Cradoc Bradshaw, Nick Pinder, Roz Hanna, Emma Lee Dawes, Clive Bennett and Wendell Smith are fictional characters, based on no one who ever lived (other than possibly myself). However, a number of other characters in Nemesis are based on historical figures who lived in San Diego in the late 1880s. All of the crimes for which Nemesis seeks revenge are inspired by true events that occurred in southern California during the 19th-century Wild West era. Among these were:
• | Jose Cota (1850-1902): His law enforcement career in San Diego spanned four decades (1874-1902) including a stint in the late 1880s as one of Joe Coyne’s deputies. Later he was San Diego’s first Hispanic police officer and the department’s first Hispanic supervisor. |
• | Joe Coyne (1837-1916): Drawn to California as a teenager by the Gold Rush, Coyne apparently made and lost several fortunes. He drifted into law enforcement after one of those fortunes was stolen by armed bandits who nearly killed him. Elected sheriff of San Diego in 1876, Coyne oversaw the transformation of the local constabulary from a ragtag gang of deputies into a proper police force with himself as chief of police. |
• | Josephine Marcus “Josie” Earp (1860-1944): Wyatt Earp’s common law wife was born in New York City to German-Jewish parents who later moved the family to San Francisco. Leaving home at 14, she worked as a dancer and actress (and most probably a sporting lady) in the Arizona Territory. After meeting Wyatt in Tombstone—shortly before the fabled shootout at the OK Corral—the two of them spent 46 years together roaming from boomtown to boomtown across the West, including several years in San Diego. She often used the stage name “Sadie” rather than her given name. |
• | Wyatt Earp (1848-1929): One of the iconic figures of the American West, Earp called San Diego his home from the mid 1880s to early 1890s. In addition to investing in local real estate, the legendary lawman ran three saloons and gambling halls (including the Oyster Bar on Fifth Avenue), refereed boxing matches and raced horses. After San Diego’s real estate boom went bust, the Earps moved to San Francisco and from there to the Klondike Gold Rush. |
• | Alonzo Horton (1813-1909): Often called the “Father of San Diego,” Horton was an ambitious and visionary real-estate developer who moved from San Francisco to San Diego in 1867 with the dream of creating magnificent new city beside one of the best natural harbors on the West Coast. He purchased 960 acres of waterfront land (most of present-day downtown San Diego) and christened it New Town to distinguish from Old Town in Mission Valley. Horton funded the steamship pier at the bottom of Fifth Street (1869), built the posh Horton House hotel (1870) and was one of the movers and shakers behind establishing Balboa Park—first city park west of the Mississippi. Although he didn’t directly take part, Horton was one of those who engineered the 1871 “bloodless coup” during which the county archives were clandestinely transferred from Old Town to New Town in the middle of the night. Whether or not he was part of the plot to burn Old Town to the ground in 1872 is still open to debate; but Horton and his New Town certainly benefited from the demise of their only commercial rival. |
• | William Hunsaker (1855-1933): Born and raised in northern California, Hunsaker served as San Diego’s duly elected mayor for just 10 months—January to November 1888. Disgusted with the way politics was run in San Diego, Hunsaker resigned and eventually moved to Los Angeles, where he practiced law. |
• | Dr. Joe LeFevre: San Diego County Physician and chief administrator of the County Hospital & Poor Farm from 1888-1891. |
• | George Marston (1850-1946): A natural-born entrepreneur, Marston arrived in San Diego in 1870 and worked as a clerk at the Horton House hotel and several local mercantiles before starting his own business. His department store at the corner of Fifth Avenue and C Street remained a thriving family business until 1961. Marston served as president of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce and founded the San Diego Historical Society. A very active philanthropist, he used his own money to save the old Spanish Presidio site in Old Town. Marston’s Arts & Crafts-style mansion on Banker’s Hill is now a museum. |
• | Elliot Patterson: The San Diego Times shooter is based on Frances Elliott Patterson, a professional photographer who ran a camera store in Fifth Avenue and later lived in a Victorian-style home at the corner of 22nd Street and Broadway on Golden Hill. The historic Hayward-Patterson House is still there, on the northwest corner of the intersection. |
• | Fatty Rice: Served as a deputy in San Diego from 1885 to 1889, before moving to Seattle where he lived for the rest of his life. |
• | Kate Sessions: The woman who recruited Roz Pinder to move from Boston to San Diego, really was vice principal at Russ School (now San Diego High School) before becoming a noted horticulturalist, landscape architect and the beloved “Mother of Balboa Park.” |
• | Ida Bailey: Starting in the 1880s, San Diego’s most notorious madame ran several houses of ill repute in the Stingaree. Her most famous place of business was the legendary Canary Cottage (opened in 1903), allegedly frequented by many of the city’s movers and shakers. |
• | Ballast Point: Mentioned several times in Nemesis—including the across-the-bay chase at the end—this small peninsula protects San Diego Bay from the open ocean. Called Punta Guijarros by the Spanish who settled the area in 1769, the name gradually changed to reflect the fact that Yankee ship captains dumped their ballast there. During the 1850s and 60s, the point provided a venue for whalers to boil blubber inside 150-gallon cauldrons. Nowadays the peninsula is part of U.S. Naval Base Point Loma. |
• | Balboa Park: Cradoc Bradshaw and Wyatt Earp venture twice into the wild lands that later became Balboa Park. On their way to the County Hospital & Poor Farm, they ride up Presidio Canyon along the same route as present-day Highway 163. Later in the story, the two of them venture to Switzer Canyon on the park’s eastern edge to evict a band of Kumeyaay Indians. The City of San Diego declared the area an open-space preserve in the 1860s—one of the nation’s first and largest city parks. Kate Session planting the park’s first ornamental trees in 1892. |
• | Baldwin locomotive: The train engine that Fabian Kendall christens with a bottle of explosives is of the exact type that the California Southern Railroad used between San Diego and the Inland Empire in the late 1880s. |
• | Clive Bennett’s motor yacht Medusa: Is based on the real-life Medea, a vintage steam yacht built in Scotland and now part of the substantial collection of the San Diego Maritime Museum. |
• | County Hospital and Poor Farm: Established in 1880, the medical and welfare facility was located in Mission Valley, on the south side of the San Diego River. The hospital buildings are long gone, replaced in modern times by Fashion Valley Mall, the San Diego Union-Tribune office, several hotels, and the interchange of Interstate-8 and Highway 163. |
• | Cuyamaca Club: The oldest chartered private club in California was founded in 1887 and patronized by many of San Diego’s movers and shakers; women were not admitted to the club until 1923. |
• | Dutch Flats: San Diego International Airport, Liberty Station and the Marine Corp Recruit Depot (MCRD) now occupy the tidal plain that was once called Dutch Flats. Prior to the diversion of the San Diego River in 1877, the river curled around Old Town and flowed across Dutch Flats into San Diego Bay. |
• | Golden Hill: The slightly elevated area where Nick and Roz Pinder built their home became popular in the 1880s as a cheaper alternative for those who couldn’t afford to live on Banker’s Hill. Nowadays the Golden Hill neighborhood is bounded by Interstate-5, Highway 94 and Balboa Park. Villa Montezuma at 1925 K Street is a surviving example of the sort of elaborate mansions that arose on Golden Hill in the late 1800s. |
• | Old Point Loma Lighthouse: The hilltop lighthouse where Nick Pinder was raised—and where the climax to Nemesis plays out—was erected in 1855 and protected the entrance to San Diego Bay for 36 years. Perched at 400 feet above sea level, the light was often shrouded in low clouds or fog, in other words useless to ships trying to enter or leave the bay. In Nemesis, the old light has been abandoned and fallen into disrepair by 1888. In reality, it was replaced by a more modern lighthouse at water level slightly later, in 1891. The lighthouse received federal protection in 1913 as part of Cabrillo National Monument. The Bayside Trail roughly traces the route that Nick Pinder and Cradoc Bradshaw would have taken from Ballast Point to the lighthouse on that fateful night in 1888. |
• | Old Town: Founded in 1769 by Spanish conquistador Gaspar de Portolà, Old Town was the military and civilian hub of San Diego through the Spanish, Mexican and early American periods. In the early 1870s, the municipal government, much of the commercial activity and most of the residents relocated to Alonzo Horton’s New Town on San Diego Bay. Many of the buildings destroyed by fire of 1872 have been faithfully reconstructed and form part of Old Town State Historic Park. |
• | Oyster Bar: Wyatt Earp’s saloon and gambling establishment was located on the ground floor of the Louis Bank of Commerce Building at 835 Fifth. The elaborate Baroque Revival-style structure (San Diego’s first granite building) still stands, rising four stories above Fifth Avenue and its rowdy modern-day nightlife scene. |
• | The Plaza: Later called Horton’s Plaza after the “Father of San Diego,” the plaza has served as a major focal point and gathering spot in downtown San Diego since the 1870s. The U.S. Grant Hotel now sits on the block-long plot where the Horton House once stood. The fictional San Diego Times building was on the western side of the plaza, where a 23-story, black-glass skyscraper called 225 Broadway now rises. |
• | San Diego Chinatown: Many of city’s early Chinese residents lived and ran businesses in the southwest portion of the Stingaree district. Their story is illuminated at the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum at 404 Third Avenue and J Street. |
• | San Diego County Courthouse: Erected in the late 1880s, the stout brick building served municipal functions until 1959 when it was torn down. The jailhouse was located at the rear of the courthouse with public hangings carried out in the livery across the street. |
• | San Diego Times: Clive Bennett’s newspaper is pure fiction; however Fabian Kendall’s San Diego Union was a real paper. Now called the Union-Tribune, the publication was founded in 1868 and has been the city’s leading newspaper for more than a hundred and fifty years. |
• | San Diego Train Station: The original station—the venue for Fabian Kendall’s fiery demise—was constructed in 1887 by the California Southern Railroad to handle the thousands of migrants pouring into San Diego. Demolished in 1915, it was replaced by the present-day Santa Fe Depot with its distinctive Spanish Revival architecture. |
• | Sunset Cliffs: The lofty sandstone palisades define the San Diego coast between Ocean Beach and Point Loma. A narrow, water-filled chasm called Devil’s Pot—pounded by incoming tides—was a landmark in Victorian times before it partially collapsed. The Cliff House was located near the northern end of the cliffs, around the spot where Ocean Beach Pier juts into the Pacific Ocean. The beach where Cradoc Bradshaw and Emma Lee Dawes venture on the Fourth of July is located at present-day Sunset Cliffs Natural Park, below Point Loma Nazarene University. |
• | Steamer Santa Rosa: Launched in 1883 in a Philadelphia shipyard, the Santa Rosa ferried passengers and cargo along the California coast until 1911, when she wrecked at Point Arguello on the grounds of what is now Vandenberg Air Force Base. State-of-the-art for the time, the iron-hulled ship was 326 feet long, |
• | Stingaree: San Diego’s notorious red light district sprawled across a dozen blocks between present-day Market Street and the waterfront. At one point it was estimated the neighborhood harbored more than 120 saloons and brothels. Depending on their place in the prostitution hierarchy, sporting ladies worked out of respectable bordellos like Ida Bailey’s Canary House (behind 536 4th Avenue) or rented space in tenement-like “cribs” with nothing more than canvas or cloth walls. In 1912, the city began a successful crackdown on illicit activities in the Stingaree. The First & Last Chance Saloon stood on the intersection of Firth and K, a block up from the Pacific Coast Steamship Company wharf, which stretched out into the bay on what is now reclaimed land occupied by the San Diego Convention Center and Embarcadero Marina Park. |
• | St. Joseph’s Church: Now the cathedral of the San Diego Archdiocese, the old Catholic Church was originally constructed in 1875 on a plot of land at the corner of Third and Beech streets donated by Alonzo Horton. |
• | Waterfront shanties: Cradoc Bradshaw’s home—located roughly where the San Diego Maritime Museum and historic Star of India clipper ship are located today—is among the many “stilt houses” that arose along San Diego Bay during the latter half of the 19th century. As bay wasn’t owned by anyone, people could construct an over-the-water house wherever they wanted without the need for homesteading or property purchase. The City of San Diego eventually outlawed the flimsy structures as health hazards. |