Farms? In Danville?
The agricultural roots of our valley were impressed even more strongly on historians Beverly Lane and Ralph Cozine as they chose photographs and researched local history for their new book, “San Ramon Valley: Alamo, Danville and San Ramon.” The book was released by Arcadia Publishing last week.
“We were basically a farming community until World War II,” said Cozine. “Then we became more of a bedroom community for people living here and working elsewhere.”
He and Don Wood, whose family owned a large ranch in Sycamore Valley, had previously put together an exhibit for the Museum of the San Ramon Valley on farming from 1850-1950. “It was one of the most fun shows I’d put on,” recalled Cozine. “He rallied up all his old friends to get all these pictures.” Many of those same photographs are now in the book, he noted.
“I particularly pressed to do a section on it being horse country,” Lane said. “I don’t think people really appreciate how significant horses were in the valley.”
The book includes photos of the Oakwood Park Stock Farm, which later became Diablo Country Club, and Blackhawk Ranch in 1917. “We talked to people in the Weidemann family,” said Lane. “They still do run cattle, and have roundups and barbecues. They’re ranching out in Tassajara and also run cattle in the Las Trampas area.”
She said a great resource was a history of the valley typed up by an early resident named Vivian Coats. “She saved some wonderful black and white photographs,” said Lane. “Almost any of the Tassajara ones came from her collection. And she had a vivid way of writing.” Vivian Coats is the one who noted back in the early 1900s that no matter how hard they partied, they still had to get up at dawn to do the farm chores.
The book was published by Arcadia as part of its Images in America series on local history. Arcadia began on the East Coast and then came west. In cities, it zeroes in on topics, such as boxing in San Francisco, the San Francisco Fire Department, and the Marina and Sunset districts. It also publishes books on subjects such as aviation, baseball, motoring and cemeteries.
“Several years ago a representative of Arcadia came through the Bay Area and approached people from museums and historical societies to enlist volunteers to do these books,” recalled Lane, who is curator at the Museum of the San Ramon Valley. She said Cozine immediately showed interest. He was active at the museum in assembling exhibits and working with its historical photographs. At the time, Lane was heavily involved with Gail Kamerer in producing a curriculum for third-graders: The San Ramon Valley, Knowing Your Community. When it was completed last fall, she was ready to tackle the book project.
“I thought that with all the Images of America books out there that San Ramon Valley really ought to have its own book,” said Lane. They needed to fit the format of 128 pages, using 180-220 photographs.
“Ralph and I volunteered our time to put it together, to do the research and do the photographs,” Lane said. “It was an interesting process to have co-authors. There were a lot of choices along the way.”
Cozine retired from Sandia Laboratories in 1989 and became active at the museum, especially with the historic photographs. State-of-the-art technology allows photographs to be improved, which is partly what makes the Images of America series so popular.
“I’ve always been interested in photography,” Cozine said, adding that he worked for a photographer while attending Kansas State University. He also related to the farming aspect, he said, since he spent his boyhood summers on his uncle’s farm in Kansas.
Now he uses Photoshop software to improve the old photos digitally. “One can begin to fix some of the things wrong with the old pictures,” he said. “Repair a tear, generally improve contrast. Some of the old ones are badly faded.”
He said the most satisfying aspect of the project is that it gives people the opportunity to own the historic photographs. “We got a chance to get wide distribution of some of these old photographs,” he said. “It’s nothing in depth but enough to put your imagination to use.”
The book opens with a section on Mount Diablo, “The Landmark Mountain.” Lane said they used resources from UC Berkeley, especially a book at the Jepson Herbarium by botanist William H. Brewer who was part of a California State Geological Survey, known as the Whitney Survey, in 1861-62.
“His book is a wonderful read,” she said. “It has quite a few pages on Mount Diablo, and his descriptions of the tarantulas are fantastic.”
Lane, who has a bachelor’s degree in history from Occidental College and a masters in public administration, was on the first Danville Town Council in 1982 and is president of the East Bay Regional Parks District board of directors. She said she probably became interested in local history about 20 years ago. “Every once in awhile it’s become obsessive,” she noted.
She said that while researching this book she delved for the first time into the history of the six original grammar schools in the area. “We spent quite a bit of time on that,” she said. “There was a lot of miscellaneous information – and a lot of contradictory information, but we were able to clarify it. We found very interesting things we hadn’t seen anywhere else.”
For instance, she learned about the history of Green Valley Grammar School. “I found in the museum archives an account of a woman written in the 19th century who talked about the fact that her father built the school and that the land was deeded by Andrew Inman,” remembered Lane. He and his brother Daniel are among the founders of Danville and the town was named after Daniel. “Andrew probably had some children who needed a school.” She noted that families in those days had huge families and said one of the reasons Tassajara School was closed in 1946 was because one family with a large number of children moved away.
They had school photos in abundance since people tend to save them, she said; the problem was which ones to select. “We had to make selections on each school,” recalled Lane.
She said they turned everything in to Arcadia at the end of July and the proofs came back for them to work on after the publisher had made some changes in the wording to follow a certain style. What followed was a group effort by Beverly and Jim Lane and Ralph and Marillyn Cozine plus museum volunteer Betty Dunlap proofing the copy again and again and wording the captions as clearly and as accurately as possible.
“It was a real challenge but I’m glad it came out in time for the holidays,” said Lane. “I hope people enjoy reading about the history they didn’t know – I sure did.”
The book is now for sale for $19.99 at the museum shop, which also carries other local history books as well as early photographs. Lane and Cozine are donating their royalties from each book to the museum, plus the museum earns the retail markup on each book it sells.
Both authors are proud that it has photographs and maps that haven’t been in book form before, including rare maps of the San Ramon Rancho, which covered all of Alamo, all of Danville and part of San Ramon. They noted that readers can use the book to enjoy the photos and perhaps use it as a starting point to explore in depth early life in the San Ramon Valley.
Book signings
Beverly Lane and Ralph Cozine, co-authors of “San Ramon Valley: Alamo, Danville, and San Ramon,” will be selling and signing the book from 10 a.m.-noon tomorrow at the Farmers Market, on Railroad and Prospect avenues in Danville. Museum volunteers will also be there to wrap the book for holiday giving. Rakestraw Books, 409 Railroad Ave., is having an author signing from 2-4 p.m. Sunday.
