Aviators and Airports

Pilot and airplane builder Rueben Coombs built Vallejo’s first airplane with his partner Paul Butler around 1910. The plane was made of bicycle parts and the enterprising builders had a Grey Eagle engine shipped out from Kentucky to power the machine. Their early “airfield” was located on the Hann’s Ranch, which today is the area at the end of Nebraska and Illinois Streets, near Interstate 80. Pilot Coombs is shown here with the plane.

Vallejo has also had several small airports over the years, including Sky Harbor, established just after WWII about two miles north of the city. Another of Vallejo’s early landing fields was Knight’s Airport, located near the present day intersection of Sacramento Street and Highway 37, where early day pilots often had to dodge jackrabbits scurrying across the landing strip. A further drawback was the fact that the field was frequently submerged under two to three feet of water after heavy winter rains. The Mini Airport was located near the intersection of Highway 37 and Broadway. Tall eucalyptus trees (a few still there) presented an interesting challenge for incoming pilots.

HMS Berry and USS Doherty

Sixty-six years ago today, on August 29, 1942, the U.S. Naval Shipyard at Mare Island launched a ship for the British Navy. The HMS Berry was the second of 24 destroyer escort vessels that Mare Island planned to build for the Royal Navy under President Franklin Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program. Berry’s sister ship, HMS Bentinck, had been launched only a week previously.

The construction of British ships at an American shipyard was only one of the unusual aspects of this destroyer escort program. In addition to their British pedigree, Bentinck, Berry, and other ships of the class were unusual because they were primarily built high in the Rocky Mountains near Denver, Colorado. The “Shipyard in the Rockies” program consisted of prefabricated parts built in Colorado and brought by rail to Mare Island for assembly and eventual launching. Denver was selected because of its largely untapped labor force and the prevalent affordable housing available for its defense workers.

HMS Berry’s sponsor was Mrs. Robert E. Moreland, wife of the Master of the Joiner and Shipwright’s Shop at Mare Island. At the launching, Mare Island’s commandant, Rear Admiral Wilhelm H. Friedell, emphasized that America’s homefront shipyards bore a major responsibility in supporting the war effort. “We, who are on the production end of this titanic struggle, must ourselves maintain an ever-present offensive,” Friedell proclaimed. “We must win. We must survive.”

However, HMS Berry would never serve in His Majesty’s Navy. As the U.S. Navy struggled to rebuild after Pearl Harbor it became apparent that more American ships were needed to fight the Axis Powers in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. HMS Berry was retained by the U.S. Navy and rechristened as USS Doherty. She served as an escort vessel in Arctic and Pacific waters throughout the war and was eventually decommissioned and then scrapped at the war’s conclusion.

As one of the many hundreds of ships built at Mare Island, the HMS Berry -USS Doherty might best be remembered as a symbol of the cooperation maintained by the United States and her allies during WWII.

Casa de Vallejo Fire

One of Vallejo's most distinctive landmarks, the Casa de Vallejo, suffered a major fire during the early morning hours of August 15th. Three residents of the senior housing complex died and m0re than a hundred were left homeless. Casa de Vallejo was built in 1919 as Vallejo's Industrial YMCA. The building was purchased by hotelier Harry Handlery in 1928 and converted into Vallejo's first luxury hotel. Casa de Vallejo has been a senior residence complex since 1978.

The Casa de Vallejo is located on Sonoma Blvd. in Vallejo, immediately adjacent to the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum, which is located in Vallejo's historic Old City Hall. Fortunately for the Museum, rapid response by fire crews from Vallejo and surrounding communities prevented the fire from spreading to adjoining buildings.

The accompanying photographs show the beautiful mission style interior of the Casa de Vallejo. Hopefully reconstruction of the building will preserve these unique historic features. Click on the photos for an enlarged view.

Vallejo Women Struggle to Win the Vote

Over the next few weeks both the Democratic and Republican Parties will hold their national conventions to select candidates for the November presidential election. Other political parties (the Green Party, Libertarian Party, Peace & Freedom Party, etc.) have also recently chosen candidates to vie for the top office. The right to vote for our political leaders - whether conservative, liberal, or elsewhere on the political spectrum - is a right that far too few Americans exercise. And for many Americans that right was only attained after years of struggle.

In Vallejo, as in the rest of the United States, women fought for decades to win the right to vote. The women’s suffrage movement in California was strident, vocal - and ultimately successful. California women gained the right to vote in 1911, nearly a decade before passage of the 19^th amendment granted that right nationwide.

The women’s suffrage movement came to Vallejo as early as 1870. Recently, Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum researcher Marilyn Armstrong uncovered this interesting article from the Semi-Weekly Vallejo Recorder of January 7, 1870:

Lecture On Woman Suffrage

“We listened last evening to a portion of the lecture delivered by Mrs. Gordon at Eureka Hall on the subject of women’s rights. The audience was quite meager showing that our citizens are not duly interested in the movement. The lecture possessed some merit and was delivered in a calm dispassionate and graceful manner, but had evidently been well studied, cut and dried. The object of the lecture was explained fully which was to keep up the agitation of the question. Many of the positions taken by the lecturess were untenable and the conclusions drawn were fallacious. She rehashed much of that nonsense and simple stuff which has long since become ‘weary, stale, flat and unprofitable’ and attempted to answer the arguments which any sensible person who is opposed to woman’s transcending the sphere for which she was intended by nature, could urge. No doubt Mrs. Gordon is a woman of some education and accomplishments but that she has mistaken her calling is apparent."

Questions arise:

Did the otherwise unidentified “Mrs. Gordon” live long enough to exercise her legal right to vote in California nearly forty years later?

Did the editors of the Vallejo newspaper rethink the condescending attitude shown in this article and eventually come around to support women’s suffrage?

Have women’s voices (and votes) influenced the course of American politics since this important right was attained?

The lesson learned?

Get out and vote!

What’s Going On? – California and the Vietnam Era

The landmark exhibition “What’s Going On? – California and the Vietnam Era” is currently featured at the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum . “What’s Going On?” provides a timely examination of the impact of the Vietnam War on California life and culture. Home to numerous defense contractors and military training centers (including the Mare Island Naval Shipyard and Travis Air Force Base), the state also served as the primary portal for both returning soldiers and Southeast Asian immigrants following the fall of Saigon. As the epicenter of the war’s home front, California became a hotbed of social and political movements that spread across the county, and ultimately redefined what it means to be an American.

The exhibition focuses on events in California from the 1950s Cold War era to the present, with special emphasis on the tumultuous years from the Vietnam conflict’s escalation in 1965 through its end in 1975. During that time, California was the epicenter of the war’s domestic front. The state was the staging ground for most of the nation’s defense contractors, the location of principal military centers where troops were trained and transported, and the base of legendary peace protests and New Right politics ushered in by Reagan’s gubernatorial election in 1966.

The exhibition includes historical artifacts, photographs, and documents interwoven with oral histories contributed by veterans, activists, and former refugees. Based on a larger exhibition of the same title developed by the Oakland Museum of California, this 1,000 square-foot exhibition provides visitors an opportunity to consider and ask question about this important period in our nation’s history.

The exhibit has been supplemented with material from the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum reflecting the impact of the Vietnam conflict on Solano County. Much of Solano County’s history has been defined by the strong military presence of the Mare Island Navy Yard, Travis Air Force Base, and the Benicia Arsenal.

The exhibit has been further enhanced by the addition of historical and artistic works by Amerasian artist Ruth Moss, a Solano County native whose work reflects the impact of the era on her and her extended family. Moss’ father served in the US Air Force in Vietnam. Her mother is Vietnamese. After coming to the United States the family helped literally hundreds of Vietnamese immigrants who came to California via refugee camps in Guam, the Philippines, and other locations.

Currently scheduled for installation at more than 10 museums across the state over the next three years, “What’s Going On?” will continue at the Vallejo Museum through September 6^th.

The “What’s Going On? – California and the Vietnam Era” exhibition tour was organized by the California Exhibition Resources Alliance (CERA) in concert with the Oakland Museum of California. CERA is a network of professionally operated museums and cultural organizations that collaborate to create and tour smaller, affordable, high quality exhibitions that enhance civic engagement and human understanding. The Oakland Museum exhibition was made possible with support by the Oakland Museum Women’s Board, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The James Irvine Foundation, The Clorox Company Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum is located at 734 Marin Street, Vallejo. For more information call (707) 643-0077.

Photo caption: U.S. Marine and Vietnamese refugees at Camp Pendleton refugee center, 1975. Stephen Peck, photographer

The Ink Bottle House

The Octagon House was an unusual but popular style of architecture in the mid 19^th century. The style was most common in the East and Midwest, but there were also a few examples in the West. Five octagons are known to have been built in San Francisco, and two still survive - the Feusier House and the McElroy House. Vallejo's Octagon was known as the "Ink Bottle House” and stood on the south side of Florida Street, between Marin Street and Sonoma Boulevard. According to the Vallejo Times-Herald in 1936, the unusual house was built around 1865 by "an eccentric sea captain whose name even the old timers have forgotten.” In later years, the Daley and Colton families lived in the house. The octagon was torn down around 1908, though some accounts have it standing - abandoned - into the 1910s.

Vallejo's First 4th of July Celebration

When the young city of Vallejo became California’s state capital in 1852, the future looked bright. The fledgling town, located midway between the bustling port of San Francisco and the gold fields above Sacramento, seemed poised for greatness. But unfortunately the State Legislature departed Vallejo after only two abbreviated sessions in 1852 and 1853. Nearby Benicia became the seat of California’s government and Vallejo was rapidly depopulated.

So by July of 1853 the state legislature had fled Vallejo and the U.S. Navy had not yet arrived. More than a year would pass before Captain David G. Farragut would establish the Navy Yard at Mare Island in September 1854. In the summer of 1853 only two families and a handful of bachelors remained in the struggling town. Vallejo’s future seemed grim.

But those early settlers remained patriotic. In The History of Solano County, published by Wood, Alley & Company in 1879, we find an account of the first 4^th of July celebration in Vallejo:

“On July 4, 1853, we find the first celebration of Independence Day, in Vallejo, by a dinner at the Vallejo House [a hotel] and bonfire. At the former there sat down two ladies and eight gentlemen, Mrs. Robert and Thomas Brownlee, Captain Stewart, Squire Hook, Edward H. Rowe (elder), West Rowe, Lemuel Hazelton, B. F. Osborne, with Robert and Thomas Brownlee. At an early hour Captain Stewart had donned his full uniform and called on all to celebrate the day with becoming ceremony. A few tar barrels had been procured from the dry-dock and dragged up to what is now called Capitol hill; a pile of brushwood was heaped up to an immense height, and ‘lashings of whisky’ had not been forgotten. At dark the hill was ablaze, making the surrounding country as light as day. Success to the Union was drunk amidst much enthusiasm; the glass and merry song went round; speeches were the order of the day, or rather night, while intense loyalty gave place to noisy enthusiasm, to be replaced by morbid toast making, until one by one the heroes who had braved so many dangers sank to rest on the bosom of mother earth in a slumber which the mighty Bourbon had invoked.”

Happy 4^th of July, Vallejo!