USA > California > History of the State of California and biographical record of Coast Counties, California. An historical story of the state's marvelous growth from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 26
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ter rumors were set afloat of rich strikes on the head waters of that stream. The stories grew as they traveled. One that had a wide circula- tion and was readily accepted ran about as fol- lows: "A Mexican doctor had appeared in Mari- posa loaded down with gold nuggets. He re- ported that he and four companions had found a region paved with gold. The very hills were yellow with outcroppings. While gloating over their wealth and loading it into sacks the In- dians attacked them and killed his four com- panions. He escaped with one sack of gold. He proposed to organize a company large enough to exterminate the Indians and then bring out the gold on pack mules." This as well as other stories as improbable were spread broadcast throughout the state. Many of the reports of wonderful strikes were purposely magnified by merchants and dealers in mining supplies who were overstocked with unsalable goods; and by transportation companies with whom busi- ness was slack. Their purpose was accom- plished and the rush was on. It began in Jan- uary, 1855. Every steamer down the coast to Los Angeles was loaded to the guards with adventurers for the mines. The sleepy old metropolis of the cow counties waked up to find itself suddenly transformed into a bustling mining camp. The Southern Californian of Feb- ruary 8, 1855, thus describes the situation: "The road from our valley is literally thronged with people on their way to the mines. Hundreds of people have been leaving not only the city, but every portion of the county. Every descrip- tion of vehicle and animal has been brought into "requisition to take the exultant seekers after wealth to the goal of their hopes. Im- mense ten-mule wagons strung out one after another; long trains of pack mules and men mounted and on foot, with picks and shovels; boarding-house keepers with their tents; mer- chants with their stocks of miners' necessaries and gamblers with their 'papers' are constantly leaving for the Kern river mines. The wildest stories are afloat. If the mines turn out $10 a day to the man everybody ought to be satis- fied. The opening of these mines has been a Godsend to all of us, as the business of the en- tire country was on the point of taking to a
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trec. The great scarcity of money is seen in the present exorbitant rates of interest which it commands: 8, 10 and even 15 per cent a month is freely paid and the supply even at these rates is too meager to meet the demands." As the rush increased our editor grows more jubilant. In his issue of March 7, he throws out these headlines: "Stop the Press! Glorious News from Kern River! Bring Out the Big Gun! There are a thousand gulches rich with gold and room for ten thousand miners. Miners averaged $50 a day. One man with his own hands took out $160 in a day. Five men in ten days took out $4.500."
Another stream of miners and adventurers was pouring into the mines by way of the San Joaquin valley. From Stockton to the Kern liver, a distance of three hundred miles, the road was crowded with men on foot, on stages, on horseback and on every form of convey- ance that would take them to the new El Do- rado. In four months five or six thousand men had found their way into the Kern river basin. There was gold there, but not enough to go around. A few struck it rich, the many struck nothing but "hard luck" and the rush out began. Those who had ridden into the valley footed it out, and those who had footed it in on sole leather footed it out on their natural soles.
After the wild frenzy of Kern river, the press of the state congratulated the public with the assurance that the era of wild rushes was past- "what had been lost in money had been gained in experience." As if prospectors ever profited by experience! Scarcely had the victims of Kern river resumed work in the old creeks and canons they had deserted to join in the rush when a rumor came, faint at first, but gathering strength at each repetition, that rich diggings had been struck in the far north. This time it is Frazer river. True, Frazer river is in the British possessions, but what of that? There are enough miners in California to seize the country and holl it until the cream of the mines has been skimmed. Rumors of the richness of mines increased with every arrival of a steamer from the north. Captains, pursers. mates, cooks and waiters all confirmed the sto- ries of rich strikes. Doubters asserted that the
dust and nuggets exhibited had made the trip from San Francisco to Victoria and back. But they were silenced by the assurance that the transportation company was preparing to double the number of its vessels on that route. Com- modore Wright was too smart to run his steam- ers on fake reports, and thus the very thing that should have caused suspicion was used to con- firm the truth of the rumors. The doubters doubted no more, but packed their outfits for Frazer river. California was played out. Where could an honest miner pan out $1oo a day in California now? He could do it every day in Frazer; the papers said so. The first notice of the mines was published in March, 1858. The rush began the latter part of April and in four months thirty thousand men, one-sixth of the voting population of the state, had rushed to the mines.
The effect of the craze was disastrous to busi- ness in California. Farms were abandoned and crops lost for want of hands to harvest them. Rich claims in old diggings were sold for a trifle of their value. Lots on Montgomery street that a few years later were worth $1.500 a front foot were sold for $100. Real estate in the interior towns was sacrificed at 50 to 75 per cent less than it was worth before the rush began. But a halt was called in the mad rush. The returns were not coming in satisfactorily. By the mid- dle of July less than $100,000 in dust had reached San Francisco, only about $3 for each man who had gone to the diggings. There was gold there and plenty of it, so those interested in keeping up the excitement said: "The Frazer river is high; wait till it subsides." But it did not subside, and it has not subsided since. If the Frazer did not subside the excitement did, and that suddenly. Those who had money enough or could borrow from their friends got away at once. Those who had none hung around Victoria and New Westminster until they were shipped back at the government's ex- pense. The Frazer river craze was the last of the mad, unreasoning "gold rushes." The Washoe excitement of '59 and the "Ho! for Idaho of 1863-64" had some of the characteristics of the carly gold rushes, but they soon settled down to steady business and the yield from these fairly
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recompensed those who were frugal and indus- trious.
Never before perhaps among civilized people was there witnessed such a universal leveling as occurred in the first years of the mining ex- citement in California. "As the labor required was physical instead of mental, the usual supe- riority of head workers over hand workers dis- appeared entirely. Men who had been gov- ernors and legislators and judges in the old states worked by the side of outlaws and con- victs; scholars and students by the side of men who could not read or write; those who had been masters by the side of those who had been slaves; old social distinctions were obliterated; everybody did business on his own account, and not one man in ten was the employe and much less the servant of another. Social distinctions appeared to be entirely obliterated and no man was considered inferior to another. The hard- fisted, unshaven and patch-covered miner was on terms of perfect equality with the well- dressed lawyer, surgeon or merchant; and in general conferences, discussions and even con-
versations the most weather-beaten and strongly marked face, or, in other words, the man who had seen and experienced the most, notwith- standing his wild and tattered attire, was lis- tened to with more attention and respectful con- sideration than the man of polished speech and striking antithesis. One reason of this was that in those days the roughest-looking man not infre- quently knew more than anybody else of what was wanted to be known, and the raggedest man not infrequently was the most influential and sometimes the richest man in the locality."*
This independent spirit was characteristic of the men of '48 and '49. Then nearly everybody was honest and theft was almost unknown. With the advent of the criminal element in 1850 and later there came a change. Before that a pan of gold dust could be left in an open tent unguarded, but with the coming of the Sydney ducks from Australia and men of their class it became necessary to guard property with sedu- lous care.
* Hittell's History of California, Vol. III.
CHAPTER XXVI. SAN FRANCISCO.
I N 1835 Capt. William A. Richardson built the first house on the Yerba Buena cove. It was a shanty of rough board, which he replaced a year later with an adobe building. He was granted a lot in 1836 and his building stood near what is now the corner of Dupont and Clay streets. Richardson had settled at Sausalito in 1822. He was an Englishman by birth and was one of the first foreigners to settle in California.
Jacob P. Leese, an American, in partnership with Spear & Hinckley, obtained a lot in 1836 and built a house and store near that of Captain Richardson. There is a tradition that Mr. Leese began his store building on the first of July and finished it at ten o'clock on the morning of July 4, and for a house warming celebrated the glorious Fourth in a style that astonished the natives up and down the coast. The house was sixty feet long and twenty-five broad, and, if
completed in three days, Mr. Leese certainly de serves the credit of having eclipsed some of the remarkable feats in house building that were performed after the great fires of San Francisco in the early '50s. Mr. Leese and his neighbor, Captain Richardson, invited all the high-toned Spanish families for a hundred miles around to the celebration. The Mexican and American flags floated over the building and two six- pounders fired salutes. At five o'clock the guests sat down to a sumptuous dinner which lasted, toasts and all, till 10 o'clock, and then came dancing; and, as Mr. Leese remarks in his (liary : "Our Fourth ended on the evening of the fifth." Mr. Leese was an energetic person. He built a house in three days, gave a Fourth of July celebration that lasted two days, and inside of a week had a store opened and was doing a thriving business with his late guests. He fell in love with the same energy that he did busi-
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ness. Among the guests at his 4th of July celebration were the Vallejos, the nabobs of Sonoma. Leese courted one of the girls and in a few months after the celebration married her. Their daughter, Rosalie Leese, was the first child born in Yerba Buena. Such was the be- ginning of San Francisco.
This settlement was on a crescent-shaped cove that lay between Clark's Point and the Rincon. The locality was known as Yerba Buena (good herb), a species of mint to which the native Cal- ifornians attributed many medicinal virtues. The peninsula still bore the name that had been applied to it when the mission and presidio were founded, San Francisco. Yerba Buena was a local appellation and applied only to the little hamlet that had grown up on the cove. This settlement, although under the Mexican government, was not a Mexican town. The foreign element, the American predominating, had always been in the ascendency. At the time of the conquest, among its two hundred inhab- itants, were representatives of almost every civ- ilized nation on the globe. It was a cosmopol- itan town. In a very short time after the con- quest it began to take on a new growth and was recognized as the coming metropolis of Califor- nia. The curving beach of the cove at one point (Jackson street) crossed the present line of Montgomery street.
Richardson and Leese had built their stores and warehouses back from the beach because of a Mexican law that prohibited the building of a house on the beach where no custom house ex- isted. All houses had to be built back a certain number of varas from high-water mark. This regulation was made to prevent smuggling. Be- tween the shore line of the cove and anchorage there was a long stretch of shallow water. This made transportation of goods from ship to shore very inconvenient and expensive. With the advent of the Americans and the inaugura- tion of a more progressive era it became neces- sary for the convenient landing of ships and for the discharging and receiving of their cargoes that the beach front of the town should be im- proved by building wharves and docks. The dif- ficulty was to find the means to do this. The general government of the United States could
not undertake it. The war with Mexico was still in progress. The only available way was to sell off beach lots to private parties, but who was to give title was the question. Edwin Bry- ant, February 22, 1847, had succeeded Wash- ington Bartlett as alcalde. Bryant was a pro- gressive man, and, recognizing the necessity of improvement in the shipping facilities of the town, he urged General Kearny, the acting governor, to relinquish, on the part of the gen- cral government, its claim to the beach lands in front of the town in favor of the municipality under certain conditions. General Kearny really had no authority to relinquish the claim of the general government to the land, for the simple reason that the general government had not perfected a claim. The country was held as conquered territory. Mexico had made no concession of the land by treaty. It was not certain that California would be ceded to the United States. Under Mexican law the gov- ernor of the territory, under certain conditions, had the right to make grants, and General Kear- ny, assuming the power given a Mexican gov- ernor, issued the following decree: "I, Brig .- Gen. S. W. Kearny, Governor of California, by virtue of authority in me vested by the Pres- ident of the United States of America, do liereby grant, convey, and release unto the Town of San Francisco, the people or corporate authorities thereof, all the right, title and interest of the Government of the United States and of the Territory of California in and to the Beach and Water Lots on the East front of said Town of San Francisco included between the points known as the Rincon and Fort Montgomery, excepting such lots as may be selected for the use of the United States Government by the senior officers of the army and navy now there; provided, the said ground hereby ceded shall be divided into lots and sold by public auction to the highest bidder, after three months' notice previously given; the proceeds of said sale to be for the benefit of the town of San Francisco. Given at Monterey, capital of California, this Ioth day of March, 1847, and the seventy-first year of the independence of the United States."
S. W. KEARNY, Brig .- Gen'1 & Gov. of California.
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In pursuance of this decree, Alcalde Bryant advertised in the Californian that the ground described in the decree, known as Water Lots, would be surveyed and divided into convenient building lots and sold to the highest bidder on the 29th of June (1847). He then proceeds in the advertisement to boom the town. "The site of the town of San Francisco is known by all navigators and mercantile men acquainted with the subject to be the most commanding com- mercial position on the entire western coast of the Pacific ocean, and the Town itself is no doubt destined to become the commercial em- porium of the western side of the North Ameri- can continent." The alcaldes' assertions must have seemed rather extravagant to the dwellers in the little burgh on the cove of Yerba Buena. But Bryant was a far-seeing man and proved himself in this instance to be a prophet.
It will be noticed that both General Kearny and Alcalde Bryant call the town San Francisco. Alcalde Bartlett, the predecessor in office of Alcalde Bryant, had changed its name just be- fore he was recalled to his ship. He did not like the name Yerba Buena, so he summarily changed it. He issued a proclamation setting forth that hereafter the town should be known as San Francisco. Having proclaimed a change of name, he proceeded to give liis reasons : Yerba Buena was a paltry cognomen for a cer- tain kind of mint found on an island in the bay; it was a merely local name, unknown be- yond the district, while San Francisco had long been familiar on the maps. "Therefore it is hereby ordained, etc." Bartlett builded better than he knew. It would have been a sad mis- take for the city to have carried the "outlandish name which Americans would mangle in pro- nouncing," as the alcalde said.
The change was made in the latter part of January, 1847, but it was some time before the new name was generally adopted.
The California Star, Sam Brannan's paper, which had begun to shine January 9, 1847, in its issue of March 20, alluding to the change, says: "We acquiesce in it, though we prefer the old name. When the change was first at- tempted we viewed it as a mere assumption of authority, without law of precedent, and there-
fore we adhered to the old name-Yerba Buena."
"It was asserted by the late alcalde, Washing- ton Bartlett, that the place was called San Francisco in some old Spanish paper which he professed to have in his possession; but how could we believe a man even about that which it is said 'there is nothing in it,' who had so often evinced a total disregard for his own honor and character and the honor of the country which gave him birth and the rights of his fel- low citizens in the district?" Evidently the edi- tor had a grievance and was anxious to get even with the alcalde. Bartlett demanded an inves- tigation of some charges made against his ad- ministration. He was cleared of all blame. He deserves the thanks of all Californians in sun- marily suppressing Yerba Buena and preventing it from being fastened on the chief city of the state.
There was at that time (on paper) a city of Francisca. The city fathers of this budding me- tropolis were T. O. Larkin and Robert Semple. In a half-column advertisement in the Califor- nian of April 20, 1847, and several subsequent issues, headed "Great Sale of City Lots," they set forth the many advantages and merits of Francisca. The streets are eighty feet wide, the alleys twenty feet wide, and the lots fifty yards front and forty yards back. The whole city comprises five square miles."
"Francisca is situated on the Straits of Car- quinez, on the north side of the Bay of San Francisco, about thirty miles from the mouth of the bay and at the head of ship navigation. In front of the city is a commodious bay, large enough for two hundred ships to ride at anchor, safe from any wind." "The entire trade of the great Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, a fertile country of great width and near seven hundred miles long from north to southi, must of necessity pass through the narrow chan- nel of Carquinez and the bay and country is so situated that every person who passes from one side of the bay to the other will find the nearest and best way by Francisca." Francisca, with its manifold natural advantages, ought to liave been a great city, the metropolis of Cali- fornia, but the Fates were against it. Alcalde
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Bartlett, probably without any design of doing so, dealt it a fearful blow when he dubbed the town of the good herb, San Francisco. Two cities with names so nearly alike could not live and thrive in the same state. Francisca became Benicia. The population of San Francisco (or Yerba Buena, as it was then called) at the time that Captain Montgomery raised the stars and stripes and took possession of it probably did not exceed two hundred. Its change of masters accelerated its growth. The Californian of Sep- tember 4. 1847 (fourteen months after it came under the flag of the United States), gives the following statistics of its population and prog- ress: Total white male population, 247; female, 123; Indians, male, 26; female, 8; South Sea Islanders, male, 39; female I; negroes, male, 9; female I; total population, 454.
Nearly every country on the globe had repre- sentatives in its population, and the various vo- cations by which men earn a living were well represented. Minister, one; doctors, three; lawyers, three; surveyors, two; agriculturists, eleven; bakers, seven; blacksmiths, six; brew- er, one; butchers, seven; cabinetmakers, two; carpenters, twenty-six; cigarmaker, one; coop- ers, three; clerks, thirteen; gardener, one; grocers, five; gunsmiths, two; hotel-keepers, three; laborers, twenty; masons, four; mer- chants, eleven; miner, one; morocco case maker, one; navigators (inland), six; navigator (ocean), one; painter, one; printer, one; sol- dier, one; shoemakers, four; silversmith, one; tailors, four; tanners, two; watchmaker, one; weaver, one. Previous to April 1, 1847, accord- ing to the Californien, there had been erected in the town seventy-nine buildings, classified as follows: Shanties, twenty-two; frame buildings, thirty-one; adobe buildings, twenty-six. Since April 1, seventy-eight buildings have been erected, viz .: Shanties, twenty; frame buildings. forty-seven; adobe buildings, eleven. "Within five months last past," triumphantly adds the editor of the Californian, "as many buildings have been bitilt as were erected in all the pre- vjous years of the town's existence."
The town continued to grow with wonderful rapidity throughout the year 1847, considering that peace had not yet been declared and the
destiny of California was uncertain. According to a school census taken in March, 1848, by the Board of Trustees, the population was: Males, five hundred and seventy-five; females, one hundred and seventy-seven; and "children of age to attend school," sixty, a total of eight hundred and twelve. Building kept pace with the increase of population until the "gold fever" became epidemic. Dr. Brooks, writing in his diary May 17, says: "Walking through the town to-day, I observed that laborers were employed only upon about half a dozen of the fifty new buildings which were in the course of being run up."
The first survey of lots in the town had been made by a Frenchman named Vioget. No names had been given to the streets. This sur- vey was made before the conquest. In 1847, Jasper O'Farrell surveyed and platted the dis- trict extending about half a mile in the different directions from the plaza. The streets were named, and, with a very few changes, still retain the names then given. In September the coun- cil appointed a committee to report upon the building of a wharf. It was decided to con- struct two wharves, one from the foot of Clay street and the other from the foot of Broadway. Money was appropriated to build them and they had been extended some distance seaward when the rush to the mines suspended operations. After considerable agitation by the two news- papers and canvassing for funds, the first school- house was built. It was completed December 4. 1847, but, for lack of funds, or, as the Star says, for lack of energy in the council, school was not opened on the completion of the house. In March the council appropriated $400 and April 1, 1848, Thomas Douglas, a graduate of Yale College, took charge of the school. San Francisco was rapidly developing into a pro- gressive American city. Unlike the older towns of California, it had but a small Mexican popu- lation. Even had not gold been discovered, it would have grown into a commercial city of con- siderable size.
The first effect of the gold discovery and the consequent rush to the mines was to bring everything to a standstill. As Kemble, of the Star, puts it, it was "as if a curse had arrested
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our onward course of enterprise; everything wears a desolate and sombre look; everywhere all is dull, monotonous, dead." The return of the inhabitants in a few months and the influx of new arrivals gave the town a boom in the fall of 1848. Building was only limited by the lack of material, and every kind of a makeshift was resorted to to provide shelter against win- ter rains. From the many attempts at describ- ing the town at this stage of its development, I select this from "Sights in the Gold Regions," a book long since out of print. Its author, T. T. Johnson, arrived at San Francisco April 1, 1849. "Proceeding on our survey, we found the streets, or, properly, the roads, laid out reg- ularly, those parallel with the water being a succession of terraces, and these ascending the hills or along their sides being in some instances cut down ten or twelve feet below the surface. Except a portion of the streets fronting upon the cove, they are all of hard-beaten, sandy clay, as solid as if macadamized. About three hun- dred houses, stores, shanties and sheds, with a great many tents, composed the town at that period. The houses were mostly built of rough boards and unpainted ; brown cottons or calico nailed against the beams and joists answered for wall and ceiling of the better class of tenements. With the exception of the brick warehouse of Howard and Mellus, the establishments of the commercial houses of which we had heard so much were inferior to the outhouses of the country seats on the Hudson; and yet it would puzzle the New York Exchange to produce merchant princes of equal importance." * * "We strolled among the tents in the outskirts of the town. Here was 'confusion worse con- founded,' chiefly among Mexicans, Peruvians and Chilians. Every kind, size, color and shape of tent pitched helter-skelter and in the most awkward manner were stowed full of everything under the sun."
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