Farallone City Times Story by Charlie Ballard, year unknown
Charlie Ballard once owned a hardware-notions store in Montara, also home to Farallone City.
A Few Words, Reminiscent and Prophetic
Things have changed since we first addressed you through the columns of the Farallone City TIMES, and it seems but fit that we should change our form and dress to keep abreast with the progress of our townsite. A year ago Farallone City was isolated. Its values were prospective. To-day it is connected with a great city with the great steel links of commerce. Its values are real. A year ago our friends consumed an hour and fifteen minutes riding down the peninsula to San Mateo on Pat. Calhoun’s electric road before starting across the country to our place. To-day it requires only a few minutes more to ride the same distance into Farallone City over a new road only half completed, without ballast, and where tracks are only temporary and grades and curves are still to be reduced. The present age is annihilating distance with modern transportation. We count distance with minutes and hours now, not blocks and miles. A year ago Farallone City was a four hour journey from the center of San Francisco, to-day it is but little more than an hour.
One year from to-day will find you and your friends stepping on Ocean Shore electric cars at at Farallone depot to be whisked over this wonderful new scenic road into the city to your business or your occupation in less than forty minutes time. And at eventide you will be whisked back from the grime and smoke and dirt of the city to the pure, free air by the seaside to forget the toil and grind of the day’s occupation until another day brings you back to it with clear mind and rested body. Such are the benefits of modern transportaton.
It is better to have a seaside suburban home for daily recuperation than to have your savings laid away for the doctor.
HOW DOES IT APPEAL TO YOU?
FARALLONE CITY is on the peninsula down which San Francisco must expand and on the popular side of it–the beach side. It will soon have less than a 40-minute electric service into the center of San Francisco. The Ocean Shore Railroad runs through it for a mile. It is designated as one of the principal division points on this new line of railroad. Both passenger and freight depots, with freight siding combine to give it commercial significance. Three additions to Farallone City have been platted and are already largely sold to home-builders. Besides these a separate subdivision lies directly back of this new town-site, and in fact constitutes a continuation of it. In this plat alone more than a thousand homesites are already sold, and many of them built upon. Here, then, are four enterprising companies joined in the development of one place instead of spreading out and attempting to develop so many separate and distinct townsites. More than two thousand home plots in this one locality now depend on Farallone City for railroad, depot, stations, beach and waterfront. What does this mean to you, Mr Home Seeker?
It means enough bona fide home builders and enough capital interested to insure you the comfort and conveniences of a modern city. What does it mean to you, Mr. Investor? It means that values at Farallone City are no longer prospective, but real. That an investment in the heart of this new suburban center is certain not only to increase in value, but to increase rapidly and permanently.
It is better to have a few dollars safely invested in your own little place than to have many dollars invested in the bank manager’s private mansion at some noted summer resort.
Continue reading “Charlie Ballard, “The Spirit of Farallone City,” Wrote for the “Farallone City Times””
have writer’s block (WB) while he was working on the script AND when he was acting in it? If so the WB virus was catching—there were no standouts in this spirit-less flick.
