Lone ~fountain The Most Revered of San Francisco s Hills ANNALS OF THE PIONEERS COPIED FROM HEADSTONES AND OTHER OLD RECORDS By ANN CLARK HART SAN FRANCISCO THE PIONEER PRESS • PUBLISHERS MCMXXXVII ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE COLONEL E. D. BAKER • . Facing 4 GENERAL E. R. s. CANBY 4 THE PoRT OF SAN FRANc1sco JUNE 1 ST I 849 8 From an original d-rawing by George H. Baker THE SAMUEL w OODWORTH SHRINE - 16 THE CLARK MONUMENT AT LAUREL HILL 16 VISTA DE SAN FRANCISCO DE CALIFORNIA 20 Michaud Thomas, .W.exico (I848) BOURN MONUMENT AT LAUREL HILL 20 LuNING MoNUMENT AT LAUREL HILL 20 SENATOR FAIR'S MONUMENT AT LAUREL HILL • 20 SAN FRANCISCO (CALIFORNIE) • From an Engravi,ng by Leckard SAN FRANCISCO IN APRIL I 8 50 . 32 By William B. McMurtrie JEROME A. HART • 40 THE DONAHUE FOUNTAIN Douglas Tilden, Sculptor ELK CROSSING CARQ1:JINEZ STRAITI, ( 1 848) 56 RoBERT Louis STEVENSON MoNUMENT IN THE PLAZA • THOMAS STARR KING Haig Patigian, Sculptor LONE MOUNTAIN CEMETERY FROM A LITHOGRAPH INTRODUCTION HE City of San Francisco began at the Embarcadero­ the stretch of beach between Clark's Point and Rincon T Point. There the predecessors of today's merchants and shipping men embarked their modest shipments of hides, which comprised the bulk of their commerce. The little Embar-cadero of Yerba Buena was one of the least important points on the Peninsula. The Presidio of San Francisco and the Missi<'n Dolores of San Francisco were the headquarters of the Army and the Church. On the night of August 5, 1775, the paquebot San Carlos sailed through the Golden Gate, an uncharted channel as yet unnamed. It was the first ship to enter San Francisco Bay. She anchored first off Sausalito, and later moved to a safe anchorage in the lee of Angel Island. She brought men and supplies for the Presidio, but did not come to anchor off Clark's Point, nor did she find the cove later called Y erba Buena, where the whalers and the hide ships found a safe harbor. On November 14, 1792., Captain George Vancouver, com­ manding the British warship Discovery, sailed into San Fran­ cisco Bay. As he passed what is now Fort Point he received and acknowledged a salute of two guns. Further along he received other salutes. Darkness fell, and still he saw no lights from where he believed the town of Yerba Buena to be. He had taken soundings all along, and dropped anchor for the night. In the morning he found himself in a cove under the lee of a high hill and a steep bluff-Loma Alta and Punta del Embarcadero. To­ day we call them Telegraph Hill and Clark's Point. There were cattle grazing on the hills but no sign of a town, and no visible inhabitants. At sunrise some horsemen rode over the hills and down to the beach. Captain Vancouver sent a boat ashore, and invited to breakfast Padre Danti, superior of the Mission Dolores, and Don Hermenegildo Sal, ensign in the Spanish army and commander of the Presidio military post. The com­ mander invited Captain Vancouver to move his ship, and anchor off the Presidio, which was done. There the English VI INTRODUCTION captain, his officers and men, were received with the most cor­ dial hospitality. The officers were banqueted, and invited to enjoy the sport of quail shooting. Captain Vancouver was taken on a horseback trip to Santa Clara. On departing, his ship was furnished with needed supplies, including beef and mutton. This is the first record of any vessel anchoring off what is now San Francisco. Captain Vancouver's anchorage was in the Ii ttle cove under the lee of Clark's Point, called later Yerba Buena cove. In 1936 one may look out on the bay from the city front of San Francisco and still see few or no anchored ships. But there are scores of steamers moored at the piers, some of them great 30,000-ton liners. In the days of the gold discovery the bay was crowded with ships-some of them with cock billed yards. It was literally a forest of masts. Many ships were there because they could not get away, having been abandoned by their sea­ men, who had fled to the mines. There were ships with every kind of cargo from every quarter of the seven seas. There were magnificent clipper ships, v1ith towering masts and clouds of canvas-marvels of speed, often averaging over two hundred miles a day and some of them logging four hundred. These marine wonders all had double topsail and topgallant sail yards to enable the men to handle their enormous sails. Belonging to the same family of square riggers were the more modest brigs­ mainly from Yankee Land, their business that of trading in Yankee notions with the natives in the South Seas. There wer~ many whalers, most of them hailing from New Bedford,. dingy and dirty without, but loaded within with rich cargoes of oil and whalebone. The records of the harbor master of San Francisco for I 849, 1850, and 1851 give seventy-four ves~els claiming and entitled to be called clipper ships, as arriving in the port during those years. The average clipper's passage was one hundred and twenty-five days. However, the clipper Flying Cloud sailed from New York to San Francisco in eighty-nine days. The Northern Light made the passage from San Francisco around Cape Horn to Boston in seventy-six days. She was a clipper schooner sixty­ two and a half feet long, seventeen and a half feet beam, about seven feet depth of hold, and carried seventy tons. She was heavily sparred. But in "the knife-edged clipper with her ruffled spars" cargo space and low operating costs were sacrificed to speed. The name clipper may have been derived from the ex- INTRODUCTION VII pression "a fast clip." After 1855 a number of medium clippers were built, usually barque-rigged. They were built to make them roll down when "cutting out" a whale. The so-called down­ easters, that followed the clipper, combined speed, cargo ca­ pacity, and low operating costs. The short career of the clipper ship, which was about fifteen years, from approximately I 843 to 1859, was undoubtedly due to the fact that these sharp ended ships so heavily sparred, were not economical. It was the belief in San Francisco then - and perhaps since­ that the clipper ship grew out of the trade between New York and San Francisco. The demand for fast passages in the Cali­ fornia trade forced ship-builders to design new models. Hence the clippers, not too broad in the beam, not too rounded in the hull, with sharp lines bow and stern. They were magnificent creations of man's handiwork. Baltimore has always claimed to be the birthplace of the clipper. For a long time they were called "Baltimore clippers.'' Like Homer, whom seven cities claimed, so many cities have coveted the clipper that Baltimore's voice has been drowned. However, the British have always insisted that the clippers grew out of their China tea trade. As to clippers in San Francisco in the fifties, Richard Henry Dana in his classic "Two Years Before the Mast," says that in I 8 59 he sailed "from San Francisco to the Sandwich Islands on the magnificent Boston clipper Mastiff." In our day the clippers and square riggers have been supplanted by steamships. It must not be supposed that ~here was more shipping in San Fran­ cisco eighty years ago than now. To-day the bay is compara­ tively open, because the steamships are berthed at the piers. There are almost as many lines of steamships running into San Francisco Bay in 1936 as there were individual square riggers in 1850. San Francisco began as a seaport and as a seaport she has grown. The bold spirit of adventure which is born of the sea has colored the achievements of San Francisco's founders. It is not strange, then, that in San Francisco's cemeteries there is written a dramatic history; that the inscriptions on her monuments should. read like stories of adventure, of tragedy and inventive genius. The most beautiful memorial parks in the world are found in the United States; and the trend of civic improvement in our large cities is toward landscape art in the cemeteries. From the VIII INTRODUCTION crowded churchyards of our ancestors have been evolved the great cemeteries like Greenwood and Woodlawn in New York; Pine Haven with its two thousand acres on Long Island; Lake View at Cleveland; and Laurel Hill at San Francisco. A precious heritage lies at the foot of Lone Mountain that San Francisco's native sons and <laughters guard with zealous care. By incoming vessels Lone Mountain may be seen far out at sea. There are the monuments of the pioneers. Laurel Hill Cemetery, first named Lone Mountain Cemetery, is the resting place of the pioneers. Laurel Hill Cemetery is the property of their children, and for their children's children it should be preserved- a wooded open space in the midst of the crowded city. Stately trees crown its hilltops, from which are visible gorgeous sunsets in the Pacific Ocean, and the picturesque Farallones outlined on the western sky, and the fog clouds rolling in through the Golden Gate. In many of the big cities of the United States there are old cemeteries. Trinity, in New York, is over two hundred years old. That is to say, the churchyard is. New York City looks on Trinity churchyard with a feeling akin to affection.