Cultural Stockton

Stockton? I’d been somewhat intrigued by Stockton for a while because I never passed through it. Driving up to San Francisco from Los Angeles, where I used to live, you have to cut off of I-5 to the west before reaching Stockton. And to get to Sacramento from San Francisco, you head northeast, completely clearing Stockton. So I often wondered about what I was missing in California’s 11th largest city. Becoming interested in the California Delta just made me more curious about Stockton.

What’s probably unsurprising at this point is that the Gold Rush plays a part in the history of Stockton. This is largely due to its location at the furthest navigable point on the San Joaquin River. (It still seems crazy to me that a point so far inland can be navigable from the ocean.) Like Sacramento, it was a perfect location for merchants to set up shop to sell provisions to miners. As I mentioned in my previous post, Stockton is centrally located in the Central Valley. As the Central Valley grows more than half of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts grown in the United States, agriculture certainly played a large part in making Stockton an important hub of the great valley.

Despite all this history, Stockton has a reputation of not being a very nice place. It’s certainly an unlikely tourist destination. It has a pretty high crime rate. It was hit extremely hard by the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis. And in 2012, it became the biggest American city to ever file for bankruptcy up to that point. So yes, Stockton is a bust town. And it shows. But you’d never know it from my pictures below!

Haggin Museum

So, brimming with curiosity, I quietly took off for Stockton one Saturday morning in August 2022. I didn’t tell a soul because I was afraid I’d get laughed out of California. As usual, the journey to get there was part of the adventure. As I had done to get to Sacramento, I started out by taking BART to Richmond. From there, I caught the train to Stockton. I enjoyed the ride as I really got to see the inland water route. The tracks hugged the southeastern shoreline of San Pablo Bay and then followed along the southern shore of Carquinez Strait.

On the eastern edge of the Bay Area, the route entered the delta and the valley. Until then, it was a narrow coastline backed by low mountains. But from this point, it was all flat. I could see the myriad waterways, along with many of the hundreds of islands that they form. Motorboats plied the rivers and channels. I saw small marinas where the boats were kept. I didn’t get any pictures though. If I remember correctly, it was because the windows were dirty. That, combined with the speed of the train, didn’t make for favorable conditions for proper pics.

Once I got off the train, I could feel the oppressive heat of summer in the San Joaquin Valley. I had to walk about 15 minutes north in the sweltering sun to get to the local bus depot. I could see right away that Stockton is not an attractive city. It has a barren, unadorned feel. It did seem to get slightly less unattractive the further north, towards downtown, I walked. When I got to the bus depot, it seemed like the buses weren’t running. At least the bus I needed to get to my hotel wasn’t. So I kept walking. It was about another 20 minutes to get to the hotel. Welcome to Stockton! Really, what had I been thinking?

It was too early to check into my room, so I stored my bag and kept walking. This time, it was a half hour or so to get to the Haggin Museum. Stockton continued to get less unattractive the further I walked. I was well past downtown Stockton at this point, and it was greener and more middle-class than southern Stockton.

J. C. Leyendecker

The Haggin Museum is a small museum. But it’s fairly impressive for such an unassuming place as Stockton. Most of the objects in its collection are categorized as fine art or history. But it also has a significant collection of commercial art created by German-born American artist J. C. Leyendecker. It’s actually the largest public collection of Leyendecker’s art in the U.S. Most of it was donated by Leyendecker’s sister after the museum’s director began a correspondence with her following the artist’s death.

Leyendecker created the art for another iconic advertising campaign–the Arrow Collar Man.

Leyendecker’s model for most of the Arrow Collar Man’s illustrations was Charles Beach, his lifelong romantic partner.

A 1910 illustration for the Cooper Underwear Company. The model is Charles Beach. Although the painting was intended for mass consumption, it’s not hard to see the homoeroticism in this and much of his work.

*Out or Safe*, a cover illustration for a 1910 issue of *The Popular Magazine*, a literary magazine from the early 20th century.

Leyendecker created 322 cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post, more than anyone else. He was Norman Rockwell before Norman Rockwell. You might even say he was the gay Norman Rockwell. Norman was actually a pall bearer at J. C.’s funeral.

History

German-born Charles Weber came overland from Missouri to California. He founded Stockton as the 1st permanent settlement in the San Joaquin Valley just before the Gold Rush. When he died in 1881, Stockton was the 6th largest city of California.

Portrait of Commodore Robert F. Stockton.

Webber named Stockton after the commodore, who played an instrumental role in the American capture of California from Mexico. Here’s some trivia for you: Stockton was the 1st city in California not to have a Spanish or Native Californian name.

Stevens Brothers Boat Builders and Designers built boats in Stockton from 1902 to 1987, including this 1927 luxury speedboat. Imagine cruising the Delta in this!

The Holt ’75 Tractor. Developing agriculture in the Delta was difficult because the wheels of heavy farm machinery would sink into the soil. So in the early 20th century, Benjamin Holt of the Stockton-based Holt Manufacturing Company invented the first commercially successful track-type tractor, given the name “Caterpillar”.

The museum had exhibits of a number of farming firsts from Stockton, and I took pictures of a lot of them. But I didn’t want to bore you with lots of pictures of farm machinery. So enjoy the Holt ’75!

Italian vacuum cooker that Tillie Lewis, the Tomato Queen, proudly had displayed in front of her corporate headquarters.

In 1935, native New Yorker Tillie Lewis brought San Marzano (pear-shaped) tomato seeds along with canning machinery back from Italy, where she had been working, and started a tomato cannery in Stockton. She used the vacuum cooker pictured above to make tomato paste. Thanks to Tillie, San Joaquin County became the country’s top tomato-producing counties. Tillie’s company became 1 of the top 5 canneries in the nation. She was named Businesswoman of the Year by the Associated Press in 1951. She became known as the Tomato Queen and indeed, she was!

Fine Art

*Sunset in Yosemite Valley* (1868) by German-born American artist Albert Bierstadt. You’ve probably seen a ton of paintings of Yosemite. But have you ever seen one like this?

The Haggin Museum has a small but lovely collection of fine art. I focused on American art with my pictures.

Changing Horses (1880) by American artist Edward Lamson Henry. Here he’s presenting an optimistic view of American life post-Civil War.

*After a Norther, Bahamas* (after 1878) by Albert Bierstadt again. Gorgeous!

A fun, special exhibition. “From Sci-Fi to Superheroes: the Art of Sideshow Collectibles”.

Back to History

The Haggin Museum has a number of mockups of typical establishments as part of its exhibit called Turn-of-the-Last-Century Main Street.

The little old schoolhouse on Main Street.

A beautiful basket crafted in the early 20th century by the Yokuts people. The Yokuts were the original inhabitants of the San Joaquin Valley. The design was inspired by the diamondback rattlesnake.

Another basket from the Haggin Museum’s collection of Native California basketry. This one is stunning. It was created in the late 19th century by the Pomo people of Northern California. It’s decorated with feathers of glass.

A Mojave doll from the early 20th century, made from clay, fabric, glass, and horsehair. The Mojave people are indigenous to southeastern California and nearby parts of Arizona and Nevada.

Firefighting equipment from the late 19th century and early 20th century, including a shirt made by the Stockton Woolen Mill.

“Old Betsy” became California’s 2nd steam fire engine when it was brought to Stockton in 1862. It was purchased from Philadelphia’s Neafie, Levy & Co.

If you’ve made it this far, you can see that Stockton has a more illustrious history than you might have expected.

Well, after wrapping up my visit to the excellent Haggin Museum, my intention was to take a taxi to the next site on my agenda. As you may know, I generally NEVER plan to take taxis when I put my trip itineraries together. I’ll only go to places I can reach by public transportation. (That’s not to say I haven’t taken taxis on my trips when it turned out it was necessary.) Getting to this site would have required an hour of walking, which I was not up for. But due to the unique nature of this next site, I was determined to go, so I made an unprecedented exception.

The rise of Uber has made getting a taxi very challenging, especially in a smaller place like Stockton, as I learned. (And as some people know, I won’t use Uber and the like.) I was able to get hold of 1 driver. He said that texting that was the best way to communicate with him and that he would be available later. Okay, well to be a traveler is to be able to adapt to unforeseen conditions. So I started walking, not to the site, but back to the hotel. I walked until I was able to catch a bus that brought me very close to the hotel. The ability to adapt on the fly is key!

Stockton Cambodian Buddhist Temple

This must be the place! I think you’ll see why I was willing to make an exception to 1 of my hard-and-fast travel rules.

I arranged for the cab driver to pick me up after I checked into the hotel so he could bring me to the most unlikely attraction you could imagine, Stockton Cambodian Buddhist Temple. The driver was quite the character. A bit full of himself. He was immune to Covid. According to him, anyway.

I got a lovely greeting when I arrived at Stockton Cambodian Buddhist Temple.

The Cambodian name for the temple is Wat Dharmararam. The temple was built by refugees who escaped the Khmer Rouge in the ’80s.

The remainder of the photos are of the temple’s main collection of statues, which depict the life of Buddha. I hope no one takes offense at my lack of knowledge of Buddhist iconography.

It looks like Buddha may be in danger here, with bows and arrows pointed at him.

The Enlightened One receives a disciple.

I have to be honest. This reminds me of a Cambodian version of Paul Bunyan and Babe. In Buddhism, the ox represents the true self.

This very large Buddha sits at the end of a long aisle of statues depicting the Buddha’s life.

Reclining Buddha, just about to pass into the afterlife. This statue is 54-feet long and 12-feet high.

The blue giant came to Buddha to boast about his power and strength. Buddha enlightened him and calmed him down.

And now we’ll sail away on the golden boat.

Well more mundanely than departing on a golden boat, I had the extroverted taxi driver pick me up and bring me back to downtown Stockton. I headed to the Hotel Stockton to take a look at what was supposed to be my last sightseeing stop of the day. I had read on Stockton’s tourism website that on display in the hotel’s lobby was a collection of excavated artefacts from a Chinese laundry that had operated in Stockton from the 1890s to the 1930s. When I got to the hotel, the person at the entrance had no idea what I was talking about. He told me that the property was a residential hotel (yes, like Stockton itself, the Hotel Stockton was living in faded glory) and that maybe I should try again in the morning. Stay tuned.

[Factual information is primarily gathered from Wikipedia, so you know it must be true.]