Little known history in your hometown

[bilby]

In WWII, fearing Japanese air raids, a number of bomb shelters were constructed in Brisbane.

Many of these were built for public use, and were fairly flimsy - they had a concrete roof, and cinder-block walls, and were specifically designed to serve as tram shelters (once the walls were removed) after the war.

However, General MacArthur had a more robust below ground shelter for his senior staff, which was built at what is now Centenary Place. His HQ buildings were just on the opposite side of Ann Street, so the shelter would have been readily accessible in the event of an air raid warning.

In the 1960s, the majority of the ground-level public shelters were demolished, but one was kept as a storage shed for the groundskeepers; The underground military shelter was converted to a meal room and toilet facility for council tram and bus drivers.

So this morning, I used General MacArthur's lavatory.

This is the entrance to the underground shelter, and to the left, the old "tram shelter" style public shelter. You can see the recess at the edge of the concrete roof where the walls used to be:

The above ground public shelters were really only good to protect against falling shrapnel and fairly distant bombs; Even when covered with a layer of earth and surrounded by sandbags, they wouldn't have done much against a direct hit.

Access to the underground shelter is via a steep flight of steps:


Down in the underground shelter, you can still see how seriously solid the roof and its concrete supports are:


Some small windows have been cut out at the modern ground level:



Apart from bus drivers, very few people in Brisbane are aware that this little piece of wartime history is even there. The Queensland government website says that the shelters here were demolished in the 1960s, and Wikipedia echoes that statement, but in reality a significant portion remains in place (albeit with major modifications), largely because it would have been a massive effort to completely demolish such a structure.

It's all tucked away in the small park in the angle between Wickham and Ann Streets, which are amongst the busiest roads in the city, but it's disappeared almost completely from the public record, and from local knowledge.


The blue plaque gives a brief history of Captain John Wickham, for whom Wickham Street is named; It says nothing at all about the WWII bomb shelter to which it has been affixed.

What little known historical remnants are found in your home towns?

 

[Politesse]

You mean the little cowblob I grew up in? 20th century history largely passed it by, and of its slightly more exciting early days, precious little now remains. It is located on the homeland of the Tauhalamme band of the people now known as the Yokuts Indians, who foraged up and down the banks of the river and kept a stronghold at need in a cleft of rocks about four miles outside the present city limits, where the river has undercut the basalt embankment to create some low-lying caves, and the people in question likewise held their last stand there. Most were killed either by an epidemic fever that swept through the San Joaquin Valley in the 1840s, or by Estanislao's War, a catastrophic conflict that resolved the question of Spanish advancement into California. General Estanislao, after whom the war is named, was of mixed heritage, a Tauhalamme on his mother's side, though he spent much of his life as a slave and later a work leader far away at the Mision San Jose in what is now Fremont CA. The Spanish were never able to cross the Coast Ranges for any length of time without getting slaughtered as the muster spread through the Yokuts bands, but they would make brief raids into the region for fresh supplies, slaves, and converts, and to their detriment, they started sending the young Estanislao with them. He was thus in a position to both learn quite a lot about both Spanish language, armaments, and tactics, but also to make contact with his original people, with whom he immediately sympathized. He organized a counter-offensive and started raiding Spanish holdings for cattle, guns, and gunpowder. When the Spanish advanced into the plano diablo, they found it fortified and well-manned, and fought a desperate battle ending in a Pyrrhic victory for the doomed Yokuts alliance. The Spanish were repelled and their cannons destroyed, but the fort was also destroyed along with almost everyone in it, many burned alive inside its wreckage. We still find the occasional ball or shot turning up in someone's field. The battle was about thirteen miles away, up on the Stanislaus River. Both river and country are named for Estanislao, but he himself was captured and forced to repent, living out the rest of his days as a missionary and slavery apologist under force. His closest lieutenant was captured and executed on the field, and his head was placed on a stake at the Mision San Juan Bautista, a fact which they do not mention on the brochure, but which is well remembered in local legend. You can visit the two missions today, but there are precious little remains of anything else. The Yokuts numbers were so reduced that when the United States showed up and started throwing its weight around in the 1840s, most of the Tauhalamme still alive either melted into the hills or fled south to join the remaining Yokuts communities around Tuolomne City and Tule River, where the majority were slaughtered on an industrial scale during the conflicts that followed the discovery of gold up around Sonora. The last known Tauhalamme man of pure ancestry died in 1915, huddled in a little cabin near Knight's Ferry. Waterford was thus a mostly abandoned area by the time of the actual Gold Rush, its fate having already been decided. "Cleared land", from a colonial perspective.

The municipality itself was founded much the same time as most of other little towns in the region, during an agricultural land rush immediately following the California Genocide and associated gold rush in the Southern Sierra motherlode just up the hill. There had been a little ford and general store at the point where the Tuolumne River widens out onto the San Joaquin basin, and after a church joined the collection and two irrigation ditches were struck to bring water down from a dam eight miles up, a town conglomerated. The Bell and Baker families that originally owned the grants were and are still influential, but never wealthy; I went to school with plenty of their offspring. Indeed, Waterford was originally named Baker's Field, but a much larger town called Bakersfield already existed elsewhere in the state, so when our little spur line of the railroad joined the main one, the name of the town was changed to the even more vague moniker it now possesses, to avoid confusion. The death of the railroad was very nearly the death of the town, but it hung on by the skin of its teeth through the depression, and lived long enough to become a bedroom community for the growing city of Modesto, now a scant eight miles west as the boundary lines are drawn. Most people who live there now work as warehousers for Amazon or other companies, who find the western slope of the Valley to be conveniently cheap and available land to stage their West Coast operations from. A few landowners still farm, with varying degrees of success. Key agricultural outputs include almonds, cattle, pistachios, lettuce, marijuana, and methamphetamines.

Of all this history, there is little left to see. The Indian Museum in Sacramento possesses but for reasons of taste does not display some artifacts from the war and genocide, as does UC Davis. Many have been repatriated to the survivors in recent years. The original general store no longer exists, but its location is known to the locals, so you can go look at the empty patch of grass where it used to stand if you like. The ford site is buried under a housing development, but there's a little river trail you can walk along nearby if you like. When I was a kid, there used to be some railbarns and other associated stuff where the train station used to be, but they were a hazard to general health and had to be dismantled a few years ago after a firestarter nearly took out not just the barns but the entire surrounding neighborhood.

 

[WAB]

I was born at West Point, NY, a hotspot for history.

I guess as far as "little known historical remnants" goes, there is a small plaque by the side of the Hudson at West Point that says that young cadet Edgar Allen Poe wrote a poem at that spot. I did a little research years ago and it seems that the author was quite drunk at the time and actually penned only a few stanzas of said poem, then decided to masturbate instead. He was arrested for indecent exposure and conduct unbecoming of a cadet, and promptly kicked out of the academy. When asked by a journalist a few years later if Poe would ever repeat the offense, the poet answered, "Nevermore."

 

[robnisch]

Herbert Hover grew up in my hometown Oregon.

 

[robnisch]

One of John Brown's sons is buried in Portland OR. Not quite my hometown, close.

 

[Tharmas]

The town where I was born, and of which I have only a small handful of vague memories, was Buffalo, New York. Buffalo was not named after the Bison, which are not and never were found around or near Buffalo. Instead it was named by the French, who called it “Beau Fleuve,” which means “beautiful river,” or “big-ass river” or however you want to translate it. English speakers corrupted Beau Fleuve into Buffalo, a more familiar word to them.

 

[Ford]

Around the turn of the past century, my hometown of Algonac, MI, was a popular resort town. People would take steamers across the lake from Detroit to spend the day or a weekend away from the city. The more wealthy residents had summer homes on the islands of the St. Clair Flats, and a look at some of the membership rosters for the clubs looked like a "who's who" of Detroit society. Allegedly, Teddy Roosevelt liked to go hunting and fishing around there.

With the advent of the automobile, taking a paddle wheel boat like the Tashmoo across the lake slowly lost it's appeal, and the town fell into obscurity after the summer visitors stopped coming. We moved there in 1970, and you could get a nice house on the water dirt cheap. My dad was an avid hunter and fisherman, and really got into the history of the place. My brother inherited his skills (I didn't), and can basically find his way around the delta in the dark. It seemed like a boring small town to grow up in, but now that I look back, it was a great place to grow up. Especially if you had a boat.

 

[gmbteach]

Our suburb isn’t old enough for history. Our main claim to fame could be that Cameron Smith grew up on our street. Our local high school is one of the feeder schools for the Brisbane Broncos.

The onky other fame, in my time, was the Tialeigh Palmer case, which resulted in every school texting every parent of an absent child if they hadn’t already contacted the school by 9:30 am.

 

[Bronzeage]

My city is named Baton Rouge, which is French for "red stick" and no one knows why. There are many speculative theories and most are a little silly. I remember a diorama in a local museum which showed a Native American that had a dead deer hanging from a pole. The animal's blood stained the pole red. Another story is there was a large cypress tree on the river bank. Cypress trees have a reddish bark, but there were several million growing along the banks of the Mississippi River.

The most plausible explanation is Baton Rouge was a Frenchman's pronunciation of a Native word and has nothing to do with a red stick. Even so, no Native word resembling red stick has been documented.

 

[Politesse]

Well, there were the Red Sticks, of course. But that was much later and a state away.

On the other hand, they were named for an already existing tradition of red staves representing a move to war footing in Creek symbolic parlance. Many of the northern Louisiana tribes were Muscogean speakers also, so I'd be willing to entertain the idea of a cultural connection on some level.

 

[bilby]

Well, there were the Red Sticks, of course. But that was much later and a state away.

On the other hand, they were named for an already existing tradition of red staves representing a move to war footing in Creek symbolic parlance. Many of the northern Louisiana tribes were Muscogean speakers also, so I'd be willing to entertain the idea of a cultural connection on some level.

Or it could have been named after a red boat.

Bateau Rouge would make sense; Living in Louisiana you would want a lot of boats of all colours, shapes and sizes. And few people could tell the difference between "bateau" and "baton" in a crowded bar, particularly if it's being overheard by someone to whom French a foreign language.

But as I just invented it on the spot, it's not a likely etymology.

Which is rather the problem. The number of plausible just-so stories massively outweighs the single correct answer, but in the absence of a clear and unequivocal history, they're all equally plausible.

 

[Politesse]

Well, there were the Red Sticks, of course. But that was much later and a state away.

On the other hand, they were named for an already existing tradition of red staves representing a move to war footing in Creek symbolic parlance. Many of the northern Louisiana tribes were Muscogean speakers also, so I'd be willing to entertain the idea of a cultural connection on some level.

Or it could have been named after a red boat.

Bateau Rouge would make sense; Living in Louisiana you would want a lot of boats of all colours, shapes and sizes. And few people could tell the difference between "bateau" and "baton" in a crowded bar, particularly if it's being overheard by someone to whom French a foreign language.

But as I just invented it on the spot, it's not a likely etymology.

Which is rather the problem. The number of plausible just-so stories massively outweighs the single correct answer, but in the absence of a clear and unequivocal history, they're all equally plausible.

Just so. If it comes to that, plenty of "official stories" are no more plausible; unless you've got a contemporary document indicating why a township's name was selected, the odds are no one really remembers the point at which it came by its moniker. Place-naming is a very organic process, most of the time.

But fun to speculate on.

 

[Elixir]

Our County Seat is Salida, Spanish for exit but pronounced sa-lie-duh instead of sa-lee- duh. It was thought of as the exit from the mountains, being at the foot of two mountain passes. White people mess EVERYTHING up.

 

[bilby]

My state is Queensland, one of two states (out of just six in total) that are named for Queen Victoria. The name "Victoria" was already in use for the state on the opposite side of New South Wales, which as every Australian schoolboy knows was proposed to be called "Batmania". Given the vast number of places on the planet named for Queen Victoria, and the dearth of places named for John Batman, one cannot help but think that Batmania would have been a far superior choice on every possible level.

 

[Politesse]

Our County Seat is Salida, Spanish for exit but pronounced sa-lie-duh instead of sa-lee- duh. It was thought of as the exit from the mountains, being at the foot of two mountain passes. White people mess EVERYTHING up.

Weirdest thing about that? There's a town by the same name in the area where I grew up, and they pronounce it the exact same wrong way.

 

[Politesse]

Then again, it's a consistent oddity of American speech to pronounce the "foreign i" as /aɪ/ . it is common in the Midwest to pronounce "Italian" as "Eye-talyan" for instance, despite a heavy presence of Italian immigrants who could presumably corect the error. It's performative speech, emphasizing the exocitism of the perceived interior foreign.

 

[Tharmas]

Our County Seat is Salida, Spanish for exit but pronounced sa-lie-duh instead of sa-lee- duh. It was thought of as the exit from the mountains, being at the foot of two mountain passes. White people mess EVERYTHING up.

Weirdest thing about that? There's a town by the same name in the area where I grew up, and they pronounce it the exact same wrong way.

Anglo Texans have a love-hate relationship with Spanish place names. Llano TX is simply "lan-o," but the llano estacado is generally pronounced more like the Spanish, with an initial Y sound. And Mexia TX is muh-hay-uh. And, moving away from Spanish, Palestine TX is "Palesteen".

 

[Politesse]

Our County Seat is Salida, Spanish for exit but pronounced sa-lie-duh instead of sa-lee- duh. It was thought of as the exit from the mountains, being at the foot of two mountain passes. White people mess EVERYTHING up.

Weirdest thing about that? There's a town by the same name in the area where I grew up, and they pronounce it the exact same wrong way.

Anglo Texans have a love-hate relationship with Spanish place names. Llano TX is simply "lan-o," but the llano estacado is generally pronounced more like the Spanish, with an initial Y sound. And Mexia TX is muh-hay-uh. And, moving away from Spanish, Palestine TX is "Palesteen".

The name Llano Estocado is well older than the name Texas, so I'd be sad if they got it badly wrong, though not surprised. Your described pronunications for Mexia and Palestine sound extremely reasonable to me, in both cases closer to their parent tongue's pronunciations, than the usual American English bastardizations of Mexico and Palestine (there's that "exotic i" again!) We're determined to mispronounce the entire Middle East into submission, it seems. Really, I'm surprised we don't insist on calling our southern neighbor "Mex-eye-ko"...

 

[bilby]

The way the Americans pronounce "Iran" always makes me think of A Flock of Seagulls.

 

[Tharmas]

The name Llano Estocado is well older than the name Texas,

That depends on whether you mean the modern spelling of "Teyas"or "Tejas," as it appeared in mid sixteenth century Spanish documents. I don't know when Anglos changed it to "Texas," but it must have been at least by the early nineteenth century. It was originally a Caddo indian word.

That's interesting about Palestine. I would never have guessed that Texans got it right.