A river ran through it

Picture a valley where the grass grew higher than a man on horseback. Its mild climate, fresh water, plentiful game and acorns for food made it a home for centuries to peaceful Miwoks and their rich culture of stories, song and ceremony. One of their villages was called Petaluma.

For the Europeans who intruded on this paradise, Petaluma’s crowning advantage was the river — though early Petalumans would have called it a creek, or, less picturesquely, a tidal slough.

Mariano Vallejo, at 24 a rising star in the Mexican military and government, fell in love with the land that he was ordered to settle as a hedge against inroads by Russian fur trappers from the coast.

In 1836 he built the largest ranch house in California, now known as the Petaluma Adobe, with the labor of hundreds of Native Americans and a small number of Mexican colonists.

Two years later, a smallpox epidemic virtually wiped out the native population, including the last of the Petaluma Miwoks.

Before that, Indians herded cattle, raised and threshed grain, made adobe bricks, and hauled hides to Vallejo’s landing on the Petaluma Creek, to be sold to Yankee traders for $2 each. Hides were so valuable as a trade commodity that they were known as “California banknotes.” By 1845, the ranch boasted 50,000 head of cattle.

Then came the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt — and the end of the Mexican era. Vallejo, once the most powerful man in Northern California, lost much of his land and influence. The ranch became a money loser. Yet he embraced Americanism, welcoming settlers at his Petaluma Adobe and even offering them plots of land from his still-vast holdings.

Gold Rush days

No miners came to seek gold in Petaluma. Yet, says author Adair Heig, “more than any other town in Sonoma County, Petaluma is the offspring of the Gold Rush.”

Roads in those days were bone-jarring ruts, where they existed at all. All commerce in perishable goods, and especially eggs, depended on water transport.

The first to benefit from this geography were hunters and trappers, who came upstream to supply the protein-starved miners’ lust for meat. Game was easy to bag and easy to ship to San Francisco, where deer, ducks, rabbits, and even grizzly bears fetched a premium. Hunters built the first warehouse and wharf on the Petaluma Creek.

By 1852, packets and schooners plied the Petaluma Creek, and the first steamer, the Red Jacket, made its way up the twists and turns to the Petaluma wharf.

By 1855, potatoes, hay, barley, eggs, butter, cheese and other farm products as well as lumber were flowing south along the Petaluma Creek. Passengers flowed north, seeking land, the stream of settlers joining disappointed miners trickling back from the gold fields.

An enterprising real estate promoter named Garrett Keller laid dubious claim to most of the downtown area and offered lots for $10 apiece. In 1852, to facilitate his sales, he supervised the laying out of Petaluma’s streets.

Soon there were five hotels to accommodate the steady arrival of potential landowners, and by 1853 some 50 rough wooden houses had been thrown up. A livery stable and a stagecoach line to Sonoma followed.

Petalumans began reading local news in 1855, when an ambitious 17-year-old named Thomas Thompson started the Petaluma Journal and Sonoma County Advertiser, ancestor of today’s Argus-Courier. The boy wonder left after eight months, but returned to start the rival Santa Rosa Democrat at age 23.

The next five years saw the arrival of running water for the downtown, a flour mill, brewery, volunteer fire department, tannery, foundries, five churches, and even some badly needed paved streets.

Petaluma incorporated on April 12, 1858, and a year later Petaluma was already the largest and wealthiest town in Sonoma County; its river, California’s third busiest waterway.

Through the next 20 years dairy farms flourished, along with pears, prunes, peaches, apples and potatoes. Business grew, and stately mansions replaced wooden shanties.

In 1888 a Canadian inventor and promoter arrived in town. With a combination of good luck, ingenuity and razzmatazz marketing, Lyman Byce went on to put Petaluma on the map as the egg capital of the world.

(Contact Bonnie Allen at argus@arguscourier.com)