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    Daly City
    Daly City
    Daly City
    Ebook203 pages1 hour

    Daly City

    By Bunny Gillespie

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    About this ebook

    Nestled in the shadow of San Bruno Mountain and known as "The Gateway City" for its proximity to San Francisco, Daly City is much more than a typical suburb. A thriving and diverse community built along El Camino Real (The King's Highway), the road that connected all of the Spanish Missions in California, the city has evolved from a quaint agricultural town to an important business, residential, and transit center. This new collection of images, mostly vintage and rarely seen photographs, tells the city's journey from the original Spanish land grant through its 1911 incorporation and on to modern times. The town has always been cosmopolitan, developed with the help of Irish, German, and Italian settlers, and today's large numbers of Hispanic and Filipino residents. Aside from natural wonders like San Bruno Mountain and the dramatic Pacific coastline, Daly City also has man-made landmarks like the Cow Palace, which has long been host to large-scale events such as the Grand National Rodeo and political conventions. Nearby Colma is known for its cemeteries, but as readers will see in this book, shares a surprisingly rich history with Daly City.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateNov 24, 2003
    ISBN9781439614181
    Daly City
    Author

    Bunny Gillespie

    Author Bunny Gillespie and her husband Ken are the official historians for the City of Daly City. They helped established the History Guild Daly City/Colma and maintain a museum at the main Daly City Library. Her previous works include The Great Daly City Historical Trivia Book, published in 1986.

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      Book preview

      Daly City - Bunny Gillespie

      area.

      INTRODUCTION

      Daly City was voted into incorporation in 1911 by an underwhelming but decisive count of 138 to 136. Almost 100 years later, some residents were still debating those election results and hoping for assimilation into the city and county of neighboring San Francisco. Proximity to the premier city of Northern California gives Daly City a unique amount of residential desirability.

      Located just seven miles from the heart of San Francisco, Daly City is the most northerly community of San Mateo County. Much of Daly City, known as the Gateway to the Peninsula, (if heading south, and Gateway to San Francisco if heading north) occupies long-previous Spanish land grants, primarily the ranchos Laguna de la Merced and Guadalupe la Visitacion y Rodeo Viejo.

      The highest point of the area’s hilly terrain is San Bruno Mountain (elevation 1,314 feet) from which members of Gaspar de Portola’s exploratory party achieved initial sighting of San Francisco Bay in 1769. A few Native Americans lived, hunted, and foraged on the mountain. In 1776, when Spanish missionaries passed through the natural gap between the mountain and low coastal hills, they called the pass La Portezuela. The road leading north from other settlements was dubbed Mission Road, and its general location has changed little since Spanish days.

      Mission Road, now known as Mission Street, still forks at what is now known as Daly City’s Top of the Hill, with one road leading to Mission Dolores in San Francisco and the other to the Presidio of San Francisco. While other locations down the San Francisco Peninsula were being settled, very little was happening in La Portezuela. The soil wasn’t very receptive to crops, and it wasn’t until after California’s celebrated Gold Rush that any interest was paid to open spaces west of San Bruno Mountain.

      Those arriving in the later years of the 19th century joined a pioneer population of migrant and immigrant farmers and ranchers that had been spearheaded in 1853 by farmer Patrick Morgan Brooks and Robert Sheldon Thornton, a blacksmith. Thornton was a native of Rhode Island. Born in Ireland, Brooks was naturalized in Massachusetts.

      Both young men had spurred their steeds south from San Francisco after the United States government allowed purchase of land between San Bruno Mountain and Lake Merced. Brooks, then 28, settled at the base of San Bruno Mountain in a fertile valley that was to become incorporated as Colma (in 1924). Thornton, 31, settled on the sandy northwest coast of San Mateo County before acquiring additional property to the east. Both put down roots and saw their holdings and fortunes improve vastly.

      They were followed by other pioneers who brought skills and families to the area. Predominantly of Irish descent, these settlers established homes, businesses, farms, and ranches. Some had sought gold in the California diggings of 1849, without much, if any, success. They proceeded to cover the land with vegetable and potato patches, and San Francisco provided a ready market for their crops.

      Prosperity was enjoyed for almost a decade, until an agricultural blight daunted the Irish. They sold out to people of German heritage, who didn’t do much better. Their enemy was the natural air-conditioning of the area, better known as fog. The dampness became intolerable for many settlers, but not all. As the discouraged put their homes and land up for sale, families of Italian background tried their skills at developing properties. New seeds and heartier crops were introduced. They brought artichokes, cauliflowers, beets, carrots, sprouts, cabbages, and other produce to the landscape, as well as flowers such as dahlias, lilies, violets, strawflowers, mums, and marigolds. Plows pulled by sturdy horses were guided between tidy rows of field crops, and the area began to thrive again. The Italians were successful.

      In 1856, as the population increased, Thornton and Brooks established Jefferson school on land donated by pioneer Peter Dunks. The one-room building was the first of the Jefferson School District. The name of the district remains unchanged. Over the years, descendants of the pioneering Irish, German, and Italian families have continued to be highly involved with the area’s social, economic, political, and business communities.

      In 1859, a moment of national historical fame occurred near Thornton’s first business enterprise, close to the south end of Lake Merced. Two well-known politicians engaged in a pistol duel that some still consider the first shots fired in reference to the forthcoming 1861–1865 American Civil War. Participants were United States Senator David Broderick and former California Supreme Court Chief Justice David Terry. The incident followed a period of insults over the prospective role of California as a free or slave state. Broderick was mortally wounded in the duel, and he died three days later at what is now San Francisco’s Fort Mason. Adverse public reaction to his death kept California on the free side of the slavery issue. Broderick’s funeral was one of the largest ever seen in San Francisco. Terry slinked off to Sacramento and lived on, mired in unique shame.

      As Thornton was settling in the north county in 1853, a 13-year-old lad named John Donald Daly left Boston by ship with his mother, bent on crossing the Isthmus of Panama to find fortune in San Francisco. His mother died during the arduous journey. John continued alone. In 1856, the teenager found work on a Peninsula dairy farm, observed well the techniques of the business, married the boss’s daughter, and in 1868 acquired 250 acres at the Top of the Hill area. His San Mateo Dairy ranch barns were among the largest in northern San Mateo County, and prosperity was his. Later his holdings became part of the Borden Dairy Delivery Company. Daly’s prowess as a businessman, political mover and shaker, civic leader, and friend to his neighbors followed him all the days of his life.

      In the early 1860s, a railroad chugged past Daly’s Ranch. Stores, hotels, butcher shops, and other businesses blossomed in the area, as well as St. Anne’s Catholic Church (later Holy Angels), a new school, and a railway station. By the 1890s streetcars ran from San Francisco to the city of San Mateo, stopping at Daly’s Hill. Daly had moved his family into San Francisco in 1885 for better schooling, but maintained his local interests, developed a bank, and donated funds for the first local public library.

      John Daly subdivided his ranch property in 1907. Housing tracts emerged in the surrounding area. Cemeteries, now banned from San Francisco, opened in the neighboring Colma area. The movement toward incorporation as a city was underway, but many farmers feared city-style taxes and fought against the issue.

      Daly City became a city on March 18, 1911, just one month shy of the fifth anniversary of San Francisco’s disastrous 1906 earthquake and fire. As the ashes cooled in San Francisco, refugees flocked to the welcoming slopes of San Bruno Mountain, Daly’s Hill, and other outlying areas such as the Crocker, Vista Grande, Hillcrest, Mission, and the West End Homestead. Fortunes and homes had been lost in the rubble of the city, and many of those most affected by the catastrophe intrepidly moved their families and

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