Greeting family and friends! Today's memorable character vignette is about a person whose name is very familiar in the South Bay with schools, parks, a freeway and a mountain top observatory named for him. Here is a little backstory about crossing paths with James Lick.........Bill
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Memorable Character
JAMES LICK - Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Eccentric
Piano maker and the son of a Pennsylvania carpenter, James Lick
became the richest person in California prior to his passing in 1867.
Lick had accumulated a huge fortune as a real estate investor and
land baron by initially parlaying the sale of 600 pounds of chocolate,
purchased from his Peruvian friend Domingo Ghirardelli, into land
purchases in San Francisco and farmlands in San Jose. After a short
stint in the gold fields and recognizing the skyrocketing value of land
during the California Gold Rush, he came to the conclusion that a
fortune was to made by owning land, not digging in it. Buying and
selling properties he ultimately owned considerable parcels in San
Francisco, extensive orchards in Santa Clara County, large holdings
around Lake Tahoe, property in Los Angeles County, and the entire
Santa Catalina Island. Even though he owned one of the finest
hotels, the Lick House, in San Francisco and the largest flour mill in
the state he lived in a shack and was often seen wearing the same
filthy suit. Friendless and disheveled he often collected bones in an
old wagon to be ground in his mill and spread in his orchards. The
last few years of James Licks life were spent determining how to
dispense of his vast fortune including a wild idea to create giant
statues of himself and his parents and construct a pyramid in
downtown San Francisco larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza!
Luckily, Lick was persuaded by the President of the California
Academy of Sciences to leave the largest portion of his fortune to the
establishment of a mountaintop Observatory. Lick agreed with two
stipulations, that he be entombed beneath the most powerful
telescope ever built, and that there would always be fresh flowers at
his tomb. Eight decades after his passing, on a cold winter evening at
the top of Mt. Hamilton and overlooking the Santa Clara Valley I
crossed paths with Jame Lick. While the night sky and the moon
could be seen through the narrow slot in the darkened observatory
dome, only a dim lamp illuminated the base of the 1888 refracting
telescope where a small bouquet marked the final resting place of
James Lick. -Bill
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