Articles by Richard Crawford

It was plain that they were in fact buying comfort, immunity from snow and slush, from piercing winds and sleet-clad streets, from sultry days and sleepless nights, from thunderstorms, cyclones, malaria, mosquitoes and bedbugs. All of which, in plain language, means that they were buying climate . . . Theodore Van Dyke, in Millionaires of a Day (1890).

“Bay’n climate,” some people called it. The irresistible twin lure of a beautiful harbor and an equitable climate drew tens of thousands to San Diego between 1885 and 1887—a period of furious growth called the “boom of the eighties.” Within an eighteen month period, San Diego’s population exploded from about 5,000 to an estimated 40,000 people.

The story of The Great Boom of the Eighties.

5th Street in 1887.

Mr. Kitterman has taken the precaution to construct a sewer from his restaurant to the bay. Patrons of the establishment declare that it is one of the nicest places in town since the completion of the improvement, and say that the immunity from flies is remarkable. –San Diego Union, Sept. 1, 1872.

With no municipal oversight, privately built sewers, privies, and cesspools multiplied in San Diego of the 1870s—some emptying their odiferous loads on the beaches of San Diego Bay, others simply spilling into city streets.  In the mid-1880s, the City Board of Trustees decided it was time for a needed civic improvement.

The story of Sewering the City.

San Diego and its sewer outlet.

 

There was a time in America when the standard for personal cleanliness was a weekly bath. The “great unwashed” often found that Saturday night soak in commercial bathhouses. During San Diego’s population boom of the eighties, nearly a dozen bathhouses dotted the city’s waterfront. A decade later the baths had become elaborate plunges and included an architectural wonder: Los Banos at Broadway and Kettner Blvd.

The story of the San Diego Baths.

Los Banos at Broadway and Kettner Blvd.

Raid on the Emerald Hills Golf Club.

Would illegal gaming now grow in San Diego? Police Chief George Sears assured the public that “the gambling lid was on.” But the “lid” was teetering. . .

Click here for the story of San Diego’s War on Gambling.

A cartoon linked fluoridation to a Communist conspiracy.

The endorsement was overwhelming. By a five-to one vote on October 25, 1951, the San Diego City Council approved the addition of fluoride to the city water supply. San Diego would soon join hundreds of American communities that treated its water to improve the dental health of its citizens. But for an issue that met little argument at first, fluoridation would soon generate fierce controversy. . .

The story of San Diego’s battle over Fluoridating the Water Supply.

Chatham Helm

There has been some trouble with Pablo’s band of Indians, in Agua Caliente Township . . . a party of Indians, some 20 or 25 in number, appeared with the purpose of driving off Chatham Helms and other settlers. A house owned by Helms was set on fire and burned, and an Indian, named Francisco, was shot and killed.  –San Diego Union, August 18, 1877.

 The story of Chat Helm and the Indians.

Prolonged blasts from nearly all the steam whistles in town heralded the arrival of the big Benson log raft at noon today . . . during its slow passage up the bay crowds of people hastened to the water front. Before the big mass of timber had reached the wharves all the docks were lined with spectators. —San Diego Tribune, September 8, 1906.

The story of San Diego’s ocean-going timber:  The Benson Rafts.

Courtesy Maritime Museum of San Diego.

Way back in 1995, while in the employ of the San Diego Historical Society, I published a small collection of my stories in Stranger Than Fiction: Vignettes of San Diego History.  The articles were all based on primary sources found in what is now known as the Document Archives of the San Diego History Center. 

It’s a nice collection of stories illustrated by scores of  historical photographs in a book design by artist Jill Berry, who designed the Journal of San Diego History for many years.

Some of the stories have been reworked and expanded for my Union-Tribune column “The Way We Were,” but the original compilation is still in print and available at my book site through Amazon.com