Letters From Alcatraz - Michael Esslinger [15]
Frémont and Carson continued their migration south, ultimately engaging in another attack, and taking the Mexican Fort in San Francisco. They again raised their flag, announcing the independence of the newly founded republic. Soon two United States warships arrived in San Francisco, and announced to Frémont and his men that the territories were now under martial law and that California was under jurisdiction of the United States. The Stars and Stripes were then raised over the flag of the California Republic. In another of his more notable acts, Frémont would also take credit for naming the Golden Gate. As he wrote in a personal memoir, he would christen the grand entrance to the bay Chrysopylae, or Golden Gate for the same reason that the harbor of Constantinople was called Chryoceros, or Golden Horn.
John Charles Frémont, the disputed first governor of California, purchased Alcatraz Island for a mere $5,000 in 1846. As a military officer, Frémont recognized the strategic importance of the barren island as a potential site for military fortification.
Several years prior to the war, Mexico had passed legislation allowing governors to grant coastal land titles to Mexican citizens who would agree to develop the land. On June 8, 1846, the last Mexican Governor of California, Pio Pico, granted the title for Alcatraz to Julian Workman, a Mexican national. Workman had petitioned Pico for use of the island stating that “Alcatraces, or Bird Island, has never been inhabited by any person, nor used for any purpose,” and sought the right to develop the land. Alcatraz was granted to Workman under the sole condition that he “cause to be established as soon as possible a light, which may give protection on dark nights to the ships and smaller vessels which may pass there.” It is also documented that Workman never visited the island and never made any attempt to establish a lighthouse as he had agreed. In 1846, his son-in-law Francis Temple sold the island to John Charles Frémont, “in the terms of a bond for the purchase money in my official capacity as governor of California,” for the price of $5,000. The property was eventually conveyed to Palmer Cook & Company, but the money was never paid to Temple.
The earliest known photograph of Alcatraz, taken in 1853 from Nob Hill. This picture shows the island’s original topography, with soft desolate features, prior to any development or habitation.
United States Commodore Robert F. Stockton, a grandson of one the signers of the Declaration of Independence, eventually appointed Frémont, a man with strong political ambitions, as California’s Governor. However the U.S. Government disputed Frémont’s appointment, and later formally ruled that he did not have the authority to make purchases of land as an agent of the United States. Palmer Cook & Company eventually sued the U.S. Government, but they lost their case. The government insisted that even if the land had been rightfully purchased by Frémont, he had made the purchase under the name of the United States Government and therefore had no right to claim it. Frémont would later be court-martialed in Washington D.C., and his unauthorized purchase claims contributed to the trial verdict.
Despite these conflicts, Frémont did make the important observation that Alcatraz was strategically positioned to be a premier military fortification for the protection of San Francisco. Shortly after the signing of the peace treaty with Mexico in February of 1848, the United States Military took notice of the Rock and its strategic value as a military fortress. First Lieutenant William Horace Warner of the Corps of Topographical Engineers had begun conducting