'Cement King' landscaped Sequoia High

William Jackson Dingee has been described as one of the most colorful, but one of the most unscrupulous of California’s millionaires. His success in business has been attributed to his ability to gain influence over men in government through generous donations.

The site of Sequoia High School was originally part of the old Las Pulgas Rancho. A section was later purchased by Horace Hawes and then sold to Moses Hopkins, who built Emerald Lake to supply water for his horse farm. In 1902, Dingee bought the estate.

He built a home where Sequoia’s main school building is located and put in gardens for Dingee Park. The house was completely destroyed in the earthquake of 1906, and by 1907 the 3,000-acre property was sold to a developer.

Dingee was known as the "Cement King” as he owned the Standard Portland Cement Company and had plants in Napa, Washington state, Pennsylvania and finally in Santa Cruz. Construction of brick and mortar was giving way in the early 20th century to concrete construction.

Cement is a main ingredient for concrete, so its value was increasing. The United States had begun work on the Panama Canal and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the demand for cement along the Pacific Rim was booming.

Dingee moved his Santa Cruz operation to the isolated north of town to avoid opposition from townspeople to the dust and noise. He said he planned to ship his product from a wharf at Davenport. It turned out that he had also been talking to people about building a railroad.

Southern Pacific presented a plan to build along the coast to San Francisco and an unrelated plan for the Ocean Shore Railroad along our coast was developing in 1905. Ocean Shore was the first to build north out of Santa Cruz, and they rushed to get their track built before Southern Pacific laid their track and took away the lucrative freight business.

The 1906 Earthquake delayed the progress of the Ocean Shore line. Rebuilding after the "Quake” also increased the demand for cement throughout the Bay Area. In July 1907, Southern Pacific completed its line to the cement plant, and the Ocean Shore freight monopoly was over.

Dingee, meanwhile, had started to build another estate, Cliff Manor, in Santa Cruz. His planned Moorish mansion was never built, but a modest villa was erected and landscaping was done using mature plants he moved from his San Mateo County estate.

Dingee had begun his career in real estate in Oakland. In 1884, he had his offices there. He acquired control of the water supply, establishing the Oakland Water Company in the process. He had an estate in the Piedmont hills and homes in New York City as well as San Francisco.

In addition to the cement business, he also owned all of the slate quarries that produced the preferred roofing material of that time. He was a close friend of San Francisco’s Mayor Eugene Schmitz.

The mayor expressed his gratitude to Dingee for his generous gifts by endorsing legislation that enhanced Dingee’s business projects and appointing him to the Parks Commission.

Dingee’s complex financial empire began to crumble in 1909, and he finally declared bankruptcy in 1921. He died in obscurity in Sacramento in 1941.

Rediscovering the Peninsula appears in the Monday edition of the Daily Journal. For more information on this or related topics, visit the San Mateo County History Museum, 2200 Broadway, Redwood City.