The Riverside Baths and Bare Ass Beach

Posted on August 22, 2008 – 4:54 PM | by OldManFoster

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By William Burg

Before the days of air conditioning, Sacramentans used any available means to beat the heat. Homes were designed with broad porches and plenty of windows for ventilation, but the easiest way to keep cool was to find the nearest body of water and jump in. In order to provide a more genteel environment for swimming than leaping into the river, Judge Charles E. McLaughlin formed the Sacramento Riverside Bath and Park Company and built a large enclosed bathing house on Riverside Road, about three miles south of the old city limits at the Y Street Levee (now Broadway).

Originally constructed in 1909, the enclosed baths included a large 128 foot by 64 foot main tank, intended for men and boys and a smaller 20 by 40 foot tank intended for women and small children. The pool included slides and diving boards. When they were built, the Riverside Baths were the only swimming baths within 50 miles of Sacramento.

By the mid-1930s, the baths building was beginning to show its age. The original enclosed structure was replaced by an open pool with Art Deco stucco changing rooms and snack bar. A secondary pool could be rented out for private events. The new facility, renamed the Land Park Plunge, opened in 1937.

Conveniently located at the end of the PG&E streetcar line on Riverside Boulevard, across from the present site of William Land Park, the baths were a popular summertime destination. The City of Sacramento originally planned to purchase the Baths as part of Land Park, but the public turned down a bond issue to take them over. Instead, the Riverside Baths remained a private institution. Their status as a private pool made possible one of Riverside Baths’ more notorious practices: the owners maintained a strict whites-only policy in their pool. According to Southside Park resident Al Balshor, “If you had a suntan, you couldn’t get in!”

This policy kept many Sacramento kids on the outside of the Riverside Baths, including Tony Lopez, who grew up in Southside Park. “They wouldn’t let us in because we were Mexican,” said Lopez. His only entrance to the Baths was due to the intervention of Max Baer, veteran boxer, Land Park resident and staunch opponent of racism. On a hot summer day, Lopez and some of his friends encountered Baer in a candy shop across from the baths. Baer, who loved the neighborhood kids, bought them all candy bars. When Lopez and his pals explained that they could not swim in the pool, Baer led them across the street and angrily insisted to see the manager. Faced with the furious Baer, the pool management relented, but as soon as the boxer left the baths, staff kicked Lopez and his friends back out.

For Lopez and his friends, or those unwilling or unable to pay for admission, the alternative was a trip to Bare Ass Beach. This well-hidden swimming spot on the Sacramento River was located south of Broadway, roughly where Miller Park sits today.
The swimming spot was dominated by thick stands of wild blackberry bushes, and a few isolated hobo camps, known as “the jungles” to local kids.

The site got the name “Bare Ass Beach” because few bothered with the formality of bathing suits. “We went swimming bare-assed!” said Lopez. “We stripped and had a good time in there, until the City got pissed off. Clean fun. There was no fighting, we just had a good time there. The cops used to come out and we’d run like hell! We’d run into the jungles, they couldn’t see us but we could see them!”

The City of Sacramento also operated public pools, at McKinley Park and McClatchy Park. These pools were not segregated, but both were a long streetcar ride away from the Southside neighborhood where Lopez and his friends lived. Southside Park opened its own pool in 1953, only a few years before the Land Park Plunge was demolished. Today, the Temple B’nai Israel and Interstate 5 occupy the site. The only remaining evidence of the Baths is a milepost on the California State Railroad Museum’s “Sacramento Southern” excursion train. The end of the three-mile run from Old Sacramento stops at “Baths Station,” a few yards west of the site where the Riverside Baths once stood. Even the secret location of Bare Ass Beach has been lost to history, as the site was converted into the River Park marina.