by Skip Sommer, Historian

The Petaluma River is a tidal slough and a tributary of San Pablo Bay. In 1850, it was navigable only at high tides, and then, only by shallow-draft scow schooners for 16 miles up-stream. Imagine the awe felt by those exploring pioneers, when they first viewed the Petaluma Valley, and our river.  Bear, elk and deer were everywhere, the sky was clouded-over by winged game and great schools of sturgeon and steelhead trout, swam in our slough.

In 1836, Mexican General Mariano Vallejo was awarded the rights to a vast wilderness here, and it was the slough that decided the location for his Adobe Rancho home. Vallejo’s decision to build there, had been questionable then.  It was, however, proven to be a good one… over time.

In that year of 1836, the “Indian wars” were raging on the frontier, west of the Missouri River, but the Pomos and Miwoks of the Petaluma Valley were not a violent people. They were hunters and gatherers and the bounty of the Petaluma River basin made life relatively easy for them, as they cultivated berries, apples, grapes, and oats.

However, just twelve years later, the California Gold Rush was to change everything.  Thousands of men, from all over the world, flocked to California and some of those brought their gold here, to acquire land in the verdant Petaluma Valley.  By 1850, California’s  population  had grown to 92,000 and, although Petaluma was still a small  village of just 560, the ’word’ was getting-out.

Thomas Lockwood, who had sailed around Cape Horn to find gold in 1850, ventured-up Petaluma slough in a whale boat, hunting for game. He and his friends, David Flogdell and Tom Baylis, were armed with firearms and traps and they set-up a camp on the banks of the slough. At that time, a deer carcass went for $20.00 in San Francisco, and a dozen quail brought $9.00.  That was BIG money in 1850!

Alongside the slough that same year, Dr. August Heyermann had built one of the first cabins in the village. Heyermann  had been a popular “trail doc” for a wagon train, coming west from Missouri, and found that dispensing opium for .25 cents a dose, had staked him to mining equipment. (Well……sure !!). At that time, drinking water was wagoned-down, by barrel, from Sonoma Mountain springs.

Meanwhile, San Francisco and Sacramento were growing fast and they were in great need of meat, hides, and all agricultural produce from Petaluma and environs. The exchange products shipped back up-slough to Petaluma, included cigars, rifles, whiskey, matches, and gunpowder. (Not a good mix, I think).

In 1852,  Baylis and Flogdell  set up a trading post on the slough, at the end of what would eventually become our ‘B’ Street. It was  sort of a wilderness 7/11, and it thrived.  That same year, Garrett Keller built a warehouse on Water Street and he soon added a bunkhouse and an “eatery” to that.

A year later, in 1853, Keller laid-out a plat of 40 acres for our town and that really put progress in gear.  James Hudspeth  had also built a warehouse on the creek and our waterway was becoming crowded with shallow draft schooners. A grocery and a hotel  soon followed and that same year, William Zartman, John Fritsh and James Reed, established our first blacksmith shop. By 1854, our town’s population had soared to 1,200 and that year, Tom Baylis built his warehouse for wild game, at the slough. It was constructed of two foot thick walls of stone and is still there, now, as The Great Petaluma Mill, the oldest standing building in Petaluma.

There were lots of complaints about migrants in our early years, as 20,000 Chinese men had flocked to California, for the gold. N.Y. Newsman, Horace Greely, had told Americans to: “Go West, young man, go west!”…and thousands did just that. That year both San Francisco and Los Angeles were incorporated, Levi Strauss made a pair of  jeans using rivets and two men named Wells and Fargo opened a shipping company they called: “American Express”.

Our population was almost all male at that time, and sanitation and hygiene were non-existent, with no sewer or water systems. No penicillin or band-aids either, and such things as boils and burns could kill you. Pouring whiskey on wounds was the accepted standard of care….unless one went with the Miwok cure of a cow dung poultice.  (Yikes!).

By 1855,  our population had reached 1,200, as homesteaders were flooding-in and we were no longer just a small frontier town. The large number of saloons here were a testament, though, to the daily grind of survival. One relief from  ills, (if one had a $1.00 per ‘ill‘),  were the girls working upstairs, over the saloons. One could get a bath there,  with your choice of: “cold water, warm water, first water or second water”. A lady to wash your back, was “extra”. Apparently, the sailors plying our creek liked this feature.

In 1858,  Petaluma officially became a chartered city.  We had acquired churches, schools and professional fire and police protection by then. So many boats were working our slough, that it actually was soon to become the busiest waterway in the State of California and to accommodate that new traffic, our Board of Trustees voted for a TAX to pay for dredging of the waterway (and the hiring of Chinese labor to accomplish that chore). Not a popular move, then.

By 1865, the advent of steamboats caused another new problem on our creek… Explosions! And, several of those steamers had been sunk to join other wrecks that had crashed in fog, or run firmly aground in the deep mud.

Merchandise was shipped by water, in-and-out of our city, well into the 1900s and there were still 31 steam schooners plying our waterway in 1908. Then, however, hay, beef, butter and… (guess what?) chickens and eggs had become the major outgoing Petaluma products. Indeed, our tidal slough had also grown-up to become an actual river.

By the 1930s,  motor vehicles and the new Golden Gate Bridge had changed our way of traffic and, in 1950, the sternwheeler Petaluma was to make her final run down-river. The motor truck and the GG Bridge were happy events for the ranchers and merchants, who wished faster, more secure delivery.

But, by the 1950s, it was the end of a 100 year way of life for our river. More warehouses, feed mills, shops, hotels, railroads, harbors and highways had been built, and our town of Petaluma had blossomed around them, to become a city of 50,000, by the ’80s.

We, who came here, because of our river, appreciate that we now have good schools, a good hospital, a decent government, a History Museum, a fine library,  a River Festival and a Butter and Egg Day Parade that celebrate what our “good ol’ slough”, ambling thru town, has done for the ‘Chicken City’ that lives around it.