Sausalito is a city in Marin County, California, United States, located 1.5 miles southeast of Marin City, 8 miles (13 km) south-southeast of San Rafael, and about 4 miles (6 km) north of San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge.
Alan Wilson Watts was an English writer, speaker, and self-styled "philosophical entertainer", known for interpreting and popularising Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience.
Mare Island is a peninsula in the United States in the city of Vallejo, California, about 23 miles (37 km) northeast of San Francisco. The Napa River forms its eastern side as it enters the Carquinez Strait juncture with the east side of San Pablo Bay. Mare Island is a peninsula, as no full body of water separates this or several other named "islands" from the mainland. Instead, a series of small sloughs cause seasonal water-flows among the so-called islands. Mare Island is the largest of these at about 3.5 miles (5.6 km) long and a mile wide.
The Oregon and California Railroad was formed from the Oregon Central Railroad when it was the first to operate a 20-mile (32 km) stretch south of Portland in 1869. This qualified the railroad for land grants in California, whereupon the name of the railroad soon changed to Oregon & California Rail Road Company. In 1887, the line was completed over Siskiyou Summit, and the Southern Pacific Railroad assumed control of the railroad, although it was not officially sold to Southern Pacific until January 3, 1927. This route was eventually spun off from the Southern Pacific as the Central Oregon and Pacific Railroad.
Eureka is a side-wheel paddle steamboat, built in 1890, which is now preserved at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California. Originally named Ukiah to commemorate the railway's recent extension into the City of Ukiah, the boat was built by the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad Company at their Tiburon yard. Eureka has been designated a National Historic Landmark and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 24, 1973.
The Berkeley Pier is in Berkeley, California. When constructed in 1926, the pier extended 3.5 miles (5.6 km) into San Francisco Bay from the end of University Avenue. Due to extensive filling of the bay and the creation of the Berkeley Marina, it presently extends only 2.5 miles (4.0 km). Since 1937, only the first 3,000 feet (910 m) were maintained and open to the public until July 2015, when public access was closed due to safety concerns.
The Steel Electric-class ferries are a class of auto/passenger ferries that became part of the Washington State Ferry System when Puget Sound Navigation Company was acquired in 1951. They were built in San Francisco Bay for service on Southern Pacific and Northwestern Pacific Railroad routes across the bay.
Elsa Gidlow was a British-born, Canadian-American poet, freelance journalist, philosopher and humanitarian. She is best known for writing On a Grey Thread (1923), the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry published in North America. In the 1950s, Gidlow helped found Druid Heights, a bohemian community in Marin County, California. She was the author of thirteen books and appeared as herself in the documentary film, Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977). Completed just before her death, her autobiography, Elsa, I Come with My Songs (1986), recounts her life story. It is the first complete-life, lesbian autobiography published where the author "outs" herself and does not employ a pseudonym.
San Francisco Bay in California has been served by ferries of all types for over 150 years. John Reed established a sailboat ferry service in 1826. Although the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge led to the decline in the importance of most ferries, some are still in use today for both commuters and tourists.
Blue & Gold Fleet is a privately owned company in the United States providing ferry services in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. It operates the San Francisco Bay Ferry commuter ferry system under contract with WETA. Blue & Gold also operates tourist and excursion services under its own brand from Pier 41 in San Francisco, with midday ferry service to Sausalito and a variety of tourist routes. The company is the Bay Area's largest ferry transportation provider and carries approximately 4 million passengers annually.
The Richmond–San Rafael Ferry Company was a ferry service between Castro Point in Richmond in Contra Costa County and San Quentin in Marin County, California across the San Pablo Bay. It ran from 1915 until the 1956 opening of the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge.
Jean "Yanko"Varda was a Turkish-born American artist, best known for his collage work. Varda was one of the early adopters of the Sausalito houseboat lifestyle that was popular in the 1960s–1970s. He was the subject of the short documentary, Uncle Yanco (1967), made by his cousin, Agnès Varda.
San Rafael was a steamboat that operated on San Francisco Bay from 1878 to 1901. The components of the vessel and a sistership were manufactured in Brooklyn then shipped to San Francisco where the ships were assembled. San Rafael remained in service, primarily as a ferry, until the vessel was sunk in a collision with a ferry on November 30, 1901. Although San Rafael sank rapidly, quick action by the crews limited the loss of life to five persons or fewer. Subsequent litigation established negligence on the part of both captains as the cause of the collision.
Druid Heights was a counterculture enclave in Marin County, California, U.S., The property was purchased in 1954 by poet Elsa Gidlow, and subsequently the land was split with carpenter Roger Somers and his wife Mary. In 1956, Elsa named her portion Druid Heights and today the entire site is called by this moniker although in practice the neighbors seldom used the name. In actuality, the community was not a monolith, but the neighborhood shared common values and responsibilities concomitant with the remote site's lack of services. It had no city water system, no sewers, and no city maintenance for the three mile dirt road that gave them access to their properties. The neighbors, including others along the road, had to pool money and resources to maintain these vital services and these challenges demanded they work together in harmony. The remoteness and uniqueness of the site attracted various countercultural movements and many figures of the San Francisco Renaissance.
The City of Seattle was a side-wheel driven steam-powered ferry built in 1888. This vessel was the first ferry to operate on Puget Sound. City of Seattle was also used in the San Francisco Bay area starting in 1913. The ferry was known as YFB54 when owned by the U.S. navy in World War II, and as Magdalena during naval service and for a time following the war. The upper works of the ferry have been mounted on a barge hull, and are now in use as a houseboat in Sausalito, California.
Issaquah was a steam ferry built in 1914 that operated on Lake Washington and in San Francisco Bay.
Ocean Wave was a steamboat that was operated from 1891 to 1897 on the Columbia River, from 1897 to 1899 on Puget Sound and from 1899 to 1911 as a ferry on San Francisco Bay. Ocean Wave is perhaps best known for transporting summer vacationers from Portland, Oregon to seaside resorts near Ilwaco, Washington during its service on the Columbia River. This vessel is also known for being the first ferry placed in service by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
Isabel Grenfell Quallo was a Congolese-born British-American domestic worker and community activist known for her involvement in the development of Druid Heights, in Marin County, California. Born in the Congo Free State, she was educated in England and then moved with her mother to Kingston, Jamaica. Marrying at 16, she immigrated with her husband to New York City in 1914. Struggling with racism and her husband's mental illness, she supported her children by working as a domestic and waitress. Through contacts in the theater district, she made the acquaintance of writer Elsa Gidlow, becoming her lover for ten years. In their last two years together, Elsa purchased 5 acres of land south of Muir Woods. She then split the property with builder and jazz musician Roger Somers, and his wife Mary, and, initially with Isabel's help, they fostered an atmosphere which would attract many of those involved in countercultural movements, active in the United States between 1950 and 1970.
Golden Gate Ferry Company was a private company which operated automobile ferries between San Francisco, Berkeley and Sausalito before the opening of the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. The company was incorporated in November 1920. In early 1929, the Golden Gate Ferry Company merged with the ferry system of the Southern Pacific railroad, becoming the Southern Pacific-Golden Gate Ferries, Ltd. The auto ferries were discontinued soon after the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges were opened.
The steamship General Frisbie was a wooden two-deck passenger ship built in 1900, named after John B. Frisbie. She was designed for use as a ferry between Vallejo and San Francisco. The steamer was successful in that role and was the fastest ship on the route when she began service. Improved roads, bridges, and automobiles reduced demand for ferry service in the Bay Area, and newer ships were optimized for transporting cars, so General Frisbie was retired in the late 1920s.
