Articles by Richard Crawford

Harry Houdini in a familiar theatre pose.

A vaudeville act that is without its equal in the world today has been secured for the Grand theater . . . Harry Houdini, the noted handcuff and jail breaker, will give exhibitions of his skill here.  –San Diego Union, Oct. 5, 1907

In the fall of 1907, Harry Houdini, soon to be known as the world’s greatest magician and escape artist, came to San Diego to display his skills before crowded theater audiences . . .

The story of Houdini in San Diego.

Police Chief Harry Raymond

In the early 1900s, few jobs were more tenuous than Chief of the San Diego Police Department. The pressures of city politics kept careers short, averaging eleven months between 1927 and 1934. The tenure of Chief Harry J. Raymond was briefer than most, and maybe the strangest.

Raymond became chief on June 5, 1933. With more than twenty years of police experience, largely as an investigator for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office, he brought to the job “a reputation for efficiency in force management,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

But his appointment to the $300 per month job by City Manager Fred Lockwood was instantly questioned . . .

Read the complete story of the rise and fall of Harry Raymond.

San Diego is a very fine, secure harbour . . . within there is safe anchorage for ships of any burthen.  There is a sorry battery of eight pounders at the entrance: at present, it does not merit the least consideration as a fortification.  –William Shaler, captain of the American trading ship Lelia Byrd.

In 1803,  American sailors and Spanish soldiers went to war.  Read the story of  the “Battle of San Diego Bay.”

 

For landing and taking off hides, San Diego is decidedly the best place in California.  The harbour is small and land-locked; there is no surf; the vessels lie within a cable’s length of the beach, and the beach itself is smooth, hard sand, without rocks or stones.  For these reasons, it is used by all the vessels in the trade, as a depot.  –Richard Henry Dana (1835)

Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr. is an American literary classic.  The thrilling narrative of a voyage from Boston to the California coast in the 1830s was Dana’s personal memoir of his time at sea—an account which prominently featured early San Diego. 

The story of Richard H. Dana and San Diego.

A front-page headline in the San Diego Union screamed the news: “AMERICAN GUNBOAT TAKES HUN RAIDER OFF MEXICAN COAST.”  Less than a year after America’s entry into World War I, San Diegans were riveted by reports of a captured German raider ship “set to create havoc with Pacific coast shipping.”

Three U. S. Navy gunboats had taken their prize fifteen miles off the coast of Mazatlan on March 19, 1918.  Heavily armed and reportedly flying the flag of the Kaiser’s Imperial Navy. . .

Read the complete story of The German Raider.

The German “raider” Alexander Agassiz

William Heath Davis

Of the new town of San Diego, now the city of San Diego, I can say that I was its founder. –William Heath Davis, interview with San Diego Sun, December 1887.

Often forgotten in San Diego history is the pioneer some historians regard as the true founder of the City of San Diego.  William Heath Davis certainly believed he deserved credit for his attempt of 1850, an effort that failed but paved the way for a later city builder named Alonzo E. Horton.

Read the story of San Diego’s founding: The Davis Folly.

The city council signed a contract yesterday with Hatfield, the Moisture Accelerator. He has promised to fill Morena reservoir to overflowing by December 20, 1916, for $10,000. All the councilmen are in favor of the contract except Fay, who says it’s rank foolishness.  —San Diego Union.

By the end of 1915, San Diego was in its fifth year of drought.  The city reservoirs of Morena and Otay were nearly empty.  With water supplies threatened, the nervous City Councilmen gave verbal acceptance to the offer of a “Rainmaker,” Charles M. Hatfield, who boldly pledged to “fill the Morena reservoir to overflowing . . .”

Read the story of The Rainmaker

Mission Valley, flooded in January 1916.

In a bold headline, the San Diego Union of May 21, 1907, announced a shocking crime: P.S. SPARKMAN MURDERED AT RINCON. The English merchant from the tiny community at the foot of Palomar Mountain was a respected businessman, a well-known friend of the local Indians, and a peaceful man “never known to have a quarrel with anyone.”

Read the complete story of The English Storekeeper at Rincon.

The British clipper ship Darra.

“IT SMACKS OF PIRACY” headlined the San Diego Union on Sunday morning, November 28, 1887.  The night before three sailors had been forcibly taken from the British bark Darra as it lay anchored in the harbor.  The incident soon known as “The Darra Outrage” would stir up the local water front community and threaten relations with British merchants and sea captains.

Read the complete story of the Darra Outrage.

Clinton L. Byers, City Attorney

Alleged padding of city telephone bills with charges for personal calls by city officials came under scrutiny of the county Grand Jury today as it launched an investigation of “junket” trips taken by City Atty. C. L. Byers and Councilman A. W. Bennett. . .

The mid-1930s were a rocky period for San Diego politics.  Careers were made and lost in a matter of months.  One of the most prominent political casualties of the era was the city’s chief legal authority: the city attorney, Clinton L. Byers.

Read the entire story of the Embattled City Attorney.