A Narrative Written
by
Grover O'Connor
Commemorating the
25th Anniversary of the
Establishment of
St. Francis Wood
San Francisco
1937
The first owner of what is now St. Francis Wood was Jose
Jesus Noe, who came to California from Mexico in 1834. This was the year of the
arrival here of Richard Henry Dana, the Harvard student, who had sailed round
the Horn as an ordinary seaman and later described California, in his "Two
Years Before the Mast,"as "the remote and almost unknown coast of California.”
"We floated,"says Dana, "into the vast solitude of the
Bay of San Francisco. All around was the stillness of nature. Beyond to the
westward of the landing place were dreary sand hills, steep and barren, their
sides gullied by the rains. Some five or six miles beyond the landing place to
the right, was a ruinous presidio, and some three or four miles to the left was
the Mission of Dolores, as ruinous as the presidio, and almost desolate, with
but few Indians attached to it, and but little property and cattle.”
There were then only about one hundred and fifty Europeans
and Mexicans and some Indians living on the peninsula and across the bay, and
it was not until the following year that Captain William A. Richardson, who had
b een given charge of the harbor, erected in what, at that time, was known as
Yerba Buena, the first dwelling in San Francisco outside of the Presidio and
the Mission. Richardson’ shack was located on our present Grant Avenue. It was
three years before the first road was cleared between Yerba Buena and the
Mission.
In the meantime, Noe had been
living on Las Pulgas Rancho in what is now San Mateo County, from which, in
1839, he petitioned for a grant of blocks surrounded by Sixteenth, Mission,
Fourteenth and Folsom Streets, but which were then a willow grove surrounding
the embarcadero of the Mission on Mission Creek. The clerk who drafted Noe’s
petition wrote on it: Noe "is an honest man, having a large family, and is now
in most indigent circumstances"; and the clerk recommended that Noe be granted
"this small piece of land for the purpose of cultivating some vegetables for
the support of his family."The clerk’s recommendation was followed and shortly
thereafter Noe became the owner of this now valuable land. We next hear of him
in 1844. Yerba Buena had then grown to a population of fifty, and, in that
year, Noe was granted, at a cost of less than $16, a lot on the plaza, across
the road from Richardson’s house.
In another two years the war with
Mexico was brewing and consequently there was a wild scramble for land because
of the belief that Uncle Sam was about to take California. Noe apparently was
now prospering, for he had herds of horses and cattle grazing on the hills west
of the Mission. He therefore petitioned that these hills be granted to him as
the Rancho San Miguel which, according to his petition, was to extend roughly
from what are now Valencia Street and San Jose Avenue to the ocean, and from
about the present westerly portal of the Duboce Avenue tunnel to a point
shortly below the county line.
As later confirmed by Uncle Sam,
however, the rancho extended on the west only to what is now Junipero Serra
Boulevard. St. Francis Wood is located about in the center of the westerly
border of this rancho. The grant was made but a few months before the
commencement of the war with Mexico, and by the grant Noe became the owner of
4500 acres of land, or one-sixth of the present area of San Francisco.
Apparently, the first improvement on the rancho was made by Noe himself when he
built his home at about what are now Twenty-fourth and Noe Streets—which
explains how Noe Valley acquired its name. But the acquisition of the San
Miguel Rancho was not the whole of Noe’s good fortune in 1845, for, in the same
year, he was elected alcalde; that is, mayor, and alcalde he was when the Stars
and Stripes were raised on the plaza in July 1846.
Two years later, California and
much more of Mexican territory was ceded to the United States for $15,000,000,
but when the treaty of cession was signed, it was not known that only nine days
before, James Marshall had made the discovery which was to focus on California
the eyes of the world. In December 1848, however, the President announced the
discovery in his message to Congress and then the electric word "gold"shot
round the world, and the deluge was on. The Forty-niners poured in from every
quarter, and before 1850 Noe had received $20,000 for three-fourths of the lot
on the plaza, which he had acquired only six years before for less that $16.
But that was not all, for, in January 1854, Noe the indigent of but a few years
back, sold most of the San Miguel Rancho to John M. Horner for $90,000.
During the next few years the
history of the title to the San Miguel Rancho was hectic, involving so far as
may be judged from the abstract of title, a mortgage foreclosure sale for
$125,000 and another sale for $800,000. Dana, who revisited San Francisco in
1859, tells about the fabulous transformation which had occurred here since he
sailed away from the "vast solitude"of San Francisco Bay in 1835.
"When I saw all these things and reflected on what I once
was and saw here and what now surrounded me, I could scarcely keep my hold on
reality at all or the genuineness of anything and seemed to myself like one who
had moved in worlds not realized.”
By 1862, two French
merchants of the ‘50s, Pioche and Baserque, and one Parsons were the owners of
most of the San Miguel Rancho, but they lost their holdings in it by a mortgage
foreclosure in 1878, and two years later former mayor Adolph Sutro, fresh from
his triumphs on the Comstock Lode, bought, for $240,000, the northwesterly
portion of the rancho, extending roughly from where the Affiliated Colleges are
to Ocean Avenue. It was Mr. Sutro who had these thousand acres and more thickly
planted with eucalyptus trees, many of which are to be seen today.
Shortly after Mr. Sutro
bought this property, he wrote his will,
in which he tied up the newly acquired acres in a trust which was not to
terminate until the death of the last surviving of his six children, whereupon
the land was to be sold and the proceeds used for educational purposes. As two
of the Sutro children are still alive, St. Francis Wood would still be a
forest, had not the Supreme Court, in 1909, declared the trust void, and
thereby cleared the way for the first real development west of Twin Peaks.
Development of the
westerly portion of the San Miguel Rancho had been blocked, of course, by the
unbroken line of hills which lies between the affiliated Colleges and Ocean
Avenue. Consequently, St. Francis Wood itself has little history. What
attracted most attention to West of Twin Peaks in the early days was the Ocean
House, built to the north of Lake Merced. In the 1850’s, a road to the Ocean
House, called Ocean House Beach Road, was laid out south of Mt. Davidson from
the old Mission Road. It is now Ocean Avenue. You can still bump along in your
automobile over a part of this old road where it ran through the Spring Valley
property, and I suggest that you do so some day until you come to the open
space surrounded by trees where the Ocean House was located.
To the north of this open
space and south of what is now Sloat Boulevard you will see a much larger open
space in which, on November 15, 1873, occurred the greatest single day in the
history of West of Twin Peaks, for on that day was run, with the eyes of the
nation on it, the race between the California thoroughbred, Thad Stevens, and
the two world beaters, Joe Daniels and True Blue, for a purse of $20,000. All
San Francisco, which had then grown to a metropolis of 190,000 people, was in a
lather of excitement over the race. For days before it, not a vehicle could be
hired, and on the day of the race, hackmen were getting $40 per load for carrying
passengers from "down town"to the track, the passengers having to get back as
best they could. Over 20,000 people and 4,000 vehicles were on the grounds when
the race began, and thousands more who did not have the price of admission were
milling around outside the gates. In the interior of the track were the
tally-hos which carried the wealth and grandeur of the State, among them,
Governor Booth and former Governor Stanford, who was then president of the
Central Pacific. Couriers on horseback carried "down town,"for publication in
the afternoon papers, dispatches giving details of the thrilling event. The
following are a few lines from one of the first of these dispatches.
"The grounds now present a dazzling scene of animation.
The proportions of the crowd have swollen with nameless rapidity, and at the
present time there are at least 6,000 people at the course. The main road
leading to the course is hidden for a mile by a cloud of dust and a continuous
procession of buggies pours steadily down the hill.”
Over $300,000 was bet on
the outcome of the race, and that night San Francisco went wild over the
victory of Thad Stevens.
After the race, the first
traffic jam west of Twin Peaks occurred, the departing vehicles taking three
hours to pass a given point and the last of the vehicles not getting "down
town"until early in the morning. On the following day, the Alta, the morning paper of the time, editorialized on the
inadequacy of the roads leading from town, and pointed out that half a dozen
toll roads commanded access to every part of the outlying territory except
Golden Gate Park, which was then in its infancy.
Apparently the first
improvement in the San Miguel Rancho itself, west of Twin Peaks, was the Alms
House which was established in 1854 where the Laguna Honda Home now is. In 1861
the site of the Laguna Honda Reservoir was sold to the newly organized Spring
Valley Water Company for $25,000, and shortly thereafter the company laid a
pipe line and flume from its reservoir in San Mateo County to Laguna Honda
Lake, the flume crossing what is now St. Francis Wood. In 1862 a franchise was
granted for the construction of a toll road—the San Miguel Ocean House
and Beach Macadamized Road—through the pass in the hills between Twin
Peaks and Mount Davidson. This was the genesis of Portola Drive. Ten years
later, Pioche, Bazerque and Parsons sold this road to the San Miguel Road
Company for $50,000. So you see how popular the Ocean House was.
Several vegetable
gardeners then had their homes below the Spring Valley flume in the St. Francis
Wood and Balboa Terrace area. Northwesterly of what is now St. Francis Wood was
the home of W.H. Greene, who, at an early date, had taken up land on both sides
of the ravine in which the Christian Science Home and Sigmund Stern Grove are
located. This ravine then extended to the present westerly port of the Twin
Peaks Tunnel and on up the line of Ulloa Street, past what was later to be the
site of St. Brendan’s Church. There were also several houses then along the
Ocean House Road in the Spring Valley property, and, to care for the children
of these scattered dwellings, a school, accommodating about ten pupils, was
built where the Commodore Sloat School now is. In the 1870’s, the teacher used
to trudge daily over the toll road to this old school from his home at
Sixteenth and Mission Streets, for it was not until 1908 that transportation
facilities began to get anywhere near what is not St. Francis Wood.
Among the earliest of the
present residents of West of Twin Peaks is Mrs. Mabel Morrison Hawkins, who
resides at Nineteenth Avenue and Sloat Boulevard. The Hawkinses bought their
property in 1905 from one of the Greene children. The Trocadero was then
catering, in what is now Sigmund Stern Grove, to those who were out for a "time."The Hawkinses began to build their home in 1906, and Mrs. Hawkins says that
their friends thought them quite mad for doing so. Nineteenth Avenue had been
laid out only shortly before and, says Mrs. Hawkins, it was usually a sea of
mud in the winter. Sloat Boulevard was not dedicated until 1908. When the
Hawkinses became residents of West of Twin Peaks, neither sewer, telephone,
electric nor gas service was available, and the dense Sutro Forest still
extended from the old toll road, which by that time had become Corbett Road, to
Ocean Avenue, with but a few clearings in it for nurseries and vegetable
gardens.
What is now West Portal
Avenue was down in the ravine which I have mentioned, and on both sides of this
ravine stretched the Lagomarsino vegetable garden. Mrs. Hawkins says that she
and her husband thought, in 1906, that they were to be out in the "country"permanently, and very properly did they think so, for there were then only five
voting precincts in all the area south of Fulton Street through Golden Gate
Park, the Sunset, Parkside, West of Twin Peaks, Ingleside and Sunnyside to San
Jose Avenue. In fact, there are as many votes now in St. Francis Wood, alone,
as there were then in all the area from Fulton Street to San Jose Avenue, and
one-third of the votes in 1906 were cast at the Alms House. In 1908, street car
service was extended from Lincoln Way over Twentieth Street to Thirty-third
Avenue, and the Parkside Realty Company began the erection of a number of homes
in the Parkside district.
Finally, in 1909, the
Sutro will was broken and the path was cleared for West of Twin Peaks, as we
now know it. Shortly thereafter four of the Sutro children offered to sell
their interest in the San Miguel Rancho. As a result, what is known as the
Residential Development Company published on February 5, 1911, its first
newspaper advertisement offering shares of its capital stock for sale. This was
the method adopted by it for raising funds with which to purchase, for a
million and a half dollars, 725 of the 4,500 acres which had been granted to
Noe for nothing only sixty-six years before. These 725 acres included what are
now Westwood Park, St. Francis Wood and Forest Hill. In the May following, the
Mason McDuffie Company, which had been very successful in developing
residential property in Berkeley, bought in the name of the Westgate Park
Company, 175 of these 725 acres, and the first advertisement of St. Francis
Wood appeared in the newspapers just twenty-five years ago, during the week
before Columbus Day.
The tract was not an
immediate success, however, because, as Mrs. Hawkins says, the "down town"people could see no future in it without more adequate transportation
facilities. But the tide turned on July 14, 1917, when the tunnel, which had
been under construction for three years, was completed opening the portals at
last to West of Twin Peaks. The earth excavated from the westerly portion of
the tunnel had been used to fill the ravine as far as the Christian Science
property of today, and thus West Portal Avenue came into being. This brings the
story down to the present time. Our own homes, which are built in what is
conceded to be one of the most beautiful residential parks in America,
constitute the closing chapter. It would not be right to close, however,
without a word of tribute to Duncan McDuffie, to whose steadfastness of purpose
St. Francis Wood is largely due. Had he and his associates thought only of
profits, St. Francis Wood, as it now is, would never have been. Instead, Mr.
McDuffie envisaged something worthy of the memory of the gentle man of Assisi,
for whom St. Francis Wood is named, and what Mr. McDuffie accomplished has
given character, let us hope, to West of Twin Peaks, as exclusively and
permanently a district of homes.
The Story behind St. Francis Wood, by Grover O’Connor, is
dedicated to Mr. Duncan McDuffie as a token of respect and deep gratitude for
the conception of the idea of this outstanding residential tract and the
building of it into the reality which has brought pride and so much happiness
to more than five hundred families.
Printed and distributed to members of St. Francis Homes
Association, by order of the Board of Directors.
Carroll R. Harding, President, 1937.
Republished on the Westwood Highlands Association Web
site, July 2005, with permission from Petree Knighton of the St. Francis Homes Association.
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