May 6, 1894
There is nothing like the Sunday morning paper, fresh coffee, breakfast and a few quiet minutes to read without having to rush to work. (Condolences to those of you who work weekends, I work my share of them.)
The editor and proprietor Benjamin Brooks knew the value of a Sunday paper in 1894. You could get home delivery for fifteen cents a week or pick it up at the office on Chorro Street (between Higuera and Marsh) over the Chicago Brewery.
If you were offended by the brewery ad, with natural ice, you could take comfort in the Church Notices, which included listings for at least three in the same locations today. The Mission, St. Stephens and Presbyterian Church.
Somewhere along the way the Tribune stopped publishing on Sundays, perhaps about the time they combined with the Telegram. There was no Sunday paper in San Luis Obispo County for decades until Knight-Ridder bought the paper from Scripps. August 1999 marked the rebirth of the Sunday paper and the first 7-day-a-week publication in over 100 years.
Even in 1894 fashion news was hot and New York was the source. Included with a drawing of a woman wearing what must be a painfully tight corset was an article with the urgent headline:

NEW YORK FASHIONS
The Correct Thing to Wear and How to Wear It.
BEWARE OF SHAMS
Good times are coming, but after all that only means for a good many of us that we shall be able to pay up debts and “get square” and, pray, where comes in the summer wardrobe meantime, to say nothing of the gowns we used right off this minute! It means more planning, more work and more cheeriness but it all can be done. Remember, nothing will keep up father’s courage, or big John’s, as will seeing you look pretty and fresh for the new season. Besides that, it is good for his credit. As long as a man’s wife keeps tidy and dressy it gives an air of prosperity to his affairs.

The fashion was hot, as in unbearable and this was billed as summer wear.

In other news there were advertisements for several hotels, terms ranged from $1 to $2.50 a day. If you are in the market, the Barney Cole ranch is for sale, over 1,600 acres between Port Harford and the town of Morro. “It is fenced all around, except for the ocean frontage.”

The superintendent of the narrow gauge Pacific Coast Railway  was whining that the Southern Pacific would not change their timetable to suit his. Want to guess who won that battle?

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 If you didn’t buy a pair in 1894 then you missed it. The best $3 shoe in the world was a regular advertiser in the Tribune at the turn of the last century. W. L. Douglas of Brockton, Mass. told shoe shoppers to beware of knockoffs, save thousands of dollars annually and buy the genuine article.

Patent medicines were another major advertiser of the day. They had not discovered spamming yet. Heck, the tinned meat would not be patented for more than 30 years.  The Syrup of Figs ad from 1900, claims to be just the cure when you are feeling bilious or costive. Once again look for the genuine item to get its beneficial effects.

The last ad from 1905 is aimed at me. My hair IS scraggly. Especially when I have been driving with the windows rolled down. Ayer’s Hair Vigor was the Grecian Formula/Rogaine of its day. The tag line appeals to vanity and is a harbinger of the advertising industry’s appeal to youth culture.
“Have a little pride. Keep young just as long as you can.”

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One of the places I would turn back time to see would be the Ramona Hotel.
Four stories tall, the building covered the block between Higuera and Marsh Streets and fronted Essex St. (Now Johnson Ave.) The Hotel had its own railroad spur, a saloon, ballroom and several drawing rooms.
The Hotel opened October 3, 1888 with a grand ball, men wearing swallow tail coats and diamond studs, women in silk and lace. The party wouldn’t last, just over 17 years later the hotel would lie in ashes around a lone chimney.
The Ramona rose in the aftermath of an 1886 fire that devastated downtown. Destroyed were the Andrews Hotel, Bank of San Luis Obispo, the main livery stable and a number of smaller shops. The opening was reported, amid a sea of ads for other hotels, on the lead spot for local news at the time, page 3 of The Tribune. A sign of the importance of the event was the engraving that ran with the article. In this era images with news stories were rare.
Investors included the Southern Pacific Railroad who had high hopes of attracting customers to the sparsely populated west coast. Ironically when the railroad conquered Cuesta Grade in 1894 there was less reason for people to stay here on their travels. Combined with a financial panic and depression the hotel closed the day after Christmas 1894 and did not reopen for 6 months.

Quoting a story by Maggy Stephenson in the Telegram-Tribune May 10, 1947 ,

The Ramona reflected both the architectural indecision of the time, and the veranda-society of pioneer California tourists.
Basically a huge but rather unpretentious clapboard building, eclectic touches were spread on its surface like meringue on a pie.
The steep roof of the Swiss chalet; stringcourses from Italy’s renaissance; half-timber from medieval Nurnberg; chimneys from Tudor England; and little turrets, French or faintly onion-shaped from the Czar’s Russia.

A room cost $2.50 a day and up and included meals. My favorite part, Stephensen said a photograph of the common rooms show entertainment was provided via pianos, banjos, mandolins and guitars.

The dining room was 60 by 80 feet with a 24-foot ceiling and a stuffed mountain lion guarded the lobby. Long before the Madonna Inn, cupids adorned the walls of the Ramona. President William McKinley spoke from the balcony during a whistle stop tour of the west coast.

The era ended November 10, 1905 when an 2 a.m. kitchen fire spread. The night clerk ran from room to room rousing the 250 guests. The building was so far from town that no others were destroyed though several were threatened. By this time custom was to report the big news of the day on the front page. Remarkably the morning paper had a brief the morning of the fire on the front with more details to follow the next day. The Morning Tribune concluded with two boosterish sentences.

There is a golden opportunity for some person, or persons to build at once a big hotel in the business section of the city. San Luis Obispo is growing rapidly and such a hotel would pay well.

Taken on the steps of the Ramona Hotel, Nov. 24, 1896. Swiss envoy minister J. B. Pioda visits San Luis Obispo. Front row from left, starting from the young man in gray suit holding hat, Arthur Baur, A. Tognazzini (standing on second step), J. B. Pioda, A Borel (light trousers), G. A. Berton and Henry Brunner. Second row, starting with the two small boys at left, Louis and Arnold Donati, Pio Taminelli (next to boy in dark suit:, Mr. Antognini, publisher of Swiss newspaper, “El-vezia,” and standing with arms akimbo, Sam Donati (light suit); three unidentified men, one of which has light gray suit and white beard; A. Vignier (bearded with sideburns), A. Monotti and George Cavalli. Third row, starting with man with flag, M. Righetti, Mrs. B. Pezzoni, two unidentified men, one slightly behind the other, B. G. Tognazzini, undentified man standing slightly back and looking of to his left, Peter Tognazzini, G. Fanciola, Dante Muscio, J. B. Bonetti, standing with thumb tucked in pants pocket and loking off to his right, Peter Zanoli, Robert Righetti and a Mr. Palmer. The picture was printed in the Centurama edition of the Telegram-Tribune in 1956. The picture was loaned to the paper by Sam Borradori, who also made the identifications after considerable research.

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This has to be on any top ten list of big things to hit San Luis Obispo County.
The Tribune was almost 25 years old by the time Southern Pacific opened service by pulling into town May 5, 1895.
I can’t say it was a shining moment in The Tribune’s career.

Back then the custom was to load the front page with advertising and national news. Page 2, more advertising, church notices, fashion news from New York and a whiny article about the Pacific Coast Railway having trouble synchronizing their schedule with Southern Pacific. The narrow gauge railway connected San Luis Obispo and the South County with Port Harford.

If you wanted to read about the biggest news of the era you had to turn to page 3.

Bet you can’t read the story’s second sentence aloud without taking a breath.

Under a tiny headline,

THE GREAT JUBILEE
Grandly Successful—Three Thousand Visitors Come to Make Merry With Us.

In the history of San Luis Obispo when its next chapter shall be written, the page which will sand out in letters of gold will be that devoted to the Fifth of May, 1894. It is the culmination of efforts in which most of its citizens, past and present, shared with all ernestness and the only shadow on the occasion of yesterday’s rejoicing was that so many who had toiled through the wilderness for lo, these forty years, could not even, like Moses of old, look over into the promised land before their departure for a bourne where, as we are credibly informed, railroads will be a slow and inadequate means of transportation.
…
It was the biggest crowd ever gathered in our little town and it was a multitude that required very little amusing.

The lower part of San Luis Obispo turned into a ghost town, bunting flapping in the breeze, as 5,000 people walked up to the Ramona Hotel and party at the tracks. (Today that would be less than half of a Cal Poly v. UCSB soccer crowd.) The day was celebrated with a band, barbecue and canon fire as the train pulled in. The evening finished with fireworks and a grand ball.

After speeches the steam engine chuffed south, loaded with businessmen and Southern Pacific executives but it would be years before the line was completed to the small dusty towns of Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.

Beside the railroad story was another front page, uh, page three story. A home that had been built by historian Myron Angel burned down at the corner of Garden and Buchon Streets. The sleepy renter was responding to a crying infant and tripped with a kerosene lamp setting the bed ablaze. She was able to get her baby out but the fire department, called away from the railroad party at the Ramona Hotel, could do little. The nearest hydrant was four blocks away and had no water.

I am a little baffled about the story placement. I confess I have never had to hand set type for a page. It is obvious that selling from news racks was not the top design priority for the front page.

So here’s my top ten list of monster trends to hit the area, in no particular order.

1. Missions founded – The central coast is on the European map, literally
2. Oil boom – Unocal, Chevron, et al and their predecessors bring international industry here
3. Trains – The iron horse flattens the earth, brings the first tourists
4. Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant – Any time you pour a few billion dollars into a county things change.
5. Cal Poly established – No longer an uneducated cow county
6. World War II – Thousands of trainees introduced to Central Coast, many settle or retire here after the war.
7. Freeways built – Guadalupe got the railroad, Santa Maria got the freeway. Which town’s bigger?
8. Internet - You’re using it now aren’t you? I rest my case
9. Hearst Castle – One of the world’s most opulent homes becomes major tourist attraction

O.K. so I’m out of ideas. Tell me what’s on your top 10 list & if you feel like it put it in order.

I have to tune up the time machine and head back to buy one of those $75 lots for sale next to the railroad tracks.

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Construction scene from the building of tunnel No. 1 on Cuesta Grade circa 1890. The picture is from a booklet that the Tribune published at the time of the railroad opening.

Geography and technology can shape a community.

Cuesta Pass was a major obstacle to travel. Before it was tamed by the railroad and later the freeway the easiest way to move big items was by ship.

Today communities like Port Harford or San Simeon are footnotes in the area’s transportation evolution.

Are you using a whale oil fired computer? I didn’t think so.

Ah Louis helped provide the labor for the costly multi tunnel construction project. A vibrant Chinatown in San Luis Obispo was one result of the construction.

Towns like Guadalupe thrived with the railroad, others like Santa Maria would have to wait for the freeway to fuel their economic ambitions.

Quoting from historian Dan Krieger’s Tribune column Sunday, October 10, 2004:

San Luis Obispo was on the main line. On May 5, 1894, daily train service was established between San Francisco and San Luis Obispo.

Since the 1850s, communications with “the city” had been chiefly by steamer from Port San Luis. With luck, passengers and goods on board from San Francisco arrived 15 to 20 hours later at what is now Port San Luis. It took between two and 12 hours, depending on the time and the day, for the Pacific Coast Railway to transport goods from the Harford Wharf into our county seat.

An information revolution began. Local bankers, lawyers and wealthy investors had grown accustomed to reading the San Francisco newspapers as much as a week after they were printed.

Now the papers arrived on the day of publication.

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