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Summary
Summary
San Francisco is a city clouded in myth. This urban biography provides an entirely new vision of the city's history, laying bare the inner dynamics of the regional civilization centered in San Francisco. Imperial San Francisco examines the far-reaching environmental impact that one city and the elite families that hold power in it have had on the Pacific Basin for over a century and a half. The book provides a literate, myth-shattering interpretation of the hidden costs that the growth of San Francisco has exacted on its surrounding regions, presenting along the way a revolutionary new theory of urban development. Written in a lively, accessible style, the narrative is filled with vivid characters, engrossing stories, and a rich variety of illustrations.
As he uncovers the true costs of building an imperial city, Gray Brechin addresses the dynastic ambitions of frontier oligarchies, the environmental and social effects of the mining industry, the creation of two universities, the choice of imperial architecture to symbolize the aspirations of San Franciscans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, manipulation of public thought by the city's media, and more. He traces the exploitation of both local and distant regions by prominent families--the Hearsts, de Youngs, Spreckelses, and others--who gained wealth and power through mining, control of ranching, water and energy, transportation, real estate, and weapons.
This broad history of San Francisco is a story of greed and ambition on an epic scale. Imperial San Francisco incorporates rare period illustrations, personal correspondence, and public statements to show how a little-known power elite has used the city as a tool to increase its own wealth and power. Brechin's story advances a new way of understanding urban history as he traces the links among environment, economy, and technology that led, ultimately, to the creation of the atomic bomb and the nuclear arms race.
Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of 2000
Author Notes
Gray Brechin received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California at Bekeley. He has worked as a journalist and television producer.
Reviews 1
Publisher's Weekly Review
Challenging San Francisco's popular image as a tolerant, carefree, gracious city, Brechin unearths 150 years of deeply unsettling history. San Francisco's founding aristocracy were Southerners drawn to California as a mecca newly opened up for enterpriseÄparticularly for plantation culture. After the 1849 gold rush, San Francisco was built on what Brechin terms a "Pyramid of Mining"Äa pre-capitalist financial structure employed from Roman times through the Renaissance, uniting miners, financiers, the military and land speculators in a power elite whose only concern was limitless economic growth. While press lord William Randolph Hearst converted a mining fortune into a media conglomerate preaching the superiority of "the American race" and calling for the annexation of Mexico, other San Franciscan power brokers, according to Brechin, channeled mining profits into gas works, currency speculation, political and judicial bribery and the exploitation of forests. From Nevada to Northern California, they wrecked towns, deforested the pristine Lake Tahoe region, buried acres of farmland under mining debris and contaminated the soil, lakes and rivers. A historical geographer and coauthor of Farewell, Promised Land, Brechin concludes with a look at the University of California's pioneering nuclear research program laid the groundwork for the Manhattan Project. Enlivened with period engravings, photos, political cartoons, magazine art, posters and maps, this stirring, environmentally conscious history ranks with Kevin Starr's Americans and the California Dream, powerfully establishing the city on the bay as a true emblem of the atomic age. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Table of Contents
| List of Illustrations | p. xiii |
| Acknowledgments | p. xvii |
| Preface: The Urban Maelstrom | p. xxi |
| Introduction: New Romes for a New World | p. 1 |
| Part I Foundations of Dominion | |
| 1. The Pyramid of Mining | p. 13 |
| Mythologizing Mining | |
| The Invisible Pyramid | |
| California's Classical Precedent | |
| The Renaissance of Mining | |
| The Age of Discovery, Conquest, and Fugger | |
| De Re Metallica | |
| The James Marshall Myth | |
| A Promised Land Plundered | |
| Working the Frisco 'Change | |
| Ralston, His Ring, and the Comstock Lode | |
| The Sierra Nevada Flayed | |
| Halting Hydraulicking | |
| Mining Engineers as Heralds of Empire | |
| Deferred Costs | |
| Specious Denials | |
| Enduring Attitudes | |
| Transfer Technology | |
| Financial Districts as Inverted Minescapes | |
| 2. Water Mains and Bloodlines | p. 71 |
| Revealing Power | |
| A Shrine to Water | |
| Roman Aqueducts | |
| The Spring Valley Monopoly | |
| San Francisco Reclaims San Mateo County | |
| Hermann Schussler | |
| William Hammond Hall and the Thirst of Golden Gate Park | |
| Ralston's Last Gambit | |
| Sharon Rises on Ralston's Fall | |
| Francis Griffith Newlands | |
| Building Burlingame | |
| Phantom Capital | |
| The Greening of San Mateo County | |
| Phelan Discovers a Reservoir Site | |
| Enhancing Real Estate Values | |
| Los Angeles Lurches Ahead | |
| San Francisco Stalls | |
| None Other Than Hetch Hetchy | |
| Michael M. O'Shaughnessy | |
| A Debatable Masterpiece | |
| Hail, the Chief! | |
| Part II The Thought Shapers | |
| 3. The Scott Brothers: Arms and the Overland Monthly | p. 121 |
| Commemorating the Soldiers of an Unnamed War | |
| San Francisco Bay as Pacific Launchpad | |
| The Union Iron Works | |
| The Overland Monthly | |
| Spanish-American War | |
| War with the Filipinos | |
| The Inexhaustible Philippines | |
| Japan Buys Armaments | |
| Monumental Messages for the Masses | |
| A Protracted War of Kindness | |
| Imperial Designs for San Francisco | |
| Racial Solutions | |
| The Yellow Peril | |
| San Francisco Segregates Its Schools | |
| Predictions of a Racial Apocalypse | |
| The Cruise of the Great White Fleet | |
| An Ever-Expanding Military | |
| 4. The De Youngs: Society Invents Itself | p. 171 |
| Refracting Reality | |
| San Francisco's Parallel Aristocracies | |
| The Blackjack Press | |
| Exit Charles De Young | |
| The Spreckels-De Young Feud | |
| Enter Willie Hearst | |
| The Call Attacks | |
| The Midwinter Fair | |
| Arthur McEwen's Letter | |
| The Utility of High Culture | |
| Chronicle of Empire | |
| The San Francisco Graft Prosecution | |
| Rehabilitating Reputations | |
| Stuffing the Cat into the Bag | |
| Family Value | |
| Exposure Avoided | |
| Organs of Expansion | |
| 5. The Hearsts: Racial Supremacy and the Digestion of "All Mexico" | p. 200 |
| Xanadu by the Pacific | |
| Manifest Destiny and "the Texas Game" | |
| Mexican-American War and the "All Mexico" Faction | |
| Indigestible Races | |
| The Filibusters | |
| Permeable Boundaries | |
| Young Hearst | |
| Tied to Mom's Apron Strings | |
| War Impresario | |
| The Hearst Enigma | |
| A Private Empire in Mexico | |
| Peru, Too | |
| Hearst Recommends | |
| Dulce e Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori | |
| White Supremacy | |
| Belated Independence | |
| Hard Right Turn | |
| Coordinated Enterprises | |
| Editing History | |
| Part III Remote Control | |
| 6. Toward Limitless Energy | p. 245 |
| Imperial Energy | |
| A Dearth of Coal | |
| Electrical Dawn | |
| The California Oil Kings | |
| Drowning in Oil | |
| Pacific Gas and Electric | |
| Dynastic Power and Water | |
| Hetch Hetchy Energy | |
| "Greater San Francisco" | |
| The Dream City and the Real | |
| More for War | |
| Radium, and Beyond | |
| 7. The University, the Gate, and "the Gadget" | p. 280 |
| Naming Berkeley | |
| Seeking Funds | |
| The Hearst University | |
| The Greek Connection | |
| Destiny's Gun Sight | |
| The Pacific Commercial Museum | |
| Professor Moses | |
| "The Greater University" | |
| The University Militant | |
| Soldier President | |
| University Critics | |
| Right Thought | |
| Building Science's Shrine | |
| Lawrence and Oppenheimer | |
| Engineer President | |
| War Approaches | |
| Birthing "the Baby" | |
| Planning the Arms Race | |
| The Costs of the Race Come Home | |
| Notes | p. 331 |
| A Note on Sources | p. 359 |
| Select Bibliography | p. 361 |
| Index | p. 389 |