Mount Davidson
Part 1
Entry Author: Jacquie
Proctor
At 938 feet above sea level, Mount Davidson is the highest
of San Francisco's hills. Located near the geographic center
of the city, southwest of the crossroads of Portola Drive,
O'Shaughnessy, and Laguna Honda Boulevards, it is accessible
by the 36-bus line. Covered with trees planted by a Comstock
Lode millionaire on the west and native plants on the east,
it quietly remains an open space oasis in the midst of the
densest city in California. Its rugged red rock outcroppings
are made of melange terrane, 100-million-year-old radiolarian
chert that once formed an ancient ocean floor. While not a
famous tourist destination, the story of the city's highest
point and the world's tallest cross at its summit reflect
the major events that shaped San Francisco's history and reputation.
More than 30,000 attending Easter Sunrise Service in 1933
Photo courtesy of Glenn Gullmes
Click here
for large image
The vibrant color of over seventy-five varieties
of wildflowers led to the peak's original name of Blue Mountain
when it was mapped in 1826 by British explorer Frederick Beechy.
Many of those who held the city's highest office or made their
fortune in the Gold Rush would seek ownership of the city's
highest point. The first to do so was the last mayor or alcalde
of Yerba Buena, Don Jose de Jesus Noe. He acquired it as part
of a 4443-acre land grant called San Miguel Rancho, granted
by the Mexican Governor Pio Pico in 1845. After California's
statehood and discovery of gold, the validity of such land
grants was questioned. Jose Yves Limatour, a French naval
captain, presented papers purporting to have granted him the
rancho two years before Noe, in 1843. U.S. Geodetic Coast
Surveyor George Davidson, for whom the mountain was later
named, gained public acclaim for his incorruptibility by proving
that Limatour's claim was fraudulent in 1852. "California's
First Farmer," James Horner, was then able to buy the
rancho for a mere $200,000. He sold it to shipping millionaire
and Mayor of San Francisco C.K. Garrison three years later.
A Frenchman named Francois
Pioche, also drawn to California by the Gold Rush, became
the next owner of Blue Mountain. Born in France in 1818, he
left home to become chancellor to the French consul in Chile
at the age of 30. He came to California with his partner,
J. B. Bayerque, in 1850. Pioche initially opened a small business,
and then decided to go back to France to sell the new opportunities
he saw in California. Returning to San Francisco with six
million francs in investment capital, he proceeded to earn
millions of dollars. He funded construction of the first railroad
in California and not only purchased San Miguel Rancho, but
also Bernal Ranch and tracts in Visitation Valley, Hayes Valley,
and the Western Addition. To get people to his property, he
helped finance the Market Street and San Jose Railroads. He
also discovered and bottled the mineral water at New Almaden
and founded the French Hospital. The pioneer financier and
bon vivant is credited with giving San Francisco an appreciation
of fine food. At one time he brought forty chefs and a cargo
of vintage wine from France to give San Franciscans the benefit
of the "Grand Tour" and improve the local restaurant
cuisine. Men and women of importance in social, financial,
and artistic circles looked forward to lavish parties hosted
by Pioche at his home 806 Stockton Street on a weekly basis.
While Pioche was adding to his land holdings via defaulted
mortgages, German immigrant Adolph Sutro was mining the original
Mt. Davidson (also named after surveyor George Davidson) in
Nevada. He had come to San Francisco in 1850 and headed to
Nevada in 1859. The two men who had discovered silver on Mt.
Davidson had failed to enjoy its riches because they died
shortly after their discovery. As a result, the mountain was
said to curse those who found its secret. But Sutro was not
deterred. He was also able to solve the problems of ventilation
and drainage after going back East and to Europe to obtain
the necessary capital. His five-mile tunnel into the silver-rich
Comstock Lode made him and his partners multimillionaires
by 1878. One of his first investments in 1881 was 1400 acres
of the San Miguel Rancho, including Blue Mountain. By the
time of his death in 1898, Sutro had also become Mayor of
San Francisco and the owner of one tenth of the city, approximately
12,000 acres (from Baker Beach and Lincoln Park to the shores
of Lake Merced). He enlisted school children and the unemployed
to plant eucalyptus and pine trees on his land for Arbor Days,
transforming the city's barren mountaintops and creating the
thick Sutro Forest that remains on Mt. Davidson today. As
would later be done on his highest peak, he crowned another
of his San Francisco peaks Mt. Olympus and erected a lit monument
called Triumph of Light, "to inspire our citizens to
good and noble deeds for the benefit of mankind." Sutro
then willed his original 1,400 acres to his heirs as an educational
trust. His heirs, however, were more interested in the value
of the land, and they eventually convinced the California
Supreme Court to invalidate Sutro's will. The year they sold
Blue Mountain to their appraiser, A.S. Baldwin, the Sierra
Club hiked into the "little wilderness of the Sutro Forest"
to hold a ceremony renaming the peak in honor of their charter
member and President of the Academy of Sciences, George Davidson.
Mt. Davidson's new name was officially recorded in 1911.
"For the pleasure of the public," A.S. Baldwin proceeded
to invest $2,000 for construction of hiking trails to the
top of Mt. Davidson. One of those who hiked up in 1920 was
George Decatur, a Western Union official and director of the
YMCA. Inspired by the natural surroundings, he set out to
describe what can still be experienced today. "As the
group found themselves deeper in the wood...peace and quiet
were so profound that it seemed almost unbelievable that the
noise and roar of a great city was only a few minutes behind
them.… The solitude of the forest...conveyed a sense
of vastness quite as real as one would experience among the
age-old monarchs of the High Sierras.…The undergrowth
and flowers looked as if they might have been there for centuries.…[At
the summit was] a clear vision of the great panorama that
spread before the eye....on the far eastern horizon stood
the bold figure of Mt. Diablo, to the west could be seen the
boundless Pacific, with the headlands of Point Reyes and Point
San Pedro forming widespread arms of welcome to those who
enter the Golden Gate. [Below were] tall monuments of steel
and concrete wherein were housed thousands of busy minds.…Myriads
of moving objects were, without doubt, hurrying hither and
thither, all within vision of Mt. Davidson, yet the noise
and tumult of it all was absent."
George Decatur's subsequent efforts to build "a cross
to crown San Francisco's highest point" would ultimately
lead to preservation of the area as a city park. Spanish explorers
and Catholic priests had placed crosses throughout California
in the 1700s. By the 20th century, a new wave of immigrants
was seeking spiritual meaning in natural settings and building
crosses on mountaintops to counter the commercialism and materialism
they perceived in modern life. In just one day, Decatur raised
$1,100 in donations for the newly-formed Easter Sunrise Committee.
This was used to build a forty-foot-high wooden cross for
the first Easter Sunrise Ceremony on April 1, 1923. J. Wilmer
Gresham, the dean of one of San Francisco's largest churches,
Grace Cathedral, led the event. Despite the rain 5,000 people
attended. Boy Scouts and Boy Pioneers camped out the night
before and kept bonfires burning to light the way for worshippers
arriving before dawn. Search lights illuminated the cross
for (according to the San Francisco Chronicle) "boys
and girls in hiking togs, Jew and Gentile, men and women in
heavy wraps, Catholic and Protestant to trudge up the long
winding pathways leading to the glowing cross."
Click here for part 2 of
the story.
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Blue Mountain was mapped in 1826 by British explorer Frederick
Beechy
