After exploring downtown Napa last month for our story on the Cedar Gables Inn, the sister-house to Alameda’s Girls Inc. building, my interest in the history of the Napa Valley was piqued enough that I planned another trip north, this time to the famous hot springs resort town of Calistoga. By the way, “Sarafornia” is not a typo in the headline, it’s actually a part of the history, which will be revealed below.
California’s first millionaire
Samuel Brannan (1819-1889) was an American settler, journalist, businessman, and prominent Mormon who had an outsized influence on San Francisco and California history. As a young man growing up in Massachusetts and Ohio, Brannan worked as a printer, and then joined the Mormon Church at age 23. In the 1840s, with the Mormons facing rising persecution in the eastern U.S., Brannan, as the highest-ranking Mormon leader in New York at the time, convinced a group of church members to join him on an expedition to California. He chartered the ship Brooklyn, and set sail for California in January 1846. After a six-month voyage, the ship arrived at Yerba Buena Cove (today’s San Francisco) on July 31, 1846.
Using the printing press he had brought with him on the Brooklyn, Brannan established San Francisco’s first newspaper, The California Star, which debuted on January 9, 1847. He also began to open stores, including one at Sutter’s Fort, in what later became Sacramento. When gold was discovered on the American River in 1848, Brannan’s newspaper was unable to report on it because all of his staff had headed for the hills looking for gold. Some reports also suggest he held back the news until he was able to fully stock his store. Either way, he was able to capitalize on the Gold Rush by buying up all the picks, shovels, and pans he could find, and selling them to would-be gold-seekers at a significant markup. He promoted his store by running up and down the streets of San Francisco shouting, “Gold! Gold on the American River!”
Using his business profits, and possibly the tithings paid to him as an LDS Church representative, Brannan increased his land holdings in California, and even in Hawaii, where he purchased large amounts of land in Honolulu. Although there were some financial ups and downs along the way, Sam Brannan became California’s first millionaire, and was elected to the California State Senate in 1853, in the new state’s capital of Sacramento.
Sarafornia Dreaming
After visiting the hot springs in the upper Napa Valley in the late 1850s, Brannan was so enchanted with the beauty and peace of Napa’s “Upvalley” region that he purchased 2,000 acres of land and planned a hot springs resort. By 1862 his resort had opened, soon featuring 25 guest cottages with gingerbread trim, a hotel, bathhouse, racetrack, stable, distillery, telegraph office, and restaurant, all set among wide avenues, palm trees, and manicured lawns…