How Transportation Forged the History of Writing in Sacramento

By Ted Witt, Pretty Road Press

Literary kinetics in the Bay Area in the early 1900s did not escape the attention of writers in Sacramento. The Bohemian writers in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley were gaining national attention as antipodes to uppity New York and Boston — not only by way of geography but also by ideas and literary style.

For Sacramentans, there would be no better writing mentors in the pre-World War I literary scene than Bay Area influencers like Joaquin Miller, George Sterling, and Herman Whitaker. Even Jack London would be worth a trip to the Bay Area if he were in town telling stories. But getting to the Bay Area was difficult.

These well-knit celebrities, along with other prominent Bay Area journalists and authors, spawned the California Writers Club in 1909 out of the loins of the Alameda Press Club.

Ambiguities around the primary focus of their newfangled club — whether it was journalism or literary work — continued into their formative years when the focus settled on a duality of ambition. From the outside view of contemporary academics, Jack London, both a journalist and fiction writer, tilted the scales, contributing a work of fiction, “Son of Wolf,” to the club’s first anthology, titled West Winds.

London was a man on the go. He had steamed up the Delta to explore Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley. In 1908 he adventured in the Pacific, returning to California in 1910 by way of Ecuador, Panama, and New Orleans. He was unlikely to have sat in at the early meetings of the newly formed club, but he was an influencer.

London’s contribution to “West Winds” was largely a favor to his friend Herman Whitaker, one of the initial founders of the California Writers Club and a reporter for the Oakland Tribune, who had spent time reporting in Mexico.

Testimony to the difficulties of the era’s transportation challenges is the fact that Whitaker had the resources to drive  a car, which he subsequently drove into a ditch. It was as much his fault as it was the roads — evidence of early-century travel perils.

Trains Prevailed Over Cars

Cars and car travel were expensive. Roads from the Valley to the Bay were primitive for the Ford motor cars that dominated in the pre-war era. Trains were the best option. However, steamboats were available. They traveled down the Sacramento Delta, charging less, but taking longer.

The professionalism and vitality of the California Writers Club attracted a small group of writers from Sacramento who found it worthwhile travelling to Oakland despite the difficulties. Some Sacramento writers, emigrants out of San Francisco, maintained their membership with the Oakland-based group but more out of loyalty than for benefits.

As Sacramento writers coalesced and achieved status as published authors, communiques from the Oakland-based club suggested the capital city writers join their association.

But the trip to Oakland from the riverside town of Sacramento was ninety miles. Writers in Sacramento found trips to the Bay Area tiresome. Those ninety miles factored into birthing the first offspring of the famed California Writer’s Club. It would be Branch No. 1.

For example, Mrs. Milo Wood said that it was impossible to attend meetings “as the distance was too great.”

“She, her husband, and mother, all members of the Oakland club, had not attended one meeting in the five years they had been in Sacramento,” recounted Edna Becsey, the woman who would end up being the first president of the Sacramento Branch.

Turn to 2015, when this author was an officer of the Sacramento Branch of the California Writers Club, he also found it tiresome to get to state-level club training in the Bay Area. But the issues were more about traffic than dirt roads, about parking scarcity than getting stuck in mud.

So, how did the early Sacramento literary pilgrims get to Oakland, and how did transportation change over the years?

In 1910, these Sacramento Valley writers relied primarily on trains. The Southern Pacific Railroad’s steam trains provided a link from Sacramento’s 4th & I streets directly to Oakland.

A Typical Train Ride

A train ride took about three to three and one-half hours (by car, it still can take that long today, given heavy freeway traffic). Train fares were about $2 for a one-way ticket. In today’s dollars, which would bring about sixty-eight bucks.

The Southern Pacific had fixed schedules, so Sacramento writers might have caught a morning train to go to an afternoon meeting and return by evening. However, if meetings ran late (there were occasional social hours and dinners), an overnight stay in the Bay Area was likely — given limited late-night departures. Hotel Oakland, which opened in 1912, could have hosted visiting writers before their next day’s return.

Was it worth such a trip? Records indicate that, in 1915, five-plus years after the formal founding,  club gatherings in Oakland were thriving. Topics that year reflected current events and writing craft. One meeting featured a discussion of war correspondence, while another meeting would host a poet reading.

Hearsay reports tell of poet Ina Coolbrith delivering a reading — a plausible reason for Sacramentans to make the trip and return home inspired. One Sacramento attendee joked in a letter, “The Muse may live in the Bay, but she makes us earn the visit!”

California Establishes a State Highway Commission

Automobiles were slowly becoming more common as early as 1911, but roads were less than basic. California had established a State Highway Commission. Plans were underway to build paved highways, but on-the-ground progress was pathetic.

A writer with a Model T Ford would face ungraded roads and unpredictable conditions. “And that dust!” members reiterated. There was no direct highway from Sacramento. Travel by car meant piecing together county roads and wagon trails, often detouring for river crossings.

For example, writers could route south to Stockton and then west, or they could try to navigate roads through the Delta. Either way, that meant slow going.

Without bridges over the Carquinez Strait or Delta, motorists would have had to wait in line for small ferries at crossings like Benicia–Martinez or Rio Vista. A trip that took three hours by train could end up taking eight to ten hours by car, the same time as a Steamboat down the Delta.

As one CWC historian later put it, “The roads were little more than bicycle trails and mud holes, shared with mule-drawn carts, horse-drawn buggies, and pedestrians.”

In contrast, a train ticket would get you a seat in a wood-paneled coach, steam heating in winter, and openable windows for ventilation.

World War I Influences

Between the founding of the mother club and the Sacramento Branch, two noteworthy events would go on to complicate transportation on trains: World War I and the Spanish Flu.

In April 1917, the United States entered World War I. The nation’s transport networks shifted to a war footing.

One immediate effect was an increase in passenger fares on railroads. A writer’s ticket from Sacramento to Oakland would go up to $11 (equal to eighty greenbacks in today’s economy). A Sacramento writer heading to an Oakland meeting might ride alongside uniformed troops or squeeze into a day coach with war workers.

Later, in 1918, the Spanish Flu pandemic hit California. Public gatherings were restricted; quarantine measures curtailed travel. In October and November, both Oakland and Sacramento banned large meetings. Trains and ferries full of people in close quarters were potential vectors for the virus. Photos from late 1918 show train conductors and passengers wearing mandated gauze masks.

The year 1919 was a period of renewed movement — both literally and culturally. Train travel from Sacramento to Oakland became easier and more predictable again. Wartime restrictions, like priority for military traffic, were lifted.

A Sacramento writer could hop on a Southern Pacific train and expect an on-time arrival in Oakland in about three hours and fifteen minutes. Meetings in 1919 within the club were ebullient. Topics focused on rebuilding the literary scene and embracing new voices. The Roaring ’20s were about to begin. Culturally, optimism was high. The Oakland meetings addressed subjects like “California’s literary future.” They hosted readings from newly published works. At the same time, the Oakland club was considering a second West Winds anthology.

In club correspondence around 1920, one finds references to “our friends in Sacramento” who “come a long way at great inconvenience to join us.” The principal club leadership in the Bay Area, including President Austin Lewis (that was around 1920) and later Harry Noyes Pratt (1921), were well aware that some members or would-be members from the Central Valley were struggling to take part regularly.

Continued Calls for a Sacramento Branch

The refrain in 1921 among Sacramento writers became more pointed: travel was improving but still time-consuming. Wouldn’t it help everyone if a branch of the club could be set up in Sacramento?

The CWC’s mission was to support writers statewide. The idea did not fall silent — especially not on Harry Noyes Pratt,  the new CWC president who took over 1921.

Pratt, though based in Berkeley, voiced a fondness for Sacramento. He admired its history and even later moved to the city. While no official branch charter came yet, the stage was set. Pratt and others thought pragmatically: if enough members are in Sacramento, meetings could be held there or a subdivision formed.

Transportation improvements meant Sacramento writers had more flexibility than ever in reaching Oakland, but most attendees still stuck to the trains, especially for formal club meetings.

Perhaps there was a sense that the once-daunting journey was becoming routine, as evidenced by the increasing number of Sacramento names on CWC attendance lists. For example, minutes of a meeting featuring poet George Sterling speaking on “Bohemian San Francisco” report that attendees came “all the way from Sacramento.”

Other topics at Oakland meetings included the rise of jazz and its influence on literature and writing for the booming pulp magazines. New technologies became a topic:  radio was emerging. Someone gave a talk on “the future of broadcasting and storytelling.”

In Sacramento, offerings expanded beyond mere meetings and talks. Critique sessions and readings came into play. A University of California professor traveled to Sacramento to lecture on “The Poetry of the Sierras.”

A Pivotal Moment

The decisive transition came late in 1923: the Sacramento writers formally petitioned the CWC Central Board to consider establishing a Sacramento Branch. This was not an outright demand but a proposal. Specific correspondence from this time is not widely published that this author can find, but later histories reference that Sacramento members “presented their case” from 1923 through 1924.

The case was simple: With more than two dozen active writers in our city, regular meetings, writing, and publishing, wouldn’t it serve the Oakland club’s mission to have a branch in Sacramento?

They pointed out the travel burden — the “miles of rolling hills, pastures, and farmland” separating them from the East Bay, which, as early Sacramento Branch histories note, made travel “not easy” even in the best of times.

The main club wanted assurance that a Sacramento branch would have solid leadership and not fizzle. Sacramento gave those assurances. Influential voices like Pratt were in their corner. Pratt, by 1923, had been elected second vice-president of the CWC (after serving as president earlier). He earned his respect. He publicly spoke of Sacramento in glowing terms, which helped sway any skeptics.

Pratt understood that geography was the only thing holding back Sacramento’s writers from full participation. He is famously quoted for being “concerned about dusty roads from Sacramento to Oakland that complicated travel to meetings.” He “urged the Sacramento writers to form their own offshoot, ‘Branch #1.’” By late 1923, though that quote comes from a later documented reflection, Pratt’s mindset was already leaning that way.

Finally, 1924 and into 1925 became the last months Sacramento writers had to endure the pilgrimage to Oakland as their only option — and it was a significant transition period. Travel-wise, it brought further improvements that made the trip as smooth as it had ever been (just as they were about to find the journey unnecessary).

Better Seats, but Fewer Sacramento Passengers

The Southern Pacific introduced new, more comfortable passenger cars on the route — steel coaches with upholstered seating and better suspension, often called “chair cars.” Journey times hovered around three hours, reliably. An author could now have breakfast in Sacramento and luncheon in Oakland with little fuss.

All the travel improvements, however, served as a backdrop to the real story: the birth of the Sacramento Branch of the California Writers Club. In 1924, the CWC leadership officially approved the formation of branches, followed by an organizational period for the transition.

Sacramento elected provisional officers in anticipation. Unsurprisingly, Edna W. Becsey took the role as president-to-be, given her leadership and organizational talent. The first official Sacramento Branch meeting was October 31, 1925, at the Senator Hotel.

Sacramento writers during the transition still traveled to Oakland for major club events, but these trips probably had a valedictory feeling, like they were finally on the verge of no longer needing to commute for their literary fellowship.

With good reason, in mid-1924, a contingent went back for an Oakland meeting when the main club formally announced its intention to launch the Sacramento Branch. The club bulletin printed reports of applause and congratulations all around. One Oakland member quipped, “We shall miss your visits, but not the guilt seeing you travel so far!”