James Lick
James Lick was born in Pennsylvania before George Washington began his presidency. By the time U.S. Grant was president, Lick was the wealthiest man in California.
Lick's grandfather served with General George Washington, and survived that famous winter at Valley Forge. His son fought in the civil war.
When James was 20, he impregnated the daughter of a rich miller. James asked her father for her hand. But the Miller told him, “When you own a mill as large and costly as mine, you can have my daughter’s hand,’’ he said. That infuriated James!
Lick shot back, “Someday, I will own a mill that will make yours look like a pigsty!’’
That set him on an odyssey for most of his life, which included some impeccable timing and fantastic luck.
He was a carpenter by trade but learned to make pianos. His handiwork was fantastic, and he made tons of money at his New York piano shop. He moved to Argentina and made even more money there.
On a trip to Europe, his ship was captured by the Portuguese, and everyone aboard was taken to Montevideo as a prisoner. He managed to escape and walked all the way back to Buenos Aires.
He lived in Chile, Peru, and Argentina. But he never learned Spanish. He hated life there and decided to return north.
He moved to San Francisco in 1848, with lots of gold, and lots of chocolate. The chocolate quickly sold. So, James convinced his friend in Peru, Domingo Ghirardelli, to move to San Francisco. Yep, That Ghirardelli.
He began buying all of the real estate in San Francisco and San Jose that he could. When the gold rush hit, real estate skyrocketed and made him an even bigger fortune.
He tried gold mining at the start of the gold rush, but after a week he decided his fortune was to be made by owning land, not digging in it. He planted orchards and built the largest flour mill in the state.
He then went back to Pennsylvania to show that miller that he had succeeded in having the biggest and best mill in the west. But his old girlfriend had married someone else and left town. This changed him. His goals achieved but failed in their purpose. He became irascible and a bit eccentric.
To test the compliance of jobseekers, he ordered them to plant trees upside down or to move bricks from one place to another. He built a mansion, but he lived in a shack nearby. He offered to a stranger a 60-acre field for free if the stranger built a wooden fence around it. But the offer was withdrawn when the stranger took a day to reply.
He was often seen in his one filthy, reeking suit, friendless and disheveled, despised by everyone, driving a rickety wagon, collecting animal bones that he would grind in his mill to use for his orchards.
The son he never knew, came to California after his mother died. The two men never got along. After hearing his son had neglected his parrot, Lick cut him out of his will.
He built the Lick House, at the intersection of Montgomery and Sutter Street in San Francisco. It was the finest hotel west of the Mississippi River. Designed to look like Versailles, he inlaid all the wood in the 400-person dining hall himself. Sadly, years later it was destroyed in the fires from the 1906 earthquake.
In 1874, Lick suffered a massive stroke. At the time of his illness, his estates included considerable area in Santa Clara County, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, a large ranch in Los Angeles County, and all of Catalina Island, making Lick the richest man in California.
Lick spent the remainder of his life deciding how to dispense with his fortune.
He originally wanted to erect a pyramid larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza in downtown San Francisco.
However, he was persuaded to leave the greatest portion of his fortune to the establishment of a mountaintop observatory, with the largest, most powerful telescope ever built. The original location was to be just east of Tahoe City on a knoll known as Lousy Point. Lots of preparation was made for this plan. Lake Tahoe could have become the astronomical capital of the world. But accessibility won out, and Mt Hamilton was chosen.
Ultimately he left his fortune, with a current value of $65,200,000, to the construction of the Lick observatory, the James Lick Baths in San Francisco, the founding of the California School of Mechanic Arts, the erection of three bronze pioneer statues at city hall of San Francisco, and a memorial to Francis Scott Key, in Golden Gate Park.