Welcome to the online studio of Francisco Mattos, built w/ printed pieces, experiments, souvenirs, personal projects.
-| May 2021 |-
CORNERS OF S.F.
♥ | Market at Dolores
Roman goddess of war Bellona riding winged Pegasus is foregrounded by California Volunteer during the Spanish American War of 1898. Sculpture by Douglas Tilden.
♣ | Mission at 16th
Offering old-world film and independent cinema experience. SF’s nonprofit Roxie Theater has, during the coronavirus panedmic, switched to a virtual cinema model.
♣ | 6th at Jessie
By noon on March 8 2013, as a small crowd gathered outside the new substation, an unassuming Mayor Ed Lee strolled down the sidewalk, shaking hands until reaching the podium to announce the arrival of a police presence on the first stretch of Sixth Street, where dickensian deeds high and low can, have and will occur. After a speech, the mayor handed the mic to district attorney George Gascon, police chief Greg Suhr, district 6 supervisor Jane Kim, a local resident, and Zack Stender, co-owner of Huckleberry Bicycles, which had moved around the corner.
♣ | Panoramic Hwy
Just north of Golden Gate Bridge, an old growth coastal redwood forest and national monument, Muir Woods.
Light Show
USSR, cyrillic transliteration on lit windows, lights up
Novy Arbat Avenue Moscow.
—| 1965
Alphaville
Scifi movie directed by Jean-Luc Godard about a world of collectivized citizens.
—| 2012
Doctor Font Typeface by Orion Creatives.
—| 1956
1984 …
Movie prop for 1956
movie
adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian tale. Edmond O'Brien and Jan Sterling are the lovers, w/ Michael Redgrave, David Kossoff, Mervyn Johns, Donald Pleasence, Carol Wolveridge, Ernest Clark, Patrick Allen, Michael Ripper, Ewen Solon, Kenneth Griffith.
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure — a ghostly couple.
“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here too!”
“It’s upstairs,”
she murmured. “And in the garden,”
he whispered. “Quietly,”
they said, “or we shall wake them.”
But it wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain,” one might say, and so read on a page or two. “Now they’ve found it,” one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the hosue all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. “What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?” The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing-room. Not that one could ever see them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing-room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling — what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasure buried; the room …” the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, cooly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “The treasure yours.”
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering though the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
“Here we slept,”
she says. And he adds, “Kisses without number.” “Waking in the morning—”
“Silver between the trees—”
“Upstairs—”
“In the garden—”
“When summer came—”
“In the winter snowtime—”
The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer they come; cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken; we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. “Look,”
he breathes. “Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.”
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
“Safe, safe, safe,” the heart of the house beats proudly. “Long years—” he sighs. “Again you found me.” “Here,” she murmurs, “sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—” Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. “Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the house beats widly. Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”
Roman goddess of war Bellona riding winged Pegasus is foregrounded by California Volunteer during the Spanish American War of 1898. Sculpture by Douglas Tilden.
♣ | Mission at 16th
Offering old-world film and independent cinema experience. SF’s nonprofit Roxie Theater has, during the coronavirus panedmic, switched to a virtual cinema model.
♣ | 6th at Jessie
By noon on March 8 2013, as a small crowd gathered outside the new substation, an unassuming Mayor Ed Lee strolled down the sidewalk, shaking hands until reaching the podium to announce the arrival of a police presence on the first stretch of Sixth Street, where dickensian deeds high and low can, have and will occur. After a speech, the mayor handed the mic to district attorney George Gascon, police chief Greg Suhr, district 6 supervisor Jane Kim, a local resident, and Zack Stender, co-owner of Huckleberry Bicycles, which had moved around the corner.
♣ | Panoramic Hwy
Just north of Golden Gate Bridge, an old growth coastal redwood forest and national monument, Muir Woods.
Newspaper ad Evans’ Overcoats ad published by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
...| 1977
Illumination
USSR, cyrillic transliteration on lit windows, lights up
Novy Arbat Avenue Moscow.
...| 1965
Alphaville
Scifi movie directed by Jean-Luc Godard about a world of collectivized citizens.
...| 1920
Typesetting Linotype machine operator.
...| 1920
Bulletin Dada № 6 Francis Picabia, Georges Ribemont Dessaignes, Andre Breton, Paul Dermee, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Tristan Tzara, practitioners of early 20th century
art.
...| 2012
Doctor Font Typeface by Orion Creatives.
...| 1956
1984 …
Movie prop for 1956
movie
adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian tale. Edmond O'Brien and Jan Sterling are the lovers, w/ Michael Redgrave, David Kossoff, Mervyn Johns, Donald Pleasence, Carol Wolveridge, Ernest Clark, Patrick Allen, Michael Ripper, Ewen Solon, Kenneth Griffith.
THE FINISHED PROTOTYPE, w/ a driver’s cab at either end, appeared on the California Street Line in 1899. Trams “ ... were decorated w/ scrollwork and gold trim, using ornate glass transoms and, for paint, maroon and cream.”
How San Francisco’s cable car came to be built will require more than one stop on its telling, wending this way and that, and passing landmarks of wealth and waste.
Before the cable car, the task for getting to Nob Hill was relegated to paying for a ride in a horse-drawn cab. On October 11, 1869, this necessary yet wanton civic cruelty of using animals as beasts of burden changed for the good. The San Francisco Chronicle had a front page article on the death of a wretch. It took place when a horse finally lost it on California Street and, throttled, dragged down to its death.
When Andrew Hallidie read this, he paused and paced his inner office, reflecting on what if anything he could learn from this. Hallidie was already prosperous, although not yet famous. He had inherited a company from his father. The senior Hallidie had invented and then patented a Steel Cable: strands of wire lined up and braided into a rope that was super strong, and proved indispensable in the gold fields and gold mines.
Hallidie took on a failed concern: to build a conveyance capable of conquering the city‘s hills. He bought the Clay Street Hill Railway Co., and by May 1873 had built tracks and a cable assembly up Clay from Portsmouth Square to Nob Hill, a vertical climb of seven blocks.
Early on August 2 1873, a prototype was in place and, lantern-lit, Hallidie stepped on board. Activating a grip lever onto a moving cable, he ascended on that peril-prone maiden voyage. Few were awake to witness, yet by opening day on September 1, the service was in demand. In 1880 over one million tickets were sold.
The first cable cars were tiny trams powered by a patented grip that alternately holds, and releases, a continuously moving steel cable running under the street. Power is supplied by huge drums housed at nearby power stations along the route.
The tram operator is stationed forward of the tram. He employs the grip grabs and holds on to the moving cable, the tram also moves. When grip is released, tram stops, even on a hill, using a gear invention preventing slippage. Besides the tram operator (gripman) is the conductor.
Andrew Smith Hallidie was born on March 17, 1837 in London, to Andrew Smith (b.1798 Dumfrieshire, Scotland) and Julia Johnstone (Lockerbie). He died April 24 1900, in San Francisco. Six years later his cable car system would survive the 1906 Earthquake.
Cable cars then sprouted worldwide, from New York to Hong Kong. Naples crowned its opening by commissioning a song, “Funiculi, Funicula.”
In 1917, Andrew Smith Hallidie had an innovative building named for him. The Hallidie Building (by Willis Polk) has a facade rising eight stories and sheathed in glass.
When news of the discovery of gold in California traveled back east, the brawn and brains of a young nation came westward, where notions of Freedom waltzed hand-in-glove w/ greatness as well as greed.
Accordingly, access from the gold mines to San Francisco were surveyed. Roads, bridges and tracks were built wherever gold was found, w/ waystations established for respite and recreation. The mining methods these men brought w/ them quickly evolved to meet the challenges posed by the Comstock Lode and its tributaries.
The Industrial Revolution created tools used in scientific precisioning, allowing innovated models to be tested and profitably manufactured. Among these ideas was the ingenuous “square set” created by german engineer Philipp Deidesheimer. Grey Brechin picks up the umbilical cord:
The Square Set introduced methods of construction. Deidesheimer’s gift went from constructing safety zones to conduct the backbreaking business of mining into other uses, including the ability of a grid of steel beams and columns to allow support for more height.
❛Skyscraper❜ came into usage in the 1880s; America had fifteen. These buildings usually came w/ modern plumbing, electrical outlets in every room, a telephone line in every unit, central heating, and an elevator.
❛ … NASA took a fresh look at the steel cable in light of a super material, carbon nanotube ... uber-strong, light and flexible. “Space Elevators: An Advanced Earth-Space Infrastructure for the New Millenium” is the feasibility paper of this new science, to erect a track running on cables, from here to the Moon, a journey of some 62,000 miles.❜
Philipp & Mrs Deidesheimer
CABLE CAR NOTES
| Based on San Francisco’s Golden Era by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clego (1060); Cable Car Days in San Francisco by Edgar Myron Kahn (1940); The Headlight, March 1947, Western Pacific Club; Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin (1999); and online articles by Mary Bellis (“The History of Skyscrapers”), Karen Barss (“Manhattan’s Golden Age of Skyscrapers”), and Meghan Neal (“Space Elevators Are Totally Possible”)
| A 1959 episode of TV series Bonanza features a Philipp Deidesheimer plot point.
| Thank you Taryn Edwards, MLIS, Mechanics’ Institute.
| Thank you Penelope Houston, SF Public Library.
Shapes of democracy total, result of centuries, shapes ever projecting other shapes, shapes of turbulent manly cities, shapes of the friends and home-givers of
the whole earth, shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.
In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay, on sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor’d near the shore, an old, dismasted, gray and batter’d ship, disabled, done. After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul’d up at last and hawser’d tight, lies rusting, mouldering.
HISTORIC CENTER RECIPIENT
Agadez, Niger
Starting point for a journey across the Sahara, taking in “ports of call” to Timbuktu, Ghat, then Ghadames, and finally Tripoli, on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Seat of a Tuareg sultanate which was established in 1449. Occupied by the French since the early 1900s, and known of rebellion ever since. The Tuareg people are the original Canaanites from the Bible, inhabiting ancient Palestine and Phoenicia, and its lingua franca is the Hausa language, a subgroup of the Chadic languages group, and therefore a part of the Afroasiatic language family.
Started in the 1400s to serve as the south gateway into the Sahara, the Historic Centre of Agadez in Niger is now a Historic Center Recipient and a 2013 UNESCO World Heritage Site. This desert town was founded to become a center of commerce for the trans-Saharan trade, and by the 1500s the populace was 30,000.
In 1976, area mining for uranium allowed the local economy to established a school, the Ecole des Mines de l’Air.
The 2011 census counted a total of 124,324 people living in Agadez and the European language they speak is French. There is an international airport named after a Tuareg leader, Mano Dayak, but due to the ongoing Tuareg rebellion in the region, Agadez is unsafe for travel.
“Our last arrow! We’ll fire it to stop the getaway car – then end our careers as Green Arrow and Speedy!” “Yes, with our secret identities exposed, we’re uselss against criminals!”
Immortal Dane Whitman brought his time-tested skills as the Black Knight to the early days of filmmaking, creating a phantasmagorical chariot race for Fritz Lang’s 1929 silent scifi Woman in the Moon. These days, he still does stunts for Hollywood.
Although he owns a Legion flight ring from the 30th century, when not in a hurry to get somewhere Michael Jon Carter prefers to drive. He comes from the future, sheathed in a super-suit boasting futuristic tech, but the feel of rubber on road gives Booster Gold a jolt unlike any other.
Little is known about this shapeshifting foe of Batman Beyond. Her fluid body allows Inque to seep into and out of her liquid limo.
Jimon Kwan’s car is parked behind the world’s first eco-fire station. She’s there to give a demonstration – in her capacity as Silver of China Force – on her mutant ability to drain heat and then convert it into light.
Before he went to war as the Fighting American, Nelson Flagg’s father gave him a 1915 Ford Speedster – it later crashed and burned. The original is also shown, fresh off the assembly line.
It takes two of Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, to control this wide jeep because it’s sure-as-hell gonna be a bumpy ride.
The grandfather and great-grandfather of James Jesse were from the world of vaudeville, which is why their spawn continued their forays into self-powered locomotion and built a portable air-cooled engine, hooked up to an accelerator switch, an engine cut-off switch, and single-horsepowered roller skates, and later tormenting the Flash w/ weaponized toys as the Trickster.
An inside-out refrigerated truck driven by Leonard Snart, commiting crime as Captain Cold using an experimental gun based on stolen science and shooting absolute-zero blasts that solidify as ice.
H.G. Wells jumped at the chance to take a spin in an experimental contraption that his American friend and fellow futurist, the head of Stark Industries, brought over to London. The author of The Invisible Man is photographed sitting in the back seat as the self-driving car crosses Tower Bridge.
This tasty USSR-era Trabant was on display in a Belgrade art gallery when Harlequin, the “merry menace”, happened by, took one look, and promptly brought it home.
This rarely seen Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic belongs to Arthur Curry (Aquaman) and is nicknamed the Drop because he almost never has need for it.
Even super-heroes driving sports cars have to stop and pay toll, as the Thing heckles Johnny Storm’s tossing chops. “Let’s get going, Torchy! Hey! Ya missed the coin bucket!” “But I threw it okay! It wasn’t my fault! The bucket moved!”
After punching Hitler in his debut, the city of Manhattan awarded Steve Rogers w/ a spanking red 1937 Ford, and he promptly took off to drive cross-country. Then he made up for lost years w/ a Corvette. These days, his ride is a 1960 Chevrolet, always parked on the street; repeatedly stolen then returned because it was a badge of honor to leave the keys in the ignition.
Before his life was imbued w/ Bahdnisian powers and he took control of the human thunderbolt, Johnny Thunder was in Europe, having won a music scholarship while in high school. With some of his prize money he bought a second-hand Minor Morris convertible.
Bentley Wittman, narrowly escaping the Human Torch, is chauffeured back to his mansion on Long Island and his life as the Wizard. “Fire is a powerful weapon! But I possess the greatest weapon of all – the world’s greatest brain!”
No way is the mysterious Dolphin a landlubber, so whenever adventures take her ashore she always rides in her 1962 Shark roadster, w/ its aquarium pod and other aquatic must-haves allowing her safe passage.
Retiring as the Sorcerer Supreme, Steven Strange’s mentor, the Ancient One, master of mystic arts, drove home to Kamar-Taj in Tibet, crossing rivers w/ the aid of local villagers, ever grateful for deliverance from the evil Kaluu.
Suddenly, the hovering air-car is jolted by a fantastic wave of force … and that is when Nick Fury sees an awesome figure who stands waiting to confront the dynamic director of SHIELD …
A surreal episode of the Knights of the Galaxy is just starting. “For King Arthur and Britain.” (Mystery In Space #8 (June-July 1952))
To have a bit of fun while Superman is recovering from their latest encounter, Mr Mxyzptlk, the imp from elsewhere, uses fifth-dimensional science to rearrange this car and proceeds to demonstrate how to operate it.
Vic Sage blends into his camouflage car, ephemeral behind a pseudoderm mask, during the time he joined Blue Beetle, Captain Atom and Nightshade as the Question in the original Sentinels of Justice.
When insect-female hybrid Queen Zazzala of planet Korll returned for a rematch w/ the Justic League, she went first to the Citroen museum in Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris, and took possession of an experimental 1940s light-weight hovercar which she used as a beehive-nest. Badly damaged and abandoned, it still oscillates when touched, awaiting new instructions from the Queen Bee.
The nomadic Roy Harper, leaving behind his Speedy persona, took to the road in an oft-vandalized therefore oft-disguised van. When he landed in England, the former battling bowman persuaded Banksy to let him take the famous SWAT van for an extended spin as Arsenal.
Random page from the mid-century portfolio of billionaire industrialist Tony Stark: 1958 Nucleon, Norman Bel Geddes prototype, 1949 Tabot Iago, 1959 Firebird.
Sue Richards fetched Agatha Harkness, her boy Franklin’s new governess, in a custom-built Hispano-Suiza, previously owned by an heir to the Dubonnet fortune. It was a regal ride befitting the lead-witch of New Salem, who has brought along a mystical rocking seahorse as a baby present.
An early electric car prototype from the morbid mind of Oswald Hubert Loomis, aka the Prankster.
When her mom asked if her new car was safe, Jennifer Walters sent this blurry pix of her unusual find while in college. It proved ideal for camping, and that was when she got into an accident, needed a blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce, and began a new existence as the ravishing rough She-Hulk.
In 1923, Tony Stark’s dad visited the Fiat Factory in Turin and openly admired their roof treatment. When what later became the Avengers Mansion was built, he put a race-car track on the roof.
Besides lending his occult skills to combat evil, Giovanni Zatara performs as a stage magician, and is the reason he drives a 1959 Lincoln, which has a sturdy trunk to fit all his stage props.
Tony Stark awarded his executive assistant Pepper Potts w/ this pink 1954 Ford in recognition for her aid in their first caper together, battling “The Mad Pharaoh”.
Kent Allard’s elusive 1957 Lincoln Premiere, which he drove as the Shadow, caught on a U.S. postage stamp.
Blackhawk’s 1949 Hudson, later owned by Jack Kerouac when he was doing a lot of driving. Restored and no longer driven.
Carter Hall was so smitten when Hal Jordan drove up in a Phantom Corsair that the test-pilot promptly gifted this one-off automobile to the extraterrestrial detective, known to Earth as the Hawkman, for a planet-warming present.
Although a haunted horse accompanies his cursed existence, the ghost of highwayman James Craddock also owns a train, breaking the law as the Gentleman Ghost, and traveling the world w/ out a home.
Long after the owner of Gotham Broadcasting Co. Alan Welling Scott, was visited by the Green Flame of Life (“Three times shall I flame green! First to bring death! Second to bring life! Third to bring power!”) and fought evildoers as the Green Lantern, he would continue to tool around in his trusted 1939 Chevrolet clunker.
Prof. X’s band of super-human teenagers are driven to the airport in a specially-built Rolls Royce w/ dark-tinted windows. “Boy! It musta taken a heap of green stamps to buy a chariot like this!” “No joking, please! Concentrate on your mission! Review your powers! Our foe is certain to be highly dangerous!”
Brainiac 5 retooled an antique and created the “frisbee”, armed w/ repel-rays, as a combat suit for Chuck Taine, the Bouncing Boy.
Hooking up to his Plymouth Barracuda’s batteries to recharge his pyro-costume, Garfield Lynns unleashes a color crimewave based on rainbow rays as the Human Firefly.
Ted Grant’s ride when he’s fighting crime as Wildcat, immortalized on a U.S. postage stamp.
Brainiac 5 constructed this bi-cycle for Luornu Durgo Taine (Duo Damsel) to augment her super-power.
With wealth to spare, socialite Wesley Dodds had a taste for danger and cars. Which is why he could imperil his 1935 Bugatti Aerolithe by taking it out to strike terror among wrongdoers as the Sandman, declaring “There is no land beyond the law, where tyrants rule w/ unshakable power! It’s but a dream from which the evil wake to face their fate … their terrifying hour!”
A gift from Brainiac 5, this experimental bike allowed Lana Lang to apply 30th-century technology to her 20th-century life. While fiddling around w/ the teleportation button during a ride in the countryside, she managed to trade bodies w/ all the insects in a nearby field, becoming for a spell the Insect Queen.
Socialite Kathy Kane, in her first appearance as a masked crimefighter, leading the Batmobile into the fray on her Bat Bike. “Hurry, Batman – the Batwoman is beating us on this mission!” (Detective Comics #233 July 1956)
The keys to this experimental car from Stark Industries were handed to Matt Murdock, giving added comfort to his forays as Daredevil into existential evil.
Samuel Joseph Scudder drove this solar laboratory on wheels in his first appearance in Flash #105, “The Master of Mirrors”.
This innocuous van offers storage for Rory Regan’s collection of mystical rags, allowing Ragman, the tatterdemalion of justice, to find respite after a jolt of electricity ran into his body and which by all accounts hasn’t exited yet.
The second Shield, Lancelot Strong, drove a 1970 AMC Rebel for a short period until its color scheme gave him away to every bad actor on every city block.
Model kit from Aurora for Britt Reid’s special-built 1965 Chrysler, featuring a 413 engine. Bruce Lee as Kato drove the Black Beauty to fight crime w/ the Green Hornet, ever ready to deploy a pair of hood-mounted machine guns, a flame thrower, and stinger missles.
Sowing feline felony in Gotham City w/ her Cat Mobile, Selina Kyle leads a lawless life as theCatwoman.
Winslow Schott, the terrible Toyman, had his fully functional dwarf Cadillac surrounded by indignant townfolk hoping to save Doll Man and Doll Girl from a threat they were not yet aware of.
The seldom driven Joker Mobile is deployed to track down a double-crossing mobster. “The whole job – the safe-cracking, the getaway - all bear the stamp of Dink Devers! The cops think he died – but he’s right here in town, at the Blake Hotel! Ha-HA-HA!” “Gosh, Joker – I bet you’re right!”
A proficiency in auto mechanics as well as miniaturization landed Ray Palmer a plum position as a team member rehabilitating a Ferrari 375 Plus. Palmer kept tinkering some more on the racing car, giving it a capability of being shrunk, and constitutes the first step in his quest, as the Atom, to jump into, then out of, the quantum realm at will.
While parked on a cloud, the Ghost Patrol are actively bored ... “Ho Hum! Another quiet day. Nothing doing on our sector of earth lately.” “Strange! This is usually the most troublesome of the planets!” “What’s that ahead? Why – it’s a horse!”
King T’challa of Wakanda’s elusive jeep parked in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, where he was on a secret mission as the Black Panther.
This “fire” truck, designed by Stark Industries, later patented by General Motors as the Futurliner, was used to house JIm Hammond, an android spawned in the mind of Prof. Phineas T. Horton. This lab-on wheels is remotely controlled, insulated inside to withstand the intense fire generated by the golden age Human Torch.
Illustrated w/ collages, drawings, maps, paintings, photographs, prints and quotes
|⁋|
Out west, when 1848 was only twenty-four days old, mechanic James Marshall was making a routine inspection on the grounds of a sawmill he managed for his employer. That was when the New Jersey native noticed some odd-looking ore in a water channel of the South Fork of the American River. It was “... bright, yet malleable. I then tried it between two rocks, and found that it could be beaten into a different shape, but not broken.”
|⁋|
Nine days after Marshall emerged from the waters w/ his find, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, transferring a large tract of Mexico to the United States.
|⁋|
These concurrent events together precipitated the California Gold Rush of 1849, when folks came from all over, bringing dreams while praying to the god and goddess of wealth for a show of “colour”
|⁋|
The first came from Monterey, San Francisco, San Jose and Sonoma: when clerks, doctors, laborers, lawyers, mechanics, rancheros left their jobs. Sailors deserted their ships. Soldiers deserted the Mexican War. As word spread more came from Hawai‘i, Mexico and Oregon.
|⁋|
Gold seekers showing up near the sawmill of John August Sutter, where gold was first discovered, had no need for milled lumber, and his business went into decline. All the while, a new settlement grew across the American River to become Coloma, the first gold rush town. Nearby stands a monument, by the Native Sons of the Golden West, to mark the grave of James Wilson Marshall, the “discoverer of gold.”
One can cross Panama to get to California rather than sail around Cape Horn. Up Chagres river to the town of Culebra; then donkeys to Gulf of Panama, eleven miles away.
Maps were consulted and what became the California Trial began w/ existing routes. Emigrants showed up along the Missouri river and towns in Illinois or Iowa. Wagon trains hitched, they headed out, crossing landapes of grasslands, prairies, steppes, valleys and rivers to Wyoming and Fort Laramie.
|⁋|
The only way to cross the Rockies was a corridor beyond Fort Laramie, level and broad. South Pass afforded several routes passage to California. At a fork in the road soon after, the Oregon Trail veers right while the Mormon Trail turns south toward Fort Bridger.
|⁋| Overland travelers chose routes dependent on starting point and final destination. Other factors were the condition of their wagons, livestock, and the availability of water.
|⁋|
From California, one can get to Oregon on the Applegate Trail (1846), an alternative to the hazardous last leg of the Oregon Trail.
|⁋| The Oregon Trail begins in Missouri and leaves either Fort Leavenworth, Independence or Saint Joseph for a two thousand mile trek to the Oregon Territory. Past the Great Plains, then the Rockies, heading west northwest to the Snake river, Fort Boise, Witman Mission, The Dales, Fort Vancouver, the Columbia river, and the coast.
The Santa Fe Trail starts off in Missouri, rolls through Kansas and a corner of Colorado. Crossing the Arkansas river before dropping to New Mexico, the trail loses its identity somewhat in Santa Fe, where it is braided to the Gila Trail, a local 16th-c. commerce and travel high road, bringing trade from inland to the coast.
|⁋|
The Mormon Trail, gathers in Illinois and wends by Iowa and Nebraska before joining established trails in Wyoming. Together they cross the Rockies, then the Mormon Trail continues south southwest to Utah Territory to end up in Los Angeles. Besides the overlanders there were also seafarers.
|⁋| An eight-month sea route from New York to San Francisco would involve a hazardous rounding of Cape Horn.
A 49er carries pickaxe, shovel and pan. Can add a rocker and a hopper; some also conduct hydraulic experiments. A water wheel would be jim-dandy, to pick up individual quantities of gold-bearing gravel and sand.
Personal gear: pair of blankets, frying-pan, flour, salt pork, brandy (or other sanctifying spirit). Field gear must-haves: pickaxe, shovel and pan. Some procure a mule.
|⁋| Gold miners w/ no financial backing learn to congregate along mountain roads and wait for supply wagons passing through, bringing food and tools and carrying out gold dust. Saturday nights were for salooning and carousing. Sunday is a holiday – laundry, tool repair, swapping stories, writing letters, napping.
|⁋| A twelve inch shallow sheet-iron pan to rinse soil w/ water and locate the gold.
|⁋| A rocker is a rectangular wooden box mounted on two rockers and set at a downward angle.
|⁋|
The hopper is a box sitting on top of the rocker, lined w/ a sheet of perforated iron. Beneath is an area called the “riddle-box.”
|⁋| The long tom is an improved rocker plus hopper, reaching to twenty feet in length. A long sheet of perforated iron lines the bottom and beneath that iw the riddle-box.
|⁋| Women too had gold fever, coming from Mexico, Chile, Peru, England, France, New York and New Orleans.
|⁋| Depicted in history as adventuress, courtesan, harlot, pickpocket, prostitute and the demimonde, these women were also bookkeepers, cooks, laundresses, shop-keepers, maids, wives. When mountain roads improved sufficiently to make travel between towns feasible, they set forth as performers.
|⁋|
Mrs Clappe came west in 1851 w/ her husband. In her letters home she gives an account of the era, about geology and a visit to a rural doctor’s rude office of pine shingles and cotton cloth.
Yerba Buena was a hamlet on the San Francisco peninsula w/ an excellent harbor. The Spaniards established a maritime trading post and built the Mission of San Francisco de Asis. Ships docking in its cove discharged seafarers to a Spanish-style plaza known as Portsmouth Square.
|⁋| On arrival gold seekers rented lodgings in shanties and tent towns, and stayed long enough to buy tools and provisions before heading out.
|⁋|
Brought over from Australia to perform labor, English convicts deserted en masse and instead formed a gang. Soon a frontier patch of lawlessness, Sydney Town, sprouted at the base of Telegraph Hill. The Sydney Ducks preyed on people and property, augmented by a gang of lady pickpockets, and willingly committed murder to survive.
|⁋| The embers of Sydney Town rekindled and gave birth to the Barbary Coast, chock-a-block w/ bars, saloons, brothels, concert halls, dance halls; where “getting shanghaied” was first rehearsed. Survived the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, by 1917 the red-light district was no more.
Sutter’s Mill on the South Fork of the American River.
Coloma, next to Sutter’s Mill, was the first gold mining town. A post office and jail were added in 1852 – both proved popular. Gold mining also took place north at Bidwell’s Bar, Cut Eye Foster’s Bar, Downieville, Dutch Flat, Goodyear’s Bar, Grass Valley, Helltown, Illinoistown, Iowa Hill, Kanaka Flat, Lousy Level, Marysville, Murderers Bar, Nevada City, Plumas City, Poker Flat, Rough and Ready, Washington, Whiskey Flat, Wisconsin Hill, and You Bet.
|⁋|
South at Angels Camp, Chinese Camp, Dogtown, Fair Play, Hornitos, Jackson, Mokelumme Hill, Mormon Bar, Rawhide, Rich Gulch, Shaw’s Flat, Sonora, Volcano.
|⁋|
Gold was found along tributaries to the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers. At Auburn, Diamond Springs, Grizzly Flats, Missouri Flat, Placerville.
|⁋|
Home to Native Americans incl. the Miwok, the Sierra Nevada was rudely affected by the Gold Rush. In 1849 an incident occurred along the Middle Fork of the American River when some 49ers died and some indigenes killed. An uneasy truce obtained when Native Americans were hired on as laborers and paid in tin, but by 1900 their population had declined to only ±16,000.
|⁋| Before James Cagney was the Frisco Kid and Edward G.
Robinson dramatized life in the Barbary Coast era, there was a 1913 feature, The Last Night of the Barbary Coast, now a lost film.
The 1849 state census counted 42,000 overlanders and 35,000 seafarers caught up by gold fever; together w/ 3,000 sailors who had deserted ships.
Like all who seek a better tomorrow, the Chinese too came to the California Gold Rush, formed a fraternity in Coloma, squatted spent claims and worked as a team over the “tailings” left behind. In 1880 this gold-mining Chinatown was lost to fire.
Planets cross the sky from west to east, in a prograde motion. Sometimes, one will slow down and begin moving west to east, a retrograde motion – to revisit aspects and sanction possibilities. In the schemes of this and this, Ceres ended up playing host to Mercury for three weeks during one of his 2021 retrogrades. And that was when the mother to Persephone learned from the complex one that Jupiter and Saturn will have a long overdue hug in Aquarius. Mars will not retrograde and Neptune spends half the year in water. Uranus is still ankle deep in bullshit, and there’s a ranging discussion on Diana and what to do w/ the moons and moonmoons.
Uranus Rx
The graeco-roman sky god airs inner convictions and uses his outside voice doing so (tau aug-dec). Uranus is siblings w/ love, hell, and mother Earth. Uranus is also spherical, blue-green, attacked by solar winds because the avatar to the zodiacal wheel is flat on his back, wrapped in iced waters stained w/ dark organics all the while exhaling stupendous fumes.
Saturn Rx
Awareness of proximity to the god of duty stepping backwards can put a stop to all mind games (aqu jun-oct). Wallflowers can bloom for a season. Thugs and enigmas can expect a comeuppance. Early sky watchers saw an unusual planet surrounded by a sickle, so named it after Saturn, ursurper of heaven 1.0. The king of the titans is never warmer than minus 240 degrees, and his many moons and rings continually send down organic building blocks in frozen packaging.
Vesta Rx
Leaving 2020 fast as her feet could run, Vesta stops just nineteen days into 2021, and will spend 90 days unspooling a bit of 2020 back to perform a proper kindling rite and re-settle ‘first flame’, her sacred charge, in safer surroundings (vir jan-apr). The resultant glow reveals the venerable roman fire goddess to be bean-shaped and wearing a smooth basalt cloak studded w/ achondrites spears tipped w/ meteorites: diogenite, eucrite and howardite.
Pluto Rx
The roman infernal god is silently ferrying the dead back to the other side (cap may-sep). Pluto was deemed a primary planets when he was discovered. Now the ‘unseeen’ is better known as the shadow harbinger of a vast celestial court of pantheons paying heed to the Sun.
Ceres Rx
The daughter to Jupiter chooses her words carefully because she is cognizant of sharp implements (gem oct-dec). Ceres is the premier asteroid deity, stepping into view at the Observatory of Palermo on the first day of 1801. The aggrieved roman goddess of agriculture was spherical, wearing a pockmarked swimsuit, studded w/ salted pearls and slathered w/ organic building blocks, and doing laps in an ocean world of sea water.
Neptune Rx
Altered states are best practised alone as a veil descends on everything (pis jul-nov). The roman marine god gets to crest virgin waves, under unflattering light, knowing when geniality is at stake then indulgence + social outings tend touchy feely spiritualized really. The liquid liege had chosen the date of his resurfacing into history by sending a dream, in 1846, to a sleeping mathematician. The woke mortal returned to the New Berlin Observatory, entered new coordinates, and found Neptune sitting on his trident throne.
Juno Rx
Confidences can come undone, and events play out at cross-purposes (sag apr-jul). Nursed by the four seasons, Juno grew up prone to distractions. Especially now that the roman sky goddess found out that her greek-half lives just 64 asteroids away.
Jupiter Rx
Social obligations can come w/ a steady drip of dystopia (aqu jul-oct). Babylonian sky watchers paid close attention to the planet Jupiter and its annual return, and used this 12-year span of the reigning roman sky god as a 7th-c. BC structure to describe the zodiac of heaven, pin the constellations, begin a map of a hypothetical heaven.
Chiron Rx
This hybrid-spawn to Saturn and an oceanid-mare (long story) knows to wear sensible shoes (ari jul-dec). Already on a chaotic orbit, prone to head injuries, Chiron is the first of his kind: a collective of asteroids w/ comet tails.
Pallas Rx
The graeco-roman goddess of wisdom shapeshifts – becoming even harder to emulate – yet presents spartan (pis jul-nov). Afterwards, Pallas turns her grey eyes back on the two fishes whose waters she is currently swimming in. One headstrong the other lost, in ‘an ocean of energies in which two vast complementary ties can be distinguished’.
Venus Rx
The heart risks sabotage when attraction to the unattractive becomes fashionable (cap mid-dec). Beast and the beauty: escrow walk and pillow talks.
Mercury Rx
The roman messenger god flies fleet as thought over a year warped by avarice and thrice met by pushback. A friendship can be lost (aqu feb). Ego won’t stand down (gem jun). Tempests in teacups can cause a bout of chitchat opinions (lib oct).
Diana Rx
Some semi-public pedestal toppling might occur (cap may-jul). In 1863 Diana dashed into reality, darkly carbonaceous and primitive, as befits the roman goddess of the hunt.
Eris Rx Innocence can suffer, and some growing up might happen; when haste finds balance w/ waste (ari jan-dec). While the 21st-c. was young the greek priestess to Khaos stepped out of the Kuiper belt, fully formed. The goddess of discord is sheathed in white-white methane ice shedding miasmas.
Hygiea Rx
Secrets can die and Hygiea might be leaking toxin(leo jan-mar). The greek medicine goddess had emerged in 1849, spherical and intact.
Pholus Rx
Any bodily injury incurred while retrograde (cap apr-aug) can take a longer time to mend. Accidentally poisoned by Medusa’s blood, the greek centaur of Mt Pholoë expired and came back as a 110-mile wide asteroid w/ a comet tail.
:: Silent Protest 2020
Real Americans Protect Other Americans :: Climate Strike 2019
Students worldwide walk out of class in solidarity for a livable world. :: Mural Day 2016
(ABOVE) 24th and South Van Ness. Mural Day takes place in the Mission District of San Francisco, where a long history of street-level murals of diverse subjects, the people’s art, is celebrated. (BELOW) A wall mural of sixteen panels appeared on the corner of Mission and 18th streets on May 1, during a time of peak tech, w/ new restaurants all w/in walking distance.
FLASH FICTION ¶
DURING THAT SUMMER,
when Jane and John drove cross country to San Francisco, a riot of sorts broke out in a drinking establishment by Ocean Beach.
¶
THEY HAPPENED to be driving by when news crew arrived and so ended up becoming part of local history on their first night in town. Spectators were interviewed and Jane is in the broadcast: Leather skirt and sci-fi hairdo, wearing boots that she finally lost down in the Salinas Valley where John’s band played and she had taken them off for only “ ... a new york minute I swear,” but all this happened much later.
¶
A SONG WAS PENNED to commemorate that first night. John: ‘ ... by coincidence Jane and I were driving by and saw the whole thing. She even got interviewed for the local news. I forget what her answer was but it became the punchline. Anyway, I wrote this song the next day. It’s our second song, never performed it live.’ ¶
FROM A NEWSPAPER CLIPPING dated July 17, 2004: ‘A melee broke out inside a tavern by the beach, a known hangout spot for musicians. It started around 1:30 a.m. just when last call was announced. Four squad cars converged within five minutes due to the seriousness of the situation; the police spokesperson would not elaborate further.’
¶
IN ALL NINETEEN were taken into custody, including four females; no conventional weapon was found on anyone. The account in next day’s paper managed to get every name spelled wrong but had an accurate head count. Fourteen were booked and released the next morning, the others to be arraigned over unspecified charges. Within a week the reporter was quietly let go. He went on to write a novel, Fact Into Fiction, eventually moved and was glimpsed late in life living next to the Straits of Herakles.
¶
ACCORDING TO THE BARTENDER’s subsequent testimony, the riot appears to have been started over a misunderstanding: a special walking cane supposedly stolen from the person of W.S. Burroughs the day before (he was in town for a reading and his cane did go missing) was displayed prominently behind the bar.
Shapes of democracy total, result of centuries, shapes ever projecting other shapes, shapes of turbulent manly cities, shapes of the friends and home-givers of
the whole earth, shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.
In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay, on sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor’d near the shore, an old, dismasted, gray and batter’d ship, disabled, done. After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul’d up at last and hawser’d tight, lies rusting, mouldering.
CABLE CAR
THE FINISHED PROTOTYPE, w/ a driver’s cab at either end, appeared on the California Street Line in 1899. Trams “ ... were decorated w/ scrollwork and gold trim, using ornate glass transoms and, for paint, maroon and cream.”
How San Francisco’s cable car came to be built will require more than one stop on its telling, wending this way and that, and passing landmarks of wealth and waste.
Before the cable car, the task for getting to Nob Hill was relegated to paying for a ride in a horse-drawn cab. On October 11, 1869, this necessary yet wanton civic cruelty of using animals as beasts of burden changed for the good. The San Francisco Chronicle had a front page article on the death of a wretch. It took place when a horse finally lost it on California Street and, throttled, dragged down to its death.
When Andrew Hallidie read this, he paused and paced his inner office, reflecting on what if anything he could learn from this. Hallidie was already prosperous, although not yet famous. He had inherited a company from his father. The senior Hallidie had invented and then patented a Steel Cable: strands of wire lined up and braided into a rope that was super strong, and proved indispensable in the gold fields and gold mines.
Hallidie took on a failed concern: to build a conveyance capable of conquering the city‘s hills. He bought the Clay Street Hill Railway Co., and by May 1873 had built tracks and a cable assembly up Clay from Portsmouth Square to Nob Hill, a vertical climb of seven blocks.
Early on August 2 1873, a prototype was in place and, lantern-lit, Hallidie stepped on board. Activating a grip lever onto a moving cable, he ascended on that peril-prone maiden voyage. Few were awake to witness, yet by opening day on September 1, the service was in demand. In 1880 over one million tickets were sold.
The first cable cars were tiny trams powered by a patented grip that alternately holds, and releases, a continuously moving steel cable running under the street. Power is supplied by huge drums housed at nearby power stations along the route.
The tram operator is stationed forward of the tram. He employs the grip grabs and holds on to the moving cable, the tram also moves. When grip is released, tram stops, even on a hill, using a gear invention preventing slippage. Besides the tram operator (gripman) is the conductor.
Andrew Smith Hallidie was born on March 17, 1837 in London, to Andrew Smith (b.1798 Dumfrieshire, Scotland) and Julia Johnstone (Lockerbie). He died April 24 1900, in San Francisco. Six years later his cable car system would survive the 1906 Earthquake.
Cable cars then sprouted worldwide, from New York to Hong Kong. Naples crowned its opening by commissioning a song, “Funiculi, Funicula.”
In 1917, Andrew Smith Hallidie had an innovative building named for him. The Hallidie Building (by Willis Polk) has a facade rising eight stories and sheathed in glass.
When news of the discovery of gold in California traveled back east, the brawn and brains of a young nation came westward, where notions of Freedom waltzed hand-in-glove w/ greatness as well as greed.
Accordingly, access from the gold mines to San Francisco were surveyed. Roads, bridges and tracks were built wherever gold was found, w/ waystations established for respite and recreation. The mining methods these men brought w/ them quickly evolved to meet the challenges posed by the Comstock Lode and its tributaries.
The Industrial Revolution created tools used in scientific precisioning, allowing innovated models to be tested and profitably manufactured. Among these ideas was the ingenuous “square set” created by german engineer Philipp Deidesheimer. Grey Brechin picks up the umbilical cord:
The Square Set introduced methods of construction. Deidesheimer’s gift went from constructing safety zones to conduct the backbreaking business of mining into other uses, including the ability of a grid of steel beams and columns to allow support for more height.
❛Skyscraper❜ came into usage in the 1880s; America had fifteen. These buildings usually came w/ modern plumbing, electrical outlets in every room, a telephone line in every unit, central heating, and an elevator.
❛ … NASA took a fresh look at the steel cable in light of a super material, carbon nanotube ... uber-strong, light and flexible. “Space Elevators: An Advanced Earth-Space Infrastructure for the New Millenium” is the feasibility paper of this new science, to erect a track running on cables, from here to the Moon, a journey of some 62,000 miles.❜
Philipp & Mrs Deidesheimer
CABLE CAR NOTES
| Based on San Francisco’s Golden Era by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clego (1060); Cable Car Days in San Francisco by Edgar Myron Kahn (1940); The Headlight, March 1947, Western Pacific Club; Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin (1999); and online articles by Mary Bellis (“The History of Skyscrapers”), Karen Barss (“Manhattan’s Golden Age of Skyscrapers”), and Meghan Neal (“Space Elevators Are Totally Possible”)
| A 1959 episode of TV series Bonanza features a Philipp Deidesheimer plot point.
| Thank you Taryn Edwards, MLIS, Mechanics’ Institute.
| Thank you Penelope Houston, SF Public Library.
Starting point for a journey across the Sahara, taking in “ports of call” to Timbuktu, Ghat, then Ghadames, and finally Tripoli, on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Seat of a Tuareg sultanate which was established in 1449. Occupied by the French since the early 1900s, and known of rebellion ever since. The Tuareg people are the original Canaanites from the Bible, inhabiting ancient Palestine and Phoenicia, and its lingua franca is the Hausa language, a subgroup of the Chadic languages group, and therefore a part of the Afroasiatic language family.
Started in the 1400s to serve as the south gateway into the Sahara, the Historic Centre of Agadez in Niger is now a Historic Center Recipient and a 2013 UNESCO World Heritage Site. This desert town was founded to become a center of commerce for the trans-Saharan trade, and by the 1500s the populace was 30,000.
In 1976, area mining for uranium allowed the local economy to established a school, the Ecole des Mines de l’Air.
The 2011 census counted a total of 124,324 people living in Agadez and the European language they speak is French. There is an international airport named after a Tuareg leader, Mano Dayak, but due to the ongoing Tuareg rebellion in the region, Agadez is unsafe for travel.
Illustrated w/ collages, drawings, maps, paintings, photographs, prints and quotes
|⁋|
Out west, when 1848 was only twenty-four days old, mechanic James Marshall was making a routine inspection on the grounds of a sawmill he managed for his employer. That was when the New Jersey native noticed some odd-looking ore in a water channel of the South Fork of the American River. It was “... bright, yet malleable. I then tried it between two rocks, and found that it could be beaten into a different shape, but not broken.”
|⁋|
Nine days after Marshall emerged from the waters w/ his find, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, transferring a large tract of Mexico to the United States.
|⁋|
These concurrent events together precipitated the California Gold Rush of 1849, when folks came from all over, bringing dreams while praying to the god and goddess of wealth for a show of “colour”
|⁋|
The first came from Monterey, San Francisco, San Jose and Sonoma: when clerks, doctors, laborers, lawyers, mechanics, rancheros left their jobs. Sailors deserted their ships. Soldiers deserted the Mexican War. As word spread more came from Hawai‘i, Mexico and Oregon.
|⁋|
Gold seekers showing up near the sawmill of John August Sutter, where gold was first discovered, had no need for milled lumber, and his business went into decline. All the while, a new settlement grew across the American River to become Coloma, the first gold rush town. Nearby stands a monument, by the Native Sons of the Golden West, to mark the grave of James Wilson Marshall, the “discoverer of gold.”
One can cross Panama to get to California rather than sail around Cape Horn. Up Chagres river to the town of Culebra; then donkeys to Gulf of Panama, eleven miles away.
Maps were consulted and what became the California Trial began w/ existing routes. Emigrants showed up along the Missouri river and towns in Illinois or Iowa. Wagon trains hitched, they headed out, crossing landapes of grasslands, prairies, steppes, valleys and rivers to Wyoming and Fort Laramie.
|⁋|
The only way to cross the Rockies was a corridor beyond Fort Laramie, level and broad. South Pass afforded several routes passage to California. At a fork in the road soon after, the Oregon Trail veers right while the Mormon Trail turns south toward Fort Bridger.
|⁋| Overland travelers chose routes dependent on starting point and final destination. Other factors were the condition of their wagons, livestock, and the availability of water.
|⁋|
From California, one can get to Oregon on the Applegate Trail (1846), an alternative to the hazardous last leg of the Oregon Trail.
|⁋| The Oregon Trail begins in Missouri and leaves either Fort Leavenworth, Independence or Saint Joseph for a two thousand mile trek to the Oregon Territory. Past the Great Plains, then the Rockies, heading west northwest to the Snake river, Fort Boise, Witman Mission, The Dales, Fort Vancouver, the Columbia river, and the coast.
The Santa Fe Trail starts off in Missouri, rolls through Kansas and a corner of Colorado. Crossing the Arkansas river before dropping to New Mexico, the trail loses its identity somewhat in Santa Fe, where it is braided to the Gila Trail, a local 16th-c. commerce and travel high road, bringing trade from inland to the coast.
|⁋|
The Mormon Trail, gathers in Illinois and wends by Iowa and Nebraska before joining established trails in Wyoming. Together they cross the Rockies, then the Mormon Trail continues south southwest to Utah Territory to end up in Los Angeles. Besides the overlanders there were also seafarers.
|⁋| An eight-month sea route from New York to San Francisco would involve a hazardous rounding of Cape Horn.
A 49er carries pickaxe, shovel and pan. Can add a rocker and a hopper; some also conduct hydraulic experiments. A water wheel would be jim-dandy, to pick up individual quantities of gold-bearing gravel and sand.
Personal gear: pair of blankets, frying-pan, flour, salt pork, brandy (or other sanctifying spirit). Field gear must-haves: pickaxe, shovel and pan. Some procure a mule.
|⁋| Gold miners w/ no financial backing learn to congregate along mountain roads and wait for supply wagons passing through, bringing food and tools and carrying out gold dust. Saturday nights were for salooning and carousing. Sunday is a holiday – laundry, tool repair, swapping stories, writing letters, napping.
|⁋| A twelve inch shallow sheet-iron pan to rinse soil w/ water and locate the gold.
|⁋| A rocker is a rectangular wooden box mounted on two rockers and set at a downward angle.
|⁋|
The hopper is a box sitting on top of the rocker, lined w/ a sheet of perforated iron. Beneath is an area called the “riddle-box.”
|⁋| The long tom is an improved rocker plus hopper, reaching to twenty feet in length. A long sheet of perforated iron lines the bottom and beneath that iw the riddle-box.
|⁋| Women too had gold fever, coming from Mexico, Chile, Peru, England, France, New York and New Orleans.
|⁋| Depicted in history as adventuress, courtesan, harlot, pickpocket, prostitute and the demimonde, these women were also bookkeepers, cooks, laundresses, shop-keepers, maids, wives. When mountain roads improved sufficiently to make travel between towns feasible, they set forth as performers.
|⁋|
Mrs Clappe came west in 1851 w/ her husband. In her letters home she gives an account of the era, about geology and a visit to a rural doctor’s rude office of pine shingles and cotton cloth.
Yerba Buena was a hamlet on the San Francisco peninsula w/ an excellent harbor. The Spaniards established a maritime trading post and built the Mission of San Francisco de Asis. Ships docking in its cove discharged seafarers to a Spanish-style plaza known as Portsmouth Square.
|⁋| On arrival gold seekers rented lodgings in shanties and tent towns, and stayed long enough to buy tools and provisions before heading out.
|⁋|
Brought over from Australia to perform labor, English convicts deserted en masse and instead formed a gang. Soon a frontier patch of lawlessness, Sydney Town, sprouted at the base of Telegraph Hill. The Sydney Ducks preyed on people and property, augmented by a gang of lady pickpockets, and willingly committed murder to survive.
|⁋| The embers of Sydney Town rekindled and gave birth to the Barbary Coast, chock-a-block w/ bars, saloons, brothels, concert halls, dance halls; where “getting shanghaied” was first rehearsed. Survived the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, by 1917 the red-light district was no more.
Sutter’s Mill on the South Fork of the American River.
Coloma, next to Sutter’s Mill, was the first gold mining town. A post office and jail were added in 1852 – both proved popular. Gold mining also took place north at Bidwell’s Bar, Cut Eye Foster’s Bar, Downieville, Dutch Flat, Goodyear’s Bar, Grass Valley, Helltown, Illinoistown, Iowa Hill, Kanaka Flat, Lousy Level, Marysville, Murderers Bar, Nevada City, Plumas City, Poker Flat, Rough and Ready, Washington, Whiskey Flat, Wisconsin Hill, and You Bet.
|⁋|
South at Angels Camp, Chinese Camp, Dogtown, Fair Play, Hornitos, Jackson, Mokelumme Hill, Mormon Bar, Rawhide, Rich Gulch, Shaw’s Flat, Sonora, Volcano.
|⁋|
Gold was found along tributaries to the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers. At Auburn, Diamond Springs, Grizzly Flats, Missouri Flat, Placerville.
|⁋|
Home to Native Americans incl. the Miwok, the Sierra Nevada was rudely affected by the Gold Rush. In 1849 an incident occurred along the Middle Fork of the American River when some 49ers died and some indigenes killed. An uneasy truce obtained when Native Americans were hired on as laborers and paid in tin, but by 1900 their population had declined to only ±16,000.
|⁋| Before James Cagney was the Frisco Kid and Edward G.
Robinson dramatized life in the Barbary Coast era, there was a 1913 feature, The Last Night of the Barbary Coast, now a lost film.
The 1849 state census counted 42,000 overlanders and 35,000 seafarers caught up by gold fever; together w/ 3,000 sailors who had deserted ships.
Like all who seek a better tomorrow, the Chinese too came to the California Gold Rush, formed a fraternity in Coloma, squatted spent claims and worked as a team over the “tailings” left behind. In 1880 this gold-mining Chinatown was lost to fire.
“Our last arrow! We’ll fire it to stop the getaway car – then end our careers as Green Arrow and Speedy!” “Yes, with our secret identities exposed, we’re uselss against criminals!”
Immortal Dane Whitman brought his time-tested skills as the Black Knight to the early days of filmmaking, creating a phantasmagorical chariot race for Fritz Lang’s 1929 silent scifi Woman in the Moon. These days, he still does stunts for Hollywood.
Although he owns a Legion flight ring from the 30th century, when not in a hurry to get somewhere Michael Jon Carter prefers to drive. He comes from the future, sheathed in a super-suit boasting futuristic tech, but the feel of rubber on road gives Booster Gold a jolt unlike any other.
Little is known about this shapeshifting foe of Batman Beyond. Her fluid body allows Inque to seep into and out of her liquid limo.
Jimon Kwan’s car is parked behind the world’s first eco-fire station. She’s there to give a demonstration – in her capacity as Silver of China Force – on her mutant ability to drain heat and then convert it into light.
Before he went to war as the Fighting American, Nelson Flagg’s father gave him a 1915 Ford Speedster – it later crashed and burned. The original is also shown, fresh off the assembly line.
It takes two of Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, to control this wide jeep because it’s sure-as-hell gonna be a bumpy ride.
The grandfather and great-grandfather of James Jesse were from the world of vaudeville, which is why their spawn continued their forays into self-powered locomotion and built a portable air-cooled engine, hooked up to an accelerator switch, an engine cut-off switch, and single-horsepowered roller skates, and later tormenting the Flash w/ weaponized toys as the Trickster.
An inside-out refrigerated truck driven by Leonard Snart, commiting crime as Captain Cold using an experimental gun based on stolen science and shooting absolute-zero blasts that solidify as ice.
H.G. Wells jumped at the chance to take a spin in an experimental contraption that his American friend and fellow futurist, the head of Stark Industries, brought over to London. The author of The Invisible Man is photographed sitting in the back seat as the self-driving car crosses Tower Bridge.
This tasty USSR-era Trabant was on display in a Belgrade art gallery when Harlequin, the “merry menace”, happened by, took one look, and promptly brought it home.
This rarely seen Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic belongs to Arthur Curry (Aquaman) and is nicknamed the Drop because he almost never has need for it.
Even super-heroes driving sports cars have to stop and pay toll, as the Thing heckles Johnny Storm’s tossing chops. “Let’s get going, Torchy! Hey! Ya missed the coin bucket!” “But I threw it okay! It wasn’t my fault! The bucket moved!”
After punching Hitler in his debut, the city of Manhattan awarded Steve Rogers w/ a spanking red 1937 Ford, and he promptly took off to drive cross-country. Then he made up for lost years w/ a Corvette. These days, his ride is a 1960 Chevrolet, always parked on the street; repeatedly stolen then returned because it was a badge of honor to leave the keys in the ignition.
Before his life was imbued w/ Bahdnisian powers and he took control of the human thunderbolt, Johnny Thunder was in Europe, having won a music scholarship while in high school. With some of his prize money he bought a second-hand Minor Morris convertible.
Bentley Wittman, narrowly escaping the Human Torch, is chauffeured back to his mansion on Long Island and his life as the Wizard. “Fire is a powerful weapon! But I possess the greatest weapon of all – the world’s greatest brain!”
No way is the mysterious Dolphin a landlubber, so whenever adventures take her ashore she always rides in her 1962 Shark roadster, w/ its aquarium pod and other aquatic must-haves allowing her safe passage.
Retiring as the Sorcerer Supreme, Steven Strange’s mentor, the Ancient One, master of mystic arts, drove home to Kamar-Taj in Tibet, crossing rivers w/ the aid of local villagers, ever grateful for deliverance from the evil Kaluu.
Suddenly, the hovering air-car is jolted by a fantastic wave of force … and that is when Nick Fury sees an awesome figure who stands waiting to confront the dynamic director of SHIELD …
A surreal episode of the Knights of the Galaxy is just starting. “For King Arthur and Britain.” (Mystery In Space #8 (June-July 1952))
To have a bit of fun while Superman is recovering from their latest encounter, Mr Mxyzptlk, the imp from elsewhere, uses fifth-dimensional science to rearrange this car and proceeds to demonstrate how to operate it.
Vic Sage blends into his camouflage car, ephemeral behind a pseudoderm mask, during the time he joined Blue Beetle, Captain Atom and Nightshade as the Question in the original Sentinels of Justice.
When insect-female hybrid Queen Zazzala of planet Korll returned for a rematch w/ the Justic League, she went first to the Citroen museum in Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris, and took possession of an experimental 1940s light-weight hovercar which she used as a beehive-nest. Badly damaged and abandoned, it still oscillates when touched, awaiting new instructions from the Queen Bee.
The nomadic Roy Harper, leaving behind his Speedy persona, took to the road in an oft-vandalized therefore oft-disguised van. When he landed in England, the former battling bowman persuaded Banksy to let him take the famous SWAT van for an extended spin as Arsenal.
Random page from the mid-century portfolio of billionaire industrialist Tony Stark: 1958 Nucleon, Norman Bel Geddes prototype, 1949 Tabot Iago, 1959 Firebird.
Sue Richards fetched Agatha Harkness, her boy Franklin’s new governess, in a custom-built Hispano-Suiza, previously owned by an heir to the Dubonnet fortune. It was a regal ride befitting the lead-witch of New Salem, who has brought along a mystical rocking seahorse as a baby present.
An early electric car prototype from the morbid mind of Oswald Hubert Loomis, aka the Prankster.
When her mom asked if her new car was safe, Jennifer Walters sent this blurry pix of her unusual find while in college. It proved ideal for camping, and that was when she got into an accident, needed a blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce, and began a new existence as the ravishing rough She-Hulk.
In 1923, Tony Stark’s dad visited the Fiat Factory in Turin and openly admired their roof treatment. When what later became the Avengers Mansion was built, he put a race-car track on the roof.
Besides lending his occult skills to combat evil, Giovanni Zatara performs as a stage magician, and is the reason he drives a 1959 Lincoln, which has a sturdy trunk to fit all his stage props.
Tony Stark awarded his executive assistant Pepper Potts w/ this pink 1954 Ford in recognition for her aid in their first caper together, battling “The Mad Pharaoh”.
Kent Allard’s elusive 1957 Lincoln Premiere, which he drove as the Shadow, caught on a U.S. postage stamp.
Blackhawk’s 1949 Hudson, later owned by Jack Kerouac when he was doing a lot of driving. Restored and no longer driven.
Carter Hall was so smitten when Hal Jordan drove up in a Phantom Corsair that the test-pilot promptly gifted this one-off automobile to the extraterrestrial detective, known to Earth as the Hawkman, for a planet-warming present.
Although a haunted horse accompanies his cursed existence, the ghost of highwayman James Craddock also owns a train, breaking the law as the Gentleman Ghost, and traveling the world w/ out a home.
Long after the owner of Gotham Broadcasting Co. Alan Welling Scott, was visited by the Green Flame of Life (“Three times shall I flame green! First to bring death! Second to bring life! Third to bring power!”) and fought evildoers as the Green Lantern, he would continue to tool around in his trusted 1939 Chevrolet clunker.
Prof. X’s band of super-human teenagers are driven to the airport in a specially-built Rolls Royce w/ dark-tinted windows. “Boy! It musta taken a heap of green stamps to buy a chariot like this!” “No joking, please! Concentrate on your mission! Review your powers! Our foe is certain to be highly dangerous!”
Brainiac 5 retooled an antique and created the “frisbee”, armed w/ repel-rays, as a combat suit for Chuck Taine, the Bouncing Boy.
Hooking up to his Plymouth Barracuda’s batteries to recharge his pyro-costume, Garfield Lynns unleashes a color crimewave based on rainbow rays as the Human Firefly.
Ted Grant’s ride when he’s fighting crime as Wildcat, immortalized on a U.S. postage stamp.
Brainiac 5 constructed this bi-cycle for Luornu Durgo Taine (Duo Damsel) to augment her super-power.
With wealth to spare, socialite Wesley Dodds had a taste for danger and cars. Which is why he could imperil his 1935 Bugatti Aerolithe by taking it out to strike terror among wrongdoers as the Sandman, declaring “There is no land beyond the law, where tyrants rule w/ unshakable power! It’s but a dream from which the evil wake to face their fate … their terrifying hour!”
A gift from Brainiac 5, this experimental bike allowed Lana Lang to apply 30th-century technology to her 20th-century life. While fiddling around w/ the teleportation button during a ride in the countryside, she managed to trade bodies w/ all the insects in a nearby field, becoming for a spell the Insect Queen.
Socialite Kathy Kane, in her first appearance as a masked crimefighter, leading the Batmobile into the fray on her Bat Bike. “Hurry, Batman – the Batwoman is beating us on this mission!” (Detective Comics #233 July 1956)
The keys to this experimental car from Stark Industries were handed to Matt Murdock, giving added comfort to his forays as Daredevil into existential evil.
Samuel Joseph Scudder drove this solar laboratory on wheels in his first appearance in Flash #105, “The Master of Mirrors”.
This innocuous van offers storage for Rory Regan’s collection of mystical rags, allowing Ragman, the tatterdemalion of justice, to find respite after a jolt of electricity ran into his body and which by all accounts hasn’t exited yet.
The second Shield, Lancelot Strong, drove a 1970 AMC Rebel for a short period until its color scheme gave him away to every bad actor on every city block.
Model kit from Aurora for Britt Reid’s special-built 1965 Chrysler, featuring a 413 engine. Bruce Lee as Kato drove the Black Beauty to fight crime w/ the Green Hornet, ever ready to deploy a pair of hood-mounted machine guns, a flame thrower, and stinger missles.
Sowing feline felony in Gotham City w/ her Cat Mobile, Selina Kyle leads a lawless life as theCatwoman.
Winslow Schott, the terrible Toyman, had his fully functional dwarf Cadillac surrounded by indignant townfolk hoping to save Doll Man and Doll Girl from a threat they were not yet aware of.
The seldom driven Joker Mobile is deployed to track down a double-crossing mobster. “The whole job – the safe-cracking, the getaway - all bear the stamp of Dink Devers! The cops think he died – but he’s right here in town, at the Blake Hotel! Ha-HA-HA!” “Gosh, Joker – I bet you’re right!”
A proficiency in auto mechanics as well as miniaturization landed Ray Palmer a plum position as a team member rehabilitating a Ferrari 375 Plus. Palmer kept tinkering some more on the racing car, giving it a capability of being shrunk, and constitutes the first step in his quest, as the Atom, to jump into, then out of, the quantum realm at will.
While parked on a cloud, the Ghost Patrol are actively bored ... “Ho Hum! Another quiet day. Nothing doing on our sector of earth lately.” “Strange! This is usually the most troublesome of the planets!” “What’s that ahead? Why – it’s a horse!”
King T’challa of Wakanda’s elusive jeep parked in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, where he was on a secret mission as the Black Panther.
This “fire” truck, designed by Stark Industries, later patented by General Motors as the Futurliner, was used to house JIm Hammond, an android spawned in the mind of Prof. Phineas T. Horton. This lab-on wheels is remotely controlled, insulated inside to withstand the intense fire generated by the golden age Human Torch.
Before the cable car, the task for getting to Nob Hill was relegated to paying for a ride in a horse-drawn cab. On October 11, 1869, this necessary yet wanton civic cruelty of using animals as beasts of burden changed for the good. The San Francisco Chronicle had a front page article on the death of a wretch. It took place when a horse finally lost it on California Street and, throttled, dragged down to its death.
When Andrew Hallidie read this, he paused and paced his inner office, reflecting on what if anything he could learn from this. Hallidie was already prosperous, although not yet famous. He had inherited a company from his father. The senior Hallidie had invented and then patented a Steel Cable: strands of wire lined up and braided into a rope that was super strong, and proved indispensable in the gold fields and gold mines.
Hallidie took on a failed concern: to build a conveyance capable of conquering the city‘s hills. He bought the Clay Street Hill Railway Co., and by May 1873 had built tracks and a cable assembly up Clay from Portsmouth Square to Nob Hill, a vertical climb of seven blocks.
The tram operator is stationed forward of the tram. He employs the grip grabs and holds on to the moving cable, the tram also moves. When grip is released, tram stops, even on a hill, using a gear invention preventing slippage. Besides the tram operator (gripman) is the conductor.
Andrew Smith Hallidie was born on March 17, 1837 in London, to Andrew Smith (b.1798 Dumfrieshire, Scotland) and Julia Johnstone (Lockerbie). He died April 24 1900, in San Francisco. Six years later his cable car system would survive the 1906 Earthquake.
Cable cars then sprouted worldwide, from New York to Hong Kong. Naples crowned its opening by commissioning a song, “Funiculi, Funicula.”
Accordingly, access from the gold mines to San Francisco were surveyed. Roads, bridges and tracks were built wherever gold was found, w/ waystations established for respite and recreation. The mining methods these men brought w/ them quickly evolved to meet the challenges posed by the Comstock Lode and its tributaries.
The Industrial Revolution created tools used in scientific precisioning, allowing innovated models to be tested and profitably manufactured. Among these ideas was the ingenuous “square set” created by german engineer Philipp Deidesheimer. Grey Brechin picks up the umbilical cord:
The Square Set introduced methods of construction. Deidesheimer’s gift went from constructing safety zones to conduct the backbreaking business of mining into other uses, including the ability of a grid of steel beams and columns to allow support for more height.
❛Skyscraper❜ came into usage in the 1880s; America had fifteen. These buildings usually came w/ modern plumbing, electrical outlets in every room, a telephone line in every unit, central heating, and an elevator.
❛ … NASA took a fresh look at the steel cable in light of a super material, carbon nanotube ... uber-strong, light and flexible. “Space Elevators: An Advanced Earth-Space Infrastructure for the New Millenium” is the feasibility paper of this new science, to erect a track running on cables, from here to the Moon, a journey of some 62,000 miles.❜
Agadez, Niger
In 1976, area mining for uranium allowed the local economy to established a school, the Ecole des Mines de l’Air.
Immortal Dane Whitman brought his time-tested skills as the 
Although he owns a Legion flight ring from the 30th century, when not in a hurry to get somewhere Michael Jon Carter prefers to drive. He comes from the future, sheathed in a super-suit boasting futuristic tech, but the feel of rubber on road gives 
Little is known about this shapeshifting foe of Batman Beyond. Her fluid body allows 
Jimon Kwan’s car is parked behind the world’s first eco-fire station. She’s there to give a demonstration – in her capacity as 
Before he went to war as the 
It takes two of Jamie Madrox, the 
The grandfather and great-grandfather of James Jesse were from the world of vaudeville, which is why their spawn continued their forays into self-powered locomotion and built a portable air-cooled engine, hooked up to an accelerator switch, an engine cut-off switch, and single-horsepowered roller skates, and later tormenting the Flash w/ weaponized toys as the 
An inside-out refrigerated truck driven by Leonard Snart, commiting crime as 
H.G. Wells jumped at the chance to take a spin in an experimental contraption that his American friend and fellow futurist, the head of 
This tasty USSR-era Trabant was on display in a Belgrade art gallery when 
This rarely seen Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic belongs to Arthur Curry (Aquaman) and is nicknamed the Drop because he almost never has need for it.
Even super-heroes driving sports cars have to stop and pay toll, as the Thing heckles 
After punching Hitler in his debut, the city of Manhattan awarded Steve Rogers w/ a spanking red 1937 Ford, and he promptly took off to drive cross-country. Then 
Before his life was imbued w/ Bahdnisian powers and he took control of the human thunderbolt, 
Bentley Wittman, narrowly escaping the Human Torch, is chauffeured back to his mansion on Long Island and his life as the 
No way is the mysterious 
Suddenly, the hovering air-car is jolted by a fantastic wave of force … and that is when 
A surreal episode of the 
To have a bit of fun while Superman is recovering from their latest encounter, Mr Mxyzptlk, the imp from elsewhere, uses 
Vic Sage blends into his camouflage car, ephemeral behind a pseudoderm mask, during the time he joined Blue Beetle, Captain Atom and Nightshade as the 
When insect-female hybrid Queen Zazzala of planet Korll returned for a rematch w/ the Justic League, she went first to the Citroen museum in Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris, and took possession of an experimental 1940s light-weight hovercar which she used as a beehive-nest. Badly damaged and abandoned, it still oscillates when touched, awaiting new instructions from the 
The nomadic Roy Harper, leaving behind his Speedy persona, took to the road in an oft-vandalized therefore oft-disguised van. When he landed in England, the former battling bowman persuaded Banksy to let him take the famous SWAT van for an extended spin as 
Random page from the mid-century portfolio of billionaire industrialist 
Sue Richards fetched Agatha Harkness, her boy Franklin’s new governess, in a custom-built Hispano-Suiza, previously owned by an heir to the Dubonnet fortune. It was a regal ride befitting the 
An early electric car prototype from the morbid mind of Oswald Hubert Loomis, aka the 
When her mom asked if her new car was safe, Jennifer Walters sent this blurry pix of her unusual find while in college. It proved ideal for camping, and that was when she got into an accident, needed a blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce, and began a new existence as the ravishing rough 
In 1923, Tony Stark’s dad visited the Fiat Factory in Turin and openly admired their roof treatment. When what later became the 
Besides lending his occult skills to combat evil, 
Tony Stark awarded his executive assistant 
Kent Allard’s elusive 1957 Lincoln Premiere, which he drove as the 
Carter Hall was so smitten when Hal Jordan drove up in a Phantom Corsair that the test-pilot promptly gifted this one-off automobile to the extraterrestrial detective, known to Earth as the 
An experimental floating fortress from the malevolent minds at 
Although a haunted horse accompanies his cursed existence, the ghost of highwayman James Craddock also owns a train, breaking the law as the 
Long after the owner of Gotham Broadcasting Co. Alan Welling Scott, was visited by the Green Flame of Life (“Three times shall I flame green! First to bring death! Second to bring life! Third to bring power!”) and fought evildoers as the 
Brainiac 5 retooled an antique and created the “frisbee”, armed w/ repel-rays, as a combat suit for Chuck Taine, the 
Hooking up to his Plymouth Barracuda’s batteries to recharge his pyro-costume, Garfield Lynns unleashes a color crimewave based on rainbow rays as the 
Ted Grant’s ride when he’s fighting crime as 
Brainiac 5 constructed this bi-cycle for Luornu Durgo Taine (
With wealth to spare, socialite Wesley Dodds had a taste for danger and cars. Which is why he could imperil his 1935 Bugatti Aerolithe by taking it out to strike terror among wrongdoers as the 
A gift from Brainiac 5, this experimental bike allowed Lana Lang to apply 30th-century technology to her 20th-century life. While fiddling around w/ the teleportation button during a ride in the countryside, she managed to trade bodies w/ all the insects in a nearby field, becoming for a spell the 
Socialite Kathy Kane, in her first appearance as a masked crimefighter, leading the Batmobile into the fray on her Bat Bike. “Hurry, Batman – the 
The keys to this experimental car from Stark Industries were handed to Matt Murdock, giving added comfort to his forays as 
Samuel Joseph Scudder drove this solar laboratory on wheels in his first appearance in Flash #105, “
This innocuous van offers storage for Rory Regan’s collection of mystical rags, allowing 
Model kit from Aurora for Britt Reid’s special-built 1965 Chrysler, featuring a 413 engine. Bruce Lee as Kato drove the Black Beauty to fight crime w/ the 
Sowing feline felony in Gotham City w/ her Cat Mobile, Selina Kyle leads a lawless life as the
Winslow Schott, the terrible 
The seldom driven Joker Mobile is deployed to track down a double-crossing mobster. “The whole job – the safe-cracking, the getaway - all bear the stamp of Dink Devers! The cops think he died – but he’s right here in town, at the Blake Hotel! Ha-HA-HA!” “Gosh, 
A proficiency in auto mechanics as well as miniaturization landed Ray Palmer a plum position as a team member rehabilitating a Ferrari 375 Plus. Palmer kept tinkering some more on the racing car, giving it a capability of being shrunk, and constitutes the first step in his quest, as the 
While parked on a cloud, the 
King T’challa of Wakanda’s elusive jeep parked in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, where he was on a secret mission as the 
This “fire” truck, designed by Stark Industries, later patented by General Motors as the Futurliner, was used to house JIm Hammond, an android spawned in the mind of Prof. Phineas T. Horton. This lab-on wheels is remotely controlled, insulated inside to withstand the intense fire generated by the golden age 
Personal gear: pair of blankets, frying-pan, flour, salt pork, brandy (or other sanctifying spirit). Field gear must-haves: pickaxe, shovel and pan. Some procure a mule.
The 1849 state census counted 42,000 overlanders and 35,000 seafarers caught up by gold fever; together w/ 3,000 sailors who had deserted ships.
Like all who seek a better tomorrow, the Chinese too came to the California Gold Rush, formed a fraternity in Coloma, squatted spent claims and worked as a team over the “tailings” left behind. In 1880 this gold-mining 
