Historic photo of the El Verano train depot.
There is no regular Springs column this week, no stories about missing sidewalks or sexy baristas or unfinished decks. This week we’re reminiscing a little about the town named the summer, El Verano. The town that by its mere existence led to the discovery of the Springs area. Talk by the SVRAC has the regional body lumping El Verano into The Springs for “recognition” reasons but there’s so much wrong with that I don’t even know where to start. The obvious would be the water theme, notice Boyes Hot Springs, Agua Caliente, Fetters Hot Springs. There are no springs in El Verano and the only hot water here was gotten into by some of its infamous residents, Black Bart and Baby Face Nelson, to name just a few. We have no sidewalks or streetlights. We don’t want any. The coffee at Follini & Eichenbaum will rival any fancy coffee shop. The drinks at the El Verano Inn are as good as any fancy umbrella drink. Most folks are not even sure exactly where El Verano is. Like the residents of Bolinas, the famously secretive coastal burg down in Marin, we’re happy about that too.
El Verano was born June 16, 1888. The town that almost made it, as some in the early part of the last century called it, started as a railroad stop for Southern Pacific Railroad, which actually wanted a station for its line in Sonoma. But the city fathers in Sonoma at that time were having none of it. Partnering with the Maxwell family, Southern Pacific decided to start its own town and George Maxwell named it for the beautiful climate that seemed, and still does, specific to the area. He even started his own newspaper, The Whistler, named after the train whistle. The original boundaries were from what is now Petaluma Avenue and Verano Avenue, at the time called Maple Avenue on the North-South and from Riverside to Carriger on the East-West. The addition to Craig Avenue happened about nine years later. The little town prospered almost as fast as it failed, with the local Sonoma Valley paper at the time referring to it as its “Boom Town Country Cousin” and editorials about how the town would soon “fizzle” and that George Maxwell was tied to the syndicate of the railroad barons. Eventually fact caught up with the rumors and George Maxwell was forced out of the town he helped start, but not before many famous Sonoma Valley pioneer families took root in the little town. Names like Sears, Serres, Fowler, Kearney and Mullins to name a few. With the town came an official post office and the beautiful Bellevue Hotel on the site of the current new sheriff sub-station. Discovery of the hot springs further up the valley in about 1897 helped revitalize the area for a time but the town never fully realized its potential. In the 1930s, with the popularity of the automobile taking hold, the train station was demolished and the Valley of the Moon Water District sits where the depot once proudly stood. Railroad Avenue? You guessed it. That’s where the tracks were laid.
But I digress. Since El Verano was here first, I dare say it has earned its autonomy. The area has almost as much history as Sonoma itself, and some, I dare say, is even a bit more colorful. Let’s make sure that 100 years from now people know about the little town that almost made it. Let the “Springs” villages be called “The Springs,” but keep El Verano out of it.
