Gold Rush Tycoon

[Francesca Cruiz]

OnFebruary 4, 1846, 27-year-old Samuel Brannan sailed from New York City aboard the Brooklyn. On board were 238 fellow Mormons. They were bound for the Mexican territory of California, where they hoped to build a Mormon kingdom without the conflicts they had experienced in the United States. During the six months the Brooklynwas at sea, the United Stated went to war with Mexico. When the Mormons sailed into San Francisco Bay, they were dismayed to learn the Americans were in control. Elder Brannan settled his people in California anyway. He would soon make a vast fortune.

Waiting for Brigham Young

Back east, the energetic Brannan had been a promoter of his church. In California he became an ambitious leader. He constructed flour mills, bought land, and printed the California Star, San Francisco's first newspaper. All the while, Brannan awaited Brigham Young, who was leading 15,000 Mormons west on the overland trail. Brannan hoped Young would come to California, but Young preferred a desolate spot to the east, near the Great Salt Lake. He reasoned that California's abundance might attract other settlers.

Gold! Gold!

Brannan stayed in California, but rejected the Mormon church and the church excommunicated him. In the fall of 1847 he opened a store at John Sutter's Fort. A few months later, rumors circulated that gold had been found nearby at Coloma. In early May, Brannan headed to the mines to see for himself. He learned "there was more gold than all the people in California could take out in fifty years." Brannan made plans for a second store. Then, he packed some of the precious metal into a quinine bottle and traveled the hundred miles back to San Francisco. As he stepped off the ferry, Brannan swung his hat, waved the bottle and shouted, "Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" By the middle of June, three-quarters of the male population had left town for the mines.

Entrepreneur for the Gold Rush

Brannan didn't actually dig for gold, but gold swelled his investments to a fortune. His store made enormous profits by selling as much as $5,000 (about $120,000 in 2005 dollars) in goods per day to miners. Brannan also convinced some Mormon miners to pay him a percentage of their income in exchange for his attempts to secure title to the goldfields, which he never did. He opened a third store. He had several buildings in San Francisco and was on his way to being the largest landowner in the new town of Sacramento.

Vigilante Justice

Brannan made money with a reckless passion and energy. His more destructive impulses, such as drinking, womanizing and fighting, also burst forth. With property to defend, Brannan took up a vigilante brand of law and order. When a group of drunken Americans assaulted some Chileans in San Francisco, Brannan climbed atop a barrel and hurled invectives at the Americans. The men were rounded up, tried and sentenced to hard labor. There were no prisons, so some were hanged instead. In the years to come, Brannan would play a key role in San Francisco's Vigilance Committee, which through rudimentary trials dealt harshly with problems like theft, arson, murder, and criminal gangs.

The Richest Man

During the 1850s and 1860s Brannan was known as the richest man in California. The chaos of the gold rush had played to his personality and business instincts, but he plunged into some schemes with the care of a gambler. He once sailed to Hawaii to overthrow the king, a coup that failed. He bought 3,000 acres in Napa Valley, hired Japanese gardeners to tend the land and bought 800 horses. He called his new resort Calistoga and catered to San Francisco's wealthy. In typical fashion, Brannan got in a drunken fight one night with some employees. He was shot eight times. He bled profusely, but survived.

Divorce Leads to Collapse

Brannan invested in railroads, which should have made him richer, but he built a track to Calistoga and the resort was too small to make it pay. Brannan faltered financially. Then came the divorce. Bitter about her husband's notorious infidelity, Ann Eliza Brannan insisted on a cash settlement. Sam Brannan was forced to transform his immense paper fortune into cash in 1870, a low moment for the California economy. His empire collapsed.

Selling Pencils

He spent the next two decades negotiating land deals in Mexico, but his schemes failed. Impoverished, he moved to Nogales, Arizona. In 1887 Brannan sold pencils door-to-door to raise the money for a trip to San Francisco. The newspapers covered the former tycoon's visit. One reporter described him as "old, gray, broken in strength, able only to get about with the aid of a cane. The old keenness of the eye alone shows that his spirit has survived the decay of his body." Brannan died on small fruit farm outside San Diego on May 5, 1889, leaving his children but a few dollars apiece.

When Black neighborhoods across America erupted in violence in the summer of 1967, President Johnson appointed a commission to find the cause for the unrest. Their findings offered an unvarnished assessment of American race relations.

Cuando una ola de violencia se apoder de barrios negros por todo Estados Unidos en el verano de 1967, el presidente Johnson nombr una comisin para encontrar la causa de los disturbios. Sus hallazgos ofrecieron una evaluacin honesta de las relaciones raciales estadounidenses.

In the late 1970s, residents of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY discovered their neighborhood had been built on a former chemical waste dump. Housewives activated to create a grassroots movement that galvanized the landmark Superfund Bill.

Thein Sein took the landmark decision in the face of an escalating protest movement that united people across ethnic and political differences. Although the dam was never built, months before its suspension military authorities forcibly relocated some residents, including those from Tang Hpre, to new settlements with homes made of cheap materials and where the land unsuitable for farming. In the years since, there have been some efforts to restart the hydropower project, but these have been met with protests.

Since the military seized power in February 2021, however, Myitsone and the people from Tang Hpre have been facing another major threat: intensive gold mining. Activists, civil society workers and local people told Frontier that the main company behind the mining is Jadeland, which is owned by Kachin tycoon Sutdu Yup Zau Hkawng. They accuse the firm of digging with heavy machinery in areas beyond its permits, damaging the environment and displacing local people.

Unlike the Myitsone dam, however, there has been little pushback to the gold mining. Influential Kachin figures and institutions have not only largely remained silent, in some cases they have tried to shift the blame or even defended Yup Zau Hkawng and Jadeland, according to residents and activists, who would only speak anonymously for fear of retaliation from Jadeland or its supporters.

Local activists and civil society workers told Frontier that the National League for Democracy government, which came to power in 2016, made some efforts to regulate extractive industries in Kachin State, including gold mining, but that destructive practices continued through its term.

The coup, however, has erased even the limited progress made under the NLD, and created an opening for companies and individuals to mine with impunity, the activists and civil society representatives said.

In recent months, local media reports have emerged of environmentally damaging gold mining practices in Waingmaw, Hpakant, Machanbaw, Putao, Sumprabum, Shwegu and Bhamo townships, as well as other parts of Myitkyina Township, in addition to Myitsone.

Yup Zau Hkawng has near-legendary status for many Kachin people, thanks largely to his rags-to-riches story, and because he is a well-known benefactor to Kachin cultural causes including traditional Manau festivals. He also chaired the Kachin National Association of Tradition and Culture from 1998-2008.

A WMR spokesperson, who did not attend the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that five WMR representatives attended the October 5 meeting. This included Reverend Hkalam Samson, interim chair of WMR and an influential figure in Kachin society. He also serves as president of the Kachin Baptist Convention, which represents the largest denomination among the predominantly Christian Kachin.

Also present at the WMR meeting was Lamai Gum Ja, who serves with Yup Zau Hkawng on the Peace-talk Creation Group. When Frontier called Lamai Gum Ja, he repeatedly said he was busy and then stopped answering his phone.

The minister was referring to the Kachin Political Interim Coordination Team, which was established in March last year by domestic and diaspora Kachin organisations to represent Kachin political aspirations.

On December 27, 2021, the KIO issued a statement prohibiting gold mining in KIO-controlled areas. Naw Bu told Frontier that the KIO was unable to grant or withdraw permission to mine gold in areas outside of its administrative control, including near Myitsone.

Despite claiming the KIO does not have control over gold mining at Myitsone, in a follow-up interview, Naw Bu confirmed that the KIO collects taxes from gold mining activities there, as it does from many projects across the state.

From this point on, the book can be thought of as split into two distinct parts. The first part, comprised of Chapters 2 through 7, follows Tom Walsh as he seeks to make his fortune prospecting for minerals throughout Colorado. This is also the part of the book that is most likely to be of interest to economists and business historians. In these chapters, Stewart paints a picture of Walsh as a shrewd businessman who loved mining but would only engage when it made financial sense.

Walsh did not immediately rush to Colorado and begin prospecting. Instead, he was happy to find steady work as a carpenter building railroad trestles for the Colorado Central Railroad. When the financial panic of 1873 raised the returns to prospecting relative to carpentry work, Walsh joined the gold rush. Even after moving to the mining town of Del Norte in southwestern Colorado, Walsh split his time between carpentry and prospecting, a strategy he would employ for much of his mining career.

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