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Reviewed on this Coast Road site last year, Louise Nelson Dyble received the Albel Wolman Award for best new book published in the field of public works history!
Books must cover one or more of the following topics: Flood Control & Drainage, Irrigation, Waterways, Solid Waste, Planning, Engineering & Administration; Public Buildings; Sewer & Wastewater Treatment; Roads, Streets & Highways; Urban Mass Transportation; Community Water Supply; Military Installations; Airways & Airports; Parks & Recreation; and Energy.
Congratulations Louise!
Well, I live on a ridgetop
And, Lord knows, I like it just fine
Where it’s windy and foggy
And quiet most all the time
Yeah, my lawn is pine needles
And my driveway is old funky dirt
And my front pathway markers
Are pieces of granite and chert
Now, my taxes are high
But I don’t believe it’s a sin
I’ve got hundred foot pine trees
That just love to dance in the wind
And a yard full of bushes
That turn into pies in July
Between blue jays and hoot owls
I’ve got twenty-four hour singing sky
Now, when I built my house
I cut six trees to clear out the land
But there’s thirty or more left
And you know that they’re gonna stand
It’s a squirrel sanctuary
They think this woods is their home
And as long as I’m here
I’ll make sure people leave us all alone
Yes, the hill that I live on is steep
And the road’s full of ruts
And the people who live in the flatlands
Think we folks are nuts
But the ruts in my road and the curves
Keep the tourists at bay
And it’s lonesome and peaceful
And you know I like it that way
Now, I work in the city
I think my job is a gas
And I know it’s good for me
To travel and get off my ass
The very best parts of each trip
Is the Golden Gate Bridge
And the road like a snake
That will lead me back home to my ridge
Ah, I live on a ridgetop
Yes, I live on a ridgetop
And I like it
And I like it . . .
I like this high life
Jesse’s website.
Matthew walked bow-legged with quick, northbound jerky strides up the hill above Pescadero State Beach. His blue nose female kept up alongside, but her grey head hung lowered, shoulders hustling, tongue panting. Matthew’s back, young and strong, held his yellow backpack upright. It’s top peeked high above Matthew’s head. It’s bottom strapped snug around Matthew’s hips. The dog’s leash dragged on the ground, handless.
“I saw that guy south of Davenport on my way to Santa Cruz on Thursday!” said the passenger in the car driving southbound on the coast road. ”On the way back home, he had reached Swanton.”
The driver regarded Matthew as the car sped past. The speedometer needle poked 60. Only a couple state beaches and a eucalyptus grove altered the contours of the coast hills. “If we see him on the return trip, we’ll pick him up.”
After dinner and drinks at Duarte’s the two hopped back in the car and headed north. On the hill north of Pomponio creek, Matthew and the dog climbed. No arm outstretched with a thumb up asking for a ride. Matthew didn’t turn to even look at the oncoming car.
The car slowed over to the shoulder ahead of Matthew and his tired dog.
The passenger looked surprised at the driver, “I can’t believe you’re actually doing this! Maybe this guy won’t even want a ride?”
“Doubt it,” replied the driver, looking in the rear view mirror. ”He’s running towards us.”
“You’re going to let the dog in here too?” asked the passenger.
“I let our dogs in here. And one of ours is a Pit. Why not?”
Slightly winded, Matthew reached the car by traversing the drainage gully along the road’s edge. The passenger stepped out of the car, onto the paved shoulder, opened the back seat door and introduced himself to Matthew. The driver waited behind the wheel, brake applied, engine running. Matthew unclipped the waist strap and slung off his backpack, tossing it to the side of the backseat. The dog jumped in, tail a little tucked, sniffing the carpet of the car.
Through his bushy black beard and his white evenly-spaced teeth, Matthew broadly smiled and said, “Thank you so much for stopping!”
Louise Nelson Dyble‘s recently published Paying The Toll – Local Power, Regional Politics, and the Golden Gate Bridge is a rich compendium of Golden Gate Bridge history.
So rich in the amount of information, that I’ve held off mentioning this book as a blog post because I figured all of you have been on summer vacation and are too busy reading your sci-fi and romance novels. Now that it’s Back-to-School time of year, it’s time to return to serious reading. Make room for this one in your book queue.
Published by the University of Pennsylvania press, “…this is the story of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District, the government agency that grew into an empire in the shadow of the bridge.”
Louise writes in her introduction, “Agency Run Amok,” “Many San Francisco Bay Area residents expected that bridge tolls would finally be eliminated and the bridge incorporated into the state highway system, as campaign publicity promoting the bonds suggested in 1930.”
Today’s toll to cross southbound on the Golden Gate Bridge is $6 cash and $5 FasTrak. For comparison, the Bay Bridge toll is currently $4, whether that be cash or FasTrak. (The Bay Bridge carries 270,000 vehicles a day, on average, while the Golden Gate Bridge reports 110,000.)
May 27th is the Anniversary Date for our beloved Golden Gate Bridge. May 28th, 1937 was the first day for automobile traffic to drive across. Never, well, perhaps the Brooklyn Bridge, has a bridge so captured the hearts of a population. The Bridge is often a photography model, imprinted on endless amounts of tourist products, and it provides a launching pad into the next life.
The Golden Gate rivermouth span is the inspiration for San Francisco State University’s mascot, The Golden Gaters. Later changed to, The Gators, as in, alligators. (Note: There are no alligators in northern California.)
All text following has been copied off other, noted, sites:
from Wikipedia:
The bridge-opening celebration began on 27 May 1937 and lasted for one week. The day before vehicle traffic was allowed, 200,000 people crossed by foot and roller skate. On opening day, Mayor Angelo Rossi and other officials rode the ferry to Marin, then crossed the bridge in a motorcade past three ceremonial “barriers,” the last a blockade of beauty queens who required Joseph Strauss to present the bridge to the Highway District before allowing him to pass. An official song, “There’s a Silver Moon on the Golden Gate,” was chosen to commemorate the event. Strauss wrote a poem that is now on the Golden Gate Bridge entitled “The Mighty Task is Done.” The next day, President Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington, DC signaling the official start of vehicle traffic over the Bridge at noon. When the celebration got out of hand, the SFPD had a small riot in the uptown Polk Gulch area. Weeks of civil and cultural activities called “the Fiesta” followed. A statue of Strauss was moved in 1955 to a site near the bridge.
from GoldenGateBridge.org
WHY THE NAME GOLDEN GATE?
The Golden Gate Strait is the entrance to the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. The strait is approximately three-miles long by one-mile wide with currents ranging from 4.5 to 7.5 knots. It is generally accepted that the strait was named “Chrysopylae”, or Golden Gate, by John C. Fremont, Captain, topographical Engineers of the U.S. Army circa 1846. It reminded him of a harbor in Instanbul named Chrysoceras or Golden Horn.
from History of San Francisco State University:
1931 – Men’s sports, particularly football, become more popular at SF State. After SF State’s student newspaper, the “Bay Leaf,” calls for the school to adopt a mascot, a reader proposes the alligator — because “it is strong and we hope our teams have strength. It is well-built and is steadfast, steadily moving toward its goal.” The reader also proposes spelling the Golden Gaters with an “e” to typify our San Franciscan location to strangers. Students vote to adopt it. That August, however, the Bay Leaf begins inconsistently misspelling the name as “‘Gator,” and after the paper eventually changes its own name to the “Golden Gater,” the name and spelling sticks.
Not often one sees a horseman riding on Highway 1.
Not often, as in, Never.
Almost 100 years ago, J. Smeaton Chase, an Englishman who lived out the second half of his life in California, started from San Gabriel Valley, then rode south to San Diego, to then ride north to Mendocino.
Published in 1913, Chase’s California Coastal Trails
gives the modern reader a view into California’s sparsely populated coastal past.
But now we have Matthew and Hampton, our current equivalent of Chase and Chino (later, Anton, when he traded a tired Chino in Jolon). Matthew and Hampton are traveling the California Coast Trail, aka State Route 1, but their mission is not a horseback tour to see the sights. Matthew and Hampton are riding the coast to raise awareness for the Akha people in northern Thailand who are being displaced by Thailand’s Queen and mistreated by the police. Matthew first learned about the Akha in the early 90s when traveling Thailand. He was disgusted by the treatment of the Akha by their fellow countrymen, the policemen, who take ownership of Akha lands in the name of the Queen of Thailand.
