USA > California > California; an intimate history > Part 10
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fortuitous. It was these changes, in number out of all proportion to her brief existence, which made the "at- mosphere" that went up in smoke in April, 1906.
The battery of Yerba Buena in Rezánov's day was situ- ated between our Telegraph Hill and Rincon Point on a cove afterward filled and built upon, but then be- ginning at Montgomery Street. Coyotes and even bears roamed over the sand-dunes, and the sea-gulls were al- most as numerous as on Alcatraz and Angel Island. It was in the month of May, 1835, that Governor Figueroa determined to lay out a settlement at Yerba Buena, and offered William A. Richardson, the Englishman who had arrived in California in 1822 and naturalized in 1829, the position of captain of the port if he would settle on the cove. Richardson, who was a business man, and who seems to have recognized the importance of Yerba Buena, consented, and with his family moved north at once from his home near the San Gabriel Mission.
The governor died shortly after Richardson reached the end of that long slow journey of many weary leagues with his train of bullock-carts packed with women, chil- dren, and household goods. He arrived at the cove in June, and literally pitched his tent, awaiting the next move of the government. After Figueroa's death José Castro, as primer vocal, confirmed Richardson's appoint- ment and told him to select a site for the village. The alcalde of the Pueblo Dolores was the surveyor appointed, and in October he laid out the foundation street-La Calle de la Fundacion-running from a point near the present corner of Kearney and Pine streets northwest to the water. That seems to have exhausted him, and he re- tired to Dolores, while Richardson selected for himself a
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lot one hundred varas square, embracing the present Du- pont Street between Clay and Washington streets. There, with what assistance he could get from the Indians remaining at the Pueblo Dolores, he erected his rude dwelling. This is known in history as the first house built on the site of the future city of San Francisco; but it is to be supposed that the Mexican officers in charge of the battery for many years did not sleep in the sand.
The next settler was Jacob P. Leese, an American who had arrived in California the year before and engaged in the mercantile business in Monterey. He came to San Francisco to establish a branch house and do business of all sorts not only with the many ships that took shel- ter in Yerba Buena waters, but with the ranchers north and east of the bay. Governor Chico gave him permission to select a lot one hundred varas square, but not within two hundred yards of the embarcadero, that space being reserved by the government. Leese, who brought lum- ber and working-men with him, put up a frame building sixty by twenty-five, after choosing a lot near the present site of the Plaza or Portsmouth Square. Shortly before it was completed this astute merchant issued invitations for a great Fourth of July celebration, Captain Richard- son, not being overwhelmed with work, riding north and east with the invitations. General Vallejo rode down to this entertainment with a retinue from Sonoma, him- self a gallant figure on one of his superbly caparisoned horses. Sutter came by water in a large flat-bottomed boat manned by ten naked Indians. He sat alone in the stern, quite as imposing as General Vallejo.
The other rancheros and residents of the pueblos, Americans and Californians, men and women, came on
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horse and in carreta, and crossed the bay Heaven knows how. But they found, for that day, a grand entertain- ment awaiting them. Numerous tents had been erected for their comfort, and flying above them as well as at each corner of a great marquee and the new house were the American and Mexican flags. The officers of the presidio were there, visitors from Monterey, and the cap- tains and supercargoes from the vessels in the harbor- which had furnished the bunting. They were entertained at a really magnificent banquet under the marquee at five o'clock on the 4th; a band composed of drum, clarinet, fife, and bugle discoursed airs national and sentimental, when the more important of the sixty guests were not on their feet complimenting one another and making toasts. Vallejo toasted Washington in flowery Spanish, and all cheered wildly when another speaker alluded feelingly to the union of the Mexican and Ameri- can flags.
When the banquet finished the guests danced in the new house until the evening of the 5th, rested in their tents, and, again replete, dispersed regretfully to their homes, invoking blessings on the Fourth of July. A few days later Leese's store was packed with twelve thousand dollars' worth of merchandise, and his grateful guests were the first and most amenable of his purchasers. In the following year he married a sister of General Vallejo, and their daughter, Rosalia Leese, born April 15, 1838, was the first white child born in the future San Francisco.
Leese remained the most successful and energetic citi- zen of Yerba Buena until 1841, when he sold out to the Hudson's Bay Company and moved to Sonoma. Soon after Alvarado was firmly established in Monterey he
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asked that most enlightened and public-spirited of gov- ernors to give his attention to the languishing village on the cove. José Castro was prefect of the district, and immediately received orders trom Alvarado to have a survey made of Yerba Buena and of such of the adjoin- ing lands as were likely to become incorporated in a growing pueblo. Leese had in his household a young civil engineer named Jean J. Vioget, and Castro appointed him to survey the pueblo and give it streets.
Vioget's little city was laid out between the present Broadway, Montgomery, Powell, and California streets, obliterating the Calle de la Fundacion. This was in 1839, and soon afterward other merchants saw the advan- tages of living on that popular harbor. The more active business men were foreigners, Americans for the most part, although a few Mexicans had little shops, and one even had a grist-mill. William Thomes, who visited California as a sailor - boy in 1843, describes this fair sample of Mexican industry as follows:
We came to an old adobe building about a cable's length from Clark's Point and looked in. It seemed to be a mill for grinding wheat, for there was a poor disconsolate-looking mule connected with a pole, and it would make two revolutions of the ring and then stop and turn round to see what was going on at its rear. A cross be- tween a poor Mexican and an Indian, who seemed to have charge of matters, would yell out in the shrillest of Spanish after each halt:
"Caramba! Diablo! Amigo! Malo! Vamos!"
Then the mule, after hearing such frightful expressions, quietly dropped its ears and went to sleep, and the Mexican would roll a cigarette, strike fire with flint and steel, and smoke contentedly for half an hour, then get up and hurl some more bad words at his com- panion. .. .
It may be imagined that this breed of Mexicans was of little more use for loading and unloading and working in the warehouses than the Indians; and, as a matter of
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fact, the men employed, until the gold-rush brought thous- ands of American laborers into the country, were Kanakas -natives of the Hawaiian Islands. Even then there was an American saloon on the Plaza, but it seems to have done little business except when a ship was in harbor.
In 1846 there were about two hundred people living in Yerba Buena. The most notable of the California resi- dents was Doña Juana Briones. She was a widow, hand- some and vivacious, and, electing to live in what to her eyes no doubt was a gay and busy city, built an adobe house, raised chickens, and kept several cows in a corral, so wild that they had to be lassoed and their legs tied before they could be milked. She had a big white- washed sala and gave many a fandango, to which all were invited, irrespective of nationality. But it must have been a very quiet life in the little gray, foggy, wind-swept village; and even the American business men, no doubt, took their daily siesta and closed their stores in the middle of the day. The first real excitement-for they paid little attention to the internal revolutions-was caused by Fré- mont and his escapades in the north, the arrival of Mont- gomery on the Portsmouth, and the news that the United States and Mexico might go to war at any moment.
On the morning of July 8, 1846, Captain Montgomery, accompanied by seventy sailors and marines, landed and marched to the Plaza. There, under a salute of twenty- one guns from the Portsmouth, he hauled down the Mexican flag and ran up the Stars and Stripes. The Plaza was re- christened Portsmouth Square by the delighted American residents, and shortly afterward the street along the em- barcadero was named for Montgomery. The first Ameri- can alcalde was Lieut. Washington A. Bartlett, of the
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Portsmouth, and he appointed Jasper O'Farrell to resur- vey the pueblo. The practical American crossed the streets at right angles and enlarged the blocks, but the achievement of which he and Bartlett were proudest was the naming of the streets, heretofore undesignated in that friendly village, after the men prominent in the history of the moment: Montgomery, Kearney, O'Far- rell, Beale,1 Mason, Powell, Stockton, and California.
It is to Bartlett also that we finally owe our San Fran- cisco, between whose tonic atmosphere and uneasy sur- face we were thus permitted to grow up instead of in a remote and ill-weathered corner of a subsidiary bay. General Vallejo, Thomas O. Larkin, and Dr. Semple, landholders of the north, certain of the destiny of Cali- fornia, although ignorant of its great auriferous deposits, and desirous to be among the first to reap the benefit of a rapidly increasing population, conceived a subtle and far- sighted scheme. They projected a town on the shores of San Pablo Bay, a continuation, in the north, of San Fran- cisco Bay, to be called the City of Santa Francisca, nomi- nally as a marital compliment on the part of the general, really because they knew that a city so identified with the famous Bay of San Francisco would be a natural bait both for settlers and sea-craft, becoming in the course of a few years the metropolis of the future state.
Fortunately, Bartlett's mind worked as quickly and astutely as theirs. Before they had time to record the title of their town he changed the name of his from Yerba Buena to San Francisco, publishing the ordinance in the
1 Named for Lieutenant afterward General Beale, who distinguished him- self during the final "war" with the Californians. He was the father of Truxtun Beale, a well-known citizen of San Francisco and mentioned in appendix.
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SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA 1850
33
LE 47 12
SAN FRANCISCO Authenticated picture of the city as it appeared in 1846-47
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California Star, recently started by Sam Brannan. Vallejo, Larkin, and Semple protested in vain. Con- fusion must be avoided, and the fuming capitalists on the Straits of Carquinez were obliged to call their village Benicia, the second name of Señora Vallejo. There is to-day a town near by called Vallejo. But neither of these little northern communities has risen to the dignity of ten thousand inhabitants, although there is an arsenal at Benicia and the city named for the old general is close to the Mare Island Navy Yard.
Brannan had arrived on the 3Ist of July, 1846, on the Brooklyn, with a ship-load of Mormons. It was his purpose to found a colony on the bay and erect a great tabernacle. But he found the American flag flying in Portsmouth Square, and the United States government was not partial to Mormon colonies. However, they pitched a large number of tents on the sand-hills behind the little town and prepared to make the best of it. Some joined Frémont when he marched south to subdue the Califor- nians, a few sought farms, and later many went on to Salt Lake; but for the moment they were a decided acquisition to Yerba Buena, as there were many excellent mechanics among them who had brought implements and tools. Their leader carried everything necessary for printing a newspaper, and on January 9, 1847, published the first number of the Star, having previously issued an extra containing General Taylor's official report of the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. Brannan's generous details in the issue of April roth of the horrors of the Donner party pales to a mere modest primrose the yellowest efforts of to-day. So estimably has our taste for morbid, hideous, and exaggerated details decreased
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since 1847 that it would be quite out of the question to transfer extracts on this absorbing topic from the Cali- fornia Star into a respectable history.
On May 28th there was a grand illumination in San Francisco in honor of General Taylor's victory over the Mexicans at Buena Vista. Every home, tent, warehouse, and shop flew the American flag and was as brilliant at night as a limited amount of oil and tallow would permit. Of course, there was a grand fandango. Fire-crackers cracked for twenty-four hours, and big bonfires flared on the sand-dunes and on the steep granite hills behind the settlement.
At this time there was every prospect that San Francisco would continue to be a peaceful and prosperous little town whose worst vice was gambling in moderation. It was well governed by the alcalde and the ayuntamiento, a town council of six members, initiated by Governor Figueroa; there was little strain on the spirit of law and order; a school flourished; the leaders and merchants were growing rich. There were two "hotels," several boarding-houses; private dwellings were slowly increasing in number, and there were one or two billiard-rooms, pool-rooms, and ten- pin - alleys. Lots on the water - front were selling, two wharves were in the process of construction. There were twelve mercantile and commission houses, agencies of large firms in the East, British America, South America, and the "Sandwich Islands " (H. I.). The little town was clustered just above Montgomery Street, that being the water-front, and if it had not the physical allurements of the southern towns, and only men seriously engaged in business were attracted to it, nevertheless it was the city preferred by the sea-captains, for it was full of bustle and
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real business. The center of life by day was the Plaza; at night there were dances, and the men guided their womenkind to the scene of festivity with a dark-lantern; there was also much entertaining on the war-ships and commoner craft out at anchor. Men settled down to the business of getting rich slowly, enjoying life in a way, looking forward to retirement in some one of the civilized cities "at home." Only those that had married Cali- fornia women dreamed for a moment that they would spend their lives on this edge of the world where, the occasional news of the war over, the only excitement was when the ships sailed through the Golden Gate, bringing merchandise and mail.
And then, presto! all things changed.
For some weeks after the news of the gold discovery drifted into San Francisco that well-regulated com- munity poo-poohed the idea. Then suddenly the stam- pede. When Governor Mason arrived in San Francisco from Monterey on June 20th he found not an able-bodied man in the place save the merchants (and not all of those), who were unloading the merchandise themselves, even the sailors having run off to the mines. He wrote to Commo- dore Jones, who was at Mazatlan, that, treaty or no treaty, the gold discovery had settled the destiny of California. But before this letter reached its destination definite news of the Treaty Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ceded Alta Cali- fornia (including what we now call Nevada, Utah, and Arizona), New Mexico, and Texas to the United States for the sum of fifteen million dollars, had arrived. Mexico cursed herself when she heard that one of her cheaply sold provinces had turned into a river of gold, but luck as ever was with the United States.
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There was by this time another newspaper in San Francisco (removed from Monterey) called the Califor- nian, and on the 29th of May, 1848, it published this in- dignant editorial :
The whole country from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the sea to the base of the Sierra Nevada, resounds with the cry, "GOLD! GOLD !! GOLD !!! " while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pickaxes, and the means of transportation to a spot where a man obtained one hundred and twenty-eight dollars' worth of the real stuff in one day's washing, and the average for all is twenty dollars per diem.
The following week there was no Star. Even the editor was on the highroad, a pick over one shoulder, a shovel over the other, and a pan under his arm.
In September certain leading citizens who had caught the gold-fever recovered and hastened back to the de- serted city, and a number of American working-men, realiz- ing the anxiety of those and other eminent citizens who had proved immune, to have their work done and erect new buildings, and that labor would command almost as much a day as an ordinary man could pan out while breaking his back, transferred themselves to San Fran- cisco. Soon afterward, the first brick building erected in California was finished. It was on the corner of Mont- gomery and Clay streets and was the property of Mellis and Howard.
Still, those that remained in the town must have taken a gloomy view of the future. Shops were closed; it was difficult to obtain the commonest necessaries of life. The little city so serene and prosperous a few months before now looked like a deserted mining-camp itself. The windows of empty shops were broken by
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the small boy, who never under any circumstance deserts the type; doors were barricaded; merchandise was rot- ting on the wharves; and prices threatened to wipe out tidy little fortunes. The streets of the town huddled on the bay looked like dreary cañons running up into the gray unfriendly hills. During the spring and autumn there was little change, although a number of unsuccess- ful miners returned to their old homes emaciated, feeble, and dispirited. Those that could work demanded ten and twenty dollars a day, and the price of all foodstuffs had risen four hundred per cent. The shopkeepers were among those that returned early, knowing the necessities at the mines. Within the first eight weeks after the ter- ritory was alive to the richness of the "diggings" two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold-dust had reached San Francisco, and within the next eight weeks six hundred thousand dollars more; all to purchase sup- plies at any price for the miners.
But early in 1849 San Francisco, predestined city of many changes, entered upon a new phase of her chec- quered career. Ship-load after ship-load of immigrants arrived from the East, and of necessity passed through San Francisco and were fitted out for the mines. They paid what was demanded for picks, shovels, pans, and camping-outfits: about fifteen dollars apiece for the im- plements of mining, and from fifty to eighty dollars for a rocker. These, with the overland immigrants, were the men who were to go down to history as the "pioneers of '49," and there were some thirty-five thousand of them.
Before the year was well advanced San Francisco could no longer complain of dullness. Not only had many more ships arrived in the harbor-where they remained
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helpless for months-but the later ones brought as many scalawags as honest miners. In a short time San Fran- cisco had more saloons and gambling-houses than she had dwellings, and they were open twenty-four hours of the day. By this time many of the miners were returning, some with mere sacks of gold-dust, others with fortunes, but all longing for at least a semblance of civilization once more after the incredible barbarisms of mining life. Many intended to return to the East as soon as a ship could be manned, and it has been stated that not one of those that really enriched themselves remained to build up San Francisco; all found amusement meanwhile at the gambling-houses.
These were scattered all over the town, but the largest and most dazzling were clustered about the Plaza. No matter how rough the structures, they invariably had large plate-glass windows, music, a handsome bar, a handsomer cashier, and dozens of little tables. Day and night these tables were surrounded by men in flannel shirts, top- boots, and sombrero or silk hat. On the tables beside the cards were little bags of gold-dust and piles of "slugs" worth ten or twenty dollars each. In the aisles hundreds of people passed continually, watching the gambling or awaiting their turn at a table, while hundreds more pressed eagerly against the plate-glass windows. And every grade of life was represented, as at the mines: scions of good families, young soldiers, small merchants, mechanics, par- sons, school-teachers, editors and their former printers, sailors, firemen, farmers, tramps, and professional gam- blers. Of all these gambling-houses "El Dorado" be- came the most famous. Fortunes were lost and won.
New "hotels" were erected in an incredibly short time,
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but could not catch up with the demand, and hundreds slept in bunk-houses that looked like the worst of accom- modations on a river steamboat. Tents also were pitched in the city streets, and the abandoned hulks of two beached vessels served as quarters for the night. But all were gay and philosophical, unless they ruined them- selves at the tables, when they either remained philo- sophical or shot themselves out in the sand-hills.
The merchants soon adapted themselves to the high prices and wages, as employers ever do, and gouged somebody else. At the end of July, 1849, the population numbered five thousand, and in September twenty thousand. Real estate was booming, the city was spread- ing over the hills, the new houses being mainly "canvas, blanket, and bough-covered tents." But building-lots had been surveyed, and a large number of warehouses and stores were building, while the bay was a forest of masts. The streets were almost impassable with shifting sand-banks in summer and mud after the first rains. The plank sidewalks were seldom repaired. Rats played in the ooze, and there were enormous heaps of rubbish everywhere. But no one minded these trifling draw- backs. All were rich, or expected to be. The shop- keepers cried aloud their wares in front of their doors, "sized up" a new arrival's qualifications for being "done," and made their charges accordingly. As for the mechanic, he made thirty dollars by day and lost it at night in one of the gambling-saloons "glittering like fairy palaces, where all was mad, feverish mirth, the heated brain never allowed to get cool while a bit of coin or dust was left." Such was San Francisco in 1849.
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CRIME AND FIRE
DURING San Francisco's short existence as a growing pueblo everybody made a good living without extor- tion, and the more energetic of the merchants looked forward to independence in the course of a few years. Leese and Richardson had already retired to the country, and the little town, despite fogs and winds and rats and fleas and isolation, must have been as light of heart and free of care as is possible to any community of human beings on this imperfect planet. There is no record of bitter enmities, murder, or even the lighter crimes. There was not a policeman in the city, and if they had no church neither had they found it necessary to build a jail. It is true there was some gambling and the inevitable saloon, but neither led to excess nor crime. Moderation, tem- perance in the real meaning of the word, seems to have been the keynote between 1835 and 1848.
But that was the last tranquillity San Francisco was to know. Her history has been singularly unhappy. Both nature and man have done their utmost to destroy her; and even now it remains to be seen whether she has survived grafting politicians only to be throttled by labor- unionism, too ignorant to realize that dead geese no longer lay golden eggs.
The exodus to the gold-mines was the first convulsion
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to shake San Francisco fairly out of her true Californian serenity; but as the greater number of the sober-minded citizens returned within a few months, little harm would have been done as far as law and order were concerned had all emigrants elected to cross the Sierra Nevadas. But the thousands that passed through San Francisco left their refuse behind them, men who since the begin- ning of history have preyed upon their fellows, sometimes frankly as thieves and highwaymen, as often endeavoring to deceive the public, and possibly themselves, under sounding titles and protestations of brotherly love.
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