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Time to celebrate Tracy T
orchards south of town along racy is a great place to be. I spent my formative years Chrisman Road and was a lifeguard out at Bogetti’s Orchard in my hometown at a time when trains still regularly stopped water park. My parents still live here. My traffic on 11th Street or Central godparents still live here. Some Avenue, the sound of crop dusters in the fields surrounding town I knew growing up still live here. If I sound romantic could be heard for miles, about my hometown, it tractors still rolled slowly is because I am. My hisdown 11th, the smell of tory of Tracy is littered processed tomatoes from with bicycling down the Heinz plant filled the quiet streets, Friday air, my friends had parnight Bulldogs home ents who worked at Laura games and blazingly hot Scudder’s and regularly summers. had chips to share, and we Michael But my history is an spent all summer in the Langley, incredibly small piece Tracy Plunge. of a rich and layered We shopped for school Editor mosaic. Tracy’s past clothes at J.C. Penney’s includes being the weston the corner of 10th and B every August, I bought my ern stop of the Intercontinental Railroad, generations of heritage Star Wars action figures across as an agricultural center and the the street at Woolworths and legacy of a community influenced later learned about Dungeons by Portuguese, Italian, Mexican, & Dragons at Treadways stationery store down 10th at Central. Scandinavian and other traditions from across the globe. In the summers, my brother You may not know it to look and I sold iced tea in a little stand on hot sidewalks. I got my now — I did not until I grew up — but Tracy is a character. first job delivering newspapers Witness the struggle of entrealong Eaton and Hollywood preneurs like Henry Banta, who avenues and Beverly Place. I tried to make his mark with picked and dried apricots in the
Tracy press | www.tracypress.com
the railroad boom; the Poker City days, when gamblers and famous madams held sway and turned Tracy into a raucous party town; and the years following World War II when even Tracy grew up and attracted responsible jobs at the defense depot, Holly Sugar and Heinz plant. Tracy is rich with a history that, when you finally know it, marks this community as one of the most interesting in
California. Tracy has tales to tell, and our history can never die as long as we tell them. For many years, the Tracy Press published yearly or periodic Progress editions when we measured recent accomplishments and developments with our past. It’s time once again to celebrate our tradition, history and community. It’s time to “Celebrate Tracy,” because Tracy’s history is the history of all of us.
You may not know it to look now — I did not until I grew up — but Tracy is a character.
|7
then & now
signs of the times: Throughout this publication, look for images of familiar places from times gone by, like this one of the Tracy Inn at 11th Street and Central Avenue, seen today and in the early 1930s.
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Tracy’s namesake The first residents “An arid, salty land” The new industry Dry-land farming Irrigation comes home Banta’s big gamble Steel path to the future Reshaped by fire (twice) Downtown evolution Tracy rebuilds S.F. brick by brick
Decade of change Poker City Highway through town Tracy in the triangle Building a hospital World War II Tracy earns its wings The postwar boom Face of farming changes Cultural heritage Grow, slow, grow again Changing face of Tracy
T
perspective in looking at Tracy’s he Tracy area is growing and past development, its present condideveloping. That is nothing tion and its future prospects. new. It has been this way This area’s strategic locasince even before Tracy was tion in Northern California founded in 1878 — and more is a major factor in Tracy’s changes and challenges are in past, present and future our future. development. But so are Today, residents of our area its established agricultural can not only look back at a and industrial foundations, rich and sometimes colorful extensive freeway and rail history, they can also assess TRACING networks, and communities the present to see where we are today and look into the TRACY with successful, functioning future toward new horizons TERRITORY local governments and school systems. in the ongoing changes and SAM MATTHEWS Bring all these elements prospects shaping an area together and mix in comthat now includes Tracy — munities determined to have with a history stretching back well planned, well financed and well 136 years — and a bountiful rural managed development, then you area and new communities growing have the ingredients for a future of just outside our city limits. In this special section of the Tracy our area that is not only bigger but also better. Press, we are attempting to provide
3941 Holly Dr., Suite E, Tracy TRACY PRESS READER’S CHOICE
2013
Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 18 Page 22 Page 25 Page 28 Page 30 Page 34 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 40 Page 41 Page 43 Page 45 Page 47 Page 48 Page 50
Index
Bigger and better things
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A faraway namesake T
About our cover
A local photographer and fire department captain, Jim Haskell, designed the photo of the water tower at the Civic Center using highdynamic-range imaging. Haskell took several photos of the tower at different exposure levels and then layered them together to create a single image with more vivid colors and dimensions.
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racy was named for a grain merchant and railroad investor in Mansfield, Ohio, who never saw the California town named for him. Lathrop Josiah Tracy’s name was given to the new town established in 1878 at the junction of two Central Pacific Railroad lines by J.H. Stewart, superintendent of the line connecting Tracy and Port Costa in Contra Costa County. Stewart had worked for and had admired Tracy earlier in Ohio, where Tracy had been an investor in and an officer of the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark Railroad. Despite Tracy’s first name of Lathrop, there is no connection with the town (now city) of Lathrop, named a decade earlier by Central Pacific President Leland Stanford for the family of his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford.
Family line: Above, Mayor Aymon Hall (left) presents a centennial resolution to Rufus Tracy II, grandson of Lathrop J. Tracy, at left, the Ohio grain merchant for whom Tracy was named. Members of Tracy’s family stand at right.
Lathrop J. Tracy died in Alliance, Ohio, on Sept. 24, 1897, without visiting Tracy. However, his son, Rufus A. Tracy, a banker in Mansfield, did visit Tracy 40 years after the town was founded — on April 22, 1918. He was the guest of honor at a luncheon in the Southern Pacific Grill attended by com-
munity leaders. In September 1987, when Tracy celebrated its centennial, Lathrop J. Tracy’s grandson, Rufus A. Tracy II, came from his home in Carmel Valley to ride in a parade with Tracy Mayor Aymon Hall. There are still family members living on the San Francisco Peninsula.
Despite Lathrop J. Tracy’s first name, there is no connection with the nearby town (now city) of Lathrop.
|9
By 1852, after the Gold Rush had started, four native Indian villages were left in San Joaquin County — only one near Tracy, where the Mossdale bridges are now.
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Tracy’s first residents vanished 150 years ago T
he Chulamni, the northernmost offshoots of the Yokuts American Indians, were the first recorded inhabitants of what is now the Tracy area. The Yokuts lived in what became the San Joaquin Valley for at least several hundred years. Here they found abundant food on the valley floor, in the rivers and streams and hillsides of the area. During warm weather, the lightly clothed Chulamni established villages along the edge of the river marshes that later, when levees were constructed, became the San Joaquin Delta. Evidence of villages has been found along the south side of Old River north and northeast of Tracy, where fishing was bountiful. In the colder parts of the year, the native Americans moved to higher ground at the mouths of canyons along the west side the
valley. They lived in dwellings covered with mats made of tules from the nearby marshes. According to historianteacher Alan Hawkins, archaeologists estimate that the Chulamni were a tribe of about 200 to 300 people. In 1937, workers leveling land for the Holly Sugar mill farm uncovered a burial site that was 6 to 7 acres square. The leveling machines turned up human remains, arrowheads, shell beads and pieces of quartz crystal and stone charms, along with stone mortars and pestles used to grind seeds and nuts, Hawkins reported. When Spanish parties, including soldiers and missionaries, began exploring the area in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Yokuts settlements were attacked and members of the tribe were taken to missions in the Bay Area. Many died of western diseases, espe-
cially malaria, against which they had no immunity. When the mission system ended in 1834, very few Chulamni were left to return to their homeland. Many went to work for Mexican and Spanish ranchos.
By 1852, after the Gold Rush had started, only four native Indian villages were left in San Joaquin County. Only one was left near Tracy, along the river where the Mossdale bridges are now.
celebrate tracy | June 20, 2014
Spanish describe Tracy: ‘An arid, salty land’ A
t the same time that American colonists were meeting in Philadelphia in 1776, preparing to declare independence from Great Britain, several Spanish explorers became the first Europeans to look upon the Tracy area. The explorers were members of the party headed by Juan Bautista de Anza, investigating the east side of San Francisco Bay. After circling around Mount Diablo and heading south on April 4, 1776, the de Anza party stopped on a knoll at the foot of the Altamont hills. Father Pedro Font recorded what members of the party saw looking out across what he described as “an arid, salty land, all water and mud flats.” “It appeared to me that the country is so bad that it could not easily be inhabited by human beings,” Font wrote in his diary. The de Anza party then headed west across what became the Patterson Pass toward the Livermore Valley. De Anza’s second in command was Lt. José Joaquin Moraga, a native of Mexico and founder of the Presidio of San Francisco. Later that year, Moraga returned to what was named the San Joaquin Valley, crossing the Altamont Pass to travel
just south of the tulefilled marshland through what later became the Tracy area. Various parties from the Spanish exploration of the Bay Area returned to the San Joaquin Valley, bringing Yokuts Indians to missions. The Spaniards called the Chulamni Yokuts “los Tularenos” — tule people — because they had established their villages among the tule marshes of the Delta. Moraga’s son Gabriel Moraga explored the same area 32 years after the first party, in 1808, naming several major rivers during the journey — and finding the area much more inhabitable than Font had. Tracy native Jeff Pribyl, who has researched early Tracy history extensively, reported that it is probable that trapper Jedediah Smith camped near Durham Ferry on the San Joaquin River in the spring of 1827. That same year, a number of Yokuts escaped from the missions at San Jose and Santa Clara and returned to the Durham Ferry area and began harassing Mexican outposts. The Mexicans then mounted a major campaign headed by 22-year-old Mariano Vallejo, later governor of California. A major three-day battle ensued, spelling doom for the Yokuts’ uprising.
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| 11
then & now
The first Tracy Police Department, organized in 1910, employed two deputy marshals and a marshal to lead them.
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tracy’s finest: The Tracy Police Department was organized, along with the city, in 1910 and has expanded many times over the years. The first head of the department was Marshall William Lampkey. The department lost the only two officers it has ever lost in the line of duty on June 20, 1915. Deputy marshals Benjamin Franklin Ingram and Frank Blondin were ambushed outside a building known as the Italian Hotel by a gun-wielding man wanted by the Angels Camp Police Department. More than a dozen shots were exchanged, and the two were mortally wounded. Their names are enshrined on the California Peace Officers Memorial in Sacramento. The Tracy Police Department got its own building in 1940 — the Tracy Hall of Justice, seen at right in 1950. At that time, six officers protected 8,000 Tracy residents.
protect and serve: As of 2013, the Tracy Police Department employed 83 sworn officers and 38 non-sworn staff to serve a community of more than 85,000. The department is represented in the photo at left by officer Leticia Infante (from left), officer Troy Silcox, Sgt. Steven Bailey and officer Octavio Lopez, in front of the latest police station, built in 1996.
celebrate tracy | June 20, 2014
Warehousing: Engine of change T
he industry of Tracy has evolved as often and as rapidly as the community itself. In its earliest days, the city was built around the railroad, which brought the world to Tracy and brought Tracy to the world. Immigrant farmers and railroad workers flocked to our town, bringing with them the traditions that would become the base from which we would grow. Their agricultural heritage in time turned into a tradition and our primary industry. The state and nation brought roads to Tracy, and we became an intersection of commerce and agricultural bounty. Indeed, that agricultural legacy lives today in 4-H Clubs and the FFA chapters at Tracy and West high schools and in the almond, bean and other farms that ring the town. Agribusiness brought their plants directly to the fields to cut down on the cost of transporting fresh fruit and vegetables, and Tracy residents who didn’t work in the fields or in service industries found employment at factories that processed sugar beets and tomatoes.
In 1942, war brought the defense depot and another new industry, one that would years later become our main industry: warehousing and distribution. In 1972, Handyman Inc. — a San Diego-based chain of stores that was a smaller version of Home Depot — opened a warehouse at the southeast corner of Grant Line Road and MacArthur Drive. It was first of a new era of warehousing and distribution. Tracy’s location near the Bay Area, with freeways leading up and down the state and into Nevada and Oregon, has been a magnet for firms needing to store and ship their products. Since that modest beginning with Handyman, the warehouse-distribution segment of the Tracy industrial mix has become a dominant one. The Handyman warehouse, which was later closed when the firm disbanded, was located in an area that would become a major portion of the Industrial Specific Plan created in 1987. It established zoning and bonding for infrastructure for a host of similar warehouses on MacArthur
between 11th Street and Grant Line and also in south Tracy. The opening of Amazon.com Inc.’s massive fulfillment center last fall just down the road from where Handyman was located is the most recent and most dramatic development. On Oct. 2, Amazon welcomed the first of what it promised would be 1,000 workers into its newly opened 1-million-squarefoot facility. By the spring, the company was already expanding, adding another 500,000 square feet to the already massive facility. Amazon built its center in the second phase of the 790acre Northeast Industrial Area, where many, but not all, warehousing and distribution firms have been located. Up to and including Amazon, operations located in Tracy to swell dimensions of the city’s warehouse-distribution complex have included: 1992 — Orchard Supply Hardware on MacArthur Drive and Safeway Northern California Distribution Center and Costco, both in the
Patterson Pass business park west of town 1993 — U.S. Cold Storage on MacArthur 1998 — Restoration Hardware 2001 — Jacobson Distribution (Pepsi/Gatorade/ Quaker) 2004 — APL-Kelloggs/ Keebler 2006 — McLane Foods 2009 — Crate & Barrel and Home Depot 2011 — Best Buy 2013 — Amazon and a second location for APLKelloggs/Keebler In addition, Yellow Freight Systems established a regional hub on Pescadero Road in 1991. Prologis, which has been the major developer of the Northeast Industrial Area, is also hard at work developing the 1,783-acre Cordes Ranch area on the western edge of Tracy, which the city annexed in September. At least three companies are in negotiations to fill space there and take advantage of Tracy’s place as an intersection of commerce.
Our city’s driving industry keeps shifting — from the railroad to agriculture, from food processing to distribution
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| 13
If there was enough rain, there was a crop. If not, there was none.
If the rains come: Teams of mules provided power for early combines that harvested wheat and grain in the Tracy area during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of the pioneering Tracy-area farmers immigrated from what is now Germany.
First farmers work dry land A
griculture in what was to become the Tracy area began taking root in the mid-19th century. Growing grain — wheat and barley — depended almost entirely on the weather. If there was enough winter and springtime rain, there was a crop in the early summer. If not, there was none.
Many of the early dry-land farmers were immigrants from what became Germany, mostly from the northern plain of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony. The families included Lammers, Hansen, von Sosten, Krohn, Thoming, Koster, Linne, Braasch, Buschke, Schlictman, Finck, Ohm, Fisk, Frerichs,
Riecks, Staddlemire, Hilken, Huck, Walter, Steinmetz, Bruhn and Schulte. Rural Tracy roads still bear their names. They were joined by pioneer farmers from the eastern U.S. and England, including William Golden, John Chrisman and John Bird. Among the leaders of the grain-farming community were
Martin Lammers, who served in the state Assembly in 1876 and authored legislation promoting irrigation on the west side of the valley, and Peter Hansen, a leading founder of the Lammersville School District and the district board’s first clerk. Grain was shipped from the
Dry-land farming, continued on next page
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Dry-land farming continued from pAGE 14
settlement of San Joaquin City — just south of Durham Ferry Road — on the river, where a “Mosquito Fleet” of paddle-wheel boats took the cargo to Stockton. The riverfront settlement had about 1,000 residents at one point. To the west and northwest of what is now Tracy, the grain was shipped by riverboat to the Bay Area from Mohr’s Landing, established by Henry Mohr on the Old River. Wickland was established nearby. Growing grain, which remains a part of the Tracy farming scene today, diminished in importance with the coming of irrigation after the turn of the 20th century.
Irrigation changes local farming
Where water flows: At left, work is underway on the first lift station in the Banta Carbona irrigation system in 1925. Water pumped from the San Joaquin River began flowing to fields southeast of Tracy in 1926. Above, the Manuel Joaquin Costa Sr. family and workers stand in the barnyard of the Costa and Fernandes Dairy on Reeve Road west of Tracy in 1925. Costa, a native of the Azores, came to Tracy in 1917 and operated the dairy until 1956, when it was sold. The first local irrigation district. Naglee Burk Irrigation Association, was opened in 1912, followed by the West Side Irrigation District in 1918 and Banta Carbona in 1926. Water distributed by the districts allowed the establishment of dairies and cultivation of more crops, eventually including alfalfa hay, beans, tomatoes, sugar beets, asparagus and orchards of walnuts, almonds, apricots and cherries.
Read more I mproved technology after World War II would help change the face of farming in Tracy.
Water pumped by irrigation districts shaped the farming heritage of Tracy
Page 45
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| 15
Banta’s big gamble Henry C. Banta came to the area from Missouri in 1854 and 10 years later established Banta’s Station.
B
anta was founded in 1849, but hopes for it to become a bustling railroad junction were never realized. The village east of what became Tracy was founded when the Elk Horn Inn was established to serve as a teaming and stage station along the Stockton-San Jose route used by gold miners traveling to and from the Mother Lode. The hotel, later known as Chamberlain’s White House, served as a stopping spot for 49ers before they crossed the San Joaquin River at Doak’s and Bonsell’s Ferry, where the Mossdale bridges are today. Henry C. Banta came to the area from Missouri in 1854 and in 1864 bought Chamberlain’s hotel, the stage station and adjoining land and made it into Banta’s Station. When the Central Pacific rail line between Niles and Lathrop was opened in 1869, Banta’s became a stop. gold-miner diner: Henry C. Banta bought Chamberlain’s White House and tried to turn it Banta’s, as it was known by a populainto a waystation for the railroad, gold miners and sheep ranchers. tion of some 150 people, became a shipping point for cattle and sheep 1869 rail line and the new line to Port with pits for sheep dipping — a bath Costa would be joined at Banta’s. of insecticide and fungicide that sheep But the junction was established a were submerged in to protect them mile and a half to the west in what from infestation. Banta had hoped that the existing banta, continued on next page
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banta continued from pAGE 16 became Tracy. Banta, who had invested heavily in land around Banta’s Station, lost his shirt and his property. After going to Colorado, Banta returned here and raised sheep. The community of Banta has continued to be a rural center east of Tracy, and the Banta Inn is still operating as a popular restaurant and watering hole.
Tracy press | www.tracypress.com
Meet and eat: The Banta Inn — seen here during the Lincoln Highway anniversary in June 2013 — is still a place where locals gather.
After losing his original land and moving to Colorado, Banta returned here to raise sheep.
| 17
The first railroad line to come to the Tracy area arrived in 1869. It connected the San Joaquin Valley to the Bay Area through the Altamont Pass.
Railroad lays steel path to Tracy’s future
T
racy area’s location as a principal pathway connecting the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley has played a major role in determining its development for centuries — as it continues to do to this day. At first, wagons and riders on horses traveled along trails such as El Camino Viejo (the Old Road) through Corral Hollow Canyon and also over the Patterson and Altamont passes onto the valley floor, many travelers making their way to and from the Sierra gold fields. And then, in the later 19th century, the railroad came, making a major impact on this area — and creating the town of Tracy. The first railroad line to come to the Tracy area arrived in 1869. It traversed the Altamont Pass in connecting the main San Joaquin Valley line of the Central Pacific (later Southern Pacific) at Lathrop to existing C.P. lines in the East Bay and the San Francisco Peninsula.
railroad, continued on next page
the right track: The original Southern Pacific Depot after Tracy was founded in 1878.
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railroad continued from pAGE 18 Known at first as the Western Pacific (not the later W.P. rail system), the Altamont line was developed by Charles McLaughlin, a flamboyant entrepreneur. He ran out of money in mid-construction and sold the line to the Central Pacific. The line was completed in 1869, and to help boost trains over the Altamont Hills, helper engines needed to be attached or detached on both sides of the hills, depending on the direction of the train. On this side of the Altamont Pass, the adding and subtracting of engines took place several miles west of today’s Tracy at a coaling station called Ellis. The name, according to local historian Ellen Opie, could have come from several sources. One was Samuel L.N. Ellis, chief ranger of the U.S. Forest Service at the time, and the other was one of the investors in the railroad village, Moses Ellis. Located between Corral Hollow and Lammers roads, it had several rail sidings, a few
railroad buildings and a main street paralleling the north side of the tracks that held three hotels, five saloons, two stores, a livery stable and a blacksmith shop, along with 50 houses, a school and meeting halls. Ellis flourished for nine years — from 1869 to 1878 — and there were prospects that it would become a much larger town than its population of an estimated 200 residents. A map circulated in the village showed a large grid pattern of prospective streets, only a handful of which were ever constructed. The route taken by the San Pablo and Tulare Railroad changed all of that. The new rail line, a subsidiary of the Central Pacific connecting the C.P. line at Port Costa in Contra Costa County with the existing Altamont line, was routed southeast through what became Antioch and Brentwood. The new line was designed to be a sea-level route for trains passing to and from Oakland without the need of booster engines.
industrial evolution: Above, railroad crewman in 1906 stand before two engines readied for service in the Tracy roundhouse, which serviced as many as 40 steam locomotives a day. Below, the Tracy yard of the Southern Pacific Railroad seen in 1905.
Investors in Ellis built a town for the railroad. Eventually the railroad chose a site three miles east — just high enough to avoid flooding — and Tracy was born.
railroad, continued on next page
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railroad continued from pAGE 19
Switching operations were moved here from Lathrop in 1894. Tracy was becoming more of a railroad town with each new development.
train town: Above, railroad men stand by an engine in the Tracy yard in 1928. Below, the last of the steam locomotives idles in the Tracy roundhouse in 1950. By the mid-’50s, diesel engines took over the railways.
Ellis investors, and Henry Banta in Banta, too, were betting that the junction would be at their villages. But a site three miles east of Ellis and a mile and a half west of Banta — at an elevation high enough to avoid periodic flooding from the marshlands to the north — was selected. That site became Tracy. Construction of the line was started at the new junction and continued northwest, beginning in 1877. The work was completed in September 1878, and Tracy was born. Nearly all the wood-frame structures in Ellis, including commercial buildings, some railroad structures and houses, were loaded onto wagons and hauled to the new town. The Central Pacific laid out streets — curved as far as Ninth Street to follow the rail line — for the new town, with Front Street (later Sixth Street) becoming the main business center. There were no paved streets, only wooden sidewalks. Tracy’s origin as a railroad town — surrounded by grain fields — was enhanced in 1888 when the rail line running south along the West Side was constructed. The line later was continued to Fresno. In response to those developments, the roundhouse, car shops and switching operations at Lathrop were moved to Tracy in 1894. Tracy was founded as a railroad junction in 1878, and it was becoming more of a railroad town with each new development.
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then & now
The city of Tracy quite literally started at Front Street. The road today — now Sixth Street — shows how much the city has changed.
Sixth and central:  The brick Fabian-Grunauer Co., to the left in the photo above, was built on Front Street near Central Avenue to replace the wooden building that burned in the fire of 1898. The photo was likely taken in the early 1900s, because the store was remodeled just a few years later. Across the street from the store is the Tracy Hotel, owned at the time by Charles Slack, who was Abraham Grunauer’s brother-in-law. The Tracy Hotel also burned in 1898. The building shown here, rebuilt after the fire, burned again in 1911 and then was rebuilt with brick. The photo at right shows Sixth and Central on June 12, 2014. The vacant dirt lot and sidewalk on the left are roughly where Fabian-Grunauer Co. would have stood. The restaurants across the street are where the Tracy Hotel once stood.
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| 21
Shaped, reshaped by fire
Front Street — Tracy’s main street in its railroad days — was left in ruins by fires in 1898 and 1911.
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W
hen 45 of the 49 buildings and houses in Ellis were moved to Tracy in September 1878, James and Mary Eagan were already settling into their residence, a Central Pacific section house. James Eagan, Central Pacific section foreman, and his wife, Mary, were Tracy’s first residents, and their descendants, members of the Eagan and Weston families, are local residents to this day. Tracy’s first merchant was Philip Fabian, who had his store in Ellis moved to the corner of Front (Sixth) Street and by his younger Grunauer half-brother, Central Avenue. Fabian, who was Abraham Grunauer, and also Tracy’s first postmas- the store became Fabianter, sold everything from Grunauer. sewing needles to farm The north side of Front implements in what was Street was lined by woodcalled “The Big Store.” In frame buildings, housing the 1880s, Fabian, a native a variety of businesses. of Germany, was joined Across Central Avenue
The Aftermath: Spectators watch a fire in June 1898 that destroyed every building on four blocks of Front (Sixth) Street. Merchandise and possessions were hauled out of the businesses and homes and piled near the railroad tracks.
to the east were Ed Wachsmuth’s Tracy Hotel, Christian Ludwig’s San Joaquin Hotel and Edward Strateau’s Gilt Edge Saloon, and then Dan and Charles Canale’s store. In 1897, the Odd Fellows — Tracy’s major fraternal organization —
constructed a three-story brick building on the east side of Central. All of that changed on June 19, 1898, when a fire that started in a millinery — clothing and fashion — shop at Front and C streets was swept eastward by gusty
Sunday afternoon winds. The flames leaped across Central Avenue and moved eastward to the IOOF Hall, which — while it remained standing after the fire — was severely damaged by the
Fire, continued on next page
celebrate tracy | June 20, 2014
Fire continued from pAGE 22 intense heat and would have to be rebuilt. Tracy’s main street lay in ruins. A new Fabian-Grunauer store, a new Odd Fellows Hall and a new three-story Tracy Hotel — at the corner of Front and Central — were constructed, and other buildings in between. Another major fire, on Aug. 13, 1911, forced even more changes on Front Street. Started in a kitchen flue of the Tracy Hotel, the fire destroyed the stately wood-frame hotel and adjacent buildings as far east as the Odd Fellows Hall. The IOOF lodge’s brick building avoided major damage and still stands today on East Sixth Street as the Moose Lodge.
Tracy press | www.tracypress.com
Up in flames: A fire in the three-story Tracy Hotel in August 1911 would spread to neighboring buildings on Front (East Sixth) Street, stopping at the brick Odd Fellows Hall.
The Odd Fellows Hall still stands today as the Moose Lodge.
| 23
Major fires wiped out historical landmarks and new construction throughout Tracy’s history.
Some Notable fires June 19, 1898: Front (Sixth) Street, C Street past IOOF Hall
Firestone block, Central Avenue at East 10th Street
Aug. 13, 1911: Tracy Hotel, Front (East Sixth) Street to IOOF Hall
Oct. 25, 1966: Arlington Theatre, West Sixth Street May 27, 1986: Rhodes warehouse
July 10, 1958: Tracy Auto Parts, West 11th Street
July 29, 1988: True Value Hardware, East 10th Street
June 20, 1962: Otto’s Plymouth, East 11th Street
May 7, 1992: The Opera House, Ninth Street and Central Avenue
Dec. 15, 1962: Cochran Packing Shed, West Sixth Street
Where there’s smoke: Top left, True Value Hardware was gutted by fire in 1988. Top center, the Royster tire fire south of town burned from 1998 to 2000 and became a Superfund cleanup site. Top right, four unoccupied new homes burned to the ground after a plumber sparked a fire in 1999. Above, a fire involving multiple apartments at Sycamore Village in 2007 started with a gas explosion after a man tried to commit suicide.
June 7, 1997: The Diner, West 11th Street
April 28, 1964: Mid-City Motors, East 11th Street Oct. 27, 1964: Value Center-
May 31, 1998: The Plunge, Holly Drive
Aug. 7, 1998: S.F. Royster’s Tire Disposal, South MacArthur Drive Aug. 27, 1999: New homes, Pebble Brook Court July 18, 2000: Phoenix Lodge, North Tracy Boulevard Jan. 10, 2001: Grand Theatre, Central Avenue Feb. 14, 2007: Sycamore Village Apartments, West Central Avenue March 26, 2014: McKinley Village Shopping Center, North Tracy Boulevard
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celebrate tracy | June 20, 2014
Downtown redefined D
owntown Tracy has served many functions — and even changed locations — through time. When Union Pacific first decided to make Tracy the train depot instead of Ellis to the west, Front Street — now Sixth Street — housed the hotels, bars and other businesses the people of Tracy needed. With time, the population grew so much that businesses began to spread down Central Avenue. In the 1920s and ’30s, when car ownership became the goal for many American families, the state created Highway 50 — what is now 11th Street — which brought people through town every day. That pulled business north along Central and spread it out on both sides of the highway, creating yet another business zone.
Looking forward: New eating and drinking establishments are in development on West 10th Street, including Delta Brews, at left, and its next-door neighbor, The Commons (not pictured). Main Street Music recently moved to a larger space east of its original storefront. Below, Mia Bella’s Boutique (orange awning) opened in 2013 between the old J.C. Penney building and Barista’s coffeeshop.
As cars replaced trains, business moved away from the rails and the present downtown became the true center of town. Tracy’s downtown changed again after the state completed the triangle that is interstates 5, 205 and 580. Growth began to happen at the edges, where Tracy touched the freeways,
Tracy press | www.tracypress.com
and 11th Street faded as a strong business corridor. In March 2009, the city unveiled the latest Downtown Specific Plan. The city knew it had to revitalize the oncevibrant downtown in ways that could compete with shopping offerings to the west and north sides of Tracy.
From a single street fronting the railroad tracks, Tracy’s downtown has grown north and west into a modern L-shaped business district.
Downtown, continued on next page
| 25
The city sees opportunity in the quaint style of the older buildings downtown, the varied shop sizes and uses and the area’s central location.
Downtown continued from pAGE 24
Then: By the mid-1920s, when the photograph at top was taken, cars had replaced horses and Central Avenue had replaced Sixth Street as the center of Tracy’s business community. By 1950, above, more businesses were opening around the corner from Central Avenue on West 10th Street.
The city sees opportunity in the quaint style of the older buildings, the mix of varied sizes and uses of the shops and the area’s central location. The plan describes downtown this way: “As a modern ‘L-shaped Main Street,’ the Central-10th spine will be distinguished by its lively pedestrian environment, featuring outdoor dining amenities, attractive shop fronts, street trees, decorative lighting and plenty of places to sit. Housing, lodging and office uses will be located on the upper floors, where office workers, residents and visitors prize their convenient proximity to Downtown’s restaurants, shops and enter-
Now: The Grand Theatre Center for the Arts on Central Avenue, redeveloped and opened in 2009 through a city-community partnership, joins the Downtown Plaza and Tracy Transit Station as anchors of a revitalized downtown center near Tracy’s original business district.
tainment venues and enjoy their views of the street life below.” The cultural reshaping of Tracy’s downtown began with the Grand Theatre Center for the Arts, 715 Central Ave., a city-run place for performances, art exhibitions and education that it partially funded and supported by a community nonprofit group.
downtown, continued on next page
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then & now
downtown continued from pAGE 26 The city added a transit center at Sixth and Central and designated the plaza there for musical performances, community celebrations and small gatherings. Farmers markets on Saturday mornings and Wednesday evenings on 10th Street provide some regular events throughout the year. The city and Tracy City Center Association have used these civic improvements to attract the types of businesses they hope will bring more people back downtown. New restaurants have recently joined the downtown offerings. Some merchants have decided to stay open one Friday night a month. And two new nightlife spots have recently opened, as have bakeries and a bookstore.
Tracy’s downtown is again in transition, with a budding restaurant row on West 10th Street and investment by the city near Sixth Street and Central Avenue.
TOday and yesterday: Above, 11th Street, one of Tracy’s major thoroughfares, is technically outside the latest Downtown Specific Plan, but it was for many years a center of commerce and transportation as Highway 50. Top right, 11th Street in the 1950s was a bustling corridor lined with restaurants, service stations and hotels. Bottom right, the same street in 1931 was far quieter, despite having become part of the Lincoln Highway in 1914. It had originally been known as the County Road and the northern edge of town.
Those business owners and the city hope to remake the face of downtown yet again and turn it into a boutique dining, drinking and shopping destination.
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| 27
Carnegie produced the tiles that helped rebuild San Francisco after the great earthquake and fire of 1906.
The on-again, off-again history of Corral Hollow Canyon C
orral Hollow Canyon southwest of Tracy has an on-again, off-again history of spurts and lulls of activity dating from the 18th century to today. In the 1700s, it was a trail used by Spaniard explorers known as El Camino Viejo — the Old Road. Later in the Mexican period, 1822 to 1846, it was a route for dispatch riders between Monterey and Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento. The mid-19th century brought seekers of fortune traveling between the San Francisco Bay Area and the southern Mother Lode in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Coal was discovered in the canyon in 1856 by Edward B. Carrell, who had settled at the mouth of the canyon in 1850, and by Jack O’Brien, a sea captain. They mined coal at what became Tesla, shipping it first by wagon to Mohr’s Landing on the Old River and later on a special spur railroad line leading to Ellis. The limited quantity and low grade of the coal caused an end to mining by the 1870s. But in the early 1890s,
industry: The Carnegie factory in Corral Hollow Canyon made bricks and terra cotta pipe between 1902 and 1914. There is nothing left of the complex except for some half-buried bricks in the hillside, left over after industry had left the canyon.
carnegie, continued on next page
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carnegie continued from pAGE 28 John and James Treadwell, San Francisco financiers who had made a fortune mining for gold near Juneau, Alaska, bought the worthless shares of the original mining company. They began producing coal that was shipped by a railroad line leading through Carbona — coal in Spanish — to Stockton, where the coal was pressed into briquettes. To make use of the clay that was originally a byproduct of the coal mining, the Carnegie Brick & Pottery Co. was formed in 1902 to make bricks in one plant and terra cotta pipe and building decorations in another. The plants initially had 12 “beehive” kilns around three tall brick smokestacks. As the brick and terra cotta parts of the complex increased in activity, there were 13 tall smokestacks, some of which soared 300 feet high. Soon after the turn of the 20th century, there were some 2,000 people living in Corral Hollow Canyon, in Tesla, Harrietville and Jimtown — villages spread along the canyon floor. The Carnegie plants got a boost with the San Francisco earthquake and fire of April 1906. After the disaster, bricks replaced wood as the basic building material, and terra cotta building decor was popular. The Carnegie-produced building ornaments on the exterior of the Palace Hotel remain in place today.
Tracy press | www.tracypress.com
new life for carnegie: Off-road enthusiasts enjoy Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area on Nov. 22, 2013.
After the spurt of production — hitting 100,000 bricks a day — began to wane, the Carnegie plants’ business also declined. In the spring of 1911, a flash flood roared through the canyon, destroying or damaging the factories and twisting the railroad lines. What remained of the brick and terra cotta plants managed to continue with decreased production, but the firm was in financial trouble and in 1916 was sold to Gladding McBean of Lincoln. The new owners soon closed the Corral Hollow Canyon works, and the canyon quickly became a ghost town.
Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area has given the hills south of Tracy new life.
Those ghosts were what was left of activity in the canyon until the late 1950s, when the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory developed its Site 300 explosives test site in the hills above the canyon. That facility of what is now Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory continues in operation today. Another source of activity is the Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area, which was purchased by the state in 1979 from private ownership. Today, off-road motorcyclists roar up and down 1,500 acres of hillside trails leading from the south side of the canyon.
| 29
In 1910, the city was incorporated and the railroad established Tracy as a division point. The next decade set the stage for all that was to follow.
Decade of change D
espite the fire of 1911 that destroyed several commercial buildings on Front Street, the decade of 1910-19 saw a number of major positive developments for Tracy. In that decade, the growing but still small railroad town surrounded by wheat and barley fields became a multi-modal transportation center with irrigated farmland — and with a city government, a high school, two banks, new public buildings and highways. By 1920, Tracy was a much different town from what it had been a decade earlier. A major economic driver at the beginning of the decade came in 1910, when the Southern Pacific announced that Tracy would become a division point, meaning that crews on freight trains entering Tracy from all directions would be changed here. During that decade of development: n Southern Pacific operations increased rapidly with the establishment of Tracy as a division point. New residents, many from other S.P. terminals, flocked here.
World War I also gave a boost to railroad operations. n The city of Tracy was incorporated with a successful election in July 1910. (A petition to hold an incorporation election in 1907 was tossed out by the county clerk for having too few valid signatures.) Water and sewer
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decade of change, continued on next page
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ninth street: The budding community built wood-frame homes for the residents of the new town. Several young men stand on Ninth Street, in front of houses on the north side of the street. At the end of the street, on the left side of the photo, was the home of Charles Slack, who owned the Tracy Hotel. The Opera House building now stands where the Slack home had been.
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decade of change continued from pAGE 30 for having too few valid signatures.) Water and sewer systems were built and major streets were paved. Police and fire departments were formed. Abraham Grunauer, a partner in the FabianGrunauer Co. store, was elected by the Board of Trustees (City Council) as Tracy’s first mayor. n Tracy’s first bank, the Bank of Tracy, was organized in 1910 by John Droge and associates with offices at Seventh and Central. (Droge, in 1923, built the Grand Theatre adjacent to that location.) The West Side Bank, headed by Abraham Grunauer, followed in 1911 with an office on Front (Sixth) Street that still stands today. n High school education came to the Tracy area with the formation of the Tracy Union High School District in 1912. An earlier attempt, in 1909, to form a district had been approved by voters, but the county superintendent of schools forgot to certify the election and it was voided. The second time around was different. The first high school classes were held on the second floor of the new Tracy Grammar School (later Central School) built on Central
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Avenue to replace the original Willow School, which was at the corner of 11th Street and Central Avenue. n Irrigation, long discussed, became a reality in 1912 with the formation of the Naglee Burk Irrigation District northwest of town. The West Side Irrigation District surrounding Tracy followed in 1915, delivering its first water in 1918. Banta Carbona Irrigation District southeast of Tracy was organized in 1921 and began water deliveries in 1926. n Eleventh Street through Tracy became a section of the Lincoln Highway in 1914. An original route planned along Grant Line Road was headed off by heavy lobbying by local business and civic leaders. n The city of Tracy constructed a City Hall at the corner of Ninth Street and Central Avenue in 1917. The $19,000 bond issue that financed construction of the building also funded the purchase of Tracy’s first motorized fire engine. Police and fire stations were included in the new building, which is still in use today as the Roxy Hudson Fire Administration Building.
decade of change, continued on next page
The foundation for banking, education, irrigation and city government all came to be in the decade of the 1910s.
financial future: Abraham Grunauer built the West Side Bank in 1911. It was the second bank built in Tracy and still stands today on West Sixth Street.
| 31
decade of change continued from pAGE 31
Tracy’s next industry arrived in 1917 — processing sugar beets into sugar. The industry of agriculture had arrived.
serve and protect: Above, Fire Chief Tom Eagan drives Tracy’s first mechanized fire engine in front of City Hall in 1917. Both the building and the truck arrived that year. Roxy Hudson, who would later become fire chief, is beside him in the passenger seat. The building is now the Roxy Hudson Fire Administration Building. Below, the Tracy fire department poses with the new engine.
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n Also in 1917, a building for Tracy High was completed in 1917 on “the outskirts of town” at 11th and East streets. A $60,000 bond issue financed the building, which was designed by San Francisco architect H.W. Weeks in the Mission Revival style. A building with nearly identical Mission Revival design replaced the original building in 2007. n The Pacific Sugar Co. began turning sugar beets into granulated sugar in 1917, establishing Tracy’s second industry. (The railroad was the first.) The “sugar mill,” which spurred growing of sugar beets in the Tracy area, was acquired in 1926 by the Holly Sugar Corp. of Colorado Springs, Colo. n America’s entry into World War I in April 1917 caused a labor shortage in Tracy. Mexican section workers were recruited by the Southern Pacific, which housed many of the families in boxcars parked on a siding in the Tracy S.P. switching yard. That formed the nucleus of the early Mexican-American population in Tracy, according to historian Larry Gamino.
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then & now tracy’s first high school: Tracy residents voted in 1909 to form a high school district, but because the county superintendent of schools forgot to file the results of the election, the community wouldn’t get what it had voted for until 1912 — the year Tracy School, which would become Central School, first started classes. There were 11 students in the first Tracy High class, which met upstairs at Tracy School. The first graduating class was the Class of 1915. The district paid $7,000 for 12 acres to build a high school campus on Highway 50, where it still stands today. Construction was financed by a $60,000 bond, which Tracy voters passed 351129. The high school, at left, was completed in May 1917 and opened that fall. Tracy High got a gymnasium in 1922, launching basketball and other sports. Football didn’t gain momentum until 1927, when a group of wealthy members of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco — including author Peter B. Kyne — funded the Bulldogs team and football field. Into a new era: In 1946, Tracy voters approved a $600,000 bond to expand Tracy High. The first new buildings were built in 1950. Voters approved another $1.038 million bond in 1954 to build a library, cafeteria, team room, science wing, machine and auto shops and agriculture complex. In 1967, Tracy Unified High School District bought land on the east side of Corral Hollow Road south of Grant Line Road to build another high school, but West High School would not be built until 1993. In 1973, voters approved a $1.6 million bond, and in 1975, the district built the last piece of the current Tracy High campus, the Emma M. Baumgardner Theater. The old West Building at Tracy High was replaced with a $20 million building in 2008, at right, and renamed the Dr. James C. Franco Building in 2012. Classes at Tracy’s newest high school, Kimball High School, began Aug. 12, 2009. Millennium High School — a charter school within Tracy Learning Center, founded in 2001 — occupies the old Clover Middle School, while Delta Charter High School shares New Jerusalem School’s campus.
Tracy High School was built at the eastern edge of town. Eventually, the growing community surrounded the campus.
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| 33
Tracy’s rough-and-tumble alter ego: Poker City T
Charlie Clark — Tracy’s “Slot-machine King” — was just one of the colorful characters to inhabit Poker City.
poker city players: Tom Wing’s place on Fourth Street (above) was a popular tavern — and a place Tracy residents and visitor could place a bet on the Chinese lottery. At left, Charles A. “Charlie” Clark ran the Terminal Grill, a restaurant and bar at the northeast corner of Central Avenue and Sixth Street. There were card rooms for poker and other games in the back and basement, and Clark was Tracy’s leading operator of slot machines through the 1940s.
taurants and retail stores. Billy Gift, who operated the Hotel Western, was known as Tracy’s bookie and periodically played host to his friend, San Francisco gambler Bones Remmer. Across the tracks on Fourth Street, Tom Wing’s place and the Canton Café, run by Ng Shee “Mama” Lee, were taverns featuring Chinese lottery games. In 1934, the City Council tried to formalize collection of periodic fines for gambling by establishing “a vending machine ordinance” with set fees for slot machines. The state attorney general nullified the ordinance, however, stating that lawful fees couldn’t be levied upon illegal activity. And then there was prostitution. Before there was Hazel Price, Tracy’s bestknown madam, there was
racy’s “Poker City” days may be romanticized to a degree, but a wide-open town with gambling, illegal booze and prostitution was certainly part of Tracy’s colorful history. From Day One in 1878, Tracy as a railroad junction had never been a sleepy rural village, but the principal elements of Poker City came together in the 1920s with the advent of Prohibition. Gambling and prostitution complemented the illegal selling of liquor. The gambling was centered in poker games, slot machines and Chinese lotteries. Charlie Clark, a former railroad engineer who ran the Terminal Grill at Sixth and Central (where Helm’s Ale House is now), was known as Tracy’s “Slot-machine King.” He and several others had placed slot machines all over the downtown, mostly in taverns, res-
poker city, continued on next page
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celebrate tracy | June 20, 2014
poker city continued from pAGE 34 Jessie Green. She came to Tracy after the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 and settled on Tracy’s Southside. Her business was known as Jessie’s Place, located first on West Fourth Street and later at the Third and C streets. Historian Earle Williams described Jessie: “She wore the latest fashions of the era — voluminous dresses and great broad-brimmed hats spiked into her crimson hair with great hatpins; highbuttoned boots and all. Her favorite color was green, and she carried a large greenfeathered parrot, hook-billed and brilliantly colored.” Jessie died at the age of 71 in 1947 after taking poison to end her own life. Hazel Price, whose real name was Amelia Broedell, was a native of Livermore who came to Tracy in the 1920s from Martinez. Hazel’s was on Third Street just east of Central Avenue. The house’s reception room was decorated lavishly in Arabian Nights style and had a series of small rooms in the basement.
Hazel’s was known as one of the best houses of prostitution in Northern California, and Hazel, while not as flamboyant a dresser as Jessie, was a welcoming hostess to customers who came from all over. Business was especially brisk during World War II. For years, Hazel was a one-woman welfare department, helping families in times of need and often paying funeral expenses for neighbors on the Southside. The San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office, after issuing her several warnings to shut down, finally raided Hazel’s in 1949. Most of the “girls” escaped through a secret gate in the back fence, but Hazel was taken into custody. A petition signed by Tracy’s business leaders aware of Hazel’s generosity asked the court for leniency. She was fined $3,000 but not given a jail term. For a time, Hazel operated a dress shop at 11th and Parker, but later in the 1950s she reverted to her old ways. She was busted again in 1960 but never taken into custody while her trial was repeatedly postponed.
Hazel’s: The inside of Hazel’s house, at left, was well furnished and always ready to receive guests.
Several months after the arrest, Hazel became seriously ill in her low-rent apartment. She was taken to Tracy Community Memorial Hospital, but despite being one of the leading contributors to building the hospital in 1948, she was denied admission and sent to San Joaquin General Hospital — a decision that has haunted the hospital to this day. Amelia Broedell died Nov. 27, 1960, at the age of 82. Perhaps the most unusual episode of Tracy’s Poker City days was the recall of Dr. J. Frank Doughty from the Tracy City Council.
Those who lived outside the law were sometimes the biggest supporters of Tracy causes.
The short (5-foot-2) and outspoken physician was elected to the City Council in 1936 on a platform of “cleaning up Tracy.” That prospect didn’t sit well with the Poker City interests, and a year after being elected, Doughty was served a recall petition that contained vague language about him not serving the interest of his constituents. It was no secret that Charlie Clark, the slotmachine operator, was orchestrating the recall. On June 25, 1937, Tracy residents voted, 536-439, to recall Doughty. Poker City survived to live another day.
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Highways pave Tracy’s new future I
Cars turned Tracy from a rail hub into a nexus of highways.
n the first decade of the 20th century, automobiles were still a relatively scarce in Tracy and elsewhere as they weaved around horse-drawn carriages on rutted dirt roads. The Fabian-Grunauer Co., Tracy’s leading mercantile firm of the era, was selling Studebakers from its store at Sixth Street and Central Avenue. Other autos were sold and serviced at garages and machine shops in the downtown area. All that began to change in the 1920s, after World War I, when the automobile became the dominant mode of transportation and parking spaces began replacing hitching posts along business streets. Auto dealerships — many still called “garages” — were first opened in the downtown area and then popped up on 11th Street, Tracy’s slice of the Lincoln Highway and later Highway 50, which began stealing the prominence held by the railroad as the town’s main transportation corridor. The northeast corner of 11th Street and Holly Drive, now a vacant lot, was the site of the first major auto dealership in 1914. Charles Slack, one of Tracy’s
Fresh squeezed: The distinctive Giant Orange stand, opened in 1926 by Frank “Pop” Pohl and his wife, Lora, served travelers at 11th and E streets.
busiest developers, constructed a building on the corner to house the Dwelly Bros. machine shop and auto sales and repair operation. It was named the West Side Garage. The building was demolished two years ago. Other auto dealerships were constructed along 11th Street in the 1920s as the use of automobiles increased with the building of new roads. East of town, the two 90degree turns of the Lincoln Highway leading to Banta were eliminated and a new section of roadway leading to the
Mossdale Bridge over the San Joaquin River was constructed. The Tracy Chamber of Commerce, which beat back several efforts by highway engineers to make Grant Line Road, and not 11th Street, the route of the Lincoln Highway — later Highway 50 — through Tracy, was active in promoting improved highways. George Good, a local lumber dealer and past chamber president, became chairman of the chamber’s Highway Committee and took part in meetings throughout the area in an effort to coor-
dinate efforts to secure state and county funding for paving and straightening area roads. As automobile traffic increased, service stations, often called “filling stations,” were installed up and down 11th Street — along with restaurants, the renowned Giant Orange stands and competitors such as the Giant Lemon and Orange Basket. Tracy’s efforts to serve the motoring public were capped off by the construction of the Tracy Inn in 1927. The inn, located on a former playground area for adjacent Central School, was a community project. The Tracy Hotel Corp., headed by Good, sold stock to local residents, raising $137,800 — more than the goal of $85,000 — in 1926 to assure completion of the project in January 1927. In 1922, 11th Street was improved and in 1929, widened to four lanes with parallel parking on both sides of the street, reported Gary Kinst, historian of road and highway development in the Tracy area. “The railroad brought Tracy to life, and the Lincoln Highway enabled it to grow and prosper,” he wrote.
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Freeways put Tracy in the triangle T he completion of the four-lane freeway across the Altamont Pass in 1938 marked the dawn of freeway development in the Tracy area, a beginning that resulted more than three decades later with the encircling of Tracy by three interstate freeways. In 1938, the Altamont Pass was still part of Highway 50, which ran through the center of Tracy on 11th Street. In 1954, a four-lane section of Highway 50 was constructed between Tracy and the Altamont Pass, but the days of running major highways through the centers of towns were numbered. The federal interstate freeway system, signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, changed all of that. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, routes for interstate freeways in the Tracy area were being determined through a series of public forums and engineers’ calculations. It was first determined that a foothill route, Interstate 5, would run along the west side of the valley connecting via Interstate 580 to the Altamont
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the future? Altamont Corridor Express trains may bring rail travel back to Front Street.
Pass. The main route of I-5 would pass east of town. About that time, a decision was made to run a section of freeway around the north side of Tracy connecting to Stockton and northbound I-5. That section became Interstate 205. The first leg of what would become the Tracy freeway triangle came into being in November 1967 when I-580 was completed along the hills west and south of town as part of a freeway project extending south to Los Banos. The Altamont Pass route, which became a section of
I-580, was enlarged in 1970 with construction of a second four-lane road bed to provide four lanes of traffic in each direction. Freeway construction continued in the Tracy area with the completion in December 1970 of I-205 around the north side of Tracy. Construction of the final leg of the triangle, I-5 east of town, was completed in November 1971. The Gordon H. Ball Co. of Danville was the contractor on all three freeway legs. Later, the I-580 stretch near
Tracy was named for W.E. “Brownie” Brown, a onetime Tracy mayor who had been active with the 33 Highway Association that was instrumental in establishing the route of the foothill freeway. I-205, originally known as the North Tracy Bypass, was named for Robert T. “Bob” Monagan, another former Tracy mayor who became speaker of the state Assembly. In the past decade and a half, the heavily traveled I-205 was gradually enlarged from two lanes of traffic in both directions to three lanes each way, providing relief from what had became a traffic bottleneck. In fact, the future of transportation to and from Tracy may yet again lie in rail travel. Altamont Corridor Express runs four daily round trips to and from San Jose and plans to increase that to six round trips by 2018, and 10 by 2022. ACE is also studying whether to move the Tracy stop down to the transit station at Sixth Street and Central Avenue — bringing passenger railroad back to Front Street.
The rails that created Tracy may be a solution to heavy traffic on the triangle of interstates.
| 37
Led by a gambler and a madam, Tracy residents donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund a community hospital.
Community builds its own health care
T
racy Community Hospital was truly built by the community. For the first half of the 20th century, most Tracy children were born at hospitals in Stockton, and the nearest emergency room was 15 miles away at San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp. In 1945, Dr. J. Frank Doughty — a former city councilman who was forced off the council in 1937 during a recall election funded by Poker City gambling interests — approached the Chamber of Commerce and the City Council looking for money to build a hospital in Tracy. He was unsuccessful until he enlisted the help of bean grower George Clever and developer C.E. “Pete” Ritter. They led a fundraising campaign to raise $250,000 from the community to build a 40bed hospital.
They reached their goal in 1947 and sent the project out for bid. When the bids came back, the lowest was $362,582 — more than double the initial $175,000 set aside for construction. So the group went back to the community and raised another $175,000 by May 1947. All told, the citizens of Tracy pledged $420,000 through 2,200 donations — including $17,500 from Tracy’s slot-machine king and operator of the Terminal Grill, Charles A. “Charlie” Clark, and $7,000 from madam Hazel Price, whose real name was Amelia Broedell. The group purchased the land at the corner of Eaton and Bessie avenues and began construction. The hospital was completed in late 1948 and dedfoundation: The original hospital sat on the same site — icated on Dec. 12 of that year.
hospital, continued on next page
on Eaton Avenue between Bessie Avenue and Tracy Boulevard — as Sutter Tracy Community Hospital now.
Detailed information will be available soon as Tracy Hills updates its plan in partnership with the City of Tracy © 2014 Integral Communities, All Rights Reserved. The developer reserves the right to modify or change the conceptual plan depicted herein without prior notice.
38 |
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celebrate tracy | June 20, 2014
hospital continued from pAGE 38 The hospital almost immediately ran into financial problems, losing $32,000 the first year. Voters would not approve a hospital district to levy taxes to support operations, but the people did support a third fundraising drive and gave $30,000 to put the hospital’s books in order. Tracy Community Hospital added a maternity ward in the late ’50s and built a new wing, with 26 new beds, in 1964 after another community fundraising campaign. A second major expansion, completed in 1977, included a new operating room, pharmacy and emergency room. The hospital spent $2.5 million and bought Harmon Park north of the hospital from the city to expand into. In 1991, Tracy Community Hospital expanded once again, spending $18 million to add a second floor, intensive care unit, laboratory
and same-day surgical suite. In 1993, hospital directors voted to affiliate with Sutter Health Systems, which gave the Tracy Community Memorial Hospital Foundation control over the hospital real estate holdings and $4 million in cash reserves to maintain some local control over the hospital’s future. In 1996, the hospital’s name was changed to Sutter Tracy Community Hospital. Kaiser Permanente opened medical offices on Grant Line Road near Interstate 205 in January 2005. Sutter was supposed to expand medical care for Tracy citizens with a new, high-tech facility within the Gateway development that broke ground Oct. 28, 2010, west of Kimball High School. But the residential and business park development still has not manifested, and Sutter has decided to postpone development in Gateway for 10-15 years.
then & now
community care: Above, Tracy Community Hospital as it looked the day of its dedication, Dec. 12, 1948. Below, Sutter Tracy Community Hospital on June 10, 2014.
The Tracy Hospital Foundation still controls land and assets for Tracy’s first hospital.
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| 39
Economic activity ramped up to support the war effort — on the railroad, at the new depot, on airport runways and at a secret POW questioning center.
World War II brings Tracy back to life A
fter limping through the Depression of the 1930s, Tracy started coming alive in beginning of the 1940s as war clouds gathered. The pace of economic activity became even more active after the United States entered World War II with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. During World War II between 1941 and 1945, the Southern Pacific Railroad went full steam into action, the Tracy Defense Depot was opened, the War Department operated an ultra-secret prisoner-of-war interrogation camp at Byron Hot Springs northwest of town — known by many as Camp Tracy — and the Vernalis Naval Auxiliary Landing Field was active to the southeast. In town, stores, restaurants and taverns were busy, and in the rural areas, farmers who had struggled through the Depression found good demand for their products. Southern Pacific operations began ramping up in 1940 and boomed after the U.S. entry into the war. Military materiel and personnel flowed through the rail yard in en route to the Pacific war zone. With many of the railroad’s male employees in the armed forces, women went to work in “the shops” repairing steam engines and boxcars. Federal funds financed the construction of Wainwright Village, which provided housing for depot and S.P. workers. What was originally the location of 50 four-unit apartments was later acquired by the city of Tracy and is now Tracy Civic Center. The depot, first known locally as “The Quartermaster,” was
opened in September 1942 on 448 acres of land southeast of town where the Southern Pacific and Western Pacific rail lines crossed. The depot — officially the Lyoth Sub-Depot of the Oaklandbased California Quartermaster Depot — handled nonperishable food, clothing and general supplies, much of it headed to American forces in the Pacific.
Initially, hundreds of Tracy residents went to work at the depot, which had 12 warehouses and outdoor storage at the outset. Close to 500 German prisoners of war worked at the depot while housed in a tent city. Other German and Italian POWs were housed in rural camps while harvesting crops. The U.S. Army Air Forces took over Tracy Municipal
In Wartime: Top left, the Tracy depot — shown in May 2002 — was opened during World War II to support American armed forces in the Pacific Theater. It now employs about 1,2000 people as Defense Distribution Depot San Joaquin. Below left, the Byron Hot Springs hotel served as an interrogation center for Japanese and German prisoners.
Airport and also built a landing strip at Vernalis to train pilots in two-engine planes. At the Tracy Airport, the Army replaced the gravel runway with concrete runways, one extending about 4,000 feet. The original facilities were built by the American Legion in 1929 and used in 1940-41 by students of the Boeing School of Aeronautics training to be United Airline pilots. Meanwhile, at Byron Hot Springs roughly 14 miles northwest of town, what was officially named in most military messages as “P.O. Box 651, Tracy, Cal.” was a top-secret prisoner-of-war interrogation center enclosed in two 12-foot-high wire fences patrolled by guards carrying submachine guns. In the three-story brick hotel building, Army and Navy interrogators questioned 3,234 Japanese and 252 German prisoners of war.
World War II, continued on next page
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World War II continued from pAGE 40 The POWs were at the top-secret base for periods of one or two days to several months, depending on the information they provided. Although many POWs refused to talk, some Japanese prisoners captured on naval vessels and on Pacific islands provided invaluable information. Of special interest were details about Japanese surface ships and submarines, the whereabouts of Army units and the location of prime Japanese industries, including aircraft factories. Some useful information was also gleaned from German prisoners. Techniques used by Japanese- and German-speaking interrogators were almost always non-threatening, although there were exceptions. Rooms on the third floor of the hotel building were “bugged” by what were then the most sophisticated listening systems. Tape recorders in the basement recorded the conversations for transcribing. The Vernalis Naval Auxiliary Air Station served as a practice-landing site for Navy planes flying out of Alameda Naval Air Station. There was some limited practice bombing in the hills west of the base. Several hundred Navy personnel were stationed there. A USO center for military personnel was established in the former Central School on Central Avenue.
To the skies: Before an air show at Tracy Municipal Airport in 1931, members of the Tracy City Council visited the airport: Fred Herzog (from left), Nelson Dwelling, Mayor John Ranley, R.G. Harvey and C.L. Sheppard. The airport opened in 1929 after the American Legion constructed a runway and first hangar.
Tracy earns wings
I
n many ways, Tracy Municipal Airport has not evolved as rapidly, or as much, as the rest of Tracy. In 1928 — at a time 10 years after the end of World War I when the promise of aviation was becoming known throughout the country — “flying circuses” were performed all over the country by daring barnstorming pilots.
The mounting interest in aviation came at a time of energetic business activity in Tracy. The town — spurred by the development of irrigation in the rural areas and a rapid increase in motor vehicle travel on paved roads and highways — was growing fast. W.D. Cannon of Metropolitan Airways urged the development of an airport for Tracy.
He and George Pond, who had been a U.S. Navy test pilot, recommended placing it south of town along the Altamont foothills, because — at an elevation of 200 feet — the airport could thus avoid much of the valley’s wintertime tule fog. In September 1928, the new American Legion Airport
Mounting interest in aviation after World War I coincided with a time of energetic business activity in Tracy.
Airport, continued on next page
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Airport continued from pAGE 41
Activity at the airport has waxed and waned in its 87-year history. A new city plan could greatly expand facilities there.
Committee, headed by H.J. “Hap” Frerichs, received support from the Tracy Chamber of Commerce and urged the Tracy City Council to purchase 158 acres three miles south of town from Al Pereira. Council members agreed several meetings later to buy the property. The Legion post agreed to lease property from the city for three years, developing gravel runways and taxiways. Tracy Municipal Airport opened in April 1929 with a three-day air show. The air show was a resounding success, drawing thousands of people. But turning the airport into a busy, commercial enterprise proved more difficult, especially with the broad impact of the Great Depression. The Legion ran the airport until 1931 and then, when the post’s threeyear contract was up, turned it back to the city. The airport got a new lease on life in 1940 when — at the urging of Ken Hamilton, a pilot and active member of the Tracy Chamber of Commerce — the Boeing School of Aeronautics leased the airport to train pilots for United Airlines. From October 1940 through December 1941, about 120 young men received secondary flight training before earning their United wings and being assigned as co-pilots. The training at the airport lasted six to eight months. The student pilots were housed and fed at Tracy Inn and attended ground school classes next door at the original Central School on Central Avenue. But the training ended soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Tracy was too close to the coast for security, and the school moved to Cheyenne, Wyo. During World War II, the U.S. Army Air Forces took over the airport as an auxiliary landing field for Stockton
Field, where multi-engine pilots completed advanced training before receiving their wings. Fairchild twinengine planes were common sights in the skies over Tracy. The U.S. Army built two 4,000-foot concrete runways and a third one of 3,400 feet. The shorter runway now holds the main hangar and tie-downs. After the war, the military turned both facilities over to the city. Prospects for private aviation seemed unlimited, and Tracy Municipal Airport took on renewed activity. Flying enthusiasts formed the Tracy Flying Club, which held regular air shows at the field. George Boys, Frank Haley and Carl Trinkle launched an ag-flying service at the airport, later moving to a private New Jerusalem strip. In the 1960s and ’70s, Fourth of July air shows were held at the airport. But general aviation, which held so much promise in the years immediately following World War II, became more of a luxury in later years, and activity at the airport slowed again. Currently, Skyview Aviation operates an aircraft sales and delivery service along with pilot training. On June 3, the Tracy City Council approved a new Airport Layout Plan to submit to the Federal Aviation Administration. The plans call for more than tripling the private hangars at the field, adding corporate hangars to cater to the large companies with private jets that are moving to Tracy, modernizing the administration offices and adding a commercial space, which — consultant Reinard Brandley opined — could someday house a restaurant. The council is submitting the plan to the FAA in hopes of securing a federal grant to help pay the $12 million price tag for the improvements.
Flight plans: At top, Tracy Municipal Airport today, as seen June 10. Above, the first class of pilots trained for United Airlines at Tracy Municipal Airport in 1940-41.
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Postwar Tracy booms D
uring its 136-year history, Tracy has experienced periods of major change when the shape and feel of the community took on a new life and look. Such a period was the decade beginning in 1910. Looking back some 70 years, it becomes apparent that the decade following the end of World War II — 1946-56 —can qualify as another period of major change. As in so many communities, the end of the war unleashed pent-up demand for goods, services and homes. 44 — Even before the war ended in August 1945, the largest addition of land to the city until then was completed in 1944 with the annexation of Parker Acres. Residents living in homes scattered on 580 acres between Eaton Avenue on the south and Grant Line Road on the
Major industry: Truckloads of tomatoes await processing at the Tracy H.J. Heinz Co. factory. Opened in 1946, it became the largest Heinz tomato-processing facility in America.
north voted 239-119 to be annexed. When development of what became Parker Acres began in the 1920s, the city agreed to provide water, but sewage was handled in backyard septic tanks. There were
no paved streets and few sidewalks. After annexation, major projects to lay sewer lines, pave streets and build sidewalks were started. 1945-46 — The H.J. Heinz Co. factory was completed late in
1945 and went into production in the spring of 1946, the first major industry to locate in Tracy since the factory that became Holly Sugar was opened in 1917. The factory, designed by the renowned architectural
firm of Skidmore, Owens & Merrill and constructed by the Bechtel Corp., provided employment for many returning veterans. At first, the plant concentrated on tomato products. A decade later, Heinz expanded its range of products and its operations to year-round and made Tracy its West Coast headquarters. Tomatoes grown for the Heinz plant and general demand for farm products also gave the Tracy agricultural industry a major boost. New equipment, including tractors, plows and oneman hay balers, spurred growth of farming.
The decade after the end of the Second World War — 1946-56 — became another period of great change for Tracy.
After the war, continued on next page
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| 43
Tracy gained a new City Hall, hospital, schools and other infrastructure in the postwar years.
New construction: At left, the Delta-Mendota Canal was completed in 1951 to carry water to Central Valley farms and points south. El Portal School, below left, was one of several schools built in Tracy during the decade from 1946 to 1956. It was later renamed Monte Vista Middle School. Deuel Vocational Institution also opened during that decade, in 1953; below right, an inmate welds an aircraft frame in one of DVI’s shops. The prison recently restarted its vocational programs, which had been abandoned because of overcrowding.
After the war continued from pAGE 43
1947 — City offices were moved from the 1917 City Hall at Ninth and Central to the original Central School, which had given way to a new Central School in 1938. The original City Hall’s fire station facilities were expanded. 1948 — The longheld dream of having a local hospital was realized in December 1948 when Tracy Community Memorial Hospital was opened. Residents and firms of the Tracy area raised $420,000 from 2,200 individual donations to build the 49bed facility, which was expanded four times and is now Sutter Tracy Community Hospital. 1950 — The construction of new buildings — a gymnasium and classroom wing — at Tracy High School ushered in a boom in school building. Constructed were Senior Elementary School (later Clover Middle School, and now Tracy Learning Center),
North, South and McKinley elementary schools, El Portal School (now Monte Vista Middle School) and a new West Park School (now Stein High School). 1951 — Tracy staged a three-day celebration to welcome the opening of the Tracy Pumping Plant and Delta-Mendota Canal of the Central Valley Project. Gov. Earl Warren flipped the switch to start the pumps, sending water 120 miles south to the Mendota Pool and irrigating farmland along the way. 1952 — The Tracy District Recreation
Commission, organized a year earlier, began operating with the hiring of Joe Wilson as its first director. The commission was a joint venture of the city, two school districts and the county. City and school facilities were used for recreation programs. 1953 — Deuel Vocational Institution was opened east of town. The prison, operated by the California Department of Corrections, was originally known as the California Vocational Institution when opened in 1946 in Lancaster as a vocational school
for Youth Authority offenders. DVI’s original programs stressed vocational training in a variety of areas for younger inmates. 1954 — The councilmanager form of city government was approved by Tracy voters, providing professional management — headed by a councilappointed city manager — of programs and policies approved by the City Council. Before, each member of the council, other than the mayor, oversaw an area of city government: police, fire, utilities and finance.
1956 — In 1956, the last steam engine — No. 1751 — left Southern Pacific’s Tracy yard, marking the end of the steam era and the beginning of the decline of railroad activity and employment in Tracy. At one time, in the early 1950s when Korean War shipments peaked, the Southern Pacific Railroad had more than 900 employees in Tracy. Then the roundhouse, where engines were serviced, and the freight-car shops were closed. Later, train crews began moving to Roseville.
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Face of farming changes in 1940s A
heritage: Above, alfalfa hay is harvested by one-man balers, which revolutionized hay harvesting after World War II. Tracy became home of the San Joaquin Valley Hay Growers Association in 1946 and continues to be a major hay producing area. At right, grower Jim McLeod picks through the local apricot harvest.
and apricots. New machinery lthough industrial development, especially and improved cultural pracin warehousing and dis- tices, including the use of new ag chemicals, increased protribution, has been the major duction. driver of economic growth, The beginning of mechaniagriculture remains an imporcal harvesting of tomatoes in tant factor in the Tracy area’s 1963 compensated for the end economy. of Public Law 78, which had What began with dry-land brought Mexican “braceros” grain farming — wheat and here to harvest barley — in the tomatoes by hand. latter half of the In the late 1970s 19th century gave Read more and early 1980s, way to irrigated P re-irrigation farming crops a century when interest rates was tough business for for ag-production ago, when irrigaearly residents of the tion districts were loans ballooned, a Tracy area. formed. Land number of growPage 14 ers faced financial was subdivided and row-crop and challenges and orchard farmers some foreclosures. and dairymen arrived on the Farming stabilized in the 1980s Tracy farm scene. and into the 1990s, at a time After facing tough times in when the number of dairies the Depression years before was drastically reduced by World War II, farming got a economics and the federal shot in the arm during the war. whole-herd buyout program, When the H.J. Heinz Co. and most apricot orchards were pulled out. factory started production in In the past five years or so, 1946, growing of canning tomaa dramatic increase in the toes boomed, augmented by alfalfa hay, beans and orchards — mostly walnuts, almonds farming, continued on next page
Following World War II, new machinery and factories pushed Tracy area farmers to new success and efficiency.
Tracy City Center Association 1025 Central Avenue Tracy, CA 95376 tel: 209.597.0073 fax: 209.879.0102 tcca@tracycitycenter.com www.TracyCityCenter.com Tracy press | www.tracypress.com
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farming continued from pAGE 45
The current drought may again change the lives of local farmers — for some, the change may be permanent.
working the land: Above, John Robertson (left) and his brotherin-law Bill Alcock drive Caterpillar tractors through a Carbona field to cut and windrow dry beans. At left, tomato growing exploded in the Tracy area after World War II. Into the 1960s, the crop was harvested by hand, mostly by Mexican nationals, later called “braceros.” Many of the local tomatoes went to the H.J. Heinz Co. factory in Tracy.
acres planted in almonds and walnuts has again changed the face of farming in Tracy. Almonds especially have become a dominant Tracy area crop. More than 3,000 acres of almond trees are estimated to have been planted within the past few years as growers sought steady income from a crop in worldwide demand and one with minimum labor requirements. Some growers long accustomed to leasing ground for row crops are finding it more difficult to secure sufficient acreage. Adequate water for agriculture remains a major concern. The present drought is expected to cause water shortages in some areas, especially those dependent on Delta-Mendota Canal water, which so far in 2014 has been curtailed to 5 percent of normal allocations. On Jan. 17, Gov. Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency, casting into doubt the future water rights of many local farmers who had come to depend upon direct access to the Delta or state waterways. Some irrigation districts have told their customers to expect potentially permanent loss of water rights if the drought continues.
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Tracy culture was homegrown O
ver the years, no one has celebrated Tracy more than the community itself. Celebrating the arts, agriculture, our varied heritage and our shared American identity have been staples of yearly life. The first service clubs in Tracy — the Tracy Woman’s Club and Tracy Lions Club, both organized in 1922 — threw Christmas parties for patients at convalescent hospitals and put on the community’s first festival, the Tracy Tomato Festival. The Tracy Rotary Club, organized in December 1929 at the height of the Great Depression, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to send Tracy teens to college. The Tracy Optimists, Soroptimists, Kiwanis Club, Sunrise Rotary, Tank Town Lions Club and a host of other service organizations have paved the way for community activism. The West Side Board of Trade — which became the Tracy Chamber of Commerce — was founded in 1909, the year before Tracy’s incorporation. In addition to helping attract businesses to Tracy, the chamber has been a key sponsor of many of Tracy’s public celebrations. Chamber members
helped sponsor the annual Fourth of July Day in the Park celebration and the California Dry Bean Festival. The festival, which started in 1987, was reorganized this year as the Taste of the Valley Art and Food Festival, opening Sept. 7. The many people who migrated to Tracy from other parts of the world brought their own traditions and celebrations, which have been woven into the fabric of Tracy’s cultural life. After World War I, Portuguese families — many from the islands of the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean — moved to the Tracy area and began farming and raising dairy cows. The most visible sign of Tracy’s Portuguese heritage is the yearly “festa” sponsored by the IPFES, Tracy’s prominent Portuguese society. The festival, which begins June 20, draws thousands of people from all over Northern California. The presentation of the queens, a Catholic mass in Portuguese at St. Bernard’s Church, a parade and bloodless bullfights are all parts of the festa — festival in Portuguese — experience. The Tracy African American Association — which succeeded Tracy’s first African-American organization, the Ways and Means
Committee, in 1993 — holds the annual Juneteenth celebration to commemorate June 19, 1865, when slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned that the Civil War had ended and they were free. Mexican families came back to Tracy — most had left when California joined the United States in 1848 —when World War I began. The Southern Pacific Railroad brought Mexican families to Tracy because of a shortage of men to work the rail yard. Most lived at first in boxcars with no electricity, running water or sewers, heated only by small coil-oil stoves. Some lived in those cars for decades before finding permanent homes. Most of Tracy’s MexicanAmerican families formed a close bond and lived on the south side of the tracks for generations. During and after World War II, the government began the “bracero” program for temporary farm laborers, bringing even more Mexican families into the Southside community. The community has changed over the years and expanded out into the rest of Tracy, but every September, the celebration of Mexican Independence Day — sponsored by the South
Side Community Organization — begins on the Southside with talent shows, music, dancing, pageants and food. Tracy’s cultural heritage is not all derived from the cultures of the people who have come here. In 1991, the Tracy Art League began the “Expressions” art show to celebrate art and artists and to educate Tracy youth. Children’s tours of the show — which runs for two weeks every February — have hosted more students than the present population of Tracy. Tracy residents have also actively built our cultural heritage, giving millions of dollars to launch the Boys and Girls Clubs of Tracy, the Grand Theatre Center for the Arts, a community hospital and many other institutions. “Expressions,” the former Festival of Trees fundraiser for the Tracy Hospital Foundation, Tracy’s Home for the Holidays, the annual golf tournament and auction for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Tracy, the Brighter Christmas charity for families and children in need and many more annual efforts are directly supported and funded by the people of Tracy in a legacy of giving that will benefit the community for years to come.
Tracy residents have actively built our cultural heritage — a legacy of giving that will benefit the community for years to come.
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Growing, slowing, growing again R
esidential growth in Tracy moved along at a steady but moderate rate during the 1960s and through the 1970s. Subdivisions were individually developed in various parts of town. That changed in the 1980s as Tracy began feeling the impact of the shortage of affordable housing in the Bay Area, resulting in pressure for home-building in Tracy and other towns in the northern San Joaquin Valley. In response to that growing demand for housing, especially single-family homes, city officials began planning Tracy’s response: master-planned residential and industrial growth. Those plans became known in the mid-1980s as the Residential Specific Plan and Industrial Special Plan. Before the plans were completed, however, the city instituted special bonding districts to finance the infrastructures of growth. The first financial instrument was known as 84-1, which provided funds for water, sewage and storm-drain facilities. Fees paid by developers would service the bond issues. And in a move not considered
From slow, steady growth in the 1960s and ’70s, Tracy exploded in the 1980s and ’90s before hitting the brakes in the 2000s.
by many cities in California at the time, a special Mello-Roos fee to finance school construction was approved in 1987 with the formation of a city-schools jointpowers agreement, which levied an annual fee of close to $1,000 per year on new residential units. Although greatly unpopular with many new residents — especially those whose children couldn’t attend Mello-Roos-funded schools because of classroom overcrowding — it did for the first time provide local funding for school construction based on homes constructed. The Residential Specific Plan master-planned 1,400 acres of land, mostly south and west of town, for development of an estimated 7,200 residential units, mostly single-family homes but some multifamily complexes. At a maximum average of 1,200 units per year (individual years could hit 1,500, as prescribed by an accompanying growth-management ordinance), it was estimated to take six years, or possibly longer, to complete growth under the plan. Because of the ups and downs of the housing market, it took longer.
In 1988, 703 residential building permits were issued in Tracy. The following year, 1989, the total increased to a new record of 1,390. The building boom then began to subside in intensity, and 1990 saw 714 permits for home construction issued. The modest rate of residential development continued through most of the 1990s but increased in 1998, when 1,026 permits were issued. The city responded to market demand for two-story homes on smaller lots by rezoning many residential areas to mediumdensity residential, which allowed smaller lot sizes. As Residential Specific Plan allotments began to run out, development of subdivisions in what was called the Plan C area, with 6,000 residential-growth allotments, moved forward. Plan C developer fees were the principal source of revenue for the city’s $44.5 million share of building a project to bring Sierra runoff water to Tracy. In 2000, 1,599 residential building permits were issued as developers responded to a hot market for homes. Proposals
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to increase the annual average above 1,200 residences were discussed, adding to a growing angst among some Tracy residents who felt that the city was losing control of managing growth and that developers were calling the shots. A measure to cut the growth rate in half — to a 600-home yearly average and a 750-home one-year maximum — was placed on the ballot in March 2000 but lost by a narrow margin, with “no” votes securing 51.3 percent of the ballots. An identical measure — Measure A — was placed on the November general election ballot and was successful, with 56.1 percent “yes” votes. In addition to reducing by half the average number of housing starts in a year, the measure provided provisions to promote infill, low-income and senior citizen housing. Measure A didn’t become effective immediately, because Plan C subdivisions had already secured development rights. Many of those subdivisions were built out in the next several years, and because the city
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Development plans 11,000 homes northeast of Tracy
T
leaps and bounds: Developers are still adding to Mountain House, northwest of Tracy. Construction on three developments in Hansen Village — including the one above, seen May 2, 2014 — is underway. There are 4,100 homes so far in the planned community, and Mountain House Town Center is expected to be built within three years. Project developers unveiled a downtown plan with shopping, retail and residential space on May 31, 2014.
Housing growth continued from pAGE 48
had exceeded its new average maximum of residential permits, the number of housing permits was curtailed during the next several years to near zero.
About that time, the housing market’s figurative bubble burst, extending the dry spell for housing development. A positive result was that when the housing market crashed, Tracy had already throttled back its number of housing starts and was ready
for the housing drought’s impact on developer fees and city staffing needs. It wasn’t until 2013 that several subdivisions were approved and planned to begin construction this year — with two major projects, Tracy Hills and Ellis, in the wings.
he River Islands development near Mossdale Landing broke ground this year, and developers are showing models for the first of an expected 11,000 singlefamily homes along the San Joaquin River. DeNova Homes, Brookfield Residential and Van Daele Homes are all working on the first phase of the nearly 5,000-acre planned development in the city of Lathrop. However, because River Islands is within Banta Elementary School District boundaries, children in the budding community will likely attend Tracy High School. The Banta school district completed its first school in the community last year.
For now, the campus is occupied by a charter school, River Islands Technology Academy, but district leaders are planning to welcome River Islands children to a technology school that’s expected to open there in August. Once called Califia, and before that planned as a sprawling amusement park called Gold Rush City, River Islands has been the subject of big plans from Lathrop city leaders for years — plans that haven’t yet come to fruition. The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office and the LathropManteca Fire District will serve River Islands. Fire Chief Gene Neely anticipates that it will be two to five years before the community’s fire station is built.
Even as voters slowed Tracy’s growth, new communities began to grow nearby
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Tracy’s changing face
map of history: Tracy residents have added details to the community over the years — such as a new City Hall, bottom right, and the refurbished Grand Theatre Center for the Arts, bottom left — but no change in Tracy is more evident than the expanding city limits over the years, shown in the graphic at left. The city had 996 people when it was incorporated in 1910.
On a map, Tracy’s growth between 1910 and 1980 seems even and sustained. Today, the limits of the city are far beyond what people knew just 30 years ago.
The small yellow area in the middle represents Tracy’s boundaries in 1922, when the population was 2,450. The orange area north of the yellow reflects Tracy’s city limits in 1954, when the population was more than 8,400. By 1981, the city — which had grown to a population of more than 18,400 — had added only a small sliver of land to the south and a larger piece west of Tracy Boulevard, shaded in green. The gray area represents the city of Tracy in 2012. The area is even larger now since the annexation of Cordes Ranch in September 2013.
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