Letters From Alcatraz - Michael Esslinger [16]
Lieutenant William Warner’s 1847 Survey Map of Alcatraz.
The Gold Rush
The discovery of gold in Coloma California in 1848 caused a worldwide frenzy and families from around the globe journeyed to the region with dreams of striking it rich. The population of San Francisco surged from four hundred in 1848 to thirty thousand by late 1849.
The California Gold Rush is remembered as an extraordinary episode in San Francisco’s colorful history and it also influenced the government to find the means of protecting its land claims from other powers. On a cold and crisp morning on January 24, 1848, mill carpenter James Marshall walked down a steep path to a river clearing where his crew was building a mill for John Sutter. Marshall wrote of what followed:
One morning in January – it was a clear, cold morning, I shall never forget that morning – as I was taking my usual walk along the river after shutting off the water, my eye was caught with the glimpse of something shining in the bottom of the ditch. There was about a foot of water running then. I reached my hand down and picked it up. It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold!
The tiny nuggets that Marshall had found that morning in Coloma, California had little value – their total worth was less than fifty cents. But Marshall’s discovery would change California history. Marshall’s find at Sutter’s Mill stirred little excitement from local newspapers and it was a Coloma general store owner named Sam Brannan who would become the mastermind behind the gold frenzy. Marshall told Sam about his find, and soon Brannan had collected several nuggets that he gathered into a small medicine bottle. Riding horseback into San Francisco along old Montgomery Street, he shouted to passing patrons, announcing his gold find in the American River. In January of 1848 the entire population of San Francisco was less than four hundred, but by the following year the populace would explode to over thirty-thousand and Brannan would become exceptionally wealthy from selling mining equipment to the new settlers.
As word spread around the globe of abundant riches in California, the United States Government would evoke security measures to protect its land and mineral resources from seizure by other countries. San Francisco developed into a principle port of U.S. commerce, second only to New York’s grand harbor. The incentive to safeguard San Francisco using the United States Military had now become a key priority. A commission was appointed to select sites for military fortifications, and Alcatraz seemed to be a strategic gift from nature.
A bird’s-eye view of the City of San Francisco, rendered in 1868. Alcatraz Island is clearly visible at the center of the bay with a dense crowd of vessels congregating at the city’s eastern crest.
By 1849, the Port of San Francisco had become tremendously active. Establishing a lighthouse became an immediate priority, to help ships navigate into the new western shipping harbor. Since the military had not yet begun development of the island into the promising military fortress that it would become, the construction of the first western lighthouse was contracted to a Baltimore firm. The crew arrived in San Francisco on January 29, 1853 and immediately began work. The design was for a Cape Cod style two-story cottage with a central light tower and the fifty-foot lighthouse was to be painted white with black trim. The fixed third-order lens did not arrive until October of 1853, and budget problems would delay its installation until June 1, 1854. A fog bell would be added in 1856, after it became clear that frequent fog layers often rendered the light ineffective. The original fog bell had to be rung by hand, but later versions were equipped with a clockwork mechanism that automatically struck