USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > A history of the city of San Francisco; and incidentally of the state of California > Part 23
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SEC. 183. Outside Lands. The title of the city to about four thousand acres of land west of Larkin street having been perfected, ordinances were passed to convey it to the parties in possession and to give them deeds for it. In 1853, the city as successor of the pueblo of Yerba Buena, presented its claims to the federal land commission for four square leagues, about seventeen thousand acres, under the Mexican law, giving so much for common or other public pur-
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poses to every pueblo or town. The claim was con- firmed in 1854 by the land commission for about ten thousand acres, including all that part of the penin- sula north of the Vallejo line, which started near the intersection of Fifth and Brannan streets and ran through the summit of Lone Mountain to the ocean. Both parties, the city on one side and the land agent of the federal government on the other, appealed from this decision, and in course of time the case reached the federal circuit court, which on the eighteenth of May, 1865, filed a decree confirming the claim to the city to four square leagues above high water mark, "for the benefit of the lot-holders under grants from the pueblo, town or city of San Francisco, or other com- petent authority, and as to any residue, in trust for the use and benefit of the inhabitants of the city." An appeal was taken from this decision on behalf of the federal government to the United States supreme court; but on the eighth of March, 1866, congress passed an act confirming the decree, and granting to the city all the title of the United States to the tract described in the decision of the circuit court, with the exception of lands needed for federal reservations, subject to the conditions that all of this land not needed for public purposes, or not previously disposed of, should be conveyed to the persons in possession. The only opposition to the city claim recognized by the law was that by the United States, and when congress granted the federal title to San Francisco, there was no basis for litigation, so the United States
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supreme court dismissed the appeal, and the decree of the circuit court stood as the true basisof the title. That decision gave the land not already disposed of "in trust for the use and benefit of the inhabitants of the city;" the act of congress gave it for the benefit of "the parties in the bona fide actual possession thereof." The inhabitants were many; the people in possession were few, but they had money, political influence, or- ganization, and the legislature passed an act providing that everybody in possession of not more than one hundred and sixty acres, should keep it all. The supervisors passed the Clement ordinance recognizing the ownership of the people in possession, and the McCoppin ordinance, giving deeds to them. Thus a domain which might have been sold for millions of dollars, or given in small lots to ten thousand poor citizens, anxious to secure homes, was bestowed upon a few. The giving of such large areas was not in har- inony with the town system of Mexico, and the posses- sory titles within the limits of the pueblo claim were void under the American law; nor was their recogni- tion consistent with sound public policy, but it re- ceived the sanction of the legislatures, councils and courts. The city out of all this vast domain reserved a park of one thousand acres, mostly drifting sand, and some lots for public squares and buildings.
SEC. 184. 1867. The winter of 1866-67 had brought nearly one half more than the average supply of rain, and among its consequences were a very abun- dant crop of wheat and the exportation of merchan-
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dise to the value of $22,000,000-an increase of $5,- 000,000 over 1866, and $8,000,000 over 1865. The merchandise exports of San Francisco had now reached a level with the gold production of the state. The gold yield of Idaho had commenced to decline, but it was still about $5,000,000 annually, and the loss was more than compensated by the rise of the silver yield of Nevada to $18,000,000, and the distri- butions of $3,800,000 silver dividends in San Fran- cisco, the last figure being twice as great as in 1866. The large bonanza at Gold Hill came into view, and gave birth to the hopes, which were realized a few years later, that the profits obtained by the Gould & Curry and the adjacent mines from 1863 to 1866 would be surpassed. The sales of mining stocks were twice as large in the aggregate as in the previous year, and the San Francisco board found it necessary for the accommodation of its customers to move to new rooms in the Merchants' Exchange on California street. The completion of that building and of the Bank of California, and the transfer of the business connected with the two stock boards, fixed the finan- cial center on California street, between Battery and Montgomery, where land soon rose to be worth $3000 per front foot, a price considerably greater than that demanded previously. The work of rebuilding the west side of Kearny and relaying the pavement and sidewalk had now advanced so far, the street had at- tracted so much traffic, and its lots advanced so much in value, that the improvement of widening it had become an assured and high success.
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The fever of land speculation was so active that the old steam excavator could not keep pace with the demand for grading, so a new one was imported and set to work. The bridge a mile long across Islais Cove, and the Bay View railroad, were completed, thus furnishing cheap access to an extensive district on the southern water front. The stone dry-dock at Hunter's Point was finished at the same time. The growth of the city was most active south of Market street, and the steam cars which had been running on that street to the Mission for seven years, were now stopped in accordance with the general demand, and horses were substituted. The sale of the Beideman tract of one hundred and sixty acres, north of Turk street and west of Larkin, at auction in small lots, enabled hundreds to buy homesteads at prices much less than the land commanded a few years later. The claim of the De Haro family to the Potrero was defeated in the United States supreme court, and the people in possession were protected in their titles. A contract was made for a sea wall of stone along part of the water front, at the rate of $278 per lineal foot, implying that the entire cost of the projected wall would be about $1,500,000 a mile. In this year the Almshouse, Trinity church, and the Howard Presby- terian church on Mission street near Third, were fin- ished.
SEC. 185. Railroad Progress. The progress of the Central Pacific railroad became a matter of great in- terest in 1867 to San Franciscans, who had previously
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believed that it would not in many years surmount the Sierra Nevada. Now they saw a strong probability that the iron track would be finished across the conti- nent within a few years, thus reducing the time between San Francisco and New York from twenty- four to seven or eight days for ordinary travel, and relieving passengers from the discomforts of a long sea voyage, including two weeks in the tropics. This was the great work to which they had long looked for- ward as necessary to the proper development of the industry and commerce of California, and as the time for its completion drew near they were filled with confidence that the city and state were about to enter a new era of prosperity more brilliant than any known in the past. Their confidence. stimulated all kinds of business, and the general feeling, especially in the real estate market, was one of high exhilara- tion.
SEC. 186. Democratic Victory. The republican party which had held control of the state government for six years, and had a majority of 18,000 at the presidential election in 1864, lost its power by nomi- nating George C. Gorham for governor. At the pre- ceding session of the legislature he had urged the adoption of the bill to give $2,850,000 to the Western Pacific and Placerville railroad companies, and thus had given serious offense to influential republican journals and to many of the voters; but, on account of his talent for public speaking and partisan man- agement, he was the favorite of the professional poli-
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ticians in the party, and they thought they could defy all opposition. They over-estimated their power. An independent republican ticket hostile to railroad subsidies was nominated; the democrats adopted a platform denouncing subsidies as a great danger; a campaign pamphlet was published with a colored map, showing the immense areas of land in Cali- fornia granted by congress to aid the Central Pacific, the Southern Pacific, and the California and Oregon railroads; and though these lands were for the most part of little value, and the grants of them were moderate aids to enterprises of much service to the development of the industry and commerce of the state, still the maps were well fitted to increase the popular discontent provoked by the unreasonable plans for money subsidies. The republicans allowed themselves to be put in the position of advocates of subsidies, and they were defeated. H. H. Haight, democratic candidate for governor, and a legislature of the same party, were elected on the platform of "economy, purity and reform."
For the first time in ten years the democrats suc- ceeded in defeating the candidate of the taxpayers or people's party for mayor. At the preceding ses- sion of the legislature the municipal election had been transferred by the republicans from the spring to the fall, so that it was held on the day fixed for choosing state and federal officers. The pretext for making the change was that there were too many elections; but a strong, if not the predominant, motive
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was the desire to increase the influence of the na- tional party organization in the choice of the city officials, and thus break down the local people's party in San Francisco. The republicans altered the law, expecting to be the gainers by it, as for years their ticket had been the chief rival of the taxpayers'; but the blundering of the state republican convention in its platform and nominations, and the skillful use by the democrats of the opportunity offered to them, gave to the latter party the lead in San Francisco (as well as in the interior of the state), and Frank Mc- Coppin, their candidate for mayor, became the head of the city government, the only person elected to that place between 1857 and 1874 inclusive, under . nomination by a convention wearing the name of a national political party.
SEC. 187. 1868. The exhilaration which had filled the San Francisco real estate market in 1867 became an intoxication towards its end, and so continued through the next year. Land speculation, especially in the southern part of the city, was extremely active. The real estate sales ran up to twenty-seven million dollars, an increase of ten million dollars over the pre- vious year. Several scores of homestead associations bought up large tracts, going, in some cases, six miles out on the peninsula, or nearly as far beyond Oakland, and sold the lots at double or treble the cost to igno- rant and deluded purchasers, who made their payments in small monthly installments, while two or three spec- ulators usually divided the bulk of the profits. It
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was now certain that the railroad across the continent would be finished before 1870. Two great corpora- tions, endowed by congress with immense grants of land and loans of bonds, means that were not availa- ble until considerable distances had been built, work- ing from the opposite ends, and entitled to all they could build respectively, were running an unexampled race in laying track at the rate of a mile a day or more. The attention of the nation was fixed upon the race, the road, and California. The gain of the state by immigration in the twelve-month was thirty-five thousand, surpassing anything since the first few years after the gold discovery.
The railroad from Vallejo to Sacramento was fin- ished, and the journey between the metropolis and the political capital of the state was reduced from eight hours to four and a half. This road was also connected by a track four miles long from Adelante to Suscol with the Napa valley road, thus giving continuous steam communication from San Francisco to Calistoga, which thus became a prominent pleasure resort-for a time the most prominent on the coast. The comple- tion of the railroad from Sacramento to Marysville, and the subsidy of three hundred thousand dollars in thestock of the San José railroad, given by the city of San Fran- cisco to the southern Pacific railroad company to aid the construction of thirty miles of road from San José to Gilroy, and the completion of the stone dry-dock at Hunter's Point, all contributed to the land excitement.
SEC. 188. Earthquake of 1868. The year 1868
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is memorable for the severest earthquake felt in the city since the American conquest. It came on the twenty-first of October, about eight A. M .; killed five persons by throwing loose bricks from the tops of buildings upon them as they were walking in the street, and led as many more to break bones by jump- ing out of second and third-story windows. No person was severely injured in a house, nor was the better class of structures damaged, but a dozen brick buildings which had weak foundations, on the made ground were cracked so as to be untenantable; and many people affected by the news of the great Peru- vian earthquake on the thirteenth of the previous Au- gust, with its tidal wave that swept a city to destruc- tion, were seriously frightened, so that hundreds slept in the public squares for several nights. Fears were entertained that there would be a serious decline of real estate and a decrease of population, but the scare passed off in a few weeks; and since that time earth- quakes have been less frequent and severe than before.
SEC. 189. San Joaquin Valley. The winter of 1867-68 brought a rainfall of thirty-eight inches, or half as much more than the quantity necessary for a good crop, and the consequence was an exceptionally good harvest. The state had now had abundant rains for four successive seasons, giving great profit to the farmers, and leading to a doubling of the area under cultivation. The spread of tillage was especially notice- able on the eastern side of the San Joaquin valley, be- tween the Stanislaus and Merced rivers, a region previ-
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ously considered almost valueless for any purpose save pasturage. The soil is a sandy loam, and the rainfall is one third less than in San Francisco; so that in dry years the grain crops if not irrigated are poor, but for four seasons the rains had been so abundant that the clay soils near the coast had been almost unmanage- able on the account of the excess of water, and the farmers were driven to try the sandy plains. Lands, which for years had found no purchasers at the federal price of one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, were now in demand at twenty dollars. Half a million acres were bought up in two years. Instead of being worthless, as was supposed, it was found to be in some respects the best wheat land in the state ; for, though not so rich as some other, it would produce more in proportion to the labor devoted to it. A single plow- man, with a gang plow, with six shares, and six spans of horses, could work eight or ten acres a day; whereas, on heavy, hilly land, one plow is as much as a man can manage. The cultivation of this land made it necessary to build a railroad to get access to it, and the increase in the value of the farms exceeded the cost of the road. In 1866, Stanislaus county was the seventeenth wheat county in the state, producing only one hundred and fifty thousand bushels; and in 1868 the first, producing two million three hundred thou- sand bushels.
SEC. 190. 1869. Among the notable events of 1869 were the completion, in May, of the connection by rail between Sacramento and New York; the com-
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pletion four months later of the Western Pacific road from Sacramento to Oakland; the culmination of the real estate excitement in the spring, and a consequent grand panic in real estate; an intense excitement about the newly discovered silver mines at White Pine, and the disappointment of nearly all the ad- venturers who went thither to make their fortunes; the failure of a scheme to extend Montgomery street in a direct line from Market to the Potrero; the open- ing of New Montgomery street parallel with Third; the cutting of Second street through Rincon Hill; the sale by the state of the tide and submerged lands on both sides of Hunter's Point; the introduction of free postal delivery ; the building of the Grand Hotel, the Pacific bank, the Savings and Loan bank, Friedlander's block, the rolling mill and the Cali- fornia theater; and the transfer of the slaughter houses from Brannan street beyond Mission creek to the present Butchertown, built on piles near the south shore of Islais Cove.
SEC. 191. Pacific Railroad. The driving of the last spike of the Central-Union Pacific railroad near Salt Lake, on the ninth of May, giving a continuous iron track from Sacramento to New York, was recog- nized and celebrated as one of the great events of the age, but to San Francisco it did not bring the antici- pated benefits. Her citizens had calculated upon too much, and had invested their money on the basis not of realized results, but of extravagant expectations; and when the completion of the road compelled a
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comparison between results and expectations, it was found that the prices of land generally, and especially in the suburban districts, were far beyond any perma- nent demand. Everybody had wanted to sell, and nobody to buy; and a general and severe panic en- sued. Many of the losers gave vent to their vexa- tion by complaints that the Pacific railroad was a damage to San Francisco; that the peninsular posi- tion of the city did not permit her to profit by rail- roads; that she had been built up by steamboat traffic and could not prosper after it was destroyed; that the cars from the Atlantic states could not be expected to come round the southern arm of San Francisco bay, that therefore some town on the eastern or northern shore of the bay-either Vallejo, Benicia, Oakland or Saucelito-must be the main terminus of the rail- ways of the Pacific slope; and that as the network of tracks would extend every year, so would the relative importance of San Francisco decline. For thirteen years the prices of real estate and the amount of sales had risen steadily and rapidly; and now so soon as the great road for which California had prayed as necessary for the proper development of her natural wealth, and for the foundation of a new era of pros- perity to surpass that of the gold discovery, was completed, there was a panic more severe than that which accompanied the decline of the placers after 1853. The opening of the railroad between Sacra- mento and Oakland by way of Stockton, in Septem- ber, made no perceptible improvement in the situa- tion.
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The Central Pacific company was considered hostile to San Francisco, whose capitalists had refused to subscribe to its stock when it was about to commence work, whose representatives had opposed county subsidies to it in the legislature, whose council had refused to issue the bonds ordered to be given to it by the legislature, and whose public journals had been cool or unfriendly to it. The company had its chief office at Sacramento, and had acquired a large tract of land, supposed to be valuable for terminal purposes, at Oakland.
While business was in confusion on account of the extravagant over-speculation in lots-a mistake that deprived a large majority of the industrious, well-to- do people of a considerable part of their imaginary wealth, and reduced to poverty many of those who had gone into debt, there were serious disturbances in various branches of business, in consequence of the transition of transportation from steamer to rail. Much of the travel and freight between New York and the interior of the state ceased to pass through San Francisco, which thus lost a considerable part of her revenue.
SEC. 192. Vallejo Railroad. There was an oppo- sition to the Central Pacific railroad between San Francisco and Sacramento, but it came from Vallejo. The California Pacific railroad from that place to the state capital had been opened in February, and a fast boat had been purchased to run between Vallejo and the metropolis. In time, cost and comfort, this route
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was preferable to any other; but the influence of this opposition to the Sacramento railroad company was not less dangerous to San Francisco, in the opinion of many business men. Distinguished engineers in the army, navy, coast survey and civil life, had publicly expressed the opinion that there was a much better place for a city at Vallejo or Benicia than at San Francisco. The soil in the neighborhood is richer; the anchorage more secure; the natural site and water front better; access to the heart of the Sacramento valley more convenient, and the water deep enough for large vessels. That place grew rapidly; there was a lively demand for its lots; the construction of the railroad wharves and warehouses gave facilities for shipping wheat, and in the crop year of 1869-70 thirty-three vessels were loaded there for Europe. The bold and active men controlling the California Pacific company, supported by the European capital- ists who had advanced the money to build the road, spoke loudly and confidently of the other roads they would construct to make Vallejo the great railroad center of the state, of the factories to be built, of the combinations to be made with steamship companies whose ocean steamships should have the terminus of their route at Vallejo. Fears that these assertions might be verified helped the panic.
SEC. 193. Silver Mines. The production of silver by the state of Nevada was only fifteen million dollars in 1869, the same as in 1868, and four millions less than in 1867; but there was some compensation
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for this in the discovery of the mines at White Pine in the previous year, of a large deposit of argentifer- ous chloride, some of it yielding ten thousand dollars a ton, surpassing in richness and facility of reduction the croppings of the Ophir mine when the wealth of the Comstock was opened. Before much exploration could be done on Treasure Hill, the intense cold of winter at an elevation of nine thousand feet above the sea checked the work while the miners were still drifting in an immense mass of silver ore as rich as any mentioned in the records of Mexico or Peru; and California and Nevada waited impatiently for spring to permit an active resumption of labor and the re- moval of the doubt whether the Comstock lode was to be reduced to relative insignificance-a result pre- dicted confidently by some of those who had visited the new place. So soon as the roads were open for travel there was a rush of adventurers to White Pine, where they found promises of a wonderful silver yield. This district had made more progress in three months than Washoe had in three years, and the ore was more than three times as rich. The production of the year was four million dollars. Those who were too late to get hold of rich mines looked to city lots for their profits. Treasure City, Hamilton and Sherman became important towns, and leading speculators in real estate were millionaires in the general estimation for a brief period; but they and the mine owners were soon doomed to disappointment. The chloride depos- its did not last long. Mining engineers said there was
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no fissure vein; there was no lode running far and deep like the Comstock. The miners cut through the few large ore bodies into the barren rock; the smaller deposits promised little profit; the towns collapsed; the throng of adventurers ceased, and White Pine suddenly sank from the second place among the silver districts of Nevada to the fourth.
SEC. 194. Street Changes. The success in widen- ing Kearny street having, at an expense of less than six hundred thousand dollars, added more than four million dollars to the value of lots on Kearny and Third streets, led to various schemes to bring up Montgomery street. The first of these was to extend it in a straight line to the Potrero, a distance of a mile, cutting diagonally through the blocks on the line. This scheme was carried through the supervis- ors and passed over the mayor's veto; commissioners were appointed, and they made an elaborate report, with estimate of the expense, but the engineer, in laying off the map of the work, assumed incorrectly that the blocks intersected were exactly of the size proposed in the original survey. The consequence was that the line of the new street was not straight, but showed a little offset like a saw-tooth at every street crossing. This defeated the enterprise, causing serious loss to those who had bought property on the line, in the expectation of the completion of the work.
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