Seculovich vs. Railroads: The Need for a Drawbridge
Historical Essay
by Stephanie T. Hoppe
Stephanie T. Hoppe is a former staff counsel to the California Coastal Commission and a great-great-granddaughter of Peter Seculovich.
Part 9 of Peter T. Seculovich in San Francisco
View north/northeast from about Quint and Custer on the south side of today's Islais Creek channel, August 20, 1915, some years after the long-sought drawbridge was finally built.
Photo: OpenSFHistory.org wnp36.00850 [dpwbook12, dpw2507]
The railroads also persisted. Early in 1899, with its route to Santa Barbara approved the Southern Pacific firmed up its choice of route. The Chronicle borrowed Seculovich’s arguments:
The encroachments of the Southern Pacific on Islais creek have been continuous. From the navigable stream it was in the sixties it has been reduced to a succession of duck ponds. Now the company purposes to cut off the duck ponds and leave the property-owners high and dry, while it hurries its short line through their rights…..When the State was admitted the stream was not only recognized as navigable, but it was navigable for at least two miles from the bay. As late as 1862, the records show, a Government schooner of forty tons, laden with hay, was burned at Franconia point, and where a boat of forty tons can sail there are few who would have the hardihood to deny the navigability of the stream … The first step it took was in building the bridge across the creek at Kentucky street, over which now pass the cars of its electric system. That point is not more than half a mile from the bay and up to it, even now, the waters of Islais creek are navigable at high tide. Beyond it, only water fowl can keep the channel that once accommodated deeply laden schooners. Of course the Islais creek property-owners objected, but their objections came too late. The railroad, long before, despite the plain wording of the admission act, had found a legislature willing to do its bidding….The consequence has been that mud, which never would have been allowed to accumulate in a creek where vessels were sailed, has filled the channel above the obnoxious bridge, and, at present, the stream is an unnavigable as the Southern Pacific wants it to be…. The company purposes constructing a line as directly as possibly from its Third-and-Townsend-street yards to a point on Islais creek near the Kentucky-street bridge. There it intends to fill in the creek, shutting of entirely the tidewater from the lands above.
In conclusion, the reporter turned to Seculovich:
Captain Peter Seculovich, who has been foremost in the fight against Southern Pacific encroachment, says that a final assault will be made for property rights. He says that he has every confidence that the fight this time can be carried to a successful conclusion, to the end, at any rate, that the railroad will be compelled to respect those rights to the extent of substituting a drawbridge for its present and contemplated roads for the obstructions that now exist. He is not prepared at present to reveal his plans, but says they are based on the section of admission act heretofore pointed out. (Chronicle, 3/10/1899)
Discussion continued as to whether the crossing of Islais Creek and marsh should be by solid embankment or trestle. The city engineer voiced concerns to the Street Committee about navigation and the need for drawbridges over waterways such as Islais Creek. Southern Pacific representatives argued that San Francisco had ample waterfront facilities, but City Engineer Grunsky replied, “Basins and channels were not to be dispensed with.” In negotiations for a route for Santa Fe along Illinois Street, one block to the east of Kentucky Street, that company agreed “at any time when required to construct a draw bridge across the waterway known as Islais Creek channel” (Chronicle, 4/27/1900; Call & Post, 5/4/1900).
In June, the Street Committee of the Board of Supervisors, Mayor Phelan, City Engineer Grunsky, and Santa Fe Railroad representatives toured the area, considering whether the crossing of Islais Creek for the line to Santa Cruz should be on a trestle or fill. They noted that placing fill along the line of Illinois Street would be costly due to the muddy bottom and generally agreed on a drawbridge over Islais Creek. The group also discussed overall policy for the tidelands. Thirty years earlier, to both encourage and regulate the filling of the shallow tidelands along the San Francisco shoreline, the state legislature designated a line for a seawall to separate waters for public use for navigation, commerce and fisheries from waters that could be privately owned and filled. Construction of an actual physical seawall took 50 years, and never did reach as far south as Islais Creek, where the seawall line lay some 2,000 feet east of Kentucky Street, well out into San Francisco Bay. The mayor favored filling that stretch to create land for manufacturing, but Grunsky wanted several waterways “laid out between the seawall and the present shore line.” Santa Fe wished to fill China Basin in Mission Bay to the line of the seawall, creating 35 acres of solid ground for its yards. In August, the Board of Supervisors granted Santa Fe a franchise for a route along Illinois Street across Islais Creek with no mention of waterways or a draw (Chronicle, 8/7/1900; Call & Post, 8/14/1900). The Chronicle commented,
For years schooners used to come two or three miles up the creek as far as the Mission road. When the Market-street Railway Company ran its line of cars out Kentucky street the passage of boats up and down the stream was effectually barred by a trestle built across it. The people of the Mission for years have sought to have this obstruction removed, and view with alarm the granting of a franchise to the railroad without some provision being made in the franchise for a drawbridge. This to some extent has already been done, as the franchise expressly states that upon demand the railroad must build a drawbridge over the creek. The City has accepted Kentucky street, as it is now constructed, so has the right to reconstruct the trestle over the creek at that point and replace it with a drawbridge. This it will be urged upon the Supervisors to do. A little aid from the Federal Government for the dredging of the stream, it is contended, will make Islais creek of immense benefit to the Mission in the way of bringing trade and giving a cheap rate for produce. (Chronicle, 8/8/1900)
Islais Creek lift bridge at 3rd Street. Looking east as the drawbridge is up, Oct. 27, 1915.
Photo: OpenSFHistory.org wnp36.01046, [dpwbook14, dpw2817]
To the north of Mission Bay, wharves for shipping lined the waterfront, but to the south, development was more diverse, a mix of small and large industrial and commercial enterprises, including boatworks building the ubiquitous scow-schooners and the slaughterhouses with their myriad ancillary industries. In 1885, the Union Iron Works, the largest manufacturing plant of its time on the Pacific Coast, launched an 800-ton steamer. The “New Navy” of the 1890s, expanding US naval forces from coastal defense to ocean-going steel steamships, brought US government contracts to San Francisco for vessels such as the cruiser Olympia and the battleship Oregon, celebrated in the Spanish American War. The increase in trade and traffic to Asia that accompanied that war and the subsequent conquest and occupation of the Philippines further raised the hopes of shipping interests even as the railroads were increasingly buying up both waterfront land and water lots.
A gathering of representatives of Western states called the TransMississippi Congress passed resolutions calling for federal funding for various projects, including, in California, a deep-water port at San Pedro and improvements to the Oakland harbor, the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers—and Islais Creek. The congress also promoted the construction of cables to the Farallon Islands and Hawaii as well as “proper protection and defense” of Puget Sound with fortifications and a detail of warships (Examiner, 11/29/1894).
In 1896, the Harbor Commissioners tabled a proposal for a wharf along Tulare Street, bordering the north side of Islais Creek, on the grounds that the needs of commerce were at present insufficient and anyway funds were lacking. The proposal for a 1,000-foot wharf on Islais Creek at the end of Army Street piqued their interest, however, and they appointed a committee to “make soundings of the creek” and report back. Visiting members of the US House of Representatives Rivers and Harbors Committee met with representatives of San Francisco improvement clubs at the Palace Hotel on a Sunday afternoon in 1901. Skeptical about the benefits of improving Islais Creek, the committee asked for more information and without actually viewing the creek, departed to inspect the Stockton channels, the San Joaquin River and the Sacramento River as far upstream as the Feather River (Chronicle, 3/3/1896; Call & Post, 3/3 and 3/21/1896, 6/18/1901; Examiner, 3/4 and 5/1/1896, 6/24 and 7/3/1901).
In 1902, Seculovich “addressed a communication to the world in general and his associates in particular,”
protesting against the incursion of railroads and other corporations upon the waters of the bay, and calling upon the authorities and the public to save Islais and Bay View bays from further destruction….. He particularly calls attention to the grant of sixty acres of land in Mission bay for railroad terminal purposes, and maintains that said grant was without legal authority. In view of the fact that other railroad schemes are in projection, which will entail filling in parts of the harbor, he urges that the necessary steps be taken immediately to prevent such desecration. (Chronicle, 3/23/1902, p. 24)
One month later:
Peter J. [sic] Seculovich, president of the Islais Creek Property Owners’ Association, has filed a protest with the Harbor Commissioners against the Santa Fe’s proposed steel bridge across Islais creek closely parallel to Kentucky street. On behalf of his association he wants a drawbridge substituted for the proposed solid steel fixture, and enters a plea for the reopening of Islais creek to commerce. Before this complaint was issued he protested to the Secretary of War, who referred the matter to the resident United States engineers, with directions to investigate, but no remonstrance was interposed by the Government. Earlier than that he appealed to the Board of Supervisors, but that body granted the railway franchise, with the stipulation that a drawbridge should be substituted whenever the city might so desire. Even earlier than that there was a protest against the solid causeway being built across the creek to make Kentucky street, under which the water flows through a big culvert to the bay. (Chronicle, 4/30/1902)
In June, identified as Peter J Secneovetich, president of an improvement club, he presented another petition to the State Harbor Commissioners protesting the placing of a solid structure over Islais creek, which the commissioners referred it to their attorney. The following month when he made the same protest to the Board of Supervisors, the supervisors instructed their clerk to ask the Board of Public Works about “the feasibility and advisability of opening Islais creek to navigation by compelling the construction of drawbridges over Kentucky and Illinois streets” (Call & Post, 7/22/1902; Chronicle, 7/25/1902). In September, the Harbor Commissioners heard from their chief engineer that Islais Creek “has been considered a navigable waterway since April, 1888, but that no provision for the passage of vessels along the waterway had ever been made” (Chronicle, 9/4/1902). City officials took somewhat more interest. The city engineer recommended dredging Islais channel as far as Texas Street, some six blocks west of the Kentucky Street embankment. The Board of Public Works recommended surveys of the creek but no draws. The Street Committee asked for input from commercial sector. The Merchants Association argued that San Francisco needed better infrastructure for commerce—such as improving Islais Creek for shipping. The Chronicle agreed:
Islais creek is one of the few inlets on the bay shore of the peninsula within the boundaries of the city which an unwise and shortsighted policy in the disposition of the water front has left available for commerce. In moments of weakness Mission bay and China basin were given by the municipality to railroad corporations to be filled in and converted into solid land to serve as railroad yards, although it ought to have been plain to every one farsighted enough to see the possibilities of San Francisco as a commercial entrepot that both would some day be sorely needed for the docking of ships and the extension of wharf facilities for the handling of their cargoes. We have practically reached that stage in our commercial history when the possession of both would now be an inestimable boon. They would relieve the congestion created by the limited wharfage possible in ten miles only of frontage, besides helping to concentrate the shipping business in the heart of the city. Islais creek should not be permitted to suffer a fate similar to that of Mission bay and China basin. If commerce does not actually need it now it soon will. The inlet is over a mile long and 200 feet in width. Its inner end is adjacent to the Mission district. It ought to be navigable for sea-going vessels, as the Merchants’ Association Review says, and all that is needed to make it so is dredging and the opening of drawbridges in the railroad trestling which now crosses it. It offers an opportunity to give the city over two miles of addition frontage and wharfage. If it were open to commerce to-day it would doubtless be used by many ships which are required to swing at their anchors in the bay until a berth of the present water front is vacant for them As Islais creek is navigable water, it is the duty of the Federal Government, of course, to improve it so as to be available to shipping, but we may have to wait years for Congress to move in the matter. Meantime our wants for the accommodation of ocean commerce are growing. It is proper, therefore, that the Supervisors should adopt suitable measures for the creek’s preservation, at least, until Congress is willing to appropriate money for its improvemen.t We must conserve every foot of the water front possibilities remaining, and Islais creek is undoubtedly one of them. (Chronicle, 1/6/1903)
View north on 3rd Street near Cargo Street, through the Islais Creek drawbridge, Oct. 22, 1925.
Photo: OpenSFHistory.org wnp36.03273, [dpwbook35, dpw10019]
With a four-deck headline, the Chronicle announced subsequent calls for “opening of Islais Creek”:
“Declare Need of Wharfage”
“Men of Commerce Tell of Need for More Area on the City’s Water Front” • “All Agree on Value of Swamp District” • “Board of Works and Harbor Commissioners Are Asked to Get Up Plans for the Islais Creek Improvement”
City Engineer Grunsky … remarked that while he had mentioned 200 feet as the proper width for Islais creek channel, the late Colonel Mendell had suggested that it would be still better if another tier of blocks could be taken, making the harbor 500 feet wider. Industrial establishments, said Grunsky, should be given opportunity to get as close as possible to navigable waters.
Harbor Commissioner Paris Kilburn said the obstructions in the channel of Islais creek should be removed. The Commissioners, he declared, would co-operate in anything that would be for the good of the city and the State.
Harbor Commissioner Kirkpatrick remarked that a channel 200 feet wide would not be of much use. He thought there should be piers at right angles to the banks of the creek.
Lott D. Norton, engineer for the Harbor Commission, said that it would be of no use to dredge the creek until bulkheads should be constructed.
H. Mighell of the Chamber of Commerce said that there should be at least 600 feet of fairway to allow of the turning of ships.
Captain Nelson declared that the city was yet in its infancy and that the water front would have to expand to meet the requirements of commerce. The trade of the Pacific, he said, would surpass that of the Atlantic, as all of the Oriental trade must come this way. “No one,” he exclaimed, “can prophesy what the commerce of this city will be in twenty-five years.”
Andrea Sbarboro, representing the Manufacturers and Producers’ Association said that drawbridges should not be disturbed until the channel should be opened.
“I believe that the creek should be opened and a definite plan prepared,” said Isaac Upham of the Board of Trade.
“We favor the preservation of the waterway,” was the essence of the speech by W. J. Dutton, representing the Merchants’ Association.
Then spoke Peter T. Seculovich, an owner of property on Islais creek, and the man whose persistence has been the chief agency of stirring up all the discussion He said: ‘We demand the removal of all obstructions.” (Chronicle, 2/27/1903)
It must have seemed to Seculovich that everything he had ever asked for was suddenly within reach. And then came even more extravagant proposals. The Examiner reported that the engineers from the Harbor Commissioners, the city and the US Army Corps of Engineers were working on plans for a channel 500-600 feet wide, distance inland to be determined. The Call & Post provided additional details: a channel extending to Delaware Street, more than 2 miles up Islais Creek from the Kentucky Street embankment with dredging along that entire distance, as well as across nearly 1,000 feet of shallow waters on the bay side of the embankment. One of the Harbor Commissioners asked for a channel 1,000 feet wide to accommodate perpendicular piers and ships turning (Examiner, 3/1/1903; Call & Post, 3/3/1903).
Seculovich was not distracted from the railroads, protesting again to the Board of Supervisors about Southern Pacific crossing Islais Creek without a drawbridge. He expanded his legal argument to claim that only the federal government had the power to permit obstruction of the creek as it had sole authority over commerce and navigation (Chronicle, Call & Post, 6/23/1903).
Early in 1904, engineers from the city and the Board of State Harbor Commissioners released their long-awaited “general plan of improvement”—but it was limited to a basin and wharfage on the bay side of the Kentucky Street embankment. Seculovich urged the Harbor Commissioners to move forward with the larger project of opening the full length of Islais Creek to shipping. He claimed that he and other property owners had suffered $3 million in damages since 1878. A month later, he again asked the Board of Supervisors for a drawbridge in the Kentucky Street embankment, “telling the committee that its members would be sorry if the bridge were not constructed.” The chairman answered, “There was no commerce on the creek and that when there was a bridge would be constructed.” In any event, the Chronicle reported, there were “no funds in the city treasury available for the improvement of Islais creek” (Chronicle, 1/12, 3/10, 5/13 and 5/21/1904; Call & Post, 3/31/1904).
That fall, Santa Fe’s Ocean View Railroad to Santa Cruz secured its franchise and Southern Pacific received permits to start work on its Santa Barbara route. In his “oft-time renewed request” for drawbridges, Seculovich pointed out to the Board of Supervisors that the engineers from the city and the Harbor Commissioners had not yet reported, as directed, on the best manner of opening Islais creek to navigation. The board referred the issue to its Street Committee. In the new year, the Chronicle editorialized that instead of filling the bay, San Francisco should dredge shallow waters to make more wharf space.. The Chamber of Commerce also urged increased dockage, noting that the limited plan of improving India Basin with 10,000 additional dockage feet would be inadequate in five years (Chronicle, 11/1/1904, 3/14 and 10/12/1905; Call & Post, 11/1/1904, 8/7/1905).
Seculovich also returned to the Harbor Commissioners:
Peter T. Seculorich [sic], an old man who has frequently besought the Board to look after Islais creek, again appeared and implored the Commissioners to either build a drawbridge over the stream or remove the obstructions to navigation. Having no time to listen to Seculorich [sic], as usual, the Board fixed August 9th, at 10 o’clock in the morning, as the time for giving particular attention to this matter.” (Chronicle, 7/7/1905)
No such meeting was reported, but the Examiner took note of recognition Seculovich received:
Peter T Seculovich, president of the Islais Creek Property Owners’ Association, was recently presented by the members with a solid gold medal bearing on its face the word “Eureka” and the seal of the State. The token was given in appreciation of his successful efforts in reopening for commerce and navigation Islais creek, which was closed by the Southern Pacific Company at Butchertown. The presentation was made on behalf of the organization by A. O. Colton. Seculovich has been president of the association since its founding in 1880. He instituted a suit in the courts against the closing of the water way and secured a decision from the United States Supreme Court that no water way can be closed, leased or given away, but must be held in trust by the State for the nation. (Examiner, 11/13/1905)
These statements were largely inaccurate. The lawsuit brought by the Board of State Harbor Commissioners in 1880 was certainly instigated by Seculovich and furthered his aims, and the Islais Creek Property Owners Association put up funds for outside counsel to assist in the litigation—although we do not know if Seculovich himself contributed any money. Victory came in the trial court, but was overturned by the California Supreme Court, which decided for the railroad. The case never went to the US Supreme Court. Nor was navigation restored to Islais Creek—indeed, the absence of shipping would be difficult to miss. We might suppose the reporter relied on what Seculovich told him. Are the misstatements then the result of the reporter’s failure to understand Seculovich’s accented English? Or was Seculovich reframing the past? His efforts, although certainly persistent and often carrying a number of people in their train, had not, as yet, met with the least success.
However weary public officials became of his persistence, they sometimes took a kind thought for him. When Southern Pacific answered an inquiry about work it was performing in the creek to state that it had no intention of obstructing navigation in Islais Creek, the Harbor Commissioners directed their secretary to send a copy of the letter to Seculovich, “who has for years past made a hobby of seeing that Islais creek was not damaged” (Chronicle, Call & Post, 12/15/1905).
Two days later, the Harbor Commissioners directed their secretary “to notify the Southern Pacific Company that the bridge over Islais Creek, near Texas street, should be a drawbridge which would not interfere with the navigation of the stream. Report comes to the board that the railroad people are spanning the creek with trestle” (Call & Post, 12/17/1905, p. 9; 12/22/1905, p. 9). A month later, Seculovich complained to the Harbor Commissioners both about the Southern Pacific bridge and Santa Fe’s Ocean Shore Railroad “driving piles for another trestle bridge that would not exceed twenty feet in height”—that is, too low to allow ship passage (Chronicle, 1/12/1906). Adopting Seculovich’s reasoning, the Chronicle reported
Both corporations have ignored the navigability of this stretch of waterway by crossing it on trestling without providing drawbridges for the ingress and egress of shipping. While the improvement of the creek for the accommodation of commerce must ultimately be performed by the State Harbor Commission, jurisdiction over Islais creek as navigable water is vested exclusively in the War Department, which has the power to prevent its obstruction to commerce. That is unquestionably the authority whose aid should be invoked to preserve the creek for the use of shipping, and the power of the department should be exercised in that direction before the persistent and surreptitious efforts to gradually fill it make it a subject of irritating contention and prolonged costly litigation. (Chronicle, 1/13/1906).
The Call & Post chimed in:
The incident was noted yesterday that the Santa Fe maintained a crossing of Islais Creek. The Commissioners instructed Secretary Fay to communicate with the Santa Fe and obtain from that company an assurance similar to that filed by the Southern Pacific. In order to create a great basin in Islais Creek the Legislature would have to authorize the Harbor Commissioners to purchase forty blocks of land. The cost of dredging, added to the cost of the land, would exceed $3,000,000. Under the decisions quoted by the attorney of the commission it is made clear that Congress can at any time intervene and compel the removal of any obstruction to the navigation of the stream. It is also clear that the Southern Pacific maintains its culvert crossing at Kentucky street and also the crossing at Texas street under an old decision of the California Supreme Court, but Engineer Hood promises to put in the draws when the Commissioners decide that such work is necessary. (Call & Post, 1/19/1906, p. 11)
The Examiner complained that San Francisco had failed to develop harbor facilities with a view to successful and increased commerce and that Islais Creek channel was only 200 feet wide, “where 600 or 1,000 feet should have been allowed.” At the time, San Francisco had less than five miles of waterfront developed with not quite 10 miles of wharves, whereas New York had 400 miles of developed waterfront. The tonnage handled in San Francisco approached that of major ports in Europe, such as Liverpool, Rotterdam and Antwerp (Examiner, 1/19/1906; Chronicle, 1/25 and 2/15/1906).
The 1906 Earthquake
All these plans and complaints were eclipsed by the earthquake that struck at 5:12 in the morning on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. Seculovich was presumably safe in his bed, as were also his daughter, Jennie, and her family on Tenth Avenue near Golden Gate Park. Neither home burned in the subsequent fires, but either or both may have received structural damage. We know that Jennie and her young daughter stayed for some days in tents in the park while her husband was worryingly absent about the city but we have no information on how Seculovich fared. Some 250,000 of a total population of 350,000 residents were displaced. Some obtained one of the 5,000 portable cabins built by union carpenters for the San Francisco Relief Corporation and rented out for $2 per month. A refugee camp on Bernal Heights hosted 250 of these structures in what became a vibrant community with pop-up restaurants and bars. A few remain to this day, incorporated into larger residences.
The city moved quickly to rebuild. “Even the ashes of San Francisco are to be utilized in the work of rebuilding the city,” reported the Call & Post one week after the earthquake with the resulting fires still smoking. The Ocean Shore Railroad switched the 1,000 men working on its new route to cleanup. An estimated 9 million cubic yards of debris from the ruins was to “fill up the Islais Creek flats, transforming a marsh into eighty blocks of valuable land.”
To carry this off by the ordinary methods would take many months, and in order to save time C. E. Loss & Co., the contractors who volunteered to clean the streets without charge, began work today on an elaborate system of bunkers to be used by the various railway companies that have belted and traversed the burned district with spur tracks. These bunkers are to be placed at advantageous points on main lines or laterals. Each will have a capacity of from 1500 to 2000 cubic feet of debris.
The extreme length of wagon haul necessary to reach the bunkers will be four blocks, but the average haul will be only two blocks. The wagons will run up a short incline and dump their debris through a low trap into cars or skips, which, by means of a mechanical contrivance, will be raised twenty-six feet to the top of the bunkers, thence gravitating to the point where they are needed. Once the bunkers are completed and filled, which will be early next week, the railway companies will be able to fill their cars rapidly and keep them going continuously day and night until the great task is completed.
This system is expected to reduce the average cost of removing debris 70 per cent and incidentally enable the cleaners of the city to do what would ordinarily be a year’s work in “a few months’ time.” (Call & Post, 4/26 and 5/5/1906)
Seculovich could watch this work from his home on the San Bruno road, less than a mile away across the marsh to the south. He must have despaired, but still, nearing his 80th year, he returned to the Harbor Commissioners:
Peter T. Seculovich, the aged champion of Islais Creek, who has attended nearly every meeting of the board since 1880, tried to get a hearing before the new board, but was laughed into silence by President Stafford, who invited the old gentleman to call again in 1911. (Call & Post, 4/5/1907)
Originally from Oakland, W. V. Stafford had chaired the current governor’s campaign committee and received the post of state Labor Commissioner. After Stafford moved to San Francisco in March 1907, the governor appointed him as one of the State Harbor Commissioners for the city.
This time, Seculovich did not bother to take his petition to the Board of Supervisors, as he and everyone else in San Francisco realized the supervisors had no attention to spare for anyone but themselves with the news unfolding about the bribery scheme involving the mayor, his political associates and appointees, the entire 18-member Board of Supervisors and several city departments. As it happens, we can observe Seculovich following these developments. Before the news broke, on March 1, he began a scrapbook, clipping and gluing newspaper articles onto the pages of an account book left from his locksmith business. He began with articles going back several months, relating as we would expect, to Islais Creek and Southern Pacific. Other articles covered the state’s denial of a seawall for the city of Berkeley and litigation between the railroads and the city of Oakland over control of its port lands. A range of other topics also piqued his interest: instructions for perfecting title to real estate in San Francisco after the destruction of city hall and all of the property records; the appointment of a professor from the University of California to teach at an institution in Greece; a duel between two military officers in Russia; the conviction and jailing of British suffragettes for disrupting Parliament; suicides by several persons of means who fell on hard times; and the photo of a beauty contestant on which he wrote, “Looks like Mrs. EET”—his daughter, Jennie, then 37—“when at proper age.”
Coverage of the bribery scandal quickly overtook all his earlier interests. He clipped and glued the daily full-page updates on arrests and indictments. Following revelations of $1 million paid by competing telephone companies seeking an exclusive franchise for telephone service in the city, came evidence of bribery in earlier railroad and gas franchises. Much of this was commonly known or supposed, but the persistence of the district attorney in bringing it into the open and following up with prosecutions was something new in San Francisco. In the end, the district attorney gave the supervisors immunity from prosecution in exchange for their evidence against the mayor and other principals.
Although publicly disgraced, the supervisors continued in office. Some argued it was better to keep these known scoundrels in the public eye. If they resigned, the corrupt mayor would just appoint different cronies of his own. In July, after the mayor was indicted and resigned, 16 of the 18 supervisors did resign, and a new reform mayor appointed replacements. This new board took more seriously Seculovich’s complaints in August about sewer and street work:
The board will investigate the complaint of P. Seculovich that the Ocean Shore company had stopped the flow of the sewer in San Bruno avenue at the foot of Cortland avenue and also regarding the alleged poor street work in Forty-sixth avenue between H and J streets. (Call & Post, 8/15/1907)
That was Seculovich’s final public appearance that we know of, but he his interest in public affairs endured. In earlier years, he had joined different small reform parties, but in 1907 and 1908 he registered to vote in the Republican Party. Despite its long association with the railroads, it was also, at this time, the party of good government and opposition to corruption.
The 3rd Street bridge over Islais Creek, January 1, 2023.
Photo: Chris Carlsson
All sources for this 10-part article appear at end of Part 10.