Travelogue

‘FRISCO’S FORTUNE COOKIES'

A wizened old Chinese man with skin the colour and texture of chewed leather lurked nearby for a few moments. Then he sidled over to us, his eyes darting warily from left to right, in the manner of one about to divulge a State secret.

“The Gold Rush started here in 1849,” he whispered, and shuffled off. Seconds later he was back. “That’s why they call them the 49ers,” he added - and was gone.

“Here” was Portsmouth Square in San Francisco, at the heart of America’s oldest Chinatown, now part of the newest city walking trail in the US.

Back in the mid 1800s, news of the strike brought young Chinese men pouring across to the Big City of Gold Mountain. Many went off to the gold fields. Others chose to stay and open shops and market stalls. When the earthquake and great fire of 1906 destroyed immigration records, they claimed citizenship, brought their families over and stayed. He could have been one of them.

The Barbary Coast Walking Trail, inspired by the much older Boston Freedom Trail, was put in place recently by the San Francisco Historical Society. It was inaugurated this year with bronze pavement plaques to mark the way.

We’d reached Portsmouth Square – birthplace of the Gold Rush - on a bright Spring morning, much like the May day in 1848 when adventurer Sam Brennan marched through, waving a bottle of gold dust with cries of “Gold! Gold! Gold! From the American River!”

Hundreds of San Franciscans dropped everything, left town and headed for the hills. They were joined by thousands of fortune hunters from around the world, eager to make a quick buck. By 1849, the Gold Rush was on.

What they didn’t know was that Uncle Sam Brennan had already stocked hisSacramento hardware store with the picks and shovels and mining pans he knew would be in demand. Just to make sure, he advertised the Gold Rush in The Californian Star – his own newspaper.

The gold diggers made little out of it all, but support industries like Uncle Sam’s did very nicely thank you. Anyone who has lost a packet on tech shares recently and wonders if they’re sitting on a pile of fool’s gold may start to see a pattern emerging here.

When it comes to the seven deadly sins, the 3.8 mile self-guided Barbary Coast Trail through the oldest surviving parts of the city takes in most of them. Sex, violence and greed, to name but three.

From Portsmouth Square the trail led us down Commercial Street to Montgomery. We took the suggested side-trip to the Wells Fargo History Museum on the corner of Clay Street, and it was well worth the visit.

It’s free to go in, and with the help of a pitching and rolling stagecoach, life-size cut-out of Black Jack the poetic highwayman, and samples of the earliest mail, San Francisco’s amazing story continued to unfold.

The museum is housed behind a modern façade, unlike the businesses that occupy the original 19th century brick buildings around Jackson Square. They’re among the few that survived when the earthquake hit, and fire swept through the city.

They were saved thanks to the quick-thinking of Jackson Street whisky distillers, Hotaling - and a lot of luck..

As the flames raged through, the authorities decided the only way to stop the inferno spreading was to detonate great chunks of the city and create fire breaks. As it came ever closer to Hotaling, the distillers knew that one way or another they stood to lose everything.

They ran up to the control post in Portsmouth Square and managed to persuade the commander that blowing up hundreds of barrels of highly flammable liquor wasn’t a good idea.

Instead they enlisted the navy to lay a one mile-long water hose from the sea to douse the buildings opposite and stop them tumbling onto the whisky warehouse, which would add fuel to the fire – so to speak.

The plan worked. The buildings fell the other way, leaving the distillery and surrounding buildings in tact. Then came the real stroke of luck. For no explicable reason, the wind changed. The prevailing westerly off the Pacific that had fanned the flames suddenly dropped, the fire began to die, and the historic buildings around Jackson were saved.

The old Yerba Buena Bay area we were walking around is just about the only flat part of San Francisco – city of umpteen steep hills. During the Gold Rush, it was still a sea cove. Look out for the wavy line running down Hotaling Place that marks the original shoreline, before the cove was reclaimed and became part of the city.

Along the trail, take a rest break in tranquil Redwood Gardens, with its tall shady trees and charming bronze statues, and consider the fact that beneath you lie the hulls of countless abandoned ships. Before the cove was filled in, they were used as foundations for buildings, and as markers by entrepreneurs, keen to lay claim to their slice of the most valuable waterfront in the world.

(Seven deadly sins-wise, we’ve covered the greed. Now we come to the sex and violence bits).

Back in 1849, it wasn’t much fun being a deckhand on the ships that took the fortune hunters out to the New World. First chance they got, the crew ran for the hills, in search of gold. Some found it. Some didn’t. But the upshot was the same. A shortage of crew to man the sailing ships on their voyage home.

The drinking dens, bordellos and night-spots around Jackson Square (which claim to be the real birthplace of jazz) provided rich pickings for maritime recruitment thugs.

While the sailors enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh, head-hunters spiked their drinks with knockout drugs, dragged them off and dumped them on board ship. By the time they came round, they found themselves shanghaied – already well out to sea on a slow boat to China.

With its bright lights and loose morals, the area got its nickname from Morocco’s infamous Barbary Coast. Devout churchgoers even laid the blame for the great earthquake and fire at the door of San Francisco’s visiting sailors, brothel keepers and gangsters.

In reply to all this righteous indignation one wag wrote:

“If, as they say, God spanked the town for being over frisky, Why did he burn the churches down And spare Hotaling’s whiskey?”

Today, the historic Jackson Square area is home to the chicest style gurus. Interior designers, oriental rug sellers and antique dealers have set up shop here. So who are the guys sitting in front of computer screens in the ornate Victorian style building on the corner of Hotaling Place?

They’re the first of today’s fortune-cookies to arrive here. The new dot com companies are moving in.

Self-guided Barbary Coast Trail booklets are on sale from the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau Information Center, 900 Market Street, corner of Powell and Market, lower level of Hallidie Plaza.

They also sell the new City Pass that gets you into major exhibits around the city, and provides unlimited travel on public transport, including cable cars. Web site: www.sfvisitor.org

Brenda Howley,

This article published courtesy of The Artist Magazine www.theartistmagazine.co.uk