Articles by Richard Crawford

San Diego is the rottenest graft ridden city of its size on the American continent. If the Mayor and the Chief of Police don’t know it they ought to be sent to a home for the feeble-minded.  If they do know it, they both should be in the penitentiary.

–Abraham Sauer, publisher, San Diego Herald.

In 1925, a San Diego City Councilman was indicted for attempting to bribe developer Ed Fletcher.  Read more about The Bribe.

Head Nurse Dora Henderstedt and her charges, June 1951.

In the early 1900s, tuberculosis killed about 110,000 Americans annually.  Without modern antibiotics, the disease was often fatal.  To protect children judged at risk from TB because of exposure or poor health, communities sometimes segregated the juveniles in “preventoriums.”  Rest Haven,  opened in 1920 in east San Diego, was one of the first and last preventoriums for children in the United States.   Read more about The Rest Haven Preventorium.

Water flowing from the San Diego Aqueduct into the San Vicente Reservoir.

San Diego today imports about 80% of its water supply. But until 1947 all of our water came from local wells and reservoirs. This article explains how our addiction to outside water supplies began just after World War II: The story of the San Diego Aqueduct.

The notorious “Russian Mike”

In San Diego’s notorious Stingaree district of the 1890s, liquor and violence flowed freely in dozens of saloons south of H Street (Market). One of the more disreputable dives was the Pacific Squadron Saloon on the corner of 4^th and J streets, where a homicide involving alcohol, a cheap gun, and a character named Russian Mike, drew rapt attention from San Diegans in the spring of 1899. Read the story of Russian Mike.

A bold, daring and successful attempt at jail breaking occurred at the county jail this morning before daylight. . . Four desperate characters, conspired together to break for liberty, and after careful, premeditated plans, succeeded in gaining liberty. . .

Read about the first successful escape from the San Diego County jail: Jail Break

July 29 – 8 to meridian. At 10:30 hauled up courses, standing in for harbor of San Diego.  At11:30 came in to 9½ fathoms; hoisted out boats . . . At 3:40 the launch and Alligator under command of Lieutenant Rowan, and the Marine Guard under Lieutenant Maddox, left the ship to take possession of the town of San Diego.

–Log of the USS Cyane.

Read the story of the first flag raising over San Diego in 1846: Raising the flag

Ostrich farms were big business a century ago and the giant birds prospered in San Diego.  Read more about the Ostriches.

Southern California families, especially homeowners, are currently pondering the question of their lives: To build or not to build a place to hide from nuclear attack. . .

A backyard bomb shelter.

Read here about “shelter mania” in San Diego: Fallout .

Captains and officers of San Diego’s “Yippie” boats.

We called ourselves the pork chop express. We carried meat and vegetables from Pearl Harbor all over the central Pacific. . . Sometimes we’d come back from an 1,800 jaunt, load up with pork chops and go right out again. We were so slow that almost anything could have caught up with us and sunk us.

The story of San Diego’s tuna fleet in World War II: The Pork Chop Express.

The city of San Diego has been the namesake for two U.S. Navy ships with distinguished careers in the two world wars. The armored cruiser USS San Diego served in World War I before its sinking by a German mine off the New York coast in 1918. Another USS San Diego would fight in World War II, remembered by San Diego author Fred Whitmore as “the unbeatable ship that nobody ever heard of.”  Read more about the USS San Diego of World War II.