Back to the Miramar & Maymie

A few posts back I told you how I first got into Coastside history.

I was obsessed with it and had to have everything I could get my hands on. Every time I collected a new photo, fact or anecdote, I felt so proud. I really did.

When I heard the Miramar Beach Inn had originally been built as a prohibition roadhouse– and even more tantalizing–that a madam named Maymie Cowley ran the place, I set out on a search for her. I figured there was a slight chance Maymie was still alive; she would have been in her 90s at the time.

Alas, I was too late. She had died some ten years before I started my search for her. I did get information at the funeral home and found relatives and her last place of residence in Redwood City (After a robbery at the Miramar in 1955, her home since about 1916, she moved over the hill). I wrote the relatives and they sent me photographs of Maymie–nobody had these photos.

I knocked on the door of Maymie’s last known home–a place she shared with another woman but couldn’t get anywhere. The lady did admit Maymie had lived there but I think she thought I was some sort of nosey official, what with my legal sized notebook and pen in hand. (I was so serious about my research).

By the way, that’s Maymie in the photo, one of the pix her relatives from the Midwest sent me. (And what’s great is that the Miramar–that’s what locals call it–an historic roadhouse, still stands.