William Ralston Mural

Years before it was ever popular to be environmentally friendly or "green", One day back in 1996 a friend of mine Nick Motley and I were walking back from lunch. As we approach the train crossing he looks at me as says "That wall looks like a big canvas to me". I agreed with him. About 4 months later I was at the library in SM and I was looking at for a Barrens newspaper for a particular stock I was looking to invest in. This was the old library and upstairs was the business section. On the walls were pictures of the old downtown San Mateo rail cars, as well as old Historic pictures. I was very intrigued and spent about 30 additional minutes looking at all the history.

Well about in 1998 I had heard the City was redoing downtown. The train Station as well as the Movie theater etc. I thought that I should do something on the wall to tie it all together. I went to the county Historical society and met with Mitch Postel the head county curator. Nick and I spent 2 days looking at all the historical pictures and literature.

I finally decided to do a mural of William Ralston who races the steam train. This was authenticated by Mitch and I petitioned the City to obtain money from the downtown redevelopment program. So with help of 14,000 from the city, and 5,000 from myself and my mother each as well as 10,000 from Elsie Turchen we did the mural. It serves as multiple reasons. One a memorial for Ward Anderson, Elsie's son who died, as well as my father who passed, and a tribute to the downtown San Mateo area as an authenic memorial of our history in this great county of ours.