The Power of Progress and the Harmony of Nature:
San Francisco, 1869-1906
In 1874, Walt Whitman conjured up a magnificent vision that evoked the quintessence of what California as supposed to be:
— Walt Whitman, Song of the Redwood Tree”
There is nothing in Whitman’s poem about anti-Chinese riots, labor disputes, bank failures, exhaustion of the silver mines, and countless other disasters and disappointments of the 1870s that led historian Oscar Lewis to christen this era “the discontented decade.”
The following years were also replete with major difficulties of their own: graft and corruption in local government, tong wars, and, overarching all, the enormous financial and political power of the railroad magnates. Throughout the early years of the city, San Franciscans yearned for the iron rails that would put an end of California’s isolation, binding the continent into a truly United States. It was an inspiring hope; but the drama of the railroad came to San Francisco with its own dominant money and power themes. The Big Four railroad magnates — Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington and Mark Hopkins — lorded it over city, in symbol and in fact, from their huge, expensive mansions poised at the crown of Nob Hill. But in the larger picture, the railroad represented the fulfillment of the most cherished belief in the power of progress: the application of technology for the improvement of the human condition.
Along with the power of technology came the belief in the beauty and healing power of nature. So it was in this era that San Francisco undertook one of its greatest public works: Golden Gate Park, which would concentrate all the profusion of beauty and fruitfulness inherent in the California landscape.
(Photo by Uberdrive)
