Nevada Traveler: Longtime journalist writes about hometown of Vallejo

Brendan Riley really knows the city of Vallejo. Riley, the longtime Associated Press Capital Bureau Chief in Carson City, was born and raised in Vallejo, where his father was a legendary local newspaper editor and political figure, Wyman Riley, and his mother, Marjorie Riley, was also a journalist and writer.

Following his retirement in 2009, Riley, a member of the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame, who spends part of his time in Genoa, and part of it in Vallejo, turned his attention to his hometown and specifically its rich history.

In 2017, he published his first book, “Lower Georgia Street: California’s Forgotten Barbary Coast,” about a once-notorious sailor district in Vallejo with a colorful and racy history.

In the course of writing that book, Riley collected so much historical material about the city that he felt he had more to say on the subject. As a result, later that year he began writing a regular column, the Solano Chronicles, for the Vallejo Times-Herald newspaper.

Recently, Riley collected the best of his columns for the past few years into another book, “Vanishing Vallejo: Random History Notes on a Colorful California Town.” In other words, a book begets a column that begets another book.

“Vanishing Vallejo” offers a wonderful overview of the many interesting people, events, and places that define the city. Importantly, many of the entries focus on Mare Island, a historic shipyard that provided jobs for many in the community and remains an important part of the community’s identity.

Riley divides his book chronologically; with entries organized by the year they were published. He begins his book, appropriately, with a short history of the city’s namesake, General Mariano Vallejo, who originally hoped to have the California state capital located in the community (it did have that distinction for a short time).

Other items in the first chapter, collecting 2017 columns, include a profile of Admiral David Farragut, the first Mare Island Shipyard Commandant, a story about gangster George “Baby Face” Nelson’s time hiding out in Vallejo in the 1930s, and the impacts of prohibition on the city (it was largely ignored).

Subsequent chapters include stories about the time the future Duchess of Windsor spent in Vallejo in 1920, how ill-informed urban renewal efforts in the early 1970s unfortunately destroyed several landmark buildings in the city, the stories of sunken ships in Vallejo’s Bay, and how famed novelist Ernest J. Gaines, who grew up in Vallejo, once haunted the city library for inspiration.

Reading the book, one comes away with a new appreciation for the rich history of Vallejo, a city that often is overshadowed by its more famous neighbors, the Napa Valley, Sonoma Valley, and San Francisco.

For example, who knew that in 1918, actor Boris Karloff, who would later go on to great fame in films like “Frankenstein” and “The Bride of Frankenstein,” spent time in Vallejo as a struggling actor? Karloff, then in his early 30s, joined the acting troupe at Vallejo’s Airdome Theatre and performed in a number of plays until the theatre, like all public venues, was closed during the deadly influenza outbreak of 1917-18.

Unable to work as an actor, Karloff worked as the nearby Sperry Flour Mill for about two months. In 1919, with the Vallejo acting company now defunct, Karloff joined a theater company in San Jose and, eventually, ended up in Hollywood, where he found much greater success.

Brendan Riley’s “Vanishing Vallejo: Random History Notes on a Colorful California Town,” is published by America Through Time, an imprint of Foothill Media, working with Arcadia Publishing. It can be found in online bookstores, such as www.bookshop.org, which pays a portion of its sales to local bookstores.