This page last updated: 14 May 10 @ 5:27 pm

For 83 years, execpt for traveling the Strand, access to the "Rock" came only by ferryboat. Melinda Wakefield Nahmias, Martha's sister provides us with a brief history of our beloved ferrys.

A FERRY TALE
by Melinda Wakefield Nahmias

For those of us who live in Coronado or are lucky enough to make it back regularly, it may be difficult to conjure up the time before the bridge, that "blue ribbon in the sky," was built. But what a time it was. Our time. Our youth, spent in a real-life paradise.

The Strand notwithstanding, the ferryboats were the main conduit for - and barrier from - life beyond that paradise for some 83 years (depending on the source, you'll find the start date listed as either April 1886, when a paddle-wheel carried construction workers back and forth to Tent City, or July 1929, when the earliest ancestors of the boats we knew plied the channel.) The story goes that there were only two interruptions in service in that 83 years: Once for a labor strike in the early 1950's and again in 1960 when the effects of an earthquake in Peru caused the boats to tie up for a day.

For 45 cents, driver and car could make the trip (a dime was added for each additional passenger) at any time, day or night. At rush hour, the traffic lined up along Orange Avenue, sometimes all the way back to 10th Street! But even that didn't seem like real traffic. Heck, that was before Coronado proper had a single traffic signal.

For many of us, that trip across the bay represented a right of passage. A sign of maturity was marked when we were permitted to make the ferry crossing unchaperoned, let alone to drive it by ourselves. That's how we got to "away" games. That's how we went shopping in the big city or to cultural events across the bay. The excitement of a vacation or trip to Disneyland began on a ferry. At its worst, the trip was a forced 10 minutes or so of serenity en route to our destinations or back home again. It didn't matter how urgent your trip was. Or how late you were getting home. You were handed some "chill out" time, courtesy of the ferries. At best, the trip gave us a chance to soak in the beauty of our island home.

What a fitting introduction to what was then a sleepy little beach town. Our brother, Stephen (class of '64), was a deckhand on the ferries from March of 1968 until the last run in August of 1969. He told of captains who missed the docks due to low tides, dense fogs - and liquid lunches.

Then there was the guy in the Cadillac who barreled on a ferry much too fast and punctured his gas tank. And countless others got out of their cars to enjoy the skyline only to lock their keys inside! Stephen also remembered working nights after some of the Naval ships had returned to home port from tours of the Pacific or Southeast Asia. Loved ones couldn't always wait until the ferry crossing ended to begin making up for lost time in the romance department. (I, Melinda, was always careful, myself. Big Brother really was watching men)

Stephen had the task of tying up the San Diego after her final arrival into the Coronado docks at midnight, August 2, 1969, while one of his colleagues tied up the Crown City on the San Diego side. An era had indeed ended.

I doubt anyone guessed just how much the bridge would change the city. According to Catherine Eitzen Carlin and Ray Brandes in their book "Coronado, The Enchanted Isle," home costs rose 34% in a single year. In 1969, the Shores construction began. And the first traffic light on Orange Avenue was installed.
When the ferries died that summer, so did the "nickel-snatchers," the passenger boats that carried workers to their jobs at North Island. That passing, as much as that of the ferries themselves, contributed to the "new" Coronado. According to Carlin and Brandes, "Before the time of the bridge, 5,000 military personnel used the pedestrian ferry for the bay crossing and scarcely traveled the streets of Coronado. By March 1970, an estimated 20,000 vehicles were on the 'recently designed new State Highway leading to North Island through the City of Coronado.'"

At the bridge opening ceremonies, Mayor Paul Vetter said, "Coronado is gone - long live Coronado! We'll never be the same." What a mouthful! I don't know about you, but my memories wouldn't be complete without recalling what a lovely part the ferries played in them.

Who remembers the names of the other three ferry boats? Check with Martha; she does!