A note on the image: I used my AI agent to combine the original column and magazine cover and refresh their faded colors. The original wording and imagery remain as printed and are reproduced here as historical artifacts. The cover’s romanticized portrayal of a Mexican man and its period coverline may read as stereotypical today. Please let me know if anyone has concerns, and I will remove the image.
From KGO to KPCR: When Ruth Filled the Airwaves
At first glance, this short notice in Sunset might look as though Ruth Comfort Mitchell’s novel A White Stone did not receive the attention it deserved. But that is not what the magazine was saying.
The editors explained that the novel “warrants more space than remains,” but immediately added that they could be excused because they had already discussed the book “quite fully, a week or two ago, in our regular Monday evening chat over radio KGO.”
This was not an oversight or a shortage of interest. The full discussion had already gone out over the air. The printed notice was essentially an encore for readers who had missed the broadcast.
For those readers, Sunset offered an extraordinarily strong judgment:
“It’s without doubt the best piece of work the author has accomplished.”
The magazine called A White Stone “a well-conceived, delightfully executed story”—as comforting as a drink of spring water after the many overly clever literary concoctions of the publishing year.
That praise tells us something about the book. The reference to KGO tells us something larger about the pull of Ruth Comfort Mitchell.
Ruth’s reach extended beyond the printed page
Ruth’s work was not confined to bookshelves. It moved through nationally circulated magazines, newspapers, theater, motion pictures—and now the newest mass medium in America: radio.
By 1925, Sunset had a regular KGO book-review program. An Oregon State Library archival record preserves 39 announcements for books reviewed during 1925 and 1926 on a KGO program hosted by Joseph Henry Jackson, Sunset’s literary editor. Jackson was therefore likely the voice behind these discussions.
The magazine treated its radio audience as part of its readership. It did not need to repeat the entire review in print because many people had already heard it.
That is the striking part of this clipping. Sunset assumed that a radio discussion carried genuine literary weight. A review did not have to remain on paper to count. The spoken word had become part of the magazine’s publishing power.
Ruth’s name and her novel were important enough to move naturally between those worlds.
KGO was a new kind of force
When A White Stone was discussed over KGO, the station was barely a year old.
General Electric launched KGO from Oakland on January 8, 1924. Newspapers announced it as the greatest radio station yet built in the West—a “super-station” that would be more powerful than anything west of General Electric’s station in Schenectady, New York.
KGO began with 1,000 watts. In December 1924, it received special authorization to increase its power to 1,500 watts. Only five other American stations had then been permitted to operate at that level. By January 15, 1925, KGO was authorized for 2,000 watts.
Today, those numbers sound modest. At the time, 1,500 watts was considered massive.
A San Francisco newspaper claimed that KGO would be capable of throwing the human voice a third of the way around the world. That was promotional language, but it captured the sense of wonder surrounding the station. One person could speak into a microphone in Oakland and be heard across the Bay Area—and, under favorable conditions, far beyond it.
KGO also carried live programs from hotels, churches, theaters, auditoriums, clubs and dance halls on both sides of the Bay. It was not merely broadcasting entertainment from a sealed studio. It was beginning to connect the cultural life of the region.
A book review of A White Stone therefore did more than promote a novel. It placed Ruth’s work inside a rapidly forming Bay Area conversation.
A powerful station with a hidden microphone
Radio’s reach was enormous, but the medium was still new enough to make speakers uncomfortable.
In KGO’s original 1924 studio, the microphone was reportedly disguised as a floor lamp to reduce “mike fright.” Guests could speak more naturally when they were not staring directly at the unfamiliar machinery carrying their voices across the region.
It is a wonderful image of the moment: the microphone was hidden, but its influence could not be.
That may also be the perfect image for Ruth’s position in 1925. Her influence traveled through books, magazines and radio, reaching people who might never have attended one of her plays or entered a bookstore. Sunset did not need to introduce her or explain why she mattered. Its editors assumed that many readers had already heard them discussing her work.
Locally, she was often identified as Mrs. Sanborn Young. On book jackets and magazine pages, she was Ruth Comfort Mitchell. Two names, one undiminished life—and a literary presence substantial enough to command both the printed page and one of the West’s most powerful new radio stations.
Yung See San Fong returns to the air
There is now another chapter to this story.
Yung See San Fong, the Los Gatos home Ruth shared with Senator Sanborn Young, was completed in 1917. The house was only seven years old when KGO began broadcasting, and Ruth was living there when A White Stone was carried into homes over the new medium of radio.
Today, Yung See San Fong is once again connected to the airwaves.
The property now houses the transmitter and antenna for KPCR-LP 92.9 FM—Pirate Cat Radio, Los Gatos’ independent community station. The modern house therefore does more than preserve artifacts from Ruth’s life. It is participating again in the same tradition of using radio to connect writers, musicians, artists and community voices.
The transmitter equipment at Yung See San Fong operates at a little over 100 watts. On the surface, that does not seem far removed from KGO’s “massive” 1,500 watts at the end of 1924. It is only a three-to-one difference in raw transmitter output.
But those two wattage figures do not produce comparable coverage.
KPCR is licensed as a low-power FM station with 100 watts of effective radiated power. That is the power figure calculated after the transmitter, feed line and antenna system are considered. Modern full-power commercial FM stations commonly operate at tens of thousands of watts; some reach 100,000 watts.
More importantly, KGO and KPCR use very different portions of the radio spectrum.
Why 1,500 watts once covered the Bay—but KPCR cannot
KGO was an AM station operating near 1,000 kilohertz. Radio waves at that frequency are roughly 1,000 feet long. They travel partly as a ground wave, following the surface of the earth and bending around terrain more effectively than FM signals.
The waters of San Francisco Bay also provided a favorable path for AM propagation. Salt water conducts radio energy exceptionally well. A relatively modest AM transmitter connected to a large, efficient antenna could therefore cover an impressive area.
KGO’s original installation was substantial. Its antenna was suspended between two 150-foot steel towers spaced approximately 260 feet apart, with a large counterpoise system beneath it. The entire facility was designed to make maximum use of those 1,000—and later 1,500—watts.
The Sunset book program aired on Monday evenings, which supplied another advantage. After sunset, AM signals can interact with the ionosphere and return to earth far beyond their ordinary daytime range. Listeners throughout the Bay Area could receive KGO, while more distant listeners might also hear it under favorable nighttime conditions.
FM behaves differently.
KPCR broadcasts at 92.9 megahertz, with a wavelength of only about ten and a half feet. FM signals travel primarily by line of sight. Hills, buildings and other obstructions can block or reflect them. The Santa Cruz Mountains and the uneven terrain surrounding Los Gatos therefore matter far more to KPCR than they did to KGO’s lower-frequency AM signal.
Antenna height is also crucial. Federal Communications Commission data list KPCR’s antenna as approximately 22 feet above ground and 193 feet below the average surrounding terrain. That negative “height above average terrain” helps explain why its over-the-air signal cannot blanket the Bay Area. The station sits in a landscape that rises around it, producing the FM equivalent of shadows.
KPCR’s limitation is therefore not evidence that modern radio is weaker. Full-power FM stations transmitting from high locations such as mountain peaks and major towers can cover much of the Bay Area. KPCR was intentionally created as a low-power, local community service. Its power, license and antenna position are designed for a much smaller geographic audience.
KGO’s 1,500-watt AM signal benefited from long wavelengths, ground-wave propagation, favorable paths across the Bay, an enormous antenna system, evening skywave conditions and a radio dial containing far fewer competing stations.
KPCR’s signal uses short-wavelength FM, operates at low effective radiated power and must contend with the hills around Los Gatos. Its terrestrial reach is smaller—but through online streaming at KPCR.org, its programming can now travel farther than KGO’s engineers in 1924 could have imagined.
The history is still alive
A century separates the KGO discussion of A White Stone from the KPCR signal now leaving Yung See San Fong.
Yet the purpose feels remarkably continuous.
In 1925, radio allowed Sunset to carry books, criticism and cultural conversation beyond the printed page. Today, KPCR carries independent music, artists, writers, interviews and community voices from an antenna and transmitter housed at Ruth’s former home.
Yung See San Fong is therefore preserving more than a building. It is preserving a tradition.
The house remembers an age when radio was so new that microphones were hidden inside floor lamps, yet so powerful that a literary review could be considered complete once it had crossed the airwaves. Now the house has returned to those airwaves itself—still connecting people through words, music and ideas.
A century later, the historical lesson is not simply that Ruth Comfort Mitchell was once famous. It is how completely a public presence can disappear, even after it has filled bookshelves, magazines, theaters and the air itself.
At Yung See San Fong, part of that history is broadcasting again.
Sources: Sunset, February 1925; Oregon State Library, Joseph Henry Jackson KGO book-review records; John F. Schneider, “The History of KGO”; KGO’s 1924 studio and disguised microphone; FCC Low-Power FM information; FCC discussion of AM and FM propagation; KPCR technical information; Pirate Cat Radio.