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 Looking down Miller Avenue during the flood of 1945 |
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Below are narratives created from excerpts of oral histories taped and then transcribed by the Mill Valley Historical Society's Oral History Committee. You may check out the transcripts of the complete interviews and listen to the tapes in the Mill Valley Public Library's Lucretia Hansen Little History Room. From the Oral History of Henri Boussy Henri Boussy moved to Mill Valley in 1946. A former teacher at Tamalpais High School, a past member of the Mill Valley Historical Society Board of Directors, and the author of many articles on Mill Valley history, Mr. Boussy was interviewed for an oral history by Carol Wilson in June 1997. In this excerpt, Mr. Boussy describes how Mill Valley winters, while usually temperate, can be particularly disastrous due to freezes and heavy rains which cause intermittent flooding, especially near Tam High School, "the school by the slough." "My wife and I remember one morning trying to drive to school, and all of a sudden, the car skidded on this perfectly flat, what looked like, dry pavement.  It skidded and almost turned around, and I didn't dare go on. I didn't dare leave the car, because I was in the middle of the street, and I was within a couple of blocks of Tamalpais High School. I could see the high school, but I couldn't reach it.So I waited until I thought it was safe to move the car and drove in about three hours late to the school to find out that the buses had been stalled when the ice came. That's when the students were coming in from all over the county. School was not held that day because the students couldn't arrive. We have had some dangerous floods. Every once in a while it comes as a surprise, but the streams can't handle the rainfall, so all the lowlands are flooded. Of course where the Goheen buildings are was marshland originally, and the boats used to come in and dock up as far as Tamalpais High School in the slough there, because it was deep enough. Those areas traditionally flood because they're lowlands. It's usually a combination of high tide and heavy rainfall that can't full wash out into the bay, so you get knee deep water in front of the gym, or you used to until they took care of it. Students used to bring canoes out and paddle up and down Miller Avenue. When the trains were still active in Mill Valley, they converted to an electric third rail system, and it used to short every time there was a heavy rain. It would short the rails, so that they couldn't use the tracks. There was a couple of boys in Mill Valley that had use of a Model T Ford. They used to drive people from the train station at Manzanita into Mill Valley during those flooded conditions, because they couldn't come in by train. It was quite an enterprise."
From the Oral History of Valborg (Mama) Gravander "Mama" Gravander was honored by Swedish King Gustav VI for keeping Swedish traditions alive through spinning and weaving classes, culinary events, and celebrations of Swedish cultural arts and festivities. Following are excerpts from an oral history interview by Mrs. Ruth Lescohier in 1970. The Marin Libraries Online Catalog at MARINet contains additional information about Valborg Gravander. "For a long time we came over here on weekends. We camped in a tent under the oaks while Mr. Gravander built the first house.  He built it partly so we would have a place to stay overnight and partly so he could have his workshop here. He started building looms; for many years he built all the looms that we used in our school. I'm still using them. The workshop was upstairs. Downstairs there was just one room. We had a couple of cots and an old iron stove. It was quite serviceable for a weekend cottage.When I decided to buy this lot [335 Tamalpais Avenue], we had no money, and when I wanted my husband to come over and look at it with me, I said, 'I don't want you to say no before you see the place.' Then he saw it, too, and saw how beautiful it was, here on the mountain. We walked down the hill together and walked into Mr. Nostrand's office. We actually didn't have two dollars to rub against one another at that time (1929). Mr. Nostrand lent us the down payment for the lot. We moved over here permanently in 1945. We had also built this house on the lot [325 Tamalpais Avenue]. A young man who lived at my house in San Francisco was an architect, and he said, 'I'll draw up the plans for your new house if you'll weave me a suit of clothes from camel hair.' And I did, and he did! We made the plans, and my husband built it with the help of an 80-year-old carpenter, with friends and neighbors helping in putting on the roof and things like that. We had to come from San Francisco by ferry, and it was very pleasant to take a streetcar down to the Ferry Building, and the ferry over, and the little train from Sausalito. And then we trudged up the hill. Don't think that we had, at that time, 25 cents for the taxi from the station up to this hill. Unless we had lots of bags and baskets to carry, we walked up. My favorite Swedish Christmas cookie is the ginger cookie, the one we use for the gingerbread houses and the gingerbread men. It's really a very simple recipe. That's the one I have taught the young children who came here to Lucia. Those years when I celebrated Lucia with them, they came here the Saturday before, and we made cookies. Those cookie bakes were really wonderful occasions. And they'd come back year after year. I've seen the children in the neighborhood grow up around my cookie-baking table."
From the Oral History of Cornelia Ripley Sherman Mrs. Cornelia Ripley Sherman, longtime Mill Valley resident, died in 1999 in her home at the age of 103. Mrs. Sherman was a remarkably sharp and able lady, a dancer and a landscape gardener, who supported the Suffragettes and served as a nurse in World War I during the 1918 flu epidemic. During World War II, Mrs. Sherman organized the Women's Fire Fighting Team in Mill Valley. In an oral history interview conducted by Marilyn Geary, Mrs. Sherman described how she went about organizing Mill Valley's women to serve in critical emergency preparedness and firefighting roles during the wartime years. "When the war broke out, I thought a great many of the men commute and the women are going to be left if small fires are going to be set around here. There was an election, and I went down and cast my vote. Then I stood [outside the polls]. When the women came out, I asked, 'Is there anybody interested in fire protection?' Well, about ten were, so I said, 'Come around and follow me,' and we went galloping up here [to Mrs. Sherman's home on Elinor Avenue]. We discussed what women could be taught to back up the men. I didn't think we'd go out as a fire team, but we would go out with them and be behind them so that they could go forward.  The women would see to it that the sparks that were left wouldn't start again. The women were...quite a team.There was the matter of getting the male head of the Fire Department to agree. I did that by getting to his wife [laughs]. He agreed to give us some training. So we went out, and we actually went down the fire pole many a time at the Fire House there. They all loved that [laughs]. We went out quite often when they burned off lots. Why, we'd go behind and handle the hoses and watch the perimeters of the men. There would be a call, and we'd have to come down in a hurry. Hanging out of the back of the fire truck and coming down Summit Avenue [laughs]. It was exciting. Also we cut some fire trails. The men were delighted to hand [clearing brush] to us. We swung an axe and cut fire trails up by Summit [Avenue]. Not all the women caught on.There was a woman who lived up there. She heard that this was going on, and that she ought to do her bit. She came out to join us dressed in a dainty little apron and was helping with something a good deal like manicure scissors [laughs] to cut a fire trail."
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