Baseball in Boyes Hot Springs

NOTE: Baseball, Part 1, the Exhibition at the Depot Park Museum opens Saturday, October 26, at 1PM (power or no power!) The following post is a preview of Part 2, which will open in spring of 2020.

Baseball Park circa 1910 (Sonoma Valley Historical Society)

Early in the twentieth century, the climate and healing waters of Sonoma Valley, Boyes Hot Springs in particular, were attractive to Pacific Coast League baseball teams looking for places to train.

Seals Training

“Boyes’ Hot Springs is rapidly becoming recognized as one of California’s chief health resorts. A few years ago this famous resort was known only to a favored few in Sonoma and Marin Counties, who were aware of the marvelous healing powers of its medicinal waters. Through the combined efforts of Dr. Parramore of Mill Valley, and former Under Sheriff Litchenberg of San Rafael, both Marin County boys, the facilities and accommodations of the springs have been developed until now it is able to house the immense number that flock to this delightful and health giving spot. Against a State wide competition the Seals have chosen Boyes’ Hot Springs for their Spring training quarters. Exhibition games will be given there in recreation park that stands on the hotel property. The owners of the teams pronounce the facilities for (training) the best in the State. There is a large swimming tank, hot and cold water baths, plunges, a gymnasium, and the best climate in California.” Sausalito News, Volume 28, Number 48, 30 November 1912 — Page 1

Post marked 1914

The League was founded in 1903. Teams initially were not associated with the major leagues and PCL baseball was considered an “outlaw” league until 1904 when an agreement was settled with Organized Baseball which made the PCL a Class A league. Still the PCL was “the only game in town” west of St. Louis until the Giants and Dodgers moved to California in 1958. Star players of the League included the DiMaggio brothers and Ted Williams which tells you something about the level of play.

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We know that the San Francisco Seals, a perennial powerhouse, were holding spring training at Boyes Springs as early as 1912. In that year, as an SF Chronicle headline read, an “ Eight Acre Ball Park (is) Being Built at Boyes Hot Springs.” The Chron goes on,…” it seems certain that the Seals will have the largest ball grounds in the world (!)-and very likely the finest-in which to prepare for their pennant struggle.” Manager Cal Ewing “…is highly enthusiastic about the new quarters.” In 1913 the SF Call, in an article about opening day, declared “The Boyes Springs rooters were the most conspicuous of the bunch. Headed by Doctor Parramore and Rudie Litchenberg (sic), they arrived at noon in a big auto and they drove direct to the ball park to root for the Seals.”

SF Call, 1913

Building new parks for the Seals happened every few years, it seems. In 1913, under the heading “Interesting Items From El Verano and Vicinity,” the Index tribune reported that “Dr. E.L. Parramore and R.G. Lichtenberg (owners of the Boyes Bath House) of Boyes Springs were in the city on Friday of last week. Their visit was for the purpose of purchasing the lumber to build the fence around the new ball park, which has been laid out for the use of the Seals, who will do their spring training there.”

This is probably the field that endured until the 1950s. It was also very close to the Boyes Bath House. The land was surrounded by the Olive Grove subdivision in 1947 (see map),and completely subsumed by housing in the following decade. Originally named Fetters Field, it later became Lichtenberg Field. Today, De Chene Ave. roughly follows the old outfield fence.

Sonoma County Recorder’s Office

Index Tribune, 1951

The Seals weren’t the only team to train at Boyes Hot Springs. In 1950 the Twin Falls farm team of the Yankees were there; in 1951, the Oakland Oaks. The Index Tribune put the story of their arrival on the front page, with a photo of manager Mel Ott. Since one of the original attractions for teams was the healthful waters, it was natural that some players would endorse the product. The Oakland Tribune showed two Oaks pitchers enjoying Boyes Springs mineral water after a workout in 1947.

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Some of the major leaguers who came to the valley for training ended up settling there. One such was Sam Agnew. SamAgnewbbCard

According to the Society for American Baseball Research, “Sam Agnew is best remembered for being the catcher for both of Babe Ruth’s pitching victories in the 1918 World Series.” Agnew started in baseball with the Vernon team of PCL in 1912. His Major League debut came with the St. Louis Browns in 1913. He started as catcher for the Browns through 1915, when he was traded to the Red Sox. While a St. Louis player he had the distinction of being called out while sitting in the dugout: the team was found to be batting out of order and he was supposed to at the plate at the time.

Agnew opened a service station in Boyes Springs in 1935. It was at the corner of Vallejo St. and the Highway (where the Barking Dog parking lot is today.) Agnew died in 1951 in Sonoma.

Lookingsouth@Vallejo SamAgnewAd1935

AND THAT’S JUST A SAMPLE! STAY TUNED…

Index Tribune courtesy of the Sonoma Valley Historical Society. All others as noted or Author’s collection.

Boyes Hot Springs, History, Wonders and Marvels

Nine Pounds of Iron

KnobTopDown1 Knobfrint1 Ovoid object of cast iron, heavily rusted, weight about 9 lbs, found, sometime in 2010, in the soil at the southeast corner of lot # 6 block 12 of the Boyes Springs Sudvivison A, which was platted in October of 1913. It appears to have been attached to a shaft, of which there is a broken stub. It’s too big and heavy to be doorknob: Possibly a surveyor’s corner marker.

Boyes Hot Springs

Crossing the Road

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Boyes Hot Springs, nature, Neighborhood Phenomena, Photographs, Wonders and Marvels

Grape vines and “grape vines”

Art, Boyes Hot Springs, People, Photographs

Wing Young Huie

“My intent is to reveal not only what is hidden, but also what is plainly visible and seldom noticed.”

The Springs Museum concerns itself with “History, Art and Community.” Art has been somewhat neglected until now. Wing Young Huie is not a resident of the Springs, but the art he created here constitutes an important document of the place. It is an artistic achievement and a historical archive of Boyes Hot Springs in 2007.

“I am the youngest of six and the only one in my family not born in China. For most of my life I’ve looked at my own Chinese-ness through a white, middle-class prism. Growing up in Duluth, Minnesota made it easy. After all, I was weaned on Snoopy, Mary Tyler Moore, and the Vikings. Mom made me pray to Buddha every New Year, but it was Jesus Christ Superstar who became my cultural touchstone. The result was that sometimes my own parents seemed exotic and even foreign to me.

They also were my first photographic subjects. I was twenty and living at home, experimenting with my new Minolta camera, when I made the first exposures of my dad in the kitchen. It was strange and exhilarating to look at someone so familiar so intently, and see something new. Now, some thirty years and hundreds of thousands of exposures later, I’m still trying to look at the world anew.

Inside the Springs follows my many projects that attempt to reflect the dizzying mixture of socioeconomic and ethnic realities that encompass our changing cultural landscape. My first major exhibition in 1996 focused on Frogtown, a St. Paul neighborhood plagued with a dubious reputation driven in part by media stories. I spent two years photographing the complexities and mystery behind those headlines.

I continue to focus on submerged communities that exist on the periphery of the prevailing cultural radar. My intent is to reveal not only what is hidden, but also what is plainly visible and seldom noticed.

I had never been to The Springs or Sonoma prior to my residency through the Sonoma Community Center. At the invitation of Shelly Willis, the former Artistic Director of the SCC, I spent one month photographing Boyes Hot Springs in October 2007. The process of photographing and interacting with people has remained, for the most part, the same since I photographed my own neighborhood in Duluth. I simply walk around, encountering people on the street, who then suggest or introduce others to photograph.

In this manner I meandered through the crooks and alleys of The Springs, photographing hundreds of citizens going about their daily lives. To describe a few: barbequing chickens, harvesting grapes at dawn, waiting for the school bus, a job, a blessing, a taco, dancing in the driveway, singing, jogging, mourning, celebrating, taking communion and pictures, aerobically swimming, tasting coffee and sweating communally.

It’s difficult to sum up what I saw or learned. I photographed a fraction of what is there, but I feel I saw a lot. Sometimes I get asked what is the purpose of what I do and I’m never sure how to answer. In a way, making those first photographs of my dad may have been one of the most intimate things I ever did with a man who was not easy to know. Maybe that’s the reason.

There were many who helped me along the way, including Mario Castillo and the Vineyard Workers Services, Libby Hodgson, manager of the Barking Dog, Eric Holman, Abdul and Celeste Winders, formerly of the Valley of the Moon Teen Center, Juanita Brinkley, Tarja Beck and the Finnish American Heritage Association, Ellen LaBruce and the La Luz Center, Martha Parra, Ross Drulis Cusenbery Architects, and all the folks at the Sonoma Community Center.”

www.wingyounghuie.com

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Boyes Hot Springs, History, Now and Then, Resorts

The Center of Town

The corners Sonoma Highway makes with Boyes Blvd. and Vallejo Ave. are the heart of Boyes Hot Springs. From the 1890s to now, it has been our commercial hub. Many buildings are gone, but significant ones remain, if altered. The Post Office has been there, in three different buildings, for over one hundred years. Many new businesses thrive and more are planned. During the season, we now have a weekly farmers market.

The path the highway follows was probably originated by mastadons migrating to the coast. Boyes Blvd. and Vallejo Ave. came along much later, during the early 20^th century, when speculators started to subdivide the land.

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Only the highway ( called “Road to Santa Rosa”) was there in 1860 when the United States Court confirmed Thaddeus Leavenworth’s claim to 534 and 62/100 acres of land in the Rancho Agua Caliente, land that was to become Boyes Hot Springs, Agua Caliente, and Fetters hot Springs.

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The highway is just called “County Road” in the 1916 Hotel Grounds subdivision map, which also show Boyes Blvd. but does not extend to the east, so no Vallejo.

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Possibly the oldest photographs of the location are scenes of The Club House (Red roof in lower photo, shown on the Hotel Grounds map), Grahams Store, and other businesses, from around 1910.

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A beautiful 1939 shot shows the entrance to the Sonoma Mission Inn, the Richfield Station, Jim’s café, other businesses and the palm tree in the center of “Boyes Plaza.”

Shot from slightly farther south, this 1930s photo also show Jim’s, in the distance, and two buildings in the foreground that are still there in 2019.

Now looking south at the Center Building, that housed Jim’s, past the corner of Vallejo Ave.

The southwest corner with the Woodleaf Store, around the same time (1930s).

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This 1943 Naval aerial photo shows the train depot and palm tree in the upper right corner.

In the early 1950s, the Plaza Center building replaced the Boyes Plaza. The Center Building (opposite side of the highway) has become Polidori’s 5 + 10 cent store.

The Mission Inn entrance in the 1950s. On the right, signs for Gallo Brothers Service, Mike And Rose’s market and the C.O.G. club.

A little later in the 50s, Polidori’s has become the Boyes Variety store. The Woodleaf Market sign is promienent on the right, as well as Betty’s Cut and Curl.

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In 1955 the Chamber of Commerce issued a map showing many local businesses, including ones at our corner.

The Big three closed in 2016, never to reopen? Buildings come and go. It’s inevitable. But preservation should be important to all of us. Let’s hope we can do what is needed to preserve the Big Three/Woodleaf from demolition.

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Two artistic interpretations of the intersection from the Valley of the Moon Main Stem Project, by Michael Acker.

Thanks to Arthur Dawson for the Leavenworth Plat interpretation and general info. Other images courtesy of the Sonoma Valley Historical Society, the Northwestern Pacific Railroad Historical Society, the Sonoma County Recorder’s Office, and Stanford Library Special Collections.

Boyes Hot Springs, History, People, Personal History, Wonders and Marvels

Dick Dawley

We found our friend Dick Dawley out in front of his house on Vallejo St., building a fence. Dick is 85 years old and he’s lived in Boyes Hot Springs for forty nine years. Many people know Dick from the twentyeight years he worked at Parson’s Hardware.

Dick’s fence, which he built from redwood 1x12s milled from logs salvaged from the 2017 fires.

Boyes Hot Springs, El Verano, Fetters Hot Springs, History, Photographs, Resorts, Springs Historic Photo Database

New to the Springs Historic Photo Database, June 2019

Agua Caliente 1912

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Baseball At Boyes Springs 1911

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1909

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1924, currently the “Aviel” building at Mt. Avenue

Boyes Hot Springs, Entertainment

Lanning/Resort Club/Melody Club

In June of 1945, Bob and Edith Lanning were granted a license to sell alcoholic beverages at their B&E Café in Boyes Hot Springs. By 1949 they had changed the name to The Resort Club.

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Highway 12 near Boyes Blvd., looking north, early 1950s. The Resort club building is at right. Beyond it the tower of the Fire Station can be seen.

Bob Lanning was also a photographer. Many of his photos appeared in the pages of the Index Tribune.

BobLanningPhotographerad1950

Bob was elected to the board of the Valley of the Moon Water district in the 1960s, but his activity on water issues started earlier.

“…Art Stewart, Ed Delaney, and Bob Lanning took turns driving “The Thing” around the valley prior to, and during the election.” Photo by Bob Lanning.

Edith was active in the Sonoma Valley Grange for decades.

Women of Sonoma Valley Grange #407, 1951

In 1965 the Lannings sold the business to Mr. and Mrs. Leonard F. Bruhn. After selling the club, Bob opened Bob’s Fixit Shop in building on the same property.

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In 1969, Pete Mancuso took over and opened his Melody Club.

Pete Mancuso standing at left, standing. On the right is Kim Kimmel, “First Lady of the Hammond Organ.” 1969

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Pete retired in 1983. He sold the club to Doug Graham, but it didn’t last long after that. Lanning Construction moved in in 1984.

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“In 1984 Lanning Structures (Dean Lanning) converted the Melody Club into offices a while after Pete closed. Lanning Structures closed in 1996 and Steve Lanning Construction took over the offices. Both metal buildiing contractors, Father and Son.” Winnie Lanning (married to Dean Lanning), 2019, via email.

Dean Lanning died in 2006.

Bob Lanning died in 1995, Edith in 2013.