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THE YEARS OF DRIVING DANGEROUSLY

Jeff Elliott 1 Comment

April 1, 1916 was a grand day in Santa Rosa as an estimated 20,000 visitors – “one of the largest [crowds] ever seen here,” boasted the Press Democrat – joined residents to cheer a parade of autos two miles long. No, it wasn’t the Rose Carnival (there wasn’t one that year) but “Safety First Day” organized by town bigwigs. Hyped as being the kickoff of a new national semi-holiday, six newsreel camera crews were on hand to record the doings.

There were all manner of safety-related demonstrations. Firemen extinguished a mock fire on the roof of the Santa Rosa Savings Bank, although there was a delay because a car was illegally parked in front of the hydrant. A PG&E lineman faked electrocution (!) and was given aid by a doctor and nurse who were part of the act, which was performed so convincingly that two doctors in the audience rushed up to help. The parade included two boys carrying an enormous model of a safety pin which was a real crowd-pleaser for some reason, and the Petaluma contingent included children dressed as chickens (of course).

– –
MORE FROM THE ANNALS OF BAD DRIVING

10 MPH is Fast Enough, Mr. Speed Burner (1908)

Get Off the Sidewalk, I’m Driving Here (1909)

The Rules of the Road are Relative (1911)

Driving Like a Santa Rosan (1912)

When We Began Driving Like Maniacs (1913)

But the main focus of Safety First Day was “instructing people in the rules of the road and operating of automobiles to prevent accidents.” Earlier the San Francisco Examiner promoted the event with promises that “expert drivers of motor cars will give exhibitions of the right and wrong way of driving in the city streets…drivers will give an actual demonstration how automobiles should be operated to comply with the laws” and not to be left out, “pedestrians will also be taught how to cross the streets. Dummies will be used to show how the drivers of cars have to avoid the average pedestrian who never looks up or down the street before crossing.”

Luther Burbank and his new Willys-Knight five-passenger touring car were at the front of the parade, and afterwards the Examiner quoted his enthusiastic endorsement of the event. “Such a demonstration as this is amazing…if adopted nationally it would be one of the greatest benefits to humanity. I had no idea that it would be as good as this.”

Unfortunately, a few months later our Luther was involved in a safety mishap which could have ended tragically. He and Elizabeth were driving to the movies when he confused the accelerator with the brake pedal. The big car lurched over the curb, narrowly missed a pedestrian, then crashed through the display window of the White House department store at Fourth and B streets. Burbank parked and called store owner Bill Carithers (did Burbank just walk through the broken window to use their phone?) before he and his wife proceeded with their plans to watch a romantic melodrama and a British documentary on WWI combat.

Gentle Reader might expect the most famous guy in town crashing through a plate glass window of the most popular store in town would merit more than a 200 word item on page eight of the PD. But despite the enthusiasm shown on 1916’s Safety First Day, in the following years even serious accidents became so commonplace they became back page fillers – it was rare to open the paper and not find reports of drivers and passengers being hurled out of their seats, a car “turning turtle” (flipping over) or a pedestrian being struck.

In the same issue with Burbank’s broken window there were two other major incidents reported. A driver lost his front teeth when his face smashed into the steering wheel in a collision, and a man who had been charged three days earlier for drunk driving demolished his car after it plunged over a 100-foot embankment on the Rincon Grade.

If the Press Democrat and other newspapers seemed cavalier about reckless driving and serious auto accidents, it could be they were only taking cues from the courts. In Sonoma County traffic complaints were handled by Justice Marvin Vaughan, who was on the bench 1915-1931. But until 1922, apparently no one brought before him served jail time, no matter how terrible the offense. Fines usually ranged from $5 to $100, the determining factors seeming to be whether the driver was from out of town and/or drunk. (For reference, $10 in 1920 was worth about $150 today.) Here’s an example of his lenient sentencing:

In a head-on collision on Santa Rosa Ave one of the cars flipped over, pinning Santa Rosa’s Gnesa sisters inside. (Maybe it was a family curse – four years earlier, their brother was likewise a passenger in an accident that ended with the auto upside down.) The young women were not seriously injured which the crowd that gathered thought was something of a miracle, considering both cars were pretty well trashed.

But that wasn’t the only lucky surprise that Friday night. While people were gawking at the wreckage, a car driven by Julius Momsen of Petaluma sped through the crowd, somehow managing to not hit anyone. A high-speed chase by police ended with Momsen finally stopped on the outskirts of Petaluma.

Charged with driving recklessly through the crowd and speeding, Momsen was fined all of $20. While he might have also spent a month behind bars, Justice Vaughan allowed him to have his auto “jailed” for thirty days instead.

Judge Vaughan heard all sorts of cases besides traffic (my new favorite headline: “Youth Who Stole Tinfoil Released”) and while trials were sometimes held in his courtroom, few reckless drivers faced a jury. A rare exception was when George Hedrick was charged with nearly killing Hilda Brockelman; she was walking “several feet” off the side of the road when she was struck by his car. Her neck was broken and the trial delayed for several weeks as they waited for a special neck brace to arrive so she could leave the hospital to testify. The jury couldn’t decide (the split was 10-2, with two voting for acquittal) and Hedrick – whose only defense was that he had been blinded by oncoming headlights – was not retried.

Although this article just covers dangerous driving in the six years following Safety First Day, looking farther down the road it can be seen that serious accidents were ever increasing at an alarming rate. To get a rough idea of how it progressed, I searched the Press Democrat digital archives for “reckless driving”. From 86 hits in the 1910s it jumped to 1,314 during the 1920s.

References to "reckless driving" in the Press Democrat, 1915-1929
References to “reckless driving” in the Press Democrat, 1915-1929

While there are no official statistics for Sonoma County, we can be sure the true numbers were actually much higher. Those figures are inaccurate mainly because some combination of those two words appeared in less than half of the PD articles on the topic – recklessness was usually not mentioned because it was implied by the scenario. Also, lots of references were missed because the OCR text of the archive is mediocre, at best; in one case, it translated the headline “RECKLESS AUTOMOBILE DRIVING” into “BfiS JUTiIBBILE DRIVING” (go figure).

Driving too fast was always the main reason for accidents; state traffic law c. 1920 put the speed limit at 35, and then only when a thoroughfare was clear. A man near modern-day Rohnert Park clocked autos on the highway going 50-60 MPH but before you presume that’s still a reasonable speed, remember that cars a century ago were clunky. They were like cumbersome little tractors and keeping them on course was a constant physical fight with the steering wheel. They had no power brakes or power anything else and their pneumatic tires were forever blowing out.

Another frequent cause was not using lights after dark. Cars and trucks a century ago had carbide lamps, which had to be lit by hand and powered by a small acetylene gas tank usually mounted on the running board. Many articles about accidents mentioned a factor was having no tail light or just one working headlight, presumably to save acetylene fuel. In a 1920 incident a pair of brothers were headed home to Todd Road when their lights failed. Figuring they were close enough to make it the rest of the way by the moon they continued driving, only to have a head-on collision with another car driving in the dark.

Also mentioned by the PD were accidents caused by unskilled drivers cutting in (“if you are traveling 30 miles an hour, no other car has the right to pass you,” the paper reminded) and parents letting children under sixteen drive unsupervised. In my survey of the 1917-1922 local newspapers I didn’t find any mention of either causing an accident, but the PD and District Attorney cited these as serious problems.

Riffling through those old Press Democrats will turn up more than a few crazy stories that border Believe-it-or-Not! territory. In 1920 a Santa Rosa taxi driver and another fellow raced down the Sonoma Valley road while shooting at each other. The cabbie received “slight gunshot wounds” while the other man was taken to Judge Vaughan’s courtroom. The fine for driving too fast while blasting away at someone on a public highway was $50.

And remember the driver who crashed his car on the Rincon Grade the same day as Luther Burbank’s accident? His drunk driving arrest three days earlier was for trying to knock a streetcar off the tracks at Fourth and E streets.

There was also an alarming uptick in hit-and-run incidents starting in 1920, which I suspect was related to the enactment of Prohibition. Drunk driving was likewise on the increase and a year earlier the state had made it a felony. While Justice Vaughan can be found reducing intoxication charges to merely careless driving, no judge would be lenient with drunken yahoos who run over people. Sure, some might have been so snockered as to not realize a person had been hit, but it seems more likely many were hoping to get away without being caught in bad shape at the scene. (Fun fact: “Drunken yahoos” dates back to 1810 England and coined to mock the king’s counsellors.)

It grew so bad by 1922 even Vaughan started handling out jail time. After a hit-and-run driver struck 9 year-old Virginia Bufford while walking home from the Todd district elementary school, the judge sentenced him to a week in the county jail. Not much, but he said his decision was mitigated by the child not being seriously injured and the driver giving $55 to her family.

But the number of serious accidents kept escalating through the year, culminating in four deaths during the autumn including a Civil War vet killed as he was crossing the street in Healdsburg. One of the other victims died via a hit-and-run. There were four other hit-and-run injuries around the same time.

Following those incidents, in December 1922 District Attorney Hoyle published an unusual open letter in the Press Democrat calling for the county courts to crackdown on dangerous drivers:

“In practically every one of these cases the cause is traceable to carelessness, and in almost even case of such carelessness the person knew he was violating the law…Small fines amount to nothing. It is an indirect way of licensing these violations of the law…I shall therefore ask the magistrates of the county in all cases of these more serious violations of the Motor Vehicle act to impose prison sentences instead of fines…”

These problems were by no means unique to us; reckless driving had become a nationwide crisis and nobody had a solution. Officials like DA Hoyle said the answer was stiffer laws; preachers said it was a morality problem spurred by Demon Rum; pundits were inching their way towards calling the young people who were usually the culprits as the Roaring 20s “Lost Generation.” But in the meantime, many cities experimented with shaming the offenders.

Cartoon appearing in the October 28, 1922 Press Democrat
Cartoon appearing in the October 28, 1922 Press Democrat

The PD and other papers ran articles and photo spreads of Detroit drivers being taken to hospital wards of children who had been hit. Speedsters in Cleveland were escorted to a 7 year-old girl’s burial under police guard and Los Angeles offenders scrubbed jail floors by hand. Did any of this slow down the increase in reckless driving? Look again at the chart above.

I decided to cut this horrific driving survey off at the end of 1922 because it was a watershed moment when some actually believed this problem could be solved. There may someday be a “Years of Driving Dangerously II” that continues this series but frankly, I’m not sure I have the stomach for all that mayhem.

 

(1921 title photo courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection)

 

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SANTA ROSA HAS 1ST SAFETY 1ST DAY IN STATE
What Stuart Gayness, Automobile Editor of The Examiner, Has to Say of Tomorrow’s Big Event
(By Stuart Gayness)

Big preparations are being made for the “Safety First” day celebration which will be observed Saturday at Santa Rosa.

The City of Roses will give over the entire day to practical demonstrations of the safety first rules for motorists, pedestrians and drivers of horse-drawn vehicles. This will be the first event of its kind ever held in California, and because of the possibilities it offers for the education of the public in the safety first campaign it will probably be followed by similar events in other cities throughout the country.

Expert drivers of motor cars will give exhibitions of the right and wrong way of driving in the city streets. They will show how each driver of a machine should obey the State and city traffic laws. How the drivers should stop and let passengers alight on the sidewalks, how close to drive to a street car and when to stop for other vehicles. In fact, the drivers will give an actual demonstration how automobiles should be operated to comply with the laws and at the same time co-operate with the safety first campaign.

Pedestrians will also be taught how to cross the streets. Dummies will be used to show how the drivers of cars have to avoid the average pedestrian who never looks up or down the street before crossing. It is hoped by the Santa Rosa authorities to impress the public so strongly with the necessity of obeying the traffic laws that the safety first day will be a big factor in reducing the number of accidents in that city.

Because it places before the drivers of vehicles and the pedestrian an unusual opportunity of realizing how they endanger their lives, the safety first day would be a good idea for all cities. If every city in the country would hold an annual safety first day, at which time drivers of cars and horse-drawn vehicles and pedestrians would be shown how to follow the safety first rules, it would be a most important step in the elimination of accidents.

– Press Democrat, March 31 1916

 

RECKLESS DRIVE ACROSS STREETS
Collision of Cars at Fifth and B Streets — The Law Should Be Better Observed.

Fast driving at street intersections resulted in an auto accident at Fifth and B streets Thursday afternoon, shortly before 5 o’clock when Will Harris, driving a Ford truck, collided with John Keith of San Francisco, driving a small roadster, as the latter was crossing Fifth.

Harris’ car was turned completely around and an elderly gentleman, riding with Harris, was thrown out but the occupants of both cars escaped injury. What was still strange is the fact that neither car was damaged other than slight dents on the fenders.

The accident was witnessed by a number of people and a crowd quickly gathered. Mr. Harris admitted he was driving at a speed which made it impossible for him to stop when he saw Keith who had the right of way come into sight, despite the fact that he made every effort to do so.

The law is being generally ignored in Santa Rosa relative to street in intersections and it is marvelous that more serious accidents do not occur. Some one is going to be killed or maimed for life and then there will be something done to stop the unlawful speed used by auto drivers at practically every street corner.

The law is plain and distinct in giving the man to your right the right of way and it is the duty of all drivers to watch their right side and see that they keep clear of all cars coming from that direction while on the road as well as to reduce speed to ten miles per hour at intersections.

– Press Democrat, June 29 1917

 

DRIVES AUTO INTO AN ELECTRIC CAR
D. C. Hoffman, While Intoxicated, Tears Step off Street Car and Rips off the Side of His Automobile When He Endeavors to Bump Bigger Machine off the Track Saturday Night — Man Arrested.

D. C. Hoffman was arrested by Police Officers William Shaffer and George W. Matthews on Saturday night, charged with driving an automobile while in an intoxicated condition.

Hoffman, who had two other men with him, tried to bump the outgoing electric train at Fourth and E streets off the track. The motormän saw a reckless driver was approaching and stopped his car so as to avoid accident. Hoffman drove his auto into the electric car. tore off one of the side steps and ripped off the side of his automobile.

The charge of operating an automobile while in an intoxicated condition is a very serious one.

– Press Democrat, November 11 1917

 

AUTO JUMPS INTO A BIG WINDOW
Luther Burbank Puts Foot on What He Thought Was the Brake—Instead It Was “More Gas,” and Car Goes Through White House Window.

Luther Burbank accidentally drove his auto into one of the plate glass windows on the B street front of the White House shortly after 7 o’clock Wednesday evening. The big glass was shattered but beyond that no damage was done.

Mr. Burbank with his wife had driven down town to attend the Cline to see the British tanks in operation. As he drove up to the curb to park his machine he placed his foot on the brake pedal as he supposed, and when the curb was reached jammed it down hard.

The result was far from his expectations. Instead of it being the foot brake he had placed his foot on the accelerator lever and when ready to stop had given the engine a full charge of gasoline causing it to jump forward, mount the curb and dash into the window.

The error was quickly corrected but the damage was done. A man passing narrowly escaped being caught in the wild jump of the car. Both Mr. and Mrs. Burbank sat and quietly surveyed the wreck and then, without a word of comment, Mr. Burbank reversed the machine and backed it out and off the sidewalk to its place in the street at the curb. Both alighted and went to the theatre after notifying W. R. Carithers of the accident.

– Press Democrat, November 15 1917

 

Pays Fine of $25 for Reckless Auto Driving

Earl Ronshimer of Penngrove, charged with reckless driving when he visited Occidental last week, when a companion shot up the town, paid a fine of $25 in Justice Vaughan’s court yesterday.

– Press Democrat, January 5 1918

 

AUTO OWNERS IGNORE LAWS
Speeding, Head and Tail Lights, Children Driving Cars, Are Some of the More Common Infractions Which May Result in Arrest and Fines.

An auto driver was fined $5 Thursday for speeding on Humboldt avenue. He was caught, but many others escape the fine because officers cannot be everywhere at once.

Many auto owners are violating the laws by running at night with only one light in front. The law calls for two as well as a tail light. Officers will arrest all caught ignoring the law relative to lights.

Much complaint is made regarding the practice of owners allowing young children to drive their cars. Boys and girls under 16 are frequently seen driving about town and country without an older person on the front seat with them, which is unsafe and against the state law.

– Press Democrat, September 6 1918

 

Suggested Remedy for Reckless Auto Driving

A contributor to a San Francisco daily makes a practical suggestion for the prevention of reckless and careless driving of autos which might be put into effect with good results. He says:

To insure sobriety and carefulness, it might be advisable to revive a perfectly good law that was enforced in Athens The edict provided that a ferryman or other person engaged in transportation. who put in jeopardy the life of a Greek, such person, after being adequately punished, was forbidden ever again to ply his trade, under penalty of death. To deprive these drunken yahoos of their autos would be just and would be to them a more severe punishment than hanging.

– Press Democrat, September 19 1918

 

The Supervisors deprecated the dismissal of some cases in which speed violators had been allowed by certain magistrates to go with a warning when in the opinion of witnesses the punishment should have been severe. It is planned to put a check upon reckless driving, specially on the state highway, and this matter had better be understood by motorists. The two traffic officers have been cautioned to be vigilant and there is no mistake that they are.

– Press Democrat, September 21 1918

 

TAXI AND AUTOMOBILE IN COLLISION YESTERDAY

Reckless driving of machines in the streets of Santa Rosa is a common sight, and despite many arrests and fines in the past the practice is maintained by certain drivers, who appear to have no regard for their own safety or that of others.

Yesterday afternoon, what was described a racing taxi, crashed into the Ford auto of Richard Davis at Humboldt as the taxi was racing for the S. P. depot, upset the Ford and smashed it into a mass of ruins, narrowly escaping killing Mr. and Mrs. Davis and their three children.

The top was entirely torn to pieces, the glass windshield was crushed into fragments, a case of eggs was scattered and crushed over the car and inmates, while the occupants were buried under the car and debris. For a time it was believed a babe had been killed owing to the cries of the frightened and bruised mother, but this proved untrue.

The family was taken into the home of Justice and Mrs. M. T. Vaughan and a physician summoned, who quieted the shocked family and found that no bones had been broken. Mr. Davis appeared to be the worst injured, but it is believed he escaped any serious injury, although all suffered a terrible nervous shock. Every one who witnessed the accident agrees that the taxicab was driving at a reckless gait and was unable to stop when it was seen that an accident would occur.

– Press Democrat, December 25 1918

 

SERIOUS CHARGE AGAINST DRIVER
James Aquistapace Arrested for Driving While Intoxicated — Narrowly Escaped Injuring Machine Loaded With Family When He Ran on to Sidewalk on Mendocino Avenue.

James Aquistapace was arrested Sunday afternoon charged with operating an automobile while intoxicated. Witnesses who saw him drive up Fifth street declare that he would undoubtedly killed Mr. Meacham, wife and baby, who were driving out Mendocino street, had he not hit the iron policeman in the street, which deflected his course sufficient to make him hit the Meacham car a glancing blow. Aquistapace went on down Mendocino avenue on the sidewalk to Fourth street before getting his car stopped.

Traffic officers placed the man under arrest and Monday he was taken before Justice Vaughan and arraigned. He asked for time to secure an attorney. Later he returned represented by Attorney Fulwider and his hearing was set for Friday morning at 10 o’clock. Aquistapace refused to answer any questions propounded by the Judge until they had been explained by one of his countrymen in his own language.

– Press Democrat, March 18 1919

 

JUDGE ‘UP TREE’ AS TO DISPOSITION OF AUTO HE SEIZED

After relieving J. Momsen of Petaluma of the use of his automobile for thirty days Monday, Judge Vaughan is now in a quandary as to what to do with the machine.

He has no garage of his own in which to keep the car and he could not pay storage bill at a garage out of the fine money collected. On last reports he has about decided to pass the buck to Sheriff Petray and place the machine in his charge for safekeeping for the time.

Momsen was fined $20 and relieved of his machine on two charges, one exceeding the speed limit and another of reckless driving preferred against him by Traffic Officer Long.

His arrest grew out of his driving recklessly through the crowd gathered about the accident south of town Friday evening and the subsequent chase he gave the traffic officer, who caught him on the outskirts of Petaluma.

In line with the policy of increasing severity of fines the judge decided to try jailing the machine rather than the defendant. However, in the case Momsen was given the choice of going to jail himself for relinquishing his machine for the period and he chose the latter.

– Press Democrat, March 30, 1920

 

SPEEDERS TO BE CURBED HERE BY MOTOR OFFICER
Council Votes Month’s Trial in Effort to Stop Reckless Driving

The city council at the mid-month meeting last night authorized Chief of Police Matthews to appoint a traffic officer with a motorcycle to watch autoists and see that the laws of city and state were better obeyed within the city limits.

The action was taken on the request of the Chief, who declared it was impossible for a policeman on foot or a bicycle to catch an autoist, and with the greatly increased traffic of the sumner months such an officer was badly needed.

The Mayor and several of the councilmen endorsed the plan and it was declared that such an officer would more than earn his salary in restricting careless and reckless drivers on the city streets. When asked if he could get a man the Chief said he had a man in view who understood his business. It was decided to try the plan out for a month and if it proved successful to keep him on all summer.

– Press Democrat, May 19 1920

 

TWO SPEEDING AUTO DUELISTS TO FACE COURT

Warrants for reckless driving have been sworn out in the Sonoma justice court against Constantino (Scotty) Maggiori of Santa Rosa and George F. Blanco of Vallejo, who figured in a sensational racing and shooting episode last week on the road near El Verano.

The warriors have been placed in the hands of Constable Jack Murray, with instructions to see that both men are brought into court. Indignation in the Sonoma valley has been running high since the two men took turns in passing each other at high speed and in exchanging shots on a public highway.

Maggiori, a Santa Rosa taxi-cab driver, suffered slight gunshot wounds, while his opponent in the racing and shooting was fined $50 in the Santa Rosa Justice court.

– Press Democrat, August 3 1920

 

BOY’S LEG BROKEN IN AUTO ACCIDENT

Raymond King, 13-year-old son of Mrs. R. King of Rincon Valley, was run down by a Ford truck on the Rincon valley road Friday morning and suffered a broken leg, and the officers are looking for B. H. Cook, who was charged with reckless driving and striking the child and failing to stop and give assistance.

The boy was brought into Santa Rosa and taken to a hospital following the accident. George M. Hansen, county traffic officer, made some inquiries into the accident and then swore to the complaint against Cook, and the warrant was issued in justice court by Judge Marvin T. Vaughan.

– Press Democrat, October 9 1920

 

LIGHTLESS CARS COLLIDE IN DARK
Callisa Brothers Injured Saturday Night in Collision Near Kenwood, One in Hospital

Joseph Callisa was taken to the General hospital Saturday evening, with a broken knee cap, as the result of an automobile accident which occurred near Kenwwood after dark. Louis Callisa, a brother also suffered several cuts on the nose and over his left eyebrow as a result of the collision.

The two brothers have been working at Vallejo and were on their way to the Todd District to visit their parents. Shorty after dark their lights went out for some inexplicable cause and they thought they could manage the rest of the distance, it being only about ten miles farther to their destination, without lights.

When about seven miles from Santa Rosa they collided with another machine in the dark. The second lightless machine was said to have been owned by a resident of Kenwood. Both machines were badly damaged in the smash but the occupants of the second car escaped injury.

Louis Callisa was able to proceed home after having his cuts attended by a Santa Rosa physician. His brother will be confined to the hospital for several days.

– Press Democrat, October 10 1920

 

Washington, Dec 8 – A total of 3,808 persons were killed in automobile accidents, or died as a result of injuries therefrom during the last year, the census bureau announced today in a statement offering suggestions for traffic improvement automobile accident death rate of 14.1 out of every 100,000 population was reported in 1919, an increase over every year since 1915 when the rate was 8.0 and an increase of 245 in the total number of deaths of 1918.

 

A SANTA ROSA MAN timed several automobiles traveling between 50 and 60 miles an hour at a point between Wilfred and Cotati Sunday afternoon. He secured the numbers of eight machines, one right after the other, traveling at least 15 miles an hour over the legal rate of speed…

– Press Democrat, February 17 1921

 

WOMAN WITH NECK BROKEN FAILS TO CONVINCE JURORS

The jury hearing the case of G. W. Hedrick, charged with reckless driving, tried in the Justice court before Judge Marvin T. Vaughan, disagreed and was discharged Thursday. The jury stood 10 for conviction and two for acquittal at the time it was discharged.

The case will come up for new trial soon Judge Vaughan stated Thursday.

Hedrick is charged with reckless driving on the highway between this city and Bellevue. The complaint states that he ran down Mrs. Hilda Brockelman who was walking south on the highway. Mrs. Brockelman’s neck was broken in the accident. She claims that at the time she was struck she was walking several feet to one side of the highway.

Hedrick claims that the lights of the car that he passed just before he hit Mrs. Brockelman blinded him and he did not see her. Mrs. Brockelman, who has been in a local hospital since the accident, was one of the witnesses for the prosecution Thursday, appearing in court with a special brace on her neck.

– Press Democrat, July 8 1921

 

Our Careless Pedestrians

Most of the criticism directed against reckless driving is just, and most accidents are the result of carelessness in driving. But it is absurd to make assumption that the driver is always responsible when he bumps into a pedestrian.

It has been seriously proposed in one city that killing of a pedestrian by an automobile should lead automatically to the punishment of the driver for murder. That would be as tragic a travesty on justice as to apply the same rule to railroad accidents, and always sentence the engineer for murder without hearing the evidence.

Every pedestrian knows that the community is full of careless drivers, and every motorist knows that the community is full of careless walkers. The driver of a car has the superior obligation to look out for the other fellow, because in case of a collision it is the other fellow who is likely to get hurt. But the pedestrian certainly shares the responsibility for avoiding a collision. It is up to him to take reasonable precautions for his own safety, and also to realize that even a citizen driving an automobile has traffic rights which a fellow-citizen on foot ought to respect.

– Press Democrat, December 28 1921

 

FRATES PLEADS HIS INNOCENCE
Man Accused of Running Down Little Girl Released on Bail of $250.

Frank Frates, who was arrested on a complaint of Miss Irene Sink, school teacher in the Todd district, charged with reckless driving and with running down little Virginia Bufford a few days ago, pleaded not guilty when brought before Judge Marvin T. Vaughan yesterday.

Frates was released on $250 bonds and is to appear in court again this morning to have a date set for the trial.

The little girl was at first thought to have been seriously injured, but it later developed that she was only slightly injured, and will soon be over her injuries.

The Bufford girl was returning from school to her home, walking along the highway when struck by a passing automobile, which did not stop. The license of the car, as taken by witnesses, is said to have corresponded with one issued to Frates.

– Press Democrat, February 1 1922

 

Jail Sentence for Reckless Driver

SANTA ROSA, Feb. 9. Frank Frates, accused of reckless driving, resulting in injuring a small girl near the Todd school, recently pleaded guilty to the charge before Justice M. T. Vaughan in the Justice court today and was sentenced to seven days in the county jail.

Frates had given the parents of the girl $55 and the court took into consideration his attitude to the parents in basing a decision. The court stated, however, that the reimbursing of the parents did not wholly satisfy the penalty for a criminal complaint.

Judge Vaughan stated following the trial, that the sentence was in line with the court’s policy to attempt to stock [sp] reckless automobile driving in the county.

– Petaluma Daily Morning Courier, February 10 1922

 

Santa Rosa Youths In Petaluma Trouble

PETALUMA. April 8. Two Santa Rosa youths, said to have been drinking, were brought to town under arrest last night by Jack H. Kreitler, the well known highway official, and taken before Justice J. P. Gallagher, who fined them $50 each.

The youths were driving an auto in a reckless manner and drove through the barricades erected where repairs are under way, smashing lantern and barriers. One lantern still clung to their car when it reached this city.

They did not know how they got here or what they had been doing and both were very penitent and admitted their great wrong. They were allowed to return home, but not to drive their car. This is declared to be their first offense. Both are members of prominent families of Santa Rosa and both have good reputations, hence their names were withheld from publication.

– Press Democrat, April 9 1922

 

RECKLESSNESS MUST HALT

To The Press Democrat: Please grant me a little space in your valuable paper upon a very important subject.

Life is short at best, yet many a life is snuffed out prematurely either through the carelessness of himself or others. Within the last two weeks many automobile accidents have occurred in this county and people have been maimed and killed. In practically every one of these cases the cause is traceable to carelessness, and in almost even case of such carelessness the person knew he was violating the law. The automobile is here to stay, but the time has certainly arrived when there must be a more rigid enforcement of the law.

From reports received by me, speeding is not an uncommon thing; cutting-in about as common and much more dangerous, while headlights are not infrequent. These last three have caused many deaths, many cripples and the loss of much property in this county, and the time has come to call a halt. Small fines amount to nothing. It is an indirect way of licensing these violations of the law.

For the protection of life and property in the county I shall therefore ask the magistrates of the county in all cases of these more serious violations of the Motor Vehicle act to impose prison sentences instead of fines, as it seems to me to be the only way of correcting these existing conditions. The lives of our citizens are more important to the public than the occasional withdrawl of a man from society for a few days, weeks or months, while he is learning the lesson that he must respect the law and the rights of his fellow citizens. G. W. HOYLE District Attorney.

– Press Democrat, December 7 1922

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YESTERDAY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER (Series Index)

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“The past is never dead. It’s not even past” is a flippant line tossed off in a novel by William Faulkner (don’t bother reading it; I did one college summer, when I thought Faulkner novels were something I just had to learn to appreciate, more the fool I) and that quote reflects the theme of the book, which is about the terrible prices we often pay for long-ago mistakes. In recent years it’s been misappropriated to mean history in general, particularly as an upbeat catchphrase for historic places. That meaning fits the town of Sonoma, with its adobes haunted by Vallejo’s ghosts, or Petaluma, with much of its downtown undisturbed since Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn. But Santa Rosa – not so much. Here the phrase has to be used in its original intent, to express the unhappy ways we are dogged by our past.

– –

THE REDEVELOPMENT SERIES

THE CITY DESIGNED FOR DRIVING CARS

HOW WE LOST SANTA ROSA CREEK…

…AND HOW WE GAINED AN UGLY CITY HALL

HOW WE LOST THE COURTHOUSE

IT WILL BE A RESPLENDENT CITY

TEARING APART “THE CITY DESIGNED FOR LIVING”

WHO OWNED COURTHOUSE SQUARE?

* ROAD TO THE MALL *

HOW THE MALL CAME TO BE

MONEY FIRST, PLANS LATER

THAT WHICH WE LOST

THE CHOSEN ONE

MR. CODDING HAS SOME OBJECTIONS

GREATEST EXPECTATIONS

SAVE THE CAL

THE BIG BOOK OF RED FLAGS

THE WAR COUNCIL

ALL PLANS REVEALED

REGRETS, WE HAVE A FEW

WHO KILLED DOWNTOWN…AND WHY?

 

This is the 700th article to appear in this journal, which now clocks in at over 1.5 million words (I have statistically typed the letter “e” about 190,530 times but the letter “z” merely 1,110). Normally such a milestone is an occasion for a “best of” recap but I did that not so long ago back at #650 with “650 KISSES DEEP,” so instead I’d like to step back and reflect on some of the reasons Santa Rosa came to be the way it is today.

This is also timely because right now (summer 2019) the city is working on the Downtown Station Area Specific Plan which “seeks to guide new development with a view to creating a vibrant urban center with a distinct identity and character.” The plan calls for wedging up to 7,000 more housing units into the downtown area, which will be quite a trick.

There are limits to what developers can build, in part because this is a high-risk earthquake zone (a 1 in 3 chance we will have a catastrophe within the next 26 years), but a greater obstacle is that Santa Rosa is uniquely burdened by layers of bad decisions made over several decades.

THE ORIGINAL DOWNTOWN PLAN   Santa Rosa’s prime underlying problem is (literally) underlying. Scrape off the present downtown buildings and we have the same frontier village that was platted way back in 1853, when there was only one house (Julio Carrillo’s), a store, a tavern and stray pigs. It was small enough for anyone to walk across any direction in a couple of minutes or three – 70 total acres from the creek to Fifth street, from E to A street.

Now eight score and five years since, our downtown core is virtually unchanged from that original street grid – minus the dozens of acres lopped off for the highway and mall – so there ain’t much room on the dance floor for developers to make any sort of dramatic moves.

Not that people haven’t envisioned a better downtown. In 1945 architect “Cal” Caulkins created a plan which eliminated Courthouse Square and turned almost all of the space between First and Third streets into a Civic Center. No question: This was the best of all possible Santa Rosas, as I wrote in “THE SANTA ROSA THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN.” The plan had universal and enthusiastic support and only needed voter approval of a $100k bond to get started. It lost by 96 votes on a ballot crowded with other bond measures. Attempts by the Chamber of Commerce to revive a modified version of the design in 1953 went nowhere.

Another big attempt to fix Santa Rosa’s design problems came in 1960-1961, when the city’s new Redevelopment Agency hired urban design experts from New Jersey. Some of their ideas were pretty good; they envisioned a pedestrian-friendly city with mini-parks, tree-lined boulevards and a greenway along both banks of a fully restored Santa Rosa Creek. Their objective was for the public to drive to a parking garage/lot as easily as possible and walk.

Over the following years came a succession of consultants and developers with both detailed schemes and spitballing proposals, mainly focused on revitalizing Fourth street by making it more walkable. (Most innovative was an idea to rip out the roadway and replace it with an artificial creek criss-crossed by little footbridges.) In 1981 it was rechristened the “Fourth Street Mall” and closed to autos on Friday and Saturday nights to squash the local street cruising fad, topics covered in “POSITIVELY PEDESTRIAN 4TH STREET.”

Tinkering does not a city remake, and downtown is still as it always was, an Old West village square. As I’ve joked before, the town motto should be changed from “The City Designed For Living” to “The City Designed For Living…During the Gold Rush.”

THE PRICE OF PARKING   Or maybe the motto should be, “The City Designed For Buggies.”

For a city with such a small downtown, Santa Rosa devotes a big hunk of that footprint to automobile parking, with nine lots and five garages. Yet should even half of the new residents in those 7,000 proposed apartments/condos have a car, every single parking spot will be taken – and then some.

Santa Rosa has always had a fraught relationship with autos, and it’s again because so much of the core area is unchanged from its buggywhip days. Once beyond the eight square blocks around Courthouse Square many of the old residential streets are so narrow that parking is not allowed on both sides and it’s still a squeeze when trucks or SUVs pass. Again, high-density development would be tough. (The exception is College ave. which is quite wide because they drove cattle down the street from the Southern Pacific depot on North street to the slaughterhouse near Cleveland ave.)

Complaints about downtown parking go back to 1910, when farmers coming to town in their wagons for Saturday shopping found fewer hitching posts available. In 1912 the city finally gave in and set up the vacant lot at Third and B streets as a kind of horse parking lot.

Fourth street between A and B streets c. 1922-1925. Postcard courtesy Larry Lapeere Collection
Fourth street between A and B streets c. 1922-1925. Postcard courtesy Larry Lapeere Collection

From the 1920s onward, photos of downtown show seemingly every parking spot taken. There was no shortage of articles in the Press Democrat detailing the latest plans to solve the parking problem – including 1937’s increased fines for every additional violation, which reveals a major drawback of living in a small town where the Meter Lady knows everybody.

The crisis came 1945-1946, when the city introduced parking meters along with Santa Rosa’s first sales tax, both to predictable taxpayer howls. The Press Democrat’s letter section saw writers interchangeably angry between the tax and the parking meters and although the tax was only one percent, there were calls for a complete boycott of the downtown as a kind of Boston Tea Party protest. On top of that, street parking was dreaded because the city insisted upon parallel parking only, even though merchants had been protesting it for many years. (Those pre-1950 land-yachts did not have power steering, so turning the wheels when the car was not in motion was a helluva workout.) For more on all this feuding see: “CITY OF ROSES AND PARKING METERS.”

2 tons of American steel
2 tons of American steel

Whilst the normally peaceable citizens of Santa Rosa were stabbing their City Councilman dolls with voodoo pins, a guy named Hugh Codding was building a new shopping center he called Montgomery Village. It opened in 1950 with an advertising blitz promoting no sales tax (because it was outside of city limits) and easy, meter-free parking. Shoppers flocked there. Thus closed the first chapter of a big book we might call, “A Series of City Hall’s Unfortunate Events.”

OUR WAY OR NO FREEWAY   City Hall alone was not to blame for all that era’s dreadful decisions; together with the Downtown Association and Chamber of Commerce they “sawed the town in half,” as a Press Democrat editor put it in the paper’s 1948 end of year wrapup.

As well known from old photos, the Redwood Highway – AKA Highway 101 – used to pass smack through downtown Santa Rosa, around Courthouse Square and up Mendocino ave. This traffic included not only your aunt Ginny running errands across town but big trucks passing through with redwood logs, cattle, farm equipment and such. It may have looked like the City of Roses, but it probably smelled like the City of Diesel.

prop2In 1938 there was a municipal bond measure to fund an alt truck route around downtown. It failed to pass but would have pushed all that heavy traffic over to Wilson street, which was the heart of our “Little Italy” community – although the ads for the bond pleaded it was urgently needed for the safety of our school children, that concern apparently didn’t extend to the Italian kids. Backers also warned this truck route was necessary because the State Highway Commission might otherwise build a bypass and turn Santa Rosa into a “ghost town.”

A couple of years passed. The city’s Grand Poobahs were still stuck on the idea of a truck route but now wanted it a block closer to downtown, on Davis st. (or rather, between Davis and Morgan streets). The state offered no firm counterproposal; maybe they would construct a bypass somewhere west of Santa Rosa or perhaps use the Davis st. route with a short five block overpass, similar to what they were currently building in San Rafael. Anyway, there was no urgency: The state estimated there were only 4,500 daily trips along this stretch of highway 101 (today there are about 100,000).

Come 1941, however, the Press Democrat front page screamed with 72-point headlines – not just about the war against Hitler, but the war against the Highway Commission.

“An insult to Santa Rosa!” raged a PD op/ed after the state announced it was going to build a 13 block overpass through the town, from Sebastopol road to Ninth st. The paper called this a “highway on stilts” and the Downtown Association lawyer said it would “create the impression that the city is nothing more or less than a ‘slough town.'”

Santa Rosa’s response came in another banner headline: “CITY TO BUILD ALTERNATE TRUCK HIGHWAY!” They quickly bought right-of-way from seven homeowners between South A and South Davis streets (moving one of the houses), paved the stub of a road, and because the Commission didn’t grunt in disapproval, the town declared victory. The next thing anyone knew was when a state engineer was found surveying for the overpass and told someone it was “absolutely necessary at this time.”

I will mercifully spare Gentle Reader the full drama of what happened between 1942 and 1948, except to say that the Press Democrat wore out its supply of lead type exclamation marks (“CITY TO FIGHT OVERHEAD HIGHWAY!”) as it breathlessly reported all the good news about how the damned “Stilt Road” was not just merely dead but really most sincerely dead. And then another surveyor showed up from Sacramento. Nope.

There were in toto six different routes under consideration by the Highway Commission; unfortunately, not all of them were detailed in any Sonoma county newspapers (as far as I can tell). There was always the threat of a complete western bypass, but it was never mentioned whether that route would have been Stony Point or Wright/Fulton, or both. Serious consideration was given an eastern route from Petaluma Hill road to North street, curving back to Redwood Highway/Mendocino ave. between Memorial Park and Lewis road – which would have brought the highway rumblings within earshot of the tony McDonald ave. neighborhood, of course.

The state finally relented and gave Santa Rosa what the Poobahs wanted – a ground-level freeway that mostly wiped out Davis street (it’s the same route of highway 101 today). There were eleven crossings on it between Sebastopol road and Steele lane so there were plenty of chances to turn off and do some shopping.

Building highway 101 in 1948. Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library
Building highway 101 in 1948. Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library

Our ancestors fought so fiercely for this layout because they believed the downtown business district would wither if there was a bypass – that Santa Rosa couldn’t survive unless shoppers were only seconds away from their favorite stores. But I suspect another reason was because they didn’t actually grasp the concept of freeways. It was the mid-1940s, remember, and the very first one in America (Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles) had been constructed just a few years before. From some of the remarks in the PD it appears they thought of an elevated freeway like a bridge, where there was no getting on or off in midspan; when road options were presented at hearings in Petaluma, state officials had to explain that a freeway included a certain number of on and off ramps.

By contrast, when Petaluma’s highway improvements came years later that town had the opposite attitude – the state could not build their downtown bypass fast enough. “Loss of the tourist trade will be more than offset by an increase in local trade,” their City Manager said before work began. Petaluma’s greatest concern was the route be chosen with care to avoid the “poultry belt” because of “the harmful effects of irregular noises, headlights and police sirens on white leghorns,” as a freeway skeptic remarked.

The grand opening of the “Santa Rosa Freeway” was May 20, 1949. Less than two months passed before the first fatality: George Dow was killed in July when a car turning onto West College crossed his southbound lane. After that someone died every ten weeks on the average until the PD wrote a 1950 editorial which began, “A state highway ‘deathway’ runs through Santa Rosa. It is mistakenly called a ‘freeway.'”

Remember the joke that a camel was a horse designed by a committee? This was a freeway designed by shopkeepers. Of the eleven crossings only seven had stoplights. The only turn lanes were on the southbound side for turning east onto Third, Fourth and Fifth streets – to make it easier to get downtown, of course – otherwise drivers shot across oncoming traffic. Crossings at Steele Lane, Fifth St. and Barham Ave. proved the most deadly and the city asked for more traffic lights; the state replied they would study the safety issues concerning the road they told us they did not want to build. Meanwhile, the speed limit was cranked down from 55 to 45 to 35 as the death toll mounted and the city discovered there was more cross-traffic than there were cars using the highway.

Then there was the community impact. The PD sent out a reporter in 1950 to talk to people living on the west side. He was told the freeway made them feel stigmatized – they were on the “wrong side of tracks.” And so they were; there were no parks around there at the time except for a single weedy lot. Their 400+ kids had to walk across the freeway to go to school (mainly Burbank Elementary), so the city built a pedestrian underpass at Ellis Street. It flooded during heavy rains.

There was no whitewashing the fact that the freeway was a disaster in every way, and no doubt about who was to blame for it being like that. But curiously, the Press Democrat no longer mentioned the names of the guys it had long praised for standing up to those smarty-pants state engineers just a few years earlier.

Santa Rosa’s City Manager Sam Hood spoke to the San Francisco Commonwealth Club in 1951 and said the “selfish interests” who were to blame for forcing through the ground-level roadway had come to find the freeway had no impact on their business at all. He added that if a vote were to be held that day – less than two years after the freeway opened – not one merchant would oppose a bypass.

The PD managed to both strongly condemn the freeway (“every intersection is a death-trap”) while making its original boosters – including the paper itself – even more anonymous in a 1956 editorial: “…well-intentioned Santa Rosans, laymen who thought they knew more than highly experienced and qualified engineers, who kicked, screamed and protested until they had their way – and saddled Santa Rosa with a classic example of what happens when local pressure-groups have their way.” So forgiving.

Santa Rosa finally yielded to the state and planning began for what we have today – an elevated highway 101 directly above the old ground level version. When work began the PD printed an Aug. 24, 1966 feature on the detour plans and expressed relief that the end was nigh for our “17-year-old mistake.” The new freeway opened October 1968 and cost $3.8M.

The old Santa Rosa Freeway may be no more but its terrible legacy remains, forever splitting the city between east and west. Whatever happens to this city – a population boom, catastrophic earthquake or fire, sweeping redevelopment or no development at all – that highway will endure and shape what we can do with our future. In Santa Rosa it will always be 1949.

NEXT: HOW WE LOST SANTA ROSA CREEK…
 

 

(Photo at top courtesy Larry Lapeere Collection)

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THE SHORT CRAZY SUMMER OF DAREDEVIL DOOLEY

Jeff Elliott 5 Comments

Ah, Spring in Santa Rosa. The colorful roses, the whiff of barbecue, the deafening roar of overpowered engines at the fairgrounds that ruin the evenings for everyone living near downtown. Now that the city is trying to lure developers into building high-rise apartment buildings, perhaps someone should mention that those units will be uninhabitable on weekends when there are motorcycle/hotrod races, destruction derbies or monster truck rallies. Hey, while we’re discussing a makeover of the downtown area anyway, could we please consider swapping the locations of the county fairgrounds and county admin center? Just a thought.

Santa Rosa’s always been a race-lovin’ town, however, starting with our hosting the first California Grand Prize Race in 1909. Even when there were fuel shortages during WWI and WWII we packed the grandstand to watch drivers spin around the dirt track and not-so-rarely crash. There have been deaths (two motorcycle racers were killed in 2016) and some of the pileups became the stuff of legend, such as the flaming tangle of nineteen Model T Fords in 1939 (“a smash-up spectacle Cecil B. De Mille couldn’t have staged,” gasped the Press Democrat).

Of all the events at the Santa Rosa Fairgrounds I’ve read about in the old newspapers, there’s one I’d have truly loved to have attended: On July 4, 1918, Ed Dooley and another driver slammed their massive cars together head-on at an impact speed of 100 MPH, the men jumping out at the last second. At age 39, Dooley had never done anything like this before; he was a portly ex-salesman who apparently woke up one morning and decided he was fearless.

Dooley was never a race car driver; he only drove big, heavy touring cars which would seat 6-8 people and at the time cost as much as a small house. He had a gimmick, being that he only drove with his knees and feet, his hands cuffed behind his back. That’s not quite as astonishing as it might seem, as in all photos he is seen with the handcuffs behind his neck, so he could have swung them over his head if he needed to take control in an emergency or needed to scratch his nose. And although the automatic transmission didn’t yet exist, the cars he used were easy to shift gears because they had a linear gearbox, not the “H” pattern on today’s manual transmissions. A video of one of his favorite model cars, the Winton 6, shows the layout which made it possible to shift by throwing his leg over the stick (the entire short video is worth watching if you’re at all curious about what’s needed to restore such an old vehicle).

(RIGHT: Ad for the 1917 Oldsmobile Eight)olds8

On his 1918 WWI draft card Dooley listed his job as “performer in exhibitions” which was quite a new claim – in every earlier document he’s simply a salesman. He worked mostly for J. W. Leavitt & Company, which was the Oldsmobile dealership in San Francisco and distributor for the brand in California and Nevada. Ed was always described as well-known and well-liked, which is to say he had the traits of a good car salesman.

Almost nothing about Kieran Edward Dooley can be found prior to his adventures with handcuffs. He was born in Minnesota in 1879, the youngest of nine Irish farm children. His future wife, Nellie, was born four years later on a nearby farm.

Nor do we know why he started doing shackled driving stunts in 1917 as the “Cowboy Chauffeur.” A mid-life crisis? He was associated from the beginning with western themes and had a custom saddle to fit the hood of his car. At rodeos, local cowpunchers would try to hold on while Dooley made the car “buck” and sometimes he chased down a steer as the cowboy on the hood tried to rope it.

We know he made appearances that year at a rodeo in Salinas, the Stanislaus Livestock Fair and the Arizona state fair, but if he was paid much or anything for these appearances is anyone’s guess. It’s possible he was underwritten by the carmaker; in a 1917 newsletter for dealers, “The Oldsmobile Pacemaker,” it was boasted, “this feat of Dooley’s of driving without his hands and of guiding the car with his knees, proves how absolutely true the alignment of the wheels and steering mechanism is and how easily an Oldsmobile may be handled.” Another blurb appeared in the Los Angeles Times where Dooley praised the Oldsmobile Eight as a “super-quality” car.

It may be discovered he performed at other 1917 rodeos and fairs in the hinterlands – many newspapers from smaller counties are not yet online, and he didn’t get much coverage anyway. There was one brief item in a Modesto paper when he appeared there, and they misnamed him as “Dan” Dooley.

But truthfully, the hands-free driving schtick had limited appeal. It was more like a party trick, and one of the mentions that year had him driving up and down one of San Francisco’s steepest streets on a bet with other salesmen at the Olds dealership.

Come 1918, however, the “Cowboy Chauffeur” was reborn as “Daredevil Dooley” and “‘Suicide’ Ed Dooley.” Ed still did everything handcuffed but it became part of a complete show: “Dooley’s Automobile Rodeo,” which was to make its world debut at the Santa Rosa fairgrounds.

Dooley now had a press agent, a performance team and a small fleet of luxe cars to wreck. Who bankrolled the show is unknown, but it seems clear the objective was to get a Hollywood deal. An item in a Sacramento paper was clearly lifted from a PR handout: “Dooley has worked with Doug Fairbanks, Bill Hart and many of the big leaguers in the picture and racing world, and a year ago beat Barney Oldfield and others in the Phoenix race.” He was never in a race of any kind with Oldfield and no mention whatsoever can be found of him associating with moviemakers, although a newsreel crew supposedly filmed the whole doings in Santa Rosa.

The novelty act in the show was the “world’s youngest driver,” Ed’s son Ronald, who they claimed was five years-old but was actually six (Ed also shaved a couple of years off his own age when he registered for the draft later that year). More PR, this time appearing in the Press Democrat: “…this little chap, who cannot reach around the steering wheel, who has to slide ‘way forward in his seat to reach the brakes or change gears, is a thoroughly accomplished driver. Dooley tested his son repeatedly in the heavy traffic of San Francisco, and is satisfied that the boy has won his spurs.”

There were eleven parts in the Santa Rosa program, as transcribed below. Ed did his usual handcuff tricks and the cowboy bucking stunt along with a tug of war between two autos, a relay race and a few other competitions with both cars and motorbikes. There was also “the man from the Philippines, climbing a greased pole 40-foot high,” about which the less said.

The big attraction, of course, was the head-on collision. “‘First exhibition of its kind in history,’ the press agent says.”

 

dooleysantarosa

 

From the Sebastopol Times: “…And then will come the tremendous finale, the daring, death-defying head-on collision of two big touring cars, hurtling across the field toward each other at a rate of fifty miles an hour. Few people have ever seen a serious automobile accident, and those who have bear witness to the thrill of the impact of two great bodies. It is a breath-catching sensation, the one instant before the big cars crash with a roar that can be heard for blocks…”

I’ll offer only a few comments about this stunt: Presumably the driver’s doors were removed; presumably Ed and the other driver had practiced diving out of their cars at high speeds. Still, Edward Dooley was a 39 year-old man and from his photos appeared to be more chunky than lithe. He recently also had been in a highway auto accident near Fresno, when a tire blew out and hurled him 30 feet from the car.

There are no reviews to be found of the show, but we know no one was seriously injured – after all, they did the same head-on show a month later at Idora Park in Oakland. The only additional detail is that in Oakland both cars started from inclines, so it’s possible the engines were not running at the time of the collision.

Another month passed and it was time for the California state fair. The Sacramento papers were calling him “Suicide” Ed Dooley because his new stunt was to jump over a 20-foot high house constructed on the infield of the race track. His 3,000 lb. Oldsmobile Eight would shoot up a 50° ramp, fly over the roof and crash land on the other side.

This time he would not jump free at the last moment. “What will happen however, when the car hits the ground after its terrifying drop, even Dooley himself does not know, although he hopes to escape with nothing worse than a badly smashed car and a severe shaking-up,” said the San Francisco Chronicle.

And here’s the Believe-it-or-Not! twist: As crazy as that was, Ed Dooley had an even more risky stunt planned. Less than a week later, he was scheduled to be back at Idora Park, where he would perform another head-on collision – except it would be in midair this time. Both cars would race up an incline and the drivers would jump out just before the cars hit head-on, twenty feet in the air.

We don’t know if he did that show, and nor do we know if he did the house jump – again, it wasn’t customary to publish reviews of such entertainment events. But there certainly would have been news items if someone was killed or seriously injured, just as it was reported that several attendees were taken to the hospital when an Idora Park carnival ride malfunctioned that same afternoon.

It’s certain, though, that Daredevil Dooley’s career was over, having lasted only three (two?) months. Maybe his backers became cost-conscious after seeing how many $4,000+ autos he was busting up (the equivalent to about $70k per car today). Maybe it was because there was light attendance at his shows, as the Spanish Flu was near its peak and people were advised to avoid public places. Or maybe he could no longer ignore the toll on his middle-aged body caused by all those jumps from speeding cars.

Ed Dooley died in San Francisco about a year later, in December 1919. The cause was said to be “an attack of rheumatism” but it was probably a heart attack – at the time they didn’t understand rheumatoid arthritis is a major risk factor for coronary artery disease.

Had he reflected upon his daredevil days, I’m sure he would have remembered the Santa Rosa appearance as the high mark; not only did he receive the most publicity here but it was the only time his son was part of the show. Our ancestors, however, might not have remembered the day so fondly, as people all over town found themselves being pestered by all that noise in the middle of a very pleasant Summer afternoon. Say, did you just hear a terrible car crash? It sounded awfully close.

 

Item from The Los Angeles Times, November 18 1917
Item from The Los Angeles Times, November 18 1917

 

 

Undated portrait of Kieran Edward Dooley (Photo: Ancestry)
Undated portrait of Kieran Edward Dooley (Photo: Ancestry)

 

 

Illustration from "The Oldsmobile Pacemaker," December 1917
Illustration from “The Oldsmobile Pacemaker,” December 1917

 

 

 

 

sources
Edward Dooley, one of the best known salesmen in the local automobile trade, has been appointed general manager for the Master Spark Company and will make his headquarters in Los Angeles. Dooley has been a member of the J. W. Leavitt Company and is well known to motorists throughout this part of the state.

– San Francisco Examiner, June 8, 1915

 

DOOLEY READY FOR BIG STUNT
HANDCUFFED HE WILL DRIVE OLDSMOBILE FROM METROPOLIS TO SALINAS

Tomorrow a spectacular stunt advertising the California Rodeo will take place. Ed Dooley will leave San Francisco at 12:30 p. m. from Third and Market street with his hands securely hand-cuffed behind him and under these difficulties will drive an Oldsmobile to Salinas. Miss Kitty Doner, leading star at the Cort theater, will lock the handcuffs and speed Dooley on his way…

– Salinas The Californian, July 16, 1917

 

COWBOY TO RIDE AUTO AT RODEO
Bucking Motor Car to Be Feature of California Round-Up Next Saturday.

Despite the fact that one of his arms was broken when a high-powered racing car crashed into his “broncho” automobile recently, Edward Dooley, cowboy motorist, who recently drove from this city to Salinas with his hands manacled behind his back, will appear at the California Cowboys’ Roundup, to be held under the auspices of the Newspaper Men’s Club of San Francisco at Ewing Field, September 8, 9, and 10.

Dooley, who is under a surgeon’s care, declared yesterday that he would put his car through its paces at the roundup with his good arm strapped behind him and the injured member in a sling…

– San Francisco Examiner, September 2, 1917

 

NOVELTY STUNT OFFERED FAIR

Most people have enough trouble driving an auto with their hands but Ed Dooley, called the “Cowboy Chauffeur,” found that too tame and so he has developed the habit of driving the festive motor car with his hands handcuffed behind him. Dooley is in Phoenix planning to hook up with the State Fair for an exhibition if such a thing is possible and with him he brings a big scrapbook of notices of his stunts on the coast.

Dooley has driven hundreds of miles using his feet to shift gears with and his knees to steer by. He climbs in his car up an artificial flight of steps set at an angle of nearly 40 degrees and he does a number of other hair-raising stunts besides, according to press notices.

– Phoenix Arizona Republic, October 10, 1917

 

 

See Ed Dooley at the Fair today ride around the track at 40 miles per hour in an Oldsmobile “8” hand-cuffed and steering with his feet!

– Oldsmobile ad in Phoenix Arizona Republic, November 14, 1917

 

 

Drives Auto Without Use of Hands or Feet

Ed Dooley, who recently drove an Oldsmobile from Los Angeles with his hands handcuffed behind him, has arrived in San Francisco.

Dooley has found that the Olds is the easiest car on the market to-day to handle this way, and has decided to prove this fact by driving around this city manacled with his hands behind his back.

He has a wager with some of the salesmen of J. W. Leavitt & Co. that he can drive an Oldsmobile up Jones-street hill, stop half way, back down, and then proceed up the hill.

Dooley will drive his auto along the Ocean boulevard in this method this afternoon.

– San Francisco Examiner, December 9, 1917

 

 

A spectacular automobile rodeo, with touring cars, runabouts and motorcycles replacing the bucking broncos, wild steers and outlaws of the old rodeo, will be the attraction offered July 4th at the Santa Rosa Fair grounds. The feature of the day will be a head-on collision between two huge touring cars. Ed Dooley, known from coast to coast where daredevil automobile driving creates a thrill, has assembled a group of daring spiries into an aggregation known as Dooley’s Rodeo Company, and the intrepid crew will present their sensational feats of skill and danger on the afternoon of the Fourth.

Dooley’s Los Angeles-Yuma race across the sands of the Mohave won him national recognition as a driver of utter fearlessness. His feats, throughout the southwest country are spoken of with bated breath. His run last year from San Francisco to Salinas, with his hands manacled behind his back, was at once the joy of those who love a new thrill, and the bane of the speed cops.

This year “Daredevil Dooley” as his associates in the auto game call him, has perfected his handcuff driving to such an extent that throughout the entire rodeo July 4th, he will do all his driving, no matter how difficult the feat or how desperate the chance, with his wrists handcuffed behind his neck.

Dooley drives with his knees and the muscles of his legs. Just a few paces ahead may loom sudden danger. Despite the fact that he has not the use of his hands, an almost indistinguistable [sic] motion of the muscles sends intrepid driver and his car safely by. Automobile and motorcycle racing, an auto race backward, a hundred yard dash between a sprinter and an autoist, and several other racing novelties — in all of which Dooley drives handcuffed, will comprise the early part of the program.

Another feature of universal appeal will be the driving of Dooley’s little five year old son, Ronald. This handsome, curly-headed lad, who, his dad claims is the youngest professional driver in the world, handles his big car with a sureness that many an older driver would envy.

The tug of war between two big autos will provide thrills of a different nature. The sight of the huge cars tugging and straining in an effort to conquer their rivals; the battle of the gasoline giants is well worth watching.

But the great feature of the day, the soul-stirring, hair-raising tremendous finale of a program full of thrills, will be offered by the head-on collision. A huge Winton Six will be sent by Dooley (handcuffed) hurtling across the field to crash head-on into a Cadillac, started from the opposite side of the race course. The crash of these two big cars provides a sensation well worth experiencing.

Prior to the opening of the Rodeo. Dooley and his fellow motorists will take part in the big Moose parade. The Fair grounds gates will be opened at noon on July 4, and the rodeo will advance sale of seats will be announced shortly. The price of admission will be $1.

– Press Democrat, June 23 1918

 

BIG AUTO RODEO AT SANTA ROSA ON JULY FOURTH

…Dooley, who has won a name for himself throughout the country as one of the most daring men who ever handled the wheel of a car, will present many novelties in the way of thrilling driving on the occasion of the big rodeo.

“Daredevil Dooley,” they called him when he flashed into national prominence in the Los Angeles-Yuma Desert Classic several years ago; and in the southwest, men who saw his reckless performance in the wild dash across the sands still speak of his feats with awe…

– Petaluma Argus, June 24 1918

 

THE AUTO RODEO HERE ON FOURTH
Whole Lot of Merriment and Sport Is Promised by Stunts of “Dare Devil Dooley” and His Aggregation When They Show Here on the Holiday.

Hundreds of small boys from Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties, who are counting impatiently the days until “The Fourth,” which will bring Dooley’s Automobile Rodeo to the Santa Rosa Fair Grounds, are no more impatient for the big day than a certain little fellow, just past his fifth birthday, down in San Francisco.

War demands for powder this year promise to do away with fire-crackers altogether, but the head-on collision of two great touring cars, a giant Winton six and a Locomobile, which are already in Santa Rosa awaiting the word that will send them crashing head-on into each other, this collision of the gasoline giants, the kiddles know, will cause a bang! bigger than any cannon cracker they ever fired in the days before the “Safe and Sane” rule went into effect.

Down in San Francisco, is the little five-year-old son , of “Daredevil Dooley,” the auto handcuff king who will put on the big show. Little Ronald Dooley is counting the days before the Rodeo just as impatiently as any lad who has been figuring on how he would he able to “raise” the price of admission.

For Ronald, on the afternoon of July 4, will make his first bow to the public in the game his father has learned so well, that of professional automobile driver. From the time he has been able to walk, the little fellow has had a love for the big fast cars his daddy uses, and nightly takes his ride behind a daring driver. Little by little, he mastered the controls himself; and now this little chap, who cannot reach around the steering wheel, who has to slide ‘way forward in his seat to reach the brakes or change gears, is a thoroughly accomplished driver.

Dooley tested his son repeatedly in the heavy traffic of San Francisco, and is satisfied that the boy has won his spurs; so Ronald will give his first public exhibition of his skill July 4.

And here’s the good news for all the other kiddies who have been looking forward to the big show and wondering whether there would be a tent for them to sneak under (which there won’t).

In order that there may be a goodly bunch of little fellows and their sisters out to make little Ronald feel at home, Dooley will admit free all children under ten years of age who are accompanied by their parents. Up to 16 half price will he charged.

Remember, the head-on collision of the big autos, racing together at a 50-mlle-an-hour rate, will not be the whole show: not by a whole lot. There will be automobile races, three fast motorcycle contests for purses of goodly size; an auto tug-of-war, automobile bucking contests, an auto hurdle race, racing backward, and many other big events. It will be a big day for both the kiddies and their parents.

In the morning. Donley and his drivers will take part in the Moose parade, with their cars and motorcycles. The gates will open at noon, and the big show will commence promptly at 2:30.

– Press Democrat, June 27 1918

 

DOOLEY’S AUTO RODEO SANTA ROSA JULY 4

…And then will come the tremendous finale, the daring, death-defying head-on collision of two big touring cars, hurtling across the field toward each other at a rate of fifty miles an hour. Few people have ever seen a serious automobile accident, and those who have bear witness to the thrill of the impact of two great bodies. It is a breath-catching sensation, the one instant before the big cars crash with a roar that can be heard for blocks…

– Sebastopol Times, June 28 1918

 

ED DOOLEY AND HIS SON ARE HERE

Ed Dooley, famous for his daredevil automobile driving, and his five year-old son are here preparatory to their exhibition at the race track on July 4th. Mr. Dooley has many interesting tales to tell about his experiences and narrow escapes while performing his feats in his big Oldsmobile “8.” Many times he had escaped death by only a hair’s breadth, and has lain in hospitals several times from accidents received while performing his stunts. Following is an article that appeared recently in a Fresno paper after a harrowing handcuff drive between that city and Modesto:

Edward Dooley, handcuffed auto pilot, narrowly escaped death early this morning when the automobile he was driving to the county fair here was ditched as a result of a blowout while the machine was rounding ‘death curve” on the road between this city and Modesto.

The machine, which was traveling at the rate of fifty miles an hour, was completely demolished and Dooley was hurled a distance of thirty feet, escaping, however, with a few minor scratches and bruises.

Dooley, who was a feature at the recent California cowboys’ round-up held by the Newspapermen’s Club of San Francisco, had been showing at the Modesto round-up and was making the handcuffed drive to Fresno on a wager.

At the time of the accident he had covered the greater part of the distance between Modesto and this city in the record time of two hours and 10 minutes.

– Press Democrat, June 29 1918

 

“DARE DEVIL’S” BIG FROLIC DN THE MORROW

When “Daredevil” Ed Dooley, hands manacled behind his back, hurls his powerful automobile out onto the Santa Rosa Fair Grounds track tomorrow afternoon, his appearance will signal the opening of one of the most spectacularly thrilling programs ever presented on a California race course.

For Dooley’s Automobile Rodeo will be truly a twentieth century roundup. with motor-driven cars, automobiles and motorcycles, replacing the fractious steeds and wild steers of the conventional rodeo; their daring drivers performing feats of skill and danger in a manner bound to bring the throngs to their feet with cheers for the intrepid performers.

Dooley himself is the premier of the daredevil crew who will race their gasoline steeds in novel contests of all kinds. The veteran of a hundred tracks, who has no superior in his line, will perform all his feats without the use of his hands, which will be firmly handcuffed behind his back. With this handicap, he will race the most reckless drivers of his crew; he will drive backward, will take part in the auto relay race, and in the stake or hurdle driving.

The motorcycle races will add their quota of thrills and excitement to the program. Dooley has secured ten of the fastest drivers in the bay district, and will present them in three death-defying contests. Substantial prizes have been offered the winners in the various races, and each man will be out to make the fastest time of which his machine is capable.

The auto bucking contest will be another event far out of the ordinary, and should prove productive of considerable excitement. Dooley during the past week has been busy rounding up range riders famous for their conquests of outlaw horses, and has offered a large bonus to the rider who can stay on a saddle attached to the radiator of his automobile.

– Press Democrat, July 3 1918

 

PICTURE MEN AT RODEO

With the completion of the track for the head-on collision of two big touring cars at the Santa Rosa Fair grounds on the afternoon of the Fourth, Edward Dooley manager of Dooley’s Automobile Rodeo, announced today that all is in readiness for the spectacular entertainment. Dooley has built a runway for the two cars, that will send them unerringly together to destruction at a fifty-mile an hour rate. The head-on collision will be the spectacular finale of the day’s program of thrills.

Attracted by the possibilities of the many novel events, moving picture producers have been besieging Dooley for the exclusive rights to film the various features; and today Dooley announce that he had finally closed with a San Francisco movie man.

The latter will “shoot” not only the automobile and motorcycle races, but the auto tug-of-war, Dooley himself in his sensational and daring exhibition of handcuffed driving; little Ronald Dooley, five-year old driver; the auto hurdle and relay racing; the auto bucking contest, in which a cowboy attempts to keep to the saddle strapped securely to the radiator of a bucking automobile; the racing backward, and all the other unique events.

Dooley announced today that he would himself pay the war tax on admissions; so there will be no charge outside the admission price…

– Petaluma Courier, July 3 1918

 

PROGRAM AT THE AUTO RODEO HERE THIS AFTERNOON
Card of Events That Will Be Pulled Off by “Daredevil Dooley” and His Performers at the Race Track This Afternoon, Beginning at Two o’Clock.

The program for “Daredevil Dooley’s Auto Rodeo” at the race track, beginning at half past two o’clock this afternoon, will be replete with many startling and unique features, and “Daredevil Dooley” and his five-year-old son, manly Master Ronald Dooley, will be the principal stars, assisted by a galaxy of other lesser stars. The auto tug-of-war, the great motorcycles and many other features will be on tap for the thousands this afternoon.

“Daredevil Dooley” can do most anything he wants with an automobile hurdle, drive it blindfolded and with his hands manacled and goodness knows what else. His work has attracted thousands at many rodeos.

THE BIG PROGRAM

First event – Motorcycle race; amateur: 10 miles: $5O cash prizes.
Second – Relay race with nine automobiles. First time ever attempted.
Third – Tug-of-war; automobiles.
Fourth – Stake race; with automobiles. First time on record.
Fifth – Ronald Dooley: five years of age; world’s youngest driver; demonstrating his complete control of seven-passenger, 60-horsepower touring car.
Sixth – “Ed” Dooley (“Daredevil” Dooley) in exhibition handcuff stunts
Seventh – “Daredevil” Dooley vs. B. C. Madden in five-mile auto race; Dooley driving handcuffed.
Eighth – Automobile bucking contest.
Ninth – The man from the Philippines, climbing a greased pole 40-foot high.
Tenth – Motorcycle race; five-mile; professional entrants; $50 cash prize.
Eleventh – Head-on collision between a Winton “Six” and a Locomobile “Six”. “First exhibition of its kind in history.” the press agent says.

– Press Democrat, July 4 1918

 

AUTOS TO CRASH AT IDORA SUNDAY

All is in readiness for the sensational head-on automobile collision which is to be staged in the stadium at Idora Park tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 o’clock sharp.

The spectacle will be a thriller from start to finish.

From the heights of two inclines at opposite ends of the stadium. “Daredevil” Dooley and Jack Rigo will drive the autos at breakneck speed to collide head-on in the center of the stadium.

To see these powerful cars driven to destruction at top speed, with the drivers clinging desperately to the wheel up to a fraction of a second of the terrific compact, is to experience death-threatening suspense, relieved only by the final crash in which the machines crumple up like a deck of cards.

Thrill is piled on thrill during the brief period the autos are racing toward each other, speeding at more than 50 miles an hour.

Dooley and Rigo must keep their nerve. They must use iron control and their eyes must work in unison with their minds. Otherwise they, too, face destruction.

But the spectators need have no fear. “Daredevil” Dooley and Jack Rigo have ridden in this spectacle before. They will leap from the machines a moment before the smash. They will jump to safety.

At any rate Idora visitors are promised the most sensational spectacle, free in the stadium, that has ever been staged in Oakland.

– Oakland Tribune, August 3, 1918

 

Dooley Will Jump Over 20-Foot House in an Oldsmobile
Other Stunts Will Be Performed at State Fair by Hair-Raising Dare-Devil.

Ed Dooley, famous the country over for his spectacular stunts with automobiles, is here this week and will stage a series of events at the state fair destined to thrill the thousands as they have never been thrilled before.

Dooley will use an Oldsmobile in a sensational leap over a house Monday at 3:3O and several other hair-raising feats will be pulled off during the week. Dooley has worked with Doug Fairbanks, Bill Hart and many of the big leaguers in the picture and racing world, and a year ago beat Barney Oldfield and others in the Phoenix race. He is using the same Olds he used in this race.

Dooley has just finished a 188-mile drive in 4 hours and 45 minutes handcuffed and he will demonstrate his handcuff driving some time during the week at the fair grounds. In the handcuff driving Dooley works with his hands behind his back and his performance has been the wonder of automobile men since he first staged this remarkable event.

– Sacramento Union, September 1 1918

 

[State Fair schedule] …This afternoon promises to be one of the most interesting of the fair. The most sensational features will be the harness races and the dare-devil ride of “Suicide” Ed Dooley, the cowboy chauffeur.

Dooley will hurl his big Olds machine over the top of a twenty-foot high house while driving with his hands handcuffed behind him.

Dooley, guiding his car with his knees and manipulating the gears with his feet, will depend upon the momentum gained from a dash up a runway to the eaves of the house to carry him clear over the roof.

– Sacramento Union, September 2 1918

 

DOOLEY WILL DRIVE HIS CAR OFF HOUSETOP
Cowboy Chauffeur to Give Spectacular Exhibition at State Fair

The big spectacular thrill of the California State Fair programme will occur Monday afternoon at 4:30 o’clock, when “Suicide” Ed Dooley, the cowboy chauffeur will hurl his big Oldsmobile Eight touring car over the top of a twenty-foot high house while driving with his hands handcuffed behind him at a speed of thirty or forty miles an hour.

The house and wooden runway approaching it are being erected on the infield of the race track in front of the grandstand especially for the stunt. The runway, rising sharply on a 50 degree angle, will end abruptly a foot or two below the eaves of the house and several feet distant from the side wall.

Dooley, guiding the car with his knees and manipulating the gears with his feet, will depend upon the momentum gained from his dash up the runway to carry him clear over the roof. What will happen however, when the car hits the ground after its terrifying drop, even Dooley himself does not know, although he hopes to escape with nothing worse than a badly smashed car and a severe shaking-up.

– San Francisco Chronicle, September 3 1918

 

Cars, Head-On in Air, To Be Idora Card

Two automobiles, racing down inclines from opposite ends of the stadium, leaping across a space of fifty feet and crashing head-on in mid-air, this is the spectacle supreme which will thrill Admission Day crowds at Adora Park Monday afternoon.

This thriller has never before been attempted. Engineers have figured out the weight of the cars, the speed necessary for them to travel and the exact spot, twenty feet above the ground, where they will collide head-on.

“Suicide” Ed Dooley will drive one of the machines and Jack Riga the other. Both drivers will jump to safety a fraction of a second before the cars leap skyward.

– San Francisco Examiner, September 7 1918

 

Ed Dooley, Popular Auto Man, Is Dead

Local motordom is this week mourning the death of Ed Dooley, one of the best-known salesmen identified with the industry. Dooley died Friday following an attack of rheumatism.

Dooley was quite a character, as his many novel stunts with an automobile were so daring that they attracted the attention of the general public. One of his recent feats was to tour to the Salinas rodeo with his hands securely fastened with handcuffs, while on another occasion he drove with handcuffs on through the traffic in Market street escorted by motorcycle police.

For years Dooley had been identified with the distributers of Oldsmobile cars and trucks, having worked as salesman for J. W. Leavitt & Co., as well as the former handlers of this line.

Dooley was not only prominent in the automobile world, but he had a host of friends in all walks of life. Politicians and theatrical people also knew Dooley almost as well as motorists, and he is being mourned by thousands.

A widow and six-year-old son survive.

– San Francisco Chronicle, December 14, 1919

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