USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > A history of the city of San Francisco; and incidentally of the state of California > Part 24
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So soon as the project of extending Montgomery in a straight line was abandoned, another scheme came to the surface. This was to open New Montgomery
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street, between Second and Third, and parallel to them from Market street to the bay. A company of capitalists bought up the land on the line from Mar- ket to Howard, opened the street so far, and built the Grand Hotel to give value to the adjacent property and attract business men to the street ; but the enter- prise was unprofitable. They had expected that the land would be worth fifteen hundred dollars a foot, and it did not bring as much as its cost to them, which was four hundred dollars, besides lying idle for a long time. One result of the opening of this new street, and of the Second street cut was that the value of Second street, between Howard and Market, previ- ously a good street for fashionable shops and a favorite promenade, was injured seriously-almost destroyed. The idea of extending New Montgomery street south- ward from Howard was abandoned when the first sec- tion of it proved unprofitable.
Another street scheme was the Second street cut. John Middleton, a prominent dealer in real estate, and owner of a large lot on the corner of Second and Bryant, believed that if Second street were cut down through Rincon Hill to such a grade that heavy teams could pass over its line to the vicinity of the Pacific Mail wharf, the southern end of the street would become the site of an active business, and real estate there would greatly advance in price. To carry his enterprise through, he secured an election to the assembly, and there, by his influence as a member of the legislature, notwithstanding the protests of the
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lot-owners on Rincon Hill against being assessed for the cost of work which would do them serious dam- age, the bill was passed for reducing the grade be- tween Folsom and Bryant-that is, cutting a deep ravine through Rincon Hill. The work was done, but the predicted benefits failed to make their appear- ance. The cut or ditch, at one place sixty feet deep, has ugly steep banks, which have slid down in wet weather; the falling dirt has destroyed the sidewalks; the despoiled lot owners have refused to keep the pavement in repair; heavy teams have found it more convenient to pass through other streets in going to and coming from the Pacific Mail wharf; Rincon Hill has lost much of its beauty and all its pre-eminence as a district for fashionable dwellings; the most active advocates of the scheme made nothing by it; and the direct expense of the improvement was three hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars, while the loss to citizens beyond all benefits was not less than one mill- ion dollars. Many had to pay for the errors of judg- ment committed by a few.
A scheme still wilder in its character was brought forward and urged by meetings of lot-owners upon the legislature as a highly meritorious measure. This was to make a nearly uniform grade on Stockton street, from Geary to Clay, for the purpose of giving convenient access for promenaders on that street, be- tween the northern and southern parts of the city. This scheme implied the cutting of a ditch the width of the street for a distance of half a mile, with a depth
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in one place of eighty feet, in the heart of the city, leaving the houses along the line, not only without access from the street, but on the edge of a cliff which would probably tumble down after the first good soak- ing in the rainy season. The scheme was defeated and then abandoned.
SEC. 195. 1870. San Francisco built 1200 new houses, gained 10,000 inhabitants, and prospered in many ways in 1870, but there was general complaint of hard times, because the real estate market had not recovered from its panic of the previous year, and serious fears were felt of the powers and purposes of the two great railroad companies. The average monthly sales of real estate, which had been $3,500,- 000 in the first half of 1869, fell to $1,300,000 in 1870. There was a lack of confidence in the ability of the capital invested in San Francisco to overcome the combinations and influences that might be brought to the aid of Vallejo and Oakland, the advocates of which towns claimed that, as they had at the begin- ning of their career taken a large share of the loading of wheat for exportation, so they would in a few years receive cargoes from abroad, and would continue to gain business indefinitely. The California Pacific road was run with such speed that it took nearly all the local traffic; and the company owning it, sup- ported by prominent European capitalists, was recog- nized as a formidable rival of the Central Pacific. These were now the two great inland transportation companies of California. One was confessedly work-
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ing to build up Vallejo; the other composed of citizens of Sacramento, was suspected of an in- tention to make its chief terminus at Oakland. A metropolis without control over, or even an interest in any of the great transportation companies bringing trade to it-a trade for which ambitious rivals, not without power, were making greedy bids-was in an awkward situation.
Among the new buildings of the year were St. Patrick's church (to which Peter Donahue gave a chime of bells, the first in the city), Bancroft's build- ing, and the White House. The grading of Yerba Buena square was commenced as a preparation for the erection of a new city hall; and a beginning was made in the improvement of the Golden Gate Park. A lottery for the benefit of the Mercantile Library was authorized by the legislature in defiance of the constitution, and conducted to a successful termina- tion with a net profit of half a million.
The city took a holiday to witness the blowing up of Blossom rock, a submarine reef, the top of which was five feet below high tide, on the line of Davis street, and three quarters of a mile from North Point. A coffer-dam or hollow cylinder was built on the reef; the water having been pumped out, a shaft was sunk down into the rock and galleries were dug for a length of one hundred and forty feet and a width of forty feet, at a depth of thirty-seven feet below low tide. The miners having completed their part of the work, and twenty-one tons of powder having been distrib-
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uted in the drifts, on the twenty-third of May, in accordance with public notice, and within sight of myriads of people in boats and on the hills, the charge was exploded, a column of water one hundred feet in diameter was blown several hundred feet up into the air, and that was the end of the most dangerous ob- struction to commerce in the bay of San Francisco. The method of submarine excavation used on Blossom rock, invented by A. W. Von Schmidt, a San Fran- ciscan, was first applied in making the entrance of the Hunter's Point dry-dock, and is an interesting addition to the science of engineering.
The rainfall of 1869-70 had been nineteen inches, less than the amount needed to make a good crop; so the harvest was scanty and the farmers generally did not prosper. Railroads were built from Petaluma to Santa Rosa, from Marysville to a point twenty-five miles beyond, on the California and Oregon route, and from Los Angeles to Wilmington. The silver mines of Eureka (Nevada), and the borax deposits found at various places in the same state, attracted much attention in this year, and offered opportunities for the profitable investment of several millions of capital.
SEC. 196. Census of 1870. The federal census taken in this year reported a total population of 149,- 473 in the city, though a year before the estimates in the directory had made out a population of 170,000. There was a common opinion that the census agent had omitted many persons, but his work was official,
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and in various respects more carefully done than the other. It showed that of the entire number of in- habitants, 75,754 were natives of the United States, 73,719 foreigners; 136,059 whites, 12,022 Chinese, 1330 of negro blood, 54 Indian, and 8 Japanese. About ninety people in a hundred were white, nine Asiatic, and one African. The number of whites born in California was 36,565, or more than a fourth of all the whites; but most of them were minors, for only two years before, among 25,000 registered voters there were not half a dozen natives of the state. The two sexes were about equally divided among the children under sixteen; but over that age there were 52,102 males and 38,316 females, or three to two, and if a count had been made of those over twenty-one the disproportion would have been found considerably greater.
SEC. 197. French-German War. The war between Germany and France, for the military and political leadership of continental Europe, excited an intense interest in San Francisco, where the former country had thirteen thousand six hundred and the latter three thousand five hundred of her natives. The Irish, generally, and some Americans, sympathized with the French; while the Italians, and many of the Ameri- cans of the Anglo-Saxon stock favored the Germans, so there were large parties on each side. When it became evident that France was badly beaten, the French residents poured out their money with great devotion to aid their country, and gave about three
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hundred thousand dollars-far more in proportion to their number than the Californians had given to the sanitary fund in the American civil war. These con- tributions astonished France by their liberality, and were acknowledged by the government repeatedly. Madame Mezzara, a French lady long resident of San Francisco, who, having gone east to serve as a nurse of the sanitary commission in the American civil war, and upon the invasion of her native land had gone to its assistance in the same capacity, was made the direct recipient of some of the Californian contribu- tions; and her representative character, as well as her experience and efficient labor, gained for her a recog- nition from the government, which gave her a special gold medal and other honorable decorations; and the San Francisco Art Association, in which her husband was a director, received from the French government a present of a large and valuable collection of plaster casts, taken from the original marbles in the Louvre. The Germans did not feel the necessity of making sacrifices so great, the losses being less on their side, and their government better able to provide for its sufferers, but they collected one hundred and thirty- eight thousand dollars. A number of young men of both nationalities gave up lucrative positions to join their relatives in arms.
SEC. 198. 1871. The California Pacific railroad company, having completed its branch road to Marys- ville, annexed the Napa Valley road, and announced its purpose of building roads through Sonoma Valley to
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Russian River, and from Woodland northward on the west side of the Sacramento river to Red Bluff, now acquired the boats of the California Steam Navigation company that controlled nearly all the traffic of the inland navigation of the state, and also bought the Petaluma Valley railroad. About the same time the capitalists of the California Pacific road formed a com- pany to build a road to run from the northern part of the Sacramento Valley to Ogden, and thus compete with the Central Pacific. It is impossible to find out how much of this plan was seriously meant, but be- fore anything further could be done, the directors of the Central Pacific, to rid themselves of a bothersome, if not a dangerous rival, bought the majority of the shares in the California Pacific company, which then ceased to give trouble as a competing road. In the winter of 1871-72 portions of the railroad west of Sacramento and south of Marysville were washed away by a flood, and the interruption of the traffic was a serious damage to the road and its terminus. The Marysville branch has never been restored, and Vallejo, which had grown with great rapidity for the preceding four years, came to a standstill, and has not yet regained its former prosperity.
When the time approached for electing a governor and other state officers, the republican leaders, taking a lesson from their defeat in 1867, nominated Newton Booth, an enemy of railroad subsidies, for the head of their ticket, and under his lead they recovered power; but, on account of a difference of opinion in reference
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to the policy to be pursued by the state towards the railroad companies and other corporations, before the close of his term he became the leader of the Inde- pendent or Dolly Varden party, which elected him to the federal senate.
On account of the uneasy feeling among the citizens in reference to the terminal business of the railroad, inquiries were addressed to the directors frequently whether they intended to bring their cars into the city, and they replied that they could not afford to run seventy miles round the southern arm of the bay with their regular trains from the east; but if the means to build a bridge at Ravenswood were supplied, so that the distance would not be greater than by way of Oak- land, the cars would come into the city. Thereupon a proposition was introduced into the board of super- visors to take a popular vote upon the question whether three million dollars should be given as a subsidy to aid the construction of a bridge, but the ordinance was voted down.
The Ravenswood scheme having been abandoned, for a time at least, a plan was brought forward for the construction of a bridge from Potrero Point or Hunter's Point to Alameda, a distance of five miles. The bay is there in mid-channel fifty feet deep, and the current strong ; and it was estimated that a perma- nent bridge would cost fifteen million dollars; and as neither the company, the city, the state, nor congress, wished to spend any such sum, that idea came to nothing, although it was urged persistently by sev- eral public journals.
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SEC. 199. Hawes. Horace Hawes, a millionaire, died in March. Some months before his death, he had made a deed, giving nearly all his property, val- ued at several millions, for the endowment of a uni- versity at Redwood, and a school of the mechanic arts in San Francisco. The gifts were accompanied by complex and burdensome conditions and, being sub- ject to modification by the grantor at any time dur- ing his life, were in the nature of bequests, and sub- ject to the same need of confirmation by a probate court as a will. He was a stingy, quarrelsome, sus- picious, unpopular man; and in his will allowed out of his large fortune not more than enough to his wife for a merely comfortable maintenance of herself and son, though the latter was to receive about thirty thousand dollars after he should reach the age of thirty years. More than ninety-five per cent. of the estate was to be given for public purposes. Mrs. Hawes was esteemed as much as he was disliked, and when she contested the will, the jury promptly ren- dered a verdict that he was not of sound mind, though he was in no respect insane. His deed was in keeping with its conduct for the previous twenty-five years, during all of which time he had been a successful business man, an acute lawyer, a prominent citizen of San Francisco, considered worthy to be intrusted with difficult and important public affairs. He was ap- pointed prefect in 1849, and elected state senator in 1856 and 1864 ; and as senator he was author of the consolidation bill or city charter of 1856, and of the
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act for the registration of voters-two of the most original and beneficent statutes ever enacted in Cali- fornia. His superior capacity was recognized and his influence accepted in the legislature by his associates, notwithstanding their indifference or dislike to him.
SEC. 200. 1872. The continuation of the real estate panic, the popular agitation against the grant of Goat Island to the Central Pacific railroad com- pany for a terminus, and a greater excitement in the mining stock market than any before observed, were among the events of 1872. The legislative appor- tionment required by the constitution to give repre- sentation in the legislature proportioned to the num- ber of inhabitants in the various counties, as shown by the census of 1870, was defeated by the mining counties with help and encouragement from Sacra- mento and Stockton; and San Francisco, which was entitled to one fourth of the members of the senate and assembly, had to wait two years before the bill could be passed, and she could obtain justice.
SEC. 201. Goat Island. The relation of the city to the Central Pacific company continued to be a matter of absorbing interest. The supervisors having refused to give a subsidy for a bridge at Ravenswood, the company urged its application previously made to congress for a permission to occupy Goat Island. Little attention had been given to the idea of making a terminus at the island; but now the opinion pre- vailed that the establishment of the terminal busi- ness there, with a bridge to the Oakland shore,
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and numerous warehouses and wharves on the island would result in serious, if not immense damage to San Francisco. The press and public meetings de- nounced the scheme, and a committee of one hundred prominent citizens was organized to take proper meas- ures for protecting the public interests supposed to be endangered by the bill.
Goat Island had been reserved by the government of the United States for military purposes, and the federal army engineers in response to an inquiry whether there was any objection to the occupation of the island as a railroad terminus, replied that such occupation would seriously diminish the military value of the position which might become very important if some hostile vessel should succeed in passing through the Golden Gate. The coast survey engi- neers, when requested to give their opinion, said that any bridge or solid causeway from the Oakland shore to Goat Island would check the currents along the east- ern shore of the bay, cause the deposition of a large amount of sand and mud, diminish the tidal area, reduce the amount of tide water flowing out of the Golden Gate with the ebb, and lead to a shallowing of water on the bar, thus injuring the value of the harbor.
While matters were in this condition, a delegation of citizens from St. Louis, interested in the Atlantic and Pacific railroad, which had a franchise and land grant from congress to cross the continent about the thirty-fifth parallel of latitude, came to San Fran-
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cisco to solicit a subsidy for their road, which they promised should enter the city by the peninsula. This party was warmly welcomed, and the committee of one hundred received their propositions with much favor; but after a few weeks the idea began to prevail that the Atlantic and Pacific company had no sub- stantial foundation, and that the subsidy of $10,000,- 000 demanded by them would be thrown away. A division of opinion in the committee followed; the minority adhered to the plan of aiding the Atlantic and Pacific company indirectly if not directly; the majority advised a compromise with the Central Pa- cific. It was agreed that the latter company should abandon the application for Goat Island, build a bridge at Ravenswood, and construct a road along the bay shore east of San Bruno mountain to Mission cove within eighteen months, make the main termi- nus of the Trans-Continental, San Joaquin Valley and Southern Pacific roads in the city, and when author- ized by law extend a track from South Beach to North Beach, and deliver merchandise along the ex- tension without extra charge. The city, on the other hand, was to give a subsidy of $2,500,000 in her bonds to the company. This compromise, failing to command the favor of the people or of the supervisors, was abandoned, and in its place a scheme was brought forward to give $10,000,000 for the construction of a railroad to the Colorado, where it should connect with whichever company should first reach that river from the other side. After an acrimonious campaign both
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parties were defeated, a result with which the citizens generally have since been well pleased; for the cars now run to the Colorado without help from the city, and the eastern companies which made loud promises in 1873, that they would build hundreds of miles of road every year on the southern routes across the continent, have for years done nothing.
SEC. 202. Belcher Bonanza. The greatest excite- ment known up to that time in the San Francisco mining stock market was caused in the beginning of 1872 by the discovery of the large size of the rich ore deposit opened in the Crown Point and Belcher mines in the previous year, and by the simultaneous finding of a rich body of ore in the Raymond & Ely mine at Pioche. The consequence of these develop- ments was an advance that far exceeded anything pre- viously observed even among the speculative Califor- nians. The aggregate value of the silver stocks on the San Francisco market was seventeen millions in January, twenty-four in February, twenty-six in March, thirty-four in April, and eighty-one in May, a gain of sixty-four millions in five months-no slight addition to the wealth of a city of two hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants in so brief a period. Unfortunately, this wealth did not stick. Suddenly the fever was followed by a chill; in ten days there was a decline of sixty millions, and hundreds that had considered themselves rich found themselves bankrupt. There was, however, no mistake about the new ore bodies. The Gold Hill bonanza yielded altogether
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over eighty millions, and the Pioche district turned out eight millions in 1872. The stock sales of the year ran up to two hundred millions, or about twice as much as in 1871, and four times as much as in 1870.
SEC. 203. Diamond Fraud. The latter half of 1872 was marked by another excitement which threat- ened for a time to throw even the wonderful silver mining stocks into insignificance. A report was cir- culated that an extensive and wonderfully rich dia- mond field had been discovered in the interior of the continent, though the precise situation was kept secret. One rumor said it was in Arizona, another in Utah. The recent opening of the diamond fields of South Africa, and the reports of the great wealth amassed there by many individuals after a few months of labor, prepared the public to be swindled by one of the most adroit schemes ever devised to gull an ignorant or excitable community. The schemers showed no haste or lack of confidence. They went to leading capital- ists of San Francisco, brought the alleged discoveries before them, showed specimens of the rough diamonds -they were stones from Brazil and South Africa, bought for the purpose-and proposed the formation of a company, with the understanding that the matter was to be carefully withheld from the public until the federal mining law could be amended so as to recog- nize the validity of mining claims for diamonds, and to authorize the issue of patents for them. This proposition demanded a very trifling advance of
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money from the capitalists, left its expenditure in their own hands, gave abundant time and opportunity for investigation, and was so business-like that no doubt was entertained of the good faith of the pro- moters. The law in reference to patents for mines as adopted in 1866 was amended on the tenth of May, 1872, so that in addition to "gold, silver, cinnabar or copper," previously mentioned, it should also include "lead, tin, or other valuable deposits." Thus the trap was ready, but some of the bait was still lacking; so a couple of men went to London, bought a consid- erable supply of rough diamonds, including large and small, and even some of the diamond dust obtained from South Africa, and salted the stuff in the place selected in Colorado-for it was in that territory, and not in Arizona or Utah that the scene was laid-and came on to San Francisco, where their friends had got up a party, including several gentlemen who pretended to be mining experts, and Henry Janin, a mining engineer of good repute for honesty, capacity, and knowledge.
The party having arrived upon the field found the diamonds where they had been salted, and found them with an ease that should have provoked distrust. Janin had no experience in diamond mining; his sus- picions had not been aroused ; he assumed that he had a diamond field before him, and wrote his report on that basis. He did not explain the formation or the precautions to prevent deception by salting, but de- voted much of his attention to the discussion of the
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