The Santa Cruz Mountain range west of Santa Clara Valley has
long attracted some rather quirky characters. But I doubt there was
anyone who lived among those redwood covered elevations who was
more eccentric than
”
Father
”
William Riker.
The Santa Cruz Mountain range west of Santa Clara Valley has long attracted some rather quirky characters. But I doubt there was anyone who lived among those redwood covered elevations who was more eccentric than “Father” William Riker.
Riker was the rather odd leader of a cult called The Perfect Christian Divine Way. His title of “Father” was self-appointed, and his religious community of “Holy City” was started on a mountain grove just a few miles from Los Gatos.
During the 1920s, the operation made him more than $100,000 a year in the holy pursuits of selling gasoline and food to tourists. Many older Los Gatos residents still recall a billboard sign placed near Riker’s scenic utopia that advised travelers to “see me if you are contemplating marriage, suicide or crime.”
Riker was a third-grade dropout from Oakdale, Calif., who worked for a time as a necktie salesman in San Francisco. He started a palm-reading and mind-reading act that proved much more lucrative and gave him the idea to start up his own religion. By 1914, calling himself “The Comforter,” he started his small cult of believers based on his idea of a white supremacist path to salvation. In 1919, he bought 200 ridge-top acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains and started a commune there, preaching to travelers who stopped to patronize his enterprises, which included a garage, hotel, general store, restaurant and barber shop.
Tourists heading from the Santa Clara Valley to the resort town of Santa Cruz went through Holy City and saw the various placards and miniature church “peep shows” Riker had set up. (These displays often created a comical effect – one memorable diorama presented a series of life-size Santa Claus statues standing next to a statue of a rather voluptuous woman.)
During the 1920s, Riker also set up a small radio station to broadcast music and his religious ramblings. With the call letters KFQU (be careful how you say it), it was closed in December 1931 when the Federal Radio Commission took the broadcasting license away on the grounds that “the station was not operated in the public interest and had frequently deviated from its assigned frequency.”
The 1930s were the high-water mark in Holy City’s growth – as many as 200 people hit by the Great Depression joined the cult in order to have a place to stay and be taken care of.
With aspirations to political office, Riker unsuccessfully ran for governor of California in 1938, 1942, 1946 and 1950. His bigoted platform targeted Asian- and African-Americans with such statements as, “The White Man can take care of any and all kinds of business in our own, White Man’s California State Home, and no longer will the White Man tolerate your undermining and polluting tactics.”
With the opening of Hwy. 17 in the late 1930s and the outbreak of World War II, Holy City began its rapid decline. By 1948, it had become a virtual ghost town of about 20 believers.
My father, Raymond Cheek, one time stopped at Holy City in the 1940s to buy gas while on a trip from Hollister to Santa Cruz. He recalled meeting Father Riker on this occasion, and he described the religious charlatan as a charismatic man who had strong opinions about religion and politics. He also thought that Riker was a savvy businessman. My father, needless to say, remained a loyal Methodist and did not join Riker’s cult. He just wanted gasoline.
On Dec. 3, 1969, Riker died, at the age of 96, in Agnews State Hospital, a facility for the mentally ill in Santa Clara. Over the years, much of Holy City has crumbled to dust or burned down. However, the sign of its “Holy City Zoo” was taken to San Francisco, where a well-known comedy club borrowed the evocative name.
As far as religious cults go, Riker’s was relatively benign. His cult didn’t end in mass death as so many other cults have, such as the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, Jim Jones’ “People’s Temple” of the 1970s and the bizarre Heaven’s Gate cult where members thought they would be transported to Paradise on a space ship after their death. And the World Church of the Creator of today’s world provide a far more violent form of white supremacy than Riker’s ravings. No doubt we’ll hear in the news in the 21st century of other horrific cult accounts.
And just because a church is considered more mainstream than the more extreme religious views, doesn’t mean that its members are not in danger of getting sucked into a cult-like atmosphere. I know of churches in the South Valley and San Benito County regions that keep its members in check through constant fear of a soon-to-come forecasts of the end of the world Armageddon. Some of them even openly preach narrow-minded doctrines of racial and cultural bigotry.
In the 20th century, Father Riker kept his members in his control through fear of the world’s end and promises of Paradise. The religious leaders in many churches of today do the exact same thing. The difference is, they don’t sell gasoline.
