Swabby’s grave at Pine Knoll Pet Cemetery in Santa Cruz, California.

Swabby was a German shepherd and member of the Marine K-9 Corps during WWII. His remains lie in a grave at the slightly dilapidated Pine Knoll Pet Cemetery, in Santa Cruz, California. He was one of several dogs sent to the Pacific Theater. Swabby and his handler Don Sprauge, served in Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. Sprauge and Swabby saw fierce fighting and Swabby is said to have saved his unit more than once.

Swabby was honorably discharged and after the war went through a retraining program in California with Sprauge. Sprauge gave him to his neighbor John Heuvers, who moved to Santa Cruz in 1949. Swabby died in 1952. His story was unearthed by Dan Model who discovered the old grave while exploring at the Pine Knoll Pet Cemetery and was intrigued by the U.S. Marine Corps medal. Model honored Swabby by placing a U.S. flag by his grave last Veterans Day (read the Sentinel article here).

Dogs in the World Wars

The use of dogs in warfare goes back to ancient times. They have typically been used as scouts, sentries and trackers but sometimes were used in battles to attack the enemy. In World War I dogs were used extensively by both the United States (U.S.) and international forces and many were killed in action. After WWI, the U.S. largely abandoned training dogs for military purposes. However, after Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7th 1941, the U.S. military started a program called Dogs for Defense which worked with the American Kennel Association to get people to donate their healthy dogs to the U.S. Army.

Officers and men of the 135th Aero Squadron with their mascot “Rin Tin Tin” shortly after his rescue as a puppy in 1918. Photo from Bwmoll3.

The War Dog Program, or “K-9 Corps” was established in March of 1942. The program started out taking in over 30 breeds of dogs, but quickly limited the acceptable breeds to only seven: German shepherds, Belgian sheep dogs, Doberman pinschers, collies, Siberian huskies, Malumutes and Eskimo dogs. The dogs were given basic obedience training for 8 to 12 weeks, then were given specialized training as either sentry dogs, scout or patrol dogs, messenger dogs or mine-detection dogs. Scout dogs proved to be essential in combat situations as they alerted patrols to the approaching enemy and prevented sneak attacks.

War Dogs post WWII

After WWII the U.S. military continued the K-9 units. During the Vietnam War 232 dogs and 295 of their human dog handlers were killed, though it’s estimated that the k-9 units saved over 10,000 lives.

K-9 units continue to be incorporated into many different aspects of military operations. One sign of how entrenched dogs are in the military of today can be seen in the U.S. Armies’ on-line ads for positions as Military Working Dog Handler.

Famous War Dogs: Rags (c. 1916 – March 6, 1936)

Rags with Sergeant George E. Hickman, 16th Infantry, 26th Division. Photo from FlowerofScotland.

Rags was a mixed breed terrier who became the U.S. 1st Infantry Division’s dog-mascot in World War I. Rags achieved great fame when he saved many lives in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive by delivering a vital message despite being bombed, gassed and partially blinded.

Sergeant Stubby (1916 or 1917 – March 16, 1926)

Sergeant Stubby wearing military uniform and decorations circa 1920. Photo in the public domain.

Sergeant Stubby was the official mascot of the 102nd Infantry during WWI. Stubby was with the 102nd for 18 months and served in seventeen battles on the Western Front. He alerted his regiment to surprise gas attacks, found wounded soldiers, and once held a German soldier by his pants until the Americans came and found him. Sergeant Stubby made the American newspapers frequently.

Chips (WWII)

Chips was a German shepherd-collie-Siberian husky mix and the most decorated war dog from World War II. Chips and his handler were trapped on a beach by an Italian machine gun unit during the invasion of Sicily. The dog apparently ran into the dugout of the machine gunners, forced them out and they ultimately surrendered to the Americans. After the war, Chips was returned to his original family but after a visit from his war-time handler, the family gave Chips to the handler.

Lex (1999 – March 25, 2012)

Marine K9 Lex with Cpl Dustin J. Lee. Photo by L. Rich.

Lex and his handler Corporal Dustin J. Lee were stationed in Iraq in 2007. On March 21st, they were hit by a rocket attack and Lee was killed. Lex, though wounded, refused to leave Lee. Lex eventually had to be dragged away to be treated. Lex recovered and was returned to active service. The Lee family, however, wanted to adopt the dog, and with national media attention were able to get the dog retired from active service and adopt him before his official retirement age. The Lee family and Lex continued to give of themselves throughout Lex’s retirement. They frequently took Lex to visit wounded veterans and soldiers and became involved with the Paws 4 Hearts program. Lex died in 2012 from cancer.

Jerome Lee and Lex meet with World War II Veterans. Photo from Psc349.

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Holy City circa 1920s. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

For several decades in the 1900s eight Santa Claus statues welcomed motorists driving along the Old Santa Cruz Highway to a mysterious place called Holy City. The “city” — a tiny town that took five minutes to walk from one end to another — was established in 1918 by Father William E. Riker, also known as “The Emancipator,” “The Comforter,” “The King, ”and “The Professor.” This eccentric individual, like many cult leaders, has a muddied past of manipulation, showmanship, and morally questionable choices.

William and Lucile Riker. [Betty Lewis Collection] Photo: Courtesy of Richard Beal.

Before establishing Holy City in 1918, Riker earned his nickname “The Professor” from reading palms. He also travelled the country performing a mind reading act before he was arrested for bigamy in San Francisco. Leaving his two wives behind, Riker fled to Canada, where he developed the “Perfect Christian Divine Way.” To follow this new way required total celibacy, abstinence from alcohol, hard-core white supremacy, and communal living. Obviously, not the life for everyone, and yet at its peak in the 1930s, Father Riker had 300 devoted disciples.

The Cult’s Beginnings

In 1918, Riker purchased 30 acres just south of Los Gatos for only $10 that became “Holy City” according to Betty’s Lewis’s account in Holy City: Riker’s Roadside Attraction in the Santa Cruz Mountains. His following began with 30, mostly elderly, disciples who gave him all their money so they could focus on their new “religion.” Some called the group a religious cult but the only place of “worship” in the City was a redwood grove where Father Riker gave sermons that were more like philosophical lectures.

Riker himself actually referred to his group as a cult in the Rules and Regulations for Members:

Holy City in the early 1930s. [WIlliam A. Wulf Collection] Photo: Courtesy of Richard Beal.

Early in his new career as a spiritual leader of sorts, Riker first incensed one of his disciples by straying from his own strict rules and taking a wife. His disciple tried unsuccessfully to sue Riker. Instead of losing face (and the money he’d taken from his elderly follower), he soon began making $100,000 annually from his religious enterprise which included a restaurant, a service station, an observatory (10 cents to view the moon and stars through a telescope), and a mineral water business he ran on the side. By 1929, Holy City had a weekly newspaper and a radio station (KFQU). The radio station lasted two years until its license was revoked because Riker kept using other station’s frequencies.

Santa Claus Statues and Strange Signs Draw Tourists

By the 1930s Holy City had become a popular tourist spot for curious motorists traveling along the Old Santa Cruz Highway. Eight shoulder-height Santa Claus statues beckoned you onto the property. Several signs at the entrance boasted bold statements:

Riker’s idea of perfection, it seems, was an entirely white population (another one of his controversial, and in this case downright offensive, signs read “Asians and Negroes keep out of Holy City until you’ve learned your place”) and one where everyone except for Father Riker had to follow a strict set of rules and live without money or worldly possessions.

One of the buildings in Holy City, 1968. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

Riker was a man full of contradictions. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Adolf Hitler and yet he was overly friendly to Jews and welcomed them with open arms into his flock. He preached celibacy and yet he was a bigamist before founding Holy City and took a wife after establishing his strict ideology. He also preached sobriety and yet encouraged the man leasing the restaurant on his property to add a bar to the establishment. (He then later made him shut it down because too many of his disciples were frequenting it.)

“To My People I am God”

Despite his blatant hypocrisy, Riker’s cult-like group persisted through the Depression. He was quoted saying, “My people will do anything I tell them to do. To them I am God.” The Holy City fared well for a while, profiting from both dedicated followers and curious tourists. A variety of businesses attracted drivers to pull off the Old Santa Cruz Highway: There was a gas station, post office, grocery and meat market, restaurant, barber shop (the disciples had to borrow money from Riker to get a haircut), print shop, lecture hall, zoo, motion pictures, and ballroom with a sign reading:

“The Emancipator” (as Riker liked to call himself) also had grand plans for an amphitheater that would seat 17,000 people and host shows where he would miraculously “cure” people posing as blind, deaf or crippled.

The Fall of Riker’s Kingdom

The popularity of the cult finally fizzled as Riker’s followers began to see their leader as the manipulative and deceitful man he really was. Riker wouldn’t allow spouses to live together in Holy City yet rumors spread that the leader slept with all his female disciples. By 1938, only 75 men and 4 women lived at the site.

An old building in Holy City.

The opening of Highway 17 (which bypassed Holy City) in 1940 and gas rationing with the start of World War II, led to a sharp decline in tourists. In 1942 the FBI charged Riker with sedition for letters he wrote to Hitler showing his open support and his anti-semitic, British, Filipino, and Chinese propaganda. He avoided jail but had to give up his pamphlets and paid a large sum of $15,000 in legal fees by the end of the trial.

Father Riker still held on after the trial and after losing most of his land in a bad real estate transaction in 1959. That same year a series of mysterious fires burned most of the City’s buildings to the ground. Still, a handful of followers remained with Riker even after the 94-year-old cult leader converted to Catholicism in 1966. He died three years later with three loyal disciples still residing in Holy City.

A building in the Holy City of 2015.

Today, all that remains of Holy City is one modern building and the narrow road that bears its name. The old buildings have disappeared except for a derelict shack that may or may not have been a part of Father Riker’s small empire. A shop with a dayglo sign reading “Holy City Art Glass Holy City, California” reminds those few who drive by that a tract of 30 acres here in the Santa Cruz Mountains was once bustling with loyal disciples and curious tourists.

The Art Glass shop is the only remaining business in Holy City, 2015.

Holy City Road will take you up to Highway 17.

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North America: Three grizzly-bears in a forest next to a carcass. Coloured lithograph.
Image from Wikimedia Commons via Welcome Images.

“Mountain Charley” McKiernan had finally met his match. Face to face with a 1,000 pound grizzly bear, standing almost ten feet tall on her haunches, McKiernan was acutely aware of his mortality. Her paws were raised in preparation for a deadly bear hug, and she was so close he could feel and smell her hot, fishy breath.

Two painfully long seconds passed and McKiernan raised his gun, aiming and firing shakily at the bear’s chest. The bullet found its mark but the bear was only momentarily stunned. Without enough time to reload his rifle, McKiernan beat the bear over the head with it until it broke, but this only enraged her. Lunging at McKiernan, she sunk her teeth into his skull. When the bear released her grip, he reached up to cover his face with his hands and the mother bear’s massive mouth closed around both his arms.

McKiernan’s 26 years flashed before his eyes and then the bear turned and left, as quickly as it appeared, lumbering quickly toward her cubs who were being attacked by the dogs of McKiernan’s hunting partner, Taylor. McKiernan was somehow still conscious but couldn’t move his legs. There was nothing for him to do but to sit and wait for help.

Mountain Charley McKiernan’s legendary fight with a California grizzly bear in 1854 made his name famous throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains. McKiernan was already respected for his bear hunting skills, and even though he lost this fight, it was said that after this encounter the grizzlies let him pass through their territory in peace.

Mountain Charley, presumably before his legendary bear fight. Photo: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

Patched up with Pesos

Charley might have survived the bear attack, but he was left disfigured. The bear’s teeth chewed away his skull above the left eye up to the top of the frontal bone. The doctor hammered together two Mexican pesos to make a silver plate used to fill in the gap in his skull where the bear had exposed his brain. The makeshift plate began to corrode within three weeks and had to be replaced. McKiernan suffered through both procedures without anesthetics which were not yet readily available.

After suffering severe headaches, the second plate was removed two years later. McKiernan was put under with chloroform, the first known use of the new anesthetic in that region, and the doctors removed an abscess that had formed around a wad of hair left in the wound. His pounding headaches subsided after the surgery and the wound properly healed, but he began to always wear a hat low over his left eye to hide the disfigurement.

When a grizzly chewed off part of Mountain Charley’s skull, two pesos were hammered together to make a plate to fill in the hole.

The First House in the Santa Cruz Mountains

Besides the bear fight, McKiernan was known as the first white man to permanently settle in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A plaque on the summit at Mt Charlie Road off the Old Santa Cruz Highway still marks the site of his simple log cabin. In the 1850s and ’60s, it was a popular place for stagecoach passengers travelling from Santa Cruz to Santa Clara to stop for dinner. It was also a county landmark for many years until it burned down in 1899.

This is most likely the replica of Mountain Charley’s cabin that was rebuilt after the original burnt down in 1899. Exact date unknown. Photo: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

What brought “Mountain Charley” McKiernan to the Santa Cruz Mountains in the first place? Born in Ireland in 1825, McKiernan traveled to Australia and New Zealand as a quartermaster in the British Army before coming to California in 1848 when he caught wind of the gold strike. He worked in the mines, somewhere near San Francisco, for $20 a day. McKiernan had never dreamed of making so much back home in Ireland where mining wages were $20 a year.

After saving up his wages for a year, McKiernan ventured into the Santa Cruz Mountains, where land was plentiful, to look for a place to stake his claim. He found it up on the summit at a spot once popular with the area’s native peoples. He began building his cabin on a site littered with mortars, pestles, and flint arrowheads. He later built some of the first roads through theses mountains, including Mt Charlie Road, several miles of which are still in use today.

Mountain Charley built some of the first roads through the Santa Cruz Mountains, including one that still bears his name.

When Lions, Bears, and Wildcats Ruled the Summit

Back in the 1800s, the land was still wild up on the summit. McKiernan soon found out the hard way that raising sheep on land shared by mountain lions, wildcats, and grizzly bears was not such a profitable business venture. Spanish explorers in the mid-1700s made the first written accounts of the area and one padre beautifully captured its rugged wilderness (misspellings are in the original text):

“The adjecent mountains were wild and rugged, the canyons deep and dark with the shadows of the forest. Coyotes broke the stillness with their dismal howls, and herds of deer slacked their thirst in the clear waters of the San Lorenzo. Grizzly bears were numerous, prowling about in herds, like hogs on a farm.”

McKiernan lived alone in these wild mountains for three years. He gave up on sheep and, instead, raised long-horned steer and hunted grizzlies and wild deer. It is said that the deer were still so unaccustomed to humans that one could be shot while grazing in the middle of a herd and the rest of the deer would only raise their heads for a moment before continuing their deliberate munching.

“A rough and tumble with a grizzly,” by H. Bullock Webster, ca. 1874 – 1880. Image: University of British Columbia

Near Death by Grizzly: Just Another Day in the Life of a Santa Cruz Mountain Settler

The mountain man had his first neighbors, the Burrell family, in 1853. This family and other settlers also had frightening encounters with grizzlies.

While out building a fence for his pigs, Lyman Burrell heard his pigs making strange noises so he went over to investigate. There on the trail was a mother bear and her cub running straight towards him. Burrell began to run as fast as he could but he tripped and fell flat on the ground. The mother bear came upon Burrell and took his leg in her jaws, biting down with her huge incisors. Luckily, she only took one bite and then continued running down the trail with her cub. Burrell survived and his leg healed after six months.

A Frenchman living in the nearby town of Lexington was not so lucky.

The Frenchman encountered a bear while out hunting and when he missed his shot, the bear bit his left hand and then took his left arm in its paws. With his free right hand, the Frenchman began pummeling the bear with his fists, eventually hassling the bear enough to cause it to let go and lumber off. He lost his left arm but, as the story goes, the bear was found dead in the woods from the man’s mighty blows.

Grizzly Cubs Make Poor Pets

It’s difficult to say how true these tales are, but what is certain is that grizzlies were a common sight in the 1800s. Sadly, the large number of settlers drawn to California by the promise of gold led to the extinction of the California grizzly by 1924.

McKiernan certainly played his part in the bear’s extinction. He was one of the best-known bear hunters in the Santa Cruz mountains although there’s no record of how many bears died by his hand. Another one of his encounters with a California grizzly bear ended in the mother bear’s death, leaving behind two cubs. McKiernan took the cubs home and kept them for a while until they killed one too many hogs and had to be destroyed.

Mountain Charley’s cabin burned down in 1899 but you can visit this historic marker on Mt Charlie road off the Old Santa Cruz Highway. The marker says he “…settled near here in 1850.”

Mountain Charley lived the exciting life of a homesteader and bear hunter in the Santa Cruz Mountains until his death in 1892 at age 67. His close calls with grizzly bears (and those of his neighbors) are reminders of how truly wild these mountains once were.

Further Information

Please note that Mountain Charley is not to be confused with Charlie Parkhurst, another famous character from the Santa Cruz Mountains.

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This mural of Charley Parkhurst was at the Soquel Village Post Office from 1985 to 2012. Artist Frank Hill. Image: Courtesy of Mrwrite

Driving from San Jose to Santa Cruz over Highway 17 is a pretty harrowing 40 minutes with tight twisting curves and crazy drivers. Just imagine driving a team of six horses and a stagecoach full of passengers over the same route—but on treacherous dirt roads barely more than trails. In the 1800s it was thought only a man could handle a job as dangerous as this. And yet, it was a woman in the 1860s, that became one of the most famous—and not to be messed with—stagecoach drivers between San Jose and Santa Cruz. Charley Parkhurst chose to live as a man for over 30 years, deftly handling horses and bravely fighting bandits throughout the west. It wasn’t until Parkhurst’s death that his secret was revealed.

Not to be confused with another well-known character of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Mountain Charley McKiernan, this Charley was born Charlotte Parkhurst in Lebanon, New Hampshire and grew up in an orphanage. Dressed in boy’s clothing Parkhurst left the orphanage and according to one account, met Ebenezer Balch, the owner of a livery stable in Rhode Island, who took him in as his own son. Balch taught the young child to ride horses and drive wagon teams giving him the skills needed to later drive stagecoaches throughout California. He quickly mastered the profession and made the perilous long journey all the way across the country to work as a whip (the term then for a stagecoach driver) on the Pacific Coast.

Charlotte “Charley” Parkhurst. Image: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

One-Eyed, Bandit-Shootin’ Charley

When the almost 40-year-old Parkhurst arrived in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1850, he fit right in with the other rough and tough drivers. Known as “One-eyed Charley”, he wore a black patch over his left eye, lost when attempting to shoe a horse. His lips were stained from constant tobacco chewing and as the years wore on he talked less and less earning him another nickname, Silent Charley. When Parkhurst did speak, he didn’t hesitate to sling around swear words in a gruff voice. The only part of his appearance that was out of place was his clean-shaven face, an odd choice for a man in those days.

Parkhurst proved himself in California not only in skill with a team of up to six horses but in handling bandits. A bandit called “Sugarfoot” and his crew held up Parkhurst’s stagecoach and forced him to hand over the wagon’s strong box (used to hold all of the passenger’s valuables). He calmly acquiesced while keeping all his passengers safe, but before they left, he warned the robbers that he’d “break even with them.” Sugarfoot unwisely stopped his stagecoach again, and this time, Parkhurst shot him dead. As the story goes, Sugarfoot crawled back to a miner’s cabin and, before he died, told the miners he’d been shot by the famous driver, One-eyed Charley.

Charley Parkhurst would have driven a stagecoach similar to this one pictured at Big Basin in 1906.
Image: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

First Woman to Vote in America

Parkhurst took advantage of his disguise in other ways. In 1868, Parkhurst registered to vote. This was 52 years before the 19th amendment granted women the right! Although Parkhurst’s name is recorded on the official poll list for the election of 1868, it is unknown whether he actually cast his ballot. Still, there is a plaque at his grave, as well as at the Soquel Fire Station and Soquel Post Office, that commemorates him as the first woman to vote in the United States of America.

A Secret Revealed

During his 30 years as a stagecoach driver, Parkhurst became known as one of the best in California. In the late 1860s, as traveling by train began to replace the need for stagecoaches, Charley retired as a whip and tried his hand at other ventures. He is rumored to have raised cattle on Bean Creek and may have opened a stage station and saloon between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. It seems more certain that he worked as a skilled lumberjack for several years until rheumatism and cancer of the mouth forced him to stop.

Parkhurst’s secret was finally revealed upon his death in 1879. His reasons for choosing this lifestyle are unknown, but we can safely assume that Parkhurst would never have become a famous stagecoach driver as a woman. You can visit his grave today at the Pioneer Cemetery at 44 Main Street in Watsonville, California.

Charler Parkhurst’s grave marker.
Photo: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History.

Further Information

• Charley’s Choice: The Life and Times of Charley Parkhurst. Fern J. Hill. 2008.
• The Whip, by Karen Kondazian. Hansen Publishing Group LLC. 2012.

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The famous “cats” guarding the road to Poet’s Canyon in 1925. The automobile is a Ford Model T (notice the spare inner tube for the tires). Photo: William A. Wulf Collection, Courtesy of Richard Beal.

Updated March 15, 2016 with new photos from Richard Beal, author of Highway 17: The Road to Santa Cruz.

Living in Santa Cruz and driving back and forth over Highway 17, I always thought the Cats Restaurant and the two cat statues just a few hundred feet south of it derived their inspiration from the nearby town of Los Gatos (the cats in Spanish). But this is apparently not true.

The eight feet tall cats, Leo and Leona, have kept watch over the entrance to “Poets Canyon” since 1922. They were commissioned by writer Colonel Charles Erskine Scott Wood and poet, suffragist Sara Bard Field to mark the entrance to their 34 acres; their safe haven and place to philosophize and write poetry.  They built a house, planted a vineyard and put big wine casks out along the road as a way to protest prohibition. The property was a hang out for artists, writers and musicians of the day. Sara wrote well known poems while living there: The Pale Woman, Barrabas, and A Darkling Plain. Charlie Chaplin, John Steinbeck and even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the place.

Colonel (Ret.) Charles Erskine Scott Wood. Wood died at age 92 in his much loved “castle in the sky.” [Courtesy Horace Bristol] Photo: Courtesy of Richard Beal.

The statues were originally modeled in clay and then made in concrete. Created by sculptor Robert Paine, he lived on the property for the year it took him to make them and accepted only a small payment. According to Richard A. Beal, author of “Highway 17: The Road to Santa Cruz,” Charles and Sara conceived of their cat statues not  because of neighboring “Los Gatos” but because they just liked cats. Los Gatos was named in the 1840s after the wildcats in the area and Leo and Leona don’t look completely like mountain lions or bobcats, so it could be!

Wood died at age 92 in early 1944, his last years in failing health. Field, who had married Wood in 1938, continued to own the property until 1955, when she sold it to an oil executive, Fred G. Hampton.

The estate was owned by the Ogilvie family from 1960 until it sold in Nov. 2013. Eva “Diane” Ogilvie, was an entrepreneurial Los Gatos woman who apparently persuaded Hampton to sell to her. It remained in the Ogilvie family, largely unseen by the public. The Ogilvies expanded the property to 75 acres, with a total of nine parcels. Diane’s husband Bruce died in 2003 and when Diane died in 2011, the family decided to sell. Artisan Sothbys International listed the property for sale in late 2013 for $8.95 million. It sold and the new owner says the historic aspects of the site will be preserved.

“The Cats” entry to the former estate of Charles Erskine Scott Wood and Sara Bard Field in Los Gatos, California, March, 2006. Photo: Matthew A. Voorsanger.

Todays Cats Restaurant and Tavern was a stop on the old stage line from Santa Cruz to San Jose. It was a raucous social gathering place and in the 1920s was a speakeasy and bordello. In the 50s and 60s it was variably a realty office, gun shop and sporting goods store. It became a restaurant again in 1967. The Ogilvie Family bought the restaurant in 1977 and ran it until 2006. It stood closed until 2011, when new owners opened it on New Years Eve. Diane Ogilvie died on Oct 3, 2011 and was hoping to support the new owners by eating there when it opened. Unfortunately, she did not make it.

In October 2013, the Museum of Los Gatos Art and History ran a six month long exhibit “American Bohemia:  The Cats Estate in Los Gatos” it explored the lives of Wood and Field.

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