Born 1830 in Prussia
Died August 8, 1898 in San Francisco
Sutro came to San Francisco from Prussia. He arrived on the SS California on November 21, 1850 and immediately engaged in trade in San Francisco
When the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nevada, made headlines, it caught Sutro's attention because he had been educated in the field of mining engineering.
Differently from California, the odd configuration and instability of the Comstock geography required the development of new technologies. The treasure lay deep in the ground rather than at the surface or in streams, and prospectors came to the dispiriting realization that mining the Comstock Lode meant using costly equipment and sinking deep shafts into the earth - and hence required investors, mining companies, and organized work crews.
The difficulty of getting the Comstock ores out of the earth's tenacious grip challenged the era's best engineers and inventors; mining technology was a science that Americans were only beginning to grasp.
Sutro, a brilliant and aggressive entrepreneur, established the Sutro Metallurgical Works in Nevada and was responsible for the planning and building of a tunnel to make it possible to drain and ventilate mines. His proposal turned out to be a grandiose and ultimately fruitless solution to the problems of flooding, intense heat, and ore transport. He proposed digging a horizontal tunnel from Carson Valley, four miles away. At great expense, after many complications, the Sutro tunnel was completed in 1878 - but the ore had almost given out by then.
The scheme never paid for itself - though it paid Sutro, who sold his stock holdings early and retired, a millionaire, to San Francisco in 1879. There he ran for mayor on the Populist ticket, won and served one term.
At one point, Sutro owned one-twelfth of the land in San Francisco, including Cliff House & Lands End: San Francisco's Seaside Retreat.
He
purchased the Cliff House in the early 1880s, and a thousand acres of
land facing the Pacific Ocean.
That area is now called Sutro Heights, and contains a park, the remains of the Sutro saltwater baths, and what remains of the Cliff House. This stunning structure lasted through the mid 1900s and brought joy to thousands of families who frequented the gardens and greenhouses, baths (with six pools of varying temperatures and depths), ice rink and museum. It was a wonderful gift to the City.
Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area
Levi Strauss, A.L. Gump, Yehudi Menuhin, Gertrude Stein, Adolph Sutro, Congresswoman Florence Prag Kahn--Jewish people have been so enmeshed in life in and around San Francisco that their story is a chronicle of the metropolis itself. Since the Gold Rush, Bay Area Jews have countered stereotypes, working as farmers and miners, boxers and mountaineers. They were Gold Rush pioneers, Gilded Age tycoons, and Progressive Era reformers. Told through an astonishing range of characters and events.