Yesterday was an unusual day. I spent four hours on a boat trip up and down what was historically known as Petaluma Creek.*Talk about a Then & Now experience, it was great!
As we left the Turning Basin dock in front of the remodeled River House and cruised under the uplifted “D Street” bridge, I was aware of the now and some of the recent structural changes to our river town: a parking garage, an office building and many new apartment buildings. There were also other buildings with which I was familiar – the Golden Eagle Shopping Center, the Great Mill, and the Petaluma Yacht Club. It seemed like they had been there forever.
The oyster shell mounds at Jerico Products reminded me of Capt. Hans Beck, its founder. Then, there was the familiar Foundry Wharf where the annual Chamber of Commerce jazz concert is held. It is also the spot where the historic “Alma,” the only surviving scow schooners of yesteryear would dock. Other names from the “old” days were announced over the speaker system that caused me to identify with those earlier time and the people who helped develop Petaluma and Southern Sonoma County into the area it is today. For instance: McNear Canal that goes up to Steamer Landing at the foot of Copeland Street, Haystack Landing where the railroad built by Charles Minturn brought steamboat passengers into the 2nd and B Streets area. Oh look – there’s Shollenberger Park and the sewage treatment plant. They represent the “new,” our now.
Our journey continued downstream past the old Newtown site (now a Dog Park), two channel cutoffs that straighten the waterway and shorten the travel time to San Francisco. Then there was the historic Donahue’s Landing , a mere shadow of its early days. (See photo.) We pass “Marker 5,” which marks the site of the old echo board that bounced whistle or bell signals back to ships so they could navigate through the fog or dark safely.
In addition to the paddle-wheelers like the “Gold” and “Petaluma,” that carried passengers, there were the flat-bottomed scow schooners that transported hay and all sorts of other projects to and from The City. (Wood, coal, butter, eggs, poultry, hogs and cattle, machinery, buggies and wagons.) Wherever we looked, you couldn’t miss seeing the large variety of birds that inhabit this area: Gulls, White Pelicans, Willets, Herons, Egrets, Terns, Sandpipers, Scoters, Swans, and Mud-hens.
On the way back to Petaluma, all these images and thoughts were racing through my mind. Gazing out over this valley and this meandering slough, with its dikes and many twists and turns, you couldn’t help but realize what the term – floodplain – represents. All in all, it was a beautiful trip that bridged the old and the new – what was then and what is now. One also wonders if this waterway did not exist, would Petaluma have ever been founded? As we approach the 150th Anniversary of Petaluma, as a Chartered City; we realize that many, many changes have occurred, but what once served as our water-highway to San Francisco is still a twisty and meandering slough that is still a joy to travel along – today – in the 21st Century!
* In 1959, an Act of Congress changed the name of Petaluma “Creek” to “River.”