About

I found some old negatives in a box. So I scanned them into my computer to see what I had. I put together this webpage with a few of the photos. I don't know if this works on phones. I could break this page into several pages if anyone cares.

After I left the Marines and moved to San Francisco in 1971, I enrolled at Sonoma State College using the G.I. Bill. When I first traveled to visit the campus I didn't have a car so I took the bus to Cotati and then walked. I brought my camera along loaded with B&W film (I couldn't afford color slides). It seemed like an endless rural landscape along Cotati Ave. Nothing but fields and old rundown buildings.

Plus a railroad servicing a grain loader.

Then, after walking a while, a few building came into view. It was a small campus then. I was accepted in the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, to finish my B.A., having attended two colleges before. I rented a room in Rohnert Park. Exploring the area later I walked along an old abandoned railroad line from Petaluma to Sebastopol, or so it seems. At least I have these photos of that rural landscape.

I ran across a closed railcar at the time with a seal marked Petaluma and Santa Rosa. The railcar likely contained gravenstein apple products, or maybe even pencils (I heard they made pencils in Sebastopol).

Google says the P&SR began in the early 1900s as an interurban trolley powered by electricity. I ran across a couple block houses like this that I suspect once contained the transformers for electrifying the trains.

I can't find these places on a map anymore. So these are just random photos I took on the walk. Apparently scared this rabbit, though.

The Hessel Market is on the left with the Hessel Volunteer Fire Department on the right. I have a few landscape shots I left out, but that was my walk. Here are some vertical (portrait) pictures of track.

I also have a few negatives of a band playing in Santa Rosa at the courthouse square (which I don't remember but I Googled "empire building" that was in one of the photos). I doubt this was Peter, Paul, and Mary but maybe someone knows who they are.