Greetings family, friends and neighbors! Today's Historic Snippet about coal mining operations in the foothills of Central Valley in the late 1800's may surprise you. Here's the story of little known Tesla, California. 

Bill 

Historic Snippets 

TESLA, CALIFORNIA 

John Treadwell was a wealthy investor in Alaska gold mines and 

an enterprising entrepreneur who built a mansion on four acres of 

lush gardens in the Rockridge District of Oakland in 1875. When 

he learned that an abandoned Coal Mine at the head of Corral 

Hollow Canyon in the rolling hills southeast of Livermore was 

available, John organized the San Francisco and San Joaquin 

Coal Company in 1890 with an ambitious plan to become California’s leading coal producer and ultimately envisioning becoming a major energy producer by constructing a coal burning power plant in the Central Valley and selling electricity to communities in the nearby Bay Area. 

Coal was discovered in Corral Hollow in 1855 by railroad surveyors plotting a line through the canyon and a year later the first commercial coal mine was established in California. Unable to compete with cheap foreign coal or make a profit hauling coal nearly thirty six miles to industries in Stockton, the enterprise folded in four short months. A group of Welsh miners reopened the coal mine in 1868 after finding a better grade of coal, attracting the attention of the Central Pacific Railroad interested in converting their wood burning locomotives to coal and building a spur line from Stockton to Corral Hollow. Once again the coal operation was short lived when the mine caught fire in 1870 and was forced to 

close. John Treadwell’s San Francisco and San Joaquin Coal Company built a thriving company town in Corral Hollow that he named for the famous inventor Nikola Tesla, the first person to harness the use of alternating current. Five hundred miners and their families lived in company cottages spread along the canyon from Tesla Plaza and a collection of stores, shops, churches, and saloons. 

Treadwell’s operation produced 80,000 tons of coal a year for ten years, however the plan to build a coal burning power plant at Tesla never materialized. Instead Treadwell built the first successful coal briquette plant in the country in Stockton in 1901, creating a new national household commodity. Fire, the apparent vain of California’s coal industry, destroyed the plant in 1905 forcing Tesla mining operations in Corral Hollow to permanently close and the company town to be abandoned and dismantled. 

Except for mine tailings and a few cement foundations there is no trace of the once productive and vibrant town of Tesla, California, however ironically, Corral Hollow Road is an alternative commute route between the Central Valley and the Bay Area for an increasing number of Tesla electric vehicle owners, and John Treadwell’s Oakland mansion and grounds, a National Historic 

Site, is the location of my former alma mater, California College of 

Arts and Crafts. 

-Bill 2/25