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San Francisco History Podcast – Sparkletack
by Richard MillerSan Francisco history stories
Copyright: 2008
Episodes
San Francisco Timecapsule: 03.02.09
7m · PublishedSan Francisco Timecapsule: 03.02.09
7m · PublishedSan Francisco Timecapsule: 02.23.09
7m · Published1852: English adventurer Frank Marryat pays a visit to a San Francisco Gold Rush barbershop.
1852: A Gold Rush shaving-saloon
I love personal accounts of the goings-on in our little town more than just about anything. The sights, the smells, the daily routine ... I want the nuts and bolts of what it was like to live here THEN!
It's even better when the eyeballs taking it all in belong to an outsider, a visiting alien to whom everything's an oddity.
For my birthday a couple of years ago my Lady Friend gave me a book that's packed to the gills with this kind of first-person account. It's called -- aptly enough -- San Francisco Memories. And because I'm kind of a dope, it's only just occurred to me that this stuff is the absolute epitome of what a timecapsule should be -- and that I really ought to be sharing some of this early San Francisco gold with you.
Ahem. So share it I will.
Our correspondent: Frank Marryat
Frank Marryat was the son of Captain Frederick Marryat, famous English adventurer and author of popular seafaring tales. A chip off the old block, young Frank had himself already written a book of traveler's tales from Borneo and the Indian archipelago. Looking for a new writing subject, he set his sights on an even more exotic locale -- Gold Rush California.
In 1850, with manservant and three hunting dogs in tow, Frank left the civilized shores of England behind, crossed the Atlantic and the Isthmus of Panama, and made his way towards the Golden Gate.
The book that resulted, California Mountains and Molehills, would be published in 1855 -- ironically the year of Marryat's own demise from yellow fever.
He covers a phenomenal amount of oddball San Francisco and early California history, all neatly collected to satisfy the curiousity of his English reading public -- the Chinese question, the Committee of Vigilance, squatter wars, bears, rats, oysters, gold, even the pickled head of Joaquin Murieta -- and to top it off, Marryat sailed into the Bay just as San Francisco was being destroyed (again) by fire, this one the Great June Fire of 1850!
Don't worry. They'll have the city rebuilt in a couple of weeks, in plenty of time for Frank to spend some quality months slumming in the Gold Country, and then, like the rest of the Argonauts, ride down into the big city for supplies -- and a shave.
That's right -- put your feet up and relax -- in today's Timecapsule, we're going to visit a Gold Rush barber shop.
read on ...San Francisco Timecapsule: 02.23.09
7m · Published1852: English adventurer Frank Marryat pays a visit to a San Francisco Gold Rush barbershop.
1852: A Gold Rush shaving-saloon
I love personal accounts of the goings-on in our little town more than just about anything. The sights, the smells, the daily routine ... I want the nuts and bolts of what it was like to live here THEN!
It's even better when the eyeballs taking it all in belong to an outsider, a visiting alien to whom everything's an oddity.
For my birthday a couple of years ago my Lady Friend gave me a book that's packed to the gills with this kind of first-person account. It's called -- aptly enough -- San Francisco Memories. And because I'm kind of a dope, it's only just occurred to me that this stuff is the absolute epitome of what a timecapsule should be -- and that I really ought to be sharing some of this early San Francisco gold with you.
Ahem. So share it I will.
Our correspondent: Frank Marryat
Frank Marryat was the son of Captain Frederick Marryat, famous English adventurer and author of popular seafaring tales. A chip off the old block, young Frank had himself already written a book of traveler's tales from Borneo and the Indian archipelago. Looking for a new writing subject, he set his sights on an even more exotic locale -- Gold Rush California.
In 1850, with manservant and three hunting dogs in tow, Frank left the civilized shores of England behind, crossed the Atlantic and the Isthmus of Panama, and made his way towards the Golden Gate.
The book that resulted, California Mountains and Molehills, would be published in 1855 -- ironically the year of Marryat's own demise from yellow fever.
He covers a phenomenal amount of oddball San Francisco and early California history, all neatly collected to satisfy the curiousity of his English reading public -- the Chinese question, the Committee of Vigilance, squatter wars, bears, rats, oysters, gold, even the pickled head of Joaquin Murieta -- and to top it off, Marryat sailed into the Bay just as San Francisco was being destroyed (again) by fire, this one the Great June Fire of 1850!
Don't worry. They'll have the city rebuilt in a couple of weeks, in plenty of time for Frank to spend some quality months slumming in the Gold Country, and then, like the rest of the Argonauts, ride down into the big city for supplies -- and a shave.
That's right -- put your feet up and relax -- in today's Timecapsule, we're going to visit a Gold Rush barber shop.
read on ...San Francisco Timecapsule: 02.16.09
6m · Published1921: the cornerstone of the Palace of the Legion of Honor is laid ... but what was underneath?
February 19, 1921
Ghosts of Lands End
On this date the cornerstone for San Francisco's spectacular Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum was levered into place.
The Museum was to be a vehicle for the cultural pretensions of the notorious Alma Spreckels. This social-climbing dynamo envisioned her Museum as a far western outpost of French art and culture. Drawing on the vast fortune of her husband -- sugar baron Adolph Spreckels -- she constructed a replica of the Palace of Versailles out at Lands End. Alma would stock the place with art treasures from her own vast collection -- including one of the finest assemblages of Rodin sculpture on the planet.
I've already talked myself hoarse on the subject of Alma Spreckels' rags-to-riches clamber up the social slopes of Pacific Heights, but what's really interesting me today is not what's inside her museum, but what lay underneath that cornerstone in 1921. read on ...
San Francisco Timecapsule: 02.16.09
6m · Published1921: the cornerstone of the Palace of the Legion of Honor is laid ... but what was underneath?
February 19, 1921
Ghosts of Lands End
On this date the cornerstone for San Francisco's spectacular Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum was levered into place.
The Museum was to be a vehicle for the cultural pretensions of the notorious Alma Spreckels. This social-climbing dynamo envisioned her Museum as a far western outpost of French art and culture. Drawing on the vast fortune of her husband -- sugar baron Adolph Spreckels -- she constructed a replica of the Palace of Versailles out at Lands End. Alma would stock the place with art treasures from her own vast collection -- including one of the finest assemblages of Rodin sculpture on the planet.
I've already talked myself hoarse on the subject of Alma Spreckels' rags-to-riches clamber up the social slopes of Pacific Heights, but what's really interesting me today is not what's inside her museum, but what lay underneath that cornerstone in 1921. read on ...
San Francisco Timecapsule: 02.09.09
7m · Published1869: the fashionable neighborhood of Rincon Hill is sliced in two.
February, 1869
The battle for Rincon Hill is over
There aren't too many people living who remember this now, but Rincon Hill was once the fanciest neighborhood in San Francisco. You know the place, right? It's south of Market Street, an asphalt-covered lump of rock with the Bay Bridge sticking out of the north-east side and Second Street running by, out to the Giants' ballpark. That's Rincon Hill. What's left of it, anyway.
Exactly 140 years ago this month, the California Supreme Court gave the go-ahead to a scheme which would destroy it.
San Francisco's first fashionable address
As San Francisco's Gold Rush-era population explosion of tents and rickety clapboard started to settle down, the bank accounts of merchants and lucky miners started to fill up. Men were becoming civilized, acquiring culture, and the sort of women known as "wives" were moving into town. This led to a demand for a neighborhood that was distinctly separate from the barbarous Barbary Coast, and with its sunny weather, gentle elevation, and spectacular views of the Bay, Rincon Hill filled the bill.
According to the Annals of San Francisco, by 1853 Rincon Hill was dotted with "numerous elegant structures" -- including the little gated community of South Park. By the 1860s, the Hill was covered with mansions in a riot of architectural styles, and had become the social epicenter of the young city.
And then in 1968 (cue evil-real-estate-developer music here) a San Franciscan named John Middleton got himself elected to the California State Legislature. According to some sources, his elevation was part of a conspiracy to push through a specific radical civic "improvement".
The Second Street "Cut"
Here's the situation that required "improving": at the time, there was a high volume of heavy commercial horse cart traffic to the busy South Beach wharves from Market Street. Second Street provided a direct route, but -- since it went up and over the highest part of Rincon Hill -- horse carts were obliged to take the long way around via Third Street.
Middleton's plan was simplicity itself: carve a deep channel through the heart of the hill, right along Second Street. He just happened to own a big chunk of property at Second and Bryant Streets, and couldn't wait to see his property values go through the roof.
"But wait," you're saying, "what about the owners of those lovely homes up on fashionable Rincon Hill? Won't they object to having their front doors open up to a 100-foot canyon instead of a sidewalk? Do they even have the technology to pull this off? And what about the horrific mess the construction is going to make? We are talking high society here, right?"
read on ...San Francisco Timecapsule: 02.09.09
7m · Published1869: the fashionable neighborhood of Rincon Hill is sliced in two.
February, 1869
The battle for Rincon Hill is over
There aren't too many people living who remember this now, but Rincon Hill was once the fanciest neighborhood in San Francisco. You know the place, right? It's south of Market Street, an asphalt-covered lump of rock with the Bay Bridge sticking out of the north-east side and Second Street running by, out to the Giants' ballpark. That's Rincon Hill. What's left of it, anyway.
Exactly 140 years ago this month, the California Supreme Court gave the go-ahead to a scheme which would destroy it.
San Francisco's first fashionable address
As San Francisco's Gold Rush-era population explosion of tents and rickety clapboard started to settle down, the bank accounts of merchants and lucky miners started to fill up. Men were becoming civilized, acquiring culture, and the sort of women known as "wives" were moving into town. This led to a demand for a neighborhood that was distinctly separate from the barbarous Barbary Coast, and with its sunny weather, gentle elevation, and spectacular views of the Bay, Rincon Hill filled the bill.
According to the Annals of San Francisco, by 1853 Rincon Hill was dotted with "numerous elegant structures" -- including the little gated community of South Park. By the 1860s, the Hill was covered with mansions in a riot of architectural styles, and had become the social epicenter of the young city.
And then in 1968 (cue evil-real-estate-developer music here) a San Franciscan named John Middleton got himself elected to the California State Legislature. According to some sources, his elevation was part of a conspiracy to push through a specific radical civic "improvement".
The Second Street "Cut"
Here's the situation that required "improving": at the time, there was a high volume of heavy commercial horse cart traffic to the busy South Beach wharves from Market Street. Second Street provided a direct route, but -- since it went up and over the highest part of Rincon Hill -- horse carts were obliged to take the long way around via Third Street.
Middleton's plan was simplicity itself: carve a deep channel through the heart of the hill, right along Second Street. He just happened to own a big chunk of property at Second and Bryant Streets, and couldn't wait to see his property values go through the roof.
"But wait," you're saying, "what about the owners of those lovely homes up on fashionable Rincon Hill? Won't they object to having their front doors open up to a 100-foot canyon instead of a sidewalk? Do they even have the technology to pull this off? And what about the horrific mess the construction is going to make? We are talking high society here, right?"
read on ...San Francisco Timecapsule: 02.02.09
16m · Published1849: As the fateful year of 1849 begins, a newspaper editor scrutinizes San Francisco's gold rush future.
February 1, 1849
The eye of the Gold Rush hurricane
The spring of 1849 -- dawn of a year forever branded into the national consciousness as the era of the California Gold Rush.
And so it was -- but that was back East, in the "States". In San Francisco, the Gold Rush had actually begun an entire year earlier.
I'd better set the scene.
The United States were at war with Mexico -- it's President Polk and "Manifest Destiny" time. San Francisco (then Yerba Buena) was conquered without a shot in July of 1847.
In the first month of 1848, gold was quietly discovered in the foothills east of Sutter's Fort. Days later, the Mexican war came to an end, and Alta California became sole property of the United States.
Sam Brannan kick-starts things in '48
San Francisco was skeptical about the gold strike, but in May of '48, Sam Brannan made his famous appearance on Market Street brandishing a bottle of gold dust. His shouts of "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River" triggered the first wave of the Gold Rush.
The village of about 500 souls was emptied almost overnight as its inhabitants hotfooted it for the hills. Among the many businesses left completely in the lurch was Sam Brannan's own newspaper, the California Star.
While the entrepreneurial Brannan was busy becoming a millionaire selling shovels to gold miners, by June his entire staff had abandoned the paper and set off to make their own fortunes.
Edward Kemble publishes the Alta California
>Brannan sold what was left of his newspaper to a more civic-minded businessman, Mr. Edward Cleveland Kemble. Kemble resuscitated the Star (along with San Francisco's other gold rush-crippled paper, the Californian) as a brand spanking new paper he called the Alta California. The first issue appeared at the tail end of 1848.
That brings us right up to today's timecapsule.
The editorial on the front page of issue #5 of the new paper is a treasure trove of contemporary San Francisco perspectives.
As editor Kemble was composing this piece -- a retrospective of the previous year, and a peek into the uncertain future -- it was the dead of winter, and the first wave of the Rush had crested and broken back towards the city.
Kemble was first and foremost a businessman, and he was concerned with the civic and financial future of San Francisco. He points out that the city is poorly governed, a little short on law and order, already swelling with gold-seekers from Mexico and Oregon, and -- to sum it up -- is woefully unprepared for the onslaught of humanity, the avalanche of "49ers" already looming on the horizon.
But though he's aware that the next wave is going to be a doozy, with 20-20 historical hindsight we know that he doesn't really have a clue.
What Kemble doesn't know ... yet.
By the end of 1849, the village of San Francisco will have burst at every seam, with a population exploding from 2000 to 25,000. Tens of thousands of gold seekers will flow through the port and even more will stagger in overland from the East, all in all 100,000 strong.
The beautiful harbour will be choked with hundreds of deserted, rotting ships, and the local government will prove to be ineffectual and almost totally corrupt. By the end of '49 San Francisco will have become a wild, sprawling, lawless shanty boomtown, and the soul and future of our City by the Bay will be permanently transformed.
Kemble's observations give us ground-level insight into the concerns of the village of San Francisco in the winter of 1848 -- a priceless peek into the eye of the gold rush hurricane.
read on ...San Francisco Timecapsule: 02.02.09
16m · Published1849: As the fateful year of 1849 begins, a newspaper editor scrutinizes San Francisco's gold rush future.
February 1, 1849
The eye of the Gold Rush hurricane
The spring of 1849 -- dawn of a year forever branded into the national consciousness as the era of the California Gold Rush.
And so it was -- but that was back East, in the "States". In San Francisco, the Gold Rush had actually begun an entire year earlier.
I'd better set the scene.
The United States were at war with Mexico -- it's President Polk and "Manifest Destiny" time. San Francisco (then Yerba Buena) was conquered without a shot in July of 1847.
In the first month of 1848, gold was quietly discovered in the foothills east of Sutter's Fort. Days later, the Mexican war came to an end, and Alta California became sole property of the United States.
Sam Brannan kick-starts things in '48
San Francisco was skeptical about the gold strike, but in May of '48, Sam Brannan made his famous appearance on Market Street brandishing a bottle of gold dust. His shouts of "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River" triggered the first wave of the Gold Rush.
The village of about 500 souls was emptied almost overnight as its inhabitants hotfooted it for the hills. Among the many businesses left completely in the lurch was Sam Brannan's own newspaper, the California Star.
While the entrepreneurial Brannan was busy becoming a millionaire selling shovels to gold miners, by June his entire staff had abandoned the paper and set off to make their own fortunes.
Edward Kemble publishes the Alta California
>Brannan sold what was left of his newspaper to a more civic-minded businessman, Mr. Edward Cleveland Kemble. Kemble resuscitated the Star (along with San Francisco's other gold rush-crippled paper, the Californian) as a brand spanking new paper he called the Alta California. The first issue appeared at the tail end of 1848.
That brings us right up to today's timecapsule.
The editorial on the front page of issue #5 of the new paper is a treasure trove of contemporary San Francisco perspectives.
As editor Kemble was composing this piece -- a retrospective of the previous year, and a peek into the uncertain future -- it was the dead of winter, and the first wave of the Rush had crested and broken back towards the city.
Kemble was first and foremost a businessman, and he was concerned with the civic and financial future of San Francisco. He points out that the city is poorly governed, a little short on law and order, already swelling with gold-seekers from Mexico and Oregon, and -- to sum it up -- is woefully unprepared for the onslaught of humanity, the avalanche of "49ers" already looming on the horizon.
But though he's aware that the next wave is going to be a doozy, with 20-20 historical hindsight we know that he doesn't really have a clue.
What Kemble doesn't know ... yet.
By the end of 1849, the village of San Francisco will have burst at every seam, with a population exploding from 2000 to 25,000. Tens of thousands of gold seekers will flow through the port and even more will stagger in overland from the East, all in all 100,000 strong.
The beautiful harbour will be choked with hundreds of deserted, rotting ships, and the local government will prove to be ineffectual and almost totally corrupt. By the end of '49 San Francisco will have become a wild, sprawling, lawless shanty boomtown, and the soul and future of our City by the Bay will be permanently transformed.
Kemble's observations give us ground-level insight into the concerns of the village of San Francisco in the winter of 1848 -- a priceless peek into the eye of the gold rush hurricane.
read on ...San Francisco History Podcast – Sparkletack has 295 episodes in total of non- explicit content. Total playtime is 42:18:23. The language of the podcast is English. This podcast has been added on December 18th 2022. It might contain more episodes than the ones shown here. It was last updated on March 30th, 2024 08:42.
