Chapter 6
Toward Limitless Energy
An adequate supply of energy extracted from a growing hinterland is as necessary to a growing city as fresh water, and this San Francisco’s leaders early set out to acquire because of California’s dearth of good coal. Hydraulic mining led to innovations in hydroelectric energy still in use today, but the development of Southern California’s immense oil reserves also served city magnates such as Michael De Young. Tubes, wires, and railroads, like aqueducts, fueled the city’s imperial ambitions at the cost of the colonies from which the energy was taken such as the West’s felled forests and the dammed Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. The Curies’ discovery of radium in 1898 opened the possibilities for a yet-unknown super-energy that would eliminate all limits to growth.
The American Pioneer, by Solon Borglum, was the companion to James Earle Fraser’s ultimately more famous The End of the Trail at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915. The paired statues re presented relative racial energies against an imperial backdrop. Ben Macomber, The Jewel City, 1915.
Notes
1. Cf. Lane’s speech with that of Ronald Reagan quoted in the introduction: “The men of the Alamo call out encouragement to each other; a settler pushes west and sings a song, and the song echoes out forever and fills the unknowing air. It is the American sound: it is hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic-daring, decent, and fair. That’s our heritage, that’s our song. We sing it still.”
2. The definitive work on California energy is J. C. Williams, Energy and the Making of Modern California, 1997.
3. Neumann, “Religion, Morality, and Freedom,” 247-48; Wiley, Yankees, 88.
4. History of the life of Peter Donahue, 1890, in Hubert Howe Bancroft Collection, p. 22.
5. Richard Walker, “Industry Builds the City: Metropolitan Expansion of the San Francisco Bay Area, 1860-1 940,” Journal of Historical Geography (forthcoming, 1 998).
6. J.C. Williams, Energy andthe Making of Modern California , 99.
7. Augustus Bowie reported that lamps at North Bloomfield provided twelve thousand candlepower of nighttime lighting. A Practical Treatise on Hydraulic Mining in California (New York: n.p., 1905 ), 246.
8. The South Yuba Canal Company strung 1 84 miles of line along its system as early as 1878.
9. “The Power of the Future,” Mining and Scientific Press 60, no. 1 5 (8 October 1887): 225.
10. “A Long Distance Transmission Plant,” 214.
11. Dated 20 January 189 5. See William Hammond Hall papers, carton 8, folder 27.
12. Among the two major stockholders of the Associated Pipe Line Company was W. F. Herrin, Southern Pacific’s attorney and vice president; he was widely regarded as the political boss of California. By 1929, Who’s Who in California listed Cameron as a Republican and member of the Bohemian Club, Union League, San Francisco Golf and Country Club, and Burlingame Country Club.
13. Unlike the Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, whose numerous corporate interests were listed in Walker’s Manual of California Securities and Directory of Directors, de Young’s name does not appear at all.
14. Many of the SP’s fields were located under land grants that the federal government claimed had been obtained by fraud. See “Southern Pacific Loses Kern Oil Lands,” California Derrick 7, no. 11 (July 1915): 7.
15. A government report stated that “there is probably no large business so inefficiently conducted as is that involved in the production of oil in California, notwithstanding the fact that mechanical conditions here seem to be more advanced and improved than in any other part of the world.” The abundance of oil contributed greatly to the industry’s wastefulness, recalling similar conditions on the Comstock Lode. Quam-Wickham, “Petroleocrats and Proletarians,” 128.
16. Ibid., 8.
17. California Derrick 5, no. 4 (15 November 1912): 6.
18. Quam-Wickham, “Petroleocrats and Proletarians,” 234.
19. Hearst Oil incorporation file, California State Archives, Sacramento.
20. Southworth, El Directorio. Keene was an associate of George Hearst on the San Francisco mining exchange. Hearst’s cousin, Edward Hardy Clark, was listed as manager of the Mexican concession. Offices of Hearst Oil were in the Mills Building in San Francisco, and offices of the Mexican operations were in the Mills Building in New York. Hearst was, by this time, partners with the Mills family in Peru’s Cerro de Pasco mines.
21. Ryder, “Great Citizen”, 82-83.
22. Coleman, P. G.&E. of California, 230.
23. Bourn used his profits to buy the Spring Valley Water Company; many of its directors sat on the board of PG&E. Shortly before the formation of the latter, Bourn incorporated the Northern Water and Power Company with the intention of bringing power and water to the Bay Area from the Yuba River. Had he succeeded, there would have been no need for the municipally financed Hetch Hetchy system. See undated clippings, Bourn Family papers, carton 3, series 2, folder 28, and incorporation papers for NW&PC, California State Archives, Sacramento.
24. See chapter 2 for W. S. Tevis’s statement to his sister, Flora.
25. “Frank G. Drum-His Life Story,” 101-2.
26. Ibid., 100-102. Among the companies on whose boards Drum sat were Sharon, Tevis, and Haggin estates; Bay Cities Water; Occidental Land and Improvement; Palace Hotel; Guanacevi and Santa Eulalia Mining; Pacific Portland Cement; Southport Land and Commercial; Real Estate and Development; City Land; Pacific Coast Oil; Associated Oil; Amalgamated Oil; Shreves Oil; Sterling Oil; Pacific Realty; Kern County Land; Yosemite Valley Railroad; and California Pacific Title Insurance.
27. “Fred D. Elsey Dies Suddenly,” San Francisco Chronicle, 1 March 1938. Elsey also was a director of Kern County Land Company.
28. Drum was probably working for the Tevis estate, which was heavily invested in utilities.
29. J. H. Hammond, Autobiography of John Hays Hammond, 738-39.
30. W. H. Hall, “Autobiography,” manuscript, carton 6, p. 6 1.
31. Hall told the PG&E president A. F. Hockenbeamer on April 26, 19 1o, “I shielded your company and its controlling people from being known as the owners of the properties the City administration was after, and at a time when the knowledge of such ownership would have been used to injure your Company and them I have persisted and made over $r oo,ooo for you.” The company settled with Hall three days later. William Hammond Hall papers, carton 10, folder 27, Sierra Ditch and Water Company file.
32. I have pieced together the previously untold aspect of the Hetch Hetchy controversy from Hall’s papers in the Bancroft Library, especially from the Sierra Ditch & Water Company and Tuolumne County Water and Electric Power Company files in carton 10 and from Hall’s unpublished “Autobiography” in carton 6.
33. “The Bay Basin and the Greater San Francisco,” Merchants’ Association Review 2, no. 136 (December 1 907): 1.
34. December 22, 1907.
35. “Greater San Francisco Headquarters of the ‘Million Club’,“ San Francisco Chronicle, 3 January 1909.
36. Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo.
37. “Petroleum at the Exposition,” California Derrick 7, no. 11 (July 1915): 8-9.
38. Santa Fe reached the bay by buying the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railroad, which was also known as the “Valley Road” or the “Spreckels Road” since Claus Spreckels and his sons put up major financing for its construction. Spreckels bought 250 acres, or half, of Richmond’s town plat, Santa Fe officials the remainder.
39. “Trade Excursion to Richmond ,” San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Journal 1, no. 9 (July 1912): 11 .
40. Holmes, Report of the Selby Smelter Commission.
41. “An Armada of Peace,” San Francisco Chronicle, 21 October 1913.
42. “ Admiral Robley D. Evans Becomes an Oil Man,” California Derrick 3, no. 5 (October 1910): 14-15. See also the trade newspaper Oil Book for the same period, in which Admirals Evans and Dewey endorse oil.
43. Herman Whitaker, “The Arch of the Setting Sun,” Sunset 34, no. 2 (February 1915): 229.
44. Whitaker, “A City of the Sun,” 70, 79.
45. “The Reign of Oil,” California Derrick IO, no. 5 (January 1917): 12.
46. “War Helps Oil Industry,” California Derrick 10, no. 7 (March 1917), 13.
47. Henry Adams to Henry Osborn Taylor, 17 January 1905, in Harold Dean Cater, ed., Henry Adams and His Friends (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), 558-59.
A note on the Notes
The notes for this and all other chapters are organised by subsections. Not all subsections have notes. It has not been possible to replicate the context of each note. For context, please refer if possible to the print edition. More information on all the materials cited is available on the further reading page.
The Pelton wheel, an ingenious outcome of California mining engineering, was quickly adapted to electrical generation. Journal of Electricity, Power, and Gas, August 21, 1909.
An industry magazine exulted that Uncle Sam “Burns California Oil.” The U.S. Navy and navies of other nations provided a ready market for the state’s overproduction of petroleum. The Oil Book, July 11, 1910. Courtesy Bancroft Library.
