CELEBRATING THE SPIRIT OF A POST-QUAKE SANTA ROSA

It isn't a significant anniversary of the founding of Santa Rosa (1854) or

the incorporation (1867), but this centennial year may, indeed, be the most

important observance in the city's history.

A pivotal year, 1906 set a new record for hustle and bustle around this old

town.

It was the earthquake that did it, of course. And we've already marked that

milestone with solemn ceremony. But what happened after the earthquake is what

tells Santa Rosa's story best.

In the chaotic summer of 1906, the city's leaders, merchants and workers

thumbed their noses, figuratively, at the destruction around them, shook off

the aftershocks and set out to build a better town.

Last weekend in Railroad Square, citizens gathered to honor the 100th

birthday of the Lee Bros. Building, the carefully restored, colonnaded beauty

at Fourth and Wilson that now houses a furniture store.

It was one of the first new buildings constructed after the quake and

represented a leap of faith on the part of the builders, who dared to invest

in the city's future, even as others were lining up at the depot across the

street to move away -- to the Central Valley, to other states, anywhere the

ground didn't move.

Two weeks before the Lees applied for a permit to build, a notice appeared

in The Press Democrat, which was already publishing on a brand new press. It

was an invitation to a public meeting in the courtroom of Judge Albert

Burnett, in the makeshift temporary courthouse, Friday night, Aug. 17 to

discuss ''a combination of interests in the common cause of enlarging the

city's commercial importance and attractiveness.''

The nine men who signed the notice were proposing the organization of a

Chamber of Commerce.

No town ever needed to work in ''common cause'' more than Santa Rosa did in

the summer of 1906. And the meeting held that Friday evening may well have

determined the course of Sonoma County history. Could Santa Rosa come back?

Could it fend off the continuing attempts of Petaluma to become the rail hub,

to relocate the county seat?

THE ORGANIZERS were the town's leaders. John P. Overton was mayor, Allan

Lemmon and Ernest Finley were the editors and publishers of the Republican and

the PD, Edward Woodward was the state senator and a former mayor. Robert C.

Moodey owned a shoe store on Fourth Street. Edson Merritt was a banker and so

was Frank A. Brush, who was also a partner in the Petaluma & Santa Rosa

Railroad. Alex Crane ran the Abstract Bureau, and Orrie Houts brokered real

estate and insurance as well as growing hops.

Another civic-minded banker, Frank Doyle of Exchange Bank, was already at

work in the common cause, contacting commercial property owners to donate

several feet of frontage to allow for wider streets as the town rebuilt to

accommodate the automobile.

The meeting drew a crowd of interested businessmen. Ten days later, they

met again, to officially establish a Chamber of Commerce. Robert Moodey was

the first chairman, the first secretary was Edward Brown, and the first months

were spent preaching the need for a positive attitude. They began to keep

records on population figures, new industries, business revenues and tourists,

CALIFORNIA'S population was growing at an astonishing rate in these years

as the railroads lured Midwesterners with promises of Southern California

beaches and cheap Central Valley land.

Santa Rosa's devastation had made headlines all over the world, and without

a concerted effort, it seemed unlikely that new Californians would choose to

come to a city that was still largely in ruins.

Desperate measures were called for. In 1908, when real estate broker John

Gray became the second Chamber chairman, the organization was offering free

industrial land to any manufacturer who would locate in the Santa Rosa area.

There wasn't exactly a flood of takers, but an increase in business was

encouraging and the exodus of residents fleeing future earthquakes seemed to

be diminishing.

In 1913, in the boldest move to date, the Chamber sent two of its members,

real estate agents J.K. Fergurson and Ira Pyle, off on a ''goodwill tour'' of

the United States. Visiting cities in the Midwest and on the East Coast, the

two men spoke to civic and service organizations about the virtues of Santa

Rosa and the economic welcome new residents would receive.

They carried with them letters from Frank Doyle and Frank Brush assuring

all who were interested that the bankers had faith in the city's future. Brush

wrote about the good climate and fertile land and the good schools and

churches.

Doyle's approach was more personal -- chatty, even. ''I have traveled over

a dozen States and must say that I have never found a county that has the

climate we have and can produce the variety of products we can.

''We are also close to the markets of the world, bordering on San Francisco

Bay. We are so located that we get cheap electric power, cheap fuel, and when

the Panama Canal is opened, I look for improvements here that will astonish

the natives.''

AMONG THOSE virtues boasted by Pyle and Fergurson was Luther Burbank. The

nurseryman who had famously declared, three decades before the earthquake,

that the town was ''the chosen spot of all the Earth so far as nature is

concerned,'' had captured worldwide attention with his dramatic botanical

experiments. A gentlemanly fellow -- a bit shy, very polite -- Burbank was

exploited, some would say shamelessly, by Chamber officials who capitalized on

his ''Plant Wizard'' name to help rebuild Santa Rosa.

The earliest brochures from the Chamber, distributed at the State Fair, the

Los Angeles Land Show and by direct mail in the year after the quake included

a quote from Burbank, saying: ''I would rather own a piece of land the size of

a good healthy house lot in Sonoma County than an entire farm elsewhere in the

world.''

The ever-obliging Luther was trotted out for a photo opportunity whenever

the Chamber felt it could interest the wire services in an event. He was

photographed with all the famous people who came to visit him, including Sir

Harry Lauder, Helen Keller, Red Grange and Queen Marie of Romania. He held a

football, surrounded by a pro football team. He posed, smiling, with movie

stars, Miss Sonoma County, and the passengers on the first motor bus to go up

the Redwood Highway. He signed his name on a piece of petrified wood from the

Petrified Forest on Calistoga Road, bound as a gift to New York's Central

Park.

Wherever there was a possibility for publicity, the Chamber positioned

Luther Burbank.

All this ballyhoo reached a crescendo with the Panama-Pacific Exposition in

San Francisco, celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal. The Chamber

planned a giant electric sign in San Francisco urging exhibition patrons to

''Visit Santa Rosa, the Home of Luther Burbank.''

There is no record that the sign ever materialized, but the Chamber joined

in a North Bay venture -- a train car called ''Fair on Wheels'' that was

festooned with invitations to ''Come to the Land Luther Burbank Chose as his

Home.''

It was the San Francisco exhibition that occasioned the Chamber's greatest

coup of its early years -- the visit of the most famous men in America, Thomas

Edison and Henry Ford, to Santa Rosa.

IN 1923, when Frank Doyle, who may have been the town's greatest visionary

of the early 20th century, assumed what would be a five-year presidency of the

Chamber, the organization raised funds to buy 40 acres, just north of the high

school, for a park honoring Burbank.

When Santa Rosa's beloved gardener-genius died in 1926, the land was

designated as a memorial park and garden. But the Great Depression intervened

and, in 1930, Floyd Bailey, dean of a fledgling institution housed in the high

school building, struck an agreement with the Chamber and the city to use the

undeveloped land for a college campus. Santa Rosa Junior College bought the

park for $1 and named the theater building for Burbank, pledging that the oaks

and the lawn that border Mendocino Avenue would remain parklike.

The junior college campus agreement was important, but it gets second

notice in the recounting of the Chamber's activities of 1923. For it was in

January of that year that President Doyle convened a meeting to consider, as

the minutes reflect, ''the necessary steps to foster the construction of a

Bridge across the Golden Gate.''

The meeting, organized by the Chamber's Women's Auxiliary, brought

delegates from all over Northern California. The bridge was a good as built.

The wheels of progress moved much faster in those years. By May, a bill that

would establish a bonding district for the bridge had passed the state

Legislature.

If there had ever been any doubt about Santa Rosa's future growth, it was

now in the past. The bridge was completed in 1937, and while its impact was

delayed by both Depression and war, it hit full force in the second half of

the century.

The town that was desperate to add to its 8,700 residents in 1906 now

counts (according to the State Department of Finance's January 2006 figures)

157,145 citizens. And the Chamber of Commerce, on its 100th birthday, lists

more than 1,000 members, some from far-off Bodega Bay and the Sonoma Valley,

as its sphere of influence widens.

Having achieved what those nine men in the courtroom intended, the Chamber

will publish a 60-page booklet on its history next month and celebrate with a

gala Sept. 16.

Banker Debbie Meekins, chairwoman of the event, says it will be a party,

not the traditional banquet with an after-dinner speaker.

That's probably because they couldn't get Luther Burbank.