USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume I > Part 23
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Effects of a Gold Plethora
Only conditions produced by a plethora of gold would warrant such rents in a town of less than 50,000 inhabitants. The storekeeper who took gold dust for his goods from men who were not particular about the quantity of metal they gave in exchange for the articles they desired, and on occasion dispensed with the use of scales entirely, could well afford to pay any amount demanded for a suitable location. The saloon keeper who charged extortionate prices for the liquors dis- pensed by him, and took an additional toll from the careless miner when weigh- ing his dust, and the gambling house did not need to bargain closely; they could depend upon coming out ahead of the game no matter what they paid.
But the demand for the gold increased much faster than it could be taken out, a fact apparently not well considered by those who believed that every one who
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Pioneers
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had obtained possession of lots at the ridiculously low prices prevailing when the first sales were made by the alcaldes would become millionaires. It would seem when a piece of property which may have originally cost not more than $12 brought in an annual rental of thousands of dollars that the process of millionaire making would be a rapid one, and that a great number of them would be produced. But the result did not justify the expectation. In the end it developed that fewer millionaires were made in San Francisco by the great output of gold, and the abnormal conditions created by it, than were subsequently produced by the more dependable growth of agriculture and manufacturing industries and the pursuit of commerce in an orderly and less speculative manner than that which marked all transactions and occupations in pioneer days.
In 1854 there began to be something like an appreciation of the uncertainties produced by excessive speculation. In the fall of 1853 and the spring of 1854 there was a reaction in business due to the overstocking of the markets. Goods had been rushed into the new town from all parts of the world without reference to the needs of the community. The prices obtained in previous years had infected the universe with the idea that California could absorb all the goods sent to it, and as a result every mercantile house in San Francisco was deluged with con- signments which could not be disposed of and bankruptcies were numerous. Empty stores were seen on every hand and reduction of rentals proved no temptation to open them. The trade depression soon communicated itself to real estate speculators and many of them failed. The decreased rates of rent and the depre- ciation of property, however, did not have the effect of destroying confidence in the future of the City. On the contrary, predictions were made that values would greatly exceed those which had been attained; but they were not realized as speedily as the sanguine men of 1854 believed they would be.
In 1854, on March 9th, there was another sale of town lots on what was called the government reserve which realized $241,000, but the prices obtained were much lower than those eagerly bid the preceding year. Meanwhile building activ- ity was not seriously interrupted. Although rents were falling the unbounded confidence of owners of property stimulated them to increased exertion. Their opinion respecting the value of real estate was shared by the squatter element whose activities became very pronounced, no unoccupied lot being safe from in- trusion. There were numerous riots due to the determination of owners to protect their property, which they did by hiring watchers who were prepared to resist with arms any invasion of what they considered the rights of their employers. The authorities made no efforts to check the evil. Perhaps they recognized their inability to preserve order with the inadequate force at their command, but the popular impression was that they were indifferent-or worse still, that they were catering to the lawless element, for the squatters had begun to assert themselves in politics in the city and throughout the state.
It is not surprising that in the hurly burly of this eager game of grab that suggestions concerning gradients when made by "scientific gentlemen," should have gone unheeded. The grade established by a surveyor named Hoadley was strongly protested against by men who combined with their knowledge of civil engineering some taste, and were at the same time gifted with the ability to peer into the future and divine its needs. They urged the abandonment of Hoadley's grades which demanded a great deal of costly excavation to carry out the scheme of Vol. I-11
Result of Excessive Specolation
Town Lots at Low Prices
Rectangular Street System Opposed
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rectangular streets but their efforts proved wholly unavailing. The reason assigned for the persistence in a system so unsuited to a city topographically situated as San Francisco is was an overweening desire for profit by individuals who were determined to make their property valuable even though the general welfare was sacrificed; but the true cause was the indifference of the people generally due to the utter absence of civic spirit of the sort which impels a community to act together for the common good.
The Care of Streets
Very early in the history of the City of San Francisco the question of munici- pal ownership was brought up, but it failed to receive the attention it deserved. It is mentioned in this connection because it has a direct bearing on the subject of street improvement, and the ideas respecting it which prevailed at the time. The Mission, which had a small settlement in 1850, was some 21/4 miles distant from the Plaza or Portsmouth square. An ordinance was adopted by the council to con- nect it with a plankroad from Kearny street, but a proposal was made by Charles L. Wilson to construct and maintain a toll road for a period of seven years. There was some opposition on the ground that the profits which it was thought might be derived from the undertaking should be enjoyed by the City, but the discussion of the question did not take a wide range and at no time was considera- tion given to the policy of the maintenance of absolutely free roads which was then receiving considerable attention in other parts of the world.
Mission Street Planked Road
The construction of the planked road along Mission street to the Mission had the effect of carrying building operations in the direction of that settlement which wa's within municipal bounds but not included in the city limits until later. In 1853 there were so many houses on the line of the road that it presented the ap- pearance of a continuous street. It was much traveled, for there were numerous drinking houses in the Mission which for a time was the sporting and amusement resort of the City.
In 1853 and during some years later the difficulties attending the construction of the road were impressed on the people but in course of time the transformation effected was so great that the community could hardly be persuaded that the made ground was not as solid as that of other localities, and the Federal government was induced to select as a site for its general postoffice a number of lots which had formerly been a quagmire. In constructing the road several sand ridges cross- ing Kearny south of California street had to be cut through. One particularly large one near Post street caused a heavy expenditure for its reduction. It was near this point that a toll gate was established, the surrounding dunes compelling vehicles to pass through the cut at that place. This gate was maintained for a number of years.
A Difficult Piece of Roadway
The sand dunes were a less formidable obstruction than the soft places in the two and a quarter miles of road. The steam paddy performed its service effi- ciently and with comparative cheapness, but the quagmires taxed the ingenuity of the road builders. At the place already mentioned an attempt was first made to construct a bridge, but when piles were driven they disappeared, a couple of blows of the hammer of the pile driver sufficing to produce that result. The idea of bridging was then abandoned and heavy planks were laid platform-wise. This served the purpose for a while, but the traffic finally caused the platform to sink several feet, and considerable expense was incurred in keeping it in a state of passibility. This first road was built at a cost of $150,000 and the tolls charged
Cutting Through Saud Hills
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were 25 cents for a single horse and rider, 50 cents for a horse and buggy, 75 cents for two horses and a vehicle and $1 for a four-horse team. A second road was built later at a cost of $96,000. It superseded the earlier construction and was maintained down to the date of the expiration of the franchise. The under- taking was a profitable one, it being estimated that its projectors realized at least 3 per cent. a month on the amount they had invested during the period they were in control.
The movement to convert the cove of Yerba Buena into dry land was one of those undertakings marked by concert of action produced by the desire of indi- viduals for gain which often produce results nearly impossible of attainment through organization. It is unthinkable that the recovery of what is now a large part of the most important business section of the City could have been accomplished at the time by public effort. No one has ever attempted to estimate the enormous cost of this improvement, but from first to last it was so great that to even attempt to approximate the probable expenditure would have appalled the young community. But what the people in their collective capacity would have shrunk from attempting, had any one been so preposterously deficient in knowledge of practical affairs as to propose it, was achieved with comparative ease by individual effort.
Doubtless had the argonauts been advised in the last years of the Forties by a L'Enfant, and at the same time been assured that the national government would ultimately carry out a far-seeing plan of improvement, they would have lis- tened to him; or had some person gifted with as much foresight as modern harbor commissioners are with hindsight, a plan would have been devised for the settle- ment of San Francisco's water front, which would have saved much subsequent annoyance to their successors by giving them a thoroughly worked out system. In that event the pioneers might have made provision for the monster ocean carriers of today which were undreamed of then. But lacking the prophetic gift and means they did the best they could.
A community with the certainty that its development would be along the lines of orderly growth might have done something of the sort, although wisdom and order do not always walk hand in hand. If there had been no gold, the inhabit- ants of the little town on the shores of Yerba Buena in the course of a hundred years or so might have begun to feel rich enough to improve their harbor, in which event they would in all likelihood have imitated the example of Liverpool and resorted to closed docks. Instead of filling in they would have scooped out and in the long run perhaps the scooping process would have proved the best.
But the pioneers, after the gold discovery, were confronted with a different problem. Their harbor was suddenly filled with hundreds of ships of all kinds, whose owners were demanding speedy discharge of their cargoes. With such a condition existing the natural thing to do was to provide wharves alongside which the ships and other vessels might lay while unloading. To have created docks would have been out of the question; the labor, the material and the money were not available for such expensive works, and the urgency of the demand for facili- ties forbade the thought of engaging in the construction of basins which would have been years in building.
Under the circumstances the rational thing to do was to utilize the timber of the forests surrounding the bay, and this was promptly done, but not by the people in their collective capacity. Each individual was too intent on making his
Filling in Yerba Buena Cove
The Water Front Prob- lem
Not an Orderly Growth
The Need of Wharves
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own fortune to concern himself about the general welfare, but, as is usual when individualism is allowed free play and hopes of great reward are held out, that which the community refused to do for itself, or to put it more truthfully that which it was unable to do was done for it by men eager for gain. Their motives were wholly selfish, and in almost every instance they were unscrupulous, or not over- scrupulous respecting the means they adopted to carry out their projects. But the outcome was a substantial gain for the City, even though the unsystematic way in which they went about the work of recovery entailed some annoyances and later procured for them some criticism from those wise after the event.
The eagerness to bring ship and landing place close together necessitated the establishment of a water front line. Had no prohibition been interposed there is no telling how far the land would have been made to encroach on the waters of the bay. But the much-abused principle of vested rights promptly asserted itself and in an incredibly brief period, as historical periods go, brought something like order out of chaos, for the struggle for vantage points was near to bringing about that result. Public authority had to be invoked to effect regulation, and some- times it is assumed by superficial critics that because it became necessary to do so it would have been wiser for the public to have commenced at the beginning. But an assumption of this sort ignores the lesson of the fable of the monkey called upon to make the decision of the piece of cheese between the quarrelling cats. The cats found the cheese but the monkey took it all in his efforts to divide fairly and the cats were permitted to go hunt for more.
Something of the sort happened when the individuals who had built the wharves invoked public protection. In those days the appeal could not be made to the com- munity directly interested, for that was the era in which there was much talk about the hatefulness and the danger of centralization. The opposition was merely theoretical, for that really exercised was considerately overlooked. San Francisco's water front more directly concerned the people of that City than those of Los Angeles, or the mining regions, but it was the state's province at that time to regu- late and legislate specially for municipalities, and other political subdivisions, and it had to be invoked and permitted to take its share of the cheese. Later it took the whole of the cheese.
By an act of March 26, 1851, a permanent water front was established for the City, and maps were ordered to be made and deposited in various public offices delineating the prescribed boundary by a red line. In after years this map became familiarly known by the title red line, because it had to be frequently invoked. The water front established by it would have been satisfactory to the owners, and perhaps the act of the legislature would have been wholly beneficial if it had stopped at reserving the right of the state to regulate the construction of wharves so that they should not interfere with navigation. But the interference did not stop there. On May 1st of the same year the legislature passed another act which empowered the City to construct wharves at the ends of all the streets connecting with the bay by extending such streets 200 yards beyond the water front, or red line, and authorizing the City to prescribe wharfage rates. In the same act the legislature relinquished the right of the state to the beach and water lot property, but on the express condition that all the titles to such within the limits of the Kearny grant that had been conferred by justices of the peace should be confirmed. The obvious purpose of this proviso was to validate a great
Water Front Line Estab- lished
Encroachiog on Waters of the Bay
Centralized Authority
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fraud and should have had no place in a statute which was assumedly devised for the regulation of the water front. It would not have been inserted had it not been for the machinations of a class of politicians who became very active in the promotion of schemes which had for their object the security of holders of property obtained with the connivance of rascally or the carelessness of incompetent officials.
This venal interference with an affair which should have been wholly con- trolled by San Francisco was followed not long after by an attempt to make the commerce of the port help pay the running expenses of the state government. In April, 1853, Governor Bigler sent a message to the legislature in which he recommended that the limits of the City be extended toward the water front and that the space thus gained should be leased or sold. California was heavily in- debted at the time and the legislative financiers conceived the idea of replenishing a depleted treasury by extending the City front six hundred feet beyond the line established by the act of 1851. The campaign to accomplish that object was con- ducted chiefly by interior members, nothing but remonstrance coming from San Franciscans who might reasonably have been supposed to have a knowledge of the present and future requirements of the port, equal at least to that of the legislators living in the interior at distances remote from the harbor whose inter- ests they assumed to defend.
These self-constituted champions of the navigation interests of San Francisco argued that the water front limits embraced by the line of 1851 were too restricted and that this enabled the owners of water front property to charge extortionate rents for their wharves thus precluding people of moderate means from the bene- fit of their use. This antimonopoly plea was accompanied by statements that the proposed extension would enable larger vessels to be berthed conveniently and would also permit the free ebb and flow of the tide in the channel, thus increasing its scouring capacity and keeping it clean. The arguments presented seemed plaus- ible enough and would have prevailed had it not been for the uproar raised in San Francisco where the charge was openly made that Bigler and the legislature were in league with real estate speculators who had acquired for a song the lots to be made valuable at what were called "Peter Smith Sales," a name used to characterize the most outrageous fraud ever devised by the rogues who infested San Francisco.
The Peter Smith rascality will be described in another place when the subject of municipal mismanagement and grafting is dealt with; here it is alluded to only to emphasize the fact that the men who were vigorously at work seeking to make a convenient port of San Francisco received no aid in their efforts from the peo- ple whose representatives, when they were not engaged in schemes of spoliation, were studying out methods of embarrassing those seeking to promote facilities of the sort calculated to encourage the growth of commerce and the development of the interior.
Despite these drawbacks the work of improving the water front of San Fran- cisco proceeded steadily and the result must be set down as one of the greatest achievements of undirected energy of which we have a record. Had there been no other accomplishment to place to the credit of the pioneers they might have rested their fame upon their successful conversion of what under the most favorable circumstances would have been only a relatively advantageous place for discharg- ing and loading ships into a district which affords every convenience for the trans-
Interference of the Legislature
Legislature Helps the Jobbers
The Peter Smith Sales
Improvement of Water Front
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action of a large part of the business of the leading port of the state. Its crea- tion very greatly facilitated the handling of freight and passengers, the primary object of those who seek to develop and improve natural harbors.
The City's Water Supply In 1851
As in the case of the creation of facilities for shipping, individual exertion was depended upon by the people in the early Fifties for the introduction of a supply of drinking water. In 1851 the privilege was granted to Argo D. Merrifield to introduce fresh water into the City. Previous to that date the dependence had been wholly upon wells, but the failure of the reservoirs at crucial moments, due to the fact that the water obtained was required for immediate consumption, made it necessary to turn to some other source for an adequate quantity to meet the de- mands of the growing population.
The Mountain Lake Water Company
Merrifield proposed to obtain a sufficient supply from a small lagoon called mountain lake which was situated about four miles west of the Plaza. He was to receive a franchise for a period of twenty-five years at the expiration of which the plant was to be turned over to the City. In the ensuing year, on July 14th, the term of the franchise was reduced to twenty years and a board for rate-mak- ing purposes was created consisting of three members of the council and two representatives of the Mountain Lake Co., the name of the concern. It was also provided that at least $50,000 should be expended by the company during the ensuing six months, and a like sum before Jan. 1, 1854; and that a million gallons should be provided daily. This company had a great deal of trouble with the au- thorities and finally failed in 1862. Before that year the increasing necessities of the town called into existence another company known as the San Francisco Water Works which began operations in 1857, by bringing the waters of Lobos creek around the shores of the Golden Gate, by tunnel through Fort Point and a flume to Black Point, where it was pumped to suitable elevations. Like its predecessors the new company was frequently in collision with the authorities, a fact responsi- ble for the passage by the legislature of 1858 of a law designed to encourage private enterprise in the development of water for cities and towns. Under its pro- visions the Spring Valley Company was inaugurated and succeeded in meeting public requirements for some years, not, however, without creating considerable friction between itself and the public it served.
A notable occurrence connected with the water supply of the City is men- tioned in the "Annals." On the night of November 22, 1852, the few persons living in the vicinity of Lake Merced felt what they thought was an earthquake shock. On the following morning they discovered that the waters of the lake had fallen thirty feet during the night. Various conjectures were advanced to account for the phenomenon. It was suggested that it was due to a volcanic disturbance which had permitted the waters to subside through the bottom of the lake, but opinion finally settled on the heavy rains as an explanation. They had increased the body of water to such an extent that the pressure became great enough to force an outlet to the sea through the banked up sand on its shores.
This singular incident, and the talk it created, suggests that the early San Franciscans may have been impressionable and ready to draw conclusions which careful investigation would not justify. It also illustrates the indisposition of the
Take Mereed Violently Disturbed
FC RD.
DAGUE
GALL
FOR
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MERCER & HE
WHOLESALE &
IM COLGAN OKANE
CONFECT
SADDLE . HARNESS
THOLIC BOOKS.
HARDWARE AINTING
KEARNY STREET, LOOKING TOWARD TELEGRAPH HILL.
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newcomers to be deterred by phenomena of any sort from carrying through their self-appointed task of settling the country and making the best of its resources, and it furnishes evidence that the pioneers were not ready to accept the theories later advanced by a distinguished English author, who laid down the proposition that regions in which the manifestations of Nature are sometimes over-vigorous is sure to be the habitat of a people deficient in energy and given over to superstitions.
CHAPTER XXII
CLIMATIC AND OTHER PHENOMENA OF SAN FRANCISCO
SEISMIC TROUBLES DO NOT DETER IMMIGRATION-ADVANTAGES WEIGHED AGAINST DISADVANTAGES-THE VERIFIED PREDICTION OF A PIONEER-THE CLIMATE OF CALIFORNIA AND OF SAN FRANCISCO-VARIATIONS BUT NO CHANGES-CLIMATIC PECULIARITIES OF SAN FRANCISCO-THE JAPAN CURRENT-ABSENCE OF HUMID- ITY MAKES HEAT ENDURABLE-SNOWFALLS SO RARE THEY BECOME HISTORICAL EVENTS KILLING A MAN TO START A GRAVEYARD-MAN AND NATURE IN CALI- FORNIA-PRACTICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PIONEER-THE NAVIGABLE RIVERS OF CALIFORNIA-THE REGION ABOUT THE BAY.
HOMAS BUCKLE did not write his "History of Civiliza- tion in England" until 1857. Had it appeared ten years earlier it might have created a state of mind adverse to the speedy settlement of California. The qualifying OF SAN FR A word "might" is advisedly employed, for despite the 0 + SEA learned disquisitions of the eminent Englishman expe- rience has demonstrated that men will go anywhere that a prospect of earning a livelihood offers itself. The most terrifying exhibitions of Nature's unrest will not drive them away permanently from regions where oppor- tunities are presented.
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