STICKING LABELS ON TOWNS. - A Queer Mixture of Languages in Alameda County Names. - SPANISH, INDIAN, ENGLISH AND IMPROPRIETY. - The San Francisco Examiner Sun, Jun 19, 1892 ·Page 10
STICKING LABELS ON TOWNS.
A Queer Mixture of Languages in Alameda County Names.
SPANISH, INDIAN, ENGLISH AND IMPROPRIETY.
Combining in One Name a Row of Poplars and a Grove of Live Oaks - Robbing Old Associations of the Soft Spanish Titles That Belong to Them - Railroad and Postal Sponsors.
Contra Costa was the original name of a little settlement on the bank of the estuary of San Antonio, a cluster of houses on the grant to Don Luis Maria Peralta, the most magnificent estate ever owned by one man in California.
The difference between Contra Costa and Oakland, between San Antonio and Brooklyn, is the difference between the Spanish and the American style of nomenclature. Contra Costa became Oakland by a little Act of the Legislature, passed way back in 1852, when Benicia was the State capital, just two years after California became a part of the Union of American States. Had the people of the settlement had the opportunity of selecting a name they never would have chosen Oakland. Contra Costa was euphonious; it was suggestive of the situation of the town; it was reminiscent of the old Spanish settlers; it was indicative of the prominence of the place in the big county of Contra Costa. If the original name had been maintained Alameda county of the present might have been Contra Costa county, and at the division Martinez, or San Pablo, or Alvarado, or Pacheco, might have been the name given to the northern section. But Oakland suited the man who officiated at the christening, and his influence was all-powerful with the Legislature, hence Oakland became the name, and the people who live within the jurisdiction covered by that name have grown accustomed to it and seem not to regard with envy people who may head their letters with soft Hispanian names, such as Sacramento, Los Angeles, Los Gatos, San Francisco, San Rafael, Merced or Rio Vista. In fact, some people, lost to the sense of intrinsic charm of words, seem proud of the very name of Oakland
THE GENERAL'S NAME MISSPELLED.
Notwithstanding the bad example in designating its principal town, Alameda county has been fairly fortunate in retaining the musical names bestowed by those of the southern land, whose ease and sloth have been crowded out by the vigor and shrewdness of the greedy Saxon. Intermingling means surer conquest to the Spaniard or the Mexican than force of arms.
At the very entrance to Alameda county from San Joaquin is Altamont, "the high mountain," named because of its elevation in the Livermore hills, 500 or 600 feet above tide water. Soon after the railroad made and ruined towns a settlement near Altamont called Midway was a promising hamlet because it was important to the railroad, but now the trains do not even stop.
Livermore valley and the town of Livermore gained a name from the first white settler, Robert Livermore, an Englishman, whose descendants still live on the fertile plain.
Pleasanton became Pleasanton because of the patriotic pleasure of John W. Kottinger, one of the early settlers in the Livermore valley, who married a daughter of Juan P. Bernal. The general impression that the name was given with a boom purpose of calling by its very name attention to the town as a charming location abundantly endowed with climate is a mistake. Pleasanton is not a contraction of pleasant town. Mr. Kottinger, who is still alive, though very ill and feeble, was so much impressed with the gallant deeds during the civil war of General Alfred Pleasonton that he changed the name from its original designation, Alisal, meaning a sycamore grove, to the sounding surname of the cavalry commander. In transferring the name from man to town an error was made in spelling. The General's name was Pleasonton; the name of the town is Pleasanton.
THE SAD LOSS OF A LETTER.
No change has been permitted in the spelling of the name Sunol, but the Yankee tongues have changed the common pronunciation from the drawling Soonyol, with the final "o" long, to a quickly-sounded S'nol, dropping altogether the y sound. The name is that of the grantee of the great ranch of which Sunol was the central point. Antonio Maria Sunol, the first of the California Sunols, was a native of Spain, and for a time was Spanish Consul at San Francisco. He lived at San Jose before he was given a principality in Alameda county, and his family, having followed the usual course of the Spaniards who inherited great wealth in lands, have lost what they had, and one son not long ago returned to San Jose to live.
Niles - plain, short Niles - the town that has greater local pride and a poorer name than any other in the county, received its baptism from the name-dispenser of the railroad company. The other officers of the railroad so arrange connections of trains at this junction that it is known as the town spelled with five letters, one letter for every hour that a passenger has to wait for a train.
The old Spanish mission in the county is Mission San Jose, where great celebrations are held on the 19th of April, St. Joseph's Day. The people have robbed some of the name, just as some of the priests robbed the place of some of its glory by cutting down a grove of olive trees for firewood. To suit the economy of the Americans the town is designated simply as "The Mission."
No Spaniard had any part in naming Centerville, and the man who did curse the prettily situated town is dead, but his evil deed remain after him.
THE MODEST MR. SMITH.
The genius of some notable in the South Pacific Coast Railway was taxed when Newark received its title. The attempt of the railroad managers to make a town there by marvelous advertising (including the publication of the Newark Enterprise, of which Senator F. J. Moffitt was editor), is too recent to be historical.
Henry C. Smith, a pioneer of 1845, the first member of the Legislature from Alameda county, was too sensible to name the place of his abode Smithville or Smithburg. He called it Alvarado, after Governor Juan B. Alvarado, who died not many years ago in Contra Costa county.
Peterson was the name of the first settler at Mount Eden, but why the place should be Mount Eden its appearance does not indicate and history fails to tell. Eden is a historic name. Once there was a Garden of Eden, noted more for snakes than anything else, and perhaps the Eden part of the name comes from the garden. But whereby the mount became the precedent of Eden is a mystery. Perhaps Peterson had lofty aspirations and made a mountain out of a little mound that is scarce a wart on the hand of nature. But Mount Eden it became, and the Postoffice Department made the name permanent.
No one speaks of the town of Hayward. All who have occasion to speak of the place celebrated for chicken with white sauce and engagements made in summer to be broken in winter, call it Haywards, with the final "s" prominently articulated. Yet Hayward is the right name. The sponsor of the town was William Hayward, who died a few years ago, and tried to sew up his estate so that what had cost him years of labor and care should not be dissipated by prodigal and careless hands.
The San Lorenzo grant to Sergeant Soto, named from the creek that was its northern boundary, naturally gave the Spanish of St. Lawrence to the little town of which the nabobs now are H. W. and W. E. Meek, sons of the late William Meek, who purchased the fairest acres in the San Lorenzo rancho from the widow of the grantee.
Rancho San Leandro, the Estudillo grant, also had a name similar with that of a bounding stream, and naturally the town took the name of the rancho. The Estudillo family has lost its great estate, though it has bequeathed its name to a quaint old tavern.
THE GENESIS OF NIGGER CORNERS.
Many times has the town of Irvington received a dubbing. A colored man named Davis was one of the first to make a home place at the crossing of the roads, and from him came the first name of "Nigger Corners." This was expressive but not elegant, and as white settlers occupied the lands they objected to the name. Then Washington Corners came to be the designation, and then Irving and Irvington. Any of the three names was a direction for some time, but the old settlers called the place simply "The Corners," and they led no one astray. The people of the town, annoyed by the variety of its nomenclature, assembled one night and voted to call their abode Irvington, and no change has been made since that time.
The poetic may think that Palomares was named because it was a trysting place for wild doves - paloma being Spanish for dove. That is sentiment, but not fact. The name comes from a man's surname. Old Ignacio Palomares lived there so many years ago that no one can tell the number - seventy-five or a hundred, the people say. His name lives - and a good-sounding name it is - but the barbarians are already calling it "Palmyra's."
Half way between San Leandro and Oakland, in olden times, was the half-way house called Yoakum's Ferry, because old man Yoakum had a house in the neighborhood. Now all about Yoakum's Ferry are town lots for sale on the installment plan.
St. Anthony's Church retained the English of the name given to the old town of San Antonio, where bull fights and fiestas were held in the fifties. A modern Oakland politician may have heard of San Antonio, but he will not be sure where it is located. San Antonio is now East Oakland. The little settlements called Clinton and Brooklyn by the New Jersey and New York people who early came to California are also lost in East Oakland, though the names are conserved by two stations on the local railroad.
MIXING UP THE TREES.
The name Alameda means a row of poplars, and naming a stream, now called Alameda creek, by a common though inharmonious mingling of Spanish and wild western English was the first use of the name in the county that subsequently took its title from the stream. The city of Alameda gained its name from the same source. The peninsula on which Alameda is situated was commonly called the Alameda Encinal. As alameda means a row of poplars and encinal a live oak grove, the herding of the two into one title is an incongruity equal to any los Gringos have ever committed.
For the names Dublin and Limerick the late John W. Dougherty, a Mississippi man of Irish descent, is responsible.
Purely Indian is Temescal. The name signifies a sweathouse, one having been located at the place where the town north of Oakland is now situate. There the Indians, for the sake of their health, were accustomed to take a rude Turkish bath in the hut built for the sweating bath.
A great fight was waged quite recently in Washington over the name of Golden Gate. Klinkner, the man with the pink donkeys and the monkeys, who owns more property in the neighborhood than any one else, was determined that the name should be Klinknerville, but the influence with the Postoffice Department of a Senator's wife prevented this outrage and gave to the hamlet its present name.
Lorin, now a part of Berkeley, was also a name bestowed by the baptizer of the postal service. North of Berkeley M. B. Curtis, "Sam'l of Posen," has applied the name of the original owner of all Oakland, Alameda and Brooklyn townships, and Peralta is not to be lost to memory.
BECAUSE OF A PROPHETIC POEM.
When Dr. Henry Durant selected the slope opposite the Golden Gate for the site of the State University, and he and Dr. Horace Bushnell and others were thinking of a name, some one spoke of the verses of the Irish prelate, to whom Pope ascribed "every virtue under heaven," the scholar and gentleman who, intent upon planting arts and learning in America, wrote the lines so often quoted that they are seldom quoted aright:
Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last.
These kindly savants saw in the future the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Bishop of Cloyne on the very spot they had selected and hence gave the name of the town to the man who had made it.
The moderns, the present moderns, are bent on tearing away from their
associations some of the names that should be firmly rooted. Near Livermore
are some mineral springs which the Spaniards called Agua de Vida - water of
life. Now a modern demolisher of poetry, Mendenhall by name, owns the
property, and he has sublimated his personal pride by changing Agua de Vida to
Mendenhall's Springs, and yet murder has not been committed. Agua caliente
means simply hot water but Agua Caliente sounds differently from Hot Water.
Yet the site of the springs near the great ranch that Leland Stanford gave to
his brother Josiah, now deceased, and near the summer haven of the poetical
coadjutor of Chris Buckley, Sam Rainey, is now called Warm Springs, and Agua
Caliente is lost forever.
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