April 1 - December 31, 2010

Images from The Southworth Archives

    In storms and fog, many ships have been lost to the shale reef that extends out from Bolinas headland. This handsome ship, the four-masted Polaris,was built in 1902 on the Oregon Coast and had made many runs to San Francisco. In 1914 she was headed to Eureka when she was hit by gale-force wind and wrecked on Duxbury Reef.  Polaris’ Captain Hansen stayed with Bolinas schooner Captain Petar and gave Petar his ship’s handsome desk. Petar’s granddaughter Margie de Greeve gave that desk to the Museum’s history room. There you can see the faint dark line down the face of the drawers where the Captain’s ink-bottle spilled at the moment the Polaris hit the reef.  This photograph is so crisp in detail it seems that you could walk on its deck.

    In the background, on the other side of the reef, lies the wreckage of another ship, the R.D. Inman, a steam schooner that wrecked in 1909 only two years after she was launched.  She was headed for Portland, Oregon as darkness set in.  There was a light that Captain Lancaster and crew took to be on a vessel in distress, so they went toward it to investigate.  It was to late when they realized the light was a big bonfire on Bolinas Beach and the reef was under them.

                                                   First Communion, 1911

This church, built in 1877,  sits on its little hilltop, on land donated by Gregorio Briones in 1863.  Every week it is still filled with people for Sunday services. Gertrude Southworth caught this moment of girls dressed in white communion dresses, men in traditional suits and women with their great hats.  Today trees tower over the church, in this photo the church still had a sweeping view of the Lagoon.

    Town folks heard that the Runckle’s boat had turned over in the surf. No one was hurt but in this close knit community people turned out to help. (The Runckle’s ranch was in the canyon south of today’s Audubon Canyon Ranch.) With her poetic eye, Gertrude Southworth captured this moment as people wait on a low-tide afternoon. 

    Historian Phil Frank noted that out of some 500 images, there are only 5 where someone used her camera to photograph Gertrude herself.  Digging clams was a popular Bolinas pastime at the turn of the  20th Century.    The Southworths were much loved by the Bolinas community. Gertrude immigrated to the United States in the 1800s and was trained as a home health nurse. The wife of Dr. Stephen Southworth, a kindly and wealthy dentist in San Rafael, hired Gertrude to care for the doctor. Gertrude often traveled with the family to their summer house in Bolinas, one of the first to be built on Terrace Avenue in the late 1880s. Two years after Mrs.Southworth died, As Dr. Southworth’s second wife, he and Gertrude were happily married for 32 years. Much of their life was spent in Bolinas.

    The Bolinas Stage crossing the bridge over Pine Gulch Creek near the Bolinas schoolhouse, headed for Bolinas. In the late 1800s a horse drawn stage ran between Bolinas and San Rafael through Olema and Tocaloma, Horses were replaced by a motorized stage by 1911. It was still an arduous trip on dusty or muddy dirt road.  But this Stanley Steamer, open sided with row seats, was very modern and comfortable in its day!

    Fishing for abundant Perch for sport and dinner was a popular past time. This richly detailed photo shows women and a gentlemen standing at the rose covered gate watching men pose with their catch, attended by children. The Sayers’ bought the original Gibson home and Mrs. Sayers ran it as a hotel while her husband ran the livery stable. 

    In the background The Bolinas grocery store had just been rebuilt and reopened in 1908 after the earthquake. Horse drawn buggies and men wait outside. On this side of the grocery is Longley’s meat market that eventually grew into Tarantino’s restaurant. (It burned in 1973.) The dirt road, bordered by the wooden sidewalk gives a  hint of what it was like when the main street seasonally alternated between dust and mud.  Perhaps these ladies are waiting for the fish to cook for dinner at the hotel.

    We don’t know who these people are, but it is an evocative image. The woman on the left smiles with delight, the woman who has taken the wheel has a look of determined concentration while the Captain looks on. The similarity of their faces make us guess that she might be the captain's daughter.  The details of clothing, the expressions and the tilting horizon from the motion of the boat makes the viewer feel present among the passengers.

    Wharf Road was the center of activity that stimulated the growth of the town of Bolinas.  Right here, at the edge of Bolinas Lagoon, schooners, as many as 15 a day, loaded lumber and farm products or unloaded mail, supplies, equipment and passengers from San Francisco. This was the engine of commerce for Coastal Marin. In the 1860s large hotels were built at the water’s edge to accommodate the flow of visitor. The hotels were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.   

    The two buildings in his photo played key roles in Bolinas history and still stand on Wharf Road today. Frank and Nellie Waterhouse who built the “studio”(left) are credited with turning Bolinas from a settlement into a community. The “studio”  had it’s own wharf where goods were unloaded and stored in the downstairs of the building. Upstairs was Nelly’s art studio and a gathering place for famous artists, visitors and community friends. 

    The building on the right is the United States Coast Guard Station built in response to the terrible Hanalei shipwreck in 1914. The Coast Guard was a vital presence in Bolinas until 1955.  During World War II the Pepper family turned the Waterhouse Studio into a recreation center for the Coast Guard men and their families.