Richard H. Dillon has written over 20 books on California history, among them one dealing on the incredible story of Peter, James and Michael Donahue, "Iron Men" (Candela Press, 1984). Until his retirement he worked as head of the Sutro Library in San Francisco. He is a member of the Western Hostory Association, California Historical Society and the Book Club of California.
BY RICHARD H. DILLON
Published: June, 2000
Richard H. Dillon has written over 20 books on California history, among them one dealing on the incredible story of Peter, James and Michael Donahue, "Iron Men" (Candela Press, 1984). Until his retirement he worked as head of the Sutro Library in San Francisco. He is a member of the Western Hostory Association, California Historical Society and the Book Club of California.
Someone once characterized San Francisco’s founding fathers as being either adventurers or visionaries. Sometimes an individual fitted neatly into both categories. This was certainly the case with the City’s industrial pioneers, Peter, James and Michael Donahue.
The three young Irishmen brought not only the usual Hibernian brawn to Gold Rush California but also industrial daring , adventurousness and great insight and vision into San Francisco’s future.
The brothers started out small in 1849, of necessity, for they had no money. But they soon expanded their blacksmith shop into a machine shop and boiler works, and then added a foundry. They called their firm Donahue’s Union Iron and Brass Works, but the public shortened the company’s name to the Union Iron Works.
The Donahues located at First and Mission Streets, South of Market or "South of the (cable car) Slot, in the area that tired workers called Happy Valley. By 1853 the Irishmen were changing San Francisco nomenclature as well as its skyline and industrial base. They added a gas works on First, from Howard to Fremont; and the area came to be known as Tar Flat rather than Happy Valley. This was a time before natural gas. Illuminating gas for street lamps was made from coal, most of it imported from England.
At first, the by-product, coat tar, was thrown, or allowed to run, out into an adjacent lot, hence the name of the whole district. (An alternative, but less likely, origin for the name is given by some local historians. They claim that Donahue’s Irish workmen slurred their brogues and that Tower Flat, so-called for the Shelby shot tower across from the gas works, became "T’ar Flat").
Peter Donahue was no ecologist, but he was a good businessman and he soon found a use for the gas company’s (more or less "toxic") waste, using the tar for roofing material and street paving before the day of asphalt.
As early as the 1850’s, Peter Donahue say that his new hometown must take advantage of its great resource, San Francisco Bay, in order to handle the population growth that he knew was coming. So it was that he moved into transportation. From ship repair and shipbuilding, and repair, maintenance and eventual construction of locomotives, it was not too great a jump to planning both railroads and ferries.
So Donahue built the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad in1860. The line, which, today, hauls commuters by the thousands, will do the same for throngs of baseball fans. But, not content with tying the Peninsula and South Bay to the growing metropolis, he ended the North Bay’s isolation in the 1870’s by building a line from Donahue, a new port on Petaluma Creek, to the Russian River and Cazadero. He later moved his railroad terminus to Point Tiburon, and Donahue is now a ghost town below Lakeville. Eventually, as the Northwestern Pacific, the railway was extended from Tiburon and Sausalito all the way to Eureka.
To connect his trains with the City, Peter Donahue put together a ferry fleet to run from the Embarcadero. By l871, he had rebuilt such veteran steamers as the Sacramento, Wilson G. Hunt, and ironically, the Milton S. La, named for his chief local rival in transport. He placed them in service with his brand new "flagship", the James M. Donahue, named for his brother. But another star of this San Francisco Bay ferry flotilla was the aging Antelope. She had become famous on the Sacramento River in the 1850’s as "Wells, Fargo’s Gold Boat" because she carried many cargoes of gold dust and bullion. And she brought the first Pony Express mail pouches to the Embarcadero from the capital in 1860.
The equipment is much different today, but the San Jose/San Francisco railroad is humming. There is talk, even, of restoring the old NWP right-of-way in Marin and Sonoma Counties; perhaps for light-rail. Ferry boats are crisscrossing the Bay again, and more are on the way. It is apparent that the dreams of Forty-Niner Peter Donahue and his hard-working brothers are about to come true.
