Talk:Tassajara Hot Springs
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[edit] History notes
Reverse chronology of Tassajara Hot Springs ownership, extracted from David Chadwick's very long interview with Robert Beck in February 2002.
- → Note: the interview heading says, "In December of 1996 the San Francisco Zen Center signed a contract with Robert and Anna Beck for the purchase …" but 1996 may be a 30-year typo.
- [Date?] The San Francisco Zen Center bought the property from Robert and Anna Beck.
- 1960: The Becks purchased it as partners with Frederick and Nancy Roscoe (later, the Roscoes couldn't swing it and the Becks bought them out per their original agreement) from the Hudsons:
- [Date?] The Hudsons (Beck: "Mrs. Sappok sold it to the Hudsons, Admiral Hudson and Margaret Hudson. And they were an old Monterey Peninsula family. They used to own Point Lobos. And Margaret Hudson – she was Margaret Allen – her father was a race track architect. He had built Golden Gate Fields … ") bought it from the Sappocks:
- [Date?] The Sappocks (Beck: "The Sappoks, hotel people in Watsonville - it was said that they gave meals away at Tassajara and sold whisky and made their money that way") bought it from Phillip Terry and his wife, née Church:
- [Date?] Terry/Church (Beck: "Phil Terry [who had been married to Joan Crawford] … married a woman whose family owned it, the Church family." Chadwick: "… The ones who own Church Creek Ranch, the nearest National Forest in-holding to it?" Beck: "The ones who own Church Creek Ranch. And they had gotten it from the Quiltys."
- [Date?] The Quiltys (Beck: "Mr. Quilty was a state senator from I think Watsonville. He was at one time the warden of San Quentin, before he was a state senator.")
- At this point a question arises: Beck: "Do you know that woman who wrote that history that Dick Baker never wanted to have published, from Gonzales? … This was an outside historian. … she talked to all kinds of people like the Jeffries who owned the Jeffries hotel in Salinas. At one time Bill Jeffrey was the manager of Tassajara, about the turn of the century. And he was I think married to a Quilty. So he managed up there… I’ll think of her name. Seems like it was Marian or Mary Anne something like that…"
- → This book may be The History of Tassajara Hot Springs by Marilyn McDonald, cited by David Rogers in "A History of The Caves Ranch" - The Double-Cone Quarterly, Journal of the Ventana Wilderness Alliance, Fall Equinox 1999, Volume II, Number 3 - “References Cited … McDonald, Marilyn. 1985. The History of Tassajara Hot Springs. Unpublished.”
- Before the Quiltys (and perhaps before even earlier owners, prior to the Quiltys) the property consisted of three parcels ("Horse Pasture," "Pines," "Tassajara") which had been homesteaded together, Beck: … under the Homestead Act of 1862 … I think at that time you could homestead one section. And this was three quarter-sections. What the people did who homesteaded it was homestead all the water and the pasture land. Because the Pines has water on it. Then Tassajara and then the Horse Pasture which had water too. So that had always been the Tassajara parcel — these three pieces — " Chadwick: "… 160 acres, each one … Beck: … So it was 480 acres, which was three-quarters of a section."
I do not intend to violate the no original research policy. I'm collecting notes for the Tassajara Hot Springs history (of which the past 150 years of ownership forms a small part) section and stashing them here. Maybe other editors will have more to add to them. — Athaenara ✉ 03:19, 22 July 2007 (UTC) & 03:50, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
