3
The Genesis of the Scheme
The accomplishment of Pell Lake in 1924 resulted from a perfect harmonization of relevant factors that could only have occurred during the Roaring Twenties. There were three parties to the newspaper deal—the readers (gullible lot purchasers), the developers (primarily the Smadbeck brothers), and the newspapers themselves (the sponsors of the colonies). All were well positioned to make the newspaper deal a success at the start of the 1920s.
Primed by the rosy economic conditions, the lot buying customers were ripe for just this type of real estate contrivance. The end of the Great War launched a promising financial outlook for workers. People had more time, more money, and more new technologies to spend money on. Paid vacation time, the eight-hour work day, the five-day work week, and other gains made by the labor movement contributed to an increase in free time and leisurely pursuits. New inventions—radio, telephones, and motion pictures—were available for consumption and electricity introduced a new spectrum of labor-saving devices. Wages increased and credit was freely available. Automobiles became affordable to the masses enabling them to take driving trips into the countryside to fish, camp, or just carouse. Even swimsuit manufacturers cooperated by offering free swimming lessons to popularize the activity and sell more suits.1 All this made the idea of owning a cottage for summer getaways an easy temptation.
Agriculture had prospered during the war as European food production declined and prices for United States farm products rose. When the war ended the foreign agricultural markets rebounded resulting in lower prices for both farm products and farmland. Farmers were more willing to sell their land just as city folks had an increased desire to own a piece of property in the country. In addition, laws had not kept pace with the energetic economy and rapidly changing society. The lack of governmental rules and regulations, especially in rural areas, afforded land developers free rein to do as they pleased.
* * *
In this environment the Smadbeck brothers were poised to become the major players in the creation of newspaper colonies. A variety of factors contributed to their ability to prosper from the newspaper deal and make it a success.
Warren and Arthur Smadbeck brought with them not only their real estate apprenticeship but also their father’s business resources. There were many uncompleted projects when Louis Smadbeck died in 1911. A few had been ongoing for many years including Sherman Park where some lots remained unsold.2 Other developments were in the beginning stages. Shortly before writing his will, Louis acquired acreage in Asbury Park, New Jersey, had the land platted into lots, and named his community Asbury Park Estates. It was a more upscale development, aimed at a wealthier clientele with lots, designated “villa sites” and “bungalow plots,” both larger and more expensive than those at Sherman Park.
Sidestepping the Evening World and The Sun, ads were placed in the New York Times to reach a more sophisticated readership. The venture got off to a good start and Louis lent his endorsement to advertising in the Times stressing the number of sales: “Through an advertisement placed in the New York Times for three days, in response to eleven inquiries, we have sold to nine buyers…. Asbury Park Estates, L. Smadbeck, Mgr.”3 At first he followed the usual practice of frequent, prominent ads but advertising costs were expensive and needed to be paid up front. The Asbury Park Estates promotional campaign waned along with Louis’ health and the task of marketing the lots was left to Warren and Arthur.
Louis Smadbeck had incorporated under various names for different purposes and his sons not only took over those corporations but created dozens more of their own. Home Guardian Company of New York, organized on March 18, 1912, was one of their earliest companies. Warren was president, Arthur was secretary and treasurer, and both were managers and directors.4
In 1916 Home Guardian held title to thousands of lots in Asbury Park Estates. These could have been the unsold lots from Louis’ late in life venture, lots created from additional land purchased by the sons, or, perhaps, Louis’ land replatted into smaller lots. Motivated to dispose of these properties for the highest possible profit, Warren and Arthur employed the newspaper deal.
* * *
Irving Rosenbaum was a sales agent, or an advertising agent, or perhaps both a sales agent and an advertising agent for Home Guardian. In the summer of 1916 he called at the offices of the Jewish Daily News (Yidishes Tageblatt), the first daily newspaper published in New York in Yiddish. Ezekiel Sarasohn and Leon Kamaiky, operating as Sarasohn and Son, were the newspaper’s copartners and publishers.
Rosenbaum approached Enoch Wolberg, the advertising manager for the Jewish Daily News, and made a proposition on behalf of his client that was designed to both dispose of the lots in Asbury Park Estates and increase the circulation of the newspaper. Home Guardian would deed the land to the paper in blocs of 1,000 lots. The newspaper would hold the lots as trustee and, in turn, deed them to purchasers allowing the paper to represent that it was the owner of the lots. The parcels would be priced at $32.75 each, and could be bought only with the purchase of a six-month subscription at a cost of $2. The newspaper would keep all the subscription proceeds. For each lot sold the paper would pay $30.10 to Home Guardian, retaining the difference to pay for the advertisements at regular publication rates. Home Guardian was to dictate the advertising copy and determine the amount of space to be used, guaranteeing at least $2,000 worth of advertising in the first two months of the contract.
Representatives of the paper, intrigued by the proposal, traveled to Asbury Park to view the lots, were favorably impressed, and agreed to Rosenbaum’s offer on behalf of Home Guardian. The paper’s circulation manager drew up the contract which also provided that Jewish Daily News would pay Rosenbaum a 15 percent commission on the advertising income.
Instead of the smaller ads Louis had used, Warren and Arthur opted for much more expansive displays dwarfing Louis’ two-column, three-inch inserts. The Jewish Daily News was published almost entirely in Yiddish. Nevertheless, two pages announcing the investment opportunity, decorated with seven pen and ink drawings of notable Asbury Park features, appeared in the August 11, 1916, issue printed in English. There was also a third full-page ad in Yiddish.
The first Smadbeck newspaper colony, Asbury Park Estates, was promoted in the August 11, 1916, issue of Jewish Daily News with three full pages of advertising—two pages in English and a third page in Yiddish. This is the first page of the ad in English (Historical Jewish Press website founded by the National Library of Israel and Tel Aviv University, the MaRLI Project [Manhattan Research Library Initiative], New York Public Library, Columbia University, New York University).
It was made clear that only subscribers could take advantage of the offer—the ability to purchase a lot at Asbury Park Estates was a premium that accompanied the purchase of a six-month subscription. A limit of four lots with a two-year subscription was imposed. The ad made no mention of the lot size—20' × 100'—even narrower than the lots at Sherman Park. All lots were the same price providing an incentive for acting quickly and securing a corner or business lot.
Lot purchasers became members of the Jewish Daily News Colony Club entitling them to free bus transportation between their homes and the station, the village, and the beach for five years. The paper also offered to assist with bank loans for building costs and it was suggested that a casino was in the planning stage. A special pitch was made to take advantage of the opportunity to make parents comfortable in their old age. There was also an appeal to the German Jewish merchant mentality with the suggestion of opening a little store.
Combining the efforts of the developers and the newspaper proved rewarding for both. In the first year of the contract 4,763 lots were sold. The Jewish Daily News received $9,563 in subscription money as well as $12,621.95 in advertising fees, less Rosenbaum’s 15 percent. The Smadbecks reduced their inventory of lots and took in more than $138,600, and that was just in the first year of the promotion. The Smadbecks benefited in other ways. Lots could be sold to the paper in bulk rather than one by one to lot buyers. The newspaper, as purported owner, and Wolberg as its trustee, contributed to the work of deeding the lots, collecting the money, and resolving disputes with the purchasers, thus relieving the Smadbecks of much responsibility. Heavy advertising was needed but, by partnering with the newspaper, advertising costs did not have to be paid before any lots were sold.
The specifics of the newspaper deal would have remained buried had Sarasohn and Rosenbaum not disagreed over the latter’s commission. In addition to the advertising percentage paid by the Jewish Daily News, Rosenbaum received $1 from Home Guardian for each lot sold. When Leon Kamaiky learned of this, he objected to the compensation terms as double-dipping and refused to pay Rosenbaum the percentage commission. Rosenbaum sued and, when he lost, took his case up to the New York appellate court. That court reversed the finding of the lower court and, conveniently for history, published its opinion.5 Rosenbaum was deemed able to collect commissions from both parties to the contract proving that he, too, was well compensated by the arrangement.
* * *
Without question the newspaper deal was an ingenious innovation and Asbury Park Estates was the Smadbecks’ first experiment with it. By the time Pell Lake was created in 1924 the Smadbecks had developed about a dozen communities and would go on to create several dozen more. While the Smadbecks perfected the concept, its origin can be traced to other sources.
The Jewish Daily News ad for Asbury Park Estates bore the headline “The Greatest, Most Wonderful Premium Ever Offered,” an emphatic phrase that was common advertising parlance in the opening years of the twentieth century. This flamboyant wording was employed to offer magazines, atlases, bibles, encyclopedias, sets of chinaware, silverware, electric irons and toasters, fireworks, and even ponies as incentive to buy a newspaper subscription.
The individual deserving credit for devising the idea to offer land as a subscription premium is not certain. An early attempt occurred in Wichita. At its debut in January of 1909 Kansas Magazine had a yearly subscription price of $1.50. A beginning promotional offer threw in subscriptions to another magazine and a newspaper as a bonus for subscribers. After a few months the magazine ramped up its new subscriber drive by offering a year and a half subscription to Kansas Magazine, a copy of Hammond’s 1909 World Atlas, and a building lot in the latest addition to Wichita all for $18.00.
The “beautifully located” lots were southwest of the city in an area named Orienta Park after the adjacent car and locomotive shops proposed to be built by the Orient Railway. The promotion offered an initial lot, sized at a narrow 25', at the subscription rate cost with additional lots priced from $40 to $100. The proposition was multi-purposed: Kansas Magazine wanted to fulfill its “splendid mission” to interest the populace with facts about the Sunflower State, the developers wanted to sell land,6 and the railroad wanted to attract a workforce with affordable housing near the shops, a goal that was furthered by ads addressed to “You Who Work for Wages.”7
Although the lots were a premium for a magazine subscription rather than for a newspaper, ads for the promotion appeared in both. Advertisements for the Orienta Park offer were printed in several different Kansas newspapers8 and, eventually, in 1910, in the magazine itself.9
* * *
In the same time frame as the Orienta Park land promotion, other real estate exploits were taking place in California under the direction of a man who would eventually become a second mentor to Warren and Arthur Smadbeck. A contemporary of their father, B.C. (Bertram Chapman) Mayo was born in Boston on March 23, 1865. The entry in the Boston birth registry lists clothing as the occupation of his father, Noah Mayo,10 but a few years later Noah was working as a wholesale fish dealer.11
After completing school B.C. decided he was better suited to pursuing his father’s earlier occupation and for about ten years, was engaged in the wholesale clothing business in and around Boston.12 For one of those years, 1894, the men’s furnishings company of Nickerson and Mayo is listed in a Boston Directory.13 His friendship with Addison Doane Nickerson grew into the first of many business relationships that Mayo would engage in.
By the spring of 1904 Mayo had relocated to California14 and was employed as business manager for the Oakland Enquirer.15 He quickly penetrated elite business circles and engaged in a variety of speculative deals that exhibited both his quest for wealth and his promotional prowess.
Author, newspaperman, and lyricist William Mill Butler wrote a brief and somewhat fanciful biography of Bertram Chapman Mayo in 1924. Butler credited Mayo with providing a box of candy as a bonus for subscribing to the newspaper, introducing the candy idea to an Oakland theater manager, and originating the idea of offering land as a subscription premium.
According to Butler, Mayo and a friend bought a piece of land in the redwoods of Sonoma County north of Oakland hoping to strike oil, but the property proved unproductive. Butler describes what happened when B.C. and some friends went to the land on a fishing trip:
It was after the return of a jolly party with their catch to an old camp in the woods, that Mr. Mayo and his dreams and schemes were made the butt of the chaff and jokes. “B.C.,” said one, “you have fed candy to the children, given theatre tickets to the mothers and clocks to the fathers, if they will only buy your daily sheet; what next to add another figure to your circulation, a house and lot?” “Just that” came back the quick reply. “I’m going to give away these red monsters of mine for a premium.” Retorts were drowned in a roar of derisive laughter.
Butler goes on to report that Mayo took up the dare, and after buying out his partner, divided the property into small lots, named it “Casadero Woods,” and sold the lots for $5.40 each with a subscription to the Enquirer.16
Butler knew Mayo, not at the time of these supposed events, but in later years and likely learned of his background from Mayo himself. Either Butler misremembered what he had been told or Mayo colored the story to appear more cunning. Promotion was his specialty and assuredly Mayo made use of this talent when describing his life experiences. While some elements of the biography are valid, other details are unsubstantiated by the documented evidence.
Mayo did invest in property hoping to strike oil and he also bought land in the redwoods, but these were two different locations and two very different endeavors. The oil land was near Canby in the far northeastern California county of Modoc. Mayo’s partners in the Modoc Oil and Development Company were his boss, Gilbert Barber Daniels, owner of the Oakland Enquirer, and H.G. Betts, of Goldfield, Nevada, identified as a well-known mining man.17 Betts confidently asserted to reporters that he would discover an immense lake of oil in the Canby basin with just a few months of drilling.18 If Betts’ predictions materialized no newspaper took notice.
The Modoc oil experiment was not the first time Mayo teamed up with Betts and Daniels in an attempted get-rich-quick venture. William B. Swears joined them in December of 1906 as incorporators of the Goldfield Diamond Drilling and Mining Company in Arizona,19 the word “diamond” referring to a type of drill. Goldfield Diamond Drilling owned two claims near Goldfield, Nevada, a town that derived its name from the voluminous deposits of gold discovered nearby in the opening years of the twentieth century.
Each of the incorporators contributed to the enterprise. The claims owned by Goldfield Diamond Drilling were procured by William Swears’ son, Forest J., a mining prodigy who later developed into an imposing petroleum engineer under the name F.J.S. Sur.20 Betts managed the drilling operations and Daniels took care of business matters, handling the money, providing advertising connections, and supplying office space at the headquarters of the Enquirer in Oakland.
B.C. Mayo’s contribution was the advertising copy offering to sell shares of the company’s stock. These newspaper pronouncements had Mayo’s promotional fingerprints all over them beginning with the claim “The Safest and Surest mining stock on the market today” and including a testimonial from the vice-president of a company that distributed advertising matter. The ad copy explained that drilling was required to discover the gold hidden beneath the surface and contended that the use of diamond drills was a more efficient method of locating the lodes than the sinking of shafts. The venture offered a peculiar “business feature.” Rather than selling shares in gold mines the company offered shares in a drilling company that would contract to drill on the claims of others with the income from those contracts financing drilling for gold on the two mines owned by Goldfield Diamond Drilling.
In January of 1907 full-page ads offering to sell shares of the company’s stock appeared in the Oakland Tribune. Smaller, but still good-sized ads, were printed in every issue of the Carson City, Nevada, Daily Appeal during the first eight months of the year. The operation discovered no gold and had limited success in contracting out its drilling services.21 Any profits must have come from the sale of stock, sales that would have been directly attributable to Mayo’s efforts. Mayo proved to be a master at composing ad copy that could sell a product no matter how questionable.
* * *
The land Mayo purchased in the Sonoma redwoods was not acquired with the expectation of striking oil. Rather, this property was bought specifically to carve up and resell at a profit. Mayo had found another resource to mine: the one-born-every-minute naive city dweller.
For this project he allied with another Oakland newspaper man, John Berkley Bartlett. Employed as an advertising manager for an Oakland newspaper,22 probably the Enquirer, Bartlett also dabbled in real estate incorporating one realty business and acting as an agent for another.23
Between February and May of 1910, Mayo and Bartlett bought title to at least 360 acres of rugged terrain in Sonoma County from Rufus C. Chapman and Samuel R. Break, paying less than ten cents an acre.24 Approximately two miles southwest of the town of Cazadero (Spanish for “hunting ground”) the land consisted of steep stony slopes and craggy outcroppings. With a barely habitable topography, the area was used mostly for logging, an occasional rustic lodge, and camping along the rivers and streams.
As soon as they recorded their deeds, Bartlett and Mayo filed plats, sectioning out hundreds of 25' × 100' foot lots as if the ground was level.25 The subdivision was named Cazadero Redwoods and the lots were sold for $6.50 each with a subscription to the Oakland Enquirer.26 Lots were also coupled with subscriptions to Sunset magazine,27 a journal created by the Southern Pacific Railroad to publicize the landscape and natural resources of the West and to attract tourists and settlers. Surveyors’ markers were not installed—Cazadero Redwoods was probably not even surveyed—leaving no means of identifying the location of a particular lot. Only when, and if, buyers tried to find their lots did they discover the problematic terrain and its distance from the railway. In several instances the same lot was sold more than once.28
Bartlett and Mayo were not the sole perpetrators of this variety of land fraud. Between 1909 and 1913 at least a dozen such “wildcat” or “paper” subdivisions were created in the rugged country of northern Sonoma County, all platted out on paper with tiny lots and meandering streets that never materialized.29 Cazadero Redwoods was the only one of these subdivisions that used newspaper and magazine subscriptions to sell the lots. The others, created by an array of conmen, had a different scheme for roping in unsuspecting buyers.
Moving picture houses were in their infancy in the early 1900s and silent films were shown in many small storefronts and nickelodeons. To attract customers the competing theater managers were receptive to promotional schemes such as Mayo’s distribution of candy.
The wildcat subdividers paid movie house owners a few dollars to pass out tickets for a chance to win a free lot deceptively described in glowing terms and supposedly reachable by railroad or car line. Patrons provided their names and addresses on the tickets for an alleged drawing. The following day land agents would visit every theatergoer to report that his ticket won the drawing and that, while the lot was free, $5 to $10 (an inflated amount) was needed to cover the cost of the deed and abstract. Adjoining lots could be purchased for $30 to $150.
Many of the lucky winners lived as far away as Missouri, Arizona, Montana, or British Columbia. When they sought to find their land months or even years later, they discovered only valueless remote barren hillsides far from any transportation. Newspapers published articles warning against the scheme,30 a few of which noted that some lots were peddled through a subscription “to some cheap magazine.”31 Still, the easy marks kept falling for the ploy.
The Sonoma County Recorder became so overburdened with processing the many deeds and fielding inquiries about the location of lots that, in 1914, the land encompassed by these subdivisions was declared worthless and removed from the assessment rolls.32 In 1913 the California legislature made it a misdemeanor to offer tickets to win real property and collect fees to transfer the parcel. This law, still part of the California Penal Code,33 stopped the promotions in California but the scam continued to be advertised in other states. The law also failed to have any effect on the sale of lots tied to a subscription premium. Today what had been Cazadero Redwoods is part of Little Black Mountain Preserve, a land conservancy owned and managed by the Sonoma Land Trust.34
* * *
Ads in Sunset for Cazadero Redwoods allowed as many as four subscriptions and four lots to be obtained at the same low price. In this regard Cazadero was a step closer to the newspaper deal than Orienta Park where only one lot could be purchased at the reduced subscription premium cost.
Selling all the lots at the same price nevertheless produced profits for Mayo and his partner. What made the difference between the pennies per acre that they paid for the land and the more than $100 per acre they sold it for was the way the lots were advertised and promoted. Mayo was honing in on the newspaper deal and would come closer with his next project.
Mayo reaped two significant benefits from his Modoc Oil, Goldfield Diamond Drilling, and Cazadero Redwoods ventures. They provided him with some capital but, more importantly, with business and political connections that would cause a pivotal real estate opportunity to be laid at his feet.
Gilbert Daniels, Mayo’s boss and good friend, was a familiar figure in political circles as indicated by the various state positions he was appointed to after selling the Enquirer in 1917: superintendent of motor vehicles, market director, head of the board of control, and member of the prison board.35 Daniels was closely associated, both personally and politically, with George Pardee, governor of California from 1903 to 1907. Mayo was introduced to Pardee by Daniels and the three men, together with their families, often socialized together.36
George Pardee had a fickle association with the Southern Pacific Railroad, one that spanned most of his career and put him in a position to have backdoor information about the company. William Swears, one of Mayo’s business partners in the Goldfield Diamond Drilling escapade, was a private shipping commissioner in San Francisco and was familiar with issues affecting water transport. Mayo’s association with these men, together with his contacts in the world of publishing, exposed him to a broad range of insider knowledge and resulting opportunity.
The Southern Pacific owned a strip of rail right-of-way through Brown Canyon on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and planned to use it to link the port at Santa Monica with inland train routes. But when the federal government opted to construct the necessary breakwater elsewhere, deflecting shipping farther south, Southern Pacific abandoned its efforts. The railroad was left with rights to a swath of land it could no longer use.37
Mayo obtained a managerial position with Southern Pacific’s Sunset magazine38 in 1911 and took over disposing of the railroad’s right-of-way. He managed to obtain full title to the land by purchasing it, according to Butler, from a reluctant seller, a man named Smith.
Section by section Mayo platted a subdivision named Beverly Glen, incorporated the Beverly Glen Land Company, and hired surveyors, salesmen, office staff, and 200 Hindu laborers. Some of the land was suitable for building and these lots were advertised in the Los Angeles Herald with no tie-in to newspaper or magazine subscriptions.39 But with the rocky lots higher up in the canyon he repeated the game plan used at Cazadero Redwoods and disposed of these problematic lots as premiums for subscriptions to Sunset, hiring a specific gang of salesmen for this aspect of the project.40
Mayo also initiated a feature at Beverly Glen that would become a staple of the newspaper colony. He established a construction and sales headquarters at the main intersection of the development. After the building served its initial purpose, he gave it to the community for use as a clubhouse.
Lot sales were swift and Mayo showed off his project to former governor Pardee and Gilbert Daniels when Mayo invited his friends to Beverly Glen in June of 1911.41 Perhaps Mayo bragged to them about his method to save costs and produce profits by failing to provide needed services. Descriptions of the area in advertisements played up nature with the phrase “In the Hills Among the Trees,” and frequent mention of birds, squirrels, and babbling brooks. Proclaiming that the land was presented “just as nature made it,” Mayo provided no improvements at Beverly Glen other than some roads. Instead he implemented formation of an association of lot owners which he then used to organize Beverly Glen Consolidated Utilities, in effect requiring the lot buyers themselves to invest the money needed to provide transportation, water, light, telephone, and other utilities.42
Mayo had now twice sold small, undesirable lots as subscription premiums. If the price was right, distant buyers would purchase the lots sight unseen. He had recognized that he could avoid providing much in the way of improvements by emphasizing nature and promoting the tract as a casual summer resort. He formed a homeowners’ group to take over responsibilities, and he made himself look good by donating the abandoned sales office for use as a community center. It was 1911 and most of the basic elements of the newspaper deal had been identified. Bertram Mayo could now proceed to refine his scheme.
1. Kathleen Drowne and Patrick Huber, The 1920s: American Popular Culture Through History, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004, 103–04.
2. The last lot was sold on June 27, 1919. Horne, Mount Pleasant, 38.
3. New York Times, December 19, 1909, 15.
4. Articles of Incorporation, New York Department of State, Division of Corporations (NYDS), DOS ID 30431.
5. Rosenbaum v. Sarasohn, Reports of Cases Heard and Determined in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, v. 184 (1918): 204–09.
6. “Unique Real Estate Offer,” Arkansas City Daily Traveler, July 16, 1909, 6.
7. Display Ad, Hutchinson (Kansas) News, September 15, 1909, 11; See also “Orient Shop News,” Kansas Magazine 3, no. 3 (March 1910).
8. See, e.g., Display Ads, Wichita Beacon, August 13, 1909, 9; Wichita Daily Eagle, September 4, 1909, 6; Hutchinson News, September 10, 1909, 9.
9. Display Ad, Kansas Magazine 3, no. 2 (February 1910).
10. Massachusetts Town and Vital Records, Boston Births 1865, Bertram Mayo, No. 1010.
11. 1870 U.S. Census, Population Schedule, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 134, line 15.
12. “Wholesale clothing,” Boston Directory, Boston, Sampson, Murdock, 1889, 825; “Clothier,” Directory of Dedham and Westwood, North Cambridge: Edward A. Jones, 1899, 66.
13. Boston Directory, Boston: Sampson, Murdock, 1894, 907.
14. “Over Five Hundred Citizens Help to Boom the Interests of Oakland,” San Francisco Call, April 4, 1904, 7.
15. Husted’s Oakland, Alameda & Berkeley Directory for the Year 1906, Oakland: F. M. Husted, 1906, 323.
16. William Mill Butler, ed., Beachwood Borough Directory and Who’s Who, New York: Blanchard Press, 1924, 133.
17. “To Bore For Oil,” Evening Bee (Sacramento), August 9, 1907, 6.
18. “To Prospect Big Tract for Oil: Betts Thinks He Has Struck It Rich and Plans Development,” Evening Bee, July 8, 1907, 6; “Looking For Oil: Prospecting Will Be Carried on with Vigor,” Evening Bee, July 22, 1907, 7.
19. “Articles of Incorporation,” Prescott (Arizona) Morning Courier, December 18, 1906, 4.
20. “They Call Him ‘The Miracle Man’ of the Oil Fields,” National Magazine 50 (April, 1921–May, 1922), 329.
21. “Diamond Drill at Goldfield District,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 16, 1913, 12.
22. 1910 U.S. Census, Population Schedule, Oakland, Alameda County, California, sheet 13B, line 71.
23. “Realty Company Formed,” San Francisco Call, February 17, 1907, 43; Display Ad, San Francisco Call, March 31, 1907, 41.
24. “Real Estate Transfers,” Petaluma (California) Argus, February 25, 1910, 2 (80 acres); Chapman to Bartlett, March 14, 1910, Deed Book 263:189 (120 acres), and May 4, 1910, Deed Book 263:263 (160 acres), Sonoma County Recorder, Santa Rosa, California. Deeds often state the price as “one dollar and other valuable compensation” to indicate that it was a bargained transaction without specifying the amount paid. The purchase price can sometimes be computed based on the affixed revenue stamps. Neither situation applies here and the wording in the two referenced deeds suggests that the $10.00 figure listed was the actual purchase price.
25. “Meeting of Supervisors,” Healdsburg (California) Enterprise, July 9, 1910, 3.
26. See, e.g., Bartlett to Foster, May 5, 1910, Sonoma County Recorder, Deed Book 286:230.
27. Display Ad, Sunset 25, no. 3 (September, 1910).
28. Leslie E. Smirnoff, “A Cultural Resources Inventory and Management Plan for Sonoma Land Trust’s Little Black Mountain Property” (master’s thesis, Sonoma State University, 2009), 58.
29. Sonoma County Archives, Assessor Records 1873–1983, accessed July 13, 2018: http://www.sonoma.lib.ca.us/history/archive/?p=collections/findingaid&id=25&q=&rootcontentid=63,;
“Assessment Practices Survey and Assessor’s Response: Sonoma County” (Assessment Standards Division, Property Tax Department, California State Board of Equalization, 1989), 20.
30. See, e.g., “Lots Cost Little; See Picture Show,” Oregon Daily Journal, November 25, 1911, 6; “They Will Bite,” Petaluma (California) Daily Courier, June 4, 1912, 8.
31. “Old Adage That Suckers Abound,” Butte (Montana) Inter Mountain, October 25, 1912, 2.
32. “Told Land is Worthless,” The Petaluma Argus, August 22, 1923, 10.
33. Sec. 532c of the Code reads: “Any person, firm, corporation or copartnership who knowingly and designedly offers or gives with winning numbers at any drawing of numbers or with tickets of admission to places of public assemblage, any lot or parcel of real property and charges or collects fees in connection with the transfer thereof, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”
34. Smirnoff’s “A Cultural Resources Inventory” contains a history of Little Black Mountain land ownership that specifically includes the Mayo/Bartlett acreage.
35. “Daniels Named On Prison Board,” Oakland Tribune, December 10, 1925, 1.
36. “Walton Disciples Return From Trip,” Berkeley Daily Gazette, May 10, 1909, 2.
37. Barton Phelps, A Place in the Canyons, Menlo Park, CA: Sunset Books, 2013, unpaginated, accessed July 11, 2018: http://bpala.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Arroyo-Garden-Book-SM.pdf.
38. 1911 Los Angeles City Directory (Los Angeles City Directory Company, 1911), 968.
39. Display Ad, Los Angeles Herald, May 4, 1911, 7.
40. Classified Ad, Los Angeles Herald, October 22, 1910, 14. Parts of Beverly Glen remain a construction challenge. A home that managed to circumvent these problems is Arroyo House. See Phelps, A Place in the Canyons.
41. “Former Governor Pardee and Wife Visiting Here,” Los Angeles Herald, June 8, 1911, 12.
42. “Beverly Glen on Map Most Charming Region,” Los Angeles Herald, May 14, 1911, Sec. 3, 3.