Ken Kramer: I don't have to tell you elections can be contentious.

How about one that was fun?

Savannah Stallings: I think people needed something joyful, and that's kind of part of why we were happy to do it.

Ken: We'll meet the winner, and here's a question.

When it came to getting your money's worth, how would you know a century ago?

And if you were on the go, where would you go?

And do you know who this is?

A woulda, coulda, might-have-been name we all know, but we don't.

Kelsey Wood: Yeah, I mean, I do think that he deserves a little more credit than he's given.

Ken: We'll drop by his house for a visit because here is where so much history and his memory are honored.

Plus.

♪♪♪ a big celebration.

Oh, it was 70 years ago and counting now.

Marching bands and floats.

male announcer: This float depicts the man who gave rise to San Diego today.

The man who saw the vision in this community, Alonzo Erastus, Father Horton.

Ken: It was supposed to become an every year thing, but didn't, and we've got a quiz for you, and more stories too.

All of them true, about San Diego.

male announcer: "Ken Kramer's About San Diego," the history and people of the area we call home.

Here's Ken Kramer.

Ken: Hello to everybody in San Diego and Imperial Counties.

This is your show.

It's about us.

We got a lot of places to go and a lot of things to see in this episode.

I'll tell you that we're at the corner of 4th and Island in the Gaslamp in San Diego, where there is an historic house, and a lot of interesting things happened in this house, including one that might have turned out far differently, except for fate.

First of all though, we're going to go way back in time and introduce you to a personality who was well known on these streets and very well liked, simply because of who he was.

♪♪♪ Ken: Everybody knows San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter.

Restaurants, clubs, historic buildings dating back well over a century, to when it looked like this, and in this simpler setting there lived among our population of about 16,000 back then, I say there lived a celebrity.

A true star in our young city.

We adopted a dog, you see.

Well, no one person exactly adopted this dog, but everybody in the neighborhood looked after and exquisitely cared for a Saint Bernard Spaniel mix who just showed up one day, and right away stories began.

Everybody said he was a stowaway aboard the steamer Santa Rosa, and when it tied up at the wharf, he came romping into San Diego and into the hearts of one and all.

Now, I'm just gonna stop right here because you may know that I'm talking about our famous town dog Bum, who came to San Diego in 1886, but it was in the 1950s that a whole new generation of San Diegans learned about this dog because of Mr.

Orville James, who by day was a toolmaker, but at nighttime he was a cartoonist.

And here you go.

See, there's Bum bounding off the Santa Rosa.

Says the seagoing life was not for him.

The San Diego newspaper featured these drawings 75 years ago of the adventures of Bum the dog, who seems to have befriended a Chinese fisherman named Ah Wo Sue, but really belonged to no one.

And you can say, okay, a lot of this is urban legend.

Like, did he really pull a puppy out of the way of a streetcar, but a lot of it appears to be documented.

Like restaurants proudly advertising Bum eats here.

He was, according to all accounts, allowed to sit in on government meetings.

His picture did appear on dog licenses in the city, and when United States President Benjamin Harrison came to San Diego in 1889 the civic parade included a horse drawn carriage for Mr.

Harrison and another one for Bum.

He made at least one trip to LA, and was cared for along the way by fans and crew members who loved him.

We know that Bum lost a part of one leg.

Orville James drew the image of what is said to have happened.

Bum got into a fight with another dog down by the tracks and got too close to a train.

His recovery became a citywide obsession.

A bed was prepared in a local store window, and passersby could receive daily updates.

There was the matter of his drinking.

He did.

He became an alcoholic, and people who gave him beer didn't do him any favors.

Eventually Bum got old, had arthritis and rheumatism, and was taken to the county poor farm where he was fed and taken care of to the end.

He doesn't have a grave marker, but he is remembered, to put it mildly.

Generations of kids have read about him in books or recreated his life in school plays.

Through the years there've been articles written.

The tributes have been countless.

But I think these little cartoons by Orville James that appeared in the paper for a time starting in 1950 are a particularly charming legacy.

Bum deserves it.

After all, he was our town dog, and even though it was back in the 1880s, forever, that'll be true about San Diego.

♪♪♪ Ken: By the way, those cartoons have been donated to the Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation, and can I just show you something in the courtyard here at 4th and Island?

Yeah, there it is.

It's a statue, and there's a code.

It's a statue of Bum.

You can scan it, and you can hear about Bum, as thousands now have.

And since this house itself dates back to 1850, we wondered if Bum ever came by for a visit.

Here's Kelsey Wood of the museum.

Kelsey: I don't think it would be out of the realm of possibility to imagine he sniffed around here or maybe got a treat or two at the door.

Ken: More from Kelsey Wood coming up a little bit later in the show as she talks about what happened in this house, but first, you know, cities tend to have official things.

Maybe they have an official motto or an official flag.

Well, did you know San Diego used to have an official flower for many decades until something changed.

male: One, two, three, ♪ Na na na, na na na, na, na.

♪ Ken: 1964, The Beatles had the number one, two, three, and four most popular records, Ford introduced the Mustang, and the San Diego City Council declared the carnation, yes, the carnation should be our official city flower.

Savannah: There's a really cool old newspaper clipping that kind of describes it, you know.

Ken: Can you see it here?

It was controversial.

Carnations were brought into the council chambers, but so were roses and poinsettia.

City councilman Tom Hom suggested the shamrock.

The city manager swatted a spider and hinted it might have come in on a flower.

Somebody said, how about seaweed?

Councilwoman Helen Cobb said, it does make a wonderful soup, but in the end, the carnation was decided upon, and so it was our official city flower for more than 60 years.

Only thing, the carnation is not really native to San Diego, and the thinking was, why don't we find something that is?

Let's have an election.

♪♪♪ Ken: I mean, give out I voted stickers to everybody who cast a ballot.

The whole election thing, but Savannah Stallings says because there were so many candidates.

Savannah: We thought it would be fun to do a March Madness style bracket to select the flower.

Ken: So there'd be an Elite Eight, and then another ballot to decide the Final Four, and the two best would be in a runoff for the winner, the new city flower.

Savannah: People would campaign, I think, for their favorite, and got very attached to certain species.

Ken: Savannah is conservation advocacy coordinator for the San Diego Bird Alliance.

Their job is to make sure birds have a safe place to live in a natural habitat.

They conducted the election.

You could vote online, civic gatherings, libraries, lots of places.

Savannah: We had over 7,700 votes throughout the whole process, yeah, which was pretty good, I think.

Ken: There were some criteria.

Had to be native to San Diego.

It had to have significance and a name in one of the Kumeyaay languages.

They worked with the Barona Cultural Center, and soon enough they had their eight for the floral face off, including the black sage and the Cleveland sage.

Savannah: They were both knocked out in the first round, yeah.

Ken: But it was enough that you were there.

Savannah: You were there.

Ken: Same with the bladder pod and blue elderberry.

Savannah: So we have California wild rose and California buckwheat, which both made it to the final flora, the Final Four.

Ken: In the end, it was the bush sunflower and the blue-eyed grass for the championship, and the winner.

Savannah: It's the blue-eyed grass now.

Yeah, the people chose the blue-eyed grass.

Ken: Which they took to the city council, which, without a word about shamrocks, spiders, or seaweed, and far less commotion than in 1964, said we approve, and now blue-eyed grass is San Diego's city flower.

Savannah: You can find them along creek sides and, you know, shady groves.

Meadows, they're very popular in meadows.

Ken: And very pretty, and as for this exercise in democracy, she says people were pretty invested.

Savannah: It was fun.

It was a little nerve-wracking for sure.

There were some days where the votes were literally 50/50, and as the day would go on, I'd be like, please, just sway one way or the other.

Ken: Well, and it was close.

Only about 30 votes, but in the end there were no challenges, no accusations.

A relatively incident free, floral face off, that now along with blue-eyed grass has become a part of history about San Diego.

♪♪♪ Ken: By the way, if you want to see plants that are native to San Diego and this part of the country, there's a walkway around the perimeter of the Natural History Museum.

You can see the plants and read descriptions about them.

Included among them are the finalists in the final flor, and if you're lucky, the blue-eyed grass will be in bloom.

♪♪♪ Ken: All right, as promised, a story now about this place where we are, but more than that, it's a story about the fortunes of one man, and to understand it, we do have to go back in time.

Going to show you two faces from out of our distant past, okay?

Starting off, this is Alonzo Horton, and this is Bill Davis.

Now of the two, who do you think first came up with the idea of locating the modern city of San Diego where it is today?

Because remember, way back San Diego was up in Old Town, but who first thought of putting streets and houses in Newtown, where the main downtown of the city grew and is thriving today?

Oh, you say, Alonzo Horton, of course.

After all, he's the one who in the late 1860s bought up almost 1,000 acres of land, first laid out the streets, set aside space for churches.

We honor him for that with a statue, and his name's all over.

Bill Davis, not so much.

Well, let's go to this house.

This particular house at 4th and Island Avenues.

It's a salt box house, Kelsey Wood says.

Kelsey: Yeah, it actually mimics the style of the old timey salt boxes you would scoop from, so that's where it gets the name.

Ken: See, here are some old salt boxes, and the house looks a little bit like one.

It's called the Davis Horton House.

There's those two names again.

Well, who was this Bill Davis?

William Heath Davis, a Pacific Islander.

Kanaka Bill they called him.

Kelsey: He was a--actually he was a descendant of Hawaiian royalty.

He was born in Hawaii, and he came over to California when he was around 15 years old.

Ken: Found wealth in Northern California, but had an eye on San Diego, which again, was just Oldtown back then.

He took a look at that and said no.

Kelsey: And he knew that Oldtown wasn't what it could be.

It was a little too far away from the water, so he did come here with a really strong vision.

Ken: A vision of a new San Diego down along the waterfront, where back then there was nothing.

He ordered and put together ten prefabricated salt box houses, but today there's just this one left.

It houses the Gaslamp Museum where Kelsey Wood is engagement coordinator.

Kelsey: He builds all of these houses in 1850, so this house along with the others were built that year.

Ken: Kanaka Bill Davis was the one who started everything, or tried to.

Kelsey: He wasn't too happy about the situation, especially when the area got the nickname Davis's Folly.

Ken: Mr.

Davis's town just didn't grow.

Kelsey: Part of it was an economic downturn at the time.

Totally out of his control.

Ken: And that might be that, but no.

About a dozen years later, here comes Alonzo Horton with the same idea, but this time it takes off.

It's Alonzo Horton who bought the land and saw it double in value and double again.

He became famous.

He is revered today as the father of San Diego, and William Heath "Kanaka" Bill Davis is hardly known.

Kelsey: Yeah, I mean, I do think that he deserves a little more credit than he's given.

You know, it was his idea initially.

He had all these grand wonderful plans, so I do feel a little sad that he doesn't get the credit he deserves.

Ken: But at least here he is honored and his story is told.

This remarkable 175 year old house, moved twice from its earlier locations at State and Market, and 11th and Kay, has so much history of its own.

Soldiers were housed here for a time.

It was a county hospital for a lot of people who were down and out and didn't have anywhere else to go when they were sick.

There's the story of a German spy, who is said to have lived here during World War I, and an owner who had a hidden still in a closed-off room.

That was a surprise to discover.

But do you know what else?

Bill Davis, William Heath Davis himself, never lived here, Kelsey says.

But Alonzo Horton did, while one of his mansions was being built.

Looking back, Bill Davis could be forgiven for thinking, "Could have been me."

Savannah: But he was supportive of Alonzo Horton picking up the project actually.

Ken: And so in this salt box structure, it's the Davis Horton House at 4th and Island.

It and the Gaslamp Museum here are worth a visit, for this place is a tribute to their place in the history written about San Diego.

Time for a quiz about San Diego, and about Alonzo Horton in this case.

Before he came to San Diego, Mr.

Horton founded another town which bears his name, and what is the name of that town?

Is it Hortonville, Wisconsin, Horton City, Missouri, or Horton Town, Illinois?

♪♪♪ It is Hortonville, Wisconsin, population 3,364 on the shores of Black Otter Lake, where in Veterans Park is the historical marker honoring Alonzo E. Horton.

A sweet little town on a branch line railroad, with tree-lined streets extending out to and beyond Alonzo Park, and even though he did not stay here, he went on to found, what was the name of that place?

It is this Wisconsin town of Hortonville where Alonzo Horton came, and who knows, might have stayed, except he had bigger plans about San Diego.

♪♪♪ Ken: Would you like to go for a ride, grab a coat, a scarf, maybe a hat?

Oh, and one more thing, it's more than a century ago, so be prepared.

1920s, road trips were the thing and cars like the Model T were the way to get there.

Driving from LA to San Diego was a real adventure, especially along one very challenging stretch of highway.

See it on this old map?

The Torrey Pines grade.

That hill your car had to climb to come down the coast to San Diego a century ago, you can still drive it, though far more people walk up Torrey Pines Park Road from the state beach.

Same road, and just imagine, it was a real struggle for cars back then.

For one thing, they'd stall.

See, the Model T had what they called a gravity fed fuel system.

Gasoline came from the gas tank to the engine in the front, and if you were climbing the Torrey Pines grade and your tank wasn't full, oh no.

The gas didn't get up there to the engine and you stalled.

The answer was to drive in reverse.

No kidding.

Back up all the way to the top until you reached here.

♪♪♪ Ken: Ah-hah, the Torrey Pines Lodge, and let me tell you, by the time you got up here, your car needed a break, and you needed a beer.

Opened in February of 1923, its design was inspired by the Hopi Indian houses of the Arizona desert.

Inside was a restaurant where you could dine on the terrace and enjoy the piny ocean air and see the coastal fog, from which these rare trees drew moisture.

The Torrey pine tree really is uniquely San Diego, found only here along our coast and on Santa Rosa Island off Santa Barbara.

Indigenous peoples and settlers knew about the tree, of course, but it's named for Doctor John Torrey, a medical doctor, botanist, and expert on trees and flowers of North America who was from New York.

So he never saw them, never came out here and actually laid eyes on them himself.

No, it was one of his admirers, Charles C. Perry, on a scientific expedition in 1850 who identified a new species of pine growing in sheltered places on bluffs above the ocean, and he sent some samples to Doctor Torrey, and he said he wanted to name the tree after him.

So it might have been a Perry pine, but it's a Torrey pine, and there you are.

Today, the historic Torrey Pines Lodge is a ranger station and visitor center that preserves relics of that time when perspiring automobiles and tourist buses made their way up the grade so their eager occupants might walk the trails and see trees to be found almost nowhere else on earth.

♪♪♪ Ken: Refreshed, restored, and maybe inspired, motorists of a century ago could continue on their way to San Diego.

This part of the road today isn't open to cars anymore, but it still goes a ways beyond the lodge, straight and level, and built of cement and local sand and seashells dating back to the days of Warren Harding.

And along the way there is a plaque and an informational marker with just a few pictures to tell the story of the old road you're walking on.

Just a reminder, please, of the Model T days, when the Torrey Pines Grade was something to be reckoned with, and the Torrey Pines Lodge was your reward for having done so.

Lasting bits of history both about San Diego.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Ken: We are always excited to see what comes in the mail or, you know, the email.

Old pictures that you send in of what the city used to look like in bygone days.

We always set aside some time for what we call stuff, and guess what?

It's time.

We get mail asking, hey, do you remember the TV series "Coronado 9"?

It was back in 1960.

It starred Rod Cameron as a San Diego private investigator.

The scenes around town here were fun to watch.

male announcer: San Diego's Balboa Park is the heart of the city's cultural and recreational life.

In short, there's something for everybody in Balboa Park, day or night.

Ken: Uh oh, you can see trouble here for sure, but Rod Cameron always cracked the mystery and solved the crime in every one of the 39 episodes, most of them filmed around and about San Diego.

From Kenna Bramlet, a watch.

Pocket watch, kind of a rarity.

Open it and look.

Do you see Otay Watch Company of Otay, California?

Not many of these are around anymore.

Okay, quick story.

This is the corner of Fresno and Tremont Streets in Chula Vista, where on this land here in 1890 was this.

The Otay watchworks, where they made pocket watches, and if it seems kind of random, well, yes.

It lasted less than a year.

The company was not well financed, and there wasn't much of a market, frankly.

Only about 1,200 Otay pocket watches were ever made before the factory shut down.

Brian of San Diego, thank you for this.

Really interesting for the time.

Likely World War I. A panorama shot taken at Rockwell Field.

Dozens of Army aviators.

Rockwell Field was where the Army had a flight school, and where Army Aviation really got started.

Show you where it was.

Here's a map of the Coronado Peninsula.

About 1.5 miles northwest of the city you can see Rockwell Field before the Navy took complete control of North Island years later.

And one more here.

This is a remarkable picture.

November 27th, 1918.

Couple 100 or more planes from Rockwell came across the bay and flew over downtown San Diego to celebrate the end of the war.

This is what it looked like.

Can't imagine what it must have sounded like.

And by the way, somewhere in this group maybe, and definitely in this one, Brian says, is his great uncle.

1932 in the old San Diego courthouse, there was this office.

Look around.

You can see weights and measures.

You bought anything from coffee to kerosene, they went out, checked the scales and the gas pumps to make sure you weren't getting cheated.

male announcer: Under a typically beautiful San Diego day and before thousands upon thousands of spectators, San Diego presents the first annual Fiesta del Pacifico historical pageant parade.

Ken: 28th of July 1956, there was a parade up 6th Avenue.

male: This has been far beyond our expectations.

It's estimated that over 300,000 people are viewing this parade today.

Ken: Celebrities, the governors of six states.

Here's Goodwin Knight of California.

All a part of a really ambitious civic festival called Fiesta del Pacifico.

It was a month long, with road races and street parties and a theatrical presentation at Balboa Stadium of "The California Story," involving 1,300 people and a symphony orchestra on a stage that was more than a city block long.

male announcer: Here comes the Barum Brothers boys band directed by Jules Jakes.

♪♪♪ Ken: The plan was, well, this is great for the city and for tourism.

Let's do this every year.

male: We know and hope that the men and women that take over the program in the years to come will improve on what has been done this year.

Ken: But within a few years, the Fiesta had run its course.

Now just a memory, like "Coronado 9" and the Otay Watch Company and the army at Rockwell Field.

The county department of weights and measures adapted to the times though.

At the end of Prohibition, they began checking on and ensuring the honest capacity of beer kegs.

Ken: And that's it for this time and this episode of "About San Diego."

Thanks to the folks at the Gaslamp Museum at the Davis-Horton House for helping us out this time.

If you want to see these stories again, if you want to learn more about the stories you've seen here, or if you want to get a cup or a mug to show that you like the show, we really appreciate that.

We will see you next time, and until then, and as always, I'm Ken Kramer.

Thank you for watching and for caring about San Diego.

Bye-bye.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ female: Hey, if you're still watching.

Ken: Thank you for that.

We've got some exciting news.

♪♪♪ female: Bam!

♪♪♪ female announcer: Support for this program comes from the KPBS Explore Local Content Fund.

Supporting new ideas and programs for San Diego.