John M. Rhodes' Sacramento City Bank & the Rhodes Expresses
Western Express September, 2014 Hard Luck Enterprises - John M. Rhodes' Sacramento City Bank & The Rhodes Expresses By James Blaine AUTHOR’S PREFACE Ohioan John Milton Rhodes was a visionary individual who journeyed to California at the beginning of the Gold Rush, not to pan for or to dig the precious metal, but to found a bank which invariably came to be linked to the fruits of the miners who toiled to extract the riches from the region known as the "Northwestern Mines." While he never personally packed treasure-laden mules from the mines to the base towns, or distributed letters from home to anxious miners in "the diggins," John M. Rhodes' pioneer banking venture was the catalyst which eventually drew two of his brothers, James Mason Rhodes and George Washington Rhodes, as well as his uncle, Jesse Rhodes, to California. James or Uncle Jesse became the principals in the successive enterprises known as: 1) Rhodes & Lusk's Express; 2) Jas. M. Rhodes' Express / Rhodes & Co.'s Express; 3) Rhodes & Whitney's Express; and finally, 4) (Jesse) Rhodes & Co. 's Express. In the end, a cascade of events which, had they been compressed into a time-span of shorter duration could be termed "a perfect storm," overtook John M. Rhodes and his kinsmen, resulting in the demise of the last in the chain of the Rhodes Expresses, and the failure of the banking house which had nurtured them from their inception. Decades later, John recollected that: Figure 1. John M. Rhodes, from History Of Yolo "My seven years experience in the banking County California with Biographical Sketches Of The business in Sacramento was attended by Leading Men and Women of the County Who Have several serious reverses by fire, flood, robbery, Been Identified With Its Growth and Development and steamboat explosions ..
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