This email marks the launch of “Time Capsules,” a series of short vignettes exploring key moments and figures in our community’s history.
Each brief installment offers a quick look into Sausalito history: the events, people, and everyday life that shaped who we are today. We hope these snapshots spark curiosity about our shared past and inspire you to help preserve our heritage.
Read on for our first “Time Capsule”—and step back in time with us!
Jack Tracy was the Grand Marshall of the 1989 Fourth of July Parade
PHOTO COURTSEY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Fifty Historic Years
The Sausalito Historical Society was incorporated on May 2, 1979. As we approach the 50-year anniversary of that milestone, it seems fitting to re-tell the story of how the Society was founded by Jack Tracy. Following are lightly-edited excerpts from an interview Tracy gave to the San Francisco Examiner in 1984 and a Historical Society oral history in 1990:
The whole project began somewhat accidentally.
The roots were in a state request in 1974 for a city-wide inventory of what Sausalito officials felt was historically important — mostly buildings.
That’s when Jack got involved.
The following year, when the city moved its offices into Central School, Tracy was asked by Mayor Evert Heynneman to put together a historical display of whatever he could round up from various groups to display for the 1975 opening. "We stole everything we could find in town; I'm not kidding,” Jack recalled in his oral history. “We set up a whole display in the council's chambers, for that particular moment. The Army Corps brought their band and there was coffee and donuts and all that stuff.”
The whole affair was supposed to be short and routine. About 150 people, some band music and speech-making, and a brief glimpse at Tracy’s overnight collection of the town's past, then the party would be over.
The problem was that the collection was much more complete and significant than anyone had imagined.
"We scrounged everything we could find in Sausalito,” Jack confessed. “People had never seen so much of Sausalito's history at once. Hour after hour, the mayor would ask us to remain another hour.
"The people walked through the historical exhibit and then they went home and started calling other people. The first hundred people had never seen any of this stuff before. So when they left, they went back home and called their friends.
"We'd opened in the morning and didn't close until 6 o'clock that night. The people had never seen such a collection. That started it all."
A short time later Mayor Heynneman offered Tracy the top floor of City Hall. Tracy decided to form the historical society and started soliciting memberships.
Tracy was quickly joined by other volunteers (such as Evert Heynneman who joined the Society’s board and stepped into Jack’s role as Board Chairman) and the little museum launched itself. The rest, as they say, is history.
By Larry Clinton
Sausalito Historical Society