Articles by Richard Crawford

In December 1919, full-page advertisements began running in San Diego and Los Angeles newspapers soliciting dollars for an audacious plan to explore for oil in San Diego. Remarkably, the instigator of the proposal was the city’s mayor, Louis J. Wilde. The scheme would attract thousands of dollars from hundreds of San Diegans, all anxious to follow their mayor in the “Jazz Cat Gamble.”

Read the story of a reckless scheme by the city’s mayor The Jazz Cat Oil Gamble.

Mayor Louis Wilde and his portable drilling rig. Courtesy Motor Transport Museum, Campo, CA.

All those old exposition buildings are nothing but fire traps.  I go to bed every night afraid that I will wake up in the morning to see the park buildings wiped out and with them collections of materials that could not be replaced for less than $1,000,000 [and] several years of hard work. –Joseph W. Sefton, Jr., president, Natural History Museum.

The story of a disaster in Balboa Park: the Civic Auditorium Fire.

The Civic Auditorium was the former Southern California Counties Building, built for the Panama-California Exposition of 1915.

San Diego Union, Jan. 18, 1904

There are men and women, boys and girls, steadily, but surely, patrolling the path that leads to eternal ruin. It is for us to rescue them. –Mrs. R. A. Rood, vice-president, Purity League of San Diego

On Friday afternoon, August 7, 1903, forty gravely concerned San Diego women went to church. Meeting at the First Methodist Episcopal Church on the corner of D (Broadway) and Fourth Street, the ladies discussed the growing moral peril found in city’s notorious Stingaree District home to “houses houses of impurity” and unfortunate women “caught in the toils.”

The story of San Diego’s first attempt to close the “Stingaree.” The Purity League.

Student sports were in their infancy in 1900 at San Diego Normal School but the college we know today as San Diego State University was eager to launch competitive sports. From its campus on Park Blvd. in University Heights, the one-year-old school was ready for football.

The story of the First Football at San Diego State.

The Normal School champions of 1900. Courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives, San Diego State University, Library and Information Access.

 

 

Warning: Avoid the plank road. A public warning was issued yesterday by the El Centro branch of the auto club of southern California that travel to Yuma via the plank road is dangerous. . . Parties attempting to travel suffer from thirst and hunger and are sometimes in danger of death as there is little chance of succor arriving unless a call for aid reaches Holtville or Yuma. –Imperial Valley Press, April 29, 1919.

The story of San Diego’s wooden road across the sand dunes: the Plank Road.

They called them the “White Flyers of the Pacific.” The sister ships Yale and Harvard were the fastest steamships on the California coast. Between 1911 and 1936—with a few years lost to World War I–the way to travel in style from San Diego to Los Angeles to San Francisco was by coastal steamship on the white liners.

The story of San Diego’s Harvard and Yale.

SS Yale

Sister Aimee, ca. 1920

When Aimee dived into the Pacific Ocean and emerged on the Mexican desert, thus performing a feat which will not be duplicated until babies grow on walnut trees, she reckoned that the rest of the world was as foolish as she. –San Diego Herald, July 29, 1926

The apparent drowning death of famed evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson off the coast of Santa Monica in 1926 shocked the world. Even more stunning was her reappearance weeks later in the Sonora desert. The sensational story she told of her kidnapping and miraculous escape spawned front-page news coverage that lasted for months. But for a fearless San Diego newspaper editor, the reporting of Aimee’s “ten days in a love shack,” meant Federal indictment and a lurid court trial.

The story of The Evangelist and the Muckraker.

Between two and four o’clock yesterday morning a woman named Maggie McCutcheon, whose sporting title is Maggie Bangs, was killed by pistol shot under circumstances that leave it somewhat of a mystery . . . –San Diego Union, June 19, 1881.

British “Bulldog” revolver

The story of death in San Diego’s notorious “Stingaree” district: Maggie Bangs.

Courtesy sandiegotunaboats.com

It was so sudden. The waters were very rough. I thought we were going to die. –Fisherman Joaquim Rico, aboard the tuna oat American Boy.

On the morning of March 6, 1966, twelve fishermen from the tuna clipper American Boy fought for survival when heavy waves swamped their boat.

Read about The Wreck of American Boy.

Douglas Gunn

No man was ever more thoroughly identified with the history of a city than is Douglas Gunn with that of San Diego. No city has ever had a more sincere and zealous advocate.  –San Diego Union, January 12, 1888.

The story of Douglas Gunn.