The birth of a wine industry and the discovery of gold – this week in history certainly was a busy one.
Jan. 23, 1862
Hides and tallow – a greasy fat used in making cheap candles – is what California was good for under the Spanish and then Mexican government. Hundreds of thousands of cattle once wandered the hills, the valleys and the creek beds of our state. California was the original Longhorn State.
We can all give thanks to a single Hungarian nobleman for changing that fate and setting us on a path of a more sweetly-smelling future.
Count Agoston Haraszthy is known today as the “Father of the California Wine Industry.”
Born in Hungary in 1812 to a noble family, his early life is shrouded in a mist he himself created. Later in life, he claimed that as a teenager he served as a bodyguard to Marie Antoinette’s nephew, Francis I.
What is certain is that Haraszthy was the sort of man who fit more into a single year than most of us are able to in an entire lifetime.
Tiring of Europe, he traveled to the United States, wrote a book about his experience, took the proceeds from the sales of the book and invested in a new life in America.
He lived for a time in Wisconsin and then San Diego before finally making it to Sonoma County.
Everywhere he laid his hat he set himself to work: he was a farmer, store-owner, mill-operator and owner of a steamship service while in Wisconsin. In San Diego he was a sheriff, a city marshal and a state assemblyman.
When the count first made his way to California in the 1850s vineyards had already been planted in the coastal ranges of California. In fact, as early as 1812, Russian colonists had planted grapes at their outpost of Fort Bragg on the Mendocino coast.
Haraszthy arrived and took what up to then had been a crop grown for private consumption and made it into a profitable business.
Or, almost.
The count set up the Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma County in the late 1850s. On this day in 1862, Haraszthy received a load of 100,000 vines representing 1,400 European grape varieties. He was ready to begin testing to see what grew best in his new home.
Unfortunately, his very industriousness in importing European varietals sealed his fate. A few years after planting, his vines began to weaken and die – North America was in the grips of an outbreak of phylloxera. A kind of aphid native to North America, these little pests destroyed vineyards across the country. Only native grapes were partially resistant to the plague.
Haraszthy’s European vines didn’t stand a chance. Partially blamed for the devastation caused by the outbreak, Haraszthy was pushed out as president of the California Agricultural Society.
Always one to land on his feet, “The Father of the California Wine Industry” set out for South America, where he tried his hand at plantation life. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a chance to become the “Father of the Nicaraguan Sugar Industry.”
His death is as spectacular as his life. In 1869, after returning from San Francisco with machinery for his sugar plantation, Haraszthy disappeared in a river near his property and – so the assumption remains to this day – was eaten by alligators.
Jan. 24, 1848
“I have found it!”
At least that is what we like to imagine James Marshall said on this day in 1848. That is certainly what he imagined he said.
Marshall and a team of Mormons had recently been sent into the foothills outside of what would become Sacramento. Their employer was John Sutter. Their task was to build a sawmill. They would exceed all expectations, but struggle to build the mill.
Based out of an adobe fort near the confluence to two rivers, John Sutter had made this partnership with Marshall out of sheer desperation.
Marshall was no millwright, but then again Sutter was no military captain – a title he would try to claim more than once.
His settlement of New Helvetia was relatively prosperous, as far as frontier settlements were concerned.
As part of his prospects for expanding his area of interest beyond the confines of the fort, Sutter needed to construct a sawmill farther up the American River. The cut planks of pine would be used to further expand his settlement and what he didn’t use would be floated down the river to the coastal town of Yerba Buena, or San Francisco, for sale to that growing community. A wonderful business plan.
But Sutter needed a man to lead a team upriver to construct the mill, and in frontier North America men had to make do with what lay around them. With no actual millwrights in sight, he chose the carpenter James Wilson Marshall as his man.
The work at the mill had been taking longer than expected, with Marshall making occasional appearances back at New Helvetia for supplies or to explain delays to the impatient Sutter.
On this day in 1848, at half past seven in the morning, Marshall was walking the excavated ditch his crew had been digging along the river when a sparkle caught his attention.
Breaking the thin rime of ice that covered the water, he picked up several pieces of what he initially thought were shiny quartz.
After taking a sample and smashing it between two rocks, he discovered that the specimen didn’t break, but instead formed into a flattened lump.
Even as a mere carpenter, Marshall knew of only one substance that did that. Gold.
Marshall’s discovery that cold winter morning 169 years ago set into motion the largest migration of people in the history of the world.
Over the next several years, every available hand from as far away as Australia and New Zealand to France and Italy would be drawn to the golden land in search of wealth. Few would find wealth of any lasting nature, but many would try.
The world has never been the same since.
Antone Pierucci is curator of the Lake County Museums in Lake County, Calif.
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