RODEO

While Rodeo's founders started the community much as other founders established theirs, numerous differences quickly arose. Instead of a farmer selling off lots to newcomers, a corporation created the need for a town. Instead of growing because of railroad service, the Southern Pacific didn't make Rodeo a regular stop on its line until eight years after the first building went up.

Originally a pair of Anglo brothers bought 7,000 acres from the grantee's heirs. Their purchase included all of what is now Pinole, Rodeo, Oleum and Tormey. The brothers gave the latter community their own name.

John and Patrick Tormey divided their purchase. Patrick's share covered today's townsites of Rodeo, Oleum and Selby.

Twenty-five years after the division (1890), the Union Stockyard Co. bought a large tract from Patrick. They planned to make their town where the grantee once held his annual roundups (rodeos) into the meat canning center of the Pacific Coast.

On a ten acre plot the company built stockyards, slaughter-house, and a beef and a pork packing plant. Employees built their homes to one side of the new operation. Pat Tormey's ranch foreman bought a few lots. He built not only his home but also the saloon, "Rodeo Exchange”.

Three entrepreneurs who established businesses in the first year of the stockyard's operation included a Mr. Hawley who opened Hawley's General Merchandise Store, J.D. Smith who built two residences, and the operator of the Rodeo Hotel. The latter opened in April, 1892 with publicity in East Bay newspapers. Although Rodeo was not a regular stop on the railroad, special trains brought hundreds of the curious and some prospects for inexpensive homesites. That day the Rodeo Hotel served hundreds of meals, 225 persons dined at one time.

A year after the town's founding, Rodeo had its own newspaper and in 1894 held its first local election. In 1895, volunteers organized a Fire Department.

But the mushrooming growth of the new town stopped in 1895 when the Union Stockyard Co. went bankrupt. True, Rodeo gained more inhabitants but at a much slower rate. By the turn of the century the town was a bedroom community for employees of plants as far away as Crockett and Vallejo's Mare Island Navy Yard. The Union Oil Co. at Oleum (founded in 1896) employed many Rodeo residents as did the nearby Hercules Powder Co., the smelter at Selby and the recently opened sugar mill at Crockett. In 1898, the Southern Pacific Railroad made Rodeo a regular stop for its local trains.

In 1911 the Presbyterian Church opened its doors helping to supply not only spiritual comfort to some of Rodeo's residents but also some social activities to even more. A few social and fraternal organizations already were meeting but only when the first school welcomed students, in 1913, did the community feel complete.

Unfortunately a disastrous blaze wiped out Rodeo's commercial district in 1915. The business men rebuilt surprisingly soon, and on the eve of increased travel by automobile, were ready to capitalize on the larger numbers of travelers who came to town.

In 1914 Henry Ford had astonished labor by reducing the work day to only eight hours and increased wages to a minimum of $5 a day for every employee in his plants. Equally important, he brought down the price of his cars so that they were in the reach of almost everyone. Automobile traffic picked up in Rodeo and drivers destined for Napa County, Sacramento County or any place north of the Carquinez Straits needed means to cross over without having to drive to Stockton and Sacramento.

To capitalize on this new need, a cattle raiser who had just organized the First National Bank in Rodeo, helped form the Vallejo-Rodeo Ferry Co.

The ferry system ran two boats, twenty-four hours a day. The Alameda built, "Avon J. Hanford" was ordered by the ferry company but the second, the “Issaquah," was bought in Puget Sound by the Rodeo Township. Captain Haakon Olsen sailed the ferry down from Seattle, under its own power.

Two captains worked twelve hour shifts seven days a week ferrying motorists between Rodeo and Vallejo. The ferries ran until the Carquinez bridge opened in [1927].

Sunday outings made the ferries popular with families. Many made the crossing with picnic in hand. It is reported that Saturday nights many a “young blade and his date" rode the boats back and forth. Wine and singing on the night crossings were common components of parties on ferries all over San Francisco Bay in the 1920s. One who enjoyed such crossings has left this description:

“I took my girl for a ride on the ferry boat. (There was) something romantic about it; nothing like it now. (In those days) life went on a little slower, more the speed of the Rodeo ferry.”

In recent years commuters still live in Rodeo.

A printing press began printing the Tri-County News in 1945, Judge Joseph Longo, proprietor. A year later the newspaper, the Pinole-Hercules News was also printed in Rodeo. It ceased publication in 1972.

An important activity in the town since 1959 was the Chamber of Commerce sponsored Acquatic Festival and Bass Derby which attracted participants from many areas of California. The Acquatic Festival was dropped from the program after five years because of the lack of financial support from the community. However the Bass Derby is still held each October and continues to draw fishermen from all over Northern California.

The Rio Theater with its art-deco design, was once the pride of Rodeo. It was built in 1927 and showed first-rate films for many years. Eventually, television kept its former audiences at home and the theater closed two decades ago. It is open again renamed the Mix, a teen-ager dance hall.

During the 1930s the Lincoln Highway was the name of the transcontinental highway, New York to San Francisco. It ran through Rodeo on the town's main street. When the same route was designated U.S. Rt. 40, trucks and passenger cars continued coming through the center of town. Numerous restaurants and service stations served the heavy traffic. At the single traffic light, where pedestrians could safely cross the highway, when the light turned red lines of traffic sometimes reached three blocks long.

All that changed when U. I-80 opened. All the cross-country truck and passenger car traffic bypassed Rodeo. Even traffic destined for Crockett and San Pablo stayed away. Before long, some restaurants and service stations shut down and no longer did long lines of traffic line up behind the red light. The many Rodeo residents who enjoy the pace of life in a town not bothered by heavy traffic are happier for the change.

[Note (October 2003): The preceding is a transcription, with minor obvious edits, of a document of unknown origin provided by a member of the Rodeo Chamber of Commerce. Clues to its age are contained in the reference to an “ongoing” Bass Derby and to the site of the former Rio Theater operating as a teen club called “Mix”.]