Answering the Call of the Wild Saloon

The nation’s literary landmarks now include a waterfront saloon where struggling author Jack London scribbled notes for books that would become classics.

“Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon” joined the exclusive list last Monday--the 122nd anniversary of London’s birth.

Sites selected in the past by Friends of the Library USA include Edgar Allen Poe’s home in Philadelphia, San Francisco’s City Lights bookstore, the Algonquin Hotel in New York and the Robert Frost cottage in Key West, Fla.

The saloon is referred to in London’s “John Barleycorn.” He also sketched notes there for “The Sea Wolf” and “Call of the Wild.”

Built from remnants of a whaling ship, the ramshackle structure spent its first three years ashore as a bunkhouse. It became a saloon in 1883 when it was bought for $100 by Johnny Heinold, a deckhand who sailed around Cape Horn on a windjammer. Heinold later befriended the writer, who was born in San Francisco and reared in Oakland.

Legend has it that the name came from the fact that booze wasn’t legal in the adjacent city of Alameda, so the saloon became the first or last chance for a drink, depending on the direction the traveler was headed.

The bar, in Oakland’s Jack London Square, still uses the original gaslights, circa 1890. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake jarred the building from its footings and gave the floor a distinctive slant. It also stopped the clock at 5:19.

London wrote 53 books which have been printed in 80 languages. He was the first American author to make more than $1 million.

Sandy Dolnick, the group’s executive director, said the designation aims to make the lifestyle of famous authors as recognizable as their works.

London was only 40 when he died of kidney problems in 1916 at his home in Glen Ellen, in the heart of California’s wine country, a region made famous in London’s “Valley of the Moon.”

“He inspired the imagination of generations of Americans, and not just boys, but girls too,” said Dolnick. “He is one of those literary figures that people don’t think of as a reality. Rather, people think he is bigger than life.”