Summary:
Oliver (Ollie) Hamlin III was interviewed by Julie Sullivan in July of 2004. His great-grandfather came to California from Quebec during the Gold Rush and eventually bought a 200-acre ranch in Lafayette in 1871. Ollie Hamlin, who himself was active in the real estate business and also in civic affairs in Lafayette, tells how this land went from being a ranch and a dairy to many private residences during the four generations of Hamlin family ownership. The Hamlin property was also the site of the annual Lafayette Horse Show from 1932 to 1942.
Oral History:
Ollie Hamlin’s roots in Lafayette date back to 1871, the year his great grandfather, Olivier Hamelin, bought 200 acres near what would become Old Jonas Hill Road. A Frenchman who migrated from Quebec, the first Olivier had a thick accent. His surname was pronounced ‘Am- lan,’ but to locals it sounded like ‘Emler,’ and that’s the way it appears on the original deed to his ranch.
“He came to the Gold Rush in 1849 as a teenager from this little town on the St. Lawrence River,” Ollie explains. “He took a ship to Central America, then walked across the Isthmus of Panama, then caught a ship going north.”
Born in 1920 and raised in Piedmont, Ollie remembers visiting his grandfather’s ranch in Lafayette in the summer. “My grandfather, Dr. O. D. Hamlin, was a medical doctor in Oakland. He was born in 1870, and in 1871 his family moved to Lafayette to live on the ranch. Then the family moved back to Oakland. At one time they leased the land to a dairy farmer, Joe Machado, who ran the Alta Crest Dairy. Dr. Hamlin had a little cabin out there. He was interested in horses. He actually attended the Lafayette school way back in the early days. Then he rode his horse to Oakland and went to St. Joseph’s Academy.
“We used to come out in summer time and on Easter vacation. I can remember the dairy and the cows, and I learned how to milk a cow. They used to have trap shooting and a rifle range. There was plenty of land around there. McNeil’s, a second Lafayette dairy, operated at the same time. Alta Crest closed in 1941.
“The Bay Bridge was built in 1936, and the Caldecott Tunnel opened in 1937,” Ollie remembers. “A lot of people don’t know where all the dirt went when they dug the tunnel’s two bores. They used it to create Treasure Island. They held the World’s Fair on Treasure Island in 1939 and 1940. Eventually they drilled the third bore of the tunnel, and they used that dirt to create the Port of Oakland.”
In 1940, Ollie’s father, Oliver D. Hamlin, Jr., built a house on the original Hamlin Ranch, at the top of the hill going toward Rheem, and called it Sky Hy. After graduating from Stanford University in 1942, Ollie went into the Navy until 1946. He was the radar officer on the USS Farragut, a destroyer that escorted battleships and small carriers in the Aleutians. “I ended up a full lieutenant,” he says. “I was one of those ‘90-day wonders.’ After college you signed up for a program and went to school for 90 days, and you ended up with a stripe on your sleeve.”
The Lafayette Horse Show was originally held on the Hamlin ranch, Ollie recalls, “for about 10 years from 1932 to around 1942.” His grandfather was head of the Horse Show Association for several years, and Ollie rode in the show.
Ollie remembers riding his horse to The Curve restaurant. “We’d tie them up behind the Curve and go in and have a beer.” Other memories include, “The Roundup, that’s an old place. I can remember going to the opening of the Park Theater around 1940. That was a big thing in town.”
He explains how, in 1940, his father was instrumental in changing the names of what were then Oakland Street, Commercial Street and Jonas Hill to Moraga Road.
In 1947 Ollie earned an MBA from the University of California. He married Virginia Sayre of Oakland. In 1950 they built the house where Ollie still lives on Old Jonas Hill Road, on five acres his father gave them. Ollie’s older sister, Mignon Rowe, who passed away, was married to Dr. Albert Rowe, Jr. Ollie has three children: a daughter, Sally, and twins, Jonathan and Jennifer. His wife passed away in 2000 after fifty-five years of marriage.
Ollie’s father became an Alameda County judge in 1953 and moved to Oakland in order to live in the county. In 1957 he became a federal judge and moved back to Lafayette.
Judge Hamlin sold his first parcel of land around 1944. “They started a development called Lafayette Homelands, and there is a Hamlin Road and an Oliver Court, and a Rowe Place, after my sister’s married name,” Ollie says. “My father had kind of a 10-year plan. He’d sell land off, then ten years later he’d sell some more. I don’t know if it was by design.”
Ollie remembers Jack Marchant, a well known builder in town, who bought land from Judge Hamlin to build 65 houses in a subdivision called Silver Springs. “I got to know him pretty well,” Ollie says. “He was one of the first city council members. He did a very good job of creating the ranch style house, and it still has an influence. People regard a Marchant house as better than average.”
Ollie’s father sold his house and the bulk of the ranch to a developer in 1973, then moved back to Piedmont. Sky Hy subdivision was the first PUD (Planned Unit Development) in Lafayette. Judge Hamlin passed away in 1973. Gayle Uilkema, a former mayor who was on the city council for many years, lived in his old house.
In 1950 Mt. Diablo was a two-lane road. “All the cars came through the main street,” Ollie remembers. “Can you imagine how it would be if all the cars still came through Mt. Diablo Boulevard on the way to Walnut Creek? It was big time when they finally put a third lane in, so you could pass somebody once in a while.”
After the war, Ollie was in sales before getting his real estate license in 1960. He had a real estate office at 3370 Mt. Diablo Boulevard for more than twenty years, and has been in his current office at 1043 Stuart Street, #140 for thirteen or fourteen years. Ollie managed real estate projects in Antioch, building a neighborhood shopping center, and managed family property in South San Francisco. In 2003 he gave up his license. “There were a lot of other realtors in town when I opened my office,” according to Ollie. “John Loop in Orinda was a very good friend of mine. Alice Hamlin, not related, was a realtor in town. She was married to Ben Hamlin, a realtor in Walnut Creek.
“I remember the first Bill’s Drugs was where Round Table Pizza is now. He had a lot of big signs. On the corner of Mt. Diablo and Moraga Road they had Bill’s Restaurant and an Associated Gas Station. All the contractors would have lunch there. That was a very popular place. There was Meyers grocery on Lafayette Circle where Starbuck’s is now. Mickey Meyers ran it. Oakland and Walnut Creek had the bigger stores. The Broadway Center in Walnut Creek was developed when we were first out here, probably in the early 1950’s.”
Ollie’s children were involved in 4-H, raising lambs and goats, and his son had the Grand Champion lamb at the county fair.
Ollie was involved with the Lafayette Improvement Association and the incorporation of Lafayette in 1968, where local control was the big issue. He remembers, “To get permits, you had to go to Martinez, and the people in Martinez didn’t have the same feel for Lafayette as the people here did. It took at least two tries before incorporation was voted in. Some people were worried about higher taxes, but we wanted to control the development and have local people in charge.
“The biggest change I’ve seen since I’ve lived here has to do with traffic,” he adds. “We’re lucky the city incorporated when they did, and put in the landscaping on Mt. Diablo Boulevard. Before the town incorporated, there was just a jungle of signs, big, glaring, signs projecting out; and probably one of the first ordinances the city council put in was for sign control.
“ Lafayette is still a nice place to live. I was glad our children grew up here instead of in Piedmont. I think the schools are excellent.
“The city is pretty well built out now, and it’s full of hills and valleys and we don’t have room for any large developments. I don’t think the commercial part of town has room to grow much bigger. That’s always been the limiting factor. We can’t have the large stores that Walnut Creek and Concord have, because we don’t have large tracts of level ground.”
Excerpted from Voices of Lafayette by Julie Sullivan. This book is available for purchase in the History Room.
Thank you for this history.