USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume I > Part 19
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At this time there was one wharf known as the Broadway and another, the Cen- tral, was projected and completed early in 1850. There were several small land- ing places which scarcely deserved to be dignified by the title wharf. These were constructed by private parties, and extended but a little distance across the mud flats and were of no use at low tide, but they afforded facilities for landing pas- sengers and goods in open boats and were a source of profit to their owners. The Central wharf was built by an association and cost $180,000. It extended to deep water and large vessels could lay alongside and discharge at any stage of the tide.
The year 1850 was marked by great activity in wharf building, the longest of which was that at the foot of Clay street. Its original length was 900 feet, but the demand for berth space was so great than in the month following its completion it was extended to 1,800 feet. In addition to the wharves already mentioned there were in 1850 similar accommodations for shipping, some of which were not so long. Market, California, Sacramento, Washington, Jackson, Pacific, Clay and Broadway all terminated in structures whose lengths varied from 250 feet to that of Clay street, which, as already recited, was nearly a third of a mile long.
On the 1st of June, 1850, there were 526 vessels of various kinds lying in the harbor, the greater number of which were ships and barks, the remainder being brigs and schooners. In addition to these there were at least a hundred large square rigged vessels lying at Benicia and in other well sheltered parts of the bay, where they were secure from the occasional northers which swept over its waters. The records indicate that considerable damage resulted from these visita- tions in the first few years after occupation, but before 1853 the facilities provided for protection were such that it was stated no further injury was experienced from them.
It is not marvelous that the argonauts should have dwelt with great satisfac- tion upon their achievements in wharf building, and the provision they made for the expeditious transaction of the great commerce which had grown up in so short a period after the occupation. When the Americans hoisted their flag over Ports- mouth square in 1846, Yerba Buena cove was as innocent of pretensions to activ- ity in maritime matters as it was when a few native Californian soldiers marched around the head of the bay to procure lumber for the decaying presidio buildings, which they brought from the opposite shore in a rude lumber drogher built under the direction of a foreigner. This was the chief nautical achievement of the men who had dreamed and talked of a great city on the shores of the Bay of San Fran- cisco.
In four years the Americans had at a cost of more than a million and a half provided artificial thoroughfares over two miles in length along a water front of considerable extent to serve vessels numbered by the hundred bringing passengers
Commerce of San Francisco 1848
Wharves in 1850
The Bay Full of Vessels in 1850
Activities of the Pioneers
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and merchandise from every country on the globe for the consumption of a popula- tion which had sprung up like a mushroom, and which felt so assured of its future that it promptly set to work to convert the sea into dry land in order that business might be done with convenience and dispatch; for all these early constructions in another four years had ceased to perform their original functions and had been converted into public streets.
Vol. 1-9
CHAPTER XVIII
THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD AT SUTTER'S MILL IN 1848
EFFECTS OF THE DISCOVERY-THE CAREER OF SUTTER-A POORLY KEPT SECRET-BE- GINNING OF THE RUSH TO CALIFORNIA-MILITARY GOVERNOR RICHARD B. MASON- PROPOSAL TO CONSERVE THE GOLD-MARSHALL'S LIFE THREATENED-SAN FRAN- CISCO BECOMES THE MINER'S MECCA-MINING AND TEMPERAMENT-EFFECTS OF THE GOLD LURE-THE GOLD HUNTERS-THE RUSH IN 1849-POPULATION IN 1849 -IMMIGRANTS POURING INTO CALIFORNIA-UNSTABLE CHARACTER OF THE NEW POPULATION-DEPENDENCE ON MINING.
T WOULD be idle to ascribe the wonderful metamorphosis described in the previous chapter to the unassisted energy OF of the Americans who settled in Yerba Buena when the territory of California passed under the flag of the United States. There is every reason for believing that there OF SAN CC " SEA would have been progress, which would have presented a brilliant contrast to the inactivity of the dispossessed Cali- fornians, but in the nature of things the work of building up a great city must have proceeded slowly, removed as Yerba Buena was from the great centers which could have contributed the population necessary to effect its upbuilding if it were not for the adventitious circumstance of the discovery of gold.
The first Americans who settled in Yerba Buena and those who found their way into California when it became the property of the United States did not place mineral products high in the list of its resources. If they gave the subject of mineralogy any consideration in this connection, they did not lay much stress upon it. There is little or no reference to gold made in most of the early descrip- tions of the State of California. As already related gold had been discovered in the vicinity of Los Angeles by native Californians and a few ounces were gathered and sent to Philadelphia to be refined, but the discovery attracted little more than local attention, and even there it did not stimulate extensive prospecting, and in a very short time the find was a closed incident.
It may be asserted in a general way that Californians and the newcomers prior to 1848 never thought of the territory as a possible gold producer. The small but growing town of Yerba Buena was engrossed with entirely different matters, and if the minds of the more enterprising inhabitants of the place ever harbored thoughts of gold they gave no expression to them. When the discovery was finally made at Sutter's mill by accident, the intelligence of the fact brought to the people of Yerba Buena as much surprise as it did to the outside world, which knew little about California resources, and did not bother itself much about them until it
Effects of the Gold DIscovery
Mineral Resources Not Considered
First Settlers Not After Gold
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awakened to the knowledge that the placers of the newly occupied country were yielding gold nuggets and dust in abundance.
The discovery which caused the adventurous spirits of the civilized world, and some from countries that had not attained the stage implied by the term enlight- ened, was made in January, 1848, by a man named James W. Marshall who had contracted with John A. Sutter, the owner of a large tract of land granted to him by the Mexican government in the Sacramento valley, and which he entered upon in 1839 and practically took possession of the surrounding country which he called New Helvetia. In the summer of that year he established himself at a place afterward called Sutter's fort and built a road to the point on the Sacra- mento river, where the city of that name subsequently had its beginning. Sutter was born in Baden, Germany, in 1803, and had a wandering career before finally settling in California, and in the course of his peregrinations had become a citizen of Switzerland. Later he swore devotion to Mexico. Before he moved to Cali- fornia he had pursued farming in Missouri and it was from thence that he made his way to the Far West accompanying a party under the command of Captain Tripp, known as the American Fur Company, to the Wind river country. He left Tripp there and made his way to Oregon and from there to the Sandwich islands. His objective was California, but before reaching the territory he found his way to Sitka and it was not until 1839 that he achieved his aim, arriving in Yerba Buena on the 2d day of July in that year.
Sutter's Character- istics
Marshall Finds Gold
Sutter was a man of varied acquirements and undoubted enterprise. He also enjoyed the reputation of being a brave man, and it was chiefly to that fact that he owed his large grant and the consideratble latitude accorded him in the administration of affairs about his place. His so-called fort was regarded as an out- post against the Indians and he was not infrequently called upon to take action against them, albeit he was charged with deliberately provoking collisions in order to secure captives who were reduced to a condition little better than slavery.
In order to secure power for the saw mill he had contracted to build, Marshall admitted the water from the south fork of the American river, a feeder of the Sacramento, into the tail race for the purpose of widening and deepening it by the force of the current. The rush of water brought with it considerable gravel, mud and sand which was deposited in a heap at the foot of the race. In this deposit Marshall noticed a number of glittering objects. He carefully examined them and soon concluded that the shining particles were gold. He gathered about an ounce of the dust and, greatly excited over his find, he repaired with it to the fort where he exhibited it to Sutter, who thought Marshall had gone mad when he first told him that he had found gold.
A Secret That Could Not be Kept
Tests of the dust soon satisfied Sutter of the genuineness of the discovery and it was arranged between the two that they should keep their find a secret but a woman employed about the place who had overheard them divulged it and in a very short time everybody in or near the fort was discussing the discovery and in an incredibly brief period all the neighborhood was hunting gold. Every- body in the vicinity abandoned his regular employment and hurried to Sutter's mill to hunt for gold, and in a few days over 1200 persons were on the ground, from which they spread to other places where the prospects seemed good.
On June 1, 1848, Thomas O. Larkin wrote to James Buchanan, then secre- tary of state, an account of the discovery. He followed this letter with another
The Discov- ery at Sutter's Mill
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from Monterey, dated June 28, 1848, in which he spoke in glowing terms of the importance of the newly found placers, saying he was inclined to believe that a few thousand men in a hundred miles square of the Sacramento valley would yearly turn out the whole price of all the territory newly acquired from Mexico. As the amount paid to the republic for all the region embracing New Mexico, Arizona and California, in conformity with the terms of the Gadsen treaty, was only $15,000,000, Larkin cannot be accused of having overestimated the possi- bilities. Since he made the modest statement quoted no year has passed in Cali- fornia in which the yield of gold has not equalled that amount, and during many years the product has been four times as great as the cost of the acquired territory.
In the closing years of the decade 1840-9, information traveled slowly. There were no enterprising newspapers in those days to disseminate intelligence, but letter writing was an art more in favor than at present and it was not many months after the discovery before the enterprising began to turn their steps California- ward. The Baltimore "Sun" on Sept. 20, 1848, took notice of the discovery but there were parties on the way from the East to the new diggings earlier than that date. They had gained their information from private letters which had been received before the discovery was noticed by a newspaper.
The appearance of the article in the "Sun" and the dispatch of Larkin's letter to Buchanan had been preceded by a visit to the diggings made by Governor Mason, accompanied by Lieutenant William T. Sherman, afterward general of the United States army. They started from Monterey on the 17th of June, 1848, visiting San Francisco en route, finding it almost deserted. They made their way to Sutter's fort by passing through Bodega and Sonoma, reaching there on the 2d of July. They found the neighborhood a scene of great activity. From Sutter's fort they traveled up the American river about twenty-five miles to the lower mines which were known as the Mormon diggings, and thence to Coloma, where they spent several days with Marshall and Weber. At this place they found over 4,000 employed in mining.
Richard B. Mason was the military governor who took charge of the affairs of the territory in the absence of General Kearny. He was colonel of First United States Dragoons and had the bureaucratic notions of the arm of the service to which he belonged, and had some thoughts of putting into execution an idea which suggested itself to him, which to some extent foreshadowed the recently developed conservation policy of the government. As the result of his observations he concluded that the total yield of the mines he had visited was from $30,000 to $50,000 a day. As the gold was all derived from public land he seriously deliberated a method of securing to the government "a reasonable rent or fee for extracting it." He was dissuaded from adopting such a course by consideration of the fact that the country was too big and the people of the wrong sort to be managed by the force at his command.
It was fortunate for California and the rest of the world that Mason aban- doned all idea of interference and permitted the work of extracting the gold from the soil to proceed freely. Had he attempted to put his plan in force there would have been a collision which in any event must have proved disastrous. Had he succeeded in exacting fees, and in otherwise hampering the prospectors, the inevi- table result would have been a restriction of production; but it is more than probable that the course he proposed would have aroused an antagonism or a
News Dis- seminated Slowly
Larkin OD Sherman Report
Suggested Gold Con- servation
The Conservation Idea Abandoned
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rebellion which would not have been as easily quelled as the uprising of the Californians after the hoisting of the flag at Monterey. Mason must, however, be credited with good judgment. He displayed it when he wrote to Commodore James on his return to Monterey that the destiny of California was settled by the gold discovery, treaty or no treaty, but the latter was consummated before the missive reached its destination.
Early Mani- festation of Intolerance
Mason was not alone in his view respecting the conservation of gold. It was shared by General Persifer Smith who, while on his way in January, 1849, to join the American forces in California, announced at Panama that he intended to treat every man not a citizen of the United States, who entered upon the public land to dig for gold, as a trespasser; and he proposed, if possible, to drive all foreigners from the diggings. It is probable that Smith was inspired more by the "know nothing" spirit of the times than by a desire to save the gold for posterity, but he, too, was obliged to abandon his views and assent to the free-for-all policy which had established itself in the gold fields. Such decided benefits were derived by those who hunted for, and found the precious metal, and the world's commerce was so greatly stimulated by its abundance, that conservation went out of fashion and was not heard of again for over a half a century.
Marshall and the Miners
An idea of what might have occurred had Mason or Smith attempted to enforce their views may be gained from the experiences of Sutter and Marshall who took the ground that the gold of the Coloma fields was theirs by right of discovery. As soon as the rush to the placers began, Sutter attempted to exact a toll of 10% upon all the gold found. This exaction was not submitted to by the miners, who moved away. Later Sutter sold his claim in Coloma for $6,000 and Marshall disposed of his interest in the mill for one-third that amount, but he still claimed to be owner of the ground and involved himself in many quarrels by so doing, and by his propensity to boast of making big finds. His professions in this regard were believed by some and he acquired the reputation of withholding the secret of his discoveries out of pure contrariness. This exasperated the miners to such an extent that they threatened to lynch him and he fled for his life. The animosity he excited was so great that his enemies wreaked vengeance on his mill and as a result it became impossible to locate the spot where it had stood.
The State and the City
The personal fortunes of the miners and the methods they adopted to secure the gold they sought only indirectly concern San Francisco. Books have been written describing the characteristics of the miners and their performances but they are part of the history of California rather than that of its metropolis. But it is impossible to draw the line between what pertains to the state at large and that which directly affected the city which at once became the mecca of the fortunate seeker after gold and the refuge of the unfortunate prospector who, in the slang of the time, "went bust." It is safe, therefore, to assume that for many years after 1848 nothing of consequence occurred anywhere in California which did not in some manner touch San Francisco interests.
Geld the Attraction
It was the gold the miners extracted from the soil that brought a ceaseless pro- cession of ships to the port of San Francisco; and it was the bad luck or failure of the searcher after the golden fleece to achieve his desire that sent him back to the new mart of commerce to attempt to earn the living there which the aurif- erous soil begrudged him. To supply the demands of the miners who thronged the hills and built up numerous towns in the mining districts, mercantile establishments
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of consequence were started in the city, whose imports in some cases in a single year exceeded in volume and value all the merchandise brought into California during the entire period of Spanish and Mexican possession of the soil. And soon it became the business of the same bustling community to find a market for the surplus agricultural products of a region which the argonauts, at first, unmindful of the differing peculiarities of agricultural countries, had set down as unfertile and only adapted to the uses to which it had been put by the unenterprising inhabitants who were there before they came.
Because all these interests are linked up so closely the historian must draw on them and he may use them in the full assurance that their bearing will be perceived without taxing the reader with explanations. There may be no apparent connection at first between the statement that for many years the miner who carried his "outfit" on his back and was always ready to move on to where he thought he could do better, typified the restlessness of the inhabitants of San Francisco until the rushes which sometimes nearly depopulated the City are described. It will then be seen how greatly the occupation of the gold seeker affected the tempera- ment of San Franciscans, and how, until mining became only a part of the indus- trial activity of the state, it developed tendencies which would not have exhibited themselves so conspicuously if the process of growth could have been as devoid of the elements of chance as in other communities.
At no time after the discovery of gold were the stages of development the same as those in other countries. The growth was never normal. It began with a rush and was interrupted by rushes. From the day that the merchant abandoned his store, the printer his case, the minister his pulpit and the teacher his desk to dig for gold down to the days when the discovery of the precious metal in the Klondyke drew away from the City a goodly proportion of its floating population, and not a few of those who in other localities would be regarded as settled inhabit- ants, San Francisco was subject to waves of excitement which sometimes materially retarded its growth, but despite the drawbacks of this nature due to the lure of the "golden fleece" the City steadily increased in numbers and wealth.
When Constantine removed the capitol of the Roman Empire to Byzantium there may have been some such transformations effected in incredibly short periods as were witnessed in San Francisco when the news spread throughout the civilized world that El Dorado had at last been found or that at least there was sufficient gold in California to permit slaves of savage kings to bathe in its glittering dust and parade in gilded splendor if they so desired. And when with this intelligence the word was passed on that in this new land all were free to dig, the exodus of the enterprising from the older settled communities was sufficiently great to make inroads on the population statistics of ambitious American towns that had already acquired the "boosting" habit.
Something like a chronological arrangement of the national features of the invasion of the gold seekers has been attempted but the attempt did not prove very successful. The accounts agree that a large proportion of those who were first on the ground were Mexicans, the Sonoranians being particularly numerous. They were followed by contingents from Oregon on the north and soon the Sandwich islanders made their appearance. Then ships began to arrive with Peruvians and Chileans. The Orient was not far behind in contributing its quota, for in 1848 the world was on a nearly even footing in the matter of the transmission of intelligence,
Mining and Tempera- ment
Growth Abnormal
Rapid Trans- formations
Nationality of the Gold Seekers
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and the ambitious Chinese were as quick in resorting to the feast as their Cau- casion competitors. Among the latter was a not inconsiderable number from the Australian colonies; men with shady records and some perhaps who were reckoned as such, who merely suffered from the taint that long attached to the antipodean continental possession of the British, because it had been a penal settlement.
When the year 1849 opened wagon trains were slowly moving by various routes to the region whose wealth in the popular imagination immeasurably sur- passed that of the famed Indian Golconda. Ships were sailing around the Horn in fleets with thousands of passengers all animated by the same desire as the other thousands who were moving in caravans through the passes of the Rocky Mountains to the promised land. In this motley throng the good and the bad were inex- tricably mingled, but there is no foundation for the assumption, which later events seemed to warrant, that the latter element predominated.
The Wicked in Evidence
It is well to bear in mind in considering the composition of the population built up out of the adventurers of all sorts who found their way into California from all quarters of the globe that assertiveness is a propensity of the wicked. The good, until aroused, play their part in the world without attracting any at- tention to themselves; but the criminal, even when he works in secrecy, shrinking from the publicity which might invite the halter or a prison cell, engages in per- formances which force notice even when they are not wholly spectacular. Nobody sets down the number of good acts performed, but more or less accurate statistics of criminality are easily accessible.
Good Mixed With the Bad
There were many unscrupulous and utterly reckless men among the first comers in the gold rush, and they continued to be followed by others as the stream of immi- gration broadened and increased in volume. These added to the criminal class im- posed on the unfortunate province of the Mexicans, who for a long time had used California as a place of exile and penal servitude, made a powerful impress on the new community and gave it a reputation not wholly deserved, and which was in a measure confirmed by the extra legal methods later adopted to repress crime and get rid of the criminals. As will be seen later on the experiences of San Francisco in 1851 and 1856 merely exemplify the truth at the bottom of the ancient lines in which the assertion is made that "the fame of the youth who fired the Ephesian dome outlasts that of the pious fool who reared it." Had the pyromaniac not indulged his predilection we might never have known that there was an Ephesian dome, and had not a few wicked men provoked an outraged community to action the world would never have learned the sort of stuff the pioneers were made of, and how, when aroused, they could straighten out matters.
Population in 1850
It is estimated that during 1849 over 40,000 immigrants were landed in San Francisco, but at the end of the year the population of the town did not number more than 25,000. The major part of those arriving only stayed long enough to secure an "outfit" for the mines and to add to what they had brought. During 1850 the arrivals numbered upwards of 36,000, of whom fully one-half were from foreign countries. At the end of this year the population of San Francisco showed no noteworthy increase, the number not exceeding 30,000. As in 1849 all or nearly all who arrived by sea hastened to the mines.
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