The Journal of
Volume 53 Summer 2007 Number 3 • The Journal of San Diego History Diego San of Journal Number 3 • The Volume 2007 Summer 53 San Diego History
Publication of The Journal of San Diego History has been partially funded by generous grants from the Joseph W. Sefton Foundation; Quest for Truth Foundation of Seattle, Washington, established by the late James G. Scripps; and an anonymous friend and supporter of the Journal.
Publication of this issue of The Journal of San Diego History has also been supported by a grant from “The Journal of San Diego History Fund” of the San Diego Foundation. Preserve a San Diego Treasure The San Diego Historical Society is able to share the resources of four museums and its extensive collections with the community through the generous support of Your $100 contribution will help to create an endowment for the following: City of San Diego Commission for Art and Culture; County of San Diego; foundation and government grants; individual and corporate memberships; The Journal of San Diego History corporate sponsorship and donation bequests; sales from museum stores and reproduction prints from the Booth Historical Photograph Archives; admissions; Please make your check payable to The San Diego Foundation. Indicate on the and proceeds from fund-raising events. bottom of your check that your donation is for The Journal of San Diego History Fund. The San Diego Foundation accepts contributions of $100 and up. Articles appearing in The Journal of San Diego History are abstracted and Your contribution is tax-deductible. indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life.
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Front Cover: ZLAC’s clubhouse around 1908. From left to right: Elsa Wentscher Marston, Juliet Newkirk, Grace Gould Klauber, Edith Cole McFarland, and Brooke Frevert Miller. ©SDHS #85:15353.
Back Cover: Thursday Morning Rowers in the ZLAC barge, April 7, 1973. Bow to stern: Mary Jessop, Ellen Roche, Annette Frank, Margaret Redelings, Judy Browne, Betty Sullivan, Nancy Leydecker, Suzanne Leibmann, and Mary Maddox Grandell (coxswain). ©SDHS, UT #88:K7006-3, Union-Tribune Collection.
Cover Design: Allen Wynar The Journal of San Diego History Volume 53 Summer 2007 number 3
Iris H. W. Engstrand Molly McClain Editors
COLIN FISHER Associate Editor
THEODORE STRATHMAN david miller Review Editors
Published since 1955 by the SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY 1649 El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego, California 92101 ISSN 0022-4383 The Journal of San Diego History
Volume 53 sumMer 2007 number 3
Editorial Consultants Published quarterly by the San Diego Historical Society at 1649 El Prado, MATTHEW BOKOVOY Balboa Park, San Diego, California University of Oklahoma 92101. DONALD C. CUTTER A $60.00 annual membership in the Albuquerque, New Mexico San Diego Historical Society includes WILLIAM DEVERELL subscription to The Journal of San Diego University of Southern California; Director, History and the SDHS Times. Back issues Huntington-USC Institute of California and are available at www.sandiegohistory.org. the West Articles and book reviews for VICTOR GERACI publication consideration, as well as University of California, Berkeley editorial correspondence, should be addressed to the Editors, The Journal PHOEBE KROPP of San Diego History, Department of University of Pennsylvania History, University of San Diego, 5998 ROGER W. LOTCHIN Alcalá Park, San Diego, CA 92110 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill All article submissons should be typed NEIL MORGAN and double-spaced, and follow the Journalist Chicago Manual of Style. Authors should submit three copies of their manuscript, DOYCE B. NUNIS, JR plus an electronic copy, in MS Word or University of Southern California in rich text format (RTF). JOHN PUTMAN The San Diego Historical Society San Diego State University assumes no responsibility for the ANDREW ROLLE statements or opinions of the authors or The Huntington Library reviewers. RAMON EDUARDO RUIZ ©2007 by the San Diego Historical University of California, San Diego Society ISSN 0022-4383 ABE SHRAGGE Periodicals postage paid at San Diego, CA University of California, San Diego Publication No. 331-870 RAYMOND STARR (619) 232-6203 San Diego State University, emeritus www.sandiegohistory.org DAVID J. WEBER Southern Methodist University
ii CONTENTS
Volume 53 summer 2007 number 3
ARTICLES ZLAC Rowing Club, 1892-2007 Molly McClain 89
Coming Out Gay, Coming Out Christian: The Beginnings of GLBT Christianity in San Diego, 1970-1979 Joshua Grace, Christopher Rhamey, Megan Dukett, Kaylin Gill, Ricky Bell 117
“La Mojonera” and the Marking of California’s U.S. -Mexico Boundary Line, 1849-1851 Charles W. Hughes 126
The Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation 148
Museum Review: San Diego Natural History Museum Dead Sea Scrolls 151
BOOK REVIEWS 155
iii iv ZLAC Rowing Club, 1892-2007
Molly McClain
In 1992, ZLAC Rowing Club celebrated its 100th anniversary with a gala at the U.S. Grant Hotel and the publication of a history written by Helen Wetzell Wallace. This year, the club will commemorate another special occasion—the 75th anniversary of its clubhouse on Mission Bay. Designed by architect Lilian J. Rice, the clubhouse provides a visual reminder that America’s oldest women’s rowing club works to preserve its past and to encourage future interest in the sport. ZLAC was founded in 1892 by Lena Polhamus Crouse, the daughter of Captain
ZLAC’s first barge was launched on August 3, 1895, from the landing float adjacent to the Point Loma Ferry landing. Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd. Albert A. Polhamus, a pilot on the California coast and captain of the tug Santa Fe. She persuaded her sisters, Caroline and Agnes, and their friend Zulette Lamb to form a rowing club. Rowing was more than a popular sport; it was also a way to get around San Diego Bay, albeit in a butcher boat. Inspired by their male counterparts, the girls chose ranks—“Captain,” “First Officer,” etc.—and used the first letters of their names to form the acronym ZLAC. In 1894, the San Diego Rowing Club (SDRC) loaned them a six-oared barge that had been dug up from the bottom of the bay. Shortly thereafter, ZLAC commissioned an eight-oared barge from Fred Carter, the architect and designer of the famous Herreschoff yachts, raising money from families and friends.
Dr. Molly McClain is Associate Professor and Chair, History Department, University of San Diego. A ninth-generation San Diegan, she edits The Journal of San Diego History with Dr. Iris Engstrand.
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On August 7, 1895, members of Crew I raced on Salt Water Day. Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd. The new barge and its female rowers caught the eye of officers and men on Navy ships anchored in the harbor. Lena Crouse recalled, “As we rowed back and forth past these Navy boats, the order was ‘eyes in the boat.’…The girls didn’t need to rubber around at the men—the men did all the rubbering.”1 In 1896, officers of the USS Monterey presented them with a pennant, a black Navy tie embroidered ZLAC, that now hangs in the clubhouse. The San Diego Historical Society’s new exhibit, “Places of Promise,” will include ZLAC’s first barge along with photographs and memorabilia donated by club members. ZLAC I was built in Charlie Langell’s workshop at the foot of G Street and launched on August 3, 1894, from the landing float at the foot of H Street, now Market Street. It is 38 feet long and 52 inches wide amidship, planked with Port Orford cedar and covered with cotton canvas. Originally painted white, it now has fiberglass siding. It retains its original sliding leather seats, an innovation that became popular with Members of Crew I, 1900. Standing, left to right: Zulette Lamb, Agnes East Coast colleges Polhamus, Florence Roper, Carolyn Polhamus. Seated: Jean Grow, Grace Slocum, Lena Polhamus, Ethel Dyer. The ZLAC uniform consisted of a black and universities in ankle-length woolen skirt with rows of yellow braid sewn around the hemline, the 1870s. Sliding collars, and cuffs of the middy blouse. Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd. seats allowed rowers
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to increase the length of their stroke and to use the power of the legs, arms, and back. ZLAC I was donated to the Society and moved into the Casa de Balboa in August 1989.2 At the turn of the century, many women’s rowing clubs and collegiate teams were established in an effort to improve physical fitness and to compete in a sport made popular by men. Wellesley College in Massachusetts In 1902, ZLAC relocated its clubhouse from the foot of Fifth founded the oldest surviving Street to the Paulson’s wharf at the foot of H St. (now Market women’s rowing program in Street). Commercial wharves can be seen in the background, 1915. 1875. Cambridge University’s ©SDHS #89:17617-2. Newnham College founded a women’s collegiate “boating society” in 1893 while Cornell University started a competitive women’s crew program in 1896.3 In San Diego, ZLAC inspired the creation of many rowing clubs for high school- aged girls. Russ High School, later San Diego High School, sponsored teams such as the Nereids (1895), the Mariners (1898), and the White Caps (1900). In 1895, ZLAC competed in rowing and swimming events with the Waterbabies, L’Esperance, the Columbias (1894), the Gondoliers, and La Feluca (1894), and the Nereids crew. Other teams included the La Sienas (1899), the Oceanids (1901), the Las Corarias (1901),
ZLAC’s clubhouse was decorated with paper lanterns, bamboo stems, and nautical memorabilia. Over one door hung a banner with the words, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot and days of auld Lang Syne.” Over another hung a banner for the White Caps, a high school crew that joined ZLAC in 1901 to become Crew II. ©SDHS 89:17552-3
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In the late 1920s, ZLAC purchased land on Mission Bay in Pacific Beach and planned to build a new clubhouse. This view of Pacific Beach, looking south from Mount Soledad, shows Mission Beach (upper right) and Crown Point (upper left) with Point Loma in the distance, 1928. ©SDHS #8328.
the Olympia (1897), the Nautilus (1904), the Twilight Maids (1904), and the YWCA (1912). Women’s collegiate rowing began with the formation of the Rowing Club of State Normal School of San Diego in 1898. Women formed four crews—the Sylphs, the Dog-Watch, the Sobre las Olas, and the Asparas—to compete in local regattas. SDRC provided quarters for many of the women’s teams, including locker rooms, showers, and equipment storage.4 Crouse recalled that she and her sisters rowed for fun and adventure:
Our boyfriends would go out in their boats, rowing or sailing, and in the summertime would not come back for days, sometimes weeks. When they did return, they would tell us what fun they had had camping on some beach. They made it sound like a great adventure. What fun it would be for ZLACs to have such an adventure. We thought about it a great deal. I personally dreamed of it day and night. We could row, sail and swim as well as the boys. Why couldn’t we do as they did? The answer was always the same. We were girls, and girls just didn’t do such things.5
SDRC’s Henry H. Palmer joined Crouse and her friends on their early escapades. A Princeton University-educated rower and swimmer, Palmer had come to San Diego to recover his health. He helped ZLAC to acquire its first barge, taught the crew to row, attended parties, and chaperoned the young women when they took holiday Woodblock print showing the ZLAC boathouse, 1907, outings to Rancho Guajome, San Luis Rey Mission, El Cajon signed by Leda Klauber. valley, and San Miguel Mountain. Crouse described him as Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing ZLAC’s best friend, “a perfect gentleman in every respect, Club, Ltd.
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and our families trusted him and knew no harm could befall us while he was in the boat.”6 In 1899, ZLAC stored its barge on Paulsen’s wharf, located at the foot of H Street. They built a branch wharf and a clubhouse there in 1902. Twenty years later, membership had expanded considerably. The clubhouse became crowded rather than cozy and rowers found themselves “in much the position of the Old Woman in the Shoe, without being able to solve the problem by her whimsical expedient.”7 In the 1920s, ZLAC began to search for a new home “close to deep and quiet water, not crowded, with plenty of room, and not bumped by commercial activities.”8 After the opening of the Panama Canal in 1915, commercial and naval shipping had increased dramatically, causing rowers and owners of small watercraft to feel unwelcome on the bay.9 ZLAC considered two locations—La Playa and Mission Bay—before deciding on the latter. In December 1926, the club purchased two waterfront lots at Dawes Street in Pacific Beach for five thousand dollars. Crouse nearly cried when she first saw the lots: “there was nothing but water…I stood at the edge of the lake for a long time wondering how we ever got into such a tangle” and whether or not the club could get its money back.10 On low tide, however, the lots turned into marshland that could be dredged and drained. Lena Winn, a member of the club’s board of directors, “urged the girls to go out and see it. She asked them to realize that while we bought only two lots they were double in size of the ordinary lot and therefore equal to four, that the property was accessible both by the water and by Pacific Avenue [Pacific Beach Drive], and that Pacific Avenue is expected to become
Lilian J. Rice (1888-1938) supervised the development of Rancho Santa Fe before starting her own architectural practice. This 1923 photo shows Rice, left, in front of the Inn at Rancho Santa Fe, accompanied by Norma McLean, Virginia Smith, and Bertha Kreuziger. ©SDHS #2611-5.
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a business street. She urged that they call it their building site.”11 In the late 1920s, Pacific Beach consisted of scattered farms and pasture land. Garnet Street was a dirt road leading to an unsteady Crystal Pier (1927), built by a local real estate developer. Braemar, an estate owned by Frederick Tudor and Sarah Emma Jessop Scripps, covered several acres at the northwest corner of Mission Rice’s plans for the ZLAC clubhouse won an award from the American Bay. The Number 16 street Institute of Architects in June 1933. ©SDHS, AD #1014-010 F3-D13. car line, opened in 1924 and connected downtown San Diego with Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, and La Jolla.12 People traveled to the Mission Beach Amusement Center (1925) to ride the Giant Dipper Roller Coaster or to take a dip in the Plunge, at that time the largest salt water pool in the world. The club’s new lots, located at the eastern edge of the Scripps’ estate, needed to be improved before building could begin. Lilian Rice, a member of Crew IV and president of ZLAC from 1915 to 1916, inspected the property in early January 1930. She recommended the construction of a sea wall, located fifty feet beyond the club’s property line.13 By November 1931, engineers had filled the lots and completed the curbs, culverts, flood gate, and sea wall. The Crescent Beach Improvement Club planned a sandy beach to stretch from Crown Point to Dawes Street. Thomas Osborn Scripps, who lived next to his parents, offered to continue it past the Braemar property; he also contributed money for the improvement of Dawes Street.14 ZLAC chose Rice to design their new clubhouse. In 1931, the Building Committee submitted the following recommendation:
1. That Miss Lillian [sic] Rice be engaged as the architect for the new clubhouse. 2. That the ‘Monterey’ style of architecture (of board and batten) be selected as it is considered the most suitable, attractive, and economical type of construction for the club house. 3. That the proposed building be considered the first unit of a larger building to be constructed at some future date. 4. That Miss Rice, the architect, be instructed to proceed immediately with the drawing of plans which will incorporate as many of the features suggested by the various committees as possible and still be thoroughly compatible with this committee’s desire to keep the building cost within reasonable bounds.15
In 1932, Rice was a well-respected architect with her own practice. She had received her degree in architecture from University of California at Berkeley in 1910 and, in 1931, became one of the few female members of the American
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The north side of the clubhouse, ca. 1935. The new building included a large hall, kitchen, dressing rooms, showers, and a boathouse. ©SDHS #OP12909-1. Institute of Architecture. She had worked part time in the architectural office of Hazel Waterman and taught mechanical drawing and descriptive geometry at San Diego High School and San Diego State Teachers College. In 1922, architects Richard Requa and Herbert Jackson hired her to supervise the initial development of Rancho Santa Fe, one of the first planned communities in California. She designed the school, library, civic center, La Morada (now the Inn) and a number of residential structures in a Spanish Revival style. Sam W. Hamill, FAIA, worked as a junior draftsman in Rice’s Rancho Santa Fe office in 1923. He wrote, “The thing I remember most about Miss Rice was the wholesome, sympathetic and sensitive understanding she brought to student, employee or client. Her residential designs, the major portion of her work, seemed to reflect the personality and life- style of the client. Miss Rice was devoid of the autocratic ego so common to gifted designers.”16 The interior of the clubhouse reflected an Arts & Crafts aesthetic According to Elinor Frazer, one with its large fireplace, exposed rafters, and unadorned redwood of her students and later friends, walls, ND. ©SDHS #79:3. Rice was inspirational:
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This view of the clubhouse from Mission Bay shows the attached boathouse, left, and the dock. The barges were moved from the boathouse to the water on rails. Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd. She’d drive down Highland Avenue on her way to her parents’ home in National City in a great white roadster with the top down and her scarf flying in the breeze…She wasn’t really pretty, but she was blonde and attractive and you could tell immediately she was a person of character. I would dream, ‘Oh, to be an architect!’ She always looked like she’d stepped out of a bandbox. She dressed for each occasion, but in the office almost always wore a long, simple, shirt type of dress made of striped silk.17
Rice’s plans for the clubhouse, presented on March 26, 1932, showed a modest structure with single-wall construction, an attached boathouse, a fireplace, kitchen, hall, and dressing rooms. The redwood walls were left unfinished. Perhaps she derived inspiration from her Rancho Santa Fe Garden Club (1926), which also used exposed structural finish wood. According to Hamill, the ZLAC clubhouse was noted for its “sensitive treatment of wood exposed as structural and finish material, achieving architectural forms developed on the Pacific coast and in the Pacific northwest.” He suggested that the building “showed much the same feeling developed in the San Francisco bay region of William Wilson Wurste, FAIA, who was also a graduate of Berkeley.”18 After the groundbreaking in May 1932, Rice visited the construction site almost daily. The Diamond Construction Company raised the clubhouse while the Campbell Machine Company built the marine ways, wharf, and float. Several times a week, Georgie Hardy Wright and her friend Kate Sessions came to plan the landscaping. Sessions, who owned a nursery in Pacific Beach, provided the club with shrubs and trees, including several leptospermum, or tea-trees, native to Australia and New Zealand. The interior of the clubhouse reflected an Arts & Crafts aesthetic with its large
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fireplace and exposed rafters. The hall was decorated with rattan furniture that included “6 Philippine chairs,” a large sofa, wooden benches, tile coffee tables, and light fixtures designed by artist Gilbert Rose that were intended to have a “seaweedy effect.”19 In order to raise money for the new clubhouse, ZLAC held fundraisers during annual May garden fetes at the Braemer estate. From 1928-1933, the Scripps opened their exotic gardens to the public, offering tea, dancing, and puppet shows for children. An orchestra played on the tennis court while ZLAC members gave guided tours of the grounds. The Scripps permitted the club to sell home-made candies, hooked rugs, hand-made pillows, and other items. Sensitive to the economic hardships caused by the Depression, the hosts decided in 1930 that no charge would be made for tea, dancing, or cakes. Nevertheless, the club still managed to show a net profit of $1,138 in 1931.20 Sarah Emma Jessop Scripps became an honorary member of ZLAC and, with the help of her gardener, designed a small garden on the north side of the clubhouse. A dry-stone wall with an inset bench curved around a fishpond. She added a small statue of an Indian maiden from the studio of Donal Hord. On her death in September 1954, ZLAC remembered “the patio with its lawn and pool and flowers” as “a lasting monument to her labors and love for us.”21 The following year, Braemar was sold to Vernon Taylor and Clinton McKinnon for the Catamaran Resort Hotel.22 Lena Polhamus Crouse remained involved in the club until her death in 1957. Rowers describe her as an extraordinary person, “She was just something very, very special.”23 She attended Stanford University for one year (1893-94) before returning to San Diego as a teacher. Virginia Anne Grady described her as “very rigid, of course, she’d been a school teacher,” but a wonderful story-teller and “a marvelous person to know.”24 She married Warren Sefton Crouse in 1902 and raised a daughter, Harriet. In 1918, she was elected to the San Diego City and High
Two barges race on Salt Water Day, 1938. Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd.
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School Board of Education before going back to college in 1922. After the death of her husband, she rented a house in Mission Beach and, according to one member, “always supervised the construction of each home on Mission Bay—we had to row over and take a look.”25 Crouse taught new members to row. “She ruled with an iron hand,” Mary Lovelly Gault recalled, “If she didn’t like you, she didn’t like you. That person wasn’t around very long because they couldn’t take her.” Still, Gault described her as “wonderful.” She would organize rowing parties on Friday afternoons. “She’d take us out in the barge, and Crew III celebrated its 50th Anniversary on October we’d row…she made you row until you 23, 1951. It included former members of the Mariners, couldn’t stop. I can remember I could a high school crew that joined ZLAC in 1901. Left to right: Frances Henking, Alice Shaw McCoy, and hardly catch my breath.” Once in a Brooke Frevert Miller. ©SDHS, UT #84:29424-1, while, they would row over to Crown Union-Tribune Collection. Point with their picnic baskets and have dinner on the beach. After supper, “we’d all sit around the fire…and she’d tell us all these different stories.” She added, “it’s too bad somebody didn’t record these.”26 The mud flats of Mission Bay made rowing a challenge. ZLACs had to time their activities with the tide-tables so that there would be enough water to get back to the dock. Dorothy Rock recalled pushing the boat over the mud flats, “And it was oh, jeez.”27 Gault described how she and a friend would take a rowboat out “on the mud flats and we’d buy potato chips. She and I’d sit in the boat out there in the mud flats eating potato chips with nothing to drink, you know. Anyway, we’d have to push off in that oozy mud.” Sometimes they dug up clams and left them in the rowboat for the seagulls to eat.28 Social activities took the place of sport for members unwilling to brave the mud. The club held luncheons, theatricals, Salt Water Day activities and the annual Christmas Zulette Lamb Barber, one of the original Tea. 29 Their caretaker, a small, carefully founders of ZLAC, June 10, 1955. She and the Polhamus sisters—Lena, Agnes, and Caroline— dressed Englishman with tidy habits, used the first letters of their names to create “wanted to serve tea every afternoon to “ZLAC.” ©SDHS, UT #84:425-1, Union- anybody that came,” Gault recalled, “He’d Tribune Collection.
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Salt Water Day, July 25, 1954. ©SDHS, UT #84:29438-1, Union-Tribune Collection. wear his stiffly starched jacket and he’d serve tea.”30 In the 1930s, ZLAC members became increasingly concerned to appear as refined sportswomen, not competitors. Athleticism had come to be considered unattractive, even unfeminine, despite growing numbers of women involved in sport. In a 1932 Vanity Fair article, reporter Paul Gallico mocked Mildred (“Babe”) Didrikson, one of the greatest female athletes of her generation, by describing her as a “Muscle Moll” who would never find a husband.31 According to one historian, such remarks reflected a general fear that men “might be challenged or even displaced in governance of basic social order.”32 It also was a sign of the public’s disdain for working-class women in sport. When eleven ZLAC collegiate rowers were hired to portray Swiss boarding school girls in a Hollywood movie, Eight Girls in a Boat (1934), Crouse was concerned that they look like “ladies.” Katherine Pendleton Barley recalled,
She said that she wanted us to be ladies and be very proud of who we were and where we came from and we must go dressed properly. We all went and spent more money than we made to get a few clothes to wear up on the train. I’m sure nobody cared, but at any rate we had fun.33
During World War II, ZLAC opened its clubhouse to injured servicemen who were convalescing at the Naval Hospital. Members held tea dances under the strict supervision of Crouse. According to one member, she was “the task master out there. She carried a broom, carried the regular old-fashioned broom, and if she saw something she didn’t like, she’d tap on the shoulder. She was watching so that nothing ever happened out there.”34 Nevertheless, many ZLACs met their future husbands at those dances. In 1946, the club founded its first newsletter, Eight Oars, to communicate with members who had moved away from San Diego
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during the war. The club also hired Lillian Scott (“Polly”) and Stephen H. (“Bud”) Neal to serve as resident managers. Bud worked as a salesman for ABC Brewery and later the Servette Company. Polly cared for the clubhouse, grounds, and generations of ZLAC women. They retired in 1997. During the 1940s and 1950s, the club developed strategies to preserve a homogenous membership in terms of socio- cultural and economic conditions. Lists of members read like a “Who’s Who” of prominent San Diego families and included the wives of Navy officers.35 In order to ensure social continuity, the club encouraged “legacies,” new members whose mothers or grandmothers had rowed with New subjuniors pose on the clubhouse stairs, September 10, ZLAC. They also engaged in a 1954. ©SDHS, UT #84:29439-1, Union-Tribune Collection. highly selective admissions process. Gene Nelson Gray became a member through the efforts of her mother-in-law, despite the fact that she did not row. She and her husband, however, played bridge. “After about the third meeting I became pretty casual,” she said, “it was like, I’m being accepted by family because that was what Crew VIII was.”36 Mariella “Mary Agnes” Benton joined because “three of my husband’s relatives were members so there was no doubt that I would become a member.” She added, “I never did get involved in rowing.”37 Sally Lyons, a member since 1936, said, “It still means a great deal to have the daughters of our friends and granddaughters of our friends as members.”38 Members, traditionally divided into age-specific crews, held bridge parties, terrace luncheons, fashion shows, dinners and dances. Gray particularly enjoyed the June luncheon where there was a competition to see “how many people would come and fill tables for Crew X or Crew XI” or others. The oldest group of women, Crew VI, would claim victory, saying “we all came,” referring to the seven surviving members. Notices of ZLAC events appeared in the San Diego Union and the Tribune. Gray recalled, “Eileen Jackson would write a column for the paper in the society news and that was it, society news, and you would look for your name and you would look for your family’s name.” She said, “When you look back on it, it seems rather shallow, the things we did, because they really didn’t make anything great for human beings…but they were fun for us.” She worried that current members neglected activities such as the Christmas Tea, for attendance “isn’t nearly what it used to be.”39 Benton, who served as President of ZLAC in 1964, noted that the club “used to get a lot of publicity in those days.”40 In the 1960s, members began to question the exclusivity of the club. The civil
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rights movement, which would transform American society, drew attention to race, class, and gender inequalities. In 1966, Marjorie N. Breitenbach drew up a list of queries in advance of the club’s 75th anniversary. She asked, “Who is a typical ZLAC? Housewife, career girl? Socially ambitious or unambitious? Conservative or liberal? Educational level? Broad-scale interests or a little provincial?” She continued, “Do you believe that ZLAC attracts, or tends to discourage, potential or actual community leaders?” Finally, “ZLAC has a highly selective membership process. Do the other 4,999,400 [sic] residents of San Diego realize that they are excluded?”41 Slowly, ZLAC began to shed its image of white gloves and tea parties in favor of a less polite, more competitive, demeanor. At the same time, rowing began to spread beyond East Coast prep schools and Ivy League campuses to include people from a variety of different social backgrounds. Brian Ford, a coach at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut, remarked, “Rowing may have preppy cachet, but it’s a hard-nosed sport and you can’t be soft.”42 Rowing became easier with the construction of Mission Bay Aquatic Park. Between 1945 and 1962, the Army Corps of Engineers dredged Mission Bay and constructed jetties, peninsulas and islands. Dredging started in 1946 at Gleason Point, now Bahia Point. By 1956, the entire area west of Ingraham Street would be cleared. Grady, who moved to Mission Bay in 1955, recalled that “those dredges would go on all night long—bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.”43 In 1959, engineers used dredged materials to extend Santa Clara Point and to create Fiesta Island.44 The development of Mission Bay, however, created potential problems for the club. In 1959, ZLAC President Mary Veed Walt told members that the Crescent Beach Development Association’s fifty-year water lease was due to expire in seventeen years. In 1976, the beach would become public property “to be used as the city sees fit.” Street ends belonging to the city “may be used as launching sites for boats unless, after the lease expires, a highway is built along the beach.” Meanwhile, R-4 zoning would cause private homes to give way to multiple dwellings “and taxes will go higher.”45 The club considered moving from Dawes Street to El Carmel Point, next to the Mission Bay Yacht Club. However, they decided to stay put, hoping that Army Corps of Engineers and the Crescent Beach Development Association would permit them to build a boathouse on concrete pilings in the bay. In 1960, the club asked architect Sim Bruce Richards to draw up plans for a new boathouse. Richards, a highly-regarded architect, had trained with Frank Lloyd Wright as a Taliesin Fellow between 1934 and 1935. In San Diego, he built dozens of homes in Mission Hills, Point Loma, and La Jolla. He also designed the nearby Mission Bay Aquatic Center (1960). The building committee felt comfortable working with him as he was “a great admirer of the work of Lillian [sic] Rice, who designed the present clubhouse, and has previously remodeled other of her projects.”46 Moreover, he was known for his use of natural materials, particularly redwood and cedar. An exhibition of his work noted that he did not see houses as man-made objects that should be separated from the landscape: “He thought people were already separated from nature to a dangerous degree. We need an architecture to return us to the earth. His houses became part of the natural land as much as the rocks and the trees.”47 Richards worked with George Saunders, structural engineer, and Jack Liebman,
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ZLAC’s new boathouse and pier, right, were designed by Sim Bruce Richards in 1962. Photo by Joe Diamond, 1963. Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd. consulting engineer, to design a U-shaped boathouse over the bay. ZLAC President Janet Ayers told the membership that:
The men have considered the minutest details, including safety for our members and boats. The motors to let the boats into the water will be finger-tip controlled, so that when a button is released everything stops, eliminating any danger. Truly we are living in a push-button age—and the total launching time will be approximately three minutes! The boat house is to be U-shaped, supported on concrete pilings, which are more attractive then metal, and do not deteriorate with weather, age or tides. The building will be open at the south end, and protected from vandals with wire gates which lock on the inside.48
Crescent Beach Development Association, however, refused to permit the construction of a structure that would block neighbors’ views of the water. The club decided, instead, to build a boathouse on the vacant lot east of the clubhouse. In 1962, Richards drew up the plans for a 2,500 square foot structure with 8 foot ceilings. The result was a striking example of American organicism. According to one architectural historian, the building combined “modern aesthetics and abstraction with a strong sensibility of place and tectonics.”49 Although the structure was modern, Richards paid attention to local building traditions and construction techniques. Architectural Digest The editors of Joe Diamond, Lois Doane, and Jean Chestnut slide the barge recognized his award-winning out to the water on concrete pathways, October 10, 1962. design. Richards also remodeled ©SDHS, UT #85:7020, Union-Tribune Collection.
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Thursday Morning Rowers in the ZLAC barge, April 7, 1973. Bow to stern: Mary Jessop, Ellen Roche, Annette Frank, Margaret Redelings, Judy Browne, Betty Sullivan, Nancy Leydecker, Suzanne Leibmann, and Mary Maddox Grandell (coxswain). ©SDHS, UT #88:K7006-3, Union-Tribune Collection. the existing boathouse into a second meeting room, the “Trophy Room,” with kitchen facilities and an upstairs apartment for the Neals. Saunders and Liebman, meanwhile, created a pier and float. ZLAC celebrated the opening of the new boathouse on October 14, 1962.50 The 1960s marked the beginning of new era for rowing. At the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, the U.S. men’s eight-oared crew suffered its first defeat in Olympic
Juniors scull on Mission Bay, April 1975. Bow to stern: Alice Lee, Anne Benton Chuter, Shelly Shaner, Patty Mallory, and Stacey Melhorn (coxswain). ©SDHS, UT #88:L9949, Union-Tribune Collection.
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history to the West German team. Americans attributed the success of both German and Soviet teams to childhood training and advanced oar and shell design. Cold War politics spurred athletic competition and rowers founded hundreds of clubs and organizations, including the U.S. National Women’s Rowing Juniors in eight-oared shell, June 26, 1975. ©SDHS, UT #88:M1263-1A, Association (1964) and the Union-Tribune Collection. National Rowing Foundation (1966). The introduction of fiberglass racing shells also encouraged competition. In 1959, the club met with representatives of SDRC to decide “whether this new type boat would be feasible for our use.”51 They ordered two 4-oared rowing shells, two penyans, and three small rowboats. SDRC housed the shells until the new boathouse could be built, trained coxswains, and showed rowers how to use and care for the new shells. Dimaris Howe Michalek remembered, “we had to keep them at the old Rowing Club which is now the Chart House. We went down there and rowed, usually on weekends.”52 In 1964, ZLAC organized its first competitive crew coached by Patty Stose Wyatt and Suzanne Liebman. The club hosted lunches to promote the West Coast Invitational Regatta, inviting the mayor and the presidents of University of California at San Diego (UCSD), San Diego State University (SDSU), and the University of San Diego (USD). Wyatt helped start the San Diego Crew Classic in 1974, the first major competition of the spring season for collegiate crews, and served as the regatta’s first general chairperson. She also served as the chairperson of rowing and canoeing at the 1984 Olympic at Lake Casitas. Michalek recalled that Wyatt was “the one we all looked up to in my era.”53 Another important member was Debbie Ayars De Angelis who became vice president and, later, president of the National Women’s Rowing Association (NWRA). During the 1970s and 1980s, the Mission Bay Aquatic Center supported the activities of many teams, including ZLAC. It operated as a joint venture of SDSU’s Associated Students and UCSD’s Physical Education Department with contributions from USD, ZLAC, and Friends of Rowing. Collegiate teams and ZLAC juniors rowed from the Del Beekley Rowing Center administered by the Mission Bay Rowing Association. At this time, ZLAC raced four-oared shells with names that reminded members of their history, Zulette, Agnes, Mariners, and Whitecaps.54 Juniors raced in the San Diego State College Invitational Regatta, the Western Intercollegiate Rowing Championships, the San Diego Crew Classic, the Long Beach Western Regional Regatta, the U.S. Women’s Rowing Championships, the Women’s Southwest Regionals, the Lake Merritt Invitational, and other regattas. In 1974, juniors Carolyn Patten, Jackie Stitt, Cathy Thaxton Tippett, Elizabeth Neeper
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Olympic Silver Medalists, Women’s quadruple sculls with coxswain, August 4, 1984, XXIII Olympiad. Left to right: Anne Marden, Lisa Rhode, Joan Lind, Ginny Gilder, and Kelly Rickon Mitchell, a coxswain from ZLAC. Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd.
McIntyre, and Nancy Gausewitz Berner won the gold medal and the national championship at the National Women’s Rowing Association event in Oakland. Patten went on to become the first varsity female coxswain at the University of Washington, Seattle. Tippett rowed on three U.S. Olympic teams, 1976, 1980, and 1984. She also participated in nine national teams competing in Europe between 1974 and 1984. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, ZLAC had two women who became National Team coxswains: Kelly Rickon Mitchell and Lynn Silliman. In 1981, ZLAC’s Sherry Ryan and Sara Vafis were the first U.S. Junior Women ever to qualify for the World Finals. Ryan later made the U.S. Junior National Rowing Team. Rickon Mitchell and her crew of four won silver medals at the 1984 Olympics in Lucerne.55 In 1976, the club was threatened with the loss of their pier and the disruption of their rowing program when the beach and shoreline around Mission Bay became city-owned property. The City of San Diego notified local residents, including ZLAC, that they would have to demolish their piers. At the time, twenty-eight private docks extended into the bay. In a speech before the Park and Recreation Board, Mary Barnise argued that ZLAC’s pier served the public. She explained that the club had shared its facilities with the Mission Bay Rowing Club and the Associated Rowing Club since 1963. She added,
We hope you all know of our active leadership and participation in the Regattas and Crew Classics on Mission Bay. Our members have also been active in West Coast and National Regattas. Needless to say – WE WANT TO KEEP ROWING – Our pier is necessary – each 4 oar shell is approx[imately] 40 feet long and quite heavy. We have the launching equipment needed and our pier was built as a rowing pier.56
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In 1984, San Diego Parks and Recreation announced that 270,000 square yards of bottom sand would be dredged from Sail Bay and deposited on shore to create a public boardwalk on the beach, San Diego Union, November 8, 1984. Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd. The club got a brief reprieve when San Diego’s Park and Recreation Board recommended that the ZLAC pier be leased to a community rowing group, later the ZLAC Pier Association.57 For eight years, it became city-owned property and a public rowing pier. The club paid a monthly rental fee to the city; it also maintained the pier and provided liability insurance.58 In 1986, however, ZLAC had to remove its pier and float. The “Master Plan for the Improvement of Sail Bay,” approved in 1977, required all piers to be removed so that the bay could be dredged and a public walkway constructed. Workers pulled up the bulkhead, cement, bricks, palm trees and one pine tree. Milly Conard recalled, “Of course, we knew when bought that property…that there was a time limit on having it a private shore. That was the only place in the whole city, I guess, that had a private beach…But it was a blow when it happened. And to lose the pier and to lose our big boats, that was the hardest part.”59 No longer able to get the heavy wooden barges to the water, the club donated ZLAC I to the San Diego Historical Society and housed ZLAC II with the Kettenburg Boat Works. The latter, built in 1910, now resides in the club’s parking lot. The club also lost its privacy with the construction of a ten-foot wide walkway along its property line. In 1990, the walkway extended along the perimeter of Sail Bay and connected a plaza at Verona Court with five “nodes” containing raised planters and concrete benches. In the June issue of Eight Oars, Joann White explained,
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In 1990, a public boardwalk with benches was built in front of the clubhouse. It is used by walkers, bicycle riders, skateboarders and others, 2007. Author’s collection. The beach in front of ZLAC is now covered with 5,200 square feet of concrete beginning at the west end of Dawes Street and ending near the east side of the clubhouse…Our node is adorned with two wide and boxy seating areas, called benches or bancos, in an L shape as well as a single banco. At the end of Dawes Street are two raised planters which are yet to be planted, two more bancos and six Bollard lights cunningly placed to trip up any sailor who tries to carry his surfboard to the shore. The promised drinking fountain has not materialized. Probably scratched from the master plan after someone poured Redi-crete into the one at Verona Court.60
Older members remarked on the growing urbanization of the area. Jesse Thomas recalled, “The changes I saw mainly were the high rises and the apartments, and the parking. It was very difficult to get parking. And if you go to the beach it seemed like a Dana Point. There were groups that seemed to take the whole area and you felt like you were a stranger there now compared to before.”61 As development changed the skyline around Mission Bay, the club became aware of the environmental consequences of population growth. Members of the Thursday Morning Rowers took up bird watching and poured over Peterson’s Field Guide in order to identify surf scoters, blue herons, king fishers, snowy egrets and other wildlife. They took up the endangered brown pelican as their mascot and regularly counted the pelicans on the dock at Mission Bay Yacht Club.62 The club also became concerned about contaminated water. In 1980, organizers canceled the San Diego Crew Classic after storm-damaged pipelines poured 13.5 million gallons of raw sewage down the San Diego River into Pacific Ocean. Over two hundred signs posted around bay warned: “Danger – Contaminated water. Keep out.”63 Sea World also contributed to poor water quality, releasing up to 9.36 million gallons of wastewater a day into Mission Bay in 2000.64
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In 1984, President Pam Palisoul and the Board of Directors expanded the junior rowing program and hired a rowing director. Members of the 1983-84 Board, standing, left to right: Anne Lindsay, Jennifer Errickson, Ellen Davis, Alice Peschel, Kak Barley, Anne Pyle, and Lettie Sullivan. Seated, left to right: Nina Anderson, Debbie Goddard, Mary Virginia Gault, Helen Wallace, and Pam Palisoul. Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd.
In the early 1980s, the club considered their role in training competitive rowers. Few members knew much about ZLAC’s relationship to Mission Bay Rowing Association (MBRA). Lettie Sullivan wrote in 1981, “I, for one, was very uninformed. I knew MBRA was on Santa Clara Point; some of our shells were over there; some of our girls were rowing out of that boathouse instead of our own, and it was costing ZLAC some money. Why?” She went on to explain that the club did not have the facilities or equipment to train junior competitive rowers. If it
New juniors pose in front of the clubhouse, 1985. Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing, Ltd.
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ZLAC juniors participate in a mixed-sex “Learn to Row” on the old barge, 1988. Courtesy ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd. wanted to “just get out of MBRA and bring rowing back home,” as some members suggested, it would have to acquire additional equipment, enlarge the boathouse, and hire a coach and rigger, among other things. ZLAC took a preliminary step towards establishing its own junior rowing program with its establishment of the ZLAC Young Women’s Rowing Association in 1984. It was intended to draw young women from all over San Diego into the sport and to give the club a new tax status. Three years later, however, it was dissolved. The club still needed the organizational leadership, facilities, and equipment that such a program required.65 Competitive rowing at the masters level began in 1986. Michalek convinced a group of ZLACs from Crew XI, all over the age of twenty-seven, to put together a boat. At the same time, her twin sister Susan Barnes began rowing with a group in Seattle coached by Dick Erickson. Together, they convinced the San Diego Crew Classic to allow the two groups to race against one another.66 After In 1990, ZLAC won first prize in the Audi Women’s Masters Eight, Age 33+, at the San that, masters women competed in the U.S. Diego Crew Classic. Pictured are Nancy Women’s Rowing Championships, the Head Durham and Kathy Spiegel. Courtesy of of the Charles, the Women’s Henley Regatta, ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd.
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In 2000, the boathouse was expanded for a second time to make room for offices and exercise facilities. Author’s collection.
and other races. In 1986, the crew won a silver medal at the Masters Nationals in Seattle. In 1991, Sue Brickson and Martha Conn won two gold medals in the Federation Internationale des Societes d’Aviron (FISA) Masters Regatta. They also took an open-water double on the thirty-two mile “Catalina to Marina del Rey Crossing” in 1996.67 A new boathouse would be key to ZLAC’s development as a rowing club. Athletic Chair Pat Kilkenny told members in 1989,
It is now time to look to the future if we want to be visible for another 100 years and to be active in the rowing community as it is today, to become self sufficient again as Mrs. Crouse did in 1895. We then need an addition to the boathouse to have room in the future for an eight and perhaps a double, so we can have a good strong competitive and recreational program.68
That year, ZLAC acquired its first eight-oared racing shell. A year later, the boathouse was extended by 22 feet to accommodate racks and boats. According to one member, “We knew the space was desperately needed when it was put to use before the construction was even completed!”69 By the late 1990s, members agreed that the boathouse was still too small. They hired architect Scott Bernet to modify and expand the structure to 3,000 square feet with 13.5 foot ceilings, allowing for the storage of many eight-foot racing shells. A second story provided additional space for offices, lockers, and an exercise room. A large balcony overlooked Sail Bay. The new boathouse, dedicated in 2000, was named in memory of Dr. P. H. Dickinson. His widow, Ruth Dickinson, provided a generous donation while his daughter and ZLAC member, Nancy Dickinson Floodberg, oversaw construction.70 By 2002, the club had changed dramatically. Ann Wallace noted that “where juniors and a few crew members were once the only regular rowers, we now have
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Masters Rowers, 2004. Adult women continue to row for recreation and competition. Courtesy of ZLAC Rowing Club, Ltd. several crews—many of whom will be off to the Head of the Charles regatta— certainly fulfilling the ideals of our founders.”71 Title IX of Educational Amendments of 1972, the first comprehensive federal law to prohibit sex discrimination against students and employees of educational institutions, was a boon to ZLAC. High-school aged girls and their parents realized that rowing could help them win athletic scholarships to prestigious universities. In 2005, more than 50 girls between the ages of 14 and 18 rowed in ZLAC’s juniors program.72 Rowing also became more popular at the masters level. According to a 2002 Wall Street Journal article, the two fastest-growing competitive categories at the Head of the Charles are high-school rowers and masters women, mostly in their late 40s and 50s. Fred Schoch, organizer of the three-mile race on the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that adult women “see their daughters going down to the boathouse and signing up for crew” and “they say, ‘I want to do that, too.’” USRowing’s Margot Shuster remarked, “We see clubs that start with three or four masters rowers and end up with so many they have to turn them away.” When the organization sponsored a Learn-to-Row day in May 2001, more than 6,000 people showed up, most of them aged 40 or older.73 In 2003, ZLAC created a coached masters program in order to draw in new members and to “encourage many of our members to get back on the water.”74 Carolyn Thomasson returned to rowing after forty years, taking part in the Southwest Regional Masters Regatta in July 2004. Each year, masters rowers raise money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and participate in the “Row for the Cure.” In 2005, one crew transformed the Polly Neal shell into the “Pink Cadillac” by adding fins and raced as the “Pink Ladies” with pink hair, pink bandanas, and rhinestone glasses.75 Social activities continue to be an important part of club life. Each year, ZLAC hosts a dinner for participants in the San Diego Crew Classic. It also holds award
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banquets for its junior and master rowers. Masters rowers who complete more than fifty days of rowing in two calendar years receive the “Order of the Brown Pelican” while juniors get “The Sandpiper Award.” On Salt Water Day, ZLAC christens new boats such as the Ellen Scripps Davis and the Kesinger. Fundraisers include wine tasting events, an Oktoberfest, and a Very Merry Craft Bazaar. Members also gather at the clubhouse for special events. Sally Lyons noted, “ZLAC has meant a great deal to me…All big occasions have been celebrated here: our fortieth anniversary, our fiftieth anniversary, my eightieth birthday, my husband’s memorial service. My children learned to swim at ZLAC.”76 ZLAC also works to extend the benefits of rowing to girls and women from all social backgrounds. Every year, the club offers educational programs for both juniors and masters. It also participates in USRowing’s annual “Learn-to-Row” day, offering the public tours of the boathouse and erg room and providing a history of the clubhouse and club.77 In 2005, ZLAC president Nancy Perry wrote,
For over 100 years the club has addressed difficult issues, adapted to the needs of the younger generations but at all times honoring the older members and the wonderful tradition of the club. I would like to believe that we were continuing to adapt our club to the needs of our members—who span eight generations.78
Members remain upbeat about the future of ZLAC. Michalek remarked,
One thing I must say is that they are still here. They have survived two World Wars and they’ve survived all kinds of depressions and recessions and whatever, they still have their property. They are still debt-free. They are still on Mission Bay. They are still turning out good athletes. It is still one of the best support groups and networking groups that I belong to.79
The San Diego Historical Society’s new exhibit, “Places of Promise,” will feature ZLAC’s barge, “ZLAC I,” built in 1895 by Fred Carter, well-known on the East Coast as the architect and designer of the famous Herreschoff yachts. @SDHS.
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NOTES
1. Helen Wetzell Wallace, A History of the ZLAC Rowing Club (San Diego: private printing, [1992]), 36. See also Helen Wallace, “The ZLAC Rowing Club,” The Journal of San Diego History (JSDH) 6, no. 4 (1960): 97-100. 2. San Diego Historical Society, Curatorial Collection Files, “ZLAC Barge”; “No Easy Ride for Antique Barge,” Los Angeles Times, August 26, 1989. 3. Thomas E. Weil, “A Brief Time-Line of Rowing,” Friends of Rowing History, http://www. rowinghistory.net/Time%20Line/Time%20Line.htm (accessed March 22, 2007); Karen J. Jackson, “The Development of Women’s Rowing in Southern California” (master’s thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 1997), 6. 4. Jackson, “The Development of Women’s Rowing in Southern California,” 46-58 passim. 5. Wallace, A History of the ZLAC Rowing Club, 14-15. 6. Ibid., 22, 31. 7. ZLAC Rowing Club…By-Laws, House Rules, List of Members, January 1, 1922 (San Diego: private printing, [1922]). 8. Wallace, A History of the ZLAC Rowing Club, 49-50. 9. Members of the ZLAC Rowing Club interviewed by Ruth V. Held, March 30, 31, and April 8, 1992, SDHS Oral History, 5. 10. Wallace, A History of the ZLAC Rowing Club, 51-52. Crouse compared and contrasted the properties at Mission Bay and La Playa and a special meeting held on December 13, 1926. Property at La Playa was rejected by the club as too expensive. According to club records, “The majority by the vote of the crews stood for Mission Bay as an investment if not as a permanent place for the clubhouse. The lots at Mission Bay cost $5,000 and were 100 feet on the water front and 200 feet deep and were situated on the corner of Dawes and Pacific. The lots at La Playa max 175 x 150 and the cost $10,000 but this was not on the water front.” They purchased Lots 14 and 15 of the Southern Title Guarantee Company’s subdivision of Pueblo Lot 1801, map 1864, filed October 20, 1925. Minutes, ZLAC Board of Directors, 1921-29, 110-111. 11. Ibid., 115. In 1930 and 1931, the club again considered purchasing property at La Playa offered for sale by Mrs. Harold Augier as the State of California was “expected to file suit to quiet title to the tide lands in Mission Bay and so jeopardize the tide lands lease held by the club from the state.” Minutes, ZLAC Board of Directors, 1929-1931, 61. In 1941, ZLAC purchased an additional lot adjoining the clubhouse for $2,500. Minutes, ZLAC Board of Directors, June 10, 1941. 12. The Number 16 line was closed in 1940. Zelma Bays Locker, “Remember Old Number Sixteen? Recollections of the La Jolla Street Car Line,” JSDH 23, no. 4 (1977). 13. On January 10, 1930, the club met with Lilian Rice who had “visited the new clubhouse site at Braemar previous to the meeting to inspect the paving and drainage conditions. On motion, it was decided that while the club might find it advisable to use 100 (one hundred) feet of leased tide lands it was decided to ask the Pacific Beach Improvement Club to co-operate with the Zlacs to place the sea wall 50 (fifty) feet beyond the Rowing Club’s property line and to ask the other property owners to conform with a contour of proper curve to meet that outer line.” Minutes, ZLAC Board of Directors, 1929-1931, 19-20. 14. Minutes, Board of Directors, 1929-1931, 19-20, 97, 106-107. Tom Allen was the engineer in charge of the project. He later worked with Glenn Rick on the development of Mission Bay Park. Ed Gabrielson, “Mission Bay Aquatic Park: The History of Planning and Land Acquisition,” JSDH 48, no. 1 (2002), 38- 47 passim. 15. Minutes, ZLAC Board of Directors, 1929-1931, insert, 114. 16. “Lilian Rice,” SDHS Biographical Files. 17. San Diego Union, March 2, 1986, F-6. 18. “Lilian Rice,” SDHS Biographical Files. 19. Wallace, A History of the ZLAC Rowing Club, 57-58, 69
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20. Minutes, ZLAC Board of Directors, 1929-1931, 28, 97. 21. Eight Oars, September 1954. 22. Braemar, a Tudor Revival house (1906), was razed in 1959 to make way for the Catamaran Resort Hotel. The dining room, added in 1920, was preserved for use as the Catamaran Wedding Chapel. In 1985, the Pacific Beach Town Council, with the help of Vernon Taylor and Erma Taylor O’Brien, moved the structure to a vacant lot at Grand and Bayard Avenues. It then was moved to Navy-owned property along Rose Creek and renamed “Rose Creek Cottage.” In October 1986, it was moved once again to 2525 Garnet Avenue, http://www.rosecreekcottage.net/history.html (accessed March 25, 2007). 23. Virginia Anne Lynch Grady, interviewed by Dimaris Michalek, September 19, 2005, SDHS Oral History. 24. Ibid. 25. Wallace, A History of the ZLAC Rowing Club, 35-38 passim. 26. Mary Virginia Lovelly Gault, interviewed by Dimaris Michalek, September 12, 2005, SDHS Oral History. 27. Dorothy Rock, interviewed by Dimaris Michalek, September 16, 2005, SDHS Oral History. 28. Mary Virginia Lovelly Gault, interviewed by Dimaris Michalek, September 12, 2005, SDHS Oral History. 29. Wallace, A History of ZLAC Rowing Club, 90-95 passim. 30. Mary Virginia Lovelly Gault, interviewed by Dimaris Michalek, September 12, 2005, SDHS Oral History. 31. Susan E. Cayleff, Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 86, 92-93. 32. Donald J. Mrozek, “The ‘Amazon’ and the American ‘Lady’: Sexual Fears of Women as Athletes,” in From ‘Fair Sex’ to Feminism: Sport and the Socialization of Women in the Industrial and Post-Industrial Eras, ed. J. A. Mangan and Roberta J. Park (London: Frank Cass and Co., Ltd., 1987), 286. See also Susan K. Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sports (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 4, 215. 33. Katherine Pendleton Barley, interviewed by Lou Hassan, September 28, 2005, SDHS Oral History; Wallace, A History of the ZLAC Rowing Club, 84-89. The film, shot in part on location at Lake Arrowhead, starred Dorothy Wilson and Douglass Montgomery. It was directed by Richard Wallace. Paramount Studio leased racing shells from the University of California, Berkeley, and hired a coaches. For the first time, ZLAC members rowed in an eight-oared shell instead of a barge. 34. Mary Virginia Lovelly Gault, interviewed by Dimaris Michalek, September 12, 2005, SDHS Oral History. 35. Minutes, ZLAC Board of Directors, 1929-1931, passim; Minutes, ZLAC Board of Directors, 1946- 1966, passim. 36. Gene Nelson Gray, interviewed by Dimaris Michalek, September 29, 2005, SDHS Oral History. 37. Mariella “Mary Agnes” Benton, interviewed by Ginny Rodriguez, March 15, 2006, SDHS Oral History. Her mother-in-law, Hazel C. Benton, and sister-in-law, Betty Benton Bellon, were members of ZLAC as was her husband’s aunt, Mary Benton Fraiser. 38. Sally Lyons, interviewed by Ginny Rodriguez, August 30, 2005, SDHS Oral History. 39. Ibid. 40. Mariella “Mary Agnes” Benton, interviewed by Ginny Rodriguez, March 15, 2006, SDHS Oral History. 41. “ZLAC Rowing Club,” Document File, SDHS. In 1960, the city of San Diego had a population of 573,224 while the county had a population of 1,033,011. http://www.sandiegohistory.org/links/ sandiegopopulation.htm (accessed March 29, 2007). 42. “Backtalk; All Sugar and Competitive Spice,” New York Times, May 17, 1998.
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43. Virginia Anne Lynch Grady, interviewed by Dimaris Michalek, September 19, 2005, SDHS Oral History. 44. Gabrielson, “Mission Bay Aquatic Park,” 38-47 passim. 45. “A Message from Your President,” Eight Oars, May 1959. 46. “Sim Bruce Richards, AIA (1908-1983),” Modern San Diego, http://www.modernsandiego.com/ SimBruceRichards.html (accessed March 26, 2007); “Some Possibilities and Problems with Future Needs of ZLAC Rowing Club,” September 12, 1960; Minutes, ZLAC Board of Directors, September 5, 1961. They also decided that his previous works “denote a feeling and insight where fine treatment of various woods is desired.” 47. “Richards Left His Mark on San Diego Architecture,” Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1984. See also Phyllis van Doren, “Sim Bruce Richards: The Sensuous Environment,” San Diego Home and Garden (April, 1984). 48. “President’s Message,” Eight Oars, May 1961. In 1961, the club contributed $3,500 towards dredging the north end of Mission Bay. 49. S. M. Can Bilsel, interviewed by author, March 26, 2007. 50. “Past President’s Message,” Eight Oars, April 1962. 51. Wallace, A History of the ZLAC Rowing Club, 106. 52. Members of the ZLAC Rowing Club interviewed by Ruth V. Held, March 30, 31, and April 8, 1992, SDHS Oral History. 53. Ibid. Founders of the San Diego Crew Classic included Patty Wyatt, Joe Jessop Sr., Andy Borthwick, Glenn Rick, Del Beekley, Al Bernardini, A. Wharton Coggeshall, Annette Frank, Mary Ann Mabel Hazard, Richard Jessop, General Victor Krulak, Fred Sharp and Donald Waters. Erin Kelley, “History of the San Diego Crew Classic,” http://www.crewclassic.org/History_text.htm (accessed April 12, 2007). 54. Wallace, A History of the ZLAC Rowing Club, 158-160. 55. Members of the ZLAC Rowing Club interviewed by Ruth V. Held, March 30, 31, and April 8, 1992, SDHS Oral History. 56. “Mrs. Anthony Barnise, Past President, ZLAC Rowing Club, to Park and Recreation Board – March 16, 1976,” ZLAC Pier Association, Inc., Minute Book, 1979. 57. The ZLAC Pier Association’s articles of incorporation were filed with the State on January 28, 1977. 58. A member noted that “there was much adverse publicity and outcry from the public…regarding the encroachment of private facilities on a public beach.” ZLAC hired Paul Peterson “to negotiate with the city about retaining our dock and getting it included in the master plan for Sail Bay.” However, their pier was not included in the “Master Plan for the Improvement of Sail Bay,” approved by the Council on November 2, 1977. The plan called for an enlarged sand beach and landscaped walkway extending from Verona Court to Moorland Drive. At the apex of the bay, a wooden boardwalk would be built in front of nine private homes between West and East Briarfield drives. “History of ZLAC Pier Association,” ZLAC Pier Association, Inc., Minute Book, 1979; “Sail Bay Beach Project Seen Ready by ’86,” San Diego Union, November 8, 1984. 59. Minutes, ZLAC Board of Directors, April 6, 1976; Eight Oars, December 1986; Members of the ZLAC Rowing Club interviewed by Ruth V. Held, March 30, 31, and April 8, 1992, SDHS Oral History. 60. Joann White, “Sail Bay Improvements Phase III, Or a Word about the Pedestrian Nodes for Those Who Have Not Seen Them,” Eight Oars, June 1990. 61. Jesse E. Thomas, interviewed by Ginny Rodriguez, April 10, 2006, SDHS Oral History. 62. Wallace, A History of the ZLAC Rowing Club, 165. 63. “No Swimming or Boating as Sewage Pollutes Bay,” Associated Press, April 7, 1980. 64. “Regional Water Board Approves Sea World Wastewater Discharge Permit,” Associated Press, April 13, 2000. Many new rowers get vaccinated against Hepatitis A & B in the event that their boat capsizes into polluted water. 65. Wallace, A History of the ZLAC Rowing Club, 163.
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66. Eight Oars, April 2002. 67. Wallace, 183-184; Eight Oars, November-December, 1996. 68. Eight Oars, July 1989. 69. House Report, May 1990-April 1991; Architect Peter Rodi helped the club plan the expansion in 1986 while Jim Nickoloff prepared drawings to submit for permits in 1989. Eight Oars, January- February, 1986; Minutes, ZLAC Board of Directors, September 5, 1989. 70. Laurie Wright, “P. H. Dickinson Boathouse, National Rowing Day, June 10, 2006,” ZLAC Rowing Club files. 71. Eight Oars, November 2002. 72. Ibid; Eight Oars, November 2005. 73. Bill Richards, “Paddle Pushers: Landlubbers who never so much as crossed a millpond are taking up competitive rowing,” Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2002. 74. Eight Oars, November 2003. 75. ZLAC Masters Scrapbook, 2004-06; Eight Oars, November 2005. 76. Sally Lyons, interviewed by Ginny Rodriguez, August 30, 2005, SDHS Oral History. 77. For more information, see ZLAC’s website, http://www.zlac.org (accessed March 29, 2007). 78. Eight Oars, October 2005. In 2006, ZLAC was acknowledged as the oldest women’s rowing club in the world by the Rowing Museum in Henley, England. ZLAC is now part of a five-year display about the history of rowing at that museum. 79. Members of the ZLAC Rowing Club interviewed by Ruth V. Held, March 30, 31, and April 8, 1992, SDHS Oral History.
116 Coming Out Gay, Coming Out Christian:
The Beginnings of GLBT Christianity in San Diego, 1970-1979 Joshua Grace, Christopher Rhamey Megan Dukett, Kaylin Gill, Ricky Bell Winner of the James S. Copley Library Award
Can a person be a practicing homosexual and a Christian at the same time? Before the late 1960s, the integration of these seemingly contradictory terms was uncommon. By 1979, however, the concept of a homosexual Christian produced San Diego’s first coalition of gay religious groups, Ministries United for Gay Understanding. For gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) individuals making a claim on the Christian identity, this represented a significant paradigm shift that allowed the gay community to produce its own concept of the relationship between homosexuality and Christianity: fully gay, fully Christian. This paper shows how certain members of San Diego’s GLBT community began to define themselves as both gay and Christian between 1970 and 1979. In the early years, GLBT Christianity developed in the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), which appealed primarily to the homosexual community, and in Dignity, an organization of gay Catholics that did not have the sanction of the Roman Catholic Church. After 1975, Integrity, an organization of gay Episcopalians, and a group called Lutherans Concerned worked to be accepted as integral parts of their mainstream churches. By 1979, these four groups, through the Ministries United for Gay Understanding, asked San Diegans to accept that they could be both gay and Christian. This paper emphasizes four themes. First, the institutional movement was founded on the premise that practicing homosexuals could be fully Christian. Second, the movement went from trying to create separate gay spiritual institutions to arguing for inclusion within mainstream denominations. MCC and Dignity are examples of gay faith communities willing to create gay spaces separate from mainstream Christianity. Integrity and Lutherans Concerned, meanwhile, sought to work within established denominations. Third, MCC and Dignity led GLBT Christians’ outreach to the San Diego community. Fourth, gay Christians in San Diego contributed to the national movement of GLBT Christianity. Given San Francisco’s reputation as a center of gay culture, few people realize that Southern California, especially Los Angeles and San Diego, were early catalysts both theologically and institutionally for GLBT Christians.
Josh Grace, Kaylin Gill, Megan Dukett, and Ricky Bell are graduates of Point Loma Nazarene Univer- sity. Josh Grace is a Fulbright Scholar studying in Tanzania, while Megan Dukett works with the park services at the Capistrano Mission. Kaylin Gill is seeking a multiple subject credential in San Diego; Ricky Bell is currently working in the San Diego area. Christopher Rhamey is currently a senior looking to graduate next spring from Point Loma Nazarene University. They would all like to thank Dr. Dwayne Little for his dedication and hard work.
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The homosexual rights movement developed between 1945 and the passing of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. Historians have identified events of the post-World War II era as crucial to the creation of a sustained movement. For example, Allan Berube and John D’ Emilio identified war mobilization and post-war politics as important factors in a group “awakening” as they allowed gay men and women to interact in new ways, even as they became targets of institutionalized discrimination by the military and government.1 Reports on sexual behavior published by Alfred C. Kinsey in 1948 and 1953 also stimulated a powerful change of consciousness within the GLBT community. Kinsey suggested that a higher percentage of males and females engaged in homosexual acts than society previously accepted. He argued that homosexuality was not a disease of the select few, but a sexual preference of many Americans. Many churches and church leaders immediately challenged the Kinsey Reports.2 Billy Graham stated, “It is impossible to estimate the damage it will do to the already deteriorating morals of America.” His view was supported by the head of the Union Theological Seminary who saw Kinsey’s report as “a prevailing degradation in American morality approximating the worst decadence of the Roman Empire.”3 Nevertheless, Kinsey’s reports changed “the nature of public discussion of sexuality as well as society’s perception of its own behavior.”4 While their validity continues to be challenged, the reports made sexuality a topic in public discourse. In the wake of 1960s legislation protecting the legal rights of African Americans and women, many gays and lesbians took hope and began to create organizations, institutions, and communities for themselves.5 While the more confrontational gay liberation movement looked to overthrow patriarchy, advocates of the gay civil rights movement attempted to transform existing patriarchal institutions and neighborhoods. In San Diego, the emergence of the Hillcrest neighborhood as a gay “haven and home” typified national trends of what Michael Dillinger calls “gay-motivated positive gentrification,” or more simply “the investment of the gay community in itself.” Dillinger describes how the gay and lesbian community transformed Hillcrest from a run-down neighborhood of an “aged population” into the center of gay culture and vitality.6 Similarly, some GLBT community members sought to extend this transforming concept into the Christian sphere. By 1979, four well-established GLBT Christian groups were promoting gay Christianity to the San Diego public.7 The confluence of homosexuality and Christianity in San Diego began in April 1970 when the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) created an environment for gays and lesbians to integrate their sexuality and faith. Led by Reverend Troy Perry and Howard Williams, this extension of the Los Angeles home church opened in Hillcrest and encompassed parishioners from diverse Christian traditions.8 Since orthodox theology had been used to condemn their sexuality, MCC used a new theology to affirm homosexuality as a gift from God. Locally, it was the first church of this kind and provided the foundation on which GLBT organizations could create gay, Christian spaces in San Diego. Both MCC’s theology and warm, accepting fellowship were important in grounding the concept of GLBT Christianity for the local gay community. MCC San Diego adopted a dual-purposed gay theology, or what Perry called “liberal evangelical” theology.9 First, it attempted to discredit the so-called “clobber passages” in the Bible used to condemn homosexuality. “Clobber
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passages” was a term used within the gay Christian community to describe the verses that argue that homosexual acts are sinful. Perry pointed to the misuse of scripture against minority groups throughout history: “I knew the church had held biblical interpretations–sometimes for centuries–that it later came to see as misinterpretations. Sadly, this happened with the biblical justification of slavery, the oppression of women, and acceptance of racism. In each of these cases, the Church came to admit that centuries of biblical interpretation were in error.”10 MCC recast the “clobber passages” with new meanings. The church argued that Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed because they tolerated homosexuality, but because they had a widespread distain for social justice. In addition, Perry reinterpreted the sexual prohibitions listed in the Apostle Paul’s letters when he said, “I do believe that the apostle Paul, according to the original Greek of Romans 1:26-28, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10, condemned temple prostitutes– both male and female–and pederasts. But he did not condemn homosexual persons per se. On the other hand, he probably wasn’t even aware of the possibility of loving, committed same-sex relationships.”11 In short, MCC rejected the literal interpretations of the scriptures commonly used to attack homosexuality as sinful, saying that they were based on a misreading of the original languages and cultural ignorance of early Christianity.12 Gay positive theology argued that homosexuality was not a detriment to the Christian identity but, instead, a gift from God. The MCC community contended that Jesus and many of the disciples chose alternate and possibly gay-affirming lifestyles. For example, they used Jesus’s description of eunuchs “being born” to argue that Christ did not expect everyone to create a heterosexual union. Perry also used Galatians to contend that fear of God, not “respect of persons,” defined the Christian life.13 This attitude asserted that, far from being a detriment to Christianity, GLBT Christians could be instrumental in fulfilling Jesus’ Great Commission. Perry stated: “God is using you to do His will. It says in the Bible, God’s people are peculiar and there is no one more peculiar than us.”14 Instead of accepting the traditional view that homosexual acts were sinful, MCC told its parishioners and the gay community how their current lifestyle could be used for the glory of God. Gay positive theology became the foundation of an environment that pulled GLBT Christians into new spaces. Original members of MCC often felt that they had been pushed out of mainstream churches. Now, they were pulled into a community that celebrated the confluence of the homosexual Christian. More than a faith community, MCC created a space that allowed GLBT Christians to identify with other gays and “come out” safely.15 As Pat McAaron, an early MCC parishioner states, “With MCC I found comfort, friendship, in a time of great adjustment for me. Through my experience at MCC I knew more people within the gay community.”16 MCC was, above all, a place where GLBT Christians were pulled and pushed to safely explore a homosexual version of Christianity outside popular traditions. In this respect, it did not differ from other MCC sister churches across the nation and world.17 Many of the gay and lesbian organizations in San Diego had their roots in the MCC community. Historian Frank Nobiletti suggested that San Diego “had a powerful ‘Gay Church’…with strong leadership that offered stability, open arms to the community at large, and a physical base, even in the early days.” He pointed
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out, “The Prodigal newsletter, published biweekly by the MCC, was San Diego’s first regularly published gay publication. In gay communities where isolation had been the hallmark, the importance of this institution cannot be over estimated. It went far beyond church news, covering the whole emerging community and became a springboard for other publications.”18 MCC San Diego, the third MCC congregation to be organized in California, combined a Christian evangelical purpose with openness to become the early center of gay social, cultural, and political activities.19 The early success of MCC San Diego led to the creation of Dignity, a gay, Catholic group. Patrick Nidorf formed the organization in 1969 as a venue for members to openly discuss sexuality and faith. Although the group quickly moved to Los Angeles to meet greater demand, many gay Catholics remained in San Diego.20 McArron, a Catholic expelled from a seminary following accusations, attended MCC. He stated, “When I attended MCC it had a Catholic feel to it. I believe that was due to the early church leadership having a Catholic background.”21 In 1972, McArron was informed about a Dignity advertisement in the National Catholic Reporter (NPR). He wrote the organization and visited with the president of Dignity in Los Angeles: “I informed him that I knew of no one in San Diego who was gay and Catholic. After assuring me that he would take care of that minor detail, I returned to San Diego all fired up and filled with enthusiasm.”22 On May 30, 1972, the San Diego chapter of Dignity had its first meeting with an attendance of twelve, including two former nuns, and soon began to hold masses at Old Town’s Cardijn Center.23 Could one be a practicing homosexual and Roman Catholic at the same time? McArron believed that MCC had demonstrated the ability to integrate homosexuality and Christianity. It would be a challenge to integrate homosexuality and Catholicism, particularly given the fact that the Roman Catholic Church continued to oppose such practices as birth control. Yet this was the chasm Dignity sought to bridge, at least in theory.24 Its mission statement read: “We work for the development of sexual theology leading to the reform of its teachings and practices regarding human sexuality, and for the acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender peoples as full and equal members of the one Christ.”25 Unlike MCC, which detached itself from established traditions, Dignity sought to reform the Catholic Church from within. Members of Dignity gradually came to realize that their reform efforts would have little effect. Their mission statement was rejected by the Roman Catholic Church and, in 1975, the Vatican produced a “Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics.” It stated: “At the present time there are those who…have begun to judge indulgently, and even excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.”26 Nevertheless, members of Dignity felt a need to maintain a bond to the institution that had defined their faith for millennia. By 1979, Dignity, like its predecessor MCC, was not a reforming organization but a community of gay Catholics who affirmed the possibility of integrating their traditional faith with homosexuality. In the end, Dignity did not reform the institutional church but, like MCC, attempted to create new spiritual homes for gay Christians. Dignity San Diego established communities where Catholics could be openly gay and re-establish their “dignity.”27 McArron explained, “Initially, Dignity was organized to
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bring gays and lesbians in communication and open discussion to help create a community.”28 The organization sought to relieve the loneliness often felt by GLBT Catholics and to “reinforce their sense of self-acceptance and dignity and encourage full participation in the life of the Church and society.”29 Social psychologists Donileen R. Loseke and James C. Cavendish suggested that Dignity was more a “support group” for sexually marginalized Catholics than a reformation.30 While MCC was content to create a new environment detached from mainstream influences, Dignity tacitly sought and needed a relationship with its mother church. Catholic parishioners relied upon the Church to receive the Eucharist, last rites and other blessings. Off-duty priests, known as chaplains, visited Dignity meetings and served the Eucharist regularly through the year and less frequently during the summer. McAaron explained: “Why am I doing this? If we, the GLBT community, walk away from the R[oman] C[atholic] C[hurch] we feel we would lose credibility. We want to remain with the identity of a RCC organization.”31 According to some, it was more complicated to be a gay Catholic than to be a GLBT Christian. MCC leader David Farell attempted to describe Dignity members’ relationship to the Catholic Church: “You know, I really love my mother. She doesn’t know me real well. And I know she’d be freaked out by some aspects of my life. But I could never simply reject her . . . It’s like my relationship with the church. I have to live with her and she has to live with me.”32 In the 1970s, Integrity and Lutherans Concerned began working for the normalization of homosexuality within mainstream denominations. Integrity, an affiliate of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, was founded in 1975 by Louie Crew in San Francisco. Lutherans Concerned, an organization within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) was formed in 1978.33 These groups differed from MCC and Dignity because they sought to include homosexual Christians within their churches without any distinction. They sought nothing less than the removal of the qualifier homosexual from the term homosexual Christian. Locally, the chapters remained very small.34 Integrity and Lutherans Concerned expanded the agenda of the GLBT Christian movement. It was no longer enough to create independent gay spaces; GLBT Christians now wanted to reform existing mainstream denominations. One unnamed Lutherans Concerned member stated that their goal was to remove the taboo status of homosexual from GLBT Christianity: “…We are trying to change the attitude toward the homosexual as someone utterly different from the heterosexual.”35 By the late 1970s, the reform language focused on the possibility of gay, or rather openly gay, leadership in mainstream denominations. Notable discussions followed the ordination of an openly lesbian priest, Ellen Barrett, in New York in 1977. During the visit of Integrity’s President John Lawrence to San Diego in 1979, Episcopalians began to talk about the possibility of openly gay priests. Although Lutherans Concerned and Integrity forced their denominations to clarify their policies toward these issues, immediate reform did not occur and has not occurred to the present. In 1979, MCC, Dignity, Integrity, and Lutherans Concerned worked together to create the Ministries United for Gay Understanding. In addition to ministering to their own members on issues such as harassment of gays, the coalition worked to promote public understanding of GLBT Christianity through meetings – including a local GLBT ecumenical council in 1979 – and radio and television shows. While
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the addition of Integrity and Lutherans Concerned brought GLBT concepts of Christianity to mainstream denominations, it was the groups who created uniquely gay spaces, MCC and Dignity, who led the coalition’s outreach to the public.36 The nominal reception was cold. MCC’s efforts to broadcast on Christian television and radio met with cancellations, forcing them into legal battles over breach of contract. Two developments at this time began to distract attention from the “gay Christian” cause. Increasingly the issues of homosexual rights were being folded into the larger civil rights movement. Meanwhile, the conservative backlash against homosexual rights led by popular singer Anita Bryant and the Religious Right reached its zenith.37 By 1979, the confluence of homosexuality and the Christian faith in San Diego was firmly rooted. Beginning as a conceptual issue in the late 1960s, the idea of gay Christianity moved from creating gay spaces at MCC and Dignity to arguing for normalization in established churches by Integrity and Lutherans Concerned. The early movement then culminated in a united front to promote gay understanding among members of the public.38 How much did this movement accomplish? Not only did both MCC and Integrity open new local chapters in 1979 and 1980 respectively but, even more important, these GLBT Christian institutions survived a conservative backlash during the 1980s and the loss of many members to AIDS. The formative years of the GLBT Christian movements discussed in this paper are important and raise other significant issues. All four of the groups studied, or their related successors, are still active in 2007, and they have variously struggled and succeeded. There have been problems of leadership, difficulties finding places of worship, political opposition, and theological controversy. Some churches’ opposition is as firm as ever; others continue to work on policies of inclusion. Much remains to be studied. There are other gay Christian and Jewish organizations, gays who remained within their churches, and varying policies of churches regarding gay membership and leadership. It is clear from this research that the interactions of gays with their churches, and of the churches with their gay members, have and will continue to play pivotal roles in a movement important in San Diego, the nation, and the world.
NOTES
1. Allan Berube, Coming out Under Fire: the History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990); John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: the Making of the Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). 2. For a good discussion of mainline churches, homosexuality and the response to this report see, Melissa M. Wilcox, “Of Markets and Missions: the Early History of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches,” Religion and American Culture 11, no. 1 (2001), 92-95. An article that deals with more recent issues is James K. Wellman Jr., “Introduction: The Debate Over Homosexual Ordination: Subcultural Identity Theory in American Religious Organizations,” Review of Religious Research 41, no. 2 (1999): 184-206. 3. Cited in Neil Miller, Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present (Advocate Books: New York, 2005), 278-79. 4. William Cochran, Frederick Mosteller and John Tukey, “Statistical Problems of the Kinsey Report,” Journal of the American Statistical Association 48, no. 264 (1953): 673-715. “Our own opinion is that KPM are engaged in a complex program of researching involving many problems of measurement
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and sampling, for some of which there appear at present to be no satisfactory solutions. While much remains to be done, our overall impression of their work to date is favorable” (674). See also Erdman Palmore, “Published Reactions to the Kinsey Report,” in Social Forces 31, no. 2 (1952), 165, 167, 172; Vern L. Bullough, “Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Report: Historical and Lasting Contributions,” Journal of Sex Research 35, no. 2 (1998): 127-31; Roy A. Burkhart, “Church Can Answer the Kinsey Report,” The Christian Century, 65 (September 15, 1978), 942-943. For a good report on how certain Christian institutions responded with social science research, see Joseph K. Folsom, “Kinsey’s Challenge to Ethics and Religion,” Social Problems 1, no. 4 (1954): 164-168. It is interesting that a constant theme is the contestation of theological norms using biblical exegesis and social science data; both sides of this social movement were concerned with using their centers of learning–especially Midwestern colleges for gay Lutherans–to assert their views. 5. Wilcox, “Of Markets and Missions,” 88-89. Founder Troy Perry’s frequent references to Martin Luther King Jr. are particularly important. For the influence of civil liberties on American attitudes toward homosexuality, see Jeni Loftus, “America’s Liberalization in Attitudes toward Homosexuality, 1973 to 1998,” American Sociological Review, 66, no. 5 (2001), 12-13; Alan S. Yang, “Trends: Attitudes Toward Homosexuality,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 61, no. 3 (1997), 5. 6. Michael E. Dillinger, “Hillcrest: From Haven to Home,” The Journal of San Diego History 46, no. 4 (2000): 144-163. 7. Wilcox describes the factors that led to GLBT Christianity and the reasons for its longevity. Like other authors and the subjects of our interviews, Wilcox emphasizes the civil rights aspect of the GLBT Christian movement. Many of her conclusions are beyond the scope of this study, but similar research is needed for both San Diego and Los Angeles GLBT Christian organizations. Wilcox, “Of Markets and Missions,” 83-108 passim. 8. Lee Bowman, interviewed by Kaylin Raigoza and Christopher Rhamey, written transcripts, San Diego, CA, February 16, 2006. In the late 1960s, a number of GLBT Christians began a series of Bible studies in the home of Rev. Ed Hansen, pastor of Chollas View United Methodist Church. After learning of MCC Los Angeles, Howard Williams of the Hillcrest group asked Perry to meet with them. For several months Perry commuted from Los Angeles to San Diego until a formal MCC church could be organized. The institutional commencement of MCC San Diego was preceded by a weekend revival led by Perry in early March, 1970. 9. Wilcox, “Of Markets and Missions,” 89. 10. Troy Perry, “Metropolitan Community Church Announces Theological Breakthrough,” Scouting for All: Committed to Scouting, Open to Diversity, www.scoutingforall.org/aaic/2002042501.shtml (accessed April 2006). 11. Perry, “Metropolitan Community Church Announces Theological Breakthrough.” See also W. Bernard Lokenbill, “Observations on the Corporate Culture of a Gay and Lesbian Congregation,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 37, no. 3 (1998), 444; “Gays and the Gospel: An Interview with Troy Perry,” Christian Century 113, no. 27 (1996), 897. 12. For a study on the role of scripture in gay Christian identity integration, see Eric M. Rodriguez and Suzanne C. Ouellette, “Gay and Lesbian Christians: Homosexual and Religious Identity Integration in the Members and Participants of a Gay-Positive Church,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39, no. 3 (2000): 333-342. 13. Perry, “Metropolitan Community Church Announces Theological Breakthrough.” 14. Rita Gillmon, “Area Church’s Ministry Includes Homosexuals,” San Diego Union, May 13, 1978, B3. 15. Interviewed members often equated their treatment in mainstream churches with Stonewall Riots in San Francisco. The push factors are the theme in an informative a San Diego Union article that focuses mostly on obstacles as well as the gay perspective in ‘choosing’ or not choosing to be gay. Rita Gillmon, “Area Church’s Ministry Includes Homosexuals,” San Diego Union, May 13, 1978, B3. During our interviews, however, we noticed that the push factors were equally or more important than the pull factors, that is, the gay community and the possibility of a gay Christian, in creating GLBT Christianity. This is also the theme of Rodriguez’s and Ouellette’s research on individual integration of gay Christians. The push and pull factors of the early MCC are described in Wilcox, “Of Markets and Missions,” 98-100. 16. Pat McAaron, interviewed by Megan Dukett, written transcript, San Diego, CA, April 31, 2006.
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17. Rodriguez and Ouellette, “Gay and Lesbian Christians,” 333-342 passim. It was somewhat ironic that a Christian church became as a focal point for gay activities as “the Church” was often accused of oppressing homosexuals. 18. Frank Nobiletti, “The Radical Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life in San Diego: 1970-1975,” conference paper presented in a graduate seminar at University of California, San Diego, March, 1990, version 3, 13, 16. Nobiletti is currently the president of the Lambda Archives and an adjunct professor at San Diego State University. The Lambda Archives is a rich source of GLBT information, with a special emphasis on the San Diego area, http://www.lambdaarchives.org/. The Greek letter “Lambda” was chosen because it signifies unity under oppression and is often used as a GLBT symbol. 19. Although MCC became one of the most significant organizations within the homosexual community, MCC did not consider itself a “gay church.” According to the Prodigal newsletter, a name taken from the parable of the prodigal son, “MCC is not a gay church…This is what MCC is about. MCC opens its doors to all! MCC rejects none! To date, the group feeling most rejected, and flocking to MCC’s doors are the gays,” The Prodigal, 2, no. 24 (1971). The Prodigal was published as an organ of Christian outreach to the Homophile Community by the Metropolitan Community Church of San Diego, California. It was chartered on June 7, 1970 and edited by John Wild, Jr. 20. Dignity USA: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Catholics, “Highlights of Dignity USA’s History, 1969-Present,” www.dignityusa.org/archives/history.html (accessed April 17, 2006). Until the late 1970s, Dignity had no home. Patrick Nidorf resided in San Diego through 1970 but meetings took place in Los Angeles. An advertisement in the Los Angeles Free Press preceding the first official meeting states: “Join Dignity, a Catholic group of intelligent gay men and women. We share successful ways of bringing dignity into our lives. Honest talk/sensitivity/sincere people. Applicants screened. Write: Fr. Pat, Box 4486, N. Park St., San Diego, CA 92104.” The first Dignity newsletter, written by Nidorf and issued one month after the above advertisement, shows that the men needed rides to meetings in the Los Angeles area. Dignity 1, no. 1 (1970), www.dignityusa.org/archives/FirstNewsletter.pdf (accessed May 10, 2007). 21. Pat McArron, interviewed by Megan Dukett, April 31, 2006. It is thought that Dignity founder Nidorf left for Los Angeles due to a lack of interest locally, leaving MCC to lay the foundation for GLBT Christianity. However, MCC’s founding members remember a number of Catholics in leadership. This problem leads the authors to wonder about the cohesion of the gay, Christian community at this time. It is certainly easy to imagine a movement that grows outward from the center, MCC, and there is certainly some evidence to support this. But there is evidence that points to a less linear growth, helping to explain why MCC, rather than Dignity, attracted gay Catholics in San Diego. Later, this helps clarify the confusion between Integrity’s original founding in 1975 and the unconnected Integrity organization in 1980. 22. Dignity USA, “Highlights of Dignity USA’s History,” www.dignityusa.org/archives/history.html (accessed May 10, 2007). 23. Jeannette De Wyze, “Does the Lord Love Homosexuals?” The Reader 8, no. 32 (1978), 8. The church bureaucracy notified Dignity they needed to have the blessing of the diocese and the directors of the Cardijn Center’s directors to continue meetings. Dignity countered by threatening to post the names of all gay priests in the area. Nothing more was said of the issue. 24. The distinction between practicing and non-practicing homosexuality is important in the Catholic Church. Homosexuality itself is not a sin, but the practice of it is. De Wyze, “Does the Lord Love Homosexuals?” 8; Donileen R. Loseke and James C. Cavendish, “Producing Institutional Selves: Rhetorically Constructing the Dignity of Sexually Marginalized Catholics,” Social Psychology Quarterly 64, no. 4 (2001): 347-362. Especially interesting is the interstitial location of GLBT Catholics in their own traditions and GLBT Christianity. They are outsiders in Catholic tradition, but because they value their Catholic roots, they may also be uncomfortable in places like MCC. This is discussed by Loseke and Cavendish. However, the authors do not account for the Catholic background suggested by McAaron nor do they show the common link between Dignity and Integrity after the mid-1970s. The latter could have been helpful in arguing that GLBT Christians from similar traditions identify strongly with each other. Evidence from San Diego suggests that GLBT Catholics were not necessarily dissatisfied with MCC but that they were not numerous. 25. Dignity USA, “Statement of Position and Purpose,” http://www.dignityusa.org/purpose.html (April 13, 2006) 26. “Declaration for the Doctrine of the Faith: Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,”
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www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDFCERTN.HTM (accessed April 14, 2006). A copy of Dignity’s reaction to the Vatican’s statements can be found on The Voice of Integrity, http://www.integrityusa. org/voice/1976/February1976.htm. It is summed up by this excerpt: “The present Vatican document, while urging a ‘sensitive pastoral approach to the homosexual,’ does little more than repeat the traditional, unenlightened condemnation of homosexual expression, based on the presupposition that human sexuality is God-given and moral only in heterosexual marriage for the purpose of procreation. Such a narrow understanding of human sexuality has been seriously challenged by a large number of American Catholic theologians who recognize the broader purpose of human sexuality as an expression of unselfish love between two people, as a responsible communication of their love and shared life.” 27. De Wyze, “Does the Lord Love Homosexuals?” 1. 28. Pat McAaron, interviewed by Megan Dukett, written transcript, San Diego, CA, April 31, 2006. 29. Dignity USA, “Statement of Position and Purpose.” 30. Loseke and Cavendish, “Producing Institutional Selves,” 350. 31. Pat McArron, interviewed by Megan Dukett, written transcript, San Diego, CA, April 31, 2006. 32. De Wyze, “Does the Lord Love Homosexuals?” 8. 33. 1978 is the first recorded or remembered date of Lutherans Concerned in San Diego. It comes from an article on MCC in The San Diego Reader. Kenneth Marks at the Lutherans Concerned Archive directed the authors to Lutherans Concerned’s The Gay Lutheran (1974-80), a newsletter printed in Los Angeles. Editors sometimes referred to California members but most likely meant the large organization of gay Lutherans in Los Angeles and San Francisco. There is no mention of San Diego. The number of Lutherans Concerned organizations grew from four in 1975 to eleven in 1977, flourishing in cities where there were Lutheran colleges or seminaries, neither of which San Diego possessed. 34. Integrity’s existence prior to 1980 is not remembered by current leadership. It seldom reported any activity to the national body’s journal (The Voice of Integrity), and it also contributed little monetarily to the national organization. Yet in May 1976, the local Integrity chapter was recognized by San Diego’s bishop, Rev. Robert M. Wolterstorff, and given permission to convene meetings without Eucharist. In addition, local newspapers included information on Lutherans Concerned when reporting on MCC and Dignity in the 1970s. 35. Rita Gillmon, “Gay Church Disputes Broadcast Cancellation,” San Diego Union, June 26, 1979, B1. 36. “Coalition Will Meet,” San Diego Union, June 16, 1979, A-12; Gilmon, “Gay Church Disputes Broadcast Cancellation”; “He Has the Last Word,” San Diego Union, 30 April 1980, D-1. There is also evidence of institutional cooperation between Dignity and Integrity. A notice reads, “Gay Christian Workshop in San Diego. Dignity and Integrity are joint sponsoring a workshop on ‘Homosexuality and the Church Today’ with Fr. Tom Oddo as the keynote speaker, on Friday, 18th June. For information, contact Dr. Lazenby at our SD chapter, listed on our back page,” Integrity: Gay Episcopal Christian Forum, 2, no. 8 (1976), http://www.integrityusa.org/voice/1976/JuneJuly1976.htm (accessed May 10, 2007). 37. De Wyze, “Does the Lord Love Homosexuals?”; Rita Gillmon, “Gay’s Ministry Role Is Studied,” San Diego Union, September 1, 1979, B3. 38. Although there were differences among these groups in terms of beliefs and desires, there seems to be ample evidence to call the front “united” during this time period. As an excerpt from The Voice of Integrity attests: “In a Winter issue of The Gay Christian, the Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, the religious group with a special outreach to the Gay community, affirmed his personal interest in continuing to confront the established churches: ‘The time has come when we must be vocal in our demands for equality in the established Church. We must refuse to be put off by some unconcerned denominational officer whose only concern is not to rock the boat in the area of social justice for fear of losing his or her safe position. We must attack the complacent attitude of those who, if they are not for us, must be considered against us.’ The MCC founder has been most supportive of INTEGRITY from the beginning and published material in Forum No. 2. Likewise, INTEGRITY remains constitutionally committed to ecumenical action in the Gay community,” Integrity: Gay Episcopal Forum 1, no. 9 (1975), http://www.integrityusa.org/voice/1975/ August1975.htm (accessed May 10, 2007).
125 The Journal of San Diego History
“La Mojonera” and the Marking of California’s U.S.-Mexico Boundary Line, 1849-1851
Charles W. Hughes Winner of the Marc Tarasuck Award
On a bluff overlooking the “Arroyo de Tia Juana” several hundred feet up from the shoreline of the Pacific Ocean, a boundary monument—La Mojonera—has marked the start of the 1,952 mile line separating Mexico and the United States for the last 156 years. Captain Edmund L. F. Hardcastle, of the U.S. Topographical Engineers, and Ricardo Ramírez, a zoologist and botanist attached to the Mexican Boundary Commission, dedicated it on July 14, 1851.1 Today it is one of 276 monuments marking the boundary line running between El Paso, Texas, and the Pacific coast.
John Russell Bartlett’s 1852 drawing of the Monument at the Initial Point on the Pacific from Bartlett’sPersonal Narrative of Exploration and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora and Chihuahua (1854). ©SDHS, OP#17134.
Charles W. Hughes is a local historian currently studying the history of California’s U.S. Mexico border. He gratefully acknowledges the research assistance provided by the staffs of the Oceanside and San Diego public libraries, San Diego State University Library, and the National Archives.
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Topographical sketch of the southernmost point of the port of San Diego as surveyed by the Mexican Commission. José Salazar Ilarregui, Datos de los trabajos astronómicos y topograficos… por la Comissión de Límites Mexicana en la línea que divide esta República de la de los Estados-Unidos (1850). Courtesy of San Diego State University, Special Collections.
La Mojonera, or Western Land Boundary Monument No. 258, is threatened by the U.S. government’s plans to build multiple border fences. In 2005 Home Land Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suspended environmental regulations protecting historic resources to allow work on the fences to proceed. In response, Save Our Heritage Organization placed the monument on its list of San Diego’s ten most endangered historic sites. Even though it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, the monument’s future remains uncertain. This article reviews the events associated with the running and marking of California’s U.S.-Mexico boundary line between June 1849 and July 1851. It fills a gap in the historiography by telling the story of the individuals who drew the line and by describing the activities of the boundary commission during the first two years of its operation.2 Finally, it reaffirms the historical significance, both regionally and bi-nationally, of Monument No. 258. On February 2, 1848 the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war between the United States and Mexico and created a boundary line separating the two countries. The treaty compelled Mexico to relinquish 1.2 million miles of its northern frontier, over half its territory, to the United States for fifteen million dollars. Today this territory comprises the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas, Nevada, Colorado and Utah.3 The new boundary line extended three leagues into the Gulf of Mexico from the mouth of the Rio Grande River, known in Mexico as the Rio del Norte, or, River of the North. The boundary proceeded up the center of this river’s deepest channel to a point where it met the southern boundary of New Mexico north of the City of El Paso del Norte (today Cuidad Juárez). At this point, the line turned west and traveled overland to the western limits of New Mexico and then north until it intersected with the Gila River. Following the Gila to the center of its junction with the Colorado River, the boundary continued in a straight line along the division of Upper and Lower California to the Pacific Ocean.4 Treaty negotiators discussed at length the point where the proposed boundary
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line should terminate on the Pacific Coast. During the colonial period, Spanish officials had located Alta California’s southern boundary approximately fourteen miles south of the present line. In 1772, after the founding of settlements in San Diego and Monterey, officials decreed the separation of the two Californias. On August 19, 1773 Father Francisco Palóu erected, under authority granted by the Council of the Indies, a large cross to mark the boundary line separating the two territories, approximately five leagues north of the Rio Guadalupe and the site of Mission of San Miguel. This was the first inter-California boundary, and in the years that followed, although this line shifted several times prior to 1846, it remained in the same general locality.5 Treaty negotiators on the part of Mexico initially contended that the port of San Diego was not part of Alta California and sought a boundary line north of San Diego in order to retain both a port for the northern region of Baja California and a land bridge between the peninsula and mainland Mexico. They were concerned by the Americans’ belief in manifest destiny and their desire for expansion, particularly as some U.S. politicians were calling for the acquisition of all of Mexico.6 Both sides recognized that the port of San Diego had great value. A warm water port, offering secure anchorage and a mild year- round climate, San Diego became a center for the hide and tallow trade and whaling activities in the years before the war with Mexico.7 William H. Emory, a topographical engineer attached to the military forces seizing the town in 1846, solidified U.S. interests in the port when he offered this assessment in his official report: “At present San Diego is, all things considered, perhaps one of the best harbors on the coast from Callâo to Puget’s Sound, with the single exception, that of San Francisco.”8 At one point during treaty negotiations, the U.S. representative discussed setting the boundary line one marine league north of the port of San Diego or, possibly, dividing the port in two with Mexico retaining the southern half and unrestricted access to the harbor entrance. Once it became clear that San Diego In 1848, General Pedro García Conde became head of the always belonged as part of Alta commission to survey the new boundary between Mexico and California, the U.S. representative the United States. ©SDHS #9852:1.
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sought a boundary that ceded the port to the United States, based on a clearly defined boundary that would prevent any future disputes. Ultimately, directions provided by the treaty were less than consistent offering two different guidelines for establishing the California boundary. The treaty initially stated that the boundary should follow “the division line between Upper and Lower California to the Pacific.” In a subsequent paragraph, the treaty declared “in order to preclude all difficulty in tracing upon the ground the limit separating Upper and Lower California, it is José Salazar Ylarregui, an engineer and astronomer, was appointed Surveyor for the 1849 Mexican Commission. Courtesy of the Nettie agreed that the said limit Lee Benson Latin American Collection, The University of Texas at shall consist of a straight line Austin. drawn from the middle of the Rio Gila, where it unites with the Colorado, to a point on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, distant one marine league due south of the southernmost point of the port of San Diego, according to the plan of said port made in the year 1782 by Don Juan Pantoja . . .”9 The treaty further specified the appointment of a commission to demarcate “a boundary line with due precision, upon authoritative maps, and to establish upon the ground landmarks which shall show the limits of both republics.” The treaty required each country to appoint a commissioner and surveyor to supervise the marking of the line, and the decisions agreed upon by them were to become part of the treaty. One year from the final ratification by both countries, the treaty called for the commission to meet in San Diego to begin its survey work.10 On July 4, 1848 President James K. Polk issued a proclamation announcing the signing of the treaty. Six months earlier, on January 24, in California James Marshall discovered gold on the American River near Sutter’s Fort. By the end of the year the news had spread to the east coast and around the world—setting off the gold rush of 1849. Thousands of people rushed to California to earn their fortunes. The flood of immigrants severely impacted the progress of the joint boundary commission as prices for livestock, supplies and other resources skyrocketed. With everyone rushing to the gold fields, labor shortages were widespread throughout the territory making it hard to hire and retain workers to complete the boundary survey.11 After considering two other candidates, on January 14, 1849, President Polk
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Major William H. Emory served as Chief Astronomer to the U.S. Commission and was appointed acting Commissioner in January 1850. Courtesy of the National Archives, Washington D.C.
selected John B. Weller, a former Ohio Congressman, Mexican War veteran and unsuccessful candidate for governor, to serve as the U.S. commissioner. Andrew Gray, a surveyor who had worked on the boundary line between Texas and the United States, accepted the position of U.S. Surveyor. The president appointed Emory to serve as the chief astronomer, head of the Commission’s Topographical Scientific Corps, and commanding officer of the military escort.12
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In March, the Mexican government appointed General Pedro García Conde, a well-respected army officer and engineer with political and diplomatic experience, to serve as its commissioner. José Salazar Ylarregui, a twenty-five year-old civilian engineer and graduate of El Colegio de Minería in Mexico City, agreed to serve as surveyor and astronomer for the Mexican commission.13 In addition to running and marking the boundary line, each commissioner received instructions regarding the gathering of geographical and other useful information about the territory on either side of the line. Mexican officials recognized the need for information about the geography and Indians tribes of the frontier as critical for the defense of their northern borders. Congressional leaders wanted scientific duties included as part of the commission’s responsibilities, resulting in the selection of appointees with knowledge of zoology, botany and natural history. They viewed this type of information as beneficial to promoting the future settlement of the region.14 U.S. officials wanted their commissioners to identify any feasible routes for a transcontinental railroad, canal, or wagon road. A southern route was viewed by many as the most practical way to provide year round travel across the country. They viewed this route as crucial to binding the country together, strengthening the political union between the east and west coasts, and taking full advantage of economic opportunities presented by the gold deposits in California.15 Both commissioners experienced delays getting to San Diego by the time specified by the treaty. The overwhelming number of immigrants headed to the California gold fields caused the problem. Traveling from New Orleans via the Isthmus of Panama, the American commission was stranded along with several thousand immigrants for almost two months in Panama before securing passage north to San Diego. The overcrowded conditions forced Weller to divide his commission into several groups for the voyage north. Weller, Gray, and Emory, along with several other members, arrived in San Diego on June 1 while the rest of their group arrived in the weeks that followed.16 García Conde and his commission departed Mexico City on April 18, traveling overland to San Blas, Nayarit, for passage north. Upon reaching San Blas, Conde learned from the American Consul that a steamer was not expected to stop in port. García Conde decided to embark on the British frigate Caroline in hopes of reaching San Diego before the appointed deadline. The frigate, however, experienced delays due to “natural accidents seldom known in the navigation of the Pacific coasts” and did not arrive in San Diego until July 3, over a month past the deadline.17 After enjoying a festive July 4 celebration, the two commissions held their first meeting on July 6. Officials presented their credentials and adopted plans for starting the survey. The two commissioners agreed to have their engineers operate independently and meet periodically to compare their work and finalize the results. They endorsed Gray and Salazar Ylarregui’s plans to begin work by determining locations for the three geographical points needed to draw the line: the southernmost point of the port, the initial point on the Pacific coast and the eastern point at the junction of the Gila and Colorado rivers.18 Both commissions generally utilized the same methods for surveying and marking the line, establishing astronomical observations at different points along the line to determine the latitude and longitude of their positions. The emphasis of their surveying strategies was where their approaches varied. The Americans
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focused on astronomical determinations while the Mexicans used triangulation, topographical mapping and only some astronomical observations. Emory believed that the location of the line depended upon astronomy. While triangulation was the most accurate, the time and expense required by this method made it impractical.19 Previous studies of the Mexico-U.S. boundary survey have portrayed the role of the Mexican commission members strictly as advisory or secondary to the American surveyors who performed all of the significant work. These conclusions are primarily based on statements made by Emory in his published report of the boundary commission work. As a result, the contributions of the Mexican engineers have been largely ignored by historians.20 In recent years the availability of Mexican documents and a more thorough review of U.S. materials have caused a re-examination of the issue. These newer studies give little credence to arguments regarding the secondary role of Mexican engineers in conducting the boundary surveys, showing them to have little merit. Scholars have concluded, “Mexican engineers executed operations clearly independent of the United States activity, and produced results that were as necessary to the completion of the boundary as the work of the Americans.”21 The joint boundary commission experienced problems that repeatedly impaired their progress, including the gold rush economy, partisan politics, insufficient funding, personal rivalries and the rugged environment. Issues involving the American members of the commission during the California phase of the boundary survey were the most difficult to resolve. At the request of the Polk Administration, Congress passed legislation providing for the organization of the American commission and appropriated $50,000 to defray the expenses of running and marking the new boundary line with Mexico but failed to authorize salaries for the commissioner or surveyor. In the elections of 1848, the Whigs gained control of the House of Representatives and attempted to nullify Polk’s actions. By a strictly partisan vote, the House passed two amendments requiring the appointment of a commissioner from among the members of the Topographical Corps and prohibiting the payment of salaries for any officers of the commission whose appointment was made without the authority of law. The Democratic controlled Senate rejected these amendments stalemating additional funding for the American commission until the new Congress convened in 1850.22 Even before Weller and his staff arrived in San Diego, rumors were circulating regarding his impending dismissal as boundary commissioner. Polk had appointed him six weeks before his term of office expired. The Whig administration of Zachary Taylor considered him an eleventh-hour appointee and, under the rules of patronage, sought to replace him with one of their own. The appointment of Thomas Ewing, Weller’s archrival from Ohio, as the administration’s Secretary of the Interior served to intensify the fires of partisan politics. Ewing sought to discredit Weller and to frustrate any ambitions he may have entertained of returning to Ohio politics, where he still enjoyed popular support among voters.23 The incoming Taylor Administration, maneuvering to build political support for its programs, offered appointments to lucrative government positions to family members of several congressional leaders. In June Secretary of State John
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Clayton notified John C. Fremont, the western explorer and son-in-law of Senator Thomas Hart Benton, of his appointment by President Taylor as the U.S. boundary commissioner. Clayton instructed Fremont to hold Weller’s letter of dismissal until he was ready to assume the position. He justified the dismissal on grounds of mismanagement of commission affairs and failure to file required expenditure reports. Emory, upon learning of the Fremont appointment, submitted his letter of resignation, considering the action as rebuke by the new administration of his conduct at Fremont’s recent court martial trial.24 Prior to his departure for California, Weller withdrew $33,325 from the Treasury Department to cover expenses for purchasing equipment, surveying instruments, supplies and travel to California. The runaway inflation caused by the gold rush quickly exhausted those funds. In August 1849 Weller left San Diego and traveled north in search of additional financing, but San Francisco merchants, aware of the rumors regarding his dismissal, would not honor his drafts. In Monterey the news of his dismissal had already arrived before him, and General Bennett Riley, the military governor of California, declined to advance any funds to Weller for the commission. After receiving a similar request from Emory, Riley did authorize $3,000 to provide “subsistence” to the commission’s military personnel and employees. Riley told Emory that it afforded him “great pleasure to arrange any thing that will facilitate your operations.” At this point Weller met with Fremont who acknowledged the news of the appointment but did not deliver to the commissioner his formal letter of dismissal. After receiving a full accounting of the commission’s affairs, Fremont prevailed upon Weller to return to San Diego and continue to discharge his duties until he was prepared to formally assume the position. Fremont agreed to negotiate in San Francisco Weller’s drafts for $10,000 to allow the commission to maintain its operations.25 While Weller was away up north, the work of the joint commission proceeded in San Diego. Emory and Salazar Ylarregui established their camps with observatories south of the port and started taking astronomical readings to determine the latitude and longitude of the initial point. The surveyors initiated work mapping the port of San Diego to determine its southernmost point.26 Prior to beginning the survey, there was some discussion about how the port of San Diego should be defined for purposes of drawing the boundary line. García Conde raised the issue unofficially, contending that the port consisted only of the ship landing area near Ballast Point and not the entire bay as shown on Pantoja map. Weller disagreed and indicated that if the Mexican commissioner pursued the issue, he would insist on locating the line further to the south at the former boundary between Upper and Lower California, as called for in the treaty. Neither commissioner raised this issue during the formal proceedings of the joint boundary commission.27 In the more than sixty years since Pantoja drew his map, the configuration of the shoreline for the port had changed significantly. Gray reasoned that part of the change in appearance was due to differences in the seasons of the year between Pantoja’s survey and theirs. After much debate and compromises by both sides, the surveyors agreed that they had to identify the southernmost point based on features presented in the map and not on the 1849 landscape. They were able to locate a physical feature on the western shore of the port “a range of bluffs,” that
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they could identify as a point on Pantoja’s map. Using the scale shown on the map, they measured off the distance to the southernmost point, which they then transferred to the configuration of the shoreline in 1849. As a result of their work, both surveyors prepared maps of the harbor depicting the southernmost point as specified by the treaty. 28 Next, they determined the distance of one marine league from the spot designated as the southernmost point of the port. The surveyors needed to agree on the distance encompassed by one marine league, which was a unit of measurement Captain Edmund L. F. Hardcastle, a topographical engineer, oversaw unfamiliar to Americans. the placement of monuments along the boundary line. Of all the In 1849 there were no officials associated with marking the California boundary, Hardcastle had the distinction of being the only one who worked on the drawing international standards of the line from the beginning (June 1849) to the end (July 1851). for units of measurements. Courtesy of the Maryland State Archives. García Conde had received specific instructions from his government regarding this measurement, which subsequently guided Salazar Ylarregui in his dealings with Gray. The surveyors decided to use the distance of 5,564.6 meters based on a publication printed in France in 1839 by Louis Benjamin Francoeur, a professor at the University of Paris.29 While the survey of the port was proceeding, Emory and Weller sent out two American survey teams to begin extending the line east. Lieutenant Amiel Whipple, one of two West Point graduates and topographical engineers assigned to assist Emory, traveled to the junction of the Gila and Colorado rivers to determine the latitude and longitude of the point where the line would terminate at its eastern end. Lieutenant Cave J. Couts, a native of Tennessee and a Mexican War veteran, led the military escort accompanying Whipple’s party. The sour relationship between Whipple and Couts—and the hardships they experienced assisting hundreds of destitute emigrants bound for the gold fields—has been well documented in published accounts of their work.30 Lieutenant Edmund L. F. Hardcastle, the other topographical engineer, commanded a second party with orders to make a reconnaissance in the direction of the Gila River to “select elevated points by which the extremities of the line could be connected in longitude by flashes of gun powder.” Emory instructed Hardcastle to use the opportunity to collect any information of the country that may be deemed useful to the government.31 The rugged, desolate environment
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Topographical sketch of the southernmost point of the port of San Diego as surveyed by the U.S. Commission. U.S. Senate Executive Document No. 34 (1850), U.S. Government Publication Serial No. 558. Courtesy of the San Diego Historical Society. presented severe hardships, and at times “almost insurmountable obstacles,” to the joint commission as it conducted its work.32 During October, Emory sought to determine the relative longitude of the boundary by simultaneous observations of flashes of gunpowder and rockets from five elevated sites along the 141-mile line, recording time differences at each location. In addition to the observatories at both ends of the line, stations were set up at “Cerro Colorado, Los Piños and Mount Wiccarnon.” Fog coming up from the Gulf of California obstructed the view across the southern part of the desert. The experiment was abandoned after failing to complete all observations on five successive nights, compelling the commission to revert to astronomical methods for determining the longitude.33 Weller returned to San Diego on the October steamer as the surveyors located the initial point on the Pacific Coast marking the beginning of the boundary line. On October 8 the joint commission met near the southernmost point of the port of San Diego to hear the reports and examine the work of the surveyors. The commission met again on October 10 and “after a careful examination of the ground, and the surveys made by the respective parties, the initial point in the boundary was finally fixed and determined.” During these deliberations, Salazar Ylarregui’s initial recommendation for the location of the initial point was rejected and a compromise site selected.
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The joint commission ordered that a hermetically sealed bottle enclosing a sworn statement, in both Spanish and English, declaring “that the demarcation of boundary between the United States and Mexican Republic shall commence at this point, all in conformity with the 5th Article of the Treaty signed at the City of Guadalupe Hidalgo on the 2nd of February 1848” be buried. The initial point of the boundary as agreed upon is in north latitude 32° 31’ 59”.58 and the longitude of 7 hours 48 minutes 21.10 west of Greenwich. In the presence of witnesses, a temporary post was set in place to mark the spot until a permanent monument could be arranged.34 The Illustrated London News reporting on the occasion noted “during these ceremonies the countenances of the Mexican Commissioners exhibited a remarkable degree of gravity: they did not forget that they were affixing the last seal to the treaty for the dismemberment of their Republic.”35 With the initial point of the boundary identified, the Mexican surveyors joined their American counterparts in focusing their efforts on locating the eastern terminus of the line. The Mexican Commission, having fewer surveyors than the Americans, lagged behind in their surveying at times. It included five engineer/ scientists while the American contingent consisted of twenty-six members between engineers and their assistants. The Americans were able to staff four field parties while the Mexicans could sustain no more than two at a time since they did not receive the support needed to match the efforts of the Americans.36 The issue nagging the American force was providing daily subsistence and materials for their personnel since funding from Washington D.C. was not forthcoming. The task of supplying the men in the field proved challenging. While on his reconnaissance in the mountains, Hardcastle sent a letter to Emory on a Wednesday hoping that it would reach him by Thursday. He needed additional supplies sent out by Friday in order to reach him by Sunday, the day on which the men’s rations would run out.37 In addition to a smaller staff, the Mexican Commission experienced setbacks from the beginning. Prior to departing for California, the commission ordered scientific instruments from Europe to run the boundary line. The instruments were inspected prior to shipping to confirm their quality, but when they arrived it was discovered that someone had exchanged them for instruments of inferior quality. The Mexican commission was forced to borrow instruments from the Colegio Militar and Colegio de Minería, some of which were of poorer quality than the ones received from Europe. As Salazar Ylarregui explained “the hand of fate, which touches whatever is Mexican, reached out to the instruments in Paris.” Emory’s criticism of the Mexican instruments used in the California survey was confirmed by Salazar Ylarregui, who did not hesitate to complain about his instruments. However, instruments for topographical surveying and mapping were never faulted; it was the instruments used for astronomical readings that were of poor quality. 38 The Mexican Commission’s late arrival in San Diego left them at a disadvantage since the Americans had already been in the field for over a month. Losses occurring in the field resulted in additional delays. The Mexican Commission was forced to wait before sending a field team to the Gila and Colorado rivers when its military escort failed to arrive. Indian attacks, desertions, and stolen livestock delayed the arrival of their escort in San Diego.39
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Following the dedication of the initial point, Weller directed Gray to take his survey party to the junction of the Gila and Colorado rivers to survey the eastern terminus of the line. Gray’s party traveled up the Tia Juana River Valley to Tecate and through several valleys crossing over the mountains to the main emigrant trail near Carrizo Creek. At the base of the mountains Gray encountered a group of emigrants led by James C. Collier, the newly appointed Collector of Customs for the Port of San Francisco by the Taylor Administration. The Collier party had left Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in May. After traveling overland via Santa Fe, their animals were near exhaustion and the party was reduced to half rations. Gray was uncertain the party could make it to San Diego on its own and decided to guide it back over the same trail he had just used. He directed his assistant, John Forester, to continue on to the Gila and Colorado to complete the survey. . Upon Gray’s return to San Diego, Weller was irate with him for abandoning his assignment. Gray, for his part, explained that he “would not send my assistant back to guide the party because I wished to be there myself, in case of any accident or obstacle occurred, it being the first time that I believed its ascent had ever been attempted with packs, . . .” Gray believed he had pioneered a new trail across the mountains, a trail that had been known to local residents for years.40 In a group with other commission members, Weller belittled the idea that Gray had discovered a new shorter trail, and in the altercation that followed, Weller suffered a gunshot wound to his thigh. Reports about the incident indicated that both men had been drinking when the jesting escalated.41 Weller refused to allow Gray to undertake a second trip to the junction of the Gila and Colorado rivers to finalize the work. Instead, he directed Emory to have Whipple meet with Salazar Ylarregui to reach an agreement as to the point where the middle of the Rio Gila united with the Colorado. Weller, who was confined to his sick bed, also did not travel to the site. Salazar Ylarregui protested to García Conde, who was at the site expecting to meet Weller, about the substituting of Whipple. He believed that it was a violation of the treaty since neither the American commissioner nor surveyor would be present to verify the eastern point of the line.42 García Conde overruled Ylarregui, ordering him to meet with Whipple to verify the work. Following the signing, Ylarregui, who was growing increasingly critical of García Conde’s handling of the commission’s affairs, remained at the Gila and Colorado for another month completing his own survey of the point where the two rivers merged. García Conde later complained to his government about Weller’s frequent absences from the commission.43 By December 1849 with the two ends of the boundary line identified, all that remained was the drawing of the azimuth line to connect the two ends and the placement of monuments. Weller suspended the work of the American commission due to dwindling funds and made another trip to San Francisco to confer with Fremont. He learned upon his arrival that Fremont had announced his resignation from the boundary commission, a position he never occupied, to seek election as California’s first U.S. Senator. Weller’s personal property and funds were seized in legal actions by San Francisco bankers after the Treasury Department, upon instructions from Clayton, refused to honor boundary commission drafts.44 In Washington responsibility for overseeing the boundary commission was
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transferred to Ewing and the newly created Department of the Interior. The Secretary of War denied Emory’s letter of resignation fearing that it would set a bad precedent allowing an officer to quit his post in the field because of a personal dispute with a superior. Upon learning of Fremont’s resignation, Ewing sent another series of letters firing Weller a second time and appointing Emory to serve as the acting commissioner until a permanent one was appointed.45 During all of these events Weller had received only one communication from Clayton in March advising him that his salary could not be paid until Congress passed the necessary legislation. Despite all that had happened to him, Weller refused to abandon his post until formally discharged and returned to San Diego to finish the work on the California boundary. 46 At the January 28 commission meeting, García Conde raised the issue of the boundary line at the mouth of the Gila River trying again to gain a foothold for Mexico in the port of San Diego. He stated that at the time the treaty was negotiated, the American representative offered to cede three leagues of land on the Pacific, commencing at the Ranchería de las Choyas, in exchange for a small portion of territory on the right side of the Colorado River. Treaty negotiators, relying on the maps that were available, assumed that the Colorado River ran directly south after the junction with the Gila River. They did not realize that the Colorado turned in a northwesterly direction before turning south, leaving both banks of the river on the American side of the line for several miles. Due to a chance of nature, the new boundary line complied with the terms of the treaty but did not conform to the intent of those who concluded them. García Conde wanted the matter left for future negotiations between their respective governments. However, Weller could not accede to the request of the Mexican commissioner. The treaty extended to the commissioners the authority and responsibility for running the boundary line; and decisions agreed upon by them were incorporated as part of the treaty. He stated, “it is expected that we will execute this duty and settle the question forever.” Weller admitted that the maps available to treaty negotiators were probably incorrect. He contended that the lack of accurate knowledge of the region’s geography had hurt both countries, especially the U.S. since the survey was not placing the boundary in its original location as specified in the first paragraph in Article V of the treaty. García Conde commented afterwards that their decision met the legal intent of the treaty but not its spirit. He later came under severe criticism for his handling of the survey and conceding too much land in California.47 The following day the joint commission convened to discuss the placement of monuments to mark the boundary line between the Pacific and Gila River. Since the commission believed that a large portion of land bordering the boundary would never be “settled” or “cultivated,” members agreed that seven monuments were “considered amply sufficient” to mark the line. It directed the setting of “one monument at the initial point on the Pacific, one on the spot of land agreed upon near the mouth of the Gila River, one on the left bank of the Colorado where the line crosses that river, [and] one upon the desert, as near as practicable where the line crosses New River.”48 The remaining three monuments were to be placed “at such points on the intervening mountains as may be most visible and of greatest interest.” This action was later modified by the commission to require the placement of one of the three
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Monument No. 1 on the Pacific. The inscription reads: “Initial point of boundary between the United States and Mexico, established by the Joint Commission 10th October, A.D. 1849, agreeably to the treaty dated at the City of Guadalupe Hidalgo February 2, A.D. 1848. John B. Weller, U.S. Commissioner. Andrew B. Gray, U.S. Surveyor.” ©SDHS #OP 12794.
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intermediate monuments on the road leading from San Diego to Lower California where it crossed the line. Since Emory had already begun to mark the azimuth of the line east from the Pacific for approximately thirty miles, he and Salazar Ylarregui were authorized to designate the precise point for the placement of this monument.49 At a subsequent meeting, the commission gave specific instructions as to the construction of the monuments. For the initial point on the Pacific, the joint commission specified a white marble monument having a 3-foot square base with a pyramid or obelisk set atop, 9 feet in height or thereabout, costing no more than $1,500. The commission also stipulated the text of the inscription to be included, requesting that the monument be placed on a mound above the surface of the earth resulting in an overall height of approximately 14 feet. Directions for the monument to be erected near the mouth of the Gila River included construction of white marble, smaller dimensions, similar inscription, and costs not to exceed $500. The specifications for the other five monuments called for cast iron construction, not to exceed 400 lbs. in weight, with inscriptions similar to the others.50 Additionally, the commission appointed two surveyors, one from each country, to oversee the construction of the monuments and supervise their placement on the line. These surveyors were to file minutes of their proceedings at the conclusion of their work. The commissioners appointed Captain Hardcastle and Francisco Jiménez, the First Engineer of the Mexican Commission, to supervise the work of placing the monuments on the line.51 At its February 15 meeting the commission agreed that it was not practical to mark the line from California east of the Gila River because of the gold rush and its inflationary economy. The commission agreed to adjourn and reconvene in El Paso on the first Monday of November 1850. Two days after this meeting, Emory received Secretary Ewing’s letter of December 19 appointing him acting commissioner. He delivered to Weller his official notification discharging him as boundary commissioner.52 By the end of January, with all funds exhausted, General Riley interceded again on behalf of the U.S. commission authorizing Emory an additional $5,000 to sustain the operations of his command. When funds promised by the Secretary of the Interior did not arrive by summer, Emory negotiated a loan from Port Collector Collier in San Francisco. Upon his return to Washington in October 1850, Emory listed debts and loans exceeding $15,000 for the commission. Congress had recently approved $185,000 in funding to continue the survey work and, through the new boundary commissioner, John Russell Bartlett, Emory resolved the financial distress of the California survey.53 Following adjournment of the boundary commission, Jiménez and Hardcastle conferred to plan a course of action for completing their assignment. They decided to have the monuments manufactured in the United States and signed orders for their construction. Hardcastle accepted responsibility for overseeing this process. They agreed to have the monuments shipped to San Diego by sea where they would transport them to their permanent locations. Lastly they agreed to meet in San Diego on January 1, 1851 to complete their work; if one of them could not return, their appointed representative was authorized to act on their country’s behalf. At some point following this meeting, Hardcastle and Emory had second
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thoughts about the commission’s plans for placing a marble monument at the Gila River, given the problems of transporting it across the mountains and desert. Emory approved changing the plans to have the monument made of cast iron.54 In April, Hardcastle submitted an order to E. & G. W. Blunt of New York for the manufacture of monuments including plans and specifications for their design. He advised the company that the instructions are “not intended to be strictly adhered to, as they merely indicate general dimensions leaving to the architect the more proper arrangement of the proportions.” He provided instructions for cast iron monuments and suggested that the plans for the monuments follow those made at the Boston foundry for the northeastern boundary as a guide. Finally, he wanted the monument for the Gila River manufactured one-third larger than the other five.55 By May 1850 the joint boundary commission ceased its operations in San Diego. Only Hardcastle and five assistants remained to help with running the line. Emory wanted the boundary secured “beyond all cavil,” or trivial objections, and directed the construction of stone, or cairn, monuments along the line. These monuments were 12 feet at the base and 12 feet high and composed of stones and earth. After overseeing this work eastward from the Pacific Coast over settled areas of the line for over thirty miles, Emory turned the work over to Hardcastle. Salazar Ylarregui paid the initial cost of this work, and Emory, unwilling to leave the debt unpaid, borrowed the funds to pay the U.S. share prior to the departure of the Mexican commission. Hardcastle labored through the summer and fall surveying the topography and placing cairns along the line.56 In January 1850 Jiménez failed to return as planned and it wasn’t until March 18 when Ricardo Ramírez arrived to serve in his place as Mexico’s representative for finishing the work that remained. The cast iron monuments were recently received and awaiting placement on the line. Hardcastle and Ramírez decided to travel to the Gila and Colorado to set the two most easterly monuments first before turning westward across the desert to place monuments in the vicinity of the Emigrant Trail and New River. After this they intended to return to San Diego to set the monuments at the initial point and on the road to Lower California before running the line eastward until completed. They agreed to place the final monument on the road between Rancho Otay and Rancho Jesús María where it crossed the line. They spent the next three months finishing the marking of the line and setting these monuments in place as they had planned.57 At times this work proved toilsome as Hardcastle and Ramírez and the men working with them endured severe hardships completing their tasks. In a letter to Emory, Hardcastle described their efforts to place the monument at New River after being unable to take sightings at night from fires on Signal Mountain to determine a fixed point for prolonging the line:
The only method remaining that presented itself was to produce the line continuously, and this I determined to undertake despite the many and serious obstacles that opposed. Accordingly I fitted out and started with a party of 5 persons–myself, Ingraham and three men–with two pack mules. The first two days we progressed slowly, at the end of the second day we were not more than 13 miles distant from the Colorado; but we pressed onward, notwithstanding
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the discouraging difficulties–the almost impassable hills of drifting sands and the intense heat–that presented themselves…Considering the distance, the heavy sand – sometimes disposed in hills, sometimes in hillocks–the entire absence of water and the scorching rays of the sun pouring down upon and reflected from the glittering sands–some idea may be formed of the trial to physical strength and endurance to which a party, compelled to move slowly and in a direct line over this desert, is subjected.58
By mid-June Hardcastle and Ramírez worked to extend the line from Mount Tecate to New River, connecting the line coming from the Pacific to the one heading west from the Gila and Colorado. They had to take a couple of extra days to realign the boundary since the line from the Pacific reached New River 1,864 feet south of the monument they had recently placed. They had anticipated this problem and agreed to move the monuments at New River and the Emigrant Trail to conform to the line coming from the Pacific. Hardcastle described the line from the east as an approximation since they had used an instrument of poor quality to complete that part of the survey. As he explained, this was the only instrument light enough to carry on the “waste of deep and plodding sand.”59 The marble monument for the initial point on the Pacific was the last to arrive. The Daily Alta California, on March 14, 1851, reported the arrival in San Francisco of the topsail schooner Helena carrying the monument for the U.S.-Mexico boundary line. The monument was shipped down to San Diego the next month aboard the schooner Annette. It consisted of four separate pieces and weighed over eight tons. Hardcastle believed that the design of the monument was a big mistake and complained frequently to Emory about it. On one occasion he wrote “what a great mistake it was to have a marble monument of such dimension—one piece alone weighs 5 tons and is so unwieldy that it will be difficult to get here and more difficult afterwards to put in position.”60 Upon the monument’s arrival in San Diego, military personnel transported the pieces down to south end of the port on a flat-bottom barge before transferring them to gun carriages for delivery to the bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The monument was installed on a masonry foundation six feet square on top and extending three feet below the earth’s surface to prevent settling. Once this work was completed Hardcastle held a ceremony and picnic, on July 14, at the site to dedicate the monument and celebrate the completion of the California boundary line. News reports about the dedication called it a “splendid marble monument.”61 Except for a brief two-week period in 1894, this monument has stood on the line for 156 years identifying the beginning of the boundary shared by Mexico and the United States. Its history is closely associated with the Mexican American War and its aftermath. It is the starting point of the southwestern boundary of the United States, a boundary that in 1848 completed the country’s westward continental expansion. The Gadsden Treaty of 1853 resulted in a modification of the California boundary line at its eastern terminus and during those negotiations issues regarding the port of San Diego were never revisited. In an irony of history, the line marks the northern border of Mexico that resulted in the loss of over half its territory, while it added land to Baja California. La Mojonera is part of the rich historical heritage shared by the two countries and the San Diego/Tijuana
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transborder region. Its historical importance to that heritage clearly justifies its value and continued preservation.62 One last note, on February 19, 1852, John Russell Bartlett, Weller’s successor as boundary commissioner, visited San Diego and took the opportunity to visit the boundary line and see the new monument. He noted that the “monument stands directly opposite the Coronado Islands, and is seen from a great distance on land as well as by vessels at sea. On the table-land around and south of it, grows a large number of the beautiful agave.” During his brief stay Bartlett made a pencil drawing of the landmark, which is the oldest known image of the monument that is available today.63
NOTES
1. On the Mexican side of the border, the monument is popularly known as “La Mojonera” or “The Landmark.” Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, “Border Field Park’s Disrepair is Sadly Symbolic, San Diego Union-Tribune, June 28, 2003, page E-2. For the official name, see National Register of Historic Places Inventory–Nomination Form, September 6, 1974, State Office of Historic Preservation, Sacramento, CA. The official length of the boundary line, according to the International Boundary and Water Commission, is 1,952 miles, excluding maritime boundaries, running from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Paula Rebert, La Gran Línea, Mapping the United States—Mexico Boundary, 1849-1857 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 12. For the dedication of the monument, see “Minutes of the Meeting between Captain Edmund L. F. Hardcastle of the United States and Ricardo Ramírez of Mexico for the Purpose of Locating the Monuments Marking the Boundary between the Two Countries,” July 14, 1851, Henderson Collection, MSA SC 501, Folder 59, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland (hereafter Hardcastle & Ramírez Minutes) and the San Diego Herald, July 24, 1851, 2. The number of monuments cited for marking the boundary line is based on email information received by the author from the IBWC, Realty Branch, January 30, 2007. 2. The two most authoritative studies to date on the drawing of the boundary line are Rebert, La Gran Línea, and Joseph Richard Werne, The Imaginary Line: A History of the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 1848-1857 (College Station: Texas Christian University, 2007). A partial list of standard studies includes William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 153-208; Carl Irving Wheat, Mapping the American West, 1540-1861. Vol. 3 From the Mexican War to the Boundary Surveys, 1846-1854 (San Francisco: Institute of Historical Cartography, 1959), 204-246; Odie B. Faulk, Too Far North . . . Too Far South (Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1967); Robert V. Hine, Bartlett’s West; Drawing the Mexican Boundary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968); Leon C. Metz, Border: The U.S.-Mexico Line (El Paso, TX: Mangan Books, 1989), 3-116; Dawn Hall, ed., Drawing the Borderline: Artist-Explorers on the U.S.-Mexico Boundary Survey, preface by Robert V. Hine (Albuquerque: Albuquerque Museum, 1996); L. David Norris, James C. Milligan and Odie B. Faulk, William H. Emory: Soldier-Scientist (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), 65-172; Lewis B. Lesley, “The International Boundary Survey From San Diego to the Gila River, 1849-1850,” California Historical Society Quarterly 9, no. 1 (1930): 3-15; For studies providing some discussion of monuments, see Lenard E. Brown, “Survey of the United States Mexico Boundary, 1849-1855: Background Study,” (Washington: National Park Service, 1969), 148-171; Michael Dear, “Monuments, Manifest Destiny, and Mexico,” Prologue 37 (Summer 2005): 32-41. Articles related to the history of the boundary commission that appeared in The Journal of San Diego History (hereafter JSDH) include Thomas L. Scharf, “Amiel Weeks Whipple and the Boundary Survey in Southern California,” JSDH 19, no. 3 (1973): 18-31; Thomas L. Scharf, ed., “Pages from the Diary of Cave Johnson Couts: San Diego in the Spring and Summer of 1849,” JSDH 26, no. 2 (1976): 9-19; Raymond Starr, ed., “Emigrants and Indians: Selections From C. J. Couts’ Military Correspondence, 1849,” JSDH 29, no. 3 (1983): 165-84; Jorge A. Vargas, “The Pantoja Map of 1782 and the Port of San Diego: Some Answers Regarding the International Boundary in the San Diego-Tijuana Region,” JSDH 46, nos. 2-3 (2000): 118-27. A view of the monument at sunset overlooking the Pacific Ocean appeared on the cover of the July 1968 issue of JSDH. Articles in newspapers and magazines include Rita Larkin, “Whatever Became of Our Obelisk? New Hope for an Old Tourist Mecca,” San Diego & Point Magazine 17 (April, 1965): 100-101, 117; “Initial Point of Boundary Began Era of Peace for U.S., Mexico,” San Diego Union, September 19, 1971, G1-2;
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Dorothy Loomis, “Politics, as always, got’n the way as the survey was made of the border,” San Diego Union, September 17, 1961, A46; “Border Monument 100 Years Old,” Southern California Rancher 16 (July 1951), 15; John A. Ryan, “Bloodshed, Hate, War Located Present Little Known Monument,” Imperial Beach News, July 9, 1959; “Lonely Monument on the Border,” Westways 50 (June 1958): 14-15. 3. Rebert, La Gran Línea, 1-2. 4. Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1990), 187-88. 5. Charles E. Chapman, A History of California: The Spanish Period (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921), 368; George W. Hendry, “Francisco Palóu’s Boundary Marker: A Record of the Discovery of the First Boundary between Upper and Lower California,” California Historical Society Quarterly 5 (December 1926): 320-27. Fray Francisco Palóu, Historical Memoirs of New California, ed. Herbert Eugene Bolton (1926; New York: Russell & Russell, 1966), 300-302, 305. 6. Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America: Documents 122-150, 1846-1852, ed. Hunter Miller (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1937), 5:315-38; Vargas, “The Pantoja Map of 1782 and the Port of San Diego,” 120; Oscar J. Martinez, “Surveying and Marking the U.S.- Mexico Boundary: The Mexican Perspective,” in Hall, Drawing the Borderline, 13-22; Richard J. Werne, “Pedro García Conde: El Trazado De Límites Con Estados Unidos Desde El Punto De Vista Mexicano, 1848-1853,” Historia Mexicana 36 (Julio-Septiembre, 1986): 113-29; Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation, (New York: Alfred A. Knopft, 1963), 107-49. 7. Norman A. Graebner, Empire on the Pacific: A Study in American Continental Expansion (1955; reprint ed., Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, Inc., 1983), 1-21, 59-69, 219-24. 8. Norris, William H. Emory: Soldier-Scientist, 61; William H. Emory, Lieutenant Emory Reports: A Reprint of Lieutenant W.H. Emory’s Notes of a Military Reconnaissance, introduction & notes by Ross Calvin (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1951; paperback edition, 1968), 176. Calloa is the port at Lima, Peru. 9. Treaties and Other International Acts, 315-38; Griswold, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 187-88; George P. Hammond, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: February Second 1848 (Berkeley: The Friends of the Bancroft Library, 1949): 73-75. 10. Griswold del Castillo, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 187-88. 11. Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 1-31; William H. Emory, “Report of the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey: Made Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior,” House Executive Document 135, 34th Congress, 1st Session, 3-4 (hereafter HED 135). 12. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 158; Norris, William H. Emory: Soldier-Scientist, 61-62. 13. Paula Rebert, “Trabajos Desconocidos, Ingenieros Olvidados: Unknown Works and Forgotten Engineers of the Mexican Boundary Commission,” in Mapping and Empire: Soldier-Engineers on the Southwest Frontier, ed. Dennis Reinhartz and Gerald D. Saxon (Austin: University of Texas, 2005), 161; Harry P. Hewitt, “The Mexican Boundary Survey Team: Pedro García in California,” Western Historical Quarterly 21 (May 1990), 176-77; Luz Maria O. Tamayo Perez and José Omar Moncada Maya, “José Salazar Ilarregui,” Geographers Biobibliographical Studies, ed. Patrick H. Armstrong and Geoffrey J. Martin (New York: Continuum, 2004), 23:116-25. The spelling of Salazar Ylarregui does vary in the numerous sources reviewed. The format adopted in the text is the spelling used by Werne and Rebert. 14. Hewitt, “The Mexican Boundary Survey Team,” 176-177. 15. James Buchann to John Weller, January 24 and February 13, 1849, in The Works of James Buchann: Comprising his Speeches, State Papers, and Private Correspondence, ed. John Bassett Moore (New York: Antiquarian Press, LTD., 1960), 8:293-94, 322-26; Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 206-11; Joseph Ellison, California and the Nation, 1850-1869: A Study of the Relations of a Frontier Community with the Federal Government (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), 136-43. 16. Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 2nd Session, 81-82; Hiram H. Robinson to The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 12, May 26, and June 21, 1849. Robinson served as the Secretary to the Boundary Commission from February to November 1849. At the same time he was a correspondent and held an interest in The Cincinnati Enquirer. See Sidney Cohen, “Biographical Data on the Librarians of the Ohio
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State Library, 1817-1960,” (master’s thesis, Kent State University, 1961), 36-37. 17. Journal of the Joint Commission, July 7, 1849, Senate Executive Document 119, 32nd Congress, 1st Session (hereafter SED 119), 57. 18. Ibid, 58-59; Rebert, “Trabajos Desconocidos, Ingenieros Olvidados,” 160; Norris, William H. Emory: Soldier-Scientist, 73-75. For accounts of the 1849 4th of July celebration, see John B. Goodman, “Forty- Niners’ Independence Celebration,” San Diego Historical Society Quarterly 1 (July 1955): 29-31; Starr, “Pages from the Diary of Cave Johnson Couts,” 14-15; Hiram H. Robinson to The Cincinnati Enquirer, September 18, 1849. 19. Rebert, La Gran Línea, 27; William H. Emory, Notes on the Survey of the Boundary Line between Mexico and the United States (Cincinnati: Morgan & Overend, 1851), 3-18. 20. In his report, Emory stated “in this operation I looked for little or no aid from the Mexican commission, for although composed of well educated and scientific men, their instruments were radically defective. Our determinations, after being re-observed and re-computed by the Mexican commission, were received by them without correction.” HED 135, 5. Some of the standard studies citing the limited role of the Mexican engineers include Brown, Survey of the United States Mexico Boundary, 1849-1855, 6; Lesley, “The International Boundary Survey from San Diego to the Gila River, 1849-1850,” 9; Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 160-61; Faulk, Too Far North…Too Far South, 22, 30-31. Ed Scott, a San Diego historian, is frequently cited regarding the limited contribution made by the Mexican Boundary Commission. Ed Scott, San Diego County Soldier-Pioneers, 1846-1866 (National City, CA: Crest Printing Co.), 21. 21. Rebert, “Trabajos Desconocidos, Ingenieros Olvidados,” 156-57; Rebert, La Gran Línea, 34-40; Hewitt, “The Mexican Boundary Survey Team,” 171-96. 22. J. Fred Rippy, The United States and Mexico (1931; reprint, New York, AMS Press, 1971), 106-09; Lesley, “International Boundary Survey,” 3-6; Joseph Richard Werne, “Partisan Politics and the Mexican Boundary Survey,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 90 (1987): 329-46. 23. Werne, “Partisan Politics and the Mexican Boundary Survey,” 329-46; Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 163-67; Weller’s critics accused him of departing Cincinnati in haste for the Pacific coast to get beyond the reach of the new administration and avoid being recalled. In Congressional debates, California Senator, William M. Gwin, pointed out that Weller had an interview with President-Elect Taylor prior to his departure. Taylor expressed no objections to Weller’s plans for getting the survey underway. Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 2nd Session, 82. 24. Elbert B. Smith, The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor & Millard Fillmore (Lawrence, KN: University Press of Kansas, 1988), 54-66; Clayton to Fremont, June 20, 1849; Clayton to Weller, June 26, 1849; and Clayton to Fremont, June 28, 1849; C. L. Weller to Clayton, July 20, 1849; Emory to Clayton, September 15, 1849 in Report of the Secretary of the Interior . . ., 31st Congress, 1st Session, 1850, Senate Executive Document 34 (Serial 558), 1:9-11, 28-29 (hereafter SED 34); Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 163-167; Werne, The Imaginary Line, 50. 25. Letter - S. Pleasonton to Ewing, 28 December 1849, SED 119, p. 2; Letter - E.R.S. Canby to Emory, 25 September 1849, Records of the 10th Military Department, 1846-1851, National Archives Microfilm Publication 210, Roll 1, Letters Sent, Volume 6, pp.177-78; Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 2nd Session, 1850, pp. 78-84. 26. Rebert, La Gran Línea, 60. Emory’s Camp Riley was named after the senior military officer in California, General Bennett Riley. There were a number of other camps established by the members of the boundary commission over the two years it took to complete the California boundary. Weller set up his headquarters near the site Punto de los Muertos on the future site of New Town. Gray and Salazar established their camps near a fresh water creek south of Emory’s camp on the road to Lower California. Gray named his camp “Rough and Ready” and Salazar called his “el primero campo.” Captain Hayden and the infantry’s located their camp east of Gray’s. The Dragoons set up camp further south on the Arroyo de Tia Juana east of the road to Lower California. In September Gray relocated his camp closer to the initial point on the Arroyo de Tia Juana. See Gray’s plan of the port of San Diego, “Topographical Sketch Southernmost Point of the Port of San Diego,” SED34, 1:55; José Salazar Ylarregui, Datos de los trabajos astronómicos y topograficos, dispuestos en forma de diario, practicados durante el año de 1849 y principios de 1850 por la Comissión de Límites Mexicana en la línea que divide esta República de la de los Estados-Unidos (Mexico City: Imprenta de Juan R. Navarro, 1850), 15 and map; History of San Diego County, ed. Carl H. Heilbron (San Diego: The San Diego Press Club, 1936), 80.
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27. John S. Robb to St. Louis Weekly Reveille, July 9, 1849 in John Francis McDermott, ed., “Gold Fever: The Letters of ‘Solitaire,’ Goldrush Correspondent of ’49,” Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 5 (July 1949), 317; Vargas, “The Pantoja Map of 1782 and the Port of San Diego,” 122-23. 28. Rebert, La Gran Línea, 60-64; Hewitt, “The Mexican Boundary Survey Team: Pedro García in California,” 182-85; A.B. Gray to John R. Bartlett, July 25, 1851, SED 119, 283. 29. Ibid. 30. Norris, William H. Emory: Soldier-Scientist, 75; A. W. Whipple, The Whipple Report: Journal of an Expedition from San Diego, California to the Rio Colorado, from Sept. 11 to Dec. 11, 1849, ed. E. I. Edwards (Los Angles: Westernlore Press, 1961). This report was also published as a government document, “Report of Lieutenant Whipple’s Expedition,” 31st Congress, 2nd Session, 1851, Senate Executive Document 19 (Serial 589); William McPherson, ed., From San Diego to the Colorado in 1849: The Journal and Maps of Cave J. Couts (Los Angeles: Arthur M. Ellis, 1932). Emory and Riley strongly supported efforts to aid those gold rush emigrants in distress after crossing the desert. Canby to Emory, November 1, 1849, Records of the 10th Military Department, Microcopy 210, Roll 1, 6:217. 31. Norris, William H. Emory: Soldier-Scientist, 77. 32. HED 135, 4. 33. Emory, Notes on the Survey of the Boundary Line, 9; John Walton Caughey, “Rocket Men of the Mexican Border,” Westways, 41 (July 1949): 12-13. 34. Journal of the Joint Boundary Commission, October 8, October 10, 1849, SED 119, 58-59; Rebert, La Gran Línea, 64. 35. London Illustrated News, January 5, 1850, 5-6. 36. Hewitt, “The Mexican Boundary Survey Team,” 181. 37. Norris, William H. Emory: Soldier-Scientist, 77-78. 38. Rebert, La Gran Línea, 34-39; Rebert, “Trabajos Desconocidos, Ingenieros Olvidados,” 161. 39. Hewitt, “The Mexican Boundary Survey Team,” 181-82, 186; McPherson, From San Diego to the Colorado in 1849, 27-28. 40. “Pioneering the Carrizo: The Narrative of A.B. Gray,” in Gold Rush Desert Trails to San Diego and Los Angeles in 1849, ed. George M. Ellis, Brand Book No. 9 (San Diego: San Diego Corral of the Westerners, 1995), 109-111; Lesley, “The International Boundary Survey,” 10-11; Norris, “William H. Emory: Soldier- Scientist,” 89-91; Weller to Clayton, November 3, 1849, Gray to Clayton, November 17, 1849; Gray to Weller, November 7, 1849, Weller to Gray, November 8, 1849, Gray to Weller, November 4, November 14, 1849, SED 34, 1:31-32 & 44-49. 41. Although nothing appeared in official records about this incident, three different members of the boundary commission wrote about the shooting in their letters. See Hiram H. Robinson to The Cincinnati Enquirer, November 3, 1849; George Clinton Gardner, The U.S. Mexican Boundary Survey: Letters from the Field, 1849-1854, ed. Jane Lenz Elder and David J. Weber (forthcoming); “Robert Patterson Effinger, Letters from San Diego, 1849,” ed. Carol Judith Schille (master’s thesis, San Diego State University, 1986), 114-18. Weller’s health evidently experienced more than one set back while serving as boundary commissioner in San Diego. According to a New York Daily Tribune article, March 11, 1850, he received another injury the previous July due to the accidental firing of a shot gun while on a reconnaissance in the mountains. None of the San Diego correspondents cited above reported this July incident. 42. Hewitt, “The Mexican Boundary Survey Team,” 186-88; Whipple to Salazar, November 29, November 30, 1849, Weller to Clayton, January 3, 1850, SED 34, 1:33, 37-39. 43. Ibid. 44. Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 2nd Session, 1850, 78-84. 45. Norris, William H. Emory: Soldier-Scientist, 95-96; Clayton to Emory, November 23, 1849, Ewing to Weller, December 19, 1849, Ewing to Emory, January 8, 1850, SED 34, 1:12-18. 46. Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 2nd Session, 1850, 78-84. 47. Journal of the Joint Boundary Commission, January 28, 1850, SED 119, 60-62; Hewitt, “The Mexican
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Boundary Survey Team,” 190-91. 48. Journal of the Joint Boundary Commission, January 28, 1850, SED 119, 62-65. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid; Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 2nd Session, 1850, 78-84. 53. Canby to Emory, January 28, 1850, Records of the 10th Military Department, Microcopy 210, Roll 1, Letters Sent, 6:298-99; Emory to Ewing, August 20, 1850, Emory to M. L. McKennan, October 2, 1850, U.S. National Archives, Records Group 76, Inventory Entry #425, Letters Received from the Fourth U.S. Commissioner, 1849-60; Alex H. H. Stuart to D. R. Atchison, January 18, 1853, U.S. Senate Executive Document No. 6, 33rd Congress, Special Session, (Serial 688), 29-30. In summary, after an initial funding of $33,325 in February 1849, the Pacific coast phase of the U.S. boundary commission work received no additional financial support from Washington until Emory returned to the capitol in October 1850. 54. Hardcastle to Jimenes [sic] and Jimenes [sic] to Hardcastle, February 23, 1850, SED 119, 72-73. 55. Hardcastle to Blunt, April 3, 1850, Henderson Collection, MSA SC 501, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland. 56. Declaration of W. H. Emory and Jose Salazar Ylarrequi, February 26, 1850; Emory to Ewing, April 3, 1850, in SED 34, 2:8, 13-18. 57. Brown, “Survey of the United States-Mexico Boundary,” 148-171; Hardcastle & Ramírez Minutes, March 19, 1851. The Boundary Commission formally approed the minutes of the Hardcastle and Ramírez meetings on September 18, 2852. See Boundary Commission Official Journal, John Russell Bartlett Papers, Microfilm Edition, published by M.I.T. Libraries, 1966, Reel No. 9. 58. Hardcastle to Emory, May 2, 1851, U.S. National Archives, Records Group 76, Inventory Entry #425, Letters Received from the Fourth U.S. Commissioner, 1849-60. In New York City George William Blunt managed the family business, “At the Sign of the Quadrant,” that specialized in the sale of nautical publications, charts and instruments used widely by mariners engaged in foreign commerce. In addition to assisting his brother with the store, Edmund Blunt served as a member of the United States Coast Survey and was a highly respected surveyor. Along with their father, Edmund March Blunt, they were considered the foremost authorities of American Hydrography in the years prior to the Civil War. Harold L. Burstyn, At the Sign of the Quadrant: An Account of the Contributions to American Hydrography made by Edmund March Blunt and his Sons (Mystic: Conn, Marine Historical Association, 1957), 11-21. 59. Brown, “Survey of the United States-Mexico Boundary,” 148-171; Metz, Border: The U.S-Mexico Line, 28. 60. Ibid, 163; Daily Alta California, March 14, 1850, 2. 61. Hardcastle & Ramírez Minutes, June 16, 1851; Hall, Drawing the Borderline, 40. 62. Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America: Documents 152-172, 1852-1855, ed. Hunter Miller (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942), 6: 342-91. 63. John Russell Bartlett, Personal Narrative of Exploration and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora and Chihuahua (1854; Chicago: The Rio Grande Press Inc., 1965), 2:105.
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The Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation
The San Diego Historical Society honored Daniel J. Tucker, Chairman of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, with the George W. Marston Award for Civic Leadership at the 2007 History Makers Gala held at the U. S. Grant Hotel on June 2. Marston, founder and first president of the San Diego Historical Society in 1928, is well remembered for his many philanthropic activities. Tucker received the Marston award for his leadership and the outstanding service the Sycuan Band has given both to its tribal members and to the San Diego community as a whole. It is therefore important to recount the unique and remarkable history of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation from earliest times to the present. Ancestors of the Kumeyaay arrived in the San Diego area nearly 12,000 years ago. Currently, there are 130 Sycuan tribal members who proudly pass down many time-honored traditions to keep the heritage and customs alive. As a Native American Indian tribe, Sycuan is an independent, Daniel Tucker, Chairman, Sycuan Band. sovereign nation with its own democratically elected government, the Tribal Council. The people abide by tribal laws as well as state and federal laws. As an independent nation and independent government, Sycuan maintains government-to-government relationships with the city, county, state and United States governments. The earliest documented inhabitants in what is now San Diego County are known as the San Dieguito Paleo-Indians, dating back to about 10,000 B.C.E. Different groups later evolved as the environment and culture diversified. It is from one of these groups that the Southern Diegueño emerged at about 3000 B.C.E. The name Diegueño was given to them by the Spaniards. The Southern Diegueño are the direct ancestors of the Sycuan Band currently living in Dehesa Valley. Today, Sycuan is one of thirteen Kumeyaay Bands in the county. There are a total of 18 Indian tribes in San Diego, more than any other county in the United States. For thousands of years, the Kumeyaay lived peacefully and prospered in San Diego’s temperate climate. Their ancestral territory ranged east to El Centro, north to Escondido, and south to Baja California. They were skilled hunters and took full advantage of the native plants, using them for shelter, food and clothing. The Kumeyaay established their rich cultural identity and traditions, many of which are still practiced and honored today. The Kumeyaay first encountered Europeans with the arrival of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542. By the year 1769, when Spanish soldiers and missionaries, led by Father Junípero Serra, founded the Mission and the Presidio of San Diego, the destruction of the Kumeyaay way of life had
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irreversibly begun. Although the Kumeyaay were among the most resistant of all California Indians to subjugation, they still saw their ways destroyed and their land stolen. At the same time, even though they learned some useful skills, the ravages of deadly, newly introduced diseases, primarily smallpox and measles, decimated the Kumeyaay population. Life for the Kumeyaay worsened following Mexico’s overthrow of the Spanish government in 1821. All lands and power were transferred from Spain to the Republic of Mexico and, after 1835, when the mission lands were turned over to civilian administrators, they were further displaced. From the establishment of the San Diego Mission in 1769 through the end of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1848, the Kumeyaay population decreased from nearly 30,000 to approximately 3,000. The period between California statehood in 1850 through post-Civil War reconstruction was one of the worst in Kumeyaay history. With virtually no protection, the Kumeyaay were at the mercy of the state and the federal government. With the passing of the “Government and Protection Act” of 1850, California imposed its authority over Indians, and even though treaties were made to give them land, they were never ratified. The Kumeyaay continued to be strangers in their own home as more land was taken, commitments ignored, treaties broken, and in some instances, their people physically removed to other areas. In 1875, after over 100 years of unspeakable treatment of Native Americans, President Ulysses S. Grant took the first step towards an Indian Peace Policy. He passed an Executive Order that set aside specific lands in San Diego County for the exclusive use of the Kumeyaays. The current 640 acre, one-square mile Sycuan Reservation in Dehesa Valley was included in this order. The land given to Sycuan was remote, harsh and poor for farming. But the Sycuan people, through force of will, maintained their time-honored traditions and survived. In 1891, the U.S.
The U.S. Grant Hotel originally constructed in San Diego in 1910.
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Sycuan Casino
finally recognized the sovereign status of California Indian tribes by passing the “Act For The Relief Of The Mission Indians.” Sycuan has today diversified as a business enterprise. To date, the casino has been the Band’s most noteworthy economic success. To realize their goal of diversification, they established the Sycuan Tribal Development Corporation (STDC). Their first acquisition was the golf course and resort property of Singing Hills in east San Diego County near their reservation. Since then, STDC has continued with development projects in downtown San Diego and National City, purchasing and upgrading the historic U.S. Grant Hotel. They have a capital management firm and have become boxing promoters with Ringside Promotions by Sycuan. They have sponsored a number of activities for sport fans throughout San Diego. Today, the Sycuan Band again stands proud over its land. While not forgetting their past and their unique cultural heritage, the Sycuan people look forward to the future, and to becoming self-reliant once again. Their identity as a good neighbor is of utmost importance. They have contributed generously to hundreds of charitable and civic organizations over the years. It is an obligation that they have taken upon themselves to help their neighbors and make San Diego, their native homeland, a better place to live.1 The San Diego Historical Society features an exhibit of the Kumeyaay heritage at the Serra Museum in Presidio Park and a future display will be a part of the permanent exhibit in Balboa Park.
1. Information in this article has been adapted from the Sycuan Band website that may be visited at www.sycuan.com
150 Dead Sea Scrolls
Museum Review San Diego Natural History Museum Dead Sea Scrolls June 29, 2007-January 29, 2008
On June 29, 2007, the San Diego Natural History Museum will open the largest, most comprehensive exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls ever presented to the public. The exhibition—created and assembled by the Museum—includes authentic Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient illuminated manuscripts, artifacts, landscape and aerial photography, and interactive displays about science, discovery, and exploration. Because of the generosity of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, 27 Dead Sea Scrolls will be on display over the course of the exhibition. The unprecedented six-month exhibition displays materials never before exhibited together: Dead Sea Scrolls from Israel and Jordan reunited for the first time in sixty years, rarely seen ancient Hebrew codices from the National Library of Russia, medieval manuscripts from the British National Library, and stunning modern interpretations of the texts. Tracing the scrolls and their meaning through time, the exhibition connects the ancient world to the modern. The exhibition will span two floors and over 12,000 square feet. According to Dr. Risa Levitt Kohn, curator of the exhibition and director of San Diego State University’s Judaic Studies Program, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to encounter some of the world’s most significant documents and artifacts, all in the same space. The scrolls are the oldest discovered copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible, and the ideas in them have shaped our world. They shed light on life, faith and culture in ancient Israel, which influenced Judaism and Christianity.” The Dead Sea Scrolls, dating from 250 BCE–68 CE, are indisputably one of the greatest archaeological finds of all time. Discovered beginning in 1947 in eleven caves along the shores of the Dead Sea in Israel, the scrolls are a bridge to the period when the foundations of western civilization were being laid. These ancient
11QPsalms. Photo by Tsila Sagiv, Courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority.
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Qumran ruins. Courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority.
manuscripts embody universal values and bring to life a vanished world. Upon entering the exhibition, visitors will be surrounded by landscapes from top Israeli photographers Neil Folberg, Duby Tal, and Yossi Eshbol that explore Israel’s unique beauty and varied climate. The photographs will also show the similarities in San Diego’s and Israel’s climate—two of the five Mediterranean climate regions on Earth. The next area explores scientific methods, new and old, that unlock the mysteries of the scrolls and help researchers better understand them. The exhibit investigates scroll preservation, DNA and chemical analysis, infrared technology, Carbon-14 dating, and digital document reconstruction. Visitors will then explore Qumran, an archeological site near where the scrolls were found (thought by some to be where some scrolls were copied and written). This area of the exhibit will partially recreate Qumran at the height of its existence around 100 BCE to 68 CE. Authentic artifacts — coins, sandals, and an inkwell—provide insight into the lives of this ancient community. Twenty-seven scrolls will be on display throughout the course of the exhibition: visitors will see 15 at any given time, scrolls will change in the fall. Scroll highlights include: scrolls of the biblical books of Leviticus, Isaiah, Job and others;
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Scroll jar. Courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority Copper Scroll. Courtesy of West Semitic Research. scrolls such as the Damascus Document and the War Scroll highlighting the life and thoughts of the Qumran community; Psalms scrolls containing passages from liturgy still in use today; a section of the Copper Scroll from Jordan, the only Dead Sea Scroll inscribed on copper; the best preserved of all Deuteronomy manuscripts containing the text of the Ten Commandments; and scrolls written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Ancient Qumran: A Virtual Reality Tour will be featured in the Museum’s giant- screen theater and is included in admission. The Museum will offer an educational program that will include 22 lectures by world-class scholars and archaeologists, films, classes, and audio tours. Additionally, a curriculum will be prepared for use in schools, home schools, synagogues and churches. Tickets and more information are available at www.sdscrolls.org. Joan and Irwin Jacobs are the presenting sponsors of Dead Sea Scrolls.
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BOOK REVIEWS
San Diego: California’s Cornerstone. By Iris Engstrand. San Diego, CA: Sunbelt Publications, 2005. Bibliography, illustrations, maps, chronology, and index. 300 pp. $19.95 paper.
Reviewed by Eugene P. Moehring, Professor of History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Aimed primarily at the general reader and based partly on material published in two of her earlier books, Iris Engstrand’s newest survey of San Diego’s history covers a wide variety of topics and noteworthy incidents. Supporting the narrative are numerous photographs, maps, drawings, and other visual evidence. The early chapters tracing the role of native peoples and the clash of colonial cultures are informative, as are the pen portraits of leaders who helped shape the city’s history. Alonzo Horton, Major Reuben Fleet, Pete Wilson, and other influential figures are all there along with a concise summary of their contributions to San Diego’s growth. Engstrand devotes considerable space to the Panama-California Exposition, city promotion, transportation links, and downtown revitalization efforts. The latter involves discussions of park expansion, historic preservation, retail center development, and tourism. The author’s coverage of water issues, suburbanization, education, and professional sports are all satisfying, although not all subjects are of equal importance. Sometimes the desire for balance needs to be sacrificed. Subjects like the vital role of defense spending and particularly the navy – what Roger Lotchin has called “the metropolitan-military complex” – in shaping west coast urban development in places like San Diego, require more space. Moreover, a discussion of the role of defense spending in San Diego’s development demands some mention of Congressman Bob Wilson. Although wide-ranging and instructive, Engstrand’s narrative is at times too episodic. For example, she follows a section describing San Diego’s response to the September 11 terrorist attacks with coverage of the city’s water crisis. At other times, she attributes ideas and reforms to locals without placing the subject in its broader context. For instance, her discussion of Alonzo Horton’s 1867 plans to build a grand city park should recognize that New York’s recently-opened Central Park (1865), with its positive effect upon adjacent land values, inspired myriad park-building projects across urban America at that time. In the same vein, Engstrand correctly credits chamber of commerce President G. Aubrey Davidson with suggesting that San Diego hold a Panama-California Exposition to exploit the opening of the Panama Canal, but she should note that San Francisco businessmen were already working on the same idea for their city. The author’s prose chronicling San Diego’s triumphal march to greatness is largely celebratory in nature. Most readers will not object to this tone, but there are places where a more critical approach to policy is warranted. There is, for instance, little critical coverage of discrimination against the city’s minorities in housing, education, employment, and public places.
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Overall, however, Engstrand has provided an up-to-date overview of San Diego’s emergence as America’s seventh-largest city. The book is packed with useful information and dates. Her maps, photographs, and chronology of events will be especially helpful to local students and to those largely unfamiliar with the city’s past. This work contributes to our general knowledge of a Sunbelt city that, for some strange reason, still lacks much of a scholarly literature.
All Aboard for Santa Fe: Railway Promotion of the Southwest, 1890s to 1930s. By Victoria Dye. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Illustrations, appendixes, notes, bibliography, and index. 163 pp. $24.95 cloth. $17.95 paper.
Reviewed by Marisa K. Brandt, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Minnesota.
The American Southwest has been a popular tourist destination throughout the twentieth century. Its environment, architecture, and culture have provided tourists with a wide variety of reasons to visit the Southwest. Victoria Dye argues that the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe (AT&SF) Railroad’s relentless promotion of the Southwest during the early twentieth century was a crucial element in the development of tourism in the region. Dye’s All Aboard for Santa Fe: Railway Promotion of the Southwest, 1890s to 1930s provides a lively view of the AT&SF’s advertising strategies during this time period. Her concise monograph chiefly examines the city of Santa Fe itself and also provides a short discussion of Albuquerque. All Aboard for Santa Fe begins with a whirlwind summary of the region’s history and swiftly moves on to a discussion of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad and its development. The bulk of the book focuses on the Railroad’s marketing strategies. The AT&SF’s advertising materials describe a southwestern culture that had melded its Spanish and Indian history into a romantic retreat from modern life. The mythologized (and heavily sanitized) cultural story that the AT&SF used in its materials emphasized the uniquely American aspects of the area. Railway literature skillfully combined copy that touted the Southwest’s healthy environment with promotion of southwestern culture. Dye contends that the city of Santa Fe is emblematic of the region. Its success as a tourist draw “may be seen as testimony to the unprecedented use of regional motifs and cultural icons” by the AT&SF (p. 4). The Railroad initially promoted the town as a health resort (primarily for tuberculosis patients) but by the 1920s had collaborated with the Fred Harvey Company in opening and advertising hotels and other attractions that focused on the region’s cultural heritage. The Harvey Company also began running “Indian Detours,” a series of sight-seeing trips in the region. The company designed these excursions to provide a reason to stop in the Southwest during an otherwise less-than-exciting trip from the East to the West Coast and also as tourist destinations in and of themselves. Dye maintains that Albuquerque benefited from the AT&SF’s efforts, although to a lesser extent than Santa Fe, and she spends some time describing the effects of AT&SF’s advertising
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on “The Town Down The Tracks: Santa Fe’s Rival” – Albuquerque (ch. 5). Unfortunately, the book’s brevity prevents in-depth discussion of the region as a whole. Although Santa Fe is clearly an important part of the Southwest’s tourist industry, a discussion of the Grand Canyon would have added greatly to Dye’s analysis and would have helped to place it in the broader context of the region. The AT&SF spent a great deal of time and money promoting the Grand Canyon. The company also extensively developed its tourist attractions and, in collaboration with the Harvey Company, dominated tourism at the Canyon during the early twentieth century. Similarly, the Indian Detours were not specific to Santa Fe – although they were explicitly southwestern – and they were a central focus of the AT&SF’s regional advertising efforts. A more regionally-based analysis would allow Dye to draw some further-reaching conclusions about the effects of railway promotion of the Southwest and would show her readers the long reach of the Railroad in developing the region’s image. Nevertheless, All Aboard for Santa Fe is an accessible and useful examination of the AT&SF’s efforts to build regional tourism through the promotion of their idea of southwestern culture. Dye examines this under-explored topic from a new angle, providing an in-depth case study of its effects on the city of Santa Fe. All Aboard for Santa Fe will be a useful resource for anyone wishing to know more about the development of tourism in the Southwest; the extensive appendices and bibliographic notes are especially valuable.
Charles F. Lummis: Editor of the Southwest. By Edwin R. Bingham. San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1955. Reprint 2006. Bibliography, illustrations, index, and notes. 218 pp. $19.95 paper.
Reviewed by Nicole Dawn Goude, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of California, Riverside.
Through his work as an editor and contributing writer for a regional journal in Los Angeles, Charles Fletcher Lummis extolled the beauty of the Southwest and called for the preservation of indigenous culture. He founded the Southwest Museum and was instrumental in the conservation of the California Missions. One of the first historians to document the legacy of this fascinating figure was Edwin R. Bingham, professor emeritus of history at the University of Oregon. Although it was written over fifty years ago, this monograph by Bingham remains one of the few texts dedicated to the life and work of Charles Fletcher Lummis. While this second printing does not deviate from the original text or give a new introductory note, it does provide the reader with a wealth of regional history in a relatively compact volume. Bingham provides a short biography before exploring the professional editorial career of Lummis. He draws on a large body of information regarding the life of Lummis, including published works, diaries, letters, and reminiscences of others, which he makes an effort to discuss without dwelling on any particular point. In recounting the life of Lummis, Bingham allows the exciting and somewhat lurid details to come through, such as the “immoderate use of tobacco and alcohol”
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(p. 11) and womanizing that led to the failure of two marriages. These details are skillfully retold so that the reader is interested in a man who dropped out of Harvard, hiked from Ohio to California, and was afflicted with a sudden, if temporary, onset of paralysis – all before the age of thirty. In later chapters, Bingham relates how these early events affected Lummis’ career as a writer and editor of The Land of Sunshine (renamed Out West in 1902). While one might expect the rather dry statistics relating to the business of the magazine (such as advertising revenue and circulation rates) to be mind-numbing, especially after the thrilling account of Lummis’ life story, Bingham manages to weave this information into colorful anecdotes to create a fascinating read. This technique, however, comes at a cost. In the non-biographical portion of the work, he does not tell the history chronologically, so that from one paragraph to the next he jumps from Out West (1902) back to The Land of Sunshine (1895). A reader attempting to determine what contributed to the success of the magazine in a given year (whether it was Lummis himself, the advertising funds, circulation rate, or contributing writers) would have to flip back and forth to find the requisite information. It is somewhat regrettable that no revisions or additions to the original text have been made. This second printing would have benefited from an afterword that addresses the impact of Lummis’s works on the indigenous populations with whom he was so concerned. For example, Lummis founded the Sequoya League to “make better Indians and better treated ones” (p. 116), but Bingham did not include the native reaction to the Lummis’ efforts to aid in the welfare of the tribes. Additionally, the text contains some outdated and inaccurate material: “…the Chumash, the Gabrieliño, the Luiseño, and the Juaneño are now wholly extinct” (p. 114 n. 27). As we know, these tribes are not extinct, although their numbers have been drastically reduced. Ironically, these very tribes have actively conferred with one of the institutions established by Lummis, the Southwest Museum, in blessing the new exhibits. Nevertheless, this text remains a well-researched and engaging treatment of Lummis and his involvement with the preservation of the American West. Bingham’s work is still a valuable resource for the study of the Southwest and retains its relevance to the growing field of Los Angeles regional history.
Teaching Mikadoism: The Attack on Japanese Language Schools in Hawaii, California and Washington, 1919-1927. By Noriko Asato. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, 2006. Appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. 176 pp. $40.00 cloth.
Reviewed by Lori Pierce, Assistant Professor of American Studies, DePaul University.
It is one of the more interesting historical anomalies that the United States, a country which proudly regards itself as multicultural, is also so relentlessly monolingual. Our cultural diversity masks a deep suspicion of linguistic diversity. Noriko Asato’s Teaching Mikadoism explores an early episode in the history of our linguistic paranoia, the controversy over Japanese language schools in Hawai’i,
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California and Washington. Teaching Mikadoism attempts three difficult tasks: first, the book describes a narrow slice of the history of Japanese language schools in Hawai’i, California and Oregon by focusing on eight years of public debate. Second, the author attempts to “reframe” the controversy by comparing and linking the situation in these three locations. Finally, the book expands our understanding of Japanese American history by providing more insight into the Issei (first) generation of immigrants by utilizing Japanese language resources, particularly newspapers, periodicals, and the reports of the Japanese consular authorities in the United States and the Territory of Hawai’i. In order to fulfill these aims, any historian would require a volume of double the length and twice the density. Teaching Mikadoism succeeds in introducing these problems but not in resolving these issues. The book is arranged into four substantive chapters, two of which focus on Hawai’i and two of which describe developments in California and Washington. In each case, Asato argues that the controversy over language schools was symptomatic of a larger political battle between the Nikkei (Japanese) and white American communities. The attacks on language schools were an excuse to advance more far reaching efforts to control the political and social advancement of the Japanese community. Asato describes two facets of the language school debate in Hawai’i: the internal struggle between Buddhists and Christians in the Japanese community to control language schools and how the battle over language schools became a part of federal efforts to oversee education in order to promote and enforce assimilation. In the second chapter, Asato focuses on the 1919 Federal Survey of Education which led to the passage of Act 30 (later overturned by the Supreme Court) which made foreign language schools subject to control by Hawai’i’s Department of Public Instruction. The national attention garnered by this survey and the campaign for Act 30 influenced the way that Asian exclusionists in California framed the debate over language schools in that state. Exclusionists in Washington then copied Californians, using the vague threat of “mikadoism” to fan the flames of bigotry and gain support for white control over Japanese language schools. Each case is an intriguing example of how the forces behind Asian exclusion movements manufactured the controversy over schools to further other political goals. In Hawai’i, Territorial authorities, plantation owners, and religious groups vied for influence over the Japanese community, the largest single ethnic group in the islands. In California, exclusionists saw control of the schools as a way to thwart the growing economic power of the Japanese community in the agricultural industry. And although the Japanese population was relatively small, the white community in Washington seemed to take a preventive approach, attempting to keep the Nikkei from gaining any power as they had in California and Hawai’i. Asato covers no new ground in this work. As she acknowledges, the study of Japanese language schools has been the subject of numerous theses and dissertations and is a standard part of the teaching of Japanese American history. She adds to our knowledge by working with Japanese language documents and thereby introducing new perspectives to the historical record. This is evident in her descriptions of the reactions of the Issei and the role of the Japanese consular officials in these controversies. This is valuable, elementary historical work which
158 Book Reviews globalizes Asian American studies in a way that is long overdue. Good history, however, requires sound interpretation in addition to the amassing of facts. As an analysis of the Japanese language school controversy, Teaching Mikadoism is less successful. Chief among the lapses is the lack of a sustained discussion or definition of “mikadoism.” At no point does Asato define or interpret the phrase for a contemporary audience. She refers to Valentine McClatchy’s “Theory of the Mikado doctrine” (p. 55) which argued that Japanese schools and churches were an inherent threat to America because the Japanese government was using immigrants to colonize the United States. Her descriptions lead us to infer that mikadoism meant emperor worship or Japanese nationalism, but the reader longs for a clear, cogent definition or theory of mikadoism from the point of view of the researcher. And although there seems to be some connection between Buddhist-Christian rivalries in Hawai’i’s Japanese community (explored in Chapter 1) and the accusation of emperor worship by Asian exclusionists in California and Washington, Asato does little to make explicit these connections in a way that truly “reframes” the controversy over Japanese language schools.
The Failure of Planning: Permitting Sprawl in San Diego Suburbs, 1970-1999. By Richard Hogan. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2003. Bibliography, illustrations, index, and notes. 200 pp. $69.95 cloth. $24.95 paper.
Reviewed by Steven P. Erie, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Urban Studies and Planning Program, University of California, San Diego.
The Failure of Planning is a study of so-called “progressive planning” in the San Diego region during the last three decades of the twentieth century. Richard Hogan argues that progressive regional planning has failed to restrain suburban sprawl and produce a better quality of life in San Diego, not because of failures of implementation, but because of a deficit of political and economic imagination. The chief bêtes noires are San Diego Mayor and later California Governor Pete Wilson at the local and state levels and Governor and, later, President Ronald Reagan at the state and national levels. In particular, President Reagan made the “New Federalism” a supposed cover for marginalizing grassroots radical movements spawned by the sixties and co-opting both liberals and conservatives into managerial coalitions whose agendas were ultimately dominated by big developers. The builders had the resources and staying power to pay for and shape “managed growth” and “smart growth” policies that have amounted to seeming Band-Aids on cancer, at least according to Hogan (pp. 31, 135). The anti-Mira Mesa backlash of Wilson’s early years in City Hall gave way to a more accommodative managed-growth paradigm that was challenged in the 1980s by the environmental and slow growth movements. However, the post-1989 recessionary collapse of the speculative housing market muted political pressures for less development, more affordable housing, and greater habitat preservation until 1996 when a new speculative boom began and “smart growth” became the reigning mantra. According to the author, the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) facilitated the process by co-opting the
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slow growth movement into the regional planning process. Governor Wilson’s Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP) initiative was adopted, the federal Endangered Species Act gave protection to the gnat catcher, yet suburban development rolled on inexorably. Rather than embrace the conspiracy theory popular among liberal environmentalists and slow-growth advocates that progressive planning has been thwarted by a planners’ sellout to developers, Hogan advances the view that the result was inherent in progressive planning’s inability to think beyond a bourgeois market society with private property in land and a bias toward homeowner politics. Land-use decisions in San Diego are made according to “the carnival model, with multiple authorities anxiously currying favor with constituents through endless meetings and an endless struggle toward consensus” (p. 101). “Ballot box” initiatives that sought to curb development only complicated the land- use process in ways exploited by big developers (p. 95). The book’s practice of hiding behind pseudonyms of the actual names of suburban communities studied and key informants interviewed in order to protect the innocent (or the guilty) is irritating. Also off-putting are the ideological effusions and excessive self-revelations. Does one really need to know that Hogan’s own preference for radical-anarchist “eco-politics” apparently led him in 2000 to vote for neither George Bush nor Al Gore nor Ralph Nader? (p. 128). The author grew up mostly in San Diego, but minces no words about his happiness in no longer living there. He loathes life in automobile-driven San Diego compared to a bucolic bicycle-centric “college town in the Midwest” (p. 139). Notwithstanding such criticisms, the book’s underlying model of historic progressive planning in San Diego as a sorcerer’s apprentice in thrall to developers and a boom-bust housing market has something to recommend it.
The Visionary State: A Journey Through California’s Spiritual Landscape. By Erik Davis. Photographs by Michael Rauner. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006. Bibliography, photographs, and index. 272 pp. $40 cloth.
Reviewed by Joshua Paddison, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles.
“The number of churches in San Francisco implies either great devotion, or immense necessity for prayer,” observed British author J. G. Player-Frowd during a visit to California in 1872. Within a few square blocks he counted two synagogues, a Catholic church, two Swedenborgian tabernacles, and a variety of Protestant congregations including a branch of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The tremendous religious variety noted by Player-Frowd has increased exponentially in California in the years since his visit, and today the state is home to an unparalleled panoply of denominations, sects, and creeds. For The Visionary State, writer Erik Davis and photographer Michael Rauner visited dozens of California’s sacred sites, producing a fascinatingly idiosyncratic exploration of the state’s religious history. Not interested in the mainstream churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues
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attended by the vast majority of observant Californians, Davis and Rauner focus on “visionary” groups and individuals who have occupied the mystical margins of the religious landscape. San Diego, for example, is represented by photo-essays of Mission San Diego de Alcalá, the Mormon San Diego Temple, Spiritualist mansion Villa Montezuma, Theosophist buildings at Point Loma (now owned by the Church of the Nazarene), and First Church of Christ, Scientist. Pursuing the “great polytheistic collage” that makes up what Davis terms “California consciousness” (p. 9), the book’s creators include within their purview a dazzling range of “new” religious groups, from Mormons, Scientologists, Christian Scientists, and the Vedanta Society to many lesser-known ones such as the Self-Realization Fellowship, Church of All Worlds, and Ordo Templi Orientis. Accounts of famed California seers Thomas Starr King, Aimee Semple McPherson, Aldous Huxley, and Paramahansa Yogananda abut stories of largely forgotten spiritual seekers such as mystic Thomas Lake Harris, Bohemian poet Elsa Gidlow, Zen leader Shunryu Suzuki, and Tantric sensualist Penny Slinger. In his forty-three short, wide-ranging essays, Erik Davis draws upon previously published histories, journalism, and biographies to guide readers down seldom- traveled paths. Though his writing style veers toward slang – Native American tribal leaders are called “fat cats” (p. 12); Charles Manson is a “shrimpy antichrist” (p. 184) – Davis’s intelligence, ardor, and omnivorous interests elevate The Visionary State above the standard coffee table book it resembles. That said, his lack of footnotes is inexcusable, especially given the extraordinary subject matter into which he delves. Michael Rauner’s photographs are elegant and formally precise, but his decision to exclude all people from the sites he documents makes them seem—to me, at least—sterile and trapped in the past. The book suffers from a disconnection between Davis’s text, crowded with colorful people and messy stories, and Rauner’s photos of deserted, perfectly lit buildings. It feels odd to read about Tantric orgies, LSD hallucinations, arcane magic rites, and secret Spiritualist societies in the pages of an attractively designed, full- color, carefully edited, expensive tome published by Chronicle Books. Though attempting to celebrate the “restless, heretical edge” of California’s religious culture (p. 9), Davis and Rauner cannot help but tame the unruliness of their subject matter. Of course, anyone who studies or writes about religion struggles with understanding and capturing someone else’s transcendent experience. Davis and Rauner are not fully up to the challenge, but their ambition and passion make The Visionary State as singular as the people, stories, and sites it documents.
The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border. By David Bacon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Bibliography, photographs, epilogue, and index. 348 pp. $40.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.
Reviewed by Altha J. Cravey, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border documents ravaged lives of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances. These people
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defiantly confront multibillion dollar corporations, speak straightforward truths in the face of imminent danger, seek food and dignity for their impoverished children, forge alliances in unlikely places and, above all else, inspire others to follow in their footsteps. The struggles documented in David Bacon’s book illuminate the impact of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement on labor activists, agricultural families, meatpackers, industrial workers, and independent trade unionists in Mexico and the United States. Their stories might have been covered in U.S.-based newspapers if such mass media were equally concerned with labor and business topics. Since labor concerns have been neglected in such outlets, Bacon had to devote years collecting the narratives that comprise this disturbing account of social destruction wrought by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Personal stories from many distinct places reveal courage, dignity, and determination. At the U.S.-Mexico border, we meet a young man making $8 per day who was allowed only a ten-day leave when he fractured his right forearm while welding steel for Hyundai subsidiary Han Young. In Mexico City, we meet a lawyer who sews his eyelids shut for several weeks to dramatize the public protest of privatization by an independent bus drivers’ union. We meet workers in several locations who publicly declare their support for an independent union despite forceful intimidation campaigns. Most disturbing of all, we meet countless, nameless children who are harvesting onions and field crops because their parents’ salaries simply do not provide the bare essentials. In the twelve years since NAFTA was enacted, the Mexican government has turned a blind eye to the illegal use of child labor and many other labor law violations. Bacon’s riveting account of diverse labor struggles provides grim details of which many people (especially in the United States) are completely ignorant. His focus on personal narratives and specific struggles is compelling. While Bacon does not claim to be comprehensive, his analytical approach forcefully demonstrates the way in which many workers (and their families) have been irreparably harmed by the refusal of NAFTA negotiators to anticipate the social dislocations the treaty unleashed. In particular, Bacon’s book provides an indictment of NAFTA’s labor side agreements, showing that union activists, lawyers, and workers alike have spent considerable time and energy pursuing grievances in a good faith effort to hold NAFTA accountable. Over the years it has become increasingly clear that NAFTA’s complex labor grievance procedures are a waste of time because there are no enforcement mechanisms. This is an accessible book on a timely topic. Bacon suggests that cross- border labor organizing has been difficult yet the NAFTA experience has forced workers and activists to forge new kinds of cross-border alliances and new organizing strategies, especially in the US and Mexico. Thus, while the book is full of devastating details, it also highlights collaborations that are educational, transformative, and far-reaching. The black-and-white photographs in this book reinforce the compelling narrative. A six-year-old onion picker looks up from her tasks and gazes coolly and knowingly from the page. The young Hyundai welder mentioned above displays his outstretched arms on the front cover, revealing permanent deformation of his right limb. In a 1993 photograph, Tijuana workers stand before a table where they must declare out loud which union they support. A 2002 photograph shows activists in Omaha, Nebraska, handing out union
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information at a successful organizing drive in a ConAgra beef plant. Bacon’s book is refreshing for its unapologetic stance in telling the human story behind the North American Free Trade Agreement. Methodically unraveling NAFTA’s central contradiction – that goods and investments are free to move while people are not – he weaves together many stories of people in diverse places. In my view, the real strength of the book is the comprehensive way in which Bacon treats cross-border relationships. That is, the ravaged lives that Bacon documents are also meaningful lives, where individuals, unions, and community activists have insisted on the simple priorities of human dignity and social justice.
BOOK NOTES
Agriculture and Rural Connections in the Pacific, 1500-1900. Edited by James Gerber and Lei Guang. Volume 13 of The Pacific World: Lands, Peoples and History of the Pacific, 1500-1900. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2006. Illustrations, maps, notes, and index. 387 pp. $144.95 cloth. The editors bring together essays from a range of disciplines to explore the development of a trans-Pacific agriculture that involved the migration of people as well as plants.
The Coming and the Going: A History and a Story of Baja California. By John Joseph. Bloomington, IN: 1st Books Library. Illustrations. 700 pp. $28.95 paper. Joseph’s research on the Jesuits in Baja California provides the basis for this fictional account of a missionary’s experiences on the peninsula.
Spain’s Legacy in the Pacific. Special publication of Mains’l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History. San Diego, CA: San Diego Maritime Museum, 2006. Illustrations and notes. 105 pp. $11.95 paper. Eleven essays from historians and anthropologists examine a number of facets of Spanish seafaring in the Pacific. The volume features numerous high-quality illustrations.
Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, and Terror in 1968 Mexico. By Elaine Carey. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. 254 pp. $22.95 paper. Historian Elaine Carey analyzes the origins and implications of the uprising that culminated in the October 1968 killing of student protestors in Mexico City.
Mexico OtherWise: Modern Mexico in the Eyes of Foreign Observers. Edited and translated by Jürgen Buchenau. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Map. 304 pp. $22.95 paper. Grouped into four time periods, this collection features obscure and well-known writings on nineteenth and twentieth-century Mexico. Buchenau provides biographical notes on the authors.
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166 SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY 39th Annual Institute of History
The San Diego Historical Society’s Institute of History encourages research on San Diego subjects of historical significance. Papers pertaining to California, the Southwest, and Baja California are appropriate to submit to the Institute when they involve events or individuals with some relationship to San Diego’s past. Students, non-professional, and professional writers are encouraged to submit papers.
Awards, which include cash prizes, may not be given in a category if no papers of sufficient merit are submitted, as determined by the judges. All papers submitted to the Institute of History will be considered for publication in the Society’s quarterly The Journal of San Diego History.
The 2006 Institute of History Award Winners were: Charles W. Hughes: Marc Tarasuck Award - $600 - Architects and Architecture for La Mojonera & The Marking of California’s Mexico-U.S. Boundary Line Ernie Liwag: Joseph L Howard Fund Award - $500 - Business and Business People for Craft Beer in San Diego Society Scott Fraser: Mary Ward Memorial Award - $500 - San Diego County History and Historic Preservation for The Need for Water: The Federal Gov- ernment, San Diego, and the Growth of a Major U.S. Metropolis from 1940-1955 Joshua Grace, Christopher Rhamey, Megan Dukett, Kaylin Gill, Ricky Bell: James S. Copley Library Award - $300 - The American Period of San Diego History for Coming Out Gay, Coming Out Christian: The Begin- nings of GLBT Christianity in San Diego, 1970-1979 Jennifer C. Dawson Nolan: Jane Booth Award - $300 - for Women in San Diego History for By Example: How the Southland Anti-Suffrage Movement Helped California Women Gain the Vote in 1911 Awards not given: Judge Jacob Weinberger Award - $600 - Legal History Milton Fintzelberg Award - $600 - Native, Spanish and Mexican Eras Dr. Charles Fenn Memorial Award - $500 - Medical History
Deadline for submission of papers September 14, 2007
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SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY BOARD OF TRUSTEES AND STAFF
Executive Director MUSEUM OF SAN DIEGO HISTORY, David Watson RESEARCH LIBRARY, JUNIPERO SERRA MUSEUM, VILLA MONTEZUMA, AND Officers MARSTON HOUSE STAFF
Harold G. Sadler, President Jane Anderson, Administrative Assistant Robert F. Adelizzi, President-Elect Itzel Baeza, Site Interpreter Elisabeth Bergan, Vice President Catherine Berger, Human Resources & Office Peter Janopaul, Vice President Manager Helen Kinnaird, Secretary Jeff Boaz, Exhibit Preparator Laura Stanley DeMarco, Treasurer Trina Brewer, Museum Store Manager Ronald J. Urich, Past President Reggie Cabanilla, Facilities Supervisor Rachel Carpenter, Site Interpreter BOARD OF TRUSTEES Jessica Cohen, Museum Instructor Tori Cranner, Director of Collections Thomas Anglewicz Robert Cromwell, Site Interpreter Bobbie Bagel Elizabeth Daoust, Development Director Marian Barry Karie Dzenkowski-Castillo, Senior Exhibits Diane G. Canedo Preparator James R. Dawe Maria Filippelli, Store Associate August J. Felando Katrina Glynn, Education Coordinator Kenneth Golden Jamie Henderson, Collections Assistant Sumiyo Kastelic Raffael Hoffman, Outreach Coordinator Donna Knierim Burke Inman, Systems Administrator Robert McNeely Johnna Jalot, Site Intrepreter James Milch Jane Kenealy, Archivist Michael Morgan Elizabeth Klueck, Site Intrepreter Drexel Patterson Cindy Krimmel, Assistant Photo Archivist Arthur G. Peinado David Krimmel, Associate Director/Director of Marc Tarasuck Exhibits John Vaughan Rebecca Lawrence, Associate Director/Director Nell Waltz of Education William V. Whelan Joel Levanetz, Assistant Curator Leon Williams Treyer Mason-Gale, Assistant Registrar Carol Myers, Photo Archivist CREDITS Rosa Petroulias, Store Associate Ginger Raaka, Director of Retail Design and Layout Gabe Selak, Public Programs Manager Allen Wynar Montay Shine, Museum Custodian Sean Stewart, Assistant Archivist Printing Susan Stocker, Accounting Crest Offset Printing Michelle Swinney, Marketing Director & Special Events Coordinator EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Chris Travers, Director of the Booth Historical Photograph Archives/Photographer Kathryn Jordan Donna Van Ert, Membership Director Cynthia van Stralen Nicholas Vega, Senior Curator Arjun Wilkins Kate Vogel, Graphic Coordinator Johann Wahnon, Site Interpreter Beth Williamson, Site Interpreter
168 Publication of The Journal of San Diego History has been partially funded by generous grants from the Joseph W. Sefton Foundation; Quest for Truth Foundation of Seattle, Washington, established by the late James G. Scripps; and an anonymous friend and supporter of the Journal.
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Volume 53 Summer 2007 Number 3 • The Journal of San Diego History Diego San of Journal Number 3 • The Volume 2007 Summer 53 San Diego History