Welcome to the online studio of Francisco Mattos, built w/ printed pieces, experiments, souvenirs, personal projects.
-| January 2023|-
TIMELINE
BY THE FIRST WEEK of November 1918, the first world war was drawing to a close. When it began, in August 1914, both sides confidently predicted they would be victorious “before the autumn leaves fell from the trees”. Instead, the war turned into a four-year deadlock. The Germans who broke first. The United States had belatedly entered the war in 1917, but it wasn’t until the summer of 1918 that the hastily-trained doughboys, armed largely with French weapons, began arriving in significant numbers. It was enough to break the spine of the exhausted German Army, and by September 1918 the Kaiser’s troops were in retreat everywhere, and the Kaiser himself was forced to abdicate by a rebellion of the war-weary German population.
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November 11 1918, the last day of World War One
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At 5 am the French, British, American and German representatives signed the armistice treaty that formally ended hostilities in World War One. Under the terms of the Armistice, the war would officially end at 11 am that morning. All the troops in the trenches had to do was sit tight for the next six hours. Instead, allied forces continued to launch a series of attacks, producing over 10,000 casualties on the last morning of a war that was already over.
0510
At 5:10 am on November 11, the instrument of surrender was signed. To give everyone enough time to contact all their forces in the field, it was agreed that the formal end of hostilities would occur at 11 am that morning.
An hour earlier, at 4 am, the Fifth Marine Division was ordered to cross the Meuse River on pontoon bridges, and came under artillery and MG fire. The Marines took over 1,100 casualties.
The US Army’s 89th Division was ordered to storm the town of Stenay because, the commander later explained, it had a number of bath-houses and he didn’t want the Germans to have them after the war was over. It cost the Americans 61 dead and 304 wounded to take Stenay.
The 92nd Division, an African-American unit with white officers, had been scheduled for days to make an attack on the morning of the 11th. The result was, General John Sherburne bitterly declared, “an absolutely needless waste of life”.
0600
Although the allied forces had known for the past three days that an armistice was being discussed and the war was almost over, it wasn’t until 6 am that official instructions went out declaring that the war would formally end at 11 am. Foch had picked that time, as it was poetically the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
0930
Irishman Private George Edwin Elison, who had helped defend Mons from the Germans back in 1914, now became the last British soldier killed. It was 9:30 am.
1040
At 10:40 am, in the 81st Division, the commanding officer ordered his men to stand down; his superior countermanded that order and told the men to advance. The division lost 66 killed and 395 wounded.
1044
At 10:44 am, the 313th Regiment was ordered to clear out a German MG post at the village of Ville-Devant-Chaumont. As the American troops advanced, the Germans, in utter disbelief, first waved at them frantically, then fired over their heads to try to get them to stop, and finally in desperation fired a short burst directly at them. Private Henry Gunter, who had arrived in the trenches four months ago, was struck in the head and died instantly. He was the last American killed in the war. The time was 10:59 am.
1058
Meanwhile, the attack on Mons continued. At 10:58 am, Canadian trooper Private George Price became the last soldier of the British Commonwealth to be killed.
At 11 am, a German junior officer named Tomas left his trench and approached a group of American troopers in No Man’s Land. As Tomas came forward, they shot him. It was 11:02 am. The cost on the last day of World War One was over 10,000 casualties, wounded or killed: 1200 French; 2400 British; 3000 Americans; 4100 Germans.
ON the 18th and 19th of November the [Russia and Austria] army advanced two days’ march, and the [French] enemy’s outposts after a brief interchange of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the 19th a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till the morning of the 20th, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz was fought.
UNTIL midday on the 19th the activity, the eager talk, running to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants, was confined to the Emperor’s headquarters (i.e., Alexander I of Russia). But on the afternoon of that day this activity reached [General of the Russian Army] Kutuzov’s headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns. By evening the adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the 19th to the 20th the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles long.
THE concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor’s headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that followed, was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower-clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cog-wheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.
JUST as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a neighbouring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever catches it, and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak, and joins in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
JUST as in a clock the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians and French – all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm – was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors – that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history.
DISPATCH
The seat of national power, Kyiv was the main prize. Thus the thrust by elite airborne forces in the war’s opening hours.
When President Vladimir Putin launched his war on Feb. 24 after months of buildup on Ukraine’s borders, he sent hundreds of helicopter-borne commandos — the best of the best of Russia’s “spetsnaz” (special forces soldiers) — to assault and seize a lightly defended airfield on Kyiv’s doorstep.
On the first morning of the war, Russian Mi-8 assault helicopters soared south toward Kyiv on a mission to attack Hostomel airfield on the northwest outskirts of the capital. By capturing the airfield, also known as Antonov airport, the Russians planned to establish a base from which to fly in more troops and light armored vehicles within striking distance of the heart of the nation’s largest city. It didn’t work that way. Several Russian helicopters were reported to be hit by missiles even before they got to Hostomel, and once settled in at the airfield they suffered heavy losses from artillery fire.
The fact that the Hostomel assault by the Russian 45th Guards Special Purpose Airborne Brigade faltered might not stand out in retrospect if the broader Russian effort had improved from that point. But it did not. ... Last week the Russians abandoned Hostomel airfield as part of a wholesale retreat into Belarus and Russia.
An effort to take control of a military airbase in Vasylkiv south of Kyiv also met stiff resistance and reportedly saw several Russian Il-76 heavy-lift transport planes carrying paratroopers downed by Ukrainian defenses.
A sidelight of the battle for Kyiv was the widely reported saga of a Russian resupply convoy that stretched dozens of miles along a main roadway toward the capital. It initially seemed to be a worrisome sign for the Ukrainians, but they managed to attack elements of the convoy, which had limited off-road capability and thus eventually dispersed or otherwise became a non-factor in the fight. “They never really provided a resupply of any value to Russian forces that were assembling around Kyiv, never really came to their aid,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. “The Ukrainians put a stop to that convoy pretty quickly by being very nimble, knocking out bridges, hitting lead vehicles and stopping their movement.” Using a wide array of Western arms, including Javelin portable anti-tank weapons, shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and much more.
“That’s a really bad combination if you want to conquer a country,” said Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel and professor of military history at Ohio State University. “[The Russian Army]’s proven itself to be wholly incapable of conducting modern armored warfare”. ... Some analysts did question whether Putin appreciated how much Ukraine’s forces had gained from Western training that intensified after Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and incursion into the Donbas.
“It’s stunning,” said military historian Frederick Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War, who says he knows of no parallel to a major military power like Russia invading a country at the time of its choosing and failing so utterly. The Russians underestimated the number of troops they would need and showed “an astonishing inability” to perform basic military functions.
Putin failed to achieve his goal of quickly crushing Ukraine’s outgunned and outnumbered army. The Russians were ill-prepared for Ukrainian resistance, proved incapable of adjusting to setbacks, failed to effectively combine air and land operations, misjudged Ukraine’s ability to defend its skies, and bungled basic military functions like planning and executing the movement of supplies.
Gunplay is common, but a scream is rare on TV’s The Untouchables.
Font Lab
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Marooned offshore, within sight of Golden Mountain, a detention center serving as an immigration station, for folks “choosing San Francisco as their entry point into the United States”. Then a fire in 1940 turned its original identity to ashes. Angel Island is now a state park, among other identities, having reclaimed all 1.2 square miles of its claim as the second largest island in SF Bay.
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A defunct-federal prison gazes forlornly at the mainland and Union Street, climbing Russian Hill to the horizon. From 1934 to 1963, Alcatraz served as a holding cell for felons, military prisoners, and their guards; and no women were allowed on the largest island in SF Bay.
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There is a pillar of unpainted concrete on top of Telegraph Hill, built in 1933 and placed so as to greet travellers passing the Golden Gate. The nozzle was designed by architect Arthur Brown Jr. in memory of an heiress who loved fire engines.
When she died in 1929, Lillie Coit (ne Hitchcock) left one-third of her estate to the City of SF “for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved.”
Coit Tower came with a secluded apartment, where William and Marie Brady, its first tenant, lived and kept vigil over the grounds.
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Considered intelligent, the seagull is a marine-based winged mammal roaming SF Bay. This entourage showed up in the summer of 2014, chasing a food-bearing cruise.
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The old east span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, connecting Oakland to Yerba Buena Island, was replaced by a wider span in 2015 (top right). The west span into San Francisco is on the lower right.
Brush Script MT Copperplate Papyrus Courier New Courier MS Monaco Lucida Console Helvetica Avant Garde Century Gothic Lucida Grande Arial Narrow Segoe UI Tahoma Geneva Verdana Palatino Garamond Bookman Impact Didot Perpetua Baskerville Century Schoolbook Palatino Linotype Book Antiqua Times New Roman Big Caslon Lucida Bright Bodoni MT Hoefler Text Trebuchet MS
HELLO
Welcome to the online studio of Francisco Mattos, built w/ printed pieces, experiments, personal projects.
THE FINISHED PROTOTYPE, with a driver’s cab at either end, appeared on the California Street Line in 1899. Trams “... were decorated using scrollwork and gold trim, with 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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In 1917, Andrew Smith Hallidie had an innovative building named for him. The Hallidie Building (the architect is 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 with 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, with waystations established for respite and recreation. The mining methods these men brought with them quickly evolved to meet the challenges posed by the Comstock Lode and its tributaries.
The Deidesheimers
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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:
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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.
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❛ … 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.❜ — Meghan Neal, February 28 2014.
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.
DISPATCH
The seat of national power, Kyiv was the main prize. Thus the thrust by elite airborne forces in the war’s opening hours.
When President Vladimir Putin launched his war on Feb. 24 after months of buildup on Ukraine’s borders, he sent hundreds of helicopter-borne commandos — the best of the best of Russia’s “spetsnaz” (special forces soldiers) — to assault and seize a lightly defended airfield on Kyiv’s doorstep.
On the first morning of the war, Russian Mi-8 assault helicopters soared south toward Kyiv on a mission to attack Hostomel airfield on the northwest outskirts of the capital. By capturing the airfield, also known as Antonov airport, the Russians planned to establish a base from which to fly in more troops and light armored vehicles within striking distance of the heart of the nation’s largest city. It didn’t work that way. Several Russian helicopters were reported to be hit by missiles even before they got to Hostomel, and once settled in at the airfield they suffered heavy losses from artillery fire.
The fact that the Hostomel assault by the Russian 45th Guards Special Purpose Airborne Brigade faltered might not stand out in retrospect if the broader Russian effort had improved from that point. But it did not. ... Last week the Russians abandoned Hostomel airfield as part of a wholesale retreat into Belarus and Russia.
An effort to take control of a military airbase in Vasylkiv south of Kyiv also met stiff resistance and reportedly saw several Russian Il-76 heavy-lift transport planes carrying paratroopers downed by Ukrainian defenses.
A sidelight of the battle for Kyiv was the widely reported saga of a Russian resupply convoy that stretched dozens of miles along a main roadway toward the capital. It initially seemed to be a worrisome sign for the Ukrainians, but they managed to attack elements of the convoy, which had limited off-road capability and thus eventually dispersed or otherwise became a non-factor in the fight. “They never really provided a resupply of any value to Russian forces that were assembling around Kyiv, never really came to their aid,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. “The Ukrainians put a stop to that convoy pretty quickly by being very nimble, knocking out bridges, hitting lead vehicles and stopping their movement.” Using a wide array of Western arms, including Javelin portable anti-tank weapons, shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and much more.
“That’s a really bad combination if you want to conquer a country,” said Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel and professor of military history at Ohio State University. “[The Russian Army]’s proven itself to be wholly incapable of conducting modern armored warfare”. ... Some analysts did question whether Putin appreciated how much Ukraine’s forces had gained from Western training that intensified after Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and incursion into the Donbas.
“It’s stunning,” said military historian Frederick Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War, who says he knows of no parallel to a major military power like Russia invading a country at the time of its choosing and failing so utterly. The Russians underestimated the number of troops they would need and showed “an astonishing inability” to perform basic military functions.
Putin failed to achieve his goal of quickly crushing Ukraine’s outgunned and outnumbered army. The Russians were ill-prepared for Ukrainian resistance, proved incapable of adjusting to setbacks, failed to effectively combine air and land operations, misjudged Ukraine’s ability to defend its skies, and bungled basic military functions like planning and executing the movement of supplies.
TIMELINE
BY THE FIRST WEEK of November 1918, the first world war was drawing to a close. When it began, in August 1914, both sides confidently predicted they would be victorious “before the autumn leaves fell from the trees”. Instead, the war turned into a four-year deadlock. The Germans who broke first. The United States had belatedly entered the war in 1917, but it wasn’t until the summer of 1918 that the hastily-trained doughboys, armed largely with French weapons, began arriving in significant numbers. It was enough to break the spine of the exhausted German Army, and by September 1918 the Kaiser’s troops were in retreat everywhere, and the Kaiser himself was forced to abdicate by a rebellion of the war-weary German population.
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November 11 1918, the last day of World War One
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At 5 am the French, British, American and German representatives signed the armistice treaty that formally ended hostilities in World War One. Under the terms of the Armistice, the war would officially end at 11 am that morning. All the troops in the trenches had to do was sit tight for the next six hours. Instead, allied forces continued to launch a series of attacks, producing over 10,000 casualties on the last morning of a war that was already over.
0510
At 5:10 am on November 11, the instrument of surrender was signed. To give everyone enough time to contact all their forces in the field, it was agreed that the formal end of hostilities would occur at 11 am that morning.
An hour earlier, at 4 am, the Fifth Marine Division was ordered to cross the Meuse River on pontoon bridges, and came under artillery and MG fire. The Marines took over 1,100 casualties.
The US Army’s 89th Division was ordered to storm the town of Stenay because, the commander later explained, it had a number of bath-houses and he didn’t want the Germans to have them after the war was over. It cost the Americans 61 dead and 304 wounded to take Stenay.
The 92nd Division, an African-American unit with white officers, had been scheduled for days to make an attack on the morning of the 11th. The result was, General John Sherburne bitterly declared, “an absolutely needless waste of life”.
0600
Although the allied forces had known for the past three days that an armistice was being discussed and the war was almost over, it wasn’t until 6 am that official instructions went out declaring that the war would formally end at 11 am. Foch had picked that time, as it was poetically the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
0930
Irishman Private George Edwin Elison, who had helped defend Mons from the Germans back in 1914, now became the last British soldier killed. It was 9:30 am.
1040
At 10:40 am, in the 81st Division, the commanding officer ordered his men to stand down; his superior countermanded that order and told the men to advance. The division lost 66 killed and 395 wounded.
1044
At 10:44 am, the 313th Regiment was ordered to clear out a German MG post at the village of Ville-Devant-Chaumont. As the American troops advanced, the Germans, in utter disbelief, first waved at them frantically, then fired over their heads to try to get them to stop, and finally in desperation fired a short burst directly at them. Private Henry Gunter, who had arrived in the trenches four months ago, was struck in the head and died instantly. He was the last American killed in the war. The time was 10:59 am.
1058
Meanwhile, the attack on Mons continued. At 10:58 am, Canadian trooper Private George Price became the last soldier of the British Commonwealth to be killed.
At 11 am, a German junior officer named Tomas left his trench and approached a group of American troopers in No Man’s Land. As Tomas came forward, they shot him. It was 11:02 am. The cost on the last day of World War One was over 10,000 casualties, wounded or killed: 1200 French; 2400 British; 3000 Americans; 4100 Germans.
ON the 18th and 19th of November the [Russia and Austria] army advanced two days’ march, and the [French] enemy’s outposts after a brief interchange of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the 19th a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till the morning of the 20th, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz was fought.
UNTIL midday on the 19th the activity, the eager talk, running to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants, was confined to the Emperor’s headquarters (i.e., Alexander I of Russia). But on the afternoon of that day this activity reached [General of the Russian Army] Kutuzov’s headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns. By evening the adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the 19th to the 20th the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles long.
THE concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor’s headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that followed, was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower-clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cog-wheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.
JUST as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a neighbouring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever catches it, and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak, and joins in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
JUST as in a clock the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians and French – all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm – was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors – that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history.
Illustrated w/ collages, drawings, maps, paintings, photographs, prints and quotes
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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.”
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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.
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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”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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South at Angels Camp, Chinese Camp, Dogtown, Fair Play, Hornitos, Jackson, Mokelumme Hill, Mormon Bar, Rawhide, Rich Gulch, Shaw’s Flat, Sonora, Volcano.
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Gold was found along tributaries to the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers. At Auburn, Diamond Springs, Grizzly Flats, Missouri Flat, Placerville.
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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.
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.
Cable cars then sprouted worldwide, from New York to Hong Kong. Naples crowned its opening by commissioning a song, “
“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.
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