward across the United States, and outward into the Pacific whose people and stories flowed together and fused in his identity. He was intensely local and just as intensely global all at the same time. A writer of imagination, style, and seemingly effortless lucidity, he was self-effacing in all things, not least in eschewing trendy literary sophistication. A splendid raconteur, he always put the story first a story of restless people in motion, seeking opportunity, wealth, security, and redemption in regions new at least to themselves, receding ever westward. He loved the ease and warmth and freedom of life in northern California, most especially in coastal country made famous before him by Jeffers and Steinbeck. His humor, optimism, and generosity of spirit were deeply rooted in this most favored of places, though he knew something as well of earthquakes, floods, and the answering history of human destructiveness in the region. Emerging as it does from this richly mingled background, Jim s message to us is clear: love this place as you love your life in it, and preserve it for those who follow. Forrest G. Robinson is professor of humanities at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He took his B.A. at Northwestern University and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University. He has published numerous books and articles on western subjects, including, most notably, Mark Twain, Wallace Stegner, Owen Wister, Willa Cather, Jack London, Josiah Royce, Carey McWilliams, Jack Schaefer, Kevin Starr, and the new western history. 5

28 LUTH BurbAnk s spineless CAcTus: Boom TimEs in ThE CALIForniA DEsT By Jane S. Smith here s a way to end world hunger and make the desert bloom: take the common prickly pear cactus that grows wild throughout the Southwest, use hybridization and selection to persuade it to relinquish its sharp spines, plant the improved version across the arid regions of the world, and open up the range to grazing cattle. That was the plan of Luther Burbank, California s most celebrated plant breeder in the early years of the twentieth century, and it captured the imagination and the dollars of a surprising number of people the world over. From 1905 to 1916, Burbank s spineless cactus was the center of an agricultural bubble held aloft by the combined winds of genuine need, popular science, the eternal pursuit of quick profits, and, most of all, the extraordinary fame of Burbank himself. The story of the spineless cactus craze is a tragicomedy in several acts, with many prickly repercussions, but at the turn of the last century it was hardly an isolated example of California s pursuit of new and better crops. From grapes and olives in the Napa Valley to cotton in Kern County and dates in Indio, California was being transformed by agricultural innovation. All over the state, optimistic growers were busy draining, irrigating, terracing, tilling, and doing whatever else seemed necessary to transform the largely uncultivated Pacific paradise into a functioning commercial garden. Luther Burbank ( ) was the most famous plant breeder of his day. By his own successful example well publicized by myriad writers and reporters he popularized the idea that plants can be shaped to fit human needs. Credited with advancing the science of plant breeding, he was an early and major contributor to the state s growing agricultural industry. This photograph of Burbank at leisure circa 1895 belies his indefatigable efforts, for more than fifty years, to create new plants, including the spineless cactus one of approximately 800 Burbank varieties of trees, flowers, fruits, vegetables, nuts, berries, and grains. Courtesy of the Library of Congress California History volume 87 number

29

30 Burbank s spineless cactus plan never quite worked, as either cattle feed or instant riches, and its decade-long burst of promotion, cultivation, speculation, and exploitation is now almost lost in the crowded annals of financial miscalculation. Specimens still grow in many parts of California, often as unnamed components of the home garden, but both the man and his contribution to desert agriculture have faded from popular memory. 1 Like the eucalyptus tree, widely promoted during the same period as a fast-growing source of timber and now tolerated as a fragrant fire hazard of little or no commercial value, the spineless cactus, with its aura of easy profits, is a reminder of the race to riches that has characterized California history from the Gold Rush to the dot.com bubbles of the late twentieth century. the Wizard of Santa Rosa Excitement about the spineless cactus a thornfree variety of the Opuntia had been building for several years when Burbank launched his newest plant wonder on the open market with a special twenty-eight-page catalog, The New Agricultural-Horticultural Opuntias: Plant Creations for Arid Regions, on June 1, In the timeless tradition of nursery catalogs, the publication featured enticing descriptions, testimonial letters, and optimistic projects of potential yields, here combined with laboratory analyses of the cactus s nutritional value and clear photographic evidence of the product s existence. In part, the catalog s simplistic style seemed more appropriate for young readers. Everybody knows that Baldwin apples, Bartlett pears and our favorite peaches, plums and cherries cannot be raised from seeds, Burbank wrote. The same laws hold true with the improved Opuntias, but fortunately they can be raised from cuttings in any quantity with the utmost ease. More truly they raise themselves, for when broken from the parent plant, the cuttings attend to the rooting without further attention, whether planted right end up, bottom up, sideways or not at all. 2 Such simplicity did not come cheap, however. The marvelous new cacti were well beyond the reach of child and almost every adult; the price for complete possession of one of Burbank s eight new varieties ranged from one to ten thousand dollars. The New Agricultural-Horticultural Opuntias was aimed at professional plant dealers who would buy the prototypes, multiply them on their own grounds, and sell the results to the retail trade. This was Burbank s preferred method for disseminating his work, and both his extraordinary products and his eye-popping prices ensured huge publicity for the new spineless cactus, as it had for his other introductions in the past. By 1907, Burbank was already an international celebrity unique in the annals of plant breeding. As a young man, he had read Charles Darwin s Variations of Animals and Plants Under Domestication and had been inspired to seek out and foster the innate variability of all living things. While still in his early twenties and living in Massachusetts, he developed an admirably large, productive, tasty, blight-resistant potato. After exhibiting his new potato at agricultural fairs, Burbank sold the rights to a local seed merchant and used the profit the grand sum of $150 to emigrate in 1875 to Santa Rosa, the small but booming town north of San Francisco where his younger brother Alfred lived. Today, over a century later, the Burbank potato usually seen in its russet-skinned variation and now known as the Idaho potato, the russet potato, or simply the baking potato remains the most widely grown potato in the world. But for Burbank, it was only the beginning of his life s work in California: the development of at least eight hundred new varieties of agricultural and horticultural wonders for farm and garden. 3 California History volume 87 number

31 Burbank considered the rich and fertile soil of Sonoma County ideal for conducting his plant-breeding experiments. In 1885, he purchased ten acres west of Sebastopol and established the Gold Ridge Experiment Farm as an open-air laboratory for his largescale investigations. There he planted his creations, usually several hundred at a time, in long rows sometimes more than 700 feet running north and south. Though he did not develop the spineless cactus at Gold Ridge, Burbank demonstrated that the climate of Sonoma County was favorable for growing numerous varieties of the specimen. Courtesy of the Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, Santa Rosa, California, lutherburbank.org For more than thirty years since his arrival in Santa Rosa, Burbank had produced a steady stream of new products fruits, vegetables, flowers, nuts, berries, trees, and grains. Catalogs advertising his new creations, bred behind the picket fence of his large garden in Santa Rosa or at his experiment farm in nearby Sebastopol, were distributed to growers throughout California and the United States and to every continent except Antarctica. Hybrid plums, giant cherries, freestone peaches, exotic lilies, the enormously popular Shasta daisy, and a winter rhubarb so profitable growers called it the mortgage lifter all helped to generate large commercial markets in a period of agricultural expansion that amounted to a second gold rush for Burbank s adopted state. For years, reporters and photographers hovered about his grounds, waiting for the latest report of this season s dazzling new improvements on the raw material of nature. Burbank was lauded by growers, processors, and shippers for the new businesses built from his products, but he was even more celebrated for his almost magical ability to transform plants by removing what would seem to be their defining 9

32 Among Burbank s creations was a gigantic white evening primrose. In his posthumously published book The Harvest of the Years, Burbank called the effect of a field of his primroses handkerchiefs spread on a lawn. This photograph, made circa 1909 behind his Santa Rosa home, shows beds of poppies beyond the primroses and several varieties of cactus against the fence. Courtesy of the Library of Congress California History volume 87 number

33 characteristic. Since publication of his first New Creations in Fruits and Flowers catalog in 1893, reporters had gleefully called him the Wizard of Santa Rosa, filling their columns with descriptions of paradoxical varieties like the white blackberry, the stoneless plum, the everlasting flower, a bright red version of the golden California poppy, and the Paradox walnut tree that provided valuable hardwood lumber but grew as fast as a pine or other soft wood. In the context of these earlier triumphs, the spineless cactus was only the latest demonstration of Burbank s uncanny ability to bend nature to his will. In the words of Governor George C. Pardee, Working quietly and modestly among his trees and vines, our friend Burbank has worked what, to our lay minds, appear almost like miracles. He has changed the characters and appearances of fruits and flowers, turned pigmies into giants, sweetened the bitter and the sour, transformed noxious weeds into valuable plants, and verily set the seal of his disapproval upon much that to him and us seems wrong in Nature s handiwork. For us he has done much; and to him the whole world is indebted. 4 Governor Pardee, like California s commercial leaders, recognized how much Burbank had contributed to the state s highly profitable shift from fertile promise to actual production. In the search for a man of genius who could embody both the aspirations and achievements of California as the major supplier of the world s food, no single individual rivaled Luther Burbank, and no praise seemed too excessive. A Man of Genius Edward J. Wickson, professor of agriculture at the University of California, joined notables such as Thomas A. Edison and Theodore Roosevelt in voicing his admiration of Luther Burbank. Wickson dedicated his book The California Fruits and How to Grow Them (1900) to the imaginative and productive plant breeder: To Luther Burbank, of Santa RoSA, whose creative horticultural genius HAS, by new coinage of blooming, ambrosial fruit of vegetable gold, amply requited THE world s gift of THE choicest flowers and fruits for the advancement and adornment of California thus bestowing new honors upon the STATE and new riches upon mankind this work is cordially inscribed as an exponent of esteem and appreciation. A self-made Inventor To many of his admirers, Burbank s life was as appealing as his garden inventions. First there was his New England lineage, a fact that Burbank himself did not consider very important but which other people honored as a link to the nation s very beginnings. When Burbank was Edward J. Wickson, The California Fruits and How to Grow Them: A Manual of Methods Which Have Yielded Greatest Success; With Lists of Varieties Best Adapted to the Different Districts of the State (San Francisco: Pacific Rural Press, 1900); California Historical Society 1

34 born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1849, the family already had lived in New England for over two centuries and could claim a long line of teachers, clergymen, craftsmen, and manufacturers. At a time when Massachusetts dominated the cultural scene, such contemporary literary lions as Longfellow, Alcott, Emerson, and Thoreau were familiar names in the house, and Emerson and Thoreau, along with Alexander von Humboldt, remained Burbank s favorite authors throughout his life. Burbank s second appeal was that he had left New England. Luther was Samuel Burbank s thirteenth child by his third wife, and two older half brothers had joined the surge of migrants to California in the 1850s, settling in Marin County. A true child of the Gold Rush years, Luther grew up reading his brothers letters about the wonders of their adopted state. That he followed them west made him a perfect representative of the transcontinental transfer of power and influence that has long been a point of pride for California boosters. Finally, there was Burbank s status as a selftaught genius, always a form of popular hero. The Burbank brickyard in Lancaster had provided a comfortable living, but the family was far from rich. When Samuel s death ended Luther s studies at the Lancaster Academy and foreclosed any prospect of college, the fatherless young man escaped his factory job by going to the Lancaster Public Library, where he read natural history, including Darwin. Thirty years later, he was recognized as a practical inventor on a par with Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, two other giants who had skipped the lecture hall to create the transformational products that formed the modern world. 5 Despite the lack of any sort of advanced education in biology, botany, horticulture, or agriculture, Burbank won great respect from the expanding profession of science. Beginning in the late 1890s, there had been a rising tide of professional interest in his achievements from those working in both the laboratory and the field. Scientific groups invited him to deliver papers, and federal agents from the newly formed Agricultural Experiment Stations made pilgrimages to Santa Rosa to meet the master and observe his work. Hugo de Vries, the Dutch geneticist who was a celebrated leader in the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel and the inventor of the word mutation, accepted an invitation to lecture at the University of California at Berkeley because, he admitted, he wanted to visit Burbank; afterward, he took back photographs and samples of Burbank products to use in his lectures in Europe. Liberty Hyde Bailey, the Cornell University professor widely regarded as the dean of American horticulture, also came to Berkeley largely because of its proximity to Santa Rosa; dazzled by the range of experiments he saw in Burbank s small garden in the middle of the city, he praised the self-educated plant breeder as a painstaking, conscientious investigator of the best type. 6 Local boosters were even more enthusiastic about Burbank s achievements. In 1903, the California Academy of Sciences celebrated its fiftieth anniversary by awarding Burbank a gold medal for meritorious work in developing new forms of plant life, calling him the most important scientist of the past half century. 7 Edward Wickson, soon to be dean of the College of Agriculture at the University of California, declared that Mr. Burbank s thought and work have passed beyond even the highest levels of horticulture, known as horticultural science, into the domain of science itself. 8 David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University and himself a noted biologist, appointed Burbank Special Lecturer on Evolution; Jordan later collaborated with Vernon Kellogg, professor of entomology at Stanford, on a series of articles known collectively as The Scientific Aspects of Luther Burbank s Work. 9 And California History volume 87 number

35 in 1905, as though bestowing a special seal of scientific approval, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., granted Burbank the enormous sum of ten thousand dollars per year to support his experiments in plant evolution and hired a young geneticist, complete with the Ph.D. Burbank lacked, to record his methods. The Miraculous opuntia By the time Burbank had introduced his spineless cactus, then, he was a star whose name and face were familiar around the world, a darling of the business community whose products and reputation elevated every phase of California commerce, and a plant evoluter (his own preferred title) whose abilities had been certified by leaders of academic science. And now he was offering a new crop from which a great many people hoped to make a lot of money. In September 1907, three months after the New Opuntias catalog appeared, the National Irrigation Congress held its fifteenth annual meeting in Sacramento. As the main speaker, Luther Burbank repeated his prediction that the spineless cactus would solve the problem of what to feed livestock in the parched regions of the world. Of course my first object was to get a thornless [cactus], Burbank told the assembly. Then next to get an individual which would produce a great weight of forage to the acre. That has been very well accomplished. I have now a cactus that will produce 200 tons of food per acre... as safe to handle and as safe to feed as beets, potatoes, carrots or pumpkins. 10 Warning his listeners that much remained to be done, Burbank concluded his speech with a bit of boastful hyperbole that would become the gospel of his many promoters: My object is to combine this great production with great nutrition. Then, my opinion is, the cactus will be the most important plant on earth for arid regions and I have not the least doubt of securing that. 11 Other presenters addressed such important issues as grazing rights, timber sales in U.S. forests, federal support for irrigation programs, and the development of inland waterways, but it was Burbank s spineless cactus that received the most extensive coverage in the press. The Los Angeles Times, among many other papers, printed the Associated Press s report on the conference on its front page the following day under the headline Wizard s Wisdom. Other reports noted that the cactus fruit, no longer a prickly pear, would now become a delectable treat on the family table. Already, Burbank s cautions that his spineless cactus was still a work in progress were forgotten under the dazzling prospect of succulent fruits and nourishing fodder newly available for painless consumption. Indeed, miraculous crop introductions could and did happen. In 1873, Eliza Tibbets, a resident of the struggling three-year-old city of Riverside, California, received two bud stocks from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), sports that were derived from a seedless orange discovered in Bahia, Brazil. The fruit proved to be hearty, delicious, and conveniently free of seeds. The new navel orange, as it was called, did very well in southern California s dry climate and soon other growers were planting cuttings from the Tibbets tree. By 1880, local grower Thomas W. Cover had employed Chinese and Native American workers to bud seven hundred trees to navels; a few years later, profits from the Riverside navels had allowed the community to survive the 1888 collapse in land values (another frequent event in California history). By 1895, Riverside boasted the highest per capita income in the state. There was no reason at all to think that lightning couldn t strike twice.

36 Numerous catalogs and flyers advertised the spineless cactus. Dry seasons, which are certain to come, Burbank wrote, have been and will continue to be the source of irreparable loss to stock raisers. Burbank promoted the advantages of his thornless Opuntia represented by this specimen (right) to food producers throughout the country and worldwide as fodder for animals, for its medicinal properties, and in the production of juice, jams and preserves, drinks, candy, and candles. Flyer, Courtesy of Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, Santa Rosa, California, lutherburbank.org; Cactus specimen, California Historical Society, USC Special Collections California History volume 87 number

37 The Wizard Hybridizer Today, planting the desert with an experimental breed of spineless cactus seems a very complicated way to solve a not-too-pressing problem. Since the middle of the twentieth century, a combination of high-yield varieties and government subsidies has made corn so plentiful and inexpensive that it now supplies up to 40 percent of cattle feed in the United States. Grass-fed beef like the analog clock, the acoustic guitar, or the gin martini was a descriptive name coined after World War II to distinguish it from earlier products; today the term corn-fed like digital, electric, or vodka has become the new norm. But a hundred years ago, things were different. In those days, cattle grazed, brought to pasture by ranchers during the summer months. As cattle ranches expanded into the deserts of the American West, where grass did not grow and into the arid stretches of South America, Spain, India, New Zealand, and Africa the question of what the animals would eat loomed large. Burbank was not by any means the first person to look to the Opuntia for food or profit. In Mexico, prickly pears (tunas) and paddles (nopales) had been eaten long before the Spanish conquest, and the cactus plant had been cultivated for just as long as a host for the cochineal insect, a parasite that provided a valuable red dye. The prickly pear cactus also was used as emergency livestock feed in the desert, though it required a laborious process of singeing or rubbing with abrasives to remove the spines that would otherwise injure or even kill cattle. During the drought To cattle ranchers in the dry regions of the Southwest, news of forage that would thrive in the desert and safely nourish their livestock was especially welcome. Millions have died from the thorns of the prickly pear cactus, Burbank noted. How would you enjoy being fed on needles, fish-hooks, toothpicks, barbed wire fence, nettles, and chestnut burrs? he asked would-be buyers in a catalog. The wild, thorny cactus is and always must be more or less of a pest. California Historical Society, USC Special Collections 5

38 year of , ranchers had turned to modern gasoline torches to burn off the spines, and the USDA had conducted extensive analyses of the nutritional content of the cactus paddles. What was missing was a way to make the process easy, attractive, and profitable. That was where the wizard hybridizer came in, at least according to the many people who regarded Burbank as a foolproof source of lucrative products. The research had been going on for years. When Burbank first arrived in California, he was entranced by the many local varieties of cactus, some of which grew very large, and particularly by the Opuntia, which has edible fruit and is relatively tolerant of cold. He began working with the prickly pears in earnest around 1892, following his usual method: massive hybridization, the ruthless selection from thousands of specimens of a few promising seedlings, and repetition of the process over multiple generations. The first step of Burbank s experiment was to amass a large collection of cacti, primarily Opuntia. Working with professional plant hunters and building on his worldwide fame, he imported specimens from all over California; from states as unlikely as Maine and as close as Arizona; and from Australia, Japan, Hawaii, Sicily, South Africa, Mexico, South America, and Central America. Admirers, knowledgeable about Burbank s interest in cacti from the vast number of newspaper accounts that spread his fame, sent additional specimens. The federal government also supported his efforts. David Fairchild, who worked for the USDA in a position with the wonderful title of Plant Explorer, arranged for Burbank to receive samples from Italy, France, and North Africa, several of which became direct ancestors of Burbank varieties. The USDA greenhouse in Washington, D.C., provided other specimens. The city of San Diego offered a section of the city park as an Agricultural Experiment Station for the spineless cactus, 12 and cactus experiment stations were established in Chico, California, and in San Antonio, Texas, among other locations. Burbank, meanwhile, rented land in Livermore, Alameda County, as his own experimental ground, and contracted with ranchers in other regions both to test the viability of different breeds and to grow the quantities of spineless cactus he would need if he were to have enough to market. He also sent samples to the head of the University of California s Department of Nutrition and Foods at Berkeley, who tested them and declared them to have nutritive powers three-fourths of alfalfa. 13 MarKETing the new CaCTus The first sales of spineless cactus were to dealers who planned to take them overseas to propagate for foreign markets. John Rutland, a nurseryman from Australia who had moved to Sebastopol to be closer to Burbank s work, bought the first slabs of spineless cactus in 1905, a transaction Burbank publicized by telling reporters he had made enough on the sale to pay for a new house in Santa Rosa. 14 Accounts of the new desert crop began to appear in popular magazines and books, making exaggerated promises that Burbank claimed forced him to issue a catalog that would at least be an accurate description of what was available. William S. Harwood, a prolific though highly unreliable reporter who had already written several ecstatic articles about Burbank when he published New Creations in Plant Life in 1905, 15 greatly exaggerated all the marvels of Burbank s work. In April of the same year, The World Today published The Spineless Cactus: The Latest Plant Marvel Originated by Luther Burbank, by Hamilton Wright, who was identified as secretary of the California Promotion Committee. California History volume 87 number

39 Burbank conducted extensive experiments in the development of his spineless cactus. Here, Opuntia grow in planters and fields at Burbank s experiment grounds in Santa Rosa. David Starr Jordon, president of Stanford University, described Burbank s process in a 1905 article:... the original stock, prickly; the second generation, slightly prickly; the third, without thorns.... This will have very great value in the arid regions. Despite Burbank s lack of formal scientific training, he was inducted into the Agricultural, National Inventors, and Horticultural halls of fame. California Historical Society, USC Special Collections Wright was paid to boost California s reputation as a source of spectacular new products. A less partisan reporter, George Wharton James, also succumbed to the excitement of the spineless cactus in his 1906 paean to the beauty and romance of the Southwest, The Wonders of the Colorado Desert (Southern California). Describing the desperate efforts to rescue livestock during recent drought years by feeding them cactus paddles from which the injurious spines had been burned, James was relieved to report: Luther Burbank, the wizard of plant life, has solved the spine problem without singeing. He has developed a species of spineless cactus which has high nutritive and water value. This cactus will undoubtedly, in time, be planted in large areas of the Colorado and other deserts and thus aid cattle, if not man, in solving that most difficult of desert problems, the permanent and well-distributed supply of water in the driest areas. 16

40 The plant that would rescue cattle also provided fodder for little minds. Excerpts from The Spineless Cactus: The Latest Wonder from Luther Burbank appeared in the Texas School Journal in 1905 the same year Burbank s own The Training of the Human Plant appeared in Century magazine, bringing his theories of education to a wide audience. 17 By December 1907, three months after his appearance at the National Irrigation Conference, Burbank seemed a natural choice to speak at the Southern California Teachers Association meeting in Los Angeles, where he once again described his work with the spineless cactus. As Burbank was careful to note in his catalogs and many speeches, cactus is a slow-growing plant and his best varieties were still under development. Apart from the early sales to Rutland, what he offered was a promise for future delivery, future profits, and future salvation of the starving peoples of the world. Marketing was not something that interested Burbank, and he wasn t very good at it. Whenever possible, he licensed or sold his plant prototypes to large, well-established companies like Burpee Seeds in Pennsylvania, Stark Bro s Nurseries in Missouri, or Child s Nurseries, whose establishment was so large it became the city of Floral Park, New York. The spineless cactus had little appeal for northern or eastern dealers, but a number of Californians were eager to relieve Burbank of the burden of taking his promising new product to the retail level. The first of these entrepreneurs was Charles Jay Welch, a well-established rancher in Merced County. Sometime in 1907, before Burbank issued his New Opuntias catalog, Welch had formed the Thornless Cactus Farming Company in Los Angeles with several partners and paid Burbank twenty-seven thousand dollars for the right to grow and market seven varieties of his new cactus, the biggest single sale Burbank would ever make. By spring 1908, Welch boasted the production of 1,000 new plants each week at Copa de Oro, his cactus farm in the Coachella Valley. 18 Later that summer, he advertised that Burbank s Thornless Cactus will produce as high as 200 or 300 tons of rich, succulent fodder to the acre. Burbank s Improved Fruiting Varieties (for Semi-Thornless) Cactus will produce as much as 100 tons of delicious fruit to the acre.... The Burbank Cactus has just started its first distribution of these wonderful plants. Hundreds of people cheerfully paid their money for plants two years ago and waited till June, 1909, for delivery. The Thornless Cactus Farming Company asserted that it had taken requests for 50,000 starter slabs of spineless cactus from customers around the world, before a single plant had been shipped. Customers ordering now, however, would receive theirs at once. 19 The prospect of all these far-flung buyers and the even more enticing vision of ongoing trade in both cactus paddles as cattle feed and cactus fruit as a grocery item caught the attention of shipping companies. Railroads wanted new crops that would appeal to distant markets, and many carriers already had profited handsomely from Burbank s earlier introductions. From potatoes to prunes, Burbank products were a significant part of the tons of specialty crops that filled cars heading east from California. 20 Hoping to be both producer and shipper, the Southern Pacific Railroad worked from 1908 to 1912 to bring value to its barren acreage in southern California and the Great Basin by growing Burbank s spineless cactus. 21 During the same period, the Union Pacific Railroad sponsored promotions of Burbank products around the country, with particular emphasis on the spineless cactus. 22 Meanwhile, Burbank had new varieties ready for production. Apparently dissatisfied with his contract with the Thornless Cactus Farming Company, which was having trouble meeting scheduled payments, in February 1909 he began negotiating with Herbert and Hartland Law, who California History volume 87 number

41 had made a good deal of money in the patent medicine business and were the current owners of San Francisco s Fairmont Hotel. The Law brothers established Luther Burbank Products, Incorporated, to market all of Burbank s creations, including the spineless cactus, but at the last minute the man whose name and fame were vital to the operation got cold feet and pulled out of the agreement. For the time being, Burbank would continue to sell spineless cactus through his own catalogs and the Thornless Cactus Farming Company. attracting Buyers While trying to find someone else to handle the sales of his spineless cactus, Burbank entered into a separate agreement to market himself through the publication of a multivolume work that would provide practical information to budding farmers and gardeners. The numerous efforts to write about Luther Burbank are too vast and complicated to be described here, but the spineless cactus also figured prominently in efforts to sell books. 23 Starting in 1911, potential subscribers around the country received elaborate brochures from a new organization, the Luther Burbank Publishing Company, which would soon form a Luther Burbank Society of subscribers and supporters. The goal was a multivolume work, with lavish color photographs, that would be at once a practical guide, a scientific record, and an inspiration to gardeners and farmers around the world. The 1911 brochure summarized Burbank s career in glowing terms and focused on his latest creation, noting: There are three billion acres of desert in the world.... It took the imagination of a Burbank to conceive a way to transform these three billion acres into productivity. Using a tense that might be called future superlative, the prospectus described the amazing values to be expected of the fruit harvest from the prickly pear without As a member of the Luther Burbank Society from 1912 to 1917, the philanthropist Phoebe A. Hearst received this 1913 proof book as the first installment of the society s plans for publication of the 12-volume Luther Burbank: His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Application. The chapter on the spineless cactus explained how in a dozen years, Mr. Burbank carried the cactus back ages in its ancestry, how he proved beyond question by planting a thousand cactus seeds that the spiny cactus descended from a smooth slabbed line of forefathers how he brought forth a new race without the suspicion of a spine, and with a velvet skin, and how he so re-established these old characteristics that the result was fixed and permanent. California Historical Society its prickles and the forage value of the spineless cactus after the pears were gathered. In an eerie foreshadowing of the ethanol controversies of recent years, the booksellers also predicted that spineless cactus can produce $1200 of Denatured Alcohol per acre as against $35 from an acre of Indian corn. 24 9

42 The director of the Luther Burbank Publishing Company was a tireless enthusiast named Oscar Binner, who also had helped assemble and publicize a traveling exhibit of Burbank s marvels, a large glass-sided display case in which some two hundred glass jars held pickled specimens of Burbank fruits and vegetables. A large paddle of spineless cactus, flanked by luscious spineless prickly pears, occupied the central shelf, directly under a bust of Burbank. The Luther Burbank traveling display was a huge attraction. In January 1911, the cabinet of botanical curiosities was featured at the Western Land Products Exposition in Omaha, where it warranted a large photograph in the Omaha Bee. In March, it was declared the premier feature of the Pacific Lands and Products Exposition in Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles Times reported on the entire show under the headline Plant Freaks to Be Shown and the subhead Wizard Burbank Will Exhibit Some Queer Ones. 25 By November, the exhibit had made its way to New York s Madison Square Garden, where it attracted considerable interest at the Land and Irrigation Exposition despite such distractions as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Ode to Irrigation under the sponsorship of the state of Utah. Even skeptics were enthralled when several specimens of spineless cactus were taken to the cows in the New York State display and enthusiastically consumed. 26 Many were gawking, but who was buying? Jack London, for one. The writer, adventurer, and rancher lived close enough to Burbank to ride over to Santa Rosa for agricultural advice while he was trying to make his new Sonoma County enterprise a model of modern farm management, and he placed his orders directly with the cactus s creator. On June 26, 1911, while traveling in Hawaii, London sent his sister Eliza (who served as his farm manager) an order for 130 cuttings of sixteen different varieties of spineless cactus to be purchased directly from Burbank in Santa Rosa. He also included detailed instructions on dynamiting holes for planting, separating forage cactus from ones that would be grown for their fruit, and asking Burbank himself about whether the drainage conditions of the site he had in mind made it suitable for growing the cactus. 27 There is no record of London s success, but the signs are not good. Among the many brochures, clippings, and scribbled notes the writer kept for his farm experiments is a set of four sheets of yellow foolscap paper, stapled together. The sheets are blank except for the word cactus penciled at the top in London s handwriting. Four years after the first planting, Eliza wrote to her brother, On the one sore patch just northerly from your dwelling, in fork of the roads, I have permitted Mr. Lawson to plant cactus. He is furnishing the plants and keeping ground in condition at no expense to us and is to give us 25% of cactus raised. I thought this a good chance for us to try out the cactus proposition without expense. 28 Unfortunately, the nearly empty ledger of London s spineless cactus experiment seems to have been typical. As often happens with investment bubbles, the spineless cactus had its greatest value as something to be sold, not used, and records of anyone using it for cattle feed or fruit production in the United States are far scarcer than evidence of the multiple ways people hoped to profit by supplying those end users. From the beginning, there had been warnings that the spineless cactus was not an easy or instant panacea for the problems of desert ranches. For several years, David Griffiths, a cactus expert at the USDA s Bureau of Plant Industry, had been mounting a campaign against Burbank and those who promoted him. In 1905, before the boom began, the bureau had issued Griffiths booklet, The Prickly Pear and Other Cacti as Food for Stock, which investigated singeing, steaming, chopping, disjointing, and other California History volume 87 number

43 means of preparing cacti as feed for cows, sheep, goats, and hogs. In 1907, Griffiths The Tuna as Food for Man, which explored the nutritive qualities of the prickly pear fruit, was prefaced by a distinctly grumpy acknowledgment that interest in cacti in general, from both a food and a forage standpoint, has been greatly stimulated by popular writers during the past two or three years. In 1909, Griffiths felt compelled to issue The Spineless Prickly Pears, stressing limitations... placed upon the growing of the plants as farm crops which ought to be of service to those who may be misled by ill-advised stories of the phenomenal adaptability of this class of prickly pears in the agriculture of our arid States. 29 By 1912, Griffiths had risen from assistant agrostologist to agriculturalist at the USDA, all the while continuing to criticize Luther Burbank. On February 29, 1912, Representative Everis Anson Hayes from Los Angeles rose to the defense of his state s favorite agricultural hero. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Hayes delivered in the House a speech deploring that recently an employee of the Department of Agriculture had seen fit to assail Burbank and even ridicule his genius and the great work he has done and is still doing. Noting that 95 percent of the plums shipped from California were Burbank varieties, as well as almost all the state s potatoes, Hayes declared the spineless cactus Burbank s greatest triumph and insisted that a photograph of Burbank s cactus field be inserted in the Congressional Record, possibly the first such pictorial introduction. 30 Many more spineless cactus photographs appeared the following July in the Pacific Dairy Review, which devoted its first four pages to the immense possibilities of fodder from the cactus before concluding, Later we may take up some of the problems of cactus, or opuntia, culture, if in fact there shall be any problems in connection with it. From our present state of knowledge it looks so simple that it may not even leave room for the agricultural or dairy editor to do anything but say plant opuntias. 31 Like so many others, the editors of the Pacific Dairy Review were overly optimistic. The problems Griffiths cited were ones that Burbank had always acknowledged, though his various promoters tended to downplay any difficulties in their own accounts. A careful reader who could penetrate the thicket of adjectives in the New Opuntias catalog might have lingered on the conclusion of the following sentence when considering a purchase: Systematic work for their improvement has shown how pliable and readily molded is this unique, hardy denizen of rocky, drought-cursed, wind-swept, sun-blistered districts and how readily it adapts itself to more fertile soils and how rapidly it improves under cultivation and improved conditions. 32 Spineless schemes As it happened, fertile soil, cultivation, and improved conditions were precisely what the desert lacked, along with water for irrigation and cheap labor to install the fencing needed to protect the defenseless plants from hungry rabbits and other predators. Growers in India or North Africa sent Burbank testimonial letters, but American ranchers were looking for a fast, easy solution to their feed problems. Growing spineless cactus took too long, required too much work, and needed more water than nature provided in truly arid areas with much less rainfall than Sonoma or Riverside. If ranchers in the California desert could provide such ideal conditions, they would be raising alfalfa, which was, in fact, a better feed. But if the cactus wasn t flourishing as hoped, the enthusiasm of those who wanted to sell it remained as fresh and green as the grass the Opuntia was supposed to replace. And since this was California, it is no surprise that the spineless cactus boom inspired a side bubble in real estate. 1

44 By the second decade of the twentieth century, corporate agriculture had already replaced the small family farm as an economic force in California. 33 The vision of moving to the Golden State and living off the products of the land of sunshine continued to lure many migrants from other regions, however, and they were the target of real estate vendors who embraced the spineless cactus as a way to sell barren land previously considered undesirable for cultivation. In 1912, for example, a former cattle ranch in the San Joaquin Valley was divided into twentyacre lots and renamed Oro Loma, the Spineless Cactus Land. The developers advertised that buyers could turn virgin desert into profitable farms by planting spineless cactus, whose paddles would be provided with every purchase. If the buyer didn t initiate cactus cultivation right away, the sellers would still allow them to get into the market on the ground floor by providing, for the paltry additional price of $125, a quarter-acre plot that was fenced and planted with 100 cactus plants of several varieties. A small charge for superintendence would bring management and sales of the resulting product until the purchaser is ready to occupy his farm. 34 For some time, similar schemes had filled mailboxes and crowded the advertising pages of newspapers and popular magazines. Two typical advertisers from the pages of Sunset Magazine were the Terra Bella Development Company, which offered fortunes in fruit, and the Conservative Rubber Production Company, which projected $1500 A Year for Life. 35 The Oro Loma Company, however, offered the special reassurance that came with the name of Luther Burbank, whose photograph occupied the first page of its brochure; on page 2 was another photograph captioned Young Spineless Cactus on Luther Burbank s Experimental Grounds, which appears to be a reproduction of a 1908 postcard. 36 Inside pages featured more photographs of cactus fields, as well as other crops that might be used to supplement income while waiting for the cactus profits to roll in. Describing what they called the spineless cactus industry, the Oro Loma sellers noted that during the next five years the people that now have a spineless cactus nursery started, or that quickly establish one, on ORO LOMA LANDS, should realize a handsome independence out of the sale of leaves and cuttings by selling them to other growers and ranchers who did not have the foresight to get into the market early. 37 Lest the buyer be unwilling to do the math, the numbers were provided: Each acre of the spineless cactus should supply, during the third and later years... at least 150,000 leaves per annum. The selling price of the leaves ranges from 20c to $2.50 each, at present. It is not likely they will sell below 20c. each for at least five years.... That means $30,000 per acre, per year. If sold at 10 cents each, it means $15,000. Even at 5 cents each, it amounts to $7,500. Finally, readers were encouraged to organize a colony of friends to buy Oro Loma lands where together they could enjoy the comforts and luxuries that are common to the people who live in this region. 38 If twenty acres seemed too much, smaller parcels also were available for those eager to enter the surefire business of becoming a spineless cactus supplier. In the fall of 1913, the Magazine of Wall Street printed a comic response to an unnamed spineless cactus brochure, which the author claimed had inspired him to form his own company, Tailless Jackrabbit (Ltd.): Today I have a letter in my mail enclosing a prospectus. This well-printed document sets forth that the next great killing in the financial world will be made by the Spineless Cactus, the one invented by Luther Burbank. The salesman who sends me this letter asks me to take an acre or two and interest a few of my personal friends at so much commission per friend. I shall not buy California History volume 87 number

45 The Spineless Cactus Nursery & Land Co. grew hundreds of acres of thornless cacti including these of the Melrose variety in southern California. In a 1913 interview, William L. Wilson, the company s secretary and treasurer, known as the King of the Spineless Cactus Growers, predicted: When the value of spineless cactus is fully realized and appreciated, Southern California will have an industry that will loom larger than anything yet attempted in the land of sunshine and flowers. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Spineless Cactus Incorporated, today; but when I get my Tailless Jackrabbit (Ltd.), listed on the Stock Exchange, I shall expect all my friends to bite.... Kind reader, may I not put you down for a few shares in Tailless Jackrabbit (Ltd.)? If the door is locked when you call, throw your money over the transom at the sign of the Rabbit s Foot. 39 Eager to discourage pirates and profiteers and to escape from the cumbersome details of sales, Burbank tried again to acquire an official dealer for his spineless cactus. Not far from the Oro Loma Company offices in San Francisco, in the Exposition Building at the corner of Pine and Battery streets, a much larger entity called the Luther Burbank Company appeared in 1913 to make yet another attempt to handle the sale of spineless cactus for the harried inventor. The founders, who had no experience in the plant trade, paid Burbank $30,000 for the exclusive rights to market his creations and sold shares in the company worth well over $300, Interest in the spineless cactus was high in northern California, where Burbank was most famous for his work with orchard fruit, but it was even greater in Los Angeles, the gateway to the desert. The Luther Burbank Company opened a branch office in Los Angeles, managed by a recent arrival from Brooklyn named Bingham Thoburn Wilson, author of The Cat s Paw, The Tale of the Phantom Yacht, The Village of Hide and Seek, and other novels whose very titles should have constituted fair warning. It appears that Wilson was a good salesman, however. In the fall of 1913, a group of Los Angeles investors, many of them recent arrivals from Canada, formed the El Campo Investment & Land Co. with one hundred thousand plants purchased from the Luther Burbank Company. The company already had bought land in Arlington, south of Riverside, where it planned to cultivate cactus as a prelude to entering the hog and cattle business. Wilson landed another big order from Texas and proudly announced a request from Don Dante Cusi of Mexico City for enough cactus cuttings to plant one thousand acres. Like the El Campo company, Cusi envisioned the cultivation of the spineless cactus as part of a larger agricultural empire. In 1903, he had acquired over two hundred and forty square miles of property in the dry, hot area of Michoacán and eagerly adopted the latest farming products and technologies. In later years, he would import a German railroad, an English steam

46 engine, and enough irrigation equipment to turn his land into an improbable center for rice growing, but as the Los Angeles Times correctly noted in 1913, his spineless cactus order would take more than the entire Burbank plantation could supply at one time. 41 Overexpansion and difficulties in product delivery are classic problems of any new business, but these perils did not seem to bother the managers of the Luther Burbank Company. For the next two years, they continued to spend a fortune on advertising and told their salesmen to accept every order that came their way. When they didn t have enough stock to fill the orders, they bought ordinary Opuntia, singed off the spines with blowtorches or rubbed them off with pads, and sent out the doctored slabs for planting. During the years of the spineless cactus craze, investors formed the Luther Burbank Company to manage sales of Burbank products. As the corporation proclaimed in its 1913 catalog, Luther Burbank s Spineless Cactus, The Luther Burbank Company is the sole distributor of the Burbank Horticultural Productions, and from no other source can one be positively assured of obtaining genuine Luther Burbank Productions. Huntington Library, San Marino, California Buyers discovered the fraud once the cactus had been planted, of course, but by then it was too late. The Luther Burbank Company collapsed into bankruptcy on February 8, 1916, wiping out many Santa Rosa investors who had bought what seemed a sure road to wealth: a share in marketing their famous neighbor s plants. Although Burbank had little or nothing to do with the company s sales tactics or its fraudulent deliveries and was himself suing the managers for nonpayment of almost ten thousand dollars due on his original contract, the failure of the Luther Burbank Company halted sales and tarnished Burbank s name, at least among scientific researchers who recoiled at the entire attempt to commercialize his product. Burbank s critics might have taken comfort in comparing his profits, such as they were, to the enormous cost of nurturing his cactus experiments for several decades. Records are scarce, but it seems that none of the many companies formed to exploit Luther Burbank s name or sell his creations ever did more than cover expenses and few managed to get that far. But commercial failure did not mean an end to general interest. California History volume 87 number

47 Burbankian InfluenCE The spineless cactus lived on after the marketing bubble burst, and not only in the scattered gardens and farm plots of early growers. Burbank remained a popular hero, and high school biology textbooks throughout the 1920s featured him and cited his spineless cactus as an example of the careful application of Mendelian and Darwinian principles to the improvement of agricultural products. 42 Children posed in various Burbankian costumes at events organized to celebrate the great plant breeder, who was now revered as much as a spiritual model as he was as a commercial inventor. As such celebrations show, many people still wanted to learn about Burbank s life and creations. In December 1907, when he had spoken about his new spineless cactus to the Southern California Teachers Association, Burbank had met its president, Henry Augustus Adrian, who also was Santa Barbara s superintendent of schools. Not long after, Adrian left that post to become a regular performer on the Chautauqua circuit, making a successful career of explaining Burbank s creations to eager crowds who came to the traveling lecture halls for uplift and education. Known as the Luther Burbank Man, Adrian toured the country for the next sixteen years before returning to Santa Barbara in 1925, where he was promptly elected mayor. While Adrian was drawing throngs to the big brown tents that were a Chautauqua trademark, Burbank remained in Santa Rosa, where he continued to attract his own horde of visitors until his death in His hundreds of guests included Helen Keller, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, the football hero Red Grange, and the Polish statesman and musician Ignace Paderewski. In the 1920s, Burbank hosted Swami Paramahansa Yogananda, who toured the United States and made several visits to the San Francisco area before settling in Los Angeles and To protect against the fraudulent use of Burbank s name, the Luther Burbank Company trademarked its corporate identity. Proof of authenticity also was available to those who bought from the company s local representatives, who, as depicted on the back cover of the 1914 Burbank Seed Book, received an official certificate of appointment, as well as an official Burbank dealer seed case. California Historical Society 5

48 In the years following World War I, the public embraced Burbank as both an embodiment of the values of the natural world and an innovative businessman. (Below) Luther posed with his wife, Elizabeth, and schoolchildren dressed as flowers in Santa Rosa, circa With a great interest in education, he urged parents and educators to nurture children as richly and carefully as precious plants. (Left) Henry Augustus Adrian, the Luther Burbank Man, toured the country, lecturing on Burbank s life and work and his spineless cactus as a speaker on the Chautauqua lecture circuit one of many well-known performers and lecturers from the worlds of entertainment, politics, religion, and culture. Henry Augustus Adrian, Records of the Redpath Chautauqua Collection, The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa; The Burbanks with children, courtesy of the Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, Santa Rosa, California, lutherburbank.org. California History volume 87 number

49 buying the former Mount Washington Hotel, which became the headquarters of his Self- Realization Fellowship. Yogananda s visit left a lasting impression on the young swami. Twenty years later, in 1946, he dedicated his Autobiography of a Yogi to Luther Burbank An American Saint. In the chapter A Saint Amid the Roses, he described his first visit to Santa Rosa. It began with a lesson from Burbank: The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love. Stopping near a bed of spineless cactus, Burbank had described to Yogananda his method of talking to the cacti and how it was instrumental in successful hybridization: You have nothing to fear, I would tell them. You don't need your defensive thorns. I will protect you. Gradually the useful plant of the desert emerged in a thornless variety. To Yogananda s request for a few cactus leaves to plant in his own garden, Burbank had insisted, I myself will pluck them for the swami. He handed me three leaves, which later I planted, rejoicing as they grew to huge estate, the yogi wrote. 43 The original cactus, or a very early offspring, can still be seen at the Mount Washington site today. Spineless cactus will never be the answer to world hunger, but it was not an absurd idea. Free of overpromotion, the Burbank varieties are still a respected, if modest, agricultural introduction. In recent years, commercial ranchers and academic researchers have demonstrated renewed interest in prickly pear cultivation in Argentina, Chile, South Africa, southern Texas, and Tunisia, with a strong preference for the spineless varieties. 44 The Food and Agriculture Organization, a branch of the United Nations, calls spineless cactus an important crop for the subsistence agriculture of the semi-arid and arid-regions, serving as feed for livestock and also controlling desertification and restoring depleted natural rangelands. Commercial plantations of spineless cactus for nopalitos, which have been cultivated for centuries in Mexico, are moving north across the border, along with the burgeoning interest in Mexican cooking. 45 None of these modern efforts matches the enthusiasm for grand agricultural experiments that made Luther Burbank such an idol a century ago. In 1916, the same year the Luther Burbank Company failed, Congress passed the Stock Raising Homestead Act, increasing the land homesteaders could claim in the arid parts of western states from 160 to 640 acres on the grounds that it was impossible for livestock to survive on less land, given the sparseness of fodder. The Southern Pacific Land Company had already abandoned its efforts to turn its desert holdings into spineless cactus farms and returned its attention to fostering orchard crops in more fertile areas. And in 1922, the Santa Fe Railroad concluded that eucalyptus timber was unsuitable for railroad ties and converted its tree farm into a pricey real estate development, Rancho Santa Fe. But that s another story. Jane S. Smith is the author of The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants (Penguin Press, 2009), from which portions of this essay are adapted. Her history of the first polio vaccine, Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine, received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology. A member of the History Department at Northwestern University, she writes about the intersection of science, business, and popular taste.

50 A Life Remembered: The Voice and Passions of Feminist Writer and Community Activist Flora Kimball By Matthew Nye I wished oh! so ardently that a moral earthquake would startle the women in this country who are in a death-like sleep, oblivious to the laws that oppress them. Shocks are not harmful, but on the contrary may have the effect of showing us more clearly the wrongs we know of in our very midst. Flora Kimball, California Patron, F lora Kimball was an active and prominent voice in California during the state s early history. In clear, strong language, she articulated the growing views held by both women and men in rural white America in support of women s suffrage and increased independence for women outside of the traditional confines of the family. Kimball carried the banner raised by her contemporaries, including the political writers and activists Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. 2 A look into her life and writings offers us a wonderful glimpse into the mind-set of a progressive agrarian woman in nineteenthcentury California. Flora Kimball was a writer, a community activist, and a lay horticulturalist. Through her writing, she articulated her views on the changing social and economic dynamics for women and the need for a more equitable society. Through her civic commitments, she activated those beliefs. She offered her opinions freely, but she was not a maverick, nor was she always unique in her vision. Many politically astute women of the time asked both men and women to rethink their positions and responsibilities in the evolving society of the 1800s, among them Carrie A. Colby, Maria B. Landers, and L. M. Daugherty. Though her writing and activism were not on the same scale as the era s nationally recognized women in their notoriety or scope, Kimball did help spread the gospel of California s growing woman s suffrage movement. And though she neglected to address the greater range of issues that Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, and others (including twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury contemporary activists) would consider inclusionary in the capacity of the suffrage movement such as race and class 3 she addressed the pressing concerns of rural women: their changing role within the family, work outside of the home, and the right to vote. California History volume 87 number

51 The pioneering spirit of Flora Kimball ( ) is exemplified in her civic involvement to bring cultural and political change to the new state of California. Her reputation as a preeminent feminist was earned as a writer for the California Patron. At the time of her death, it was said she was the most well-known woman in the state. While consistently expressing her political views in her writing, the National City Record aptly noted that she was also among the best writers on the Pacific Coast. Morgan Local History Room, National City Public Library 9

52 In her life and writing, Kimball exhibited contrary aspects of feminist thought, simultaneously championing the importance of women in the home and the need for self-sufficiency outside the home. Through her own example, she encouraged women to achieve mastery over their own lives. A product of, as well as an influence on, the changing society for women in nineteenth-century California, she brought the philosophies of New England liberalism the antislavery, suffragist politics of the Northeast to the West. In a style that was often dogmatic and occasionally sentimental, she wrote with passion and persistence on issues that helped to spread these views and propel California into the twentieth century. Kimball s name and voice has gone unheard for many years, and while her work may not necessarily garner a place of academic merit or even recollection, its focus on the role of nineteenth-century women and its fervor and determination do warrant historical attention and review. The Journey West Flora Mary Morrill was born in Warner, New Hampshire, on July 24, 1829, one of ten children of John and Hannah Hall Morrill. Her maternal grandfather was the Revolutionary War surgeon Dr. John Hall. Her paternal grandparents, Zebulon and Mary Morrill, espoused the theological, intellectual, and social reform tenets of Congregationalism. 4 Her older sister Hannah Frances Foster (Brown), the well-known Spiritualist, was, like Flora, an avid abolitionist and women s suffragist. 5 Embarking on a career at the young age of fifteen, Flora was a teacher in her hometown. She worked for ten years in the schools of New Hampshire, eventually becoming the head of Concord High School. She would draw upon this example of the independent woman working outside the home in her later writings. Her campaign for the independence of women within the family and her advocacy for their equal rights in society began during these early years. She reportedly attributed her awareness of the inequality of women to her experience as a tenyear-old working alongside a neighbor boy to drop corn; she received five cents for her day s work to the boy s ten. She experienced this same ratio as a beginning teacher, earning one dollar a week to the two-dollar weekly salary for men. 6 In 1855, Warren C. Kimball, from the neighboring town of Contoocook, recruited the young Miss Flora Morrill to come and teach in the town school. Warren had grown up in Contoocook on his family farm with his four brothers, Frank, George, Levi, and Charles, and his two sisters, Mary and Lucy. On December 13, 1857, two years after Flora s arrival in Contoocook, she and Warren married. On that same day, Warren s brother, Levi, married Flora s younger sister, Louisa. In 1861, Warren and his younger brother Frank arrived in California, having traveled by way of Panama. 7 Joining Levi in San Francisco, the three siblings set up shop as contractors. The Kimball brothers were successful in constructing homes and commercial buildings in the city. 8 In 1862, Frank felt established enough to send for his wife, Sarah Currier. But his mother refused to give Sarah her consent to undertake the dangerous journey until Flora agreed to accompany her sister-in-law on the voyage. Frank noted in his diary: Sarah writes that she is only waiting for Flora to decide when she will be ready. Hope it will be by the 21 st. Bless her. 9 On December 18, 1862, Flora arrived in California, a land already rich in history, though one wrought with stories of conquest and struggle. The native peoples had been displaced by Spaniards in their conquest for souls and dominion, and the Californios had lost out to the Anglo- Americans in claims over water, land title, and prosperity. It was a land where everyone seemed to be fighting for a place of his own. 10 To this 5 California History volume 87 number

53 dynamic Flora Kimball brought her own agenda: the fight toward victory for women of her class and race. The Kimball families had landed in San Francisco during the city s vibrant, formative years. In this new metropolis, Flora noted, first you will meet but a few old people, for this is a new country and a great way from the old states, and but few old people break early ties and wander so far. The few whose hair is gray and step feeble, feel like the first of a race whose early associates have wearied of life s toils and laid down to rest. So all is a bustle the stir of more than a hundred thousand souls, in the beginning and prime of life. 11 Kimball found the San Francisco of the 1860s a contradiction of wealth and poverty. Her observations in some of her early writing reflect her humanity. She wrote about the downtrodden, such as the homeless Ragged Frenchman... his eye fixed on the ground, ready to spy out any pile of dirt, and eager to seize on any mouldy [sic] crust that might be found therein... and his locks long and shaggy, straying over his face and shoulders, combed only by the wind, and powdered with sand... did I not see in that once fine form, and through the dirty face, traces of beauty and intellect? With poetic observance, she described two young men walking down the street... each with a cigar in his mouth, the latest Paris cut clothes and his kid gloves. One of them took his cigar between the ends of the first two fingers of his right hand, gradually expelling the smoke from his mouth. 12 Kimball was first published during these years in San Francisco, when she and Warren rented, for ten dollars a month, the back parlor of Frank and Sarah s place at 16 Tehama Street, just south of Market and only five blocks from the bay. 13 She wrote letters to young readers in the East about the adolescent city for the publication Rising Tide, which published her accounts in columns with such titles as California Sketches, Letters from California, Little Neighbor, Shells and Sea-weed, To the Children, From Aunt Prudence, and Our California Correspondent. Her early journalism style was typical of the period in which she wrote: eloquent, yet in a manner often thick with extended descriptive sentences. As a correspondent, she chose subject matters that reflected her passions: plants and horticulture, education, and, most strongly, the new woman and her role in society and the home. In one of her California Sketches, Kimball offered a glimpse into one of the most important issues of the day, the Civil War. Her response to the Confederate defeat at Charleston, South Carolina, which she considered cause for celebration, reveals her view of the event in its broader implications for women. God and men grant that the good old flag may again continue to float over Sumter until every intelligent citizen of our country, male and female, shall enjoy the rights of suffrage, then we may properly be called what we never were a Republic, she yearned in one of her early ventures into the body politic of women s suffrage. 14 The travesty of war was a theme in Kimball s personal writing as well. In a private letter she sent back East, she wrote: Peace reigns within our borders and all we see of war, are the daily telegrams which bring us news of carnage and bloodshed. Those who have visited the Atlantic States the past year, return almost regretting the journey. Brave brother had fallen in battle, fathers and mothers prematurely gray, friends all mourning the loss of some household treasure, and our beautiful country one vast funeral and burying ground. 15 During her years in northern California, Kimball often touched upon the topic of children; she recognized the consequences of the environment in their formation and championed the advantages of solid morals. As witness to the devastating effects of mining on families in post Gold Rush San Francisco, she observed: The mania for 51

54 This photograph, made circa 1882, more than twelve years after Flora Kimball arrived at Rancho de la Nación, illustrates the sparse landscape of nineteenth-century southern California, the challenges the Kimballs faced in creating National City, and the isolated environment in which Flora lived and wrote. Morgan Local History Room, National City Public Library speculation in mining stocks... has possessed our people like an evil spirit the last year, reducing many from wealth to poverty. On hand to celebrate the 1867 expansion of the San Francisco Industrial School, she witnessed personally the cost to the city s youth. The school, located six miles outside the city, trained boys and girls from the ages of four to eighteen; the older children had committed crimes while many of the younger ones had been deserted by their parents. Kimball believed that part of the problem for youths was derived from city life: Cities do not possess... remedies for the moral delinquencies of youth. Give a mischievous city lad a dozen fine fruit trees, all his very own; his to cultivate and enjoy the fruit thereof; and his early reformation may be predicted. 16 A new start Life changed dramatically for Flora when, in 1868, in a state of ailing health, her brother-inlaw Frank decided he needed to leave the inclement weather of the Bay Area for a more moderate locale. Joined once again by Warren and Levi, the brothers purchased a former Mexican land grant, Rancho de la Nación (listed in the land patent as the National Ranch), 17 located in the most southern reaches of the state. 18 On December 5, 1868, Frank and Sarah left for San Diego, followed shortly after by Warren and Flora. In his January 19, 1869, diary entry, Frank noted simply, Flora and Warren came in on the Orizaba. 19 Flora would describe their arrival in southern California in more romantic terms: 5 California History volume 87 number

55 Ten years ago we passed through the Silver Gate of San Diego Bay on the Orizaba to make another home in this genial clime. We were borne to the shore on the arms of gallant sailors, for the busy people were too much absorbed in buying and selling corner lots to indulge in the luxury of wharf building. 20 Little more is known of Flora s feelings on relocating to such an arid, open country. Though her thoughts on the subject are not documented, the home and lifestyle she and husband created indicate that it was a positive move. The industrious Kimball brothers wasted no time in developing their newly purchased land, naming and then surveying the town-site of National City. Frank and Warren built a wharf, constructed roads, and planted orchards all to entice more settlers and, more importantly, the railroad to the region. Competition to bring a rail terminus to southern California was fierce. Fledgling farming communities like National City could use the railroad to expeditiously ship their produce out of the remote region of southern California. 21 The construction of homes was also a priority for the brothers; they built twelve during the first year and an additional seventy-five the following year. 22 The close and loving connection that Warren and Flora displayed throughout their marriage though minus any offspring was exemplified in their National City home, which was a regional showpiece. Their residence, named Olivewood, was built in the early 1870s on what would become 24th Street, between D and F avenues. With its grand panoramic views, Olivewood was a stately Italianate-modeled home decorated in Flora and Warren Kimball s home, Olivewood, was a traditional Italianate design: balanced and symmetrical with overhanging eaves and cornices. It was built on a rise and faced west toward the bay, easily catching the ocean breezes. The Kimballs were known as gracious hosts and entertained visitors regularly. Morgan Local History Room, National City Public Library 5

56 traditional Victorian fashion. But its real treasure was the gardens built by Warren and Flora, described in an 1889 article in the National City Record as a twenty-acre tract, the east half set in olives alone, and the west half in olives, various other fruits, lawns, flowers and hedges. In all there are two thousand trees; 1,300 olive; 300 orange and the balance are lemon, lime, peach, pear, apple, apricot, pomegranate, guava, plum, fig, loquat, and grapes. 23 As one of the National Ranch s first farms, it was difficult to determine what would grow in its soil. The Kimballs planted almost any type of tree they could obtain: eucalyptus, magnolia, camphor, pepper, Grevillea robusta, rubber, mulberry, Norfolk Island pine, ginkgo, crape myrtle, and 185 rods of Monterey cypress hedge an impressive number and variety of species given the absence of nearby nurseries. Many of their plantings were gifts from friends: a Japanese persimmon tree brought from Japan; an American persimmon from Kentucky; a Smyrna fig brought from Turkey; an olive tree from France; a magnolia from Natchez; a palm from Mexico; two orange trees from New Orleans; cosmos seeds from New Mexico. Particularly famous were more than seventy-five varieties of roses, including Homer, Captain Christy, Xavier, Anton Morton, Baroness Rothschild, Bon Silence, Cecil Brunner, Black Prince, and La France, which Flora planted. 24 In the management of Olivewood and the tending of her gardens, Flora made concrete her ideas about the value and importance of home recurring themes in her literary output. Confirming the emotional connection to her home, she wrote, There is no word in our language so suggestive of the best in human nature, love purity, and happiness, as home. Our home should be the expression of our most lofty ideas, a combination of the poetical, artistic and refined. 25 Flora and Warren s beautiful home and gardens were evidence of the elite status the Kimballs held in their community. A LiFE of Words Following the Civil War, many women across the country were extremely frustrated and disenchanted with the failure of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to include universal suffrage for all Americans. For women who participated in the suffrage movement, enfranchisement was a pivotal goal; it was crucial not only as a symbol of women s equality but also as a means of improving social conditions for themselves and their families. 26 Thus, the formation in 1867 of the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, the first secret society to admit women to full and equal membership, played a significant and symbolic role in the lives of many women, allowing them to participate intellectually and socially in a community organization alongside men. When the order of Patrons was established, Kimball wrote in hindsight in 1878, it seemed to us that the dawn of woman s, as well as the farmer s, prosperity had come. That those who originated the movement must have drank from the fountain of inspiration, that before another decade the moral, social and educational effects of the Grange would be felt and appreciated throughout the country. 27 The Grange was the culmination of a large number of agricultural organizations formed by men and women of the farming class who were seeking economic and social change. In 1873, the first annual convention of the state chapter, the State Grange of California, was held at San Jose, with 104 local granges represented. In 1882, Grange master Daniel Flint identified the state branch as one of the factors in voicing the wishes of the farmer, defending his rights, and making an aggressive warfare, instead of forever standing in the background and acting on the defense. 28 In his 1875 book, The Patrons of Husbandry on the Pacific Coast, Ezra S. Carr described the Grange s objective, which so intently encompassed both men and women: The barriers to 5 California History volume 87 number

57 Scenes of farm life are depicted in this 1873 promotional poster for the Granger movement, Gift for the Grangers. Grange members surely would have recognized the guiding principles of faith, hope, charity, and fidelity and have agreed with the nearly hidden words I Pay for All, suggesting the central role farmers played in the life and well-being of the nation. Library of Congress 55

58 social intercourse that are thrown around society by despotic fashion, are ruthlessly thrown down with us, and we meet on a common footing, with a common object in view.... To make country homes and country society attractive, refined, and enjoyable; to balance exhaustive labors by instructive amusements and accomplishments, is part of our mission and our aim. 29 The California Patron the state grange s newspaper also expressed a rationale for the inclusion of women. A woman stands, the publication opined, as firm and self-reliant as the bravest and strongest brother in the band, and fearlessly helps to maintain everything that is good of the order; and by the way, anything that is good for the Grange is good for the whole country aye, for the good of the nation and the whole world for that matter. 30 National City s local, or subordinate, grange, National Ranch Grange No. 235, was formed in November 1874, with Frank Kimball serving as its first master. In 1879, Flora was elected master the first woman in the country to hold the position. Working for the Grange was a natural fit for Flora; it was in line with her love of plants and agriculture; it reflected the pride she held for the life of the rural family; and it reinforced the support she touted for the role of women outside National Ranch Grange No. 235, located at 828 National Avenue (now National City Boulevard), was constructed in The second floor of the building operated as the Grange meeting hall, while the first floor housed a furniture store in the front and a tin and plumbing shop in the rear. The hall also was used for many community events, and was the site of the public library for a short period. Morgan Local History Room, National City Public Library 5 California History volume 87 number

59 of the home. Through her association with the Grange, she was able to meld her interests. Many states published Grange newspapers: the Dirigo Rural in Maine; the American Grange Bulletin of Ohio; the Grange Visitor of Michigan; and the Patron of Husbandry of Mississippi. California s paper, the California Patron, was devoted to the interests of agriculture and the homes of its readers. It also covered political issues, though with the conviction that no party had a monopoly on its principles. Owned and managed entirely by the State Grange of California, and published in San Francisco, the California Patron first appeared on March 17, 1876, and continued as a monthly for almost two years, at which time it became a semimonthly. Suspended for four months in October 1879, it resumed in March 1880 as a weekly. The California Patron, wrote the academic Solon J. Buck in 1913, exerted a wholesome influence upon the social and intellectual conditions of the farmer as well as helped to stay the decline of the Grange. 31 In 1878, the California Patron carried a regular feature for women called the Matrons Department, under the editorship of Carrie A. Colby. Colby s columns regularly revolved around domestic issues, temperance, voting rights, and education. 32 In July of that year, Kimball began to contribute articles, both fiction and nonfiction, focusing on similar issues. She saw the California Patron as providing mental food for households scattered throughout the state, many of them far from their neighbors. In March 1880, she became editor of the Matrons Department, which was soon renamed Family Circle. It was here, in the pages of the California Patron, that Kimball honed her skills and critique as a feminist suffragist. While her contemporary Susan B. Anthony pursued women s rights through governmental legislation, and Sojourner Truth linked women s rights to Christian values, Flora Kimball made a cultural connection to women s issues. With a frequent interest and focus on the home life, she wrote stories and editorials about simple discrepancies between the sexes within the family. These early columns occasionally revealed a hint of innocence: I often wondered... why careworn mothers and little sisters should spend the long winter evenings knitting and darning for the boys while they were free to enjoy themselves as they chose. Boy s fingers are as easily educated to knit and sew as girls.... When a boy learns to care for his own clothing will he appreciate the kind offices of those who have worked so faithfully for him, and his future wife will be blest with a husband who, if necessary, can relieve her of many little burdens. 33 As editor of Family Circle, Kimball included poems and a supplemental feature for young readers. But she always came back to her central theme: rural women and the roles to which they were often subjugated. Much drudgery is borne by women for no other reason than because she is a woman, she observed. She stressed that a woman ought to be a master of her work, not a slave, and believed that the work of reform should commence with women. Advocating that older children take some of the burden off their mother, she encouraged sons to learn chores around the house and fathers to assist with the laundry (if they did, she believed, many homes would soon have washing machines and wringers!). When the wife and mother make it the object of her life to wear herself out for her family, it is carrying a good thing quite beyond the bounds of reason and common sense, 34 she maintained. Young women also should prepare for an independent life outside of the home a central theme in many of Kimball s writings that was not just revolutionary but prophetic in its vision of what the next century would bring about for women. In Trades for Girls, Kimball elaborated on this provocative notion: Every argument that 5

60 Flora Kimball was a frequent, and popular, contributor to the pages of the California Patron, the publication of the State Grange of California, writing on issues of relevance to women in the state s rural and urban communities. As editor of the women s section, renamed Family Circle in 1880, she combined her passion for women s social and political rights with the feature s focus on the tender relationships and camaraderie among women. Morgan Local History Room, National City Public Library can be adduced in favor of boys learning trades applies with equal favor to girls. I believe it even more important that young women should become self-supporting than young men, for the common reasons, that, homeless, helpless girls often marry for no higher motive than to be supported. Such loveless unions inevitably result in miserable lives, and death alone can bring relief. Divorce is sometimes resorted to, but the wife is still left incapable of earning a livelihood as before the marriage. 35 Although she lived the life of a rural farm wife, Kimball understood the burdens confronting her cosmopolitan sisters. She noted that women could not enjoy the public sphere unescorted by a man, or even by another woman. As a woman, I defend the right of women to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, equally as men, she asserted. Because women are American citizens subject to the same laws with men, and share alike the burden of taxation, she pointed out, the laws should protect them without being obliged to summon a protector to protect them from their protectors. Further, if a lady is treated with disrespect at a theater or elsewhere in public, she argued, those public officials whose salary is paid by her taxes should promptly arrest such offenders, and in a short time a woman will be as safe in public as a man. 36 Kimball was cognizant of the effect of gender on women s day-to-day existence. In one column, she addressed the story of a woman who was arrested in New York for donning men s clothes in order to procure men s wages and who subsequently received a six-month prison sentence: I cannot help thinking that it is a wicked state of affairs that drives young women to the questionable expediency of donning male attire to gain an increase of wages, and then, on detection, being thrown into prison for six months!... I cannot see why it is not a crime more heinous than wearing male attire, withholding from woman the wages justly her due. An unjust discrimination against sex is a blot more foul in our social world than many offenses for which the victims are thrown in prison California History volume 87 number

61 A Champion for the MovEMEnt The promotion of women s suffrage in nineteenth-century America had many detractors. Betsy B., 38 writing for the San Francisco Argonaut in 1882, observed, In point of fact, great women are uncomfortable creatures, and no one seeks to be where they abound. No man wants one of them on his hearthstone. Kimball responded sharply: Why not, pray? A great woman may possibly make a little man uncomfortable, but how two hearts that beat as one can render each other uncomfortable is a new riddle in social science.... Flippant, female scribblers pander to a silly prejudice when they depreciate their own sex by flings at feminine greatness. 39 Kimball also published a retort to an 1881 article in the North American by Charles W. Elliott titled Woman s Work and Woman s Wages, in which Elliott railed against the legitimacy of the role of women in the workforce: To-day woman seems to be the least valuable of created beings.... No queen works, no chieftain s wife works, no trader s wife works, no lady works or wishes to work or expects to work. 40 She called Elliott s article a feeble attempt at sarcasm and described him as a relic, no doubt, of that decaying, conservative class that flourished in the last century, who believe that women s intellect, genius, strength and fortitude were given her for the sole purpose of ministering to the comfort of man. 41 Kimball also responded to an article by the editor of Scribner s Monthly, F. G. Holland, who in Women and Her Work bewailed the degeneration of women of the present day and their desire for freedom and independence in seeking employment options other than those found in their own homes. To Holland s objection that women claim the right to mark out for themselves and achieve an independent career, Kimball argued: Thanks to the growing intelligence of the age, women of sense not only claim the right, but thousands on thousands are exercising the right to make themselves so independent that they will not condescend to violate their womanly purity and marry simply for support, notwithstanding that the fossil pens of such teachers as Dr. Holland are forever telling them that marriage is the great end of a woman s life. 42 Like her contemporary Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Kimball championed women s issues other than the right to vote, including an eight-hour workday, equal pay for working women, divorce reform that would obliterate forever the notion that wives belonged to their husbands, and selfsupport. She repeatedly promoted the latter in her writings, asserting that self-sufficiency was one of the first things young people, especially girls, should learn: There is no sadder sight than that of young women who have been trained to luxurious indolence, bereft of means, with no trade or practical education, adrift on the world, an easy prey to the evils that beset the way of the objectless. 43 Kimball also supported Stanton s campaign against the enslavement of women to fashion. 44 To the suffragists, nineteenth-century clothing reform was a serious concern, regarding both comfort and preoccupation. In Feminine Folly, Kimball lamented the time and intellect wasted by women on fashion. One can almost hear her anguish as she writes, We do not, and no one should, ignore taste and beauty in dress; but we do remonstrate, with all the power of an outraged womanhood, against this soul-degrading practice of debasing the intellect of our sex, our precious time and the means that might make suffering humanity comfortable, to the senseless pursuit of every new style that cunning brain of French or American dress artist can invent. 45 To Kimball, subordinating refinement, health, and economy to the demands of fashion was a peril to women; their fixation on fashion s frivolity only debased a brilliant intellect. It is a blind obedience to the behests of fashion, more than anything else that confirms men in the belief of 59

62 women s intellectual inferiority, and shuts her out from the avenues of labor to which by nature she is peculiarly adapted, she wrote. Reiterating the need for women to design their lives for independence, she remarked, The work of unfitting her for a life of honorable self-support begins in fancy. 46 Kimball s contributions to the California Patron were not limited to editorials. She wrote poems as well as stories under the pen names Pearl Dogood, Pearl Victor, Aunt Prudence, and Betsy Snow. Written in the style of early Jane Austen stories, these fictionalized narratives depicted nineteenth-century families and lessons of morality learned within the confines of the home. 47 Some were satirical allegories in which the simple wife was guided by her husband. In Something Original: Advice to Young Wives, the young spouse Betsy Snow readily agrees with all the advice from her husband, Fred, including: Never appear at the breakfast table with your hair undressed.... On the contrary when I have been awake all night with the baby, instead of catching a little sleep at early dawn, when the weary sufferer is quiet, I get out of bed and go at my frizzes. 48 In Betsy Snow Stays Home, a subservient Betsy questions Fred when he sells some of their land, naively believing that a wife had to agree to the transaction. When Fred reminds her that the law is different in California than in other states, Betsy is humbled and remembers her place. 49 In Extravagant Wives, Betsy Snow sardonically writes, Extravagant wives drive more husbands to bankruptcy than any mismanagement of business or hard times. A twenty-five dollar hat, every time the breeze of fashion changes, soon gets to the bottom of the longest purse. She goes on to note various men who have recently squandered their business, attributing the loss to a bonnet the wife had recently purchased. 50 In the sentimental Two Thanksgivings, Kimball chronicled the lives of a simple New England family who succumbed to the delusions of prosperity during the Gold Rush. In a rash move, the family migrates to the western frontier, leaving behind all that is true and dear to them. But the characters in Kimball s story are high-minded and noble-hearted people, and in this new land they find not gold but redemption and thankfulness. Though often simple, Kimball s stories need not necessarily be judged on their intrinsic literary merit but rather on the social, political, and cultural discourses they encouraged. Under the pen name F. M. Lebelle, in 1872 Kimball wrote The Fairfields, considered by some local historians the first novel written by a San Diego area author. The book was published by Kimball s sister Louisa, who was working for the Lyceum Banner, a Chicago-based periodical with ties to the Spiritualist movement. Using a shortened form of her sister s name that mirrors the genderless and thereby perhaps more commercially acceptable aspect of her own pen names, Flora dedicated the book To Lou H. Kimball, the untiring friend of children. Writing for the San Diego Union in 1964, Gene Ingles described the book as... a novel for children full of moral teaching a novel you might expect to have been written by someone in a town not too far removed from frontier days. 51 In her prose on nature, Kimball s writing most reflects her New England heritage as inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson s Nature (1836) and Henry David Thoreau s Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) particularly the growing focus on the environment and man s relationship to nature. She embraced the era s ecological philosophy, believing that life on a farm elevated mankind through the agency of Nature: I pity the child who is cast upon the piles of brick and mortar of cities, whose feet never touched the soft, yielding grass, and whose heart has not beat with joy in the shadowy embrace of open armed California History volume 87 number

63 This young woman s stylish silhouette captured in the studio of Joshua Vansant Jr. in Eureka circa was characteristic of women s fashions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her air of discomfort may be attributed to her heavy corset which applied twenty or more pounds of pressure on the abdomen and the additional weight of her layered skirt. In her 1881 column in the California Patron, Kimball called women s fashion of the era Feminine Folly. California Historical Society 1

64 trees; whose childish appetite has not been appeased with fruits, and whose sense of beauty has not been ministered to by the happy, laughing flowers. 52 She occasionally made a connection between nature and religion: Flowers are sermons that fit us for a life hereafter and make us better in the present. They inculcate the virtues that will save us from sin. 53 Kimball wrote throughout the 1880s. In 1889, R. H. Young launched The Great Southwest, a monthly publication devoted to agricultural and industrial pursuits in San Diego and National City. He brought in Kimball as the horticulture editor of the column Home and Family. Yet Kimball continued to advocate the need for women to lay claim to their natural given rights, always striking that seemingly contradictory balance between supporting a woman s right for independence and championing her place in the home. About the economic opportunities for women, she observed: All about us are struggling women with dependent families, and all about us are the golden opportunities adapted to the capacities of each. To bring them together is to make happy and comfortable homes where poverty now exists. Poverty is the birth-right of none. 54 A Civic LiFE In an 1889 article, Kimball acknowledged the change in women s lives over the years: One by one the ponderous doors that have for ages shut women out from participation in affairs as vital to their interest as to men s have swung back on their rusty hinges. 55 And it was Kimball who had helped open many of those doors. Aside from her role as the nation s first female master of a grange, she also was involved in the early development of the National City Public Library. 56 In 1883, Governor George Stoneman appointed her to the State Board of Agriculture, along with six other ladies. 57 In 1889, the San Diego Chamber of Commerce invited its members wives to establish a Ladies Day. Kimball and seven other socially energetic women organized the Annex to the Chamber of Commerce, the first group of its kind in the country. As historian Irene Philips has noted: In two months they had 700 [members] from all parts of the county to aid the men in the industrial, commercial and horticultural interest in the county in which men as well as women had interest. With the backing of a new local paper, the Pacific Rural Press, Kimball was instrumental in providing the Annex with good publicity. She wrote, in part: It is an old notion which is constantly melting away in the light of the 20th century that it is good for man to be alone in all public work in which the community, as a whole, is engaged. Our first aims are a market-house for farmer s products, a library building, an Opera House and cheap water for San Diego. 58 The Pacific Rural Press observed that Kimball s reputation and name were larger than National City itself when she was chosen to represent southern California on the board of managers for the upcoming 1893 World s Fair in Chicago, declaring, We can think of no one more competent and every way desirable for that honorable office than the lady mentioned. She would certainly do credit to our State. 59 The year 1889 was significant for Kimball. In June she was elected to the school board of the National School District, the first woman in the state to receive that honor. She would hold the post for eight years. Despite tough competition, Kimball had received strong support, especially from the National City Record, which had endorsed her as the most available and strongest candidate. Promoting her intelligence, independence, and hard work, the editors concluded that she will be actuated by the dictates of her own conscience, and will always work for the best interest of National City. 60 California History volume 87 number

65 Like many nineteenth-century women, Kimball was involved in a number of social organizations and clubs, including the New England Society of San Diego County. 61 This association, formed by Frank Kimball and other community members, touted the objective of providing social converse and intellectual amusement to those of New England birth, though strangers were welcome at their free monthly socials on Saturday evenings nearest the full of the moon. 62 Kimball also helped found the Home Improvement Society and was an officer of the Tuesday Club, as well as an organizer and honorary member of the Social Science Club, later the Friday Club. 63 In the early days of the Social Science Club, members took turns reading from such books as George Harrison s Moral Evolution, Henry Drummond s The Ascent of Man, and Benjamin Kidd s Social Evolution. They wrote papers on the books, which they then read to one another. On October 21, 1897, the National City Record reported that Flora Kimball closed a meeting of the Social Science Club with an eloquent appeal for Women s Suffrage, which brought conviction with it. The National City Record identified her as president of the Woman s Suffrage Club, an associate of the San Diego Woman s Club, and a member of the Women s Parliament and the New Hampshire Antiquarian Society. 64 In June 1895, the San Diego Woman s Club arranged for Susan B. Anthony and Anna Shaw to come to town and speak. The event was a big success, as reported in the San Diego Union: The ushers in the First Methodist church could not find seats enough last night to accommodate all who went there to hear Susan B. Anthony and Rev. Anna Shaw speak on woman suffrage.... Mrs. Flora M. acted as chairman of the meeting. The following day, the Kimballs hosted a large reception at Olivewood. The house and grounds were attractively decorated for the occasion with nothing left undone.... The guests of honor... Miss Susan B. Anthony and Rev. Anna Shaw and about 100 persons sat down to a most beautiful repast that had been spread upon tables on the lawn... Miss Estelle Thompson read an original poem entitled Olivewood. Miss Anthony called for Our Host, the Planter of Olivewood, and Mrs. Kimball responded in a speech which elicited much applause. 65 In 1890, Kimball undertook a unique civic project that added to her celebrity. Authorized by the City Council to procure trees and supervise their planting throughout National City, Kimball planted a large number of eucalyptus trees along the property line in various sections of the city. The trees were watered from a large hose that was connected to one of the horse-drawn street sprinklers. On March 10, 1892, the city purchased five hundred additional trees at a cost of six cents each. These were planted in the same manner. By May 1893, there were about five thousand shade trees along the city s curb lines. Eventually reaching nearly eight thousand, the trees became a National City trademark. 66 Kimball saw a richer harvest of morality, beauty and religion spring forward from the influence of man s connection with nature: I can easily forgive the idolatry of the ancients, who worshipped trees. They must have possessed aesthetic and refined nature. The civic-minded Kimball had envisioned National City, a desolate town, with cut-offs at every available place, as a place where residents could benefit in nature s rewards. No nature is so depraved that it does not respond to the refining influences of trees, their flowers and fruits, and none so perfect that it may not be made pure and better by their blessed presence, she claimed. 67 Sadly, over the next seventy years, the city gradually removed the majority of the trees Kimball had planted, replacing the gravel with hewn granite sidewalks.

66 Susan B. Anthony (seated, center) and Anna Shaw (seated, left) met with California s suffragist leaders at this June 1895 luncheon party at the home of California State Suffrage Association president Nellie Holbrook Blinn (standing, third from left). Anthony and Shaw also were hosted that month in National City by the San Diego Woman s Club and at a reception by Flora Kimball at Olivewood, for 200 guests who came by train and carriage. California Historical Society An ideal Citizen in an ideal HoME Late in her life, Flora, along with her husband, opened an eatery on their Olivewood property. The Lunch Parlor became a popular destination on the National City and Otay Railroad line, which ran down 24th Street with a stop in front of Olivewood. During a seventy-minute stopover, riders could partake of a home-cooked meal and a chance to rest in the shade of Olivewood s trees. A Lunch Parlor promotional brochure announced, On the return from Old Mexico, at 1 o clock p.m. lunch will be served to tourists at this ideal California home. 68 On July 2, 1898, following a six-month illness, Flora Kimball died of heart disease. Although not unexpected, the news of her death sent shockwaves throughout the city and surrounding localities. That she was endeared to many was evident in the announcement of her death in the San Diego Union: The many friends of Mrs. Kimball, not only in the bay region, but in all parts of the United States, will be pained to hear of her [death]. During her residence of over a quarter of a century at National City she has been one of the most prominent and highly respected ladies in this part of the state, and has been foremost in charitable and educational works.... Mrs. California History volume 87 number

67 Kimball was perhaps the best known woman in this part of the state. Her exceptional genius as a writer, philanthropic interest in the affairs of her fellow creatures and liberal hospitality had endeared her to thousands of persons who will learn of her death with deep regret. 69 Today, though most of her writings are relegated to the backrooms of archives, Flora Kimball has left her mark. Her liberal writing and activism fostered a discourse for progressive politics; particularly women s rights; self-sufficiency; the enduring significance of the home; the values and morals of youth; and the vital connection between man and nature. Wearing her passions on her sleeve, she sought to enhance the fabric of life in nineteenth-century California, particularly for women of her era and for future generations. Matthew Nye, MLIS, is the Collection Manager for the San Diego Women s History Museum and Educational Center and a librarian for the San Diego Public Library. Formerly, he was a librarian for the National City Public Library and for the San Diego Museum of Photographic Art s Edmund L. and Nancy K. Dubois Library. He has published articles in the Journal of San Diego History and the University of San Diego s USD Magazine. He is co-author with historian Marilyn Carnes of Early National City (2008). Olivewood was a regular and popular stop on the National City and Otay Railroad, whose tracks ran up 24th Street. A sign to the right of the Olivewood estate s entrance advertised the charming and inviting Lunch Parlor, where guests could buy lunch for 25 cents. Tourists also could bring their own basket lunch and enjoy the welcoming relaxation of Olivewood s gardens. Morgan Local History Room, National City Public Library 5

68 n o t e s Cover caption sources: (front cover) Complimentary Banquet in Honor of Luther Burbank Given by the California State Board of Trade at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco: California State Board of Trade Bulletin No. 14, Sept. 14, 1905; (back cover) Luther Burbank with Wilbur Hall, The Harvest of the Years (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927). James D. Houston, Californian, By Forrest G. Robinson, PP 6 25 Caption sources: Carolyn Kellogg, Jacket Copy: James D. Houston Dies at 75, Los Angeles Times, Apr. 18, 2009; James D. Houston, Where the Light Takes Its Color from the Sea: A California Notebook (Berkeley: Heyday, 2008), James D. Houston, Snow Mountain Passage (New York: Knopf, 2001). 1 Interview with Morton Marcus, Always on the Brink: Facing West from California, The Bloomsbury Review (Nov./Dec. 2007); 2 A Writers Sense of Place, in The True Subject: Writers on Life and Craft, ed. Kurt Brown (St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1993), Ben R. Finney and James D. Houston, Surfing: A History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1996), Houston, Between Battles (New York: Dial Press, 1968), 54, Ibid., 121, 124, Houston, Gig (New York: Dial Press, 1969), Ibid., 20, Ibid, Houston, A Native Son of the Golden West (New York: Dial Press, 1971), Prologue. 10 Ibid., Ibid., Houston, The Adventures of Charlie Bates (Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1973), 13, Houston, Continental Drift (New York: Knopf, 1978), Ibid., Ibid., 166, Houston, Love Life (New York: Knopf, 1985), 52, Ibid., 198, Houston, The Last Paradise (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), Ibid., Ibid., Houston, Where Does History Live? Rethinking History 11 (2007): 57 58, 60. Also in Where the Light Takes Its Color from the Sea: A California Notebook (Berkeley, CA: Heyday, 2008), Houston, Snow Mountain Passage (New York: Knopf, 2001), Ibid., 3, Ibid., Ibid., 65, Houston, Where Does History Live?, Houston, Snow Mountain Passage, Ibid., I bid., Ibid., Houston, Bird of Another Heaven (New York: Knopf, 2007), Ibid., Special thanks to Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston for her permission to read the manuscript of A Queen s Journey, to be published by Heyday in Sidebar: Farewell to Manzanar, PP Morton Marcus, Always on the Brink: Facing West from California, The Bloomsbury Review (Nov./Dec. 2007), www. jamesdhouston.com/pdfs/always-onthe%20brink.pdf. 2 Ibid. Luther Burbank s spineless Cactus: Boom Times in the California Desert, By Jane S. Smith, PP Portions of this essay are adapted from The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants (New York: Penguin Press, 2009). The editors and author would like to thank horticultural historian Bob Hornback and Rebecca Baker and the staff of the Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, Santa Rosa, California, for assistance with research; Sue Hodson and Melanie Thorpe of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, for help locating fugitive documents; and Adam Shapiro, for access to his collection of biology textbooks. Caption sources: Luther Burbank with Wilbur Hall, The Harvest of the Years (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927); Luther Burbank s Spineless Cactus (San Francisco: The Luther Burbank Company); David Starr Jordan, Some Experiments of Luther Burbank, Popular Science Monthly 66 (January 1905); Proof Book Number 1 (Santa Rosa, CA: The Luther Burbank Society, 1913); The Burbank Seed Book (San Francisco: The Luther Burbank Company, 1914); The Planting of the Largest Spineless Cactus Nursery in the World, Out West, New Series 6, no. 3 (Sept. 1913). 1 See Roy Wiersma, Luther Burbank Spineless Cactus Identification Project (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2008). 2 Luther Burbank, Of Easy Culture and Rapid Growth, New Agricultural- Horticultural Opuntias (Los Angeles: Kruckeberg Press, 1907), 5. See also: plantanswers.tamu.edu/publications/cactus/ cactuscatalog/. 3 Burbank often sold complete control over his plant inventions, including naming rights, so it is impossible to trace his complete work. The best inventory is Walter L. Howard, Luther Burbank s Plant Contributions, University of California College of Agriculture, Agricultural Experiment Station, Berkeley, CA, Bulletin 691, Mar Honorable George C. Pardee, Governor of California, Complimentary Banquet in Honor of Luther Burbank Given by the California State Board of Trade at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco: California State Board of Trade Bulletin No. 14, Sept. 14, 1905, When Edison and Ford came to Santa Rosa in 1915, the well-publicized visit was regarded as a meeting of the masters of invention. It was the start of a long friendship and, for Ford, the inspiration for what would become a large collection of Burbankiana at The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, in Dearborn, MI. Among many other items, the collection includes the building where Burbank was born, transported from Massachusetts, and Burbank s garden spade set in cement at the museum entry. California History volume 87 number

69 6 Liberty Hyde Bailey, Stoneless Prunes, the Latest Wonder, Sunset Magazine 7, nos. 2 3 (June July 1901): The medal, so inscribed, is in the collection of the Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, Santa Rosa, CA. 8 E. J. Wickson, Luther Burbank: Man, Methods and Achievements, Part III, Sunset Magazine 8, no. 6 (April 1902): David Starr Jordan and Vernon Lyman Kellogg, Scientific Aspects of Luther Burbank s Work (San Francisco: Philopolis Press, 1909). 10 Wizard s Wisdom, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 6, Ibid. 12 Minutes of the Board of Park Commissioners, July 25, 1905: Moved by Mr. Moran, seconded by Mr. White, that the Park Commissioners offer to Dr. David Griffiths of the Department of Agriculture the use of about five acres of land near the southeast corner of city park for a government forage experimental station for a length of time as may be required, not to exceed 15 years, Balboa Park History, 1905; sandiegohistory.org/amero/notes-1905.htm. 13 Burbank, Voices of the Press and Public, New Agricultural-Horticultural Opuntias, Rutland also bought rights to an early variety of Burbank s plumcot, a plumapricot hybrid that many breeders discredited because they thought the cross was impossible. The plumcot is the ancestor of the modern pluot, which has the distinction of being patented, a protection not available to Burbank. Over the next five years, official delegations from India, Tunisia, and Australia came to Santa Rosa to meet Burbank and examine his newest creation; in letters to his friend Samuel Leib, Burbank also reported that the governments of Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina had invited him to visit and advise them on starting spineless cactus plantations. 15 W. S. Harwood, New Creations in Plant Life: An Authoritative Account of the Life and Work of Luther Burbank (New York: Macmillan, 1905). 16 George Wharton James, The Wonders of the Colorado Desert (Southern California), vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1906), 224. In a footnote, James noted that after meeting Burbank he realized the cactus would require fencing to survive predators that would no longer be repelled by spines. 17 Burbank, The Training of the Human Plant (New York: The Century Co., 1907). By 1908, the Mothers Clubs of California had begun a successful effort to declare Burbank s birthday, Mar. 7, Bird and Arbor Day in California and designate it as a time for schoolchildren to learn about Luther Burbank s works. 18 Greatest Opportunity of the Age, [Spokane] Spokesman-Review, Apr. 26, The Venice Vanguard, July 14, According to Norton Parker Chipman, head of the California State Board of Trade, exports had risen from some 16,194 carloads of fruits and vegetables in 1890, each carload holding ten tons of produce, to over 80,000 carloads in 1904; Pardee, Complimentary Banquet, See Richard J. Orsi, Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), See Oscar Binner, Luther Burbank: How His Discoveries Are to Be Put into Practical Use (Chicago: Oscar E. Binner Co., 1911), By 1911, several books about Burbank and his work had already been published, including Jordan and Kellogg s Scientific Aspects of Luther Burbank s Work and multiple editions of Harwood s New Creations in Plant Life. The Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC, still expected to publish a scholarly volume on Burbank s methods, written by George Shull, and the directors were shocked to learn that Burbank had signed a contract with Dugall Cree, a Minneapolis publisher, for an illustrated 10-volume set about his work to be aimed at a popular audience and sold by subscription. At least two ghostwriters had already begun work on these books when Cree sold the contract to Oscar Binner, who moved his family from Chicago to Santa Rosa and hired a stable of researchers, photographers, and writers to complete what he felt would be a great contribution to world knowledge. Cobbled together from the work of five to ten ghostwriters, including some material that seems to have been left in Santa Rosa by Shull, the Binner project finally appeared in twelve volumes under the title Luther Burbank: His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Applications (New York and London: Luther Burbank Press, 1914). Shull never finished his book for the Carnegie Institution, but he kept his notes for decades, planning to return to the project some day. 24 Binner, Luther Burbank. 25 Plant Freaks to Be Shown, Los Angeles Times, Mar. 16, George Willoughby, The Gathering of the Clans, National Magazine 35 (Oct Mar. 1912). 27 Jack London letters to Eliza Shepherd, Box 300, Jack London Collection, Manuscripts Department, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA (hereafter cited as London Collection). 28 Eliza London to Jack London, May 8, 1915, box 372 (30), London Collection. 29 David Griffiths, The Prickly Pear and Other Cacti as Food for Stock, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, bulletin no. 74 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1905); Griffiths, The Tuna as Food for Man, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, bulletin no. 116 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1907), 3; Griffiths, The Spineless Prickly Pears, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, bulletin no. 140 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1909), An Innovation in Washington: To Run Pictures in the Congressional Record, Los Angeles Times, Mar. 1, Fodder from the Cactus, Pacific Dairy Review 16, no. 26 (July 1912): Burbank, Hardy Spineless Opuntia Ready for the Hybridizer, New Agricultural- Horticultural Opuntias, 2. See also: plantanswers.tamu.edu/publications/cactus/ cactuscatalog. 33 See Ronald Tobey and Charles Wetherell, The Citrus Industry and the Revolution of Corporate Capitalism in Southern California, , California History 74, no. 1 (Spring 1995), 6 21; and H. Vincent Moses, The Orange-Grower Is Not a Farmer : G. Harold Powell, Riverside Orchardists, and the Coming of Industrial Agriculture, , California History 74, no. 1 (Spring 1995), Heisner & Shanklin, Oro Loma: Spineless Cactus Lands (Oakland, CA: Horwinski Co., ca. 1912), 17. All quotations from Heisner & Shanklin, Oro Loma, Huntington Library Rare Book Collection, San Marino, CA.

70 n o t e s 35 Sunset Magazine 20, no. 3 (January 1908). 36 Heisner & Shanklin, Oro Loma, Ibid, Ibid, The Sharpshooter, Magazine of Wall Street 12 (May Oct. 1913): See Peter Dreyer, A Gardener Touched with Genius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) for a fuller account of the many businesses that sought to capitalize on Burbank and his creations. 41 Big Ranch in Cactus, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 4, See George W. Hunter, A Civic Biology (New York: American Book Company, 1914) and A New Civic Biology (1926); Benjamin Gruenberg, Elementary Biology (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1919) and Biology and Human Life (1925); Arthur G. Clement, Living Things: An Elementary Biology (Syracuse, NY: Iroquois Publishing Company, 1925); Alfred Kinsey, An Introduction to Biology (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co, 1926); W. M. Smallwood, Ida L. Reveley, and Guy A. Bailey, New General Biology (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1929); Frank M. Wheat and Elizabeth T. Fitzpatrick, Advanced Biology (New York: American Book Company, 1929); S. J. Holmes, Life and Evolution (London: A. &. C. Black, 1931). 43 Paramahansa Yogananda, The Autobiography of a Yogi (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), See Peter Felker, Commercializing Mesquite, Leucaena, and Cactus in Texas, in Progress in New Crops, ed. J. Janick (Alexandria, VA: ASHS Press, 1996): ; See also Salah Chouki, Spineless Cactus Plantation for Forage, doc/publicat/cactusnt/cactus3.htm; Felker, Utilization of Opuntia for Forage in the United States of America, fao.org/docrep/005/y2808e/y2808eoa.htm; Gerhard C. De Kock, The Use of Opuntia as a Fodder Source in Arid Areas of Southern Africa, y2808e/y2808eof.htm; Juan C. Guevara and Oscar R. Estevez, Opuntia Spp. [spineless] for Fodder and Forage Production in Argentina: Experiences and Prospects, fao.org/docrep/005/y2808e/y2808e0c. htm; Patricio Azócar, Opuntia as Feed for Ruminants in Chile, docrep/005/y2808e/y2808e0b.htm. 45 Felker, Commercializing Mesquite, Leucaena, and Cactus in Texas. A Life Remembered: the Voice and Passions of Feminist Writer and Community activist Flora Kimball, By Matthew Nye, PP Caption sources: Mrs. Kimball Dead, San Diego Union, July 3, 1898; Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, vol. 2 (Indianapolis and Kansas City: The Bowen-Merrill Company, 1898). 1 Flora Kimball, Suffragette, California Patron, Apr. 5, Lucretia Mott is a good example of those who influenced Flora Kimball s writing; see Dana Greene, ed., Lucretia Mott: Her Complete Speeches and Sermons (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1980). 3 For a variety of reasons, during the late nineteenth century, many white suffragists turned their backs on African American women; see Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women and the Woman Suffrage Movement, in One Woman, One Vote, Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, ed. Marjorie Spruill Wheeler (Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 1995): From its beginnings in 1846, Congregationalism was the major support for the Association Missionary Society, an interdenominational missionary society devoted to abolitionist principles. The intellectual, political, and moral influence of Congregationalism could easily account for the activist nature of Flora and her sister Hannah T. Brown. See Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969); Robert C. Senior, The New England Congregationalist and the Antislave Movement, , PhD diss., Yale University, 1954; Clifford S. Griffin, The Abolitionist and the Benevolent Societies, , in The History of the American Abolitionist Movement: A Bibliography of Scholarly Articles, ed. John. R. McKivigan (Indianapolis: Indiana University, 1999), 101. While there is minimal religious reference in Flora s writing, she did express her views on occasion: Religious belief is a strong sentiment in human nature valued by its possessor above pride, but while we cling so tenaciously to our own, we are too apt to stand voluntary guardians over that of our neighbors (California Patron, July 2, 1881). 5 Flora s sister Hannah ( ) was married to John G. Brown. The couple moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Hannah started the abolitionist paper The Agitator, which she edited and published herself. The paper covered issues of race and gender equality. She also wrote The False and True Marriage; the Reason and Results (Cleveland: Viets & Savage, 1861), a radical treatise critiquing the institution. She later helped found the United States Spiritual Association and served as its president. In 1870, she joined Flora in National City, where she bought land from Warren and Frank Kimball for $2,300. The property is now the site of Sweetwater High School. After an active life as a writer and lecturer in the Spiritualist movement in National City and San Diego, Hannah Brown died of consumption in 1881; San Diego Union, July 3, Irene Phillips, Flora Kimball Campaigned Here for Women s Rights, The Star News, Feb. 23, 1961; San Diego Union, July 3, First Kimball Reunion, Golden Gate Park, August 7, 1897, collection of the California Historical Society, San Francisco. Brothers Levi and Charles Kimball initially came out to California in 1860 by way of the Horn. Warren and Frank opted for the train service across the Isthmus of Panama, which began operating in February 1855, just six years prior to their journey. The 47-mile train ride, at a cost of $25, took four and a half hours. But the Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1869, quickly became the favored means of travel to California. Ann Graham Gaines, The Panama Canal in American History (Berkeley Heights, NJ.: Enslow Publishers, Inc. 1999), The Kimball Brothers were responsible for construction of the Green Street Church at the corner of Stockton Street, the Tehama Street School in 1866, and most notably the city s Alms-House in Bill Roddy, American Hurrah, com/sanfrancisco/municipalreports/alms- House/History.htm. 9 Frank Kimball, Diary, Oct. 1, 1861, National City Public Library, Morgan Local History Room (hereafter cited as Kimball Diary). Many of Frank s 52 diaries, spanning the years 1854 to 1912, were donated to the National City Public Library in 1958 by Gordon Stanley Kimball, Flora s greatgrandnephew. The brief entries describe historical events, modes of travel, business experience, and the hardships of daily life, including the progress of National City as California History volume 87 number

71 an agricultural and horticultural center, the development of water resources, and Kimball s efforts to bring the railroad to National City. A Guide to the Kimball Family Collection, has been processed by Marisa Abramo and Mary Allely. For more information on National City and the Kimball family, see Leslie Trook, National City: Kimball s Dream (National City, CA: National City Chamber of Commerce, 1992) and William Smythe, History of San Diego, (San Diego: San Diego History Co., 1907). 10 David Wyatt writes about the subjugation of one people after another in California s history. He sees the invasion of wild oat into California and its displacement of the native bunchgrass as a metaphor for the human story that the botanical process paralleled; David Wyatt, Five Fires: Race, Catastrophe, and the Shaping of California (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc.: 1997), Kimball, California Sketches No. 1, Rising Tide, ca Kimball, California Sketches No. 2, Rising Tide, ca Kimball Diary, June 15, Kimball, California Sketches No Flora Kimball to Dear Age, n.d., Flora Kimball Collection, Box 122, National City Public Library, Morgan Local History Room (hereafter cited as Kimball Collection). 16 Flora Kimball, Fruit Growers, National City Record, Apr. 18, This is an excerpt from Flora s speech at the 11th Annual Convention of Fruit Growers held in National City. 17 The land the Kimballs purchased had belonged to the Kumeyaay people; see Michael Connolly Miskwish, Kumeyaay: A History Textbook, Volume I: Precontact to 1893 (El Cajon, CA: Sycuan Press, 2007), and Richard Carrico, Strangers in a Stolen Land, American Indians in San Diego, (Sacramento, CA: Sierra Oaks Publishing Company, 1987). Rancho de la Nación was initially owned by Don Juan Forster (a native of Liverpool, England), who was married to Maria Ysidora, sister to the last Mexican governor of California, Pío Pico. The story of the region s evolution from Spanish to Mexican to Anglo domination is explored in Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 1946). 18 Kimball Diary, June 15, Frank notes that they had agreed to buy 26,632 acres from San Francisco bankers Francois Louis Pioche and J. B. Bayerque for $30,000, onethird in cash, with the balance purchased in three annual payments at 8 percent per annum. 19 The Orizaba first arrived in San Diego on Jan. 10, 1865, and ran until The voyage between San Francisco and San Diego generally took 3 days. The ship made port in San Diego about every 12 days; Jerry MacMullen The Orizaba And Johnston Heights, The Journal of San Diego History 5, no. 3 (July 1959): 47. Designed for service between New York and Vera Cruz and launched in 1854, she [the Orizaba] came to the Pacific in 1856 and spent the next eight years running between San Francisco and Nicaragua and Panama. Purchased by the California Steam Navigation Co. from the Pacific Mail Steamship Co. in 1865, she began 20 years of voyages from San Francisco to San Diego, varied by occasional spells on the line north to Portland and Victoria. A steamer of 1334 tons and 246 feet long, Orizaba could carry 75 cabin and 200 steerage passengers as well as 600 tons of cargo. This made her one of the largest vessels in the coastwise trade until after 1880 ; John Haskell Kemble, Early Transportation in Southern California: Orizaba on the California Coast, 1876 (San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1954), Kimball, Travel to National City, California Patron, May 10, For more information on National City s history with the California Southern Railroad, see Douglas L. Lowell, The California Southern Railroad and the Growth of San Diego, Part II, Journal of San Diego History 32, no. 1 (Winter 1986); htm. 22 Leslie Trook, National City: Kimball s Dream (National City, CA: National City Chamber of Commerce, 1992), National City Record, July 4, This author was unable to find any reference as to who planted the Kimballs gardens. Yet Frank Kimball makes several notes in his diaries: Hired an Indian boy to herd sheep at $8 a month ; Only 7 Chinamen at work grading 24th in am and 9 in pm ; Harry, Clinton, and Ah Lun, Ah Bin, Ah On and 20 other heathens at work ; Kimball Diary, Mar. 17, 1879, Mar. 4, 1882, July 12, Kimball, Home and Family Beautiful Lines from the Pen of Flora Kimball, National City Record, Aug. 15, See Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, ed., One Woman, One Vote, Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement (Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 1995). 27 Kimball, California Patron, Nov. 2, Daniel Flint, Journal of Proceedings of the Sixteenth Session of the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry (Philadelphia: J.A. Wagenweller, 1882), Ezra Slocum Carr, The Patrons of Husbandry on the Pacific Coast (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and Company, 1875), 107. Gilbert C. Fite notes: The National Grange, established in 1868, was the first general farm organization founded in the United States. Formed during a period of low prices following the Civil War, the principle objectives of the Grange were to improve the social and economic welfare of rural people through organization and cooperation. However, the Grange turned to politics in the early 1870s and was largely responsible for the so-called Grange Laws which were designed to regulate railroads and other corporations. The political influence of the Grange was short-lived, however, and after the middle 1870s it had relatively little force in politics until it became active politically during the 1920s, nearly half a century later ; Fite, The Changing Political Role of the Farmer, in Pressure Groups in American Politics, ed. H. R. Mahood (New York: Scribner, 1967), California Patron, May 8, Solon Justus Buck, The Grange Movement: A Study of Agricultural Organization and its Political, Economic and Social Manifestations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913), 289. On Jan. 1, 1882, the San Diego Union reported: In the autumn and early winter of 1874, Brother Wright organized seven granges in San Diego County. Six died young, decay resulting in the death of most other Granges lack of harmony and just appreciation of the benefits accruing from a connection with the Order.... For nearly seven years this Grange [the National Ranch Grange] did not fail to meet every two weeks, in the afternoon. 9

72 n o t e s 32 Carrie A. Colby covered many of the same issues as Flora Kimball : Education for Women, California Patron, July 6, 1878; Labor, California Patron, Nov. 2, 1887; Weak Women, California Patron, July 5, Kimball, Women s Equality, California Patron, July 6, L. M. Daugherty, Our Homes, California Patron, July 10, Kimball, Trades for Girls, California Patron, Dec. 3, Kimball, New Departure, California Patron, Feb. 4, Kimball, Mrs. Glover s Kitchen Stories Woman s Work, California Patron, Mar. 23, Betsy B. was the pen name for theatre critic Mary Therese Austin; William Cushing, Initials and Pseudonyms A Dictionary of Literary Disguises (Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1885), Kimball, Great Women, California Patron, June 3, Charles Elliott, Woman s Work and Woman s Wages, North American (August 1881). 41 Kimball, Troublesome Women, California Patron, Sept. 2, Kimball, Suffragette, Fossil Literature, California Patron, Apr. 16, Kimball, Suffragette, Self Support, California Patron, June 26, Geoffrey C. Ward, et al., Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1999), 122. In 1853, Stanton wore a loose-fitting skirt that ended just four inches below the knee over capacious Turkish trousers. The costume had been devised in the autumn of 1850 by Stanton s cousin Elizabeth Smith Miller. Amelia Bloomer publicized trousers in her newspaper The Lily and they were soon referred to as Bloomers. For a comprehensive chronicle of the social history of American women and fashion, see Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983). In her chapter The Feminist Challenge and Fashion s Response, Banner explores the social and political sources that agitated for style change for American women. 45 Kimball, Fashion: Feminine Folly, California Patron, Feb. 12, Nineteenthcentury women were imprisoned in their clothing. A corset applied an average of 21 pounds of pressure to a woman s abdominal area, with some as much as 88 pounds. The skirts that descended from a constricted center weighed, again on average, almost 20 pounds, and they dragged in layers on the ground. Both poor and wealthy women wore their dresses long, losing the use of one hand to the continual lifting of the skirts ; Kathryn Cullen-DuPont, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Women s Liberty (New York: Facts on File, 1992), Kimball, Fashion Notes, California Patron, Oct. 23, Jamie Aronson, Jane Austen: Background and Early Life, History Reference Center, detail. In the late nineteenth century, Marietta Holley ( ) also wrote humorous political stories focusing on women s suffrage; see Michael H. Epp, The Traffic in Affect: Marietta Holley, Suffrage, and Late Nineteenth-Century Popular Humour, Canadian Review of American Studies 36, no. 1 (2006): Betsy Snow, Something Original: Advice to Young Wives, California Patron, July 25, Snow, Betsy Snow Stays at Home, California Patron, Sept. 19, Snow, Extravagant Wives, California Patron, Aug. 8, Gene Ingles, The Literary Ghost in San Diego s Attic, San Diego Union, Oct. 4, Ingles notes that The Fairfields is a small book approximately 3 x 5 inches, with 175 pages and dark green cover with gold lettering. An obscure, rarely seen book, he believed that its authorship was one of the biggest mysteries in San Diego literary circles. A copy exists today in the California State Library in Sacramento. 52 Kimball, Fruit Growers. 53 Kimball, Our Homes What They Ought To Be, California Patron, June 5, Kimball, Possibilities, The Great Southwest, Feb. 12, Kimball, The Great Southwest, Sept. 5, Notes, Board of Trustees meeting, July 15, 1896, 5, National City Public Library Collection. 57 San Diego Union, Apr. 26, Irene Philips, In Old National City, Chula Vista Star News, June 23, San Diego Union (reprinted from the Pacific Rural Press), Sept. 5, National City Record, May 30, The National School District at that time included Chula Vista, National City, and Coronado. 61 Some of Flora Kimball s contemporaries in the San Diego area who were involved in socially active clubs and organizations were Annie Slone, Ella Allen, and Dr. Charlotte Baker, president of the local Equal Suffrage Association; see Marilyn Kneeland, Modern Boston Tea Party: the San Diego Suffrage Camp of 1911, The Journal of San Diego History 23, no. 4 (Fall 1977): 35. Another contemporary was Lydia Knapp Horton, who was president of the San Diego Wednesday Club and a member of the Board of Trustees of the San Diego Public Library; see Elizabeth C. MacPhail, A Liberated Woman in Early San Diego, The Journal of San Diego History 27, no. 1. (Winter 1981): 17. Rebecca Mead explores the role many of these social clubs played in the theater of California s political life in the late nineteenth century, highlighting Caroline M. Severance and Charlotte Perkins (Stetson) Gilman; Mead, How the Vote Was Won (New York: New York University Press, 2004), New England Meeting, National City Record, Feb. 25, Origins of the Friday Club, Friday Club Collection, Morgan Local History Room, box 32, folder Social Science Club Meeting, National City Record, Oct. 21, The Social Science Club, later to be called the Friday Club, is one of the oldest clubs in California. The date of origin for the original organization was the first Friday of Sept. 1897, but there are neither minute books nor other historical data from 1897 to 1900 in the club files. The Social Science Club was a literary parlor club with room for 20 active members and 10 associate members. The name Social Science Club held from Sept to Sept. 1898, after which the club was referred to as the Friday Club; National City Record, July 3, In 1910, 12 years after Flora Kimball s death, her husband would build the Olivewood Club House to honor his wife. This seemed an appropriate memorial to a woman so vested in social clubs. The California History volume 87 number

73 empty clubhouse still stands on the corner of F Avenue and 24th Street. For more on early National City clubs and the Olivewood Club House, see Clarence Alan McGrew, City of San Diego and San Diego County, vol. 1 (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1922), 388, and San Diego County California: A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement, vol. 2 (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1913), Woman Suffrage, San Diego Union, June 18 and 21, Susan B. Anthony was the proprietor of The Revolution, a 16- page weekly, which first appeared on Jan. 8, Along with writer Elizabeth Stanton, Anthony had for a long time championed the right of women to vote and also supported labor s right to strike, called for equal pay for equal work, and encouraged building a coalition with organized labor. See also Ward, et al., Not for Ourselves Alone. 66 Street Widening Dooms 24 Trees, San Diego Union, Jan. 14, Flora Kimball, Fruit Growers. See also San Diego Union, Mar. 8, 1895; Frank Kimball, The Supreme Attraction of National City Is Her Sidewalk Shade Trees, National City Record, June 1, 1907; and The Trees of National City, San Diego Union, Jan. 14, Marilyn Carnes and Matthew Nye, Early National City (San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing, 2009), 96. The Lunch Parlor was also used as advertisement for the region: As there are not more attractive grounds or groves to interest the tourist unused to Southern California sights, there could be no better means of advertising what this region can produce than to show, upon their own stalks and boughs, such flowers and fruits as at Olivewood flourish from January to January almost without cessation ; San Diego Union, June 1, San Diego Union, July 3, Flora was buried at National City s La Vista Cemetery; the ceremony was conducted by E. T. Blackmer, the second husband of her sister Louisa. Bandido the life and times of tiburcio vasquez By John Boessenecker $34.95 Hardcover 512 pages 68 b&w illus. tiburcio vasquez is, next to Joaquin murrieta, america s most infamous Hispanic bandit. after he was hanged as a murderer in 1875, the chicago tribune called him the most noted desperado of modern times. Bandido pulls back the curtain on a life story shrouded in myth a myth created by vasquez himself and abetted by writers who saw a tale ripe for embellishment. Universit y of oklahoma Press 2800 venture drive norman, ok tel oupress.com.com/oupress.com/oupress vineyards and vaqueros indian labor and the economic expansion of southern California, By George Harwood Phillips $45.00 Hardcover 384 pages 15 b&w illus., 9 maps indian labor was vital to the early economic development of the los angeles region. this first volume in the new series before gold: california under spain and mexico explores for the first time native contributions to early southern california. Featuring more than twodozen illustrations and maps, Vineyards and Vaqueros demonstrates that no history of the region is complete without a consideration of the indian contribution. The ArThur h. ClArk Co Venture DriVe norman, ok ahclark.com An Imprint of the University of Oklahoma Press 1

74 r e v i e w s Edited by James J. Rawls Placing Memory: A PhotograPHic Exploration of Japanese American Internment Photographs by Todd Stewart; essays by Natasha Egan and Karen J. Leong (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008, 132 pp., $34.95, cloth) The First to Cry Down Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal during World War ii By Ellen M. Eisenberg (Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2008, 204 pp., $65 cloth, $24.95 paper) REVIEWED BY ELENA TAJIMA CREEF, ASSOCI- ATE PROFESSOR OF WOMEN s AND GENDER STUDIES, WELLESLEY COLLEGE, AND AUTHOR OF IMAGIng Japanese AmerICA: The VisuAL ConstruCTIon of CITIzensHIp, nation, and THe Body Todd Stewart s color photographs in Placing Memory: A Photographic Exploration of Japanese American Internment bear witness to this dark chapter of American wartime history. His stark images confront us with the physical memory of where 110,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated, banished to the margins of mainstream American consciousness and the remote corners of the nation s interior, during World War II. In her essay, Karen J. Leong notes that it was not until the 1980s that thirdgeneration Japanese Americans were able to voice what their parents and grandparents had struggled to keep silent for so long. I would add that first- and second-generation silence was officially broken during the 1981 hearings held by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, in which former internees spoke up many for the first time for the Congressional Record. Leong is correct that today, some twenty years after the reparations and redress movement, the Japanese American internment experience has become prominent in American national consciousness especially in a post 9/11 world. Stewart s work helps us, she argues, to render this history visible indeed, the inclusion of detailed contemporary site maps of all ten former internment camps at the end of this volume literally illustrates what an archaeology of historical memory, space, and place might look like. While Stewart s photographs are moving, what is unacknowledged is the indebtedness of his compilation to other artists whose landscape images of camp ruins comprise the larger visual archive of this subject. Missing is any reference to the works of Masumi Hayashi and Joan Myers, whose brilliant color collages and black-and-white landscape photographs also explore the ghostlike abandoned spaces of these former camps. An afterword by John Tateishi offers what is perhaps the most stirring contribution to Placing Memory. His personal reflections as a former internee who spent his early childhood behind barbed wire ironically undercuts the book s opening comment by Natasha Egan that there is a diversity of opinion among those interred concerning the justice of this wartime government policy. Tateishi s powerful closing commentary reminds us, in no uncertain terms, that the injustice of the camps and the psychic wounds of that experience are to this day carried by surviving former internees whose lives were turned upside down as a result of Executive Order 9066 a collective experience that is inexpressible in words and which not even Todd Stewart s haunting photographs can come close to capturing on film. Ellen M. Eisenberg s fine historical study, The First to Cry Down Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal during World War II, offers a different kind of intervention in the history of Japanese American relocation and internment. Her meticulous and impeccably researched book documents the Jewish California History volume 87 number

75 responses to Executive Order 9066 in the West Coast communities spanning the Pacific Northwest and California. Eisenberg interrogates the silence of the Jewish community and the nuances of this silence, uniquely mapping a different kind of ethnic landscape of the American West, with its comparative treatment of the Japanese American and Jewish communities. She reveals how the Jewish press responded to the Japanese American wartime experience (with various levels of avoidance and discomfort) and chronicles those individuals and groups that stood in opposition to the wartime treatment of Japanese Americans. Most profound is the documentation of how one Los Angeles based Jewish news organization was involved in anti-nikkei propaganda as the end result of a longer history ironically devoted to antidiscrimination and anti-semitic activities. The First to Cry Down Injustice makes important new contributions to the extant scholarship on prewar and wartime Japanese American and Jewish race relations. Wherever there s a FiGHt: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets shaped Civil Liberties in California By Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi (Berkeley: Heyday, 2009, 512 pp., $24.95 paper) REVIEWED BY CHARLES WOLLENBERG, BERKE- LEY CITY COLLEGE, AUTHOR OF Berkeley: a CITy in History In their introduction to this fine book, authors Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi use one of my favorite California quotations Wallace Stegner s observation that the state is just like the rest of the United States only more so in describing California as an exaggerated version of the American experience. That s certainly true of the themes treated in this volume. California has an extraordinary record of racism, repression, and violation of civil rights and civil liberties, but the state also has a remarkable heritage of struggle against these conditions. Elinson and Yogi discuss the soft underbelly of the California dream, from the ethnic cleansing of indigenous inhabitants to the contemporary violations of the rights of immigrants, gays, and lesbians. But in this narrative, victims fight back, gain valuable allies, and sometimes win significant victories. The authors argue that for every crisis, there were resonant voices of resistance. Elinson and Yogi are former and present staff members of the American Civil Liberties Union. While they discuss many forms of historical struggle, including strikes and political organizing, their primary focus, like that of the ACLU, is on legal battles and court decisions. California judges often supported repression and injustice, but the courts were an arena where defenders of civil rights and civil liberties had more than a fighting chance. Since the establishment of its first California affiliates in the 1920s and 1930s, the ACLU has been an important part of this process. Past ACLU leaders, such as attorney A. L. Wirin of the southern California chapter and executive director Ernest Besig of the northern California branch, play significant roles in the narrative. Plenty of other prominent historical figures put in appearances as well, including writers John Steinbeck and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, labor leaders Cesar Chavez and Harry Bridges, and Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton.

76 r e v i e w s The book also tells impressive stories of lesser known people, such as former slave Biddy Mason, suffragist Selma Solomons, and Mary Tape and Gonzalo Mendez, parents who fought against racial segregation and exclusion in California public schools. Fred Korematsu receives special treatment. He eventually won a reversal of his original conviction for resisting the 1940s wartime internment of people of Japanese descent and lived long enough to condemn the detention of suspected terrorists without due process in the aftermath of 9/11. The book proceeds thematically, with separate chapters focusing on topics such as ethnic discrimination, labor exploitation, political censorship, and discrimination based on sexual preference. This structure promotes the discussion of historical continuities but discourages the examination of the links between various forms of repression and resistance and the importance of particular eras and decades. In the 1960s, for example, the various separate protest movements fed off one another and reinforced processes of social and cultural change. As might be expected in a study of this magnitude, there are occasional factual errors. For example, author, activist, and civil libertarian Upton Sinclair did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature (Sinclair Lewis did). But this nitpicking should not detract from the overall strength of the book. It is a prime example of Wallace Stegner s observation put into scholarly practice a solid study of California events and conditions that provides extraordinary perspective on some of the worst and best elements of American life and culture. O, My Ancestor: Recognition and Renewal for the Gabrielino-TonGVa People of the Los Angeles Area By Claudia Jurmain and William McCawley (Berkeley: Heyday, 2009, 368 pp., $21.95 paper) REVIEWED BY DAVID R. M. BECK, PROFESSOR OF NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA, AND AUTHOR OF SEEking Recognition: The termination and REStoration of the Coos, LowER Umpqua and SiUSLaw Indians of SouthwEStERn oregon in Historical Context, This book is about the Gabrielino- Tongva American Indian community, a landless urban tribe whose ancestors lived in what is now the greater Los Angeles area (xviii, 201). The book is a general publication in partnership with the Tongva people and Rancho Los Alamitos, located on their original homeland, which intends, for the first time, [to] give voice to individuals, families, and groups within the Tongva community today (xvi). As the authors tell us, This is a story of revitalization and renewal, of a people who have continuously redefined themselves by blending their own cultural traditions with the cultures of newcomers whether Spanish, Mexican or American (xxii). The volume is a coffee table sized work, consisting of three lengthy essays that are organized by theme and utilize ethnographic monographs and interviews with tribal members as sources. Each essay is followed by several of ten transcribed conversations the authors held with individual tribe members. The first, Continuity within Change: Identity and Culture, describes identity in cultural, political, and personal terms and explores the reasons these forms of identity have been attacked and hidden during the Spanish, Mexican, and American years. The conversations illuminate ways in which modern generations have been reclaiming these various identities. The second essay, A Connection to Place: Land and History, describes Povuu ngna, the Gabrielino-Tongva ancient homeland, and the emergent place of the law-giver God Chinigchinich, in historic and modern terms (104). The land, dispossessed over time in a variety of ways, exists simultaneously in their cultural memory both as a thing taken from them and, paradoxically, as a thing that can never be lost (101). The third essay, The Enduring Vision: Recognition and Renewal, identifies the significance of federal recognition to tribe members and observes that though deeply divided on the role of recognition in their future, they are relatively united on the goal of achieving recognition as they seek justice for past wrongs. This has been the basis of California History volume 87 number

77 a passionate debate over... how best to achieve it, but also addresses dissent over the structural form the tribal government should take (201). Paradoxically, the essay observes, the Tongva do not need recognition, federal or otherwise, to define who they are (214). As may be expected of a communitybased history, O, My Ancestor is not error free the Heye Foundation was in New York, not Chicago, for example. The term sacred is used liberally but defined loosely. The group conversations would be easier to follow if the names of individuals were spelled out each time they spoke, rather than initialized. Nonetheless, this is a beautifully produced book with a moving story of a federally unrecognized group of people regaining their identity after severe historic losses. The Tongva culture has always been a rich and diverse blend of cultural influences, the book posits (213). This cultural elasticity has been a basis for survival that long predates the arrival of the Spanish to the Tongva homeland. The book s strength is in the individual stories that illustrate the continuities and changes in community life. Cosmopolitans: A Social & Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area By Fred Rosenbaum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009, 462 pp., $39.95 cloth) REVIEWED BY AVA F. KAHN, COAUTHOR WITH ELLEN EISENBERG AND WILLIAM TOLL OF Jews of the Pacific Coast: Reinventing Community on AmERica s Edge; EDITOR OF Jewish VoICes of THe CALIFornIA Rush AND Jewish LIFe in THe AmerICAn West; AND COEDITOR WITH MARC DOLLINGER OF CALIFornIA Jews In her pioneering article Forging a Cosmopolitan Civic Culture: The Regional Identity of San Francisco and Northern California, historian Glenna Matthews enumerated the region s singular features. She emphasized the lasting effects of its Gold Rush founding, the diversity of its population, its religious pluralism, and its opportunities for social mobility. Inspired by Matthews and identifying these same characteristics in the Jewish community, Fred Rosenbaum chose Cosmopolitans as the title and organizing principle for his hundred-year history. He describes the essence of San Francisco s Jewish community as more universalistic than particularistic, artistically creative and economically powerful, philanthropic and civicminded, borrowing freely from other traditions and interacting fully with non-jews. He supports his conclusion by placing the Jewish community in historical context, examining generational differences, and demonstrating the community s exceptionalism as compared to the wider American Jewish community. A comprehensive history that begins with the Gold Rush, Cosmopolitans illuminates the events and personalities that shaped the Bay Area s Jewish and civic communities in chronological and thematic chapters. Beginning, for example, with an 1859 meeting to protest the kidnapping of an Italian Jewish child, Jews joined with non-jews to support common causes. Among the individuals Rosenbaum considers are the young merchants Anthony Zellerbach, Jesse Steinhart, and Levi Strauss, who not only achieved wealth but also elevated their families places in the new society, becoming prominent in the arts and philanthropies, and the politicians Adolph Sutro, the first Jewish mayor of a major city, and Florence Prag Kahn, the first Jewish congresswoman. As Rosenbaum demonstrates, Jewish artists, authors, dramatists, and musicians enhanced the city s cultural identity. Rabbis and professionals alike embraced Progressivism and social justice causes. Rosenbaum explains synagogue histories, the relationships between Jews and their city and other 5

78 r e v i e w s ethnic groups, and the continuing influence of the German Jewish elites years after they had been usurped by Eastern Europeans in other western cities. However, the Jewish community s most notable characteristic, Rosenbaum believes, was its diversity. Strong voices debated how to cope with Eastern European migrants, multiple forms of Jewish affiliation and the unaffiliated, concerns about dual loyalties, and reactions to the Holocaust, Zionism, and McCarthyism. An immensely valuable history, Cosmopolitans could have contributed further to scholarship had it placed San Francisco Jewry in a western context. As is the case with many ethnic histories, at times the book overemphasizes Jewish contributions. These are minor points. While scholars may quibble about a few interpretations, Cosmopolitans is a well-balanced work that describes the laudable as well as the less desirable aspects of San Francisco Jewry. Thoroughly researched and footnoted, with multiple asterisks elaborating content, it is extremely well written. Many Jews believed that in San Francisco they had found the Promised Land. One thing is certain: without the presence of Jewish merchants, philanthropists, politicians, reformers, artists, authors, and musicians, San Francisco would be a very different place. Cosmopolitans supplies a crucial piece of San Francisco s ethnic puzzle. Wheels of Change: From Zero to 600 m.p.h.: the Amazing Story of California and the Automobile By Kevin Nelson (Berkeley: Heyday and California Historical Society, 2009, 400 pp., $24.95 paper) REVIEWED BY ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT, AUTHOR OF The great Car craze: How SouthERn California CoLLided with the automobile in the 1920s This book has two themes, not very harmoniously interwoven. One is a general account of the development of California s car culture from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century up to The other is a lovingly detailed chronicle of motor racing, car design and production, and the pursuit of speed records, focusing on, but not limited to, California. If you enjoy lap-by-lap descriptions of race meets, time trials, hot-rod encounters, endurance runs, and drag racing souped up with a parade of celebrity speed addicts like Clark Gable, Steve McQueen, and James Dean, this book is for you. If, on the other hand, you are more interested in just how the automobile has affected daily life in the Golden State, there is plenty of well-researched information between these covers. But the work as a whole is almost useless for reference purposes due to an incredibly poor index, evidently limited to proper names. Thus, for example, although there are valuable accounts of the development of freeways, oil and gasoline, trailers and motor homes, drive-in movies, and smog, there is no easy way of locating any of these; they are not indexed. Also lamentably lacking are any maps. Although the book is full of motor voyages, routes, and place-names, there is not a single map to facilitate the reader s own journey. Kevin Nelson writes well and entertainingly. His approach is largely biographical, with extensive coverage of the lives and careers of car sales tycoons such as Earle C. Anthony, racing legends such as Barney Oldfield, and car designers and builders such as Harley Earl and Harry A. Miller. A full seven pages are devoted to the life and violent track death of Jimmie Murphy, a motor racing idol of the 1920s. (Significantly, the book s dedication includes all the people whose lives ended, too soon, in a car. And this reviewer s one appearance in the text hereby happily acknowledged is my observation, concerning the streets of Los Angeles in the 1920s, that Never before in human history, except in time of war, had so many people been exposed in the course of their daily lives to the risk of violent death. ) Nelson traveled extensively around California in the course of his research, and the book is well balanced geographically. He grew up in the Bay California History volume 87 number

79 Area and his account of the role of automobiles in the 1906 earthquake and fire, changing their image from devil wagons to chariots of mercy is particularly good. The more mundane aspects of California s automotive revolution, however, such as parking, have been ignored in favor of the sensational. And, as a resident of Santa Barbara, I must point out that although Nelson gives us proper credit as the birthplace of Motel 6, he neglects, in his list of fast-food chains that began in southern California, to include the once-huge Sambo s, whose original restaurant is still operating here by the beach, with off-street customer parking for sixteen cars. Solidarity Stories: An Oral History of the ilwu By Harvey Schwartz (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009, 352 pp., $50 cloth, $24.95 paper) REVIEWED BY GREG MARqUIS, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK SAINT JOHN, CANADA This evocative volume is based on an oral history project in the early 1980s and its interviews with more than 200 men and women who were members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). This militant, left-wing Pacific coast union, organized in the struggles of the 1930s, earned an important place in American and Canadian labor history. The book begins with a useful introduction that explains the long-term political stance of the ILWU, which supported Republican Spain against fascism in the 1930s, urged a peaceful settlement to the Vietnam War, supported unions in other parts of the world, and has condemned American support for military dictatorships and aspects of free-trade agreements and globalization. In the late 1940s, the ILWU was one of the few unions purged by the Congress of Industrial Organizations to survive. Readers of these interviews will conclude that despite the importance of such leaders as the famous Harry Bridges, the ILWU is the sum of its parts in this case, a large number of dedicated, loyal, and proud members and their families who simply wanted to help working people. Editor Harvey Schwartz has skillfully omitted the original interview questions in order to give voice to rank-andfile members who toiled on docks, in the holds of ships, in warehouses, on Hawaiian pineapple plantations, and at cotton compresses in California. The union marched inland to organize inland boat workers and warehouse workers. The most recent campaign reported in the book was the organization campaign at Portland, Oregon, bookstores in The interviews presented deal principally with Los Angeles and Long Beach, the San Francisco Bay area, California s Central Valley, ports in the Pacific Northwest such as Coos Bay, Seattle, Portland, Tacoma, Vancouver, and Hawaii. Reflecting the segmented nature of the workforce in the past, most of those interviewed were white males, but given the ethnic patterns in plantation agriculture and greater support for civil rights in the post-1945 era, interviewees also represented the African-, Hispanic Filipino-, Chinese-, Japanese- American and native Hawaiian communities and women, such as Valerie Taylor, who served as president of the ILWU women s federated auxiliaries from 1949 to Solidarity Stories contains not only personal stories but also details of interest to social historians, such as the struggle against the shape up system that ended with union control of dispatching (selecting workers for specific jobs). The personal accounts remind us that history is also made by ordinary people who take risks and often suffer for their activism. This is important to remember at a time when the proportion of unionized American workers has declined to less than 13 percent.

80 r e v i e w s California Indians and their Environment: An Introduction By Kent G. Lightfoot and Otis Parrish (Berkeley: University of California, 2009, 512 pp., $50 cloth, $24.95 paper) REVIEWED BY JAN TIMBROOK, CURATOR OF ETHNOGRAPHY, SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY AND AUTHOR OF Chu- MAsh ethnobotany: plant Knowledge Among THe ChuMAsh IndIAns of SouTHern CALIFornIA Reading through California Indians and Their Environment, I found myself making notes in the margins Good Yes! Excellent and marking whole paragraphs with asterisks. The first 150 pages, grouped under the heading Rethinking California Indians, are required reading for anyone wishing to understand Native peoples relationships with the natural resources of our state. Kent Lightfoot, a well-known archaeologist, and Otis Parrish, a respected Kashaya Pomo elder, demolish the persistent stereotype of California Indians as noble savages who hunted, gathered, and fished in perfect harmony with the environment. As they point out, many instances of overexploitation and famine occurred throughout prehistory. They are also unwilling to accept a newly popular characterization derived from mounting evidence that California Indians used fire as an environmental management tool. Some writers have characterized this practice as incipient cultivation or protoagriculture. Lightfoot and Parrish argue that such terms wrongly imply that California Native people were gradually proceeding along a linear evolutionary track toward true agriculture as the mark of all truly advanced societies, and that it completely misses what was really going on. California Indians principal subsistence strategy, like so much else about California s Native cultures, doesn t fit neatly into established anthropological categories of human systems. Their goal was not to use fire to alter habitats, but to maximize the quantity and variety of wild resources upon which they depended for food, material culture, and other necessities of life. So the authors coin the term pyrodiversity collectors, which, though a perfectly apt description, becomes another of the unfortunate neologisms with which anthropological jargon often has been burdened. It s unlikely to catch on with the wider public. Even so, this is an excellent, cogent summary of California Indians interactions with their environment and why that matters. In the book s Visual Guide to Natural Resources, 114 beautiful color photographs of marine and terrestrial plants, shellfish, insects, fish, reptiles, birds, marine and terrestrial mammals provide a sampling of the species utilized by Native peoples. These and others are discussed in six subsequent sections, pertaining to the state s different geographical/cultural provinces: northwest, central, and south coasts, northeast, Central Valley, Sierra Nevada, and southern deserts. Principal resources and their uses are described, supported by copious references for those wishing more information about particular Native groups or about the species themselves. It is particularly gratifying to see that clear distinctions are made among California s diverse Native groups, rather than lumping them all as the Indians. No summary work can be completely exhaustive, but this comes close. It is well-written, interesting, and makes important intellectual contributions. The most important literature, as well as more obscure research papers, has been referenced either in the text or in the copious endnotes. An excellent index is also provided. California Indians and Their Environment progresses far beyond its predecessor, The Natural World of the California Indians (Heizer and Elsasser 1980). Beautiful and useful, this book belongs on the bookshelf of everyone interested in California history, anthropology, or ethnobiology. California History volume 87 number

81 Juana Briones of 19th Century California By Jeanne Farr McDonnell (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008, 288 pp., $50.00 cloth, $22.95 paper) REVIEWED BY MARLENE SMITH-BARANzINI, AUTHOR, HISTORICAL RESEARCHER, EDITOR OF The shirley LeTTers: From THe CALIfornIA Mines, , BY LOUISE AMELIA KNAPP SMITH CLAPPE, AND CO-AUTHOR, WITH JOHN McCLELLAND, OF a MANUSCRIPT ON PACIFIC NORTHWEST HISTORY Her 1820s house at El Polin Springs on the San Francisco Presidio grounds is being excavated. Plans are afoot to save the remains of her 1884 Palo Alto adobe. She is presented in schools and portrayed in Chautauqua performances. Now comes the long-awaited biography of Juana Briones, a contextually detailed treatment of a woman and her times. Jeanne Farr McDonnell, a journalist and women s history activist, has unearthed sources against many odds to bring this veiled figure to life. Juana Briones y Tapia de Miranda ( ) was born in 1802 at Villa de Branciforte, near Santa Cruz. Her father came to California in 1770 from New Spain; her mother was a child in the 1776 Anza expedition. Briones lived through every wave of the state s cultural upheaval from Indian times through the Mission period, the Mexican era, the American takeover, the tumultuous Gold Rush years, and the emergence of California as an ambitious western state. At every turn, the resourceful, hard-working Briones adapted her life and moved with the times. From Indians and family elders Briones learned the medicinal healing that, more than anything else, lately has defined her. When her marriage to Apolinaro Miranda turned mean, she was granted a rare Church separation. She moved her large family from the Presidio and started a small farm in the area that became Yerba Buena. Next she owned a vast ranch on former Mission Santa Clara lands. Finally, in her eighties, she moved to the Palo Alto home. Her life was unique. Driven by an insatiable quest for answers, McDonnell reveals how she accomplished it. Firsthand documents testify to Juana s intelligence, physical stamina, the ability to navigate the shifting human landscape, the intuitive wisdom to trust herself and protect her children, her genuine enjoyment of others, her knowledge of healing, and her will to live a dynamic life under any circumstances. The paper trail left by future women is short for Juana, though probably not exhausted. She lived in patriarchal societies and may not have been able to write in Spanish (or later, English), but her activities appear in legal documents in both languages, in memoirs by others who knew her, especially European and American arrivals, and in early histories of the places where she lived. Her names maiden, married, and their phonetic-like variations surely complicated the research. The history that frames this biography is detailed and meticulously documented by rare early sources and current specialists thinking, thus providing a valuable orientation to the period, especially regarding Indian Anglo relationships. At times, however, when evidence of what Briones and others thought or did is missing, McDonnell inserts conjectures that, however reasonable, may or may not be so. While this construction keeps the author actively in the narrative, readers can easily evaluate her interpretations. An ambitious labor of intellect and love, this book enlightens our understanding of life during a transformative century. Readers should find it thoroughly interesting and informative. 9

82 i n d e x Volume 87 A Adams, Ansel (87, 4), Adrian, Henry Augustus (87, 4), 45, 46 African Americans and teaching California history (87, 1) 47, 48 African Americans and the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition (87, 3), Club women, 29 30, 40, 41, 45 Migration to the West, 15 16, 19 African Dip (PPIE exhibit) (87, 3), 38, 39, 40, 45 Alameda County Day (PPIE) (87, 3), 40 42, 44 Anthony, Susan B. (87, 4), 48, 57, 63, 64 Avalon (Santa Catalina Island) (87, 1), 7, 9, 10, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23 Axelrod, Jeremiah B. C., Inventing Autopia: Dreams and Visions of the Modern Metropolis in Jazz Age Los Angeles, review (87, 3), B Babour, Clitus (87, 3), 50 Bakersfield (87, 3), 8, 17 Bakersfield sound, 8, 18 Dust Bowl migrants, 18 Banks, Frank H., Diary: 28 March 16 November 1877, A Whaling Voyage (CHS Collections) (87, 1), 4 5 Banning family (87, 1), 6 23 Banning, Hancock (87, 1), 9, 11, 12, 13, 17, 19, 22, 23 Banning, Joseph (87, 1), 9, 13, 15, 19, 22 Banning, Phineas (87, 1), 8, 9 Banning, William (87, 1), 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 19, 22, 23 Beasley, Delilah (87, 3), 26, 27, 28, 31, 35, 38, 39, 42 44, 45 Beerstecher, Charles (87, 3), 48, 59 Bertrand, Michael (87, 3), 7 Big City (Merle Haggard) (87, 3), Big Read, The (NEA) (87, 2), Big Sur (87, 2) Robinson Jeffers, U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey, Binner, Oscar (87, 4), 40 Bird, Remsen Dubois (87, 2), 54 Birth of a Nation, The (D. W. Griffith) (87, 3), 26, 31, 37, 42, 44 Bixby s Landing (Robinson Jeffers) (87, 2), 49 Blue Yodel No. 4 (California Blues) (Jimmie Rodgers) (87, 3), Bookplates (CHS Collections) (87, 4), 3 5 Broderick, David (87, 3), 48 Brophy, Robert (87, 2), 15, 20, 45 Buffalo Soldiers (87, 3), 34, 35 Bum Blockade (1936) (87, 3), 15 Burbank, Luther (87, 4), C Cabrillo, Juan Rodríguez (87, 1), 26 Cady, Daniel, In Tune with Innovation: The West by Southwest Music Panel at the 2009 Western History Association Conference (87, 3), 4 25 Language of a Subculture Redux, 7 10 West by Southwest: Southern Music in and About the American West, Left of Eden: Woody Guthrie, Do Re Mi, Looking West: Jimmie Rodgers, Blue Yodel No. 4 (California Blues), Western Apocalypse: Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, Sin City, 20 The Price of Freedom: Janis Joplin, Me and Bobby McGee, California history, teaching and global perspective (87, 1) California Patron (Grange newspaper) (87, 4), 48, 49, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61; Family Circle, California Views (photographic archive) (87, 2), California s Constitutional Convention ( ) (87, 3), Delegates, Issues debated, Origins, Proceedings, Progressives, Reforms, California s Second Constitution (1879) (87, 3), Central Pacific Railroad (87, 3), 49, 57, 59, 61; (87, 4), 22 Cherry, Edgar (Spotlight) (87, 2), 80 Chinese immigrants (87, 3), 51 52, 60 Clansman, The (Thomas Dixon) (87, 3), 26, 31, 42, 44 Colophon, The (CHS Collections) (87, 2), 4 5 Compost, Terri, ed., People s Park: Still Blooming, and On, review (87, 2), Cooper-Molera family (Big Sur) (87, 2), 27 Cover, Thomas W. (87, 4), 33 D Delgado, James P., Gold Rush Port: The Maritime Archaeology of San Francisco s Waterfront, review (87, 1), Der ll be Wahm Coons a Prancin (CHS Collections) (87, 3), 3 Deverell, William, Teaching California in a Global Context (87, 1), 57 Dixon, Thomas (87, 3), 26, 27, 31 Donner Party (87, 4), Do Re Mi (Woody Guthrie) (87, 3), 14 15, 24 Douglas, K. C. (87, 3), 8, Dowling, Patrick (87, 3), 48 Dreyfus, Philip J., Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco, review (87, 3), 74 Du Bois, W. E. B. (87, 3), 30, 31, 36, 42, 43 Dunbar, Paul (87, 3), 3 Dust Bowl (87, 3), 6, 9, 18, 22 Dust Bowl migrants (87, 3), 6, 8, 14, 15, 17 Dyble, Louise Nelson, Paying the Toll: Local Power, Regional Politics, and the Golden Gate Bridge, review (87, 3), E Eisenberg, Ellen M., The First to Cry Down Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal During World War II, review (87, 4), Elinson, Elaine and Stan Yogi, Wherever There s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California, review (87, 4), Elkind, Sarah, California History as American History (87, 1), 25, Estee, Morris (87, 3), 56, 58, 59, 61 Ethington, Philip J., Global California Contra Greater California (87, 1), 25, F Farewell to Manzanar (Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston) (87, 3), 16, Farm Security Administration (FSA) (87, 3), 8, 9 First Book: Robinson Jeffers (CHS Collections) (87, 2), 4 5 California History volume 87 number

83 Flamming, Douglas, In Tune with Innovation: The West by Southwest Music Panel at the 2009 Western History Association Conference (87, 3), 4 25 Homesick for the South: Otis Redding, (Sittin on) The Dock of the Bay, Let the Good Times Roll: Bob Geddins and K. C. Douglas, Mercury Boogie, One Magic Afternoon in Denver, The Elusive West: Merle Haggard, Big City, The Price of Freedom: Janis Joplin, Me and Bobby McGee, The South and the West in the Creation of America, 4 6 West by Southwest: Southern Music in and About the American West, Frontier Thesis (Frederick Jackson Turner) (87, 3), 4 G Geddins, Bob (87, 3), 8, George, Henry (87, 3), 46, 49, 55 Ghost (Robinson Jeffers) (87, 2), 64 Gioia, Dana, Telling Jeffers Story (87, 2), Gisel, Bonnie J. with images by Stephen J. Joseph, Nature s Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir s Botanical Legacy, review (87, 2), Gold Ridge Experiment Farm (Sebastopol) (87, 4), 29 Gold Rush and California s Pacific trade (87, 1), 29 32, 47 Gold, Christina, Pacific Eldorado : Scholarship, Pedagogy, and the Community College Student (87, 1), 25, Golden Gate International Exhibition ( ) (87, 1), 35 Grange (87, 3), 51; (87, 4) Gray Weather (Robinson Jeffers) (87, 2), 21 Gregory, James (87, 3), 6, 8 Griffith, D. W. (87, 3), 27, 31, 44 Guthrie, Woody (87, 3), 8, 14 15, 17, 20, 22, 24 H Haggard, Merle (87, 3), 8, 15 Hathaway, Pat (87, 2), 42 Hawk Tower (87, 2), 8, 13, 14, 15, 50, 58, 60 Hillman, Chris (87, 3), 20 Hoge, Joseph P. (87, 3), 54, 55, 59, 61 Holder, Charles F. (87, 1), HoSang, Daniel Martinez, Teaching Race in California History beyond Domination and Diversity (87, 1), 25, 58 Hotel Metropole (Santa Catalina Island) (87, 1), 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 21 Houston, James D. (87, 4), 6 25 Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki (87, 4), 6, 9, 17 19, 21 Hudson, Lynn M., This Is Our Fair and Our State : African Americans and the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition (87, 3), 1, I In the Redwoods, Edgar Cherry (Spotlight) (87, 2), 80 J Janssen, Volker, What Makes the World Go Round: California s History of Globalization (87, 1), 25, 59 Japanese Americans, and WW II relocation centers (87, 1), 58; (87, 4) 16, Ansel Adams photographs of (87, 4), Jeffers, Robinson (87, 2), 4 64 Big Sur, Biographical sketch, Bixby s Landing (poem), 49 Carmel, 8, 9, 13, 27, 32, 50 Cultural heritage, Ghost (poem), 64 Gray Weather (poem), 21 Literary legacy, 6 20 Occidental College, 12, Selected bibliography, 65 The Big Read, Jeffers, Una (87, 2), 12 13, 16, 26, 27, 32, 51, 54 Jewel City (PPIE) (87, 3), 38, 41 Jim Crow (87, 3), 9, 26, 27, 28, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 44, 45 Johnson, C. W. J. (87, 2), 42, 43 Joplin, Janis (87, 3), 12, Jordan, David Starr (87, 4), 33, 37 Joy Zone (PPIE) (87, 3), 31, 38, 39, 40 Jurmain, Claudia and William McCawley, O, My Ancestor: Recognition and Renewal for the Gabrielino-Tongva People of the Los Angeles Area, review (87, 4), K Karman, James, An Uncommon Voice (87, 2), 6 11; 33, 51 Karman, James, ed., The Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, with Selected Letters of Una Jeffers, vol. 1, , review (87, 2), Kearney, Denis (87, 3), 52, 59, 60 Kimball, Flora (87, 4), Kimball, Frank (87, 4), 53, 56 Kimball, Warren C. (87, 4), 50, 51, 53, 54 L La Chapelle, Peter (87, 3), 7 Latorre, Guisela, Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist Murals of California, review (87, 3), Landacre, Paul (87, 2), 20 Latin American Pacific Rim (87, 1), 43, 44, 50 Lemke-Santangelo, Gretchen, Rethinking California History (87, 1), 25, 59 Lightfoot, Kent G. and Otis Parrish, California Indians and Their Environment: An Introduction, review (87, 4), 78 London, Jack (87, 1), 37; (87, 2), 28; (87, 4), 40 Los Angeles History Research Group (87, 1) 25 Lummis, Charles (87, 3), 5 Lunch Parlor (National City) (87, 4), 64, 65 Lustig, R. Jeffrey, Private Rights and Public Purposes: California s Second Constitution Reconsidered (87, 3), Luther Burbank Company (87, 4), 43 44, 45, 47 Luther Burbank Publishing Company (87, 4), 39, 40 Luther Burbank Society (87, 4), 39 Luther Burbank s Spineless Cactus (catalog) (87, 4), 44 M Marcus, Kenneth H., California History and the Performing Arts (87, 1), 25, 60; (87, 3), 7 Mathes, W. Michael, The Russian-Mexican Frontier: Mexican Documents Regarding the Russian Establishments in California, , review (87, 1), 74 1

84 i n d e x McCawley, William and Claudia Jurmain, O, My Ancestor: Recognition and Renewal for the Gabrielino-Tongva People of the Los Angeles Area, review (87, 4), McCusker, Kristine M. (87, 3), 7 McDonnell, Jeanne Farr, Juana Briones of 19th Century California, review (87, 4), 79 Me and Bobby McGee (Janis Joplin) (87, 3), 12, 20 21, 24 Mercury Boogie (Mercury Blues) (Bob Geddins and K. C. Douglas) (87, 3), 8, 15 16, 18 Michael Steiner, Teaching California History with McWilliams, Bradbury, and Tuan (87, 1), 25, 63 Midwinter International Exhibition ( ) (87, 1), Milliken, Randall, Native Americans at Mission San Jose, review (87, 2), Moore, Rebecca, Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple, review (87, 2), 76 N NAACP, Northern California Branch (87, 3), 26, 31 National City (87, 4), 52, 53, 62, 63 National City Public Library (87, 4), 62 National City Record (87, 4), 49, 54, 62, 63 National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry (87, 4), National Ranch Grange No. 235 (National City) (87, 4), 56 National Steinbeck Center (87, 2), 52, 53 Negro Day (PPIE) (87, 3) 38, 40, 41, 44 Nelson, Kevin, Wheels of Change: From Zero to 600 M.P.H.: The Amazing Story of California and the Automobile, review (87, 4), Notley family (Big Sur) (87, 2), 32, 40 Nye, Matthew, A Life Remembered: The Voice and Passions of Feminist Writer and Community Activist Flora Kimball (87, 4), O Oakland (87, 3), 15, 16, 30, 31 Oakland blues (87, 3), Oakland Independent (87, 3), 31 Oakland Sunshine (87, 3), 26, 29, 31, 38, 40, 42, 44 Oakland Tribune (87, 3), 26, 27, 31 Occidental College (87, 2), 12, 17 20, 52, 54, 60 Okies (Dust Bowl migrants) (87, 3), 6, 8, 14, 15, 17; (87, 4), 10 Olivewood (Kimball residence) (87, 4), 53 54, 64, 65 Osborne, Thomas J., Jack London and the Call of the Pacific (87, 1), 37 Osborne, Thomas J., Pacific Eldorado: Rethinking California s Greater Past (87, 1), 24, California dream, 34 36, Early international transpacific commerce, Expansion and maritime commercial prospects, Pacific immigration, Pacific Rim commercial, strategic, and cultural affairs, Owens, Buck (87, 3), 5, 8 P Pacific Guano and Fertilizer Co. (87, 1), 29 Pacific Rim, influences on California history (87, 1) Palace of Food Products (PPIE) (87, 3), 31, 39, 43 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition (PPIE) (1915) (87, 1), 35; (87, 3), Pardee, George C. (87, 1), 1, 31 Parker, Harold (Spotlight) (87, 3), 80 Parrish, Otis and Kent G. Lightfoot, California Indians and Their Environment: An Introduction, review (87, 4), 78 Parsons, Gram (87, 3), 8, 9, 20 Pescadero Camp (San Mateo County) (87, 1), 80 Pfeiffer family (Big Sur) (87, 2), 24, 25, 34 Phelps, Robert, Teaching California Cityscapes (87, 1), 25, Presidio (San Francisco) (87, 1), 33, 34 Progress and Poverty (Henry George) (87, 3), 55 R Race Betterment booth (PPIE) (87, 3), 32, 33, 45 Ramírez, Catherine S., The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory, review (87, 3), Rancho de la Nación (National Ranch) (87, 4), 52, 54 Redding, Otis (87, 3), 18 19, 20, 24 Reed, James Frazier (87, 4), 20, 21, 22, 23 Reed, Patty (87, 4), Reesmen, Jeanne Campbell, Jack London s Racial Lives: A Critical Biography, review (87, 2), Regionalism (87, 3), 4 6 Richardson, Heather Cox (87, 3), 6 Richardson, Peter, A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America, review (87, 2), Risvold, Floyd (87, 2), 44 Robinson, Forrest G., James D. Houston, Californian (87, 4), 6 25 Rodgers, Jimmie (87, 3), 12, 14, 15, 24 Rodolph, Frank B. (87, 2), 43 Rosenbaum, Fred, Cosmopolitans: A Social & Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area, review (87, 4), Rosenthal, Nicolas G., Allison Varzally, et. al, Teaching California History: A Conversation (87, 1), Rosenthal, Nicolas G. (87, 1) Introduction, Teaching California History: A Conversation, Teaching the Messier Realities of California History, S San Francisco Workingmen s Party (87, 3), 48, 50, 52, 53, 54, 59, 60, 61 Santa Catalina Island (87, 1), 6 23 Canvas cities, 10 11, 14, 15 Isthmus, 17 18, 19 Minorities, 15 Santa Catalina Island Marine Band (87, 1), 10, 11, 18, 19 Santa Rosa (87, 4), 28, 29, 30, 36, 45, 46, 47 Sausalito houseboat community (87, 3), 19 Scharff, Virginia (87, 3), 6, 7, 10, 11, 20, 23, 24, 25 Schrank, Sarah, Art and the City: Civic Imagination and Cultural Authority in Los Angeles, review (87, 2), 75 Schrank, Sarah, California and the American Popular Imagination: Using Visual Culture in California History Pedagogy (87, 1), 25, 62 Schwartz, Harvey, Solidarity Stories: An Oral History of the ILWU, review (87, 4) 77 Sectional Thesis (Frederick Jackson Turner) (87, 3), 4, 6 Shafter migrant camp (FSA) (87, 3), 9 Shatto, George (87, 1), 9, 10 Shaw, Anna (87, 4), 63, 64 Sides, Josh, To See the Globe for the Beach (87, 1), 25, California History volume 87 number

85 Sin City (Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman) (87, 3), 8, 20 (Sittin on) The Dock of the Bay (Otis Redding) (87, 3), 18 19, 24 Sitton, Tom, The Bannings on the Magic Isle: Santa Catalina Island, (87, 1), 6 23 Smith, Jane S., Luther Burbank s Spineless Cactus: Boom Times in the California Desert (87, 4), Song of the Redwood Tree (Walt Whitman) (87, 1), 26; (87, 2), 80 Sonkin, Robert (87, 3), 9 Southern migration (87, 3), 4 25 Sperry Flour booth (PPIE) (87, 3), 38, 39 Spineless Cactus Nursery & Land Co. (87, 4), 43 Starr, Kevin (87, 1), 34, 43; (87, 4), 7 Starr, Kevin, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, , review (87, 1), 73 Stegner, Wallace (87, 4), 8 Stephens, Virginia ( Jewel City, PPIE) (87, 3), 41, 45 Stevens, Errol Wayne, Radical L.A.: From Coxey s Army to the Watts Riots, , review (87, 2), 73 Stewart, Todd, Placing Memory: A Photographic Exploration of Japanese American Internment, review (87, 4), 72 Stoneman, George (87, 4), 62 Student Printmakers Response to Jeffers Poetry (Occidental College) (87, 2), 54, Summer Home on Lake Tahoe, Harold Parker (Spotlight) (87, 3), 80 Swetnam family (Big Sur) (87, 2), 28, 35, 38 T Tanner, Henry Ossawa (87, 3), 1, 43 Terry, David (87, 3), 48, 54, 56, 59 The Crisis (NAACP) (87, 3), 29, 32, 35, 42 The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Delilah Beasley) (87, 3), 27, 45 The New Agricultural-Horticultural Opuntias: Plant Creations for Arid Regions, Luther Burbank (catalog) (87, 4), 28, 33, 38, 41 Thornless Cactus Farming Company (87, 4), Tibbets, Eliza (87, 4), 33 Todd, Charles L. (87, 3), 9 Tor House (87, 2), 8, 13, 16, 50, 51, 53, 60 Tor House Foundation (87, 2), 52 Trotter family (Big Sur) (87, 2), 35, Turner, Frederick Jackson (87, 3), 4, 5, 6 U University of California (87, 3), 48 U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey (87, 2), V Varzally, Allison, Introduction, Teaching California History: A Conversation (87, 1), W Walton, John, The Poet as Ethnographer: Robinson Jeffers in Big Sur (87, 2), Ward, David with Gene Kassebaum, Alcatraz: The Gangster Years, review (87, 3), 75 Washington, Booker T., (87, 3), 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 44, 45 We Wear the Mask (Paul Dunbar) (87, 3), 3 West, Elliot (87, 3), 6 Western History Association (WHA) (87, 1) 24; (87, 3), 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 Weston, Cara (87, 2), 54, 56 Weston, Cole (87, 2), 55 Weston, Edward (87, 2), 54, 55 Weston, Kim (87, 2), 54, 55 White, Graham (87, 3), 7 White, Shane (87, 3), 7 Wickson, Edward J. (87, 4), 31 Wiener, Leigh (87, 2), Wild, Mark, Local Contexts, Global Frameworks, and the Future of the California History Course (87, 1), 25, Wilkes, Charles (87, 1) Wilmington (Los Angeles County) (87, 1), 8, 9 Wilmington Transportation Company (WTC) (87, 1), 9, 10, 12, 15, 16 17, 19, 21, 22 Worster, Donald, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir, review (87, 2), Wrigley Jr., William (87, 1), Y Yogi, Stan and Elaine Elinson, Wherever There s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California, review (87, 4), 73 74

86 d o n o r s The California Historical Society is deeply grateful to the following individuals, corporations, foundations, and government and business organizations for their contributions. INDIVIDUALS $50,000 and above Anonymous The Estate of J. Lowell Groves, San Francisco $10,000 to $49,999 Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Decker, Los Angeles Mr. & Mrs. Reid W. Dennis, Woodside The Estate of Mr. Louis H. Heilbron, San Francisco Drs. Maribelle & Stephen Leavitt, San Francisco Dr. & Mrs. Jay Levy, San Francisco The Estate of Mr. Arthur Mejia, San Francisco Ms. Jeanne S. Overstreet, Bennington, VT $5,000 to $ 9,999 Sandy & Linda Alderson, Rancho Santa Fe Jan Berckefeldt, Lafayette Ms. Kevin Cartwright, Los Angeles Mr. Robert Chattel, Sherman Oaks Mr. Robert & Mrs. Kaye Hiatt, Mill Valley Mr. Richard Hyde, Belvedere-Tiburon Mr. Bill Leonard, Sacramento Mr. Robert A. McNeely, San Diego Mrs. Susan L. & Mr. John L. Molinari, San Francisco $1,000 to $4,999 Anonymous Mr. & Mrs. S. D. Bechtel, Jr., San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. Philip Bowles, San Francisco Brian D. Call, Monterey Mr. Rex M. Clack, San Francisco Mr. David Crosson & Ms. Natalie Hala, San Francisco Mr. Donald W. Davis, Belvedere Mr. & Mrs. Joseph E. Davis, Laguna Beach Mr. & Mrs. Ray Dolby, San Francisco Dorothy & Kenneth Gardner Jr., Genoa, NV Mrs. Gloria Gordon Getty, San Francisco Mr. Charles Pollok Gibson, San Francisco Justice & Mrs. Arthur Gilbert, Pacific Palisades Mr. Alfred Giuffrida & Ms. Pamela Joyner, San Francisco Mr. Brad Goldstone, Novato Mrs. Constance M. Goodyear Baron & Barry C. Baron M.D., San Francisco Mr. Larry Gotlieb, Los Angeles Mr. Kent Gray, Los Altos Mr. & Mrs. Timothy J. Hachman, Stockton Mr. Fredric Hamber, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. Joe Head, San Jose Mr. & Mrs. Alfred E. Heller, Kentfield Hon. Robert M. Hertzberg, Los Angeles Mr. Austin E. Hills, San Francisco Mrs. Elizabeth & Mr. A.M.D.G. Lampen, San Francisco Amb. & Mrs. L. W. Lane Jr., Menlo Park Mr. Hollis G. Lenderking, La Honda Mr. & Mrs. Ray Lent, San Rafael Jill & Joe Lervold, San Francisco Ms. Linda Lee Lester, Gilroy Mr. David & Mrs. Julie Levine, San Francisco Mr. William S. McCreery, Hillsborough Drs. Thomas & Jane McLaughlin, San Francisco Drs. Knox & Carlotta Mellon, Riverside Mr. Byron R. Meyer, San Francisco Mr. Robert Folger Miller, Burlingame Mr. Holbrook T. Mitchell, Napa Mr. Mark A. Moore, Burlingame Mr. Tim Muller, San Francisco Mr. Peter Johnson Musto, San Francisco Mrs. Rozell & Mr. P. L. Overmire, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. Thomas R. Owens, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth J. Paige, San Francisco Rick & Laura Pfaff, San Francisco Dr. Edith & Mr. George Piness, Mill Valley Ms. Darlene Plumtree Nolte & Mr. Carl Nolte, San Francisco Mrs. Cristina Rose, Los Angeles Mrs. Benjamin H. Rose III, San Francisco Mr. Adolph Rosekrans, Redwood City Mr. Donn R. Schoenmann, San Francisco Mr. Gary Sitzmann, Oakland Richard Hollis Smart & Marilee Delyn Mifflyn, San Jose H. Russell Smith, Pasadena Mr. & Mrs. Steven L. Swig, San Francisco John & Andrea Van de Kamp, Pasadena Mr. A.W.B. Vincent, Monte Carlo, Monaco David & Rene Whitehead, Sebastopol Mr. Peter Wiley, San Francisco Mrs. Alfred S. Wilsey, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. Richard C. Wulliger, Pacific Palisades Mr. & Mrs. Lee Zeigler, San Francisco Ms. Helen Zukin, Beverly Hills $500 to $999 Anonymous Mr. George H. Anderson, Hollister Ms. Elizabeth Anderson, San Francisco Mr. Ted Balestreri, Monterey Mr. & Mrs. Andrew E. Bogen, Santa Monica Ms. Lynn Bonfield, San Francisco Ms. Joanne E. Bruggemann, Redwood City Ms. Judith Brush, San Mateo Mr. Ernest A. Bryant III, Santa Barbara Mr. Michael Carson & Dr. Ronald Steigerwalt, Palm Springs Mr. Alex Castle, Walnut Creek Ms. Anne Crawford, Half Moon Bay Mrs. Leonore Daschbach, Atherton Mrs. Linda S. Dickason, Pasadena Mr. & Mrs. Frederick K. Duhring, Los Altos Mr. & Mrs. Gordon Fish, Pasadena Ms. Linda Jo Fitz, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. William S. Floyd Jr., Portola Valley Mr. Harry R. Gibson III, South Lake Tahoe Dr. & Mrs. Harvey Glasser, San Francisco Ms. Johanna S. Glumac, San Francisco Dr. Erica & Hon. Barry Goode, Richmond Mr. & Mrs. Richard W. Goss II, San Francisco Mr. Richard & Mrs. Peggy Greenfield, Palm Beach, FL Mrs. Richard M. Griffith, Belvedere-Tiburon Charles & Ginger Guthrie, Richmond Mr. David W. Hall, Belvedere-Tiburon Mr. & Mrs. Robert E. Henderson, Hillsborough Ms. Ruth M. Hill, Daly City Donna & Chuck Huggins, Larkspur Mr. & Mrs. George D. Jagels, San Marino Mrs. Katharine H. Johnson, Belvedere-Tiburon Mr. Sean A. Johnston, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. G. Scott Jones, Mill Valley Mr. Douglas C. Kent, Davis Mr. David B. King, Newark Mr. Jeri Lardy, El Dorado Hills Ms. Judy Lee, Redwood City Mr. Stephen Lesieur, San Francisco Mrs. Betsy Link, Los Angeles Ms. Janice Loomer, Castro Valley Mr. Bruce M. Lubarsky, San Francisco Mr. Stephen C. Lyon, San Francisco Ms. Rosemary MacLeod, Daly City Neil MacPhail, San Francisco Mr. Stephen O. Martin, San Mateo Mr. J. Peter McCubbin, Los Angeles Mrs. Nan Tucker McEvoy, San Francisco Mr. Holbrook T. Mitchell, Napa Dr. & Mrs. Stephen G. Mizroch, San Rafael Mr. Lawrence E. Moehrke, San Rafael Mr. Thomas E. Nuckols, South Pasadena Mr. & Mrs. Peter J. O Hara, San Francisco Ms. Diane Ososke, San Francisco Dr. Douglas K. Ousterhout, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. Samuel Palmer, San Francisco Mr. Stephen Plath, San Rafael Mr. Kevin M. Pursglove, San Francisco Mrs. Wanda Rees-Williams, South Pasadena Mrs. George W. Rowe, San Francisco Mr. Mark Schlesinger & Ms. Christine Russell, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. John Schram, San Francisco Mr. Randy Shaw & Ms. Lainey Feingold, Berkeley Mr. John B. & Mrs. Lucretia Sias, San Francisco Mrs. Thomas Siebert, Fresno Mrs. Roselyne C. Swig, San Francisco Jane Twomey, San Francisco California History volume 87 number

87 Mrs. Jeanne & Mr. Bill C. Watson, Orinda Mr. Paul L. Wattis Jr., Paicines Ms. Barbara Webb, San Francisco Stein & Lenore Weissenberger, Mountain View Ms. Susan Williams, Oakland Ms. Sheila Wishek, San Francisco Robert A. Young, Los Angeles Ms. Deborah Zepnick, Calabasas $250 to $499 Ms. Ann C. Abbas, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. Albert R. Abramson, Burlingame Mr. John Amarant, Danville Ms. Sigrid Anderson-Kwun, San Francisco Mr. Scott C. Atthowe, Oakland Mr. & Mrs. Peter Avenali, San Francisco Ms Judith Avery, San Francisco Mr. Joe Bear, San Marcos Mr. & Mrs. Michael Beeman, Woodland Katy & John Bejarano, San Mateo Mary Ann & Leonard Benson, Oakland Claire & William Bogaard, Pasadena Janet F. Bollinger, Sacramento Mr. & Mrs. Dix Boring, San Francisco Ms. Dorothy Boswell, Greenbrae Ms. Barbara Bottarini, San Francisco Mr. DeWitt F. Bowman, Mill Valley Miss Virginia Bozza, Millbrae James Brice & Carole Peterson, Pleasanton Mrs. William H. V. Brooke, San Francisco Mr. John E. Brown, Riverside Mr. William Burke, Bakersfield Mrs. DeWitt K. Burnham, San Francisco Dr. Julianne Burton-Carvajal, Monterey Mr. & Mrs. William Cahill, Ross Ms. Christina Cansler, Richmond Ms. Mary E. Campbell, Mill Valley Ms. Jeanne Carevic & Mr. John Atwood, San Jose Ms. Ann E. Carey, San Francisco Mr. Gordon Chamberlain, Redwood City Mrs. Park Chamberlain, Redwood City Mr. Fred Chambers, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. Blake Chapman, Woodacre Dr. & Mrs. Melvin D. Cheitlin, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. Herman Christensen Jr., Atherton Ms. Marie G. Clyde, San Francisco Mr. John C. Colver, Belvedere-Tiburon Ms. Margaret P. Compagno, Daly City Renate & Robert Coombs, Oakland Corinna Cotsen & Lee Rosenbaum, Santa Monica Mrs. Suzanne Crowell, San Marino Mr. & Mrs. Gerald B. Cullinane, Oakland Mrs. Karen D Amato, San Carlos Mr. Walter Danielsen, Livermore Mr. & Mrs. William Davidow, Woodside Dr. William N. 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McClurg, San Mateo Mr. Michael McCone, San Francisco Mrs. David Jamison McDaniel, San Francisco Mr. David McEwen, Newport Beach Mrs. Milbank McFie, Santa Barbara Mr. & Mrs. Lawrence P. McNeil, Rancho Palos Verdes Ms. Mary Ann McNicholas, Alameda Mrs. Charles D. McPherson, San Rafael Mrs. Suzanne McWilliam Oberlin, Corte Madera Mr. & Mrs. Burnett Miller, Sacramento Mr. & Mrs. O Malley Miller, Pasadena Mr. & Mrs. Bruce T. Mitchell, Burlingame Mrs. Albert J. Moorman, Atherton Mr. & Mrs. Robert W. Morey, Belvedere- Tiburon Ms. Paula Mueda, South San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. J. E. C. Nielsen, Mill Valley Ms. Joanne Nissen, Soledad Ms. Mary Ann Notz, Burlingame Barbara O Brien, Daly City Ms. Nancy Leigh Olmsted, San Rafael Ms. Susan Olney, San Francisco Ms. Harriett L. Orchard, Carmichael Mr. & Mrs. Richard C. Otter, Belvedere- Tiburon Ms. Mary J. Parrish, San Francisco Mr. Warren Perry, San Francisco James & Lauris J. Phillips, San Marino Dr. & Mrs. John O. Pohlmann, Seal Beach Mr. Herbert C. 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88 d o n o r s Mr. & Mrs. Bernard Schulte Jr., Orinda Rev. Thomas L. Seagrave, San Francisco Mr. L. Dennis Shapiro, San Francisco Mr. Rocco C. Siciliano, Beverly Hills Mr. Michael Silveira, Modesto Ms. Jan Sinnicks, Petaluma Mr. & Mrs. B. J. Skehan, Los Angeles Mr. & Mrs. J.E.G. Smit, Santa Ynez Ms. Harriet Sollod, San Francisco Mr. & Mrs. Moreland L. Stevens, Newcastle Mr. Daniel F. Sullivan, San Francisco Tony & Beth Tanke, Davis Mr. Max Thelen Jr., San Rafael Mr. Jerry Thornhill, San Francisco Ms. Lynne Tondorf, Daly City Mr. Richard L. Tower, San Francisco Ms. Marilyn Tragoutsis, San Mateo Ms. Catherine Trimbur, Berkeley Ms. Catherine G. Tripp, San Francisco Mr. Paul A. Violich, San Francisco Ms. Wendy Voorsanger, Burlingame Kathleen Weitz, San Francisco Miss Nancy P. Weston, San Francisco Walter & Ann Weybright, San Francisco Ms. Kathleen Whalen, Sacramento Mr. Warren R. White, San Francisco Mr. Ed White & Mrs. Patti White, Los Altos Mrs. Alice Whitson, Willow Creek Mr. Walter J. Williams, Oakland Mr. Steven R. Winkel, Berkeley Mr. Mark L. Woodbury, Oakland Mrs. Edwin Woods, Santa Maria Ms. Nancy C. Woodward, Carmichael CORPORATE, FOUNDATION & GOVERNMENT SUPPORT $200,000 and above Council on Library & Information Resources, Washington, DC / The Andrew Mellon Foundation, New York $50,000 to $199,000 Columbia Foundation, San Francisco San Francisco Foundation, San Francisco Union Bank of California, San Francisco $10,000 to $49,999 Barkley Fund, Corona Del Mar Grants for the Arts, San Francisco Institutional Venture Partners, Menlo Park Intel Community Grant Program, Hillsborough $1,000 to $9,999 Arata Brothers Trust, Sacramento Belfor, Hayward California State Library (Library Services and Technology Act, Local History Digital Resources Program) Sacramento The Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation, San Francisco CVPartners, San Francisco George W. Davis Foundation, Belvedere Institute of Museum & Library Services, Connecting to Collections Grant, Washington, DC John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ Louise M. Davies Foundation, San Francisco The Michael J. Connell Foundation, San Francisco Moore Dry Dock Foundation, San Francisco National Endowment for the Humanities, Preservation Assistance Grant, Washington, DC Oracle, Redwood City The Robert & Alice Bridges Foundation, Lafayette Sacramento Trust for Hist. Preservation, Sacramento Sidney Stern Memorial Trust, Pacific Palisades Simcha Foundation of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund, San Francisco The S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, San Francisco Trinet HR Corporation, San Leandro The Winifred & Harry B. Allen Foundation, Belvedere-Tiburon Yerba Buena Gardens/MJM Management, San Francisco Wells Fargo Bank, San Francisco $250 to $999 Church of Spiritual Technology, Los Angeles Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Daly City Dodge & Cox, San Francisco East Bay Community Foundation, Oakland J. Rodney Eason Pfund Family Foundation, Carmichael JRP Historical Consulting Services, Davis Limoneira Company, Santa Paula Metropolitan Arts Partnership, Sacramento MOC Insurance Services, San Francisco Muez Home Museum, Fresno Phillips, Spallas & Angstadt LLP, San Francisco The San Francisco Club of Litho & Print, San Francisco Westfield s, San Francisco In KIND DONATIONS Sandy Alderson, San Diego American Airlines Anchor Brewing Company, San Francisco Bill & Gerry Brinton, San Francisco Mr. David Burkhart, San Bruno John Burton, Santa Rosa Burns & Associates Fine Printing, San Francisco Carmel Bach Festival Cuvaison, Sonoma The Diocese of Monterey, Most Reverend Richard J. Garcia H. Joseph Ehrmann, San Francisco Elixir Cocktail Catering, San Francisco Elixir Saloon, San Francisco Fairmont Mayakoba Resort Andrew Galvan, Mission Dolores Grace St. Catering, Alameda Vince Guarino, Monterey Steven Hearst, The Hearst Corporation Hoyt Fields, San Simeon Korbel, Sonoma Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles Mayacama Golf Club, Monterey Mexican Consulate, Consul General Carlos Felix Corona MJM Management, San Francisco John & Sue Molinari, San Francisco Palace Hotel, San Francisco Plumpjack Wines, San Francisco Plymouth Gin, England Royal Presidio Chapel, Monterey San Carlos Cathedral Cornerstone Campaign San Diego Padres Mr. Richard Schwartz, Berkeley Mr. Gary Shansby, Partida Tequila, San Francisco Shreve & Co., San Francisco Silversea Cruises Smith Family Paraiso Vineyards, Soledad, California Square One Organic Spirits, San Francisco Mr. Lee Stetson, Yosemite Valley Taste Catering, San Francisco Tehama Golf Club, Sonoma Union Bank of California, San Francisco United States Bartenders Guild US Grant Hotel, San Diego California History volume 87 number

89 California HistoriCAl society O F F I C E r s Jan Berckefeldt, Lafayette, President Thomas Decker, Los Angeles, Vice President Mark A. Moore, Burlingame, Treasurer THOMAS R. OWENS, San Francisco, Secretary B O A R D O F T r u s T E E s Sandy Alderson, San Diego JOHN BROWN, Riverside Robert Chattel, Sherman Oaks Arthur Gilbert, Pacific Palisades Larry Gotlieb, Sherman Oaks Fred Hamber, San Francisco Robert Hiatt, Mill Valley Austin Hills, San Francisco Gary Kurutz, Sacramento Bill Leonard, Sacramento STEPHEN LeSIEUR, San Francisco Tom McLaughlin, San Francisco Carlotta Mellon, Riverside Sue Molinari, San Francisco christina rose, Los Angeles Richard Wulliger, Pacific Palisades BLANCA ZARAZúA, Salinas Helen Zukin, Los Angeles C a l i F o r n i a h i s T o r i C a l F o u n D A T i o n b o a r D DEWITT F. BOWMAN, Mill Valley, President Bill McCreery, Hillsborough robert a. McNeely, San Diego PETER MUSTO, San Francisco EDITH L. PINESS, Mill Valley DAVID BARRY WHITEHEAD, San Francisco p r e s i D E n t s e M E r i T I MARIBELLE LEAVITT, San Francisco ROBERT A. McNEELY, San Diego Edith L. Piness, Mill Valley Stephen L. Taber, San Francisco JOHN K. VAN DE KAMP, Los Angeles e x E C u t i v e d i r E C T o r E M E r i t u s MICHAEL McCONE, San Francisco on the back cover In his book The Harvest of the Years, Luther Burbank described developing and perfecting a spineless cactus for forage and for fruit as the most elaborate, the most expensive, the most painful and physically difficult, and most interesting single series of experiments I ever made. In her drawing commissioned by Chicago publisher Oscar E. Binner circa , Kate Abelmann ( ) juxtaposed the common prickly pear cactus (top left) and Burbank s improved creation (top right), and featured a detail of the fruit (below). Courtesy of Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, Santa Rosa, California, lutherburbank.org s p E C i a l a d v i s o r HUELL HOWSER, Los Angeles f e l l o w s William N. Davis, Jr., Sacramento Richard H. Dillon, Mill Valley Charles A. Fracchia, San Francisco Robert V. Hine, Irvine Gloria Ricci Lothrop, Pasadena James R. Mills, Coronado Doyce B. Nunis, Jr., Los Angeles James Jabus Rawls, Sonoma Andrew Rolle, San Marino Earl F. Schmidt, Jr., Palo Alto Kevin Starr, San Francisco Francis J. Weber, Mission Hills Charles Wollenberg, Berkeley

90 s p o t l i g h t Photographer Unknown Location Above Pasadena As John Brown s body lay stretched across the bloody wounds of American slavery and self-righteous violence, two of his sons came to California looking for a little peace. In the 1880s, Owen and Jason Brown built a cabin above Pasadena, near a hill they named Little Round Top after the site of a decisive Union victory in the war they helped to launch. Full of a great love of all humanity, according to their niece, the brothers were nonetheless grateful for their solitude. Jason was as gentle as a dove with all of God s creatures. Owen, on the other hand, was said to carry a pair of Colt pistols wherever he went. In October 2009, the Station Fire roared through Little Round Top. Amid the ash of the brothers former dooryard, the mountain lilac will bloom. Jonathan Spaulding Two Sons of John Brown, 1880s Braun Research Library Autry National Center of the American West a.99.6 California History volume 87 number

91 Lundy School, Mono County. Join the California Historical Society Join at the Friend Level to Receive: The Passport to California History (see benefits below) and The Golden Passport to Art, with free admission or discounts in California at Copia, San Jose Museum of Art, Skirball Center and many others across the country at over 80 fine arts museums to join fill out and return the attached card or call x229 Join at the Plus Level to Receive: Passport to California History, offering free or reduced admission, and other discounts: In Southern California at Japanese American National Museum, and San Diego Historical Society In Northern California at Maritime Museum of Monterey and California History Museum, Sacramento Across the country at over 100 historical museums in the Time Travelers network Subscription to quarterly California History journal * 15% discount on museum store purchases (in person, by phone, or online) * Discounts on educational programs around the state * Free admission for two to CHS San Francisco museum galleries * *Included in Basic Membership Stockton St., between Post and Geary, 1868, San Francisco. Cut Along Dotted Line m e m b e r s h i p a p p l i c a t i o n levels $125 Friend $75 Plus Membership $60 Basic Membership $55 Senior (62+ years) $45 Student/ Teacher $55 Library/ Nonprofit $250 Contributor $500 Benefactor $1,000 Silver Circle Cut Along Dotted Line New Member Member Name (please print) Address City/State/Zip Gift Giver s Name Gift Membership method of payment Check Visa MasterCard Account Number Telephone Gift Giver s Telephone (important) Exp. Date Signature All contributions above $40 are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. m e m b e r s h i p a p p l i c a t i o n levels $125 Friend $75 Plus Membership $60 Basic Membership $55 Senior (62+ years) $45 Student/ Teacher $55 Library/ Nonprofit $250 Contributor $500 Benefactor $1,000 Silver Circle Cut Along Dotted Line New Member Member Name (please print) Address City/State/Zip Gift Giver s Name Gift Membership method of payment Check Visa MasterCard Account Number Telephone Gift Giver s Telephone (important) Exp. Date Signature All contributions above $40 are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. m e m b e r s h i p a p p l i c a t i o n levels $125 Friend $75 Plus Membership $60 Basic Membership $55 Senior (62+ years) $45 Student/ Teacher $55 Library/ Nonprofit $250 Contributor $500 Benefactor $1,000 Silver Circle New Member Member Name (please print) Address City/State/Zip Gift Giver s Name Gift Membership method of payment Check Visa MasterCard Account Number Telephone Gift Giver s Telephone (important) Exp. Date Signature All contributions above $40 are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

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