‘And then the vision starts to form’: The Life, Work, and Death of Ida F McCain, Part One

By Amy O’Hair
With research and collaboration by Kathleen Laderman

The first of a two-part article about San Francisco architect Ida F McCain. Read the second part here.

The life of an artisan is a compelling subject for me. The worth of some famous lives may suffer under the weight of a subject’s shortcomings. But for the creative worker even faults and breaks can cast new light on the mysterious, even transcendent, process by which that person was able to bring something completely new in the world, something separate and enduring.

“It is interesting to watch the progress of your work through all the stages. First a thought—from this thought a vision comes—and then the vision starts to form—first a mere skeleton frame, but day by day it grows and, like the acorn that sends forth the mighty oak [that] no man’s hands fashion mere material to conform to the thought, the idea—until a day comes and behold—before us our vision materialized—our completed home.”^[1]

Speaking to an audience of women in the 1920s, architect Ida F McCain aimed to communicate her process of creation—the exhilaration, the awe, the satisfaction of working from the originating idea to the completed structure.

But the course of a life is more like an oak tree than a house—full of twists and asymmetries, buffeted by wind or drought, hampered by disease or predation—but often magnificent nonetheless.

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West Coast architect Ida F McCain designed hundreds of houses in the 1910s and 1920s, in San Francisco and elsewhere—a woman prominent in her time in a profession almost entirely dominated by men. Her bungalow plans, with their thoughtful interiors, are distinctive and interesting. She boldly promoted herself, took on her own building projects as she pleased, and spoke freely about herself and her work. Her life deserves a full telling.

Before now, no one has found what happened to her in the last years of her life, nor where or when she died.^[2] I can now tell that story. In this the first of two posts, I’ll recount her career, focusing on Westwood Park—a district adjacent to Sunnyside—where she did some of her best work. Her houses and apartment buildings are also found elsewhere in the city, as well as Los Angeles, San Mateo, and Portland. I am an amateur at architecture, but I like looking at houses, and hope to bring some of that appreciation to readers.

In the second post I’ll tell the story of what happened to her after the pace of her career slowed. During the Great Depression, as building and real estate stagnated, her relationships with family members, especially her older sister Eda, took on more importance. By the late 1930s, Ida followed her sister, her niece, and several other family members, into a newly synthesized religion headed by a charismatic leader. Ida F McCain changed her name to Faithful John—such name changes being the mark of commitment for followers—and by this action she became all but invisible to the eye of the historian. She died under that name in Philadelphia in 1949, aged 65. In the second post I will tell this strange tale, and try to answer the questions: How did her life take this remarkable turn? Why did a woman whose life was so strongly marked by self-possession and originality end up trading these for a life where the constraints and anonymity of a cult-like group were overriding dictates?

First, an account of her early life and career as an architect.

A Pioneer Childhood

Ida Florence McCain was born on 27 August 1884 in Fort Collins, Colorado. Her father James Milton McCain was a rancher; his own father had emigrated from Londonderry, now in Northern Ireland. Milton, as he was known, fought in the Civil War before marrying Ida’s mother, Hannah Oehlrich, who came from northern Germany as a child. The McCain ranch was in Virginia Dale, north of Fort Collins. Milton had brought his family to Colorado from Iowa about 1875, after the overland route had been re-routed and Virginia Dale became a stop.^[3]

Ida was the youngest of five children. When Ida was not yet a year old, her father died of a gallbladder attack that killed him after a very short illness.^[4] Hannah moved the family into the city and led a more urban life after that, buying a big house at 308 E Oak Street, perhaps with the insurance money from Milton’s death. At the time of their father’s death, the children ranged in age from Robert, 12, to Ida 10 months old, with Arthur, 8; Walter, 6; and Eda Hattie, 4, in between. Besides raising her children, Hannah ran a boarding establishment in the big house, and also hosted weddings in what must have been fairly large living and dining rooms.^[5] The house is now gone.

In January 1888, Hannah was remarried to George W King, a carpenter and builder.^[6] As an adult, looking back on what led her into architecture, Ida McCain later recalled:

“I always knew what I wanted to do….I began when I was 5 or 6 years old building my own doll houses and furniture in my stepfather’s shop.”^[7]

The following month, George moved the family back to the ranch in Virginia Dale, where Hannah took a job as the postmistress. Ranching was not likely to have been easy for George, who had lived all his life in towns. The situation did not last long, and by 1890, the family was back in Fort Collins at the East Oak Street home and Hannah returned to the business of providing room and board to guests.^[8]

Hannah, or some other family member, may have suffered from some chronic disease, as she became hostess, over several months in 1900, to a healer who claimed to work miraculous cures. “Professor A.C. Goff” was a follower of the “Weltmer Method,” which involved hypnotic suggestion.^[9] Goff was introduced into Fort Collins by a previous healer named R.H. Love, who gave his replacement a hearty endorsement and then left town.^[10] Goff opened his business and held consultations at the McCain/King house for a few months, and then also left town. Certainly many people with chronic illness turned to such sham healers then, and America coughed them up in droves. I note this event in the family’s life, and the experience of growing up in a rooming house, as these may be seen later to bear on Ida’s last years.

First Girl

Ida McCain entered Colorado State Agricultural College (now Colorado State University, College of Agricultural Sciences) in 1899, at age fifteen. She studied mathematics, being one of only two women enrolled in that course.^[11] She was unsure what direction to take with her studies, but then just before she began her second year, the college put in place a new architecture course, and that decided her. She became the first woman enrolled in the program, and worked very hard.^[12] During her time in school, “She went out surveying, into the carpenter shop, and learned thoroughly every branch of the profession.”^[13]

Standing a full five inches taller than the average woman of her time, she apparently loved sport, sun, and outdoors. When she wasn’t bent over the drafting board, she put her height to good use playing basketball on the women’s college team. A photo from the 1903 college yearbook shows McCain with her follow players.^[14]

California Calling

In the summer of 1902, Ida and her mother travelled to Los Angeles.^[15] They were preparing for a move out West. But Ida was not due to finish her technical education until the following summer. As well, two of Ida’s brothers, Robert and Walter, both got married in 1903, and then stayed in Colorado to raise their own families. Directly after Walter’s wedding, which took place in the home, Hannah sold the East Oak Street house and with the remaining members of the family moved to Los Angeles.

Fast-growing Los Angeles was a boon to young Ida’s career, offering her a place where opportunities opened up that could never have been imagined in small-town Colorado. Not yet twenty years old, she got a job as a draftsman in the architectural firm of LB Valk and Son, and lived with her family. After that, in the space of just a few years, she also worked for two building contractors in succession, RN Lamberth and CF McDonald, affording her an intense education in the business of house-building.^[16] Her training and good head for figures and business gave her the ability to grasp the whole process, not just design or aesthetics.

Breakout Builder

As soon as she felt poised to do so, Ida McCain plunged into the business of house-building on her own—or at least as part of a company made up of herself, her brother Arthur, and her brother-in-law Charles Spencer, a bricklayer whom her sister Eda had married in 1905. Along with her mother Hannah, the family moved to Portland, Oregon, by May 1909. (Stepfather George, who had been living apart from Hannah for a while, did not join them, instead returning to Colorado.)^[17]

The Spencer-McCain Company operated in Portland from May 1909 until mid-1912, building what they called “The California Bungalow,” modest-sized homes featuring craftsman elements such as porches with heavy eaves and rough-textured exterior materials, with open plan interiors. Ida had learned this style working in Los Angeles. The firm built all over Portland, but most notably in the Laurelhurst District, a new development whose curved streets broke up the relentless march of the grid across a growing city. Laurelhurst blogger Sharon Darknell did extensive research and identified at least eleven houses in Portland designed by Ida F McCain.^[18]

Arthur had only previously worked as a butcher, and Charles as a bricklayer, so Ida was clearly the brains and the artistic eye of the operation. Her older sister Eda was also bright, hard-working, and good at math; she had worked as a bookkeeper, and contributed to the company, not least as the ostensible owner of properties for construction. The Spencer-McCain Company was called “a firm of speculative builders” in print, but sometimes they obscured the fact by building houses in one or another of their names.^[19] This one was for Hannah, their mother:

Some of the features are described in a news item in 1910:

“This is a two-story bungalow with broad eaves and heavy exterior trimmings….[The] large living room…contains an open fireplace and beamed ceilings. Leaded glass bookcases and built-in writing desk appear in the buttresses supporting the columned archways between the living room and dining-room….A built-in buffet is inlaid with mirrors and fitted with leaded glass doors.” (I would dearly like to see a writing desk sprouting from a buttress.)

And another Spencer-McCain house the same year:

“A one and one-half story bungalow with a long sweeping roof. Adjoining the porch is a broad porte-cochère with brick columns and gabled roof….[Downstairs rooms have] oak floors and beamed ceilings, and all are connected with broad arches and sliding doors. The living room has a broad stone mantle. The den is equipped with built-in bookcases, leather paneling, and unique lighting features. The broad buffet in the dining room is of the craftsman style.”^[20]

Sharon Darknell’s own 1912 Laurelhurst bungalow was designed by Ida F McCain. More photos here.

The Spencer-McCain Company may have built the house for Hannah, at least in name, but of course the point was to build and sell, build and sell. Despite the lovely houses and frequent mentions in the news, eventually the company got into some financial distress. In January 1912, they closed the offices and everyone except Ida decamped for other places that year.

They likely did make some money, as Arthur moved to a town in Arizona near the Mexican border and opened a meat market. But there were other costs; Charles and Eda’s marriage disintegrated.^[21] The year following their marriage in 1905, they had lost the only child they had as a two-day-old infant, after a very hard birth for Eda; without the business as a common project, the cracks in their relationship maybe have taken a toll.^[22]

While the rest of the family left the city, Ida stayed in Portland, living in one of her houses, 115 Hazel Fern Place (now 475 NE Hazel Fern), until she could get it sold to recoup some of their losses. Research by Darknell suggests Ida finally sold it in June 1913.^[23] Ida’s first enterprise had gone south, and not yet twenty-nine years old. But those houses still stand in Portland, appreciated for their distinctive craftsman style.

The Petty Troubles of Others

Toward the end of her time in Portland, after the business had soured, McCain was interviewed by the delightful cartoonist Fay King, who described McCain as tall and blonde, and produced this caricature of her. (King included herself in the rendering, in her usual way, as the gawky girl in clod shoes with loose hair pins, on right).

In the brief interview, Ida reflected on different aspects of her work.

“I think I like making apartment house plans the best, as it is interesting to work out the points of economy, which are not so essential when drawing plans for residences….One becomes acquainted with the petty troubles of people when one is building a home for them. There is every member of the family to please—and that is very difficult.”^[24]

It may not have just been other peoples’ families that provided trouble.

Building a Southern California Life

Back in Los Angeles, Ida McCain went into real estate for two years with her sister Eda. They had both learned much about the business in Portland. Their office was downtown on South Spring Street, and they lived in adjacent apartments in South Los Angeles, along with their mother Hannah.^[25]

It was during these years that a little town north of San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles, became important to Ida’s family. Her brother Arthur returned from Arizona with his new wife May, and began running the Ramona Hotel on 12th Street in 1914. It was a pleasant locale to get away from Los Angeles. Eda visited often, and soon met her second husband, a rancher and real estate man named Emerson Walters who was then going through a difficult divorce. They did not marry until he was free to do so in 1920.^[26] Ida, Arthur, and Hannah all bought and sold property in the county in these years.^[27]

It was a far friendlier place to live than the anonymity of LA, for at least part of each year. The McCains were clearly people who liked to socialize. Ida’s house plans as we’ll see later prioritize the space in which one entertains, even in small homes. At least by the end of 1915, Ida was living in Paso Robles as well, when a San Luis Obispo newspaper reported, in the way of a small town paper in everybody’s business, that Miss Ida F McCain had gone to San Francisco to seek employment as a draftsman. ^[28]

‘Her Best Creative Work’

In San Francisco, Ida F McCain, age 32, began working for the SA Born Building Company, which was developing Lincoln Manor, in the Richmond District. In early 1917, she designed a house for the printer Ernest H Dettner, at 45 Upper Terrace, a prominent corner lot. Dettner must have had highly artistic tastes, as it is a fantastical creation. Much loved by its present owners, and much decorated for the holidays every year, it was featured in Hoodline a few years ago. Here the façade is done completely in clinker bricks, which is unusual, as on the whole she preferred to use this distinctive lumpy, burnt brickwork as touches of decoration on otherwise stucco’ed or shingled homes.

In mid-1917, she began to design for Westwood Park, which is adjacent to Sunnyside and my focus in this article. There her work was said by an early biographer to “represent her great industry and ability as a designer and builder.”^[29] She is responsible for designing one hundred and one houses in the development, built between 1917 and 1923. (My list of all 101 houses in Westwood Park can be found here. View a map of the houses here.)

There were other architects on the project, most notably Charles Strothoff, but her designs are the most singular and distinctive in the tract of some 680 homes. Strothoff was the prolific master of whole blocks full of bungalows with slightly varying facades, and purportedly responsible for five hundred in the development. But Ida F McCain clearly preferred creating unique structures full of interesting details, and her work adorns many of the eye-catching corner lots in the district. (She also designed a modest little clubhouse for teens in Sunnyside during this time.)

In Full Bloom

In her Westwood Park work, McCain was industrious and ambitious, and always willing to do interviews. Not satisfied with merely designing for clients or for speculative building for others, she also became a builder herself, building seven houses in Westwood Park for speculation on her own account, buying the land and designing to her own preferences. Most are located on large corner lots that offering excellent scope for design, allowing for more interior light and visually interesting façades.

It was these projects that Baldwin and Howell, the developers, showcased in their advertising—an indicator of her preeminence among their stable of architects. By the end of 1918, she had designed “the majority of attractive bungalows in Westwood Park”; by May 1920 she was overseeing their architecture department.^[30]

Instead of downplaying her sex, she turned it into a brand. The ads boasted: “Ida F McCain knows how a woman wants her bungalow built, with cozy corners, big closets, and those little feminine touches that only a woman can think of.”^[31]

In a 1919 interview that was widely syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association, McCain said:

“When I design a house, I start from the inside where the real home will be. After the inside is successfully designed it’s an easy matter to make the exterior artistic and attractive. I have to employ a draftsman soon—and it’s not going to be a man. I am going to employ a young woman because she pays more attention to detail.”^[32]

Not merely content to have made her way in a field overwhelmingly dominated by men, she actively encouraged other women to pursue it:

“If a woman likes architecture and is adapted for it, there isn’t any reason why she shouldn’t take it up and be successful. I think a woman is better able to design a home than most men. She must have business ability, though, and be able to meet all kinds of people.”^[33]

“Architecture is a profession for which women are peculiarly fitted if they have good heads. It is much better than interior decorating, which most young women studying architecture usually stray into. If they stick on the job they can more than successfully compete with men in a very remunerative field.”^[34]

Ida McCain had a head for figures. In 1919 the Daily Journal of Commerce interviewed McCain about the rising costs of lumber and building supplies. So completely did she lay out the problem,–nails, lumber, bricks, plumbing, cement—that the reporter apparently felt little need to comment himself, and just quoted her for the bulk of the article.

In Ida McCain ran a strong streak of the can-do spirit of her pioneer parents, with no need to be coddled and no tolerance for those did. Speaking at a debate at the Soroptimist Club in 1922:

“A woman in business should ask no quarter and give none.”^[35]

Carrie-Nation Style

McCain’s eye for detail and exacting standards were the backbone of her reputation as a superior builder of special houses. She related one telling incident to an audience in the 1920s, recounted by an early biographer.

Going out to a Westwood Park building site, she found a contractor had used inferior lumber that was full of knots. She summarily rejected the boards, marking them off with a blue pencil and getting the contractor to agree to replace the wood with solid lumber. When she returned the next day to pass on it, and found it covered with building paper, she asked him to remove the paper.

“Sure enough, I found the same knots and blue pencil marks. Then I insisted on a ladder to climb to the roof and on its inspection found that none of the roof boarding had been changed. I decided to fix it so new lumber would have to be substituted for promises, so used my heel for the lack of something better, to break the knots through, but my heel caught in a knot hole and my shoe came back minus a heel—but it helped in no way to heal the situation. The carpenter very kindly brought me a hatchet, which was more efficient, and in true ‘Carrie Nation’ style, we knocked the knots out and the holes in, so there was no question about new lumber replacing the defective boarding.”^[36]

In a 2004 San Francisco Chronicle article by Dave Weinstein, the many pleasing interior features of Ida McCain’s houses are described: Here “quirky bungalows are filled with light and with wooden wainscoting, built-in breakfronts, fireplace inglenooks, and glass-paneled pocket doors. Her dining rooms were often formal…and her floor plans open and superb for entertaining.” The piece featured owners enthusiastic about the ample closets—certainly something that a woman with experience managing a household in real life would give more thought to.

Other elements include breakfast nooks (making family meals easier to execute), exposed rafters, rough clinker bricks, and glass-front bookcases. Ida McCain had become conversant with all these features during the decade before her Westwood Park work. The lot size in this district didn’t allow for the massive porches McCain used in Portland, but open porches of a more moderate size feature in nearly all her WP houses.

‘A Bungalow Specially for You’

Let’s have a look at some of McCain’s houses in Westwood Park—four she built on her own account and five she built for clients. All but one are situated on corner lots. A gallery of many others she designed follows, along with photos or advertisements that date to when they were built.

For each of these groups of photos, click on one to bring up a slideshow of all in the group.

Located at the corner of Miramar and Northwood, this large house features a craftsman-style porch and rises asymmetrically to two stories. Built by McCain in 1920 for her own speculation, she splashed out on the interior: “The bungalow…contains seven rooms and a large conservatory. The reception hall, living room, dining room and breakfast room can practically all be thrown into one room by means of sliding French plate-glass doors.. The woodwork…is oak finished in soft silver gray, with oak floors in the same finish. The tile mantel in the living room is also finished in the same soft gray tone.” When it sold in November 1919, the price broke the record for the development to date.

Colonial Columns

This house on the corner of Plymouth and Montecito doesn’t have much of the craftsman about it, with colonial columns in front. Supposedly Ida designed it in 1917 for Robert Fazackerly, secretary of Baldwin and Howell, the firm developing the tract (but he only lived there a year). A couple of photos from San Francisco Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service gives a peek inside. The “sleeping porch” is not an item of much use as designated in this climate, but McCain featured them on many houses, a nice indoor-outdoor space for things besides sleeping.

Variety in Mass and Form

This smaller home on the corner of Eastwood and San Ramon McCain built on her own account. I like the curving overhang above the porch.

On the corner of Miramar and Westwood, this 1919 house features the heavy porch columns and clinker brick that McCain used on smaller houses as well. The roof shape is distinctive and gains impact from being repeated in different positions on the structure.

The Show-off Showplace

This house sits on a flatiron shaped corner at Faxon and Monterey. McCain bought the lot and built it for herself, clearly enjoyed this piece of work. When it finally sold, the price outstripped all previous records for the development, selling for about twice what most of the Westwood Park bungalows went for.

(Check out the “woodland setting”! Houses surrounded by trees were a sales feature of early development in the Westwood Park—but by the time they were done building, the trees were all gone.)

It was described at the time: “Sun in every room; modified colonial architecture;…large reception hall, 23-foot living room and large dining room…[both] finished in bronzed antique walnut; [and] handmade leather paper.” In the back there was a porch enclosed by a pergola, shown in the photos from the time. An attorney named Thomas Dozier bought it, and raved: “When Mrs Dozier and I went out to visit [Westwood Park] we quite accidently went through the McCain bungalow….As soon as I entered it I almost instantly decided that I would purchase it. I regard it as one of the most beautiful homes I have ever seen.”^[37]

Deserving of Love

This bungalow at Plymouth and Wildwood sports both rustic exterior features and touches of appropriation from classic Chinese architecture at the roofline. Built in 1918. For fans of Ida F McCain’s work in Westwood Park it is a source of some grief; the structure has been sorely neglected, and has even been host to squatters in recent years. It is one of my favorites, with its wrap-around porch and base of clinker brink.

This house at the corner of Westwood and Miramar McCain built for herself, and there are a few photos from the time. Finished in 1921, it took McCain almost two years to sort out the financing.^[38]

Specially for Him

This house is found where Pizarro meets Faxon. Ida McCain designed it in 1919 for Fred Brinkman, who sold cars. McCain festooned the roofline with curling extended rafters, invoking some exaggerated reference to Chinese architecture. (I imagine it was Mr Brinkman’s request that she was designing for.)

Lastly, this house at Plymouth and San Ramon, built 1918. A few real estate listing photos give a look at the sliding glass pocket doors and the low wood wainscoting, and a tiled fireplace, and mirror-backed bookcases. The house has acquired some additional window décor at some point.

Best of the Rest

Here are some galleries of other houses designed by Ida F McCain in Westwood Park, some of which are paired with photos or ads from the time they were built. I’ve grouped them to highlight some of the notable features that McCain used often and well. (View a list of McCain’s Westwood Park houses, or a map.)

Almost all McCain’s Westwood Park houses have large and welcoming entryway porches, even the small houses, with heavy columns in stucco, brick or stone, some set off by being encircled with ridges (a few have unfortunately been enclosed later).

She used recessed ‘tablets’ to break up smooth stucco surfaces, sometimes owners have accented these with contrasting paint. (In the 1930s, to do the same thing on expanses of stucco, builders often used fussy and ornate cartouches—tacky-looking and less expensive.)

Her roof lines are often interesting, sometimes with decoratively carved projecting roof beams in a variety of shapes.

Chimneys are often built with designs in clinker brick.

Windows feature prominently, sometimes with unusual mullioned (multi-paned) window designs, and always giving good interior light.

Her original front doors remain on some houses, a solid wood door with long windows of heavy leaded glass—these are welcoming doors that provide good light inside.

Some larger houses have interesting asymmetrical massing.

A kind family allowed me a look at the inside their 1920 Ida McCain house, which showed some of the typical cabinetry, as well as an original front door.

I also found a very unusual pendent lighting fixture, original but for the globe, in the entryway. Fringed and wrapped with what looks to me like artificial silk, it is unlike anything I’ve seen, and very likely to have been Ida McCain’s personal choice—one of those many details she was known for.

Recently a McCain house on Plymouth went on sale, affording a look at some interior features, such as the original breakfast-nook built-in cabinet; beveled-glass doors at the entry and between nook and dining room, with unusual hash-like division of panes; and built-in buffet with little doors to match the room door.

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A Friend for Life

When McCain moved to San Francisco in 1916, she first chose the Hotel St Regis at Fourth and Market as a place to live while she began to develop her career in the city. While there, she met someone about her age who would become a fast friend, Frank Harkins.^[39] Later, after he returned in 1919 from service in the signal corps during WWI, they both lived at the Cadillac Hotel at Eddy and Leavenworth—maybe as a couple, maybe not, it is not clear. Frank and Ida must have looked striking when together, as he was a full half-foot shorter than her, and slight.

Neither of them ever married, and after Ida and her family became swept up in the Peace Mission religious movement in the 1930s, Frank went on to live in a Tenderloin SRO, the Padre Hotel, for the last 21 years of his life, passing away in 1960. Perhaps he was gay, a comfortable friend for a woman who seemed to have little use for romantic relationships.

During the 1920s, Frank was an important part of Ida’s and Eda’s lives, taking vacations together that apparently merited mentions in the newspapers, motoring around the western states. They even bought large amounts of investment property together in San Luis Obispo County. One large purchase they made in 1927, along the Huer Huero Creek, was well over 200 acres, and would later became important toward the end of Ida’s life.^[40]

Significantly, many years later, Frank Harkins would be the person who sorted out Ida McCain’s estate after her death in 1949, something everyone else in the family was happy to turn over to him.

A Career Winds Down

By January 1923, the bulk of her intensive work in Westwood Park behind her, it was time for a break. During 1922, McCain had raised plenty of money to fund her travel plans, in part by designing multiple houses in rows over several blocks in Westwood Park, Strothoff-style. Not her usual métier, but good for cash flow.

On 11 January 1923, McCain departed San Francisco on the USS President Wilson, for a two-and-a-half month tour of Asia, visiting China, Japan, and the Philippines.^[41] After returning, she did a few houses in Westwood Park, and one in St Francis Wood in 1926, but from here on, her work load was much lighter. In 1924 she built a house in San Mateo for herself and her mother, at 701 Occidental Ave, and in 1925 she designed an apartment building at 256 Villa Terrace, also in San Mateo, of which her brother, Arthur W McCain, was owner. She built other structures in San Mateo during this time, but our research did not extend into establishing where or how many.

In the late 1920s Ida lived in San Mateo, first at the house on Occidental Ave, then at her brother’s apartment building. Frank Harkins lived with Ida in San Mateo for part of this time, then moved with her to San Francisco in about 1928, when Ida came back to the city to work as a builder. They both lived at the apartment building at 1580 Filbert at Franklin—not a building that she designed or built, but which had generously sized apartments.^[42]

Unfortunately the Great Depression set in, and the business of real estate and home-building stalled. Ida decided to take on the management of the apartment building on Filbert in 1931, buying it soon after. But it was not a venture that would end well.

Superhostess of the Redwoods

While Ida McCain was winding down her architectural career and finding new projects, her sister Eda and new husband Emerson Walters became the lessors slated to run the Big Basin Inn in the state park in Santa Cruz County. In February 1926 the couple signed a five-year lease with the California Redwood Park Commission. They had previously been running a hotel in Brawley, in Imperial County. But a month hadn’t gone by when some profound disagreement split the couple, and Eda took over management of the Big Basin Inn on her own, and divorced Emerson.^[43]

Mrs Walters, as Eda was generally known in the Santa Cruz area, was lauded immediately as a hostess of superior abilities. “Pleasing in personality, she is an ideal hostess and all visitors to the park will have her ready and anxious to make their stay enjoyable….She has the necessary experience to make her regime at Big Basin Hotel an outstanding success.”^[44]

Over her first five years, her dinner parties were newsworthy; her renovations and improvements were detailed; and the soaring numbers of visitors were celebrated. The Inn had a capacity for 150 people in fifty cabins, with a dining hall that seated 75, with room for 200 more diners in the garden. Eda oversaw 25 to 27 employees with a payroll of about $2,000 a month. There was a general store and a gas station.^[45]

Eda was a natural at the business, the darling of the business-minded locals and the nature-lovers alike, as she developed new programs and steadily attracted new visitors. One of the groups that regularly gathered to enjoy her specially planned dinners was the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Santa Cruz. At their monthly meetings, she arranged the program and the meal, giving attention to the décor.^[46]

In the off season, between November and April, Eda stayed with Ida, their mother Hannah, and Frank Harkins, at the Filbert Street apartment in San Francisco; everyone went back and forth between the city and the rural idyll in Santa Cruz. Frank Harkins served as her assistant manager at the inn, arriving from San Francisco each April to help get the place ready for the summer onslaught. One April, in 1930, both he and Eda were counted twice in the US Census—both at Ida’s apartment building on Filbert Street and at the Inn in Santa Cruz County.^[47]

At the end of the 1930 season, Eda’s lease at Big Basin was extended two more years, in part due to the ringing endorsements of locals who felt she was doing an excellent job at the hotel.^[48] “New guests are welcomed every day and old timers come back ‘home….She has…chefs who bring dinner guests back time after time from all over the coast for appetizing dinners in a ‘different’ dining room.”^[49] The following year Eda hosted Governor James Rolph, Senator Shortridge, and other notable figures. The visitor numbers broke all records that year. Eda hosted 260 nurses for a giant picnic, among other events deemed newsworthy by the local papers. Her lease was again extended, through 1934.^[50]

A Faltering Endeavor, and a Death

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Ida McCain was hustling to make her management of the Filbert St apartment building work. It may have been difficult to rent the big apartments during the depths of the Depression. In 1933 she defaulted, and mortgaged the furniture and other items in the building, and agreed to an assignment of rents with the bank—they got all rent money, and Ida got to keep the building.^[51]

In July 1934, Hannah, Ida’s mother, died in San Francisco at the age of 82. Hannah had been a rock of support for Ida her whole life long, encouraging her schooling and her ambitions—and extending practical aid in the form of buying the lots on which Ida built houses, notably her first one as owner in Westwood Park in 1917.^[52] Ida sold the apartment building at the end of 1935, and after briefly living in an apartment on West Portal Ave, moved to Santa Cruz to be with her sister Eda, sometime toward the end of 1937.

The death seemed to signal an unmooring for both sisters. Ida retired from public life, and made money solely from buying and selling property. It was about then that a crisis at Big Basin Inn ended Eda’s career there as its vaunted host and manager. This set in motion the chain of events and choices that cascaded over the next fifteen years, drawing in Ida, her sister, and many family members into the religious group known as the Peace Mission movement of Father Divine.

Disappearing into the Peace Mission Movement

It was in about 1933 in Santa Cruz that Eda Walter became involved with the local Peace Mission group, triggering the series of events that led to an exodus of family members to New York and then Philadelphia in the 1940s. As well-off white people, they were typical of new members of the movement then. Before that, membership had been overwhelmingly poor and Black, when the movement provided exemplary relief during the Depression, in the form of housing and meals for tens of thousands of desperately impoverished African Americans.

The idyllic retreat of Santa Cruz itself was a character in the story. That town’s proto-hippie tolerance for the unusual allowed the flourishing of the religious group there during the 1930s. For the two middle-aged sisters, it provided purpose and social connection. And then their whip-smart young niece took up the cause, and her ambitions catapulted her to a high position inside the movement. These three women, and many other family members, almost all with new names, melted into a communal and virtuous life as followers of Father Divine—a strange tale I’ll tell in the second part of this post.

The first of a two-part article about San Francisco architect Ida F McCain. Read the second part here.

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LINKS

• My list of Ida F McCain’s 101 houses in Westwood Park can be found here.
• Take your own tour: a map of the houses here.
• Detailed genealogies for members of the McCain family on Ancestry.com. Requires subscription. Free access through San Francisco Public Library.
  • Ida Florence McCain
  • Eda Harriet McCain
  • Hannah H Oehlrich McCain King
  • Frank Harkins

More on the Peace Mission movement and Father Divine

• Father’s Kingdom (2017). An excellent ninety-minute film about the Peace Mission movement. Available on Kanopy, a streaming service, free by signing up through SF Public Library.
• “International Peace Mission Movement and Father Divine,” by Leonard Norman Primiano. The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.
• “The City Occult #2: Father Divine’s Complicated Legacy and His Influence On Jonestown,” by Elijah Brocco. The City Root.
• Father Divine – Movers & Makers (2020). Six-minute YouTube video from WHYY Philadelphia. If you don’t mind a white academic guy explaining it all to you.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY (For Parts One and Two)

ARTICLES

Boyd, Nan Alamilla. “Who Is the Subject? Queer Theory Meets Oral History.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 17, no. 2 (2008): 177–89. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30114216.

Folk, Holly. “Divine Materiality: Peoples Temple and Messianic Theologies of Incarnation and Reincarnation.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 22, no. 2 (2018): 15–39. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537918.

Griffith, R. Marie. “Body Salvation: New Thought, Father Divine, and the Feast of Material Pleasures.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 11, no. 2 (2001): 119–53. https://doi.org/10.1525/rac.2001.11.2.119.

Hare, Nathan. “Rebels without a Name.” Phylon (1960-) 23, no. 3 (1962): 271–77. https://doi.org/10.2307/273807.

Hook, Wade F., and Alan M. Barr. “The Father Divine Peace Mission: A Social Interpretation.” Negro History Bulletin 45, no. 3 (1982): 56–75. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44176519.

Kluskens, Clare. “1950 Census: Enumerating Father Divine’s Followers.” History Hub. 1 Mar 2022. https://historyhub.history.gov/genealogy/census-records/b/census-blog/posts/1950-census-enumerating-father-divine-s-followers Accessed 2024_03_04

LeWarne, Charles P. “Vendovi Island: Father Divine’s ‘Peaceful Paradise of the Pacific.’” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 75, no. 1 (1984): 2–12. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40490843.

Lindsey, Rachel McBride. “‘Seen and Read of Men’: Biblical Text and the Living Epistles of Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement.” Journal of Africana Religions 2, no. 3 (2014): 347–78. https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.2.3.0347.

Primiano, Leonard Norman. “‘Bringing Perfection in These Different Places’: Father Divine’s Vernacular Architecture of Intention.” Folklore 115, no. 1 (2004): 3–26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30035140.

Rebecca VW, Sondak VK, Smalley KS. A brief history of melanoma: from mummies to mutations. Melanoma Res. 2012 Apr;22(2):114-22. doi: 10.1097/CMR.0b013e328351fa4d. PMID: 22395415; PMCID: PMC3303163.

Satter, Beryl. “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine and the Gender Politics of Race Difference and Race Neutrality.” American Quarterly 48, no. 1 (1996): 43–76. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30041521.

Shapiro, Eve. “Drag Kinging and the Transformation of Gender Identities.” Gender and Society 21, no. 2 (2007): 250–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27640961.

Watts, Jill. “‘This Was the Way’: Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.” Pacific Historical Review 60, no. 4 (1991): 475–96. https://doi.org/10.2307/3639873.

BOOKS

Beitiks, Kathleen. 2017. Westwood Park : Building a Bungalow Neighborhood in San Francisco. San Francisco CA: K.O. Beitiks.

Harris, Sara, Harriet Crittenden, and John Henrik Clarke. 1971. Father Divine. Newly rev. and Expanded ed. New York NY: Collier Books.

Horton, Inge S. 2010. Early Women Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area : The Lives and Work of Fifty Professionals 1890-1951. Jefferson N.C: McFarland & Co.

Hunt, Rockwell D, and Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez. 1932. California and Californians, V.4. Chicago: Lewis Publishing.

Mother Divine. 1982. The Peace Mission Movement : Founded by Reverend MJ Divine, Better Known As Father Divine. Philadelphia: Imperial Press.

Parker, Robert Allerton. 1937. The Incredible Messiah : The Deification of Father Divine, First ed. Boston: Little Brown and Company.

Singer, Margaret Thaler. 2003. Cults in Our Midst : The Continuing Fight against Their Hidden Menace. Rev. ed. San Francisco Calif. Chichester: Jossey-Bass ; John Wiley.

Watts, Jill. 1995, 1992. God Harlem USA : The Father Divine Story. Berkeley Calif: University of California Press.

Weisbrot, Robert. 1983. Father Divine and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Weisenfeld, Judith. 2016. New World A-Coming : Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration. New York: NYU Press.

Weisenfeld, Judith, ‘Real True Buds: Celibacy and Same-Sex Desire across the Color Line in Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement’, in Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White (eds), Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth-Century United States (Chapel Hill, NC, 2018; online edn, North Carolina Scholarship Online, 20 Sept. 2018).

Publications

Philadelphia Inquirer
San Francisco Bulletin
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Examiner
San Luis Obispo Telegram
San Luis Obispo Tribune
Santa Cruz Evening News
Santa Cruz Sentinel

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ENDNOTES
See Bibliography for references

1. Quoted in Hunt (1932), p275-6 ↑
2. In her exhaustive account of dozens of women working in the Bay Area in architecture in the early twentieth century, Early Women Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area: The Lives and Work of Fifty Professionals 1890-1951, author Inge Horton found nothing in the public record after a 1937 directory listing in San Francisco. While writing her book, she was interviewed about McCain and her difficulties in tracing her last years: Dave Weinstein, ”SIGNATURE STYLE / Ida McCain / Builder of bungalows “SF Chronicle, 9 Oct 2004. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SIGNATURE-STYLE-Ida-McCain-Builder-of-2688798.php ↑
3. Mac McNeill, “Virginia Dale Part 1: The Overland Trail and Stage Station,” 2 Jul 2017. Fort Collins Images. https://fortcollinsimages.wordpress.com/2017/07/02/virginia-dale-part-1-the-overland-trail-and-stage-station/ ↑
4. Assembled genealogical facts for the McCain family, including newspaper articles and notices, census data, directories, voter’s registers, and the like, are found in a well-documented and thoroughly sourced family tree I created on Ancestry.com. (Paid subscription; free through SF Public Library.) Please see LINKS Section for direct links to the family members. ↑
5. Various personal events, including a birth Hannah assisted and a wedding at the home: “Married,” The Larimer County Independent, 21 Oct 1886; “Personal,” The Fort Collins Express and the Fort Collins Review, 23 Oct 1886; “Events At Home,” The Larimer County Independent, 6 Jan 1887. ↑
6. George W King may have built the E Oak Street house, according to Inge Horton (Horton, p292). ↑
7. This excerpt is quoted by Horton, p291. The endnote says the interview was published as “She Built Doll House as Girl; Now It Is SF Homes,” Oakland Tribune, 14 Jan 1926. Apparently this issue is not available online, as I did not find it. ↑
8. The move to the ranch: “Personal,” The Fort Collins Express and the Fort Collins Review, 18 Feb 1888; and Hannah’s resignation as Postmistress: The Larimer County Independent, 26 Dec 1889. The 1900 US Census shows the family on East Oak Street; the town’s new undertaker Mr Balmer takes rooms and is married there in 1901-1902 (Larimer County Independent 12 Sep 1901; The Fort Collins Express and the Fort Collins Review, 8 Jan 1902). ↑
9. More about the inventor and the method here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Abram_Weltmer ↑
10. Various ads and notices: Fort Collins Express and Fort Collins Review, 24 Nov 1900; Larimer County Independent, 21 Jun 1900, 27 Oct 1900, 1 Nov 1900, 24 Nov 1900. ↑
11. Disclosed by McCain during an interview. Fay King, “Woman Among City’s Successful Architects,” Oregon Daily Journal, 19 Mar 1912. Historic Oregon Newspapers. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/ ↑
12. Biographical information from: Horton, pp291-2; Hunt, pp274-276; and interviews: Fay King, “Woman Among City’s Successful Architects,” Oregon Daily Journal, 19 Mar 1912; and “The Woman Worker,” The Brooklyn Citizen (Brooklyn NY), 7 Jun 1919, p7. The latter item was a syndicated interview widely reprinted in 1919. ↑
13. Fay King, “Woman Among City’s Successful Architects,” Oregon Daily Journal, 19 Mar 1912. Historic Oregon Newspapers. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/ ↑
14. Ida McCain’s height is given on her passport application of Dec 1922 as five feet, eight and a half inches. She had blue eyes. An interviewer in 1912 said she was blonde, and the application says “light”. ↑
15. “Home and County News,” Fort Collins Express and Fort Collins Review, 30 Jul 1902, p1. ↑
16. Ida F McCain in the Los Angeles directories for 1904, 1905, 1907, 1908, and 1909. She always included her employers in her listings. ↑
17. The first Los Angeles directory that lists George W king separately from Hannah H King is 1907.Then in 1910, George W King is living with his brother Elisha King in the US Federal Census for Colorado, Larimer, Fort Collins Ward 3, District 0227, p26, line 3. He returned to Los Angeles at least by Dec 1912, when he died there, though the circumstances of his death are not clear. (California Death Index, 1905-1939.) I’m sorry to say, but this story has a lot of men ending up as footnotes. ↑
18. Ida F McCain’s work as architect and builder in Portland (may be partial list): 3391 NE Multnomah St; 475 NE Hazel Fern Pl; 436 NE Hazel Fern Pl; 3033 NE 63rd Ave; 4063 NE 29th Ave; 2817 NE Dunckley St; 3641 NE Senate St.; 2647 SW Talbot Rd; 444 NE Floral Place; 1617 SE 23rd Ave; 7468 N Huron Ave. As found by Sharon Darknell, “Builder: Spencer-McCain Co.” Laurelhurst Craftsman Bungalow: Historic Style on a Budget. https://www.laurelhurstcraftsman.com/p/builder-spencer-mccain-co.html ↑
19. “Portland Takes Big Step Onward During January,” The Oregon Daily Journal, 5 Feb 1911, p14. Eda H Spencer is listed as owner for one of the houses they built on Hazel Fern: “Building Permits,” The Oregon Daily Journal, 24 Dec 1911, p14. . Historic Oregon Newspapers. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/ ↑
20. “Fine Houses Rise,” The Oregonian, 13 Feb 1910, p8. Historic Oregon Newspapers. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/ ↑
21. In Jan 1913, Arthur starts a market in Bisbee AZ (“Article of Incorporation,” Bisbee Daily Review, 12 Jan 1913, p13. A few months later he marries a woman named May Schneider who came there with him from Portland. In 1914, Eda H Spencer is listed in the Los Angeles Directory without Charles. I did not find a record of their divorce, but reckon it to date to before then. ↑
22. Death Certificate dated 10 May 1906 for Lawton Arthur Spencer, born to Charles Spencer and Eda H McCain on 7 may 1906, Los Angeles CA. Family Search.org. ↑
23. See Sharon Darknell, “More Ida McCain Research,” Laurelhurst Craftsman Bungalow: Historic Style on a Budget. https://www.laurelhurstcraftsman.com/2017/08/more-ida-mccain-research.html ↑
24. Fay King, “Woman Among City’s Successful Architects,” Oregon Daily Journal, 19 Mar 1912. Historic Oregon Newspapers. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/ ↑
25. Los Angeles directory listings for 1914 place Ida F McCain, Hannah H King, and Eda H Spencer, all at a multi-unit building on W 37^th Place. For occupation, they both say “real estate”; I do not think Ida McCain was building or designing in these two years, as she did often list herself at other places and times in directories as “builder” or “architect” in years when she was doing that work. ↑
26. A final agreement was reached in May 1919 for Walters and her first wife Mabel (San Luis Obispo Daily Telegraph, 10 May 1919). On 22 May 1920, Eda H Spencer and Emerson E Walters were married in San Francisco, with Ida McCain and Frank Harkins as witnesses (“California, San Francisco County Records, 1824-1997”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QL4B-KSHV : Thu Oct 05 02:43:00 UTC 2023), Entry for Emerson E Walters and Eda Harriet Spencer or Spenser, 22 May 1920).. ↑
27. Voter’s registers show Arthur and Eda in Paso Robles n 1914, and Eda and Hanna in 1916. The Los Angeles directory lists Eda and Ida in 1914 and 1915. For further documentation see the family tree I created on Ancestry.com in the LINKS section. Arthur is buying property in 1914-1915 (San Luis Obispo Morning Tribune, 2 Sep 1914 and 10 Sep 1915). Ida is selling property—two hundred acres!—in 1914 (San Luis Obispo Morning Tribune 28 Sep 1914), and buying in 1921 (San Luis Obispo Daily Telegraph 12 Jan 1921). ↑
28. McCain came to secure a job as a draftsman in San Francisco in December 1915, and combined this with a visit to the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, both noted in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, 3 Dec 1915 and 9 Dec 1915, indicates that McCain had been living in Paso Robles for some period just prior to moving to SF, likely with her sister Eda and her mother Hannah. ↑
29. Hunt (1932), p275. ↑
30. “Home Demand Shown in new Realty Sales,” San Francisco Examiner, 14 Dec 1918, p10; “Movie Theatre to be Built at Westwood,” SF Bulletin, 1 May 1920, p10; and “Screen Theater to go up West of Twin Peaks,” SF Chronicle, 1 May 1920, p7. ↑
31. San Francisco Chronicle, 13 Aug 1919, p15. ↑
32. “No Bread-and-Water Wage for Architect,” Wisconsin State Journal (Madison WI), 6 Jun 1919, p7; “Women Architects Better Than Men?” The Macon Press (Macon GA), 6 Jun 1919, p3; “the Woman Worker,” The Brooklyn Citizen, 7 Jun 1919, p7; “No Bread-and-Water Wage for Architect,” The Pittsburgh Press, 8 Jun 1919, p12; “She is Successful Architect,” The Evening Sun (Baltimore MD) 26 Jun 1919, p4; and “No Bread-and-Butter Wage for Her,” Muskogee Time-Democrat (Muskogee OK) 11 Jul 1919, p8.Despite the various headlines, it was the same interview. NEA had a stable of 200 or so newspapers buying its features then, so there may have been more reprints, but basically it circulated all over the US. ↑
33. Fay King, “Woman Among City’s Successful Architects,” Oregon Daily Journal, 19 Mar 1912. Historic Oregon Newspapers. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/ ↑
34. “No Bread-and-Water Wage for Architect,” Wisconsin State Journal (Madison WI), 6 Jun 1919, p7; “Women Architects Better Than Men?” The Macon Press (Macon GA), 6 Jun 1919, p3; “the Woman Worker,” The Brooklyn Citizen, 7 Jun 1919, p7; “No Bread-and-Water Wage for Architect,” The Pittsburgh Press, 8 Jun 1919, p12; “She is Successful Architect,” The Evening Sun (Baltimore MD) 26 Jun 1919, p4; and “No Bread-and-Butter Wage for Her,” Muskogee Time-Democrat (Muskogee OK) 11 Jul 1919, p8. ↑
35. “Debate Rages on Mooted Topic of Sex in Business,” SF Examiner, 8 Mar 1922, p8. ↑
36. Hunt (1932) p275. ↑
37. “Attorney Please with Park Home,” San Francisco Journal and Daily Journal of Commerce, 9 Oct 1920, p2. ↑
38. The permit application was made in July 1919, but it was not completed until June 1921. ↑
39. Frank Harkins, clerk, is at the St Regis, 85 Fourths St, in the 1915 San Francisco Directory; Ida McCain is listed at the hotel first in 1916; Harkins puts the address on his WWI draft card, Jun 1917. McCain is at the address in the 1917 SF Directory. Then in 1917 or 1918, they both move to the Cadillac Hotel on Eddy Street. ↑
40. In Mar 1927, Ida McCain, Eda Walters, and Frank Harkins purchased a large lot in Section 25 Township 26S Range 12 E, San Luis Obispo County. In the newspaper: “Recorder’s Office: Deeds,” San Luis Obispo Tribune, 1 Apr 1927. Confirmed by finding related documents in the SLO Recorder’s Office index: Attachments, 1927001589, bk 29, p165; Deed, 1928004851, bk 54, p445; and Deed of Trust, 1928004852, bk 49, p494, all dated between March 1927 and Sep 1928. My shoulder hurts. ↑
41. Travel destinations departure date were listed on her passport application, Dec 1922. Although McCain told Rockwell Hunt in 1932 that the trip was six months long, ships’ manifest for the arrival date in SF now available online reveals that she arrived back 27 Mar 1923, about eleven weeks. That was one of a few exaggerations in his account of her life and work—the other being the assertion that she designed “several hundred homes” in Westwood Park. And why shouldn’t she pad her resume, when certainly her male peers did so as well? ↑
42. San Francisco directory listings, and the 1930 US Census, for Ida F McCain and Frank Harkins. ↑
43. According to a document titled Agreement of Assignment at the Santa Cruz County Recorder’s Office, on 13 Mar 1926, Emerson E Walters agreed to transfer any rights he had regarding the lease entered into with the park commission on 16 Feb 1926, to Eda H Walters. They separated shortly afterward and Eda filed for divorce, alleging neglect (San Mateo Times, 19 Mar 1926, p1. The allegation did not necessarily mean much; in those days one had to pick among extreme cruelty, neglect, abandonment, and other reasons, as there was no no-fault option. ↑
44. “Big Basin Hotel Entertaining in Excellent Style,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 7 Jun 1926, p8. ↑
45. The Big Basin Inn specifics were described when Eda Walters was unseated at the end of the 1937 season, and a new lessor was sought. “To Ask Bids on Concession in Big Basin Park,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, 18 Apr 1937. Number of employees mentioned briefly in: “People You Should Know: Eda H Walters,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, 29 Jul 1937, p4. ↑
46. “World Visitors at Big Basin, One Party from South Africa,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 27 Jul 1928; “dinner Party at Big Basin,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 1 Aug 1928; “Business and Professional Women Meet for Dinner at Big Basin Inn,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 21 Aug 1929;”Redwood State Park will be Officially Opened Next Wednesday,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 26 Apr 1930; “Quarterly Meet B and PW Clubs To be In Oakland,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 13 Sep 1930, p6; “B and PW Club Dinner Meeting at Big Basin Inn,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 17 Sep 1930; “400 Expected at Realty Barbeque at Big Basin,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 21 Oct 1930. ↑
47. “Big Basin Park Force Ready for Summer,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 18 Apr 1932. 1930 US Census for Ida F McCain, San Francisco (Districts 251-409), District 0317, p3, lines 40-43; and for Eda H Walters, California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, District 0014 , p10, lines 62-65. I can surmise where Eda really is—at Big Basin—because she shaves several years off her age to the census taker; whereas Ida, reporting her sister’s details to the census taker in SF gives her sister’s real age (though they both acquired the bad habit of age deflation beginning in their late thirties). ↑
48. “Mrs Walters Given 2 Year Lease in Big Basin,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 22 Dec 1930. ↑
49. “People You Should Know: Eda H Walters,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, 29 Jul 1937, p4. ↑
50. “Three Noted Men Coming to Pilgrimage Here,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 16 Jun 1931, pp1,2; (Record crowds at Big Basin) Santa Cruz Evening News, 25 Jun 1931; and ”Nurses Attend Picnic Supper,” Santa Cruz Evening News, 18 Jun 1932; ↑
51. This shortened version of the story is assembled from reviewing dozens of documents indexed on the grantor and grantee ledgers at the SF Assessor-Recorder’s Office involving Ida McCain, between Aug 1932 and May 1939. ↑
52. Hunt (1932) p275. ↑