| City of Larkspur, California |
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CENTENNIAL INFORMATION |
Larkspur Recalls its 'Naughty' Past
That's how former librarian Helen Wilson described Larkspur's early image. It was the playground of fun-seekers of the middle class who saw the community as a beautiful recreation area with a wide range of amusements and entertainment. As Larkspur celebrates its Centennial year, making merry will be just as important today as it was in the early days.
Longtime Larkspur resident Helen Heitkamp is directing a team of volunteers in updating Larkspur Past and Present, a history book that will appear in its fourth edition later in the year. The book will be filled with serious information about residential and commercial developments over the decades. But it will have its lighter entries as well. "We include the 'required' historic facts but also the stories we've collected of prize fighters, wild parties, bootleggers and some of the naughty things that happened here," explained Heitkamp. "We didn't want a stuffy history because old-time Larkspur was far from stuffy. It was dubbed a 'naughty' city by the rest of Marin County. Mill Valley parents would not allow their kids to come here."
A wild time was had in Larkspur from the 1890s through the 1920s, when Larkspur was known as a summer resort. Vacationers arrived by train and either camped out in Baltimore Canyon or stayed in one of three hotels in town: the Larkspur Inn at the end of Sycamore Avenue, a four-story 80 room resort hotel with a bowling green and croquet courts; the Blue Rock Inn, a businessman's hotel; and the Bon Air Hotel, located where Marin General Hospital is today, which had the reputation as a trysting spot for San Franciscans.
In the 1890s prizefighters such as Jim Corbett and welterweight Joe Walcott trained behind a house at Magnolia Avenue and Ward Street. Bars proliferated along Magnolia, including Len Young's Larkspur Bar on the first floor of the old Brazil Building (located north of today's Lark Theater), which burned in the early 1960s, and Gus Frizzi's Exchange, which featured steam beer for 5 cents, at 503 Magnolia (now the home of Coquelicot).
Four boardwalks between Doherty Drive and just beyond the Bon Air Bridge provided party spots for squatters, and there was swimming and boating in Corte Madera Creek until it became polluted. Today just Boardwalk #1 is left, and it has lost a lot of its Bohemian charm with homes now selling for a million dollars or more.
From 1913 to 1963 Larkspur was known nationwide for its Rose Bowl dances that during their heyday attracted 3,000 dancers on weekends to swing and jitterbug to big-band music. The finale of the evening was a dramatic fire fall that was dropped from the top of one of the redwood trees. Luckily, the dances were held by the Volunteer Fire Department as fundraisers, so there were always a lot of firemen around. Larkspur's bars got plenty of business before the dances and during intermission. People who acted up at the dances were packed into a boxcar and shipped out on the last train. A re-creation of the Rose Bowl dances, complete with big-band music and period dress -- but without strong-arm tactics -- is scheduled for September 13.
Wild weekend summer parties were held in Madrone Canyon in the teens and '20s. Other partygoers went to Escalle's Limerick Inn beer garden, which drew hundreds of merrymakers on Bastille Day. Wine was delivered from Escalle's vineyards twice weekly in a horse drawn buggy -- just like a milk route.
Some of Larkspur's naughty reputation stemmed from Prohibition. Before the federal law banning the sale of alcoholic beverages was passed, individual cities could determine if they wanted to be wet or dry. The Larkspur City Council pulled a fast one and shrewdly took the vote on a stormy night when only the wet voters came to the meeting. As a result, when most of Marin was dry, Larkspur was wet. There were 11 bars in the two-block-long downtown.
Even when the federal law was passed prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages, Larkspur outfoxed the Feds. Stills were set up in the marsh and bootleggers sold from the arks on the boardwalks. When operators saw men in fedoras coming down the boardwalk, they tossed the bottles into the creek. One boardwalk resident remembers as a kid getting paid a nickel to jump in the creek the next day to retrieve the bottles. At one time there were reportedly 21 bootleggers in town.
Speakeasies were located in basements of homes on Magnolia Avenue and in the house behind the Lark Theater. Locals at the time paid weekly visits to replenish their home supply. The story goes that there was a big tank in the basement of the Blue Rock Inn stocked with liquor. Once the owners were alerted about a raid, they quickly off-loaded the liquor and replaced it with water. When the feds tapped into the vat, all they got was water. Today some reject that idea and insist that it was just a wine cellar.
During the hippie 60s Larkspur maintained its reputation for naughtiness and attracted such icons of the era as Janis Joplin, Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia. The story goes that pouches of "tea" were hung on a tree in front of 160 Madrone for a daily pick up by the hippies camping out in the upper canyon. Larkspur's public works department ended the fun by cutting off the branch.
In contrast to the wild times of yesteryear, Larkspur today seems staid. But there is still plenty of good food and drink to be had along Magnolia, and the music scene is burgeoning. And who knows what goes on those quiet hills and canyons?
(This article is based on the 1991 edition ofLarkspur Past & Present, a history and walking guide researched and written by members of the Larkspur Heritage Committee, now the Larkspur Heritage Preservation Board. Copies of the guide are available at the Larkspur Library. An updated edition will be published later this year.)
Click here for a complete Centennial Year Calendar.
