The California Gold Rush and the Jesuits

In January of 1848, James Marshall reached into a stream at Sutter’s sawmill in the Coloma valley, about forty miles east of Sacramento, and pulled out a few shiny metal flakes. The excitement created by this discovery launched one of the greatest voluntary migrations in human history: the California Gold Rush. San Francisco, the port of entry to the gold fields of Northern California, saw its population swell from less than 400 people in 1847 to almost 25,000 by 1850. Hundreds of thousands more poured through the city on their way to the gold fields. Such rapid growth precipitated virtual civic chaos. Prostitution, murder, thievery, and gambling were commonplace. Fortunes were made and lost in a day through various kinds of speculation. The city itself nearly burned to the ground more than a dozen times during the 1850s. Upon arriving in the city in 1849, Fr. Michael Accolti, one of the first Jesuits to come to San Francisco, wrote the following about the city: “Whether it should be called a madhouse or Babylon I am at a loss to determine; so great in those days was the disorder, the brawling, the open immorality, the reign of crime which brazen-faced triumphed on a soil not yet brought under the sway of human laws.” Another priest, Fr. Antoine Langlois, wrote in 1849, however, “in spite of the temptations of bar-rooms and saloons on every hand for the multitudes that frequented them…it was possible for a person to save his soul in San Francisco.” Jesuits also believed that there was a place for education in this unruly town, and they started the first institution of higher education in the City of San Francisco.

Saint Ignatius Academy was officially founded on October 15, 1855, though it was renamed Saint Ignatius College in 1859, when the State of California issued it a charter to confer college degrees. In 1930, on the occasion of its Diamond Jubilee, the name was changed for the last time to the University of San Francisco. In our city, there continues a vision and a mission stretching back in time to the founding of the Society of Jesus in 1540 by St. Ignatius of Loyola, that took root here in 1855, and that flourishes today in our Jesuit Catholic University.


Bibliographic note: For the first vignette, and many to follow, I have drawn upon the work of Joseph Riordan, S.J., who wrote The First Half Century: St. Ignatius Church and College in 1905. Also useful has been Jesuits by the Golden Gate: the Society of Jesus in San Francisco, 1849-1969 by John McGloin. S.J., the late historian and archivist at USF. I am also indebted to Michael Kotlanger, S.J., USF’s current archivist, who has opened up the university’s archives to me, checked my vignettes for accuracy, and been very supportive of this project.