Peter Donahue | |
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Born | 1822 January 11 |
Died | 1885 November 26 |
Occupation | Businessman |
Known for | Co-founder of the Union Iron Works; founder of the San Francisco Gas Company, founder of the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad; co-founder of the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad; built first railroad to go to Santa Rosa, California |
Peter Donahue (January 11, 1822 - November 26, 1885), was an Irish American businessman and Industrial pioneer. He and his brothers James and Michael are considered the founders of industrial San Francisco. Born in Glasgow, Scotland of Northern Irish parents, his family moved to Paterson, New Jersey when he and his brothers were young. It was there that they learned the trade of machinists. [1]
In December 1847, Donahue helped deliver a gunboat, the Rimac (which he had helped construct at the Brown and Bell foundry) to the Peruvian government, arriving in Callao in July 1848. It was during his time in Peru that he heard of gold being discovered in California, and booked passage on the Pacific Mail steamship Oregon, bound for San Francisco. [2]
In 1849, after several unproductive months in the gold fields, and after hearing rumors that his younger brother James was in California, Peter returned to San Francisco, where he found his brother James running a modest blacksmith's shop at First and Mission Streets. Together with their brother Michael (who arrived some months later), they gradually expanded their forge into a foundry (which became known as the Union Iron Works). [3]
In 1852, with supplies and financial backing from his contacts in Paterson, New Jersey, and with the approval of city authorities, Donahue founded the San Francisco Gas Company, a forerunner of Pacific Gas and Electric Company. [4]
In 1860 Donahue founded the Omnibus Railroad, the first crosstown streetcar service in San Francisco. Using horse-drawn cars, he ran a line from Third Street and Townsend to Union and Powell, as well as one running from Montgomery and Washington to Howard and Mission Dolores. The Omnibus Railroad was later purchased by the Market Street Railway Company, which would much later be purchased by the Municipal Railway (Muni). [5]
In 1860, Donahue also organized the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad (which continues in operation today as the publicly administered commuter service Caltrain, while Union Pacific Railroad continues to provide freight service over this same route).
In 1869, after failed efforts by Asbury Harpending to organize a northern line, Donahue acquired the rights to the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad and constructed a line that went North from a landing on Petaluma Creek, that became known as Donahue, to Cazadero. [3] He later decided to place the railhead farther south at Point Tiburon, building the railroad ferries that connected San Francisco to the Northern Counties. [6] Donahue thus built the first railroad to serve Santa Rosa, California. [7]
Donahue's Union Iron Works constructed many of the graceful double-ended railroad ferries that plied the waters of the San Francisco Bay well into the 20th century. (The Eureka, built in his Tiburon yard five years after his death, can still be seen today at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park on the Hyde Street Pier).
Peter Donahue died on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1885, a few days after catching a cold while surveying his Tiburon rail yard. [8]
The Mechanics Monument in San Francisco, unveiled in 1901, was a tribute to the Donahue brothers' contributions, commissioned by Peter's son James Mervyn Donahue, and designed by Douglas Tilden. [4] [9]
Tiburon is an incorporated town in Marin County, California. It is located on the Tiburon Peninsula, which reaches south into the San Francisco Bay. It shares a ZIP code (94920) with the smaller incorporated city of Belvedere, which occupies the southwest part of the peninsula and is contiguous with Tiburon. Tiburon is bordered by Corte Madera to the north and Mill Valley to the west, but is otherwise mostly surrounded by the bay. Besides Belvedere and Tiburon, much of the peninsula is unincorporated, including portions of the north side and the communities of Strawberry and Paradise Cay.
The golden spike is the ceremonial 17.6-karat gold final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States connecting the Central Pacific Railroad from Sacramento and the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. The term last spike has been used to refer to one driven at the usually ceremonial completion of any new railroad construction projects, particularly those in which construction is undertaken from two disparate origins towards a common meeting point. The spike is now displayed in the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
Mark Hopkins Jr. was an American railroad executive. He was one of four principal investors that funded Theodore D. Judah's idea of building a railway over the Sierra Nevada from Sacramento, California to Promontory, Utah. They formed the Central Pacific Railroad along with Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Collis Huntington in 1861.
The Panama–Pacific International Exposition was a world's fair held in San Francisco, California, United States, from February 20 to December 4, 1915. Its stated purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely seen in the city as an opportunity to showcase its recovery from the 1906 earthquake. The fair was constructed on a 636-acre (257-hectare) site along the northern shore, between the Presidio and Fort Mason, now known as the Marina District.
Union Iron Works, located in San Francisco, California, on the southeast waterfront, was a central business within the large industrial zone of Potrero Point, for four decades at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
Vulcan Iron Works was the name of several iron foundries in both England and the United States during the Industrial Revolution and, in one case, lasting until the mid-20th century. Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and smithery, was a popular namesake for these foundries.
Eureka is a side-wheel paddle steamboat, built in 1890, which is now preserved at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California. Originally named Ukiah to commemorate the railway's recent extension into the City of Ukiah, the boat was built by the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad Company at their Tiburon yard. Eureka has been designated a National Historic Landmark and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 24, 1973.
John Boyden Adams was a famous California mountain man and trainer of grizzly bears and other wild animals he captured for menageries, zoological gardens and circuses.
William Thompson Wallace was the 12th Chief Justice of California and the 6th Attorney General of California. He served on the Supreme Court of California from 1871 to 1879 and as Attorney General from 1856 to 1858.
The Northwestern Pacific Railroad is a 271-mile (436 km) mainline railroad from the ferry connections in Sausalito, California north to Eureka with a connection to the national railroad system at Schellville. The railroad has gone through a history of different ownership and operators but has maintained a generic name of reference as The Northwestern Pacific Railroad, despite no longer being officially named that. Currently, only a 62-mile (100 km) stretch of mainline from Larkspur to the Sonoma County Airport in Windsor and east to Schellville on the “south end” is operated by Sonoma–Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART), which operates both commuter and freight trains with plans for future extension north to Cloverdale. The “north end” from Willits to Eureka is currently out of service, but saved by 2018 legislation to be converted into the Great Redwood Trail.
The San Francisco and San Jose Railroad (SF&SJ) was a railroad which linked the communities of San Francisco and San Jose, California, running the length of the San Francisco Peninsula. The company incorporated in 1860 and was one of the first railroads to employ Chinese laborers in its construction. It opened the first portion of its route in 1863, completing the entire 49.5-mile (80 km) route in 1864. The company was consolidated with the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1870. Today, Caltrain and the Union Pacific Railroad continue to operate trains over part of the company's original route.
San Francisco Bay in California has been served by ferries of all types for over 150 years. John Reed established a sailboat ferry service in 1826. Although the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge led to the decline in the importance of most ferries, some are still in use today for both commuters and tourists.
This Committee of Fifty, sometimes referred to as Committee of Safety, Citizens' Committee of Fifty or Relief and Restoration Committee of Law and Order, was called into existence by Mayor Eugene Schmitz during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The Mayor invited civic leaders, entrepreneurs, newspaper men and politicians—but none of the members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors—to participate in this committee in whose hands the civil administration of San Francisco would rest.
San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad (SF&NP) provided the first extensive standard gauge rail service to Sonoma County and became the southern end of the regional Northwestern Pacific Railroad. Although first conceived of by Asbury Harpending, who had even obtained many of the right of ways, the SF&NP was bought and subsequently constructed by Peter Donahue, who drove the first spike on August 30, 1869.
The Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870) was formed in 1862 to build a railroad from Sacramento, California, to the San Francisco Bay, the westernmost portion of the First transcontinental railroad. After the completion of the railroad from Sacramento to Alameda Terminal on September 6, 1869, and then the Oakland Pier on November 8, 1869, which was the Pacific coast terminus of the transcontinental railroad, the Western Pacific Railroad was absorbed in 1870 into the Central Pacific Railroad.
The Tiburon Ferry Terminal is a ferry landing for Golden Gate Ferry and Angel Island–Tiburon Ferry Company passenger ferries in Tiburon, California in the San Francisco Bay Area's North Bay. It connects commuters from Marin County with job centers in San Francisco across the San Francisco Bay to the Ferry Building. The terminal also provides tourist and recreational passenger service to the Ayala Cove Ferry Terminal on Angel Island State Park.
The Mechanics Monument, also known as The Mechanics, Mechanics Statue, or Mechanics Fountain since it originally featured as the centerpiece of a pool of water at the base during the first five years, is a bronze sculpture group by Douglas Tilden, located at the intersection of Market, Bush and Battery Streets in San Francisco, California, United States.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of San Francisco, California, United States.
The Pacific Rolling Mill Company was the West’s first iron and steel producing foundry, founded in 1866, in San Francisco, California. Later in its life, through mergers, the company was transformed first into the Judson-Pacific Company, and then into Judson Pacific-Murphy Corporation. In its various guises, Pacific Rolling Mills has produced steel used during the construction of numerous famous buildings and landmarks in the West as well as a number of notable battleships.
Potrero Point is an area in San Francisco, California, east of San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood. Potrero Point was an early San Francisco industrial area. The Point started as small natural land feature that extends into Mission Bay of San Francisco Bay. The Point was enlarged by blasted and cuts on the nearby cliffs. The cut material was removed and used to fill two square miles into the San Francisco bay, making hundreds of acres of flat land. The first factories opened at Potrero Point in the 1860s. Early factories were powder magazine plant, the Pacific Rolling Mill Company and small shipyards. The large Union Iron Works and its shipyards were built at the site, stated in 1849 by Peter Donahue. To power the factories and neighborhood coal and gas-powered electricity works were built, later the site became Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E).