Stranger in a Strange Land: Solomon Nunes Carvalho in Los Angeles

Carvalho's self-portrait

Solomon Carvalho (1815-1897) holds a unique place in the history of the West. Carvalho was a Sephardic Jew of Portuguese descent from Philadelphia, an accomplished painter, and a daguerreotypist who documented the lives of Native Americans and Mormons as a member of explorer John C. Frémont’s 1853 survey team.

In June of 1854, Carvalho stumbled into Los Angeles, suffering from the effects of his grueling cross-country journey. Here he found solace and hospitality at the home of Manuel Domínguez and his family. During the several weeks he spent in the Southland, Carvalho met many of the Californio families; painted portraits of Manuel and Maria Engracia Domínguez, Pío Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, and others; conferred with the few Jewish citizens of the pueblo; did a little paleontology; and took in the sights. He assured his place in history by leaving behind a detailed journal of his travels at a time when the West was still pretty wild.[i]

Wonders to behold

In his journal, Carvalho demonstrates a keen interest in the geography and geology of the Los Angeles basin. While the Domínguez Rancho covered a wide swath of the Southland, Carvalho appears to have explored beyond the confines of the Rancho. For example, he extolls the virtues of the hot springs near “the mission of San Juan de Capestrano [sic]”:

“These hot springs … excel all others in the neighborhood (and there are many), in regard to their medicinal virtues, both from their chemical combinations and the results obtained by their healing qualities in all those diseases for which the chalybeates [iron salts] are reported to cure.”

The springs still flow hot in the Santa Ana Mountains, but are no longer open to the public.

Carvalho does not mention it, but it is possible he visited the hot springs for his own health. For much of his stay in California, he suffered a “brain fever.” The term might be appropriate to describe a brain inflammation, such as meningitis or encephalitis, but, more likely, in this case, it refers to a physical and nervous breakdown resulting from Carvalho’s long, arduous journey westward with Colonel Frémont. He credits the wife of Manuel Domínguez with nursing him back to health:

“I was prostrated at this gentleman’s house by a severe attack of brain fever, superinduced by exposure in travelling over the hot deserts of sand, between Salt Lake and San Bernardino. His good, kind-hearted wife, Donna [sic] Gracia, paid me all the attentions and devotion of a mother. For ten days I was delirious, during that time she hardly left my bedside. Doctor Brinkerhoff who resided with them, volunteered his medical advice. To their combined skills and care I owe my recovery.”

The Redondo Salt Works. Image courtesy of University of Southern California Libraries and the California Historical Society via Calisphere.

Among the geological wonders Carvalho witnessed was a salt lake – not exactly like the Great Salt Lake he had experienced during his sojourn among the Mormons of Utah, but salt nonetheless:

“On this rancho, towards San Pedro, is a salt lake, which was being worked by a company of gentlemen. The salt is of superior quality, and brings a good price in Los Angeles.”

The salt lake he describes is one that existed on the extreme western edge of the Rancho lands, in Redondo Beach. (Carvalho’s geography is somewhat suspect, since Redondo Beach is nowhere near San Pedro.) The site of the “Old Salt Lake” is now California State Historical Landmark No. 373. According to local historians, Manuel Domínguez sold 215 acres of his property to two merchants, Henry Allanson and William Johnson, for approximately $500 in December, 1854, the same year that Carvalho was a guest at the Rancho. No doubt he heard talk of the negotiations. The property contained a spring-fed natural salt lake about 25 acres in size. Allanson and Johnson established the Pacific Salt Works, which remained in operation until approximately 1881.

We must also suspect Carvalho’s sense of direction in describing tar pits:

“On this same place [as the salt lake], near the shores of the Pacific Ocean, there is a lake of bitumen or asphaltum, used almost altogether in Los Angeles, as a covering for the roofs of houses. In winter it does very well, but the dropping of hot pitch from the eaves of the houses in hot weather, is not agreeable ... Gentlemen’s clothing is frequently spoiled by this material.”

The La Brea Tar Pits, in Los Angeles’ Wilshire District, were a well-known land-mark long before Carvalho’s arrival and it is likely he would have been taken to see them as a tourist. Smaller seeps of tar no doubt existed at various places around the Southland, but it seems unlikely that Carvalho would have ignored La Brea in favor of something much less spectacular.

Finally, perhaps inspired by the La Brea Tar Pits and the fossilized animals found therein, Carvalho undertook to do a bit of bone-hunting himself:

“In making geological examinations on Dominguez’ land, I had the curiosity to dig into a mound of earth raised up several feet from the surface, and not fifty yards from the dwelling-house. I found several pieces of large size petrified bone, too colossal for horses or oxen. Procuring a pick-axe, I penetrated further, and was gratified in exhuming portions of a mastodon. I collected four perfect teeth; the largest weighed six pounds.”

In recent months, transportation projects in both Los Angeles and San Diego have encountered a trove of mammoth and mastodon bones. Carvalho would have loved it!

  

 Artist Charles Knight's illustration of a mastodon, 1897.

 

A version of this story appeared in The Museum Review, the newsletter of the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum.

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[i] Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West: With Col. Frémont's Last Expedition Across the Rocky Mountains: Including Three Months' Residence in Utah, and a Perilous Trip Across the Great American Desert to the Pacific. Published by Derby & Jackson, 1860.

 

 

Californio Justice: Judge Manuel Domínguez

1849 Map showing the Pueblo Los Angeles surrounding by farm and ranch lands.

Life in Los Angeles during the Californio era, and for some time thereafter, was pretty rough and tumble. Like every wild west town, the residents of Los Angeles struggled to maintain law and order. Culture clash was an ongoing problem, of course, as the Spanish padres, Mexican and African-blooded settlers, indigenous peoples, Americanos, and mixed-race families collided in Alta California.

Infighting among the Californios themselves, as they competed for land and resources, took up much of the attention of the alcaldes (mayors) and the ayuntamiento (council) during the first half of the 19th century.

Our man, Manuel Domínguez, inheritor of Rancho San Pedro, took an active role in the public life of the pueblo. He served four times in one-year terms as primero alcalde or segundo alcalde (something like an assistant mayor) beginning in 1832 when he was only 29 years of age. The sketchy records of the time make it difficult to ascertain the specific role played by any one individual. What is clear is that a select group of Dons shared the duties of governing the pueblo among them. Familiar names like Dominguez, Tapia, Carillo, Soto, Alvarado, Cota, and Sepúlveda appear regularly in various official capacities.

The Wisdom of Solomon

Early Los Angeles had a calaboose, a small jail house for rowdies and miscreants, but nothing like an adequate penal system. The nearest presidio was 100 miles away in Santa Barbara. As a result, justice was often dispensed summarily – generally by hanging for serious crimes or by more creative means for minor transgressions and civil cases.

In his various official capacities, Manuel Domínguez was called upon to act as judge in a number of cases. The Los Angeles Municipal Archives provide us with a record of one case where Dominguez did, indeed, have to employ the wisdom of Solomon. In July 1839, a case came before Segundo Alcalde Dominguez involving a piece of lumber taken from a beach. The English translation of the Spanish document reads:

“Morillo [is] suing Sepúlveda for taking a piece of lumber from the beach on the place called La Bolsa, and having commenced to work the same. The case was properly ventilated and after some arguments, a conclusion was arrived at that the piece of lumber in question belonged to both litigants and it was decided to divide the same and each receive a half with the only conditions that Sepulveda deliver the half belonging to Morillo at the door of the latter’s house in compensation for his having done the work of sawing the same.”

Some of the sense of this matter is a bit lost in translation, but we can guess that there may have been more than one piece of lumber at stake; perhaps a matter of boundaries or personal honor was in play. Unlike the baby at the heart of King Solomon’s famous decision, the pile of lumber that Morillo had created from a found log or logs was cut in half.

Domínguez may have had his own interests in mind in splitting his decision. While Justo Morillo was likely a commoner, if a landholder, who signed the decision with an “X,” José Sepúlveda was a prominent Don and one with whom Domínguez maintained an ongoing and litigious feud regarding the boundary between their respective ranchos. It might not do to add fuel to the fire by ruling against him.

There are other interesting things to note about the document. It makes reference to the “good men” who accompanied the litigants: Don Vicente la Osa and Don Ygnacio Coronel. Apparently, it was common for such hombres buenos to act as advisors to both the litigants and to the judge. Their signatures on the document attest to their approval of the decision.

It is also interesting to note that a form of due process was allowed to vecinos like Morillo, although he surely did not have the same standing as the Dons.

Nor was this the only case in which Alcalde Domínguez was forced to think on his feet. Apparently, horse-racing was a big source of both entertainment and litigation in those days. In one case unearthed from the Los Angeles County Archives by Robert Gillingham, author of The Rancho San Pedro, Domínguez settled a disputed horse race by ordering that the race be re-run within 21 days and that a member of the town council act as judge.

Report of Manuel Dominguez in an 1839 lawsuit. Courtesy of University of Southern California Digital Library via Calisphere. Page two of the original Spanish document in this case show the signatures of the principals. Domínguez and Sepúlveda each signed with a flourish. The two “good men” signed below a mark which appears to be “H.b,” for “Hombre bueno.” Señor Morillo could not write and so signed with a lopsided “X” which appears more like a “T.”

A version of this story appeared in The Museum Review, the newsletter of the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum.

Sources include:

Robert Cameron Gillingham, Ph.D., The Rancho San Pedro, 1961.

David Samuel Torres-Rouff, Before L.A.: Race, Space, and Municipal Power in Los Angeles, 1781-1894, 2013.

Witness to History: The Eagle Tree of Rancho San Pedro

 

The Eagle Tree in 1952. 

Courtesy of the Gerth Archives and Special Collection, CSU Dominguez Hills

“Beginning at a Sycamore tree….”

Thus begins the legal description of the borders of the Rancho San Pedro as proclaimed by President Buchanan in 1858. In fact, the tree served as a literal landmark throughout the long, convoluted, and contentious ownership history of the Rancho, beginning with a Spanish survey of 1817. It stood at roughly the Northeast corner of the land claimed by the Dominguez family. Some have noted that, without the continued existence of the tree, the family would have had a much harder time proving ownership of their lands as California went from Spanish to Mexican to American rule.

In early California, land surveys depended on immovable landmarks from which measurements could be taken in lengths of rope or chain. The 1857 survey map attached to the American land patent notes the tree as “Stake 1: Place of beginning.” Other landmarks along the rancho boundary line include “pile of stones,” “three rocks,” San Pedro pond,” “four rocks,” “rocks in water,” “old wagon road,” “Sepulveda’s dwelling and salt works,” and more than one “witness post,” markers placed at sharp turns in the boundary line where no other landmark could be found. It is easy to understand that most, if not all, of these “immovable” landmarks have long since disappeared from the landscape. The Eagle Tree, perhaps 300 years old or more, was likely the last. Even the Los Angeles River, the eastern boundary of the Rancho, was not a permanent fixture, moving as much as half a mile during floods.

The tree through the years

The sycamore probably sprouted early in the 18th century, if not earlier, well before the rancho era. Tall trees were rare in the area until the mid-19^th century and the tree must have stood out on the dusty plains. At some point after it had grown to a significant height it became known as the Eagle Tree due no doubt to the birds that perched in its branches. While the Eagle Tree outlived many landmarks, the metropolis grew up all around it. In recent decades it stood behind fencing between apartment buildings in a dusty right of way owned by Standard Oil Company, later Chevron, at East Poppy and North Short Avenues in Compton. A plaque recognizing the tree’s significance to the Rancho San Pedro was placed at the base of it in 1947 by the Native Daughters of the Golden West.

The 1857 survey that informed the American land grant notes that the tree measured 60 inches (five feet) in diameter; A century later historian Robert Gillingham reported the tree at six feet in diameter and 60 feet high.  A bit of high school math calculates the circumference at approximately nineteen feet.

On April 7 of this year the Eagle Tree collapsed into an adjacent parking lot. Without any perceived trigger for the event, we can assume it was rotten from the inside. It had likely been dead for some time. A few days later the carcass was lifted out by crane and taken to a nearby utility property for safekeeping. A number of citizens have advocated for a permanent home for the remnant trunk, but at this writing its fate is unknown.

The main trunk of the fallen Eagle Tree is moved to storage. Photo courtesy of Kim Cooper, Esotouric Tours. See more photos on their blog post: The Eagle Tree: Dead or Alive? 

What remains

While the Eagle Tree is gone, several small saplings remain, likely direct descendants of the mother tree. We can hope that one or more of these will be allowed to grow and thrive at the site while others, perhaps, may be transplanted to other locations. The much-defaced plaque remains, hidden behind the fencing.

A few years ago, artist Alvaro D. Marquez used bits of a fallen branch of the tree in an art installation titled “The Eagle Tree is a Witness” which he exhibited at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Others are now brainstorming ways to memorialize this witness to history.

Detail of 1859 land grant showing the northern border between Rancho San Antonio and Rancho San Pedro. The sycamore tree is indicated at the "Place of beginning."

A version of this story appeared in The Museum Review, Fall 2022, the newsletter of the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum.

How do you move a garden? Part three: The Interbay P-Patch

 

"You don't just inherit dirt here, you inherit the past, whoever was there planting things." -- Donna Kalka, gardener

Sandwiched between 15th Avenue NW and the railroad tracks, in the cleft between the Queen Anne and Magnolia hills, lies a sort-of no man's land. Part tide lands, part low-lying swale, the Interbay area has been used for everything from a dump to a parking lot, to railroad yards and light industry, to athletic fields and golf courses.

And a P-Patch.

The Interbay P-Patch was founded in 1974, just one year after the start of the city's P-Patch program. In point of fact, informal gardening may have been going on for some time on the little used acres prior to the official opening. Some 47 acres of property were (and are) managed by the Seattle Parks Department; the P-Patch, on one acre at the heart of the site, was surrounded by athletic fields and a golf course. Squeezed on all sides, it was just a matter of time before, like Sand Point and Eastlake, the patch would be forced to fight for its life. However, unlike those two gardens, Interbay had to move not once, but twice.

Lowlands

The Interbay area was named for its location between Smith Cove, an arm of Elliott Bay, and Salmon Bay, on the Ship Canal. From the P-Patch today one can see huge cruise ships on the horizon at the Smith Cove terminal to the south. Fisherman's Terminal at Salmon Bay lies to the north. Active railroad tracks define the western boundary, while busy 15th Avenue West provide the eastern edge.

Early in the 20th century, the Olmsted Brothers landscape firm, hired by the city to design a parks system, recommended that the tidal lands at Smith Cove be filled to create athletic fields for " big boys and young men." The reasoning ran that "The big boys are usually better able to afford car fare to outlying parts of the city where larger ballfields can be afforded and where there are relatively fewer small boys." (1908 Olmsted Report to City of Seattle Parks Commission). Girls did not factor into the report in the context of ball games. 

It would be many decades before anything like the Olmsted vision became a reality at Interbay. Before that happened, a portion of the land became a small dump for ten years (1916-26). Subsequently the city purchased private lands in the area with a view to establishing a small municipal airport. When that project failed to materialize, the land was devoted again to dumping -- this time on a larger scale.

The five-room Interbay School opened in 1903 at 16th NW and Barrett Street; it was de-activated in 1939 and torn down in 1948. Control of the land was turned over to the parks department.

Early in the 1960s, the open dump was converted to the increasingly popular sanitary landfill model in which garbage piles are covered with soil every day. 

In 1962 a portion of the landfill was leveled to be used on a short-term basis for overflow parking for the Century 21 World's Fair down the road. A bit later, the sanitary fill gave way to athletic fields and a 9-hole public golf course with driving range and mini-golf course. 

At one point, Interbay was proposed as the site of the Kingdome. A site adjacent to Seattle's Chinatown/International District was selected instead.

Garbage piles up at the Interbay Dump, September 22, 1944. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Image #40412.

 This map, labeled "Smith Cove Sanitary Fill Area to be reserved for future airport site," shows the proposed airport outlined in heavy black. It is dated October 15, 1946. No such facility was built. Instead the area was returned to dumping. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Image #1162.

Looking down at Interbay from the Gilman Avenue incline, 1960. The open garbage dump has been converted to a sanitary fill opening up possibilities for other uses. The streets and the fill appear to be awash with rain water. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Image #29357.

Interbay landfill site converted to use as a parking lot, 1962. 

In the mid-1970s parks engineer Don Sherwood created one of his famous diagrams of Seattle's parks for Interbay. It depicts the golf facilities on the south end of the fill lands and ball fields on the north. The original p-patch is sketched in at middle-right. (Sherwood Files) According to Don Sherwood's notes, and depicted above, the small golf course and driving range existed for a few years from 1966 on the southern half of the property. The miniature golf course shown at lower left stood approximately where the current p-patch is today.

Laying sod on the Interbay Playfield on the north end of what is now the Interbay Athletic Complex, 1967. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Image #29344.

The First Move

For several years the gardeners at Interbay were left to tend their crops in peace. Then, in the late 1970s rumors began flying that the city hoped to, once again, redevelop the public golf course at Interbay, one that promised to be a vast improvement over the derelict Interbay Golf Park. The available site was huge -- about 47 acres -- and the p-patch, in the middle of the expanse, took up just a bit more than one of these. Nonetheless, it seemed that the small garden was in the way. In 1981, gardeners won a City Council resolution guaranteeing them one acre of garden space. Unfortunately, the exact location for that space was not specified.

One of the original patchers complained in a letter to the Seattle Times:

"Me, now, I've been working the same plot at Interbay for six years. Started with a pile of rocks and clay. You oughta see the soil now, dark and rich and producing enough to feed me and all the neighbors. Seems a shame that next year folks are going to be stomping through this fine soil with their golf clubs. Didn't know they needed such grand soil for golfing." (Grace E. Carpenter, July 11, 1979.)

After several years of negotiation and protest, in 1992, the p-patch moved to the Northeast corner of the landfill site. Gardeners did most of the heavy lifting, ferrying their precious soil and plants over to the new site in wheelbarrows. Interbay Two (or New Interbay) lasted only four years before it was again threatened by the plans for the yet-to-be-built new golf course. Once again, the p-patchers manned the barricades!

The Second Move

Incensed by the threatened move so soon after the last one, gardeners took a proactive stance, orchestrating a campaign that included media outreach, circulation of a short documentary about the peril to the garden, and many, many phone calls to the city council. Long time gardener and site coordinator Ray Schutte remembers urging his fellow patchers to be relentless:

"I said we have to build our defense very slowly and timely. And I bored them to death by playing Bolero at top volume on my little boombox in the garden until they begged -- we get the message! Don't have to tell us anymore. So we basically, by the hundreds across the city, tied up the lines to the city council. I remember one council person told me afterwards, she says, 'You know, it was insane. That's all we did was answer the phone all day long cause there were hundreds of people calling."

Despite the effort, the final council vote regarding the p-patch, was 5 to 4 in favor of moving again. However, the group was able to leverage the publicity they had gotten into a highly favorable and formal agreement with the city, an agreement that included

• Being able to choose their own site
• Substantial funds to pay for the move
• Physical assistance for the move
• New soil to replace the clay cover
• Raised beds; and
• An irrigation system.

In many respects, the new garden site, in the sunny southeastern corner of the fill, was superior to the previous one. For one thing, it was not directly behind the driving range as once planned!

Down to the Soil

Much work remained to be done at the new site. The soil provided by the city was sterile, without the living organisms necessary to organic gardening. It was up to the gardeners to augment it with compost and liquid fish emulsions. A year later they rejoiced each time someone found a worm in their patch:

"They would pick it up hold it up into the air and shout WORM! And everybody would come over and look at it." (Ray Schutte)

With help from the parks department, the garden was able to recycle materials from other sites. Old paving stones from Alki Beach were used to make the main paths in the garden, along with granite pavers that could not be used at Westlake Plaza. A flag pole from the World's Fair flag pavilion was planted at the gathering space.  A greenhouse was donated by a neighbor selling his property. 

Many more improvements and artistic touches have been added to what is now, hopefully, the permanent home of this 132-plot p-patch, one of the jewels of the program. 

An enormous cruise ship at the Smith Cover terminal appears to be just a stone's throw from the garden. 2022.

An old acetylene tank, a gift from a local business, is repurposed into a "gathering bell," calling folks to communal meals. 2022.

Tall net fencing separates the garden from the golf course. Stray balls do come through often and are given to golfing gardeners to "recycle." 2022.

Thanks to Ray Schutte, Donna Kalka, and Jude Berman for their oral history interviews.

This post is a part of the Seattle Community Gardening History Project. 

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How do you move a garden? Part two: The Eastlake P-Patch

 

The Eastlake neighborhood of Seattle boasts a lovely community garden nearly hidden from view down a steep embankment. In the 1990s, gardeners pulled together to fight threats to their patch. In contrast to the Sand Point P-Patch, the Eastlake garden was located on public land controlled by the city. Unfortunately, this did not guarantee protection when developers came calling. Eastlake had no park such as Magnuson Park at Sand Point to which they could move the garden. In fact, the neighborhood with breathtaking views of Lake Union and the Olympic Mountains had very little green space at all. Faced with this situation, the community decided to combine their efforts and fight for both the garden and a new park.

The Shelby Street right-of-way in 1941. Eastlake Avenue is at top; Fairview Avenue at bottom. The lower portion of the hill is the site of the original p-patch. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Image #39970.

The top of the incline was used as a makeshift parking lot for businesses on Eastlake Avenue, including Covey Laundry. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Image #39961, 1941.

Rough Start

The story of Eastlake P-Patch dates to 1981 when a small group of neighbors, about 10 families, banded together to carve out a garden where the Shelby Street right-of-way met Fairview Avenue on the shore of Lake Union. Barbara Donnette remembers the ordeal of hacking out blackberry vines and weeds only to find piles of garbage underneath it all:

"We ultimately cleared the land, hauled away all of the debris that had collected there -- there were old car parts, old appliances deteriorating, carpeting -- you name it! And I spent quite a lot of time. We had a Volkswagen bus and at the time you could dump at the transfer station. I remember being really stuffed up in my nose after the trips with the carpeting and the mold. It was pretty awful. Anyway, we carved out 18 200-square foot plots."

The neighborhood now had a P-patch. Unfortunately, it was only a few years before real estate development put the squeeze on the garden. The demolition of a building on Eastlake Avenue was the first challenge when the city gave the owners permission to funnel trucks and dumpsters down through the right-of-way, directly through the patch. For a brief space of time gardeners coped with a reduced footprint. 

Then, early in the 1990s, construction of a new building on Eastlake Avenue threatened to take over the garden completely. The P-patch had run afoul of "interim use." However, this time the community revolted, organized, and demanded not only that the garden be preserved, but that the undeveloped green space directly north of the construction site be purchased by the city and made into a park. 

The Eastlake P-Patch in 2004 before the build-out of the upper portion. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives.

Moving things around

Thanks to the efforts of the Eastlake Community Council, the P-patchers, and a variety of other advocates, the dream of a combined park and p-patch became a reality in 1998. The group formed to honcho the effort, the Olmsted-Fairview Park Commission, honored the vision of the Olmsted Brothers landscape company which a century earlier had recommended small parks along Seattle's waterways, including Lake Union. City, county, and state funding was mobilized to allow the city to purchase land on both sides of the Shelby Street right-of-way from private owners. In 1995 the community celebrated the successful land acquisition with a blackberry festival.

The P-Patch was relocated to accommodate the design of the park. However, the move was not far -- a few feet to the south. As at Sand Point, the gardeners hoped to take their plants and the soil they had worked on to the new site. However, under cramped conditions and with heavy equipment in the way, it was difficult. The soil that was moved had to be augmented to become fertile again. Little was left of the old garden.

The Kroll map published in 2000 shows the Shelby Street right-of-way labeled "Not Open" and plats below it already named "Fairview Olmstead [sic]," the park to come. 

The Patch Rises

The Fairview Olmsted Park (now generally referred to as Fairview Park) was laid out during the winter of 1998-99. The design was created by Nakano/Dennis landscape architects (now Nakano Associates).

Since that time three fundraising efforts, each anchored by a Department of Neighborhoods Matching Fund grant, led to infrastructure improvements. Most significantly, grants obtained in 2009 allowed the garden to expand uphill. Today the garden holds 47 plots.

The garden shed was constructed with funds raised in 2000.

The Eastlake P-Patch in 2022 showing the lower and upper gardens.

Stairsteps connect Eastlake Avenue at the top of the incline down to Fairview Park (at right) and the Eastlake P-Patch (at left), 2022.

Whimsical art can be found throughout the garden.

In the (Cheshiahud) Loop

Today the Eastlake P-patch and Fairview Park are stops along the Cheshiahud Loop, a series of interconnected paths, alleys, and streets that encircle Lake Union. Small pocket parks can be found at several street ends along Fairview. The loop is named in honor of a Duwamish elder who lived in the area with his wife for many years.

The view from the Eastlake P-Patch and Fairview Park, 2022.

Thanks to Barbara Donnette for her oral history interview.

This post is a part of the Seattle Community Gardening History Project. 

🌿

 

How do you move a garden? Part one: The Sand Point P-Patch

Part I: Sand Point

In an earlier post, we described the loss of a P-Patch on 27th Avenue NE near Eckstein Middle School. Some of the gardeners from 27th Avenue were able to acquire plots at the Sand Point P-Patch approximately two miles east along Sand Point Way. This property, too, fell to development, in 2001, making way for a new facility for Seattle Children’s Hospital, the owner of the land. However, unlike some gardens mentioned here, the Sand Point P-Patch did not die, but was moved wholesale across the street to Magnuson Park.

Farming Tradition on the Sand Point Peninsula

From the early 1900s small farms could be found dotting the Sand Point Peninsula in the northeast sector of the greater Seattle area along Lake Washington. In the early 1910s, a group of Japanese farmers formed a collective community at the south end of the peninsula. This group included the parents of Gordon Hirabayashi, who was born at Sand Point in 1918. The Hirabayashis and others decided to move south to Auburn, but other Japanese families stayed on.





The circa 1925 photo above, courtesy of Densho, shows the Uyeji family on the porch of their home just off Sand Point Way. This property is approximately where the federal archives building now stands.



Photos in the Puget Sound Regional Archives property records document several Japanese homes that were confiscated and torn down early in World War II to make room for Naval housing in support of the Sand Point Naval Air Station. The families were, of course, removed to internment camps. This property was just north of NE 65th Street, where condos stand today.





The Kroll insurance map printed in the early 1940s shows the property that had been leased Japanese farms, the Orth and Gilbert 10-Acre Tracts. The northern section became the Sand Point P-Patch in the 1970s. The area pictured was not annexed by the city until 1942.

Revival of Farming

The Sand Point P-Patch took shape in 1977, early in the days of the city's P-Patch program. It was located on the site of old navy housing associated with the Sand Point Naval Air Station. (Some say it was quonset huts.) The structures had been pulled down, though remnants remained in the form of foundations and apple trees. Neighborhood children remember playing in and around the foundations of the old housing in the 60s. The abandoned railroad tracks immediately adjacent to the property were pulled up in the mid-70s and officially became the Burke Gilman Trail in 1978. Naval Station Seattle still occupied the peninsula to the east, across Sand Point Way, although flights from the base ceased in 1970.

At some point, the tract had been transferred to the U.S. Forest Service, a division of the Department of Agriculture. In 1982 the feds declared the land surplus. Various entities expressed an interest in it; when the dust cleared Children's Orthopedic Hospital (now simply Seattle Children's) emerged as the owner in 1984. However, it would be another 17 years before the hospital decided on a use for the land. During that time, the P-Patch continued to operate under an annual lease arrangement.

In 2001 the Sand Point P-Patch, which had occupied the site for nearly a quarter century, fell victim to the common theme of "temporary use." The hospital decided to move ahead with  development in 1998 and notified the gardeners that they would be ousted. Some in the p-patch community protested their eviction, asking for a small portion of the land to remain as a garden and even touting the therapeutic benefits of a garden for patients. 

When it became clear that the p-patch could not remain on the hospital grounds, the city offered gardeners the chance to create a new, larger patch across the street at Magnuson Park, the former navy base. Rather than simply giving up their hard-hoed plots and starting afresh, 33 of the 50 patchers decided to move their gardens bodily -- plants, soil, and all. What followed was a coordinated effort between the gardeners, the parks department, and the hospital to make this happen.

P-Patch Manager Rich Macdonald wrote to the team in charge of the development of the park:

"The Sand Point Naval Station is a logical site for relocation of the garden. Only at Sand Point is sufficient space and sunlight available to permit the P-Patch gardeners to design and build a beautiful new garden with their usual public amenities. community gardens have bee proposed previously for Sant Pint, although with the [imminent] loss of the present P-Patch, the need is greater than in the past." (Rich Macdonald to Sand Point Operations, City of Seattle, June 19, 1998, Seattle Municipal Archives)

Diagram of the Sand Point P-Patch in 1986. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives.

Choosing the Site

Magnuson Park is huge and, in 2000, was much less developed than it is today. Three p-patchers who happened to be employees of NOAA next door to the park undertook the task of selecting a suitable site for the new garden. They found it on a sunny hillside that had likely been constructed from the rubble of old runways that had run directly below it. They tested the soil to make sure it was healthy. 

Marty DeLong was the volunteer coordinator for the move. She describes how the new garden became much more than a simple P-Patch:

"The old place was a "P-patch." This had to be a "community garden" because it was inside the park. And that's why we have the children's garden. We have native plants, we have the native plant nursery. We have the orchard. Those things were kind of insisted upon."

Moving a Garden

So how does one move a garden? It may not be as simple as staking out a new patch and starting over. Dedicated gardeners will want to move their plants, artwork, trees and shrubs that define the garden, and, perhaps most importantly, the soil. Gardeners interviewed for this project stressed the importance of retaining soil that they had built up over years with judicious application of compost and soil amendments. 

"So in the fall of 2001 -- the hospital was wonderful. They sent their grounds crew over with big flatbed trucks because we dug up all of our plants that we wanted to take over. And then we thought we could dig up some of the little trees and we couldn't! So they went back to the hospital and got their big -- whatever they're called -- and dug them up. We took the cherry tree that was there because someone had died in the garden and it was the memorial cherry tree. We took a lilac, we took a pear, we took a fig, and then just lots of perennials that we had here and there." (Marty DeLong)

A bit of negotiation with the hospital regarding the soil turned out to be a win-win situation.

"They had to remove soil to level [the ground], The contractor was going to have to take the soil up to Everett to dump it. We had worked on that soil for years. We made a deal. They could haul it across the street and save them 60 miles round trip. And we get the soil that we had been enriching over all these years.

So they were wonderful. And we meanwhile had been busily digging up our own personal gardens. And then we took everything over, and there's kind of a little swale beside the garden that's now part of the native plant nursery, but nobody was there then. And we put all our plants there and covered them with straw because it was the fall." (Marty DeLong)

Kathy Dugaw was also involved in the move and in setting up the new garden at Magnuson. The timing of the move -- right after the events of 9/11 -- is something that sticks in her mind:

"Right after 9/11. Yeah. Easy to remember. Oh, and it was, it was so strange walking over there. I mean, 'cause it was deadly quiet because usually we're in a traffic pattern for the planes and there were no airplanes or anything like that. It was weird." (Kathy Dugaw)

Today the Magnuson Community Garden is a showpiece consisting of seven different components: an orchard, a native plant border, a native plant nursery, a tranquil garden, an amphitheater, a children's garden, and the p-patch which now has plots for 140 gardeners. Much more can and will be said about the diversity of talent and volunteerism that went toward creating this special place.

Magnuson P-Patch, summer 2022.

Seattle Children's 70th and Sand Point Administrative Building stands roughly where the Sand Point P-Patch was located. The main hospital campus is approximately two miles to the south.

Nothing remains of the old p-patch; however, a bench and plaque on the Burke Gilman Trail immediately adjacent to the old garden at the corner of NE 70th commemorates one of the stalwart gardeners. Maxine Wolfheim suffered a fatal heart attack while gardening.

Thanks to Marty DeLong, Kathy Dugaw, and Mark Huston for oral history interviews.

This post is a part of the Seattle Community Gardening History Project. 

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Seattle's Victory Gardens

Victory Garden at Seattle Children's Home, 1944. Courtesy MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Photograph Collection, 1986.5.7817.3, photo by Ed Watton.

From victory gardens to p-patches, Seattle has a long history of community gardening. A straight line links the victory gardens of old with the p-patches, community gardens, and pandemic gardens of today. In particular the idea of vacant land as an untapped resource continues, although such unused plots are harder to find today than they once were.

During World War II a cooperative “Victory Garden” was developed in the heart of Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood, not far from today’s Ravenna Community Center. According to a piece in The Seattle Times, the garden was “serving seven families for a cost of only $3.58 each.” What that amount represented or how it was calculated is not stated.

Victory Gardens abounded around the Seattle area, as they did throughout the nation at war. Framed as a way of easing the strain on the country’s agricultural resources while ameliorating the privations of war on family households, gardening was equally a way of channeling patriotism – something that could be done on the home front.

Most gardens were small scale, home-based efforts which served to supplement household provisions during a time of food rationing. Such was the garden of the Gibbon family in the Pritchard Island neighborhood of Southeast Seattle. However, Americans were also urged to make use of vacant lots, a project that would no doubt take several families working in cooperation, such as that at Ravenna.

Rosetta Gibbon and son Gary tend their victory garden on the shores of Lake Washington, c. 1943. Photo courtesy of Rainier Valley Historical Society.


Victory gardens cropped up on corner lots, in schoolyards, at public housing projects, and on army bases. Some corporations sponsored gardens next to their plants. Japanese Americans planted victory gardens in the camps where they were incarcerated during the war, while their farms and greenhouses back home in the exclusion zone were turned over to others to raise essential vegetables for the war effort.

An ambitious suggestion for a victory garden plan, courtesy of the state of Illinois.

In 1943 Orrin Hale, chair of the Seattle Civilian War Commission’s Victory Garden Committee called for registering vacant parcels throughout the city:

“There is a great deal of vacant property in Seattle that could be made available for victory gardens to people living in apartments, or homes built on small lots. We are appealing to owners of this property to turn their lots over for cultivation this year.”

The World War II Victory Garden was not a new idea. Similar efforts were made during The Great War although on a smaller scale. The terms “war garden” and “liberty garden” were used often at that time.

Women's Work

While all able-bodied civilians were encouraged to support the war effort, the target demographic for war garden work was women, particularly housewives and mothers who were less likely to become Rosie the Riveters. Government agencies, the media, and businesses all found a new appreciation for women as part of the war effort and as consumers. Seattle was no exception

“Women are being urged locally to interest themselves generally in the movement for more and better gardens. While gardening under normal conditions is essentially a man’s job, and every man with the right spirit and with facilities for gardening will roll up his sleeves and get busy, much depends on the women of this city and of the nation to make the greatest success of the movement for war gardens.” (SDT March 17, 1918)

The tone changed little two decades later. Newspaper advertisements featured attractive slacks-clad women planting and hoeing under headlines such as “Every Practical Housekeeper is planting a 1943 Victory Garden.”

Nurseries and “seed dealers” were quick to jump on the bandwagon, offering to “instruct housewives in growing vegetables in home gardens” and coming up with creative packages of seeds, tools, and instruction booklets for the patriotic gardener. And, of course, fashion could not be neglected. A 1943 “article” advertised Frederick & Nelson’s “At Home Week” (“A Thrilling Event Keyed to Victory”). The article features a photo of a smiling young woman wielding a trowel in Frederick & Nelson’s miniature victory garden (third floor.) “Wearing nail-head studded denim jeans, gay plaid shirt and sturdy Mexican huaraches, Mrs. Philip Bronson ‘digs in for victory’.

Seattle Daily Times, March 19, 1943.

Interest in home-grown produce waned after the war as women returned to traditional gender roles and food shortages decreased. However, by the 1960s a back-to-the-earth movement brought a resurgence of community gardening and laid the groundwork for the start of Seattle's P-Patch Program in 1973.

This post is a part of the Seattle Community Gardening History Project. 

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