52 Ancestors: Road Trip

As I have mentioned numerous times, newspapers are my favorite tool in genealogy. It’s amazing the information you can find in a newspaper! One evening, I plugged my grandma’s name into the online archive of The San Diego Union, and was pleased when a bunch of articles popped up! One such article documented a road trip she took.

The article, published September 16, 1936, and titled “Back From Trip,” covered a trip my grandma Pauline Gall took with friends. She was 19 at the time, and this was a little less than a year before she married.

Article from The San Diego Union, September 16, 1936.

The road trip was touted as a six-week tour of the west coast, in which my grandma and Mildred Christman accompanied Ella Johnson, the mother of their friend Catherine. After a little research, it turns out Mildred was the granddaughter of Ella and would have been about 15 at the time. On their trip north, they visited Granite Falls, Washington and Mrs. Johnson’s son (Alfred, according to my research). Catherine Johnson had been staying with her brother for three months and accompanied them on their return trip.

Pauline Gall as pictured in her high school yearbook, 1934.

After seeing sites in Vancouver and Victoria B.C., they headed home but made stops at Mt. Rainer, Columbia River Highway, Crater Lake, Mt. Lassen, Yosemite, and Mariposa Grove.

At the end of August 1937, my grandma married my grandpa William McCallum in San Diego. They honeymooned in Washington and Canada, a trip that is very reminiscent to this one. If you are interested in the articles regarding their wedding, you can find it HERE.

I find it so funny that my grandma took this trip and then married my grandpa a year later, spending the vast majority of their married life in the northwest, taking many trips to Canada!