PETALUMA’S PAST: 100 years ago, Petaluma, and the world, got ready for war

One could hardly fit more news into a single year than was crammed into the newspapers exactly 100 years ago. WWI was breaking out. The Russian Revolution had just started as Tsar Nicolas abdicated the throne. Pancho Villa was tearing Mexico apart, while Puerto Rico finally became a U.S. Territory. Prohibition began with the 18th amendment, the Suffragettes were struggling to get “The Vote” for women, the U.S. purchased the Virgin Islands, the cost of a U.S. stamp soared up to a whopping 3 cents, and Petaluma was boldly declared “The Egg Basket of the World!”

But let’s start on Jan. 16, 1917, when the United States intercepted the infamous “Zimmerman Letter,” telegraphed from Germany to Mexico, proposing that if the U.S. entered the war against Germany, and if Mexico also entered - as an ally of Germany - then Germany would guarantee that Mexico would receive the entire American states of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas after Germany won the war.

What a way to start the year.

That letter became the last straw, galvanizing U.S. public opinion toward our entering the fray, finally abandoning a policy of isolationism.

The following day, the U.S. purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark for 25 million bucks. Then, by the first week of March, the U.S. also acquired Puerto Rico. It’s interesting that all the current flap about U.S. aid in repairing the tragic hurricane destruction of Puerto Rico is taking place just as the island is celebrating its hundredth anniversary as a U.S. Territory.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was sworn-in for his second term in March.

Other big names in the news that year included Jerome Kern, Babe Ruth, Sun Yat-Sen, T.E. Lawrence, Georgia O’Keefe and Eugene O’Neill, not to mention Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky, all of them constant topics of conversation as the Soviet newspaper Pravda ominously called for the killing of “all capitalists, priests and officers!”

Bummer.

Moving forward, on the fateful day of April 6, 1917, the United States formally declared war upon Germany and entered WWI. The next month, the U.S. Selective Service Act was passed by Congress, General Pershing took our first troops to France, and more than 10 million of our boys began registering for something called “the Draft.” Upon learning of America’s mobilization, Germany pledged “unlimited submarine war” in the Atlantic Ocean.

Meanwhile, San Francisco was agonizing over the possible closing of its long-overlooked houses of prostitution, and by February had heard the pleas of more than 300 of “the Lost Angels” asking for tolerance. But the city fathers nevertheless caved in to civic pressure and began the shutdown of over 200 “houses” in S.F.

Closer to home, 1917 was the year that the Petaluma River was ranked No. 1 in tons of goods shipped on any California waterway. That 1.7 million tons was mostly due to the 13 million dozen eggs produced here that year. But in case you thought Petaluma was really up with the times that Spring, consider this: horse hitching rails had just been installed on C Street between 2nd and 3rd, and the city was finally considering widening the sidewalks on Main Street, and maybe paving the too, with basalt blocks.

Peaceful as that sounds, life wasn’t without war fear here.

Petaluma’s Home Guard, Company K Militia, was organized with much cheering and flag waving, as San Francisco Bay had just been put on war footing. Visitors were excluded from all Bay Area forts and the number of guards stationed there was doubled. In February, in response to the aforementioned threat from Germany, a torpedo boat was ordered to guard the Golden Gate. And speaking of the draft, the upper age-limit on who could be drafted was changed from 27 to 40. The county’s population was still under 50,000 then, but all of our citizens were asked to donate their horses and mules to the military, further escalating war fears.

In July, rumors began spreading that a “wireless apparatus” was in operation on the “Flaherty premises,” and Police Chief Flohr rode out there to find that it was not true. This prompted District Attorney Hoyle to state that, from then on, any such complaints of sabotage must be in writing, with complainant’s names thereon, to weed-out the mongers of false rumors.

As local thoughts turned to the conservation of food and the planting of vegetables in every spare foot of ground, our local Fish Market, Kynock & Ritchie, touted the sale of whale meat, saying, “nice steaks, as the government tells us, which will help with the conservation of food. It is said to taste like beef.”

If that blubbery slice of whale didn’t quite “set right,” you could always go see Dr. Lorentzen, whose practice specialized in what he described as “chronic and nervous diseases,” treating them with something called Somopathic, Vibratory and Electric Treatment.”

Ouch.

Moving closer to the end of the year, the beginning of Prohibition, in December of ’17, brought many changes to Petaluma. That month, the Petaluma Courier featured the headline “Whiskey Making Has Stopped in America.” The paper also went on to add the caveat that, while the making of the spirit would cease, “whiskey drinking does not end,” predicting that prohibition would only last for the duration of the war.

In that very same issue of the paper, however, the prohibitionists declared lasting victory.

“Whiskey making never will be known again in this Country,” they claimed.

Eventually, many local vineyards were uprooted and wine cellars were destroyed, while some wineries turned to producing table grapes and grape juice. Petaluma’s huge Lachman & Jacoby Winery started downsizing by leasing-out 20,000 square feet of their main building to Petaluma Poultry Producers for the storage of eggs, and the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Electric Railroad began installing a spur track there, where CVS Pharmacy is now, on Washington Street.

And for you River buffs, our 1917 Congressman, Clarence Lea, maneuvered an appropriation from the U.S. Senate for $91,000, for the control of Copeland Creek debris and straightening the course of the Petaluma River. The dredging boat, the Golden Gate, was dispatched to our waters and, after a month of work, cleared away the “troublesome bars” that had been such a great annoyance to “steamer and schooner men.”

One-hundred years later, dredging is still a concern.

But dredging is only considered in Congress every four years, and the need for it is primarily based upon commercial river tonnage, which has dwindled in the last century. With no more “steamer and schooner men” around to call for a dredging, our dear old Petaluma watershed has been put in the control of rising mud and sand bars.

Like I said, bummer.

(Historian Skip Sommer is an honorary life member of Heritage Homes and the Petaluma Historical Museum. Contact him at skipsommer@hotmail.com)