Brannan Street

Sam Brannan came out to San Francisco in 1846 with a shipload of Mormons. Two years later, on May 12, 1848 he ran through the streets waving a vial of gold dust and crying "Gold! Gold! Gold on the American River". In those two years he had founded a newspaper, The California Star, several stores, and also ran the Mormon community and extracted tithes from them, a real operator. As his wealth soared, from Utah, Brigham Young requested that Brannan in his turn submit his tithe to the church. Brannan demanded a receipt signed by God and was soon out of the Church.

The rush was really on now with Brannan's store in Sacramento perfectly located and stocked with the necessities of mining. Real estate investments in San Francisco also proved lucrative with Brannan supposedly owning a large percent of the city. As a sideline he imported grape stock and tried to start a resort in Calistoga that was not so successful. As his wealth was lost, including a supposed $500,000 payoff to Lola Montez his health failed and he died later in San Diego.

What's Brannan street doing these days? Still home to the wholesale flower market (at Sixth Street) , a Post Office renowned for it's slow service (between 3rd an 4th) and the location of Jack London's birthplace (at Third), now unfortunately an ugly condo building.

Check out this map from1847 where Brannan's house (marked as number 10) is shown as one of the largest buildings in the city. Walking home I usually cut through an alley that comes out right next to cotweet. One of several local web companies cashing in on (what I consider) tweeting idiots, but others consider as the wave of the future, or for at least a year or two.