By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society
Illustration FROM REDWOOD RAILWAYS
Boy wonder Asbury Harpending at the beginning of his remarkable career.
In 1868 several groups of entrepreneurs were vying to establish rail service in Northern California. According to the book Redwood Railways by Gilbert Kneiss, one group incorporated the San Francisco & Humbolt Bay Railraod Company for $8,600,000. A preliminary line was planned to start at “Saucelito, skirting the western shore of Richardson's Bay on the way to San Rafael, and thence as far as Petaluma.”
The partners only had enough money to pay for the rail, but figured that when they had the franchise, capital could be found. And they found it “in the pockets of a man who, had he lived a few decades later, would almost certainly have been known as the Boy Wonder.”
Here are some lightly edited excerpts from Kneiss’ account of the extraordinary history of this unlikely angel:
Asbury Harpending was a gold seeker who arrived in California very late — 1857. However, he couldn't have very well made it much sooner, as he was still only sixteen. A good-looking, black-haired Kentucky lad, brimming with enthusiasm, daring, and a latent touch of Midas, he had been well supplied with funds for the voyage west from the parental purse, but his nest egg was in Kentucky state currency and almost worthless at New Orleans where he embarked. Only five dollars jingled faintly in his pockets after the humiliating purchase of a steerage ticket — this he nonchalantly ran up to several hundred by auctioning off the purser's fruit supply as soon as the ship sailed. Then he moved to a first class cabin and arrived in San Francisco with a good stake.
Thereafter Harpending continued to go first class. Though others found the gold fields played out, young Asbury had the happy knack of coming along just as a group of experienced miners gave up as worthless a claim on which they had spent much cash and sweat, working it a little deeper and cleaning up. Age seventeen found him with $60,000. Two years in Mexico followed. Then he had sailed back through the Golden Gate, owning a quarter of a million in cold cash and a Sonora mine worth a million more, but still too young to vote.
A few days later, Lincoln was elected and secession started. Harpending, an ardent Southerner, plunged himself and his bankroll into deep-laid plots to make California a Confederate state, schemes that just barely missed success. Young Asbury spent his time and dollars freely in the cause but the putsch was called off. Deeply disappointed, he went East, served a few days on General Beauregard's staff at the battle of Shiloh and then was handed a captain's commission in the Confederate Navy by Jefferson Davis, although he had never even been aboard a warship.
Captain Harpending soon stood on the deck of his first command, a Confederate cruiser, anchored in San Francisco Bay! No one knew she was a cruiser but he and his brother officers who had just bought the ex-clipper. None among them were sailors, so they had to hire a navigator who promptly gave away the show. The Confederate "naval officers" found themselves lodged on Alcatraz, charged with high treason, and soon convicted of it. Harpending was released after four months on The Rock. Almost immediately he was warned of plans to rearrest him.
Now flat broke, he hid out in the foothills back of Fresno, stumbled onto another mine, and salted away $800,000. Then, the war being over and by-gones considered by-gones, he reappeared in San Francisco and became a large scale operator in real estate.
Such was the young man Fred McCrellish [one of the original partners] sought to interest in San Francisco & Humboldt Bay Railroad. Asbury Harpending, infected with the railroad bug like most Californians as the railroad neared completion, took over 90 per cent of the deal after a very sketchy investigation.
The young Kentucky wonder now plunged into railroad promotion with his usual impetuous energy and enthusiasm. Astride a horse, he traced out the whole route, marveled at the unhomesteaded redwood forests along the Eel River, and gloated over visions of Congressional railroad land grants through such a country. Why, he asked himself, had he been wasting his time with gold mines?
Grading continued north of Petaluma through the fall and winter of 1868, but at a reduced tempo as Harpending was becoming short of cash.
By March, the roadbed was graded within three miles of Santa Rosa and the bridge over Petaluma Creek was under way. Fifteen miles of iron had sailed from England. Ties began to arrive and bills, too. Harpending was finding railroad-building more expensive than he'd figured.
The driving of the gold spike at Promontory in May touched off a recession in San Francisco as many believed that the transcontinental railroad would lessen the importance of the port. Harpending continued to have difficulty in liquidating his real estate, and it was four months before work on the roadbed could be resumed.
Finally the Big Four [Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins and Crocker] squeezed Harpending out.
After years of political and financial strife the rail line, now called the Northern Pacific Railway, was completed in 1907. “At last,” wrote Kneiss, “Harpending’s dream was realized. Back in California and at seventy-five still making fortunes and losing them — he speculated on what might have been had he hung on to his railroad. Of the old-timers, he was almost the sole survivor.”
Asbury Harpending ended his days in 1923 in New York.