Sixty-one years ago, the Bay Area’s quirkiest auction helped save KQED and created an only-in-San Francisco story.

The popular local public television station was struggling in June 1955. If KQED didn’t raise $65,000 by the end of the month, its signal would go dark for good. The station brass had an unusual last-chance idea: start the bidding.

The KQED auction ran from 1 p.m. June 28, 1955, to 1 a.m., when the three big local stations — KRON, KPIX and KGO — directed their viewers to KQED when they signed off at midnight. Celebrity auctioneers took to the airwaves and volunteers, including finalists for the Miss San Francisco contest, answered phones.

The first auction didn’t make much money, but the station was saved and a tradition was born.

Over the 35-year run KQED auctioned off housewares, clothing, cars, trips and a few houses. One of the city’s two original Doggie Diner heads when for $2,850. The other went to the Smithsonian. The ball used in The Play during the 1982 Big Game between Stanford and Cal was on the block, and it had been signed by the Cal player who scored the touchdown, Kevin Moen, and the Stanford trombonist who got trampled, Gary Tyrrell.

Politicians got into the act, too. An anonymous donation in 1964 brought in a 1,000-pound steer from then-presidential candidate Lyndon B. Johnson’s King Ranch in Texas. During the 1972 Democratic primary, top candidates George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey showed up at the event, with Humphrey successfully auctioning off a unicycle for $60, a Snoopy doll for $57 and a doll house for $35.

In 1970, meals with celebrities were all the rage. Chronicle columnist Terrence O’Flaherty reported that a dinner with Giants stars Willie Mays and Willie McCovey went for $350 and one with Herb Caen got gobbled up at $300. The meal that got the top bid? Dinner with TV commentator William F. Buckley Jr., for $2,050.

In 1985, KQED cleared $1.5 million in the auction, but by 1990 the station was raising less money, and costs were rising. The final audiences for the auction “were so small as to be unmeasurable in the Nielsen ratings.”

Never again would a giant fiberglass dog head sell on TV in San Francisco city limits.

Bill Van Niekerken is the library director of The San Francisco Chronicle, where he has worked since 1985. In his weekly column, From the Archive, he explores the depths of The Chronicle’s vast photography archive in search of interesting historical tales related to the city by the bay.