Building Petaluma’s early riverfront real estate

Gold was discovered in California in 1848 and more than 15,000 adventurers had rushed here that year to seek a new way of life. Most of them came west by covered wagon. Trudging through the dangers of the wilderness at the rate of 20 miles a day, had wreaked havoc on them.

They were “plumb wore out,” and life, when they got here, was still not easy. No one guessed that just two years later, the number of immigrants flocking to California was to quintuple.

Most of these men went to the gold fields, and most of those failed in the endeavor to strike it rich. Some sought land to till. By the time they got here, their animals were exhausted, their stores depleted and their wagons were barely able to roll. These men had skills and ambitions, but the problem was finding a way to use those skills.

From farmers and blacksmiths to lawyers, doctors and merchants, they had trades to ply and to barter.

Some of these pioneers found a valley called Petaluma. Some became very successful. Most did not.

They had to find homes, and the best cabin sites were along the Petaluma Creek, high enough that they didn’t flood in winter at high tide, but near enough to take advantage of the bounty of fish, wildlife and ease of water transportation. The Native Pomo and Miwok had built their villages along that creek for generations, for these same sensible reasons. That lesson was valuable.

After cabin sites had been selected, animals had to be corralled and secured. Then trees had to be felled, stripped and split by ax. Those who had brought hand-hammered square nails across the plains were few.

The logs were hauled on skids to the cabin sites by mule or oxen and sometimes communal effort was needed for that task. Self-sufficiency was important, but some men had better tools, weapons and ammo, animals and skills than others and bartering with fellow pioneers was a way to individual success. Cooperation was a vital issue and a good deed was never forgotten on the frontier.

The cabin roof and floor were made of split slats, if one could afford better than a dirt floor. Some roofs were insulated with sod or thatch. Cracks between logs were chocked with creek mud.

Windows and doors had hinges of leather and hides were often secured over those openings for insulation. Buffalo hide, if one had saved some pelts from the plains crossing, was particularly good because of its longer hair.

Inside the cabin, beds were constructed firmly into all four corners, to help support the structure itself and mattresses were of moss and lichen. All the furniture was hand-hewn and held together with wooden pegs.

The wagon covers, which had long ago been soaked in linseed oil for water resistance, were now to be reused as tarps, or cut into clothing and bedding. Field stones were used to form chimneys, and those were built bigger at the bottoms so the stone structure would slope back away from the hearth at the top to increase the draft.

After the cabin was completed, the fields had to be cleared of trees, stumps and stones. This was another area of work where mutual effort prevailed. Those who had the strongest teams and harness would help clear for those who had the better guns and traps to hunt for game. Thus, through such cooperation, the early community of Petaluma took root.

Most of those who first came west were male. It was a tough life here, in the Petaluma Valley, as well as in the gold fields. Eventually, these men sent back east for their families or mail-order brides. Some traded with the Native Americans for wives.

In 1850, President Willard Fillmore purchased statehood for California from Mexico and a new kind of law was adopted that allowed settlers one square mile of territory if they staked it out and built a cabin of at least 12 feet by 12 feet, and if they did this within six months of filing for the property, and if they hadn‘t taken-up arms against the United States in the Civil War.

The new law was called homesteading, and it was very difficult to enforce, but it spawned a rush of new pioneers to come west and to build cabins on the land.

Those first Petalumans earned every acre of what they got the hard way. But, the land did get settled and the town grew, settler by settler, cabin by cabin.

We know that John Martin built his log cabin in 1822 in Chileno Valley and Teodoro Miranda followed on Petaluma Creek in 1841. Frederick Starke in 1848 and James Singley in 1851 built on the west banks of the creek. Tom Lockwood, Tom Bayliss and Johann Heyermann lived in their whale boats on the creek, while constructing their cabins alongside in 1847.

All remnants of these cabins were long gone many years ago, as the village of Petaluma evolved quickly into a town and frame structures built with nails sprung up. Life wasn’t easy back then, but the thrill of the adventure must have been great.

(Historian Skip Sommer is an Honorary Life Member of Heritage Homes and the Petaluma Historical Museum. Contact him at skipsommer@hotmail.com.)