Someone wrote on the back of a photograph: Betsy. July 12, 1927. Mill Valley. A man and four women, an open touring car, a California license plate, redwoods in the background.
The photograph came from the Anderson family of Mill Valley. Emma and Abraham Anderson had arrived in 1890, among the first buyers at the land auction that founded the town. They purchased property on Lovell Avenue. Abraham was a builder. They had six children. Their descendants lived in Mill Valley for decades and eventually donated the family's photographs and papers to the Lucretia Little History Room at the Mill Valley Public Library, where this one has been kept ever since.
In July 1927 there was no Golden Gate Bridge and no Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. To get to San Francisco you took the ferry from Sausalito. The same week this photograph was taken, opponents of the proposed Golden Gate Bridge were being heard in a Santa Rosa courtroom. Of the 2,307 people who had filed formal protests with the Secretary of State in Sacramento, five were from Marin County.
The bridge would open ten years later. Until then, a car in Mill Valley could take you up the mountain, out toward Stinson, or down to the ferry landing. It could carry five people on a summer afternoon and be worth naming and photographing.
Photo courtesy of the Lucretia Little History Room, Mill Valley Public Library, Anderson/Schwartz Family Collection (MS.2023.042). Sources: Mill Valley Record, July 9 and July 16, 1927, via the California Digital Newspaper Collection (cdnc.ucr.edu).
