75th Anniversary

San Pablo celebrated 75 years of incorporation as a city and
200 years since the first land grant of Rancho San Pablo (Rancho Los Cuchigunes)

in 1823 to Don Francisco María Castro.

The City of San Pablo celebrated its 75th birthday as an incorporated city with a community event held at Maple Hall on Thursday, April 27, 2023. The San Pablo Historical and Museum Society was there celebrating as well with exhibit tables covering the history of San Pablo from its beginnings as home to the indigenous tribes, and the Bicentennial of the Rancho San Pablo land grant of 1823.

Incorporation
~The road to becoming a city~

The city of San Pablo was incorporated on April 27, 1948. Before World War II, San Pablo village was a waystation/rest stop between Oakland and Sacramento, best known for its boarding houses, brothels and saloons. Then came the war, naval shipyards, lots of people and incorporation. It has been written in newspaper articles that "San Pablo went from being a small community whose only claim to fame was its proximity to the Richmond shipyards to being a full-fledged city of more than 20,000 citizens." It began as a proposal by County Clerk, Walter Paasch to the Board of Supervisors and backed by the Chamber of Commerce. However, the first hearing date was delayed following a protest by Rollingwood residents over being included in the proposed incorporation.

A special election took place on April 21 and the city of San Pablo with a population of 20,000 was successfully incorporated as a sixth-class city with 1437 for incorporation and 837 against. The first council members taking the oath of office administered by Superior Judge Homer W. Patterson were, Harold W. Crawford (later named first Mayor), James P. Dodd, William Olson, George Tandy and Ben Yacorzynski with Gertrude Yurko (former Justice Court chief clerk) as City Clerk and Walter Laughlin as City Treasurer.

Former Police Chief Walter Pedretti, who took the position a little over a year after the city had incorporated after Chief George C. Bowers resigned, vividly recalled what the city was like back then in a 1973 article on San Pablo's 25th saying, "in the beginning, San Pablo was known for only one thing--its loose living and its free-flowing bars. Although the city had a few barber shops, one bank, and a lone attorney, it had more than 40 bars offering all manner of pleasures and we were considered the sin city of the East Bay." This coming year, San Pablo will be 75, although San Pablo's history goes back much further, to the days of the Californios -- ranchers from Mexico who dominated California before the Gold Rush.