Meiggs’ Wharf and North Beach

Always looking for a way to make an extra buck, Meiggs talked his friend, Abe Warner, to open a drinking establishment on the northeast corner of Francisco and Powell streets. In 1856, when he opened his establishment, there was very little entertainment available for the children and non-drinking crowd so in addition to building a bar he turned his “Cobweb Palace” into somewhat of a carnival. The name he chose, Cobweb Palace, was a natural because Abe let the cobwebs alone, hanging from the ceiling until they sometimes reached length of 6 feet. He admired spiders and would not let anyone touch them or take them down. Abe, however, was a tidy man, well groomed and of a good reputation and his bar, where he held court, was clean.

Business was good. The wharf was continually full of ships arriving from the East Coast and the Orient, as well as lumber ships from Oregon and Washington. The smell of spices, fresh baked bread, crabs and shellfish abounded everywhere as well as the sound of stevedores yelling out their cargo and the sound of whips cracking to get the mules moving under the heavy load of their cargos.

Crowds sampled Abe’s free chowder as they stood in amazement at the sights inside the Palace. Abe had a fancy for paintings, mostly nudes, and the public, sailors and populace alike, couldn’t get enough of them while wandering around and looking at the Totem Poles, sperm whale teeth, war clubs from the islands of the Pacific and walrus tusks. He had a menagerie of animals, including trained parrots, monkeys, a bear and a kangaroo. He had a parrot named Warner Grandfather who swore in 4 languages and shouted out to the customers “I’ll have a rum and gum. What’ll you have?”

The locals took it all in while strolling along the pier and eating cracked clam chowder, sweet and succulent Dungeness crabs pleased everyone and fresh baked bread.

Meiggs’ aspirations were high but his money supply ran short of his projects and he figured he could “borrow” some money from the city. He discovered that the city’s controller and the mayor signed the warrants of the Street Fund and Meiggs gained somehow gained the use of them. He filled out the rest of the info needed and sold them to speculators. He left San Francisco on Oct. 6, 1854 just before the fund loss was discovered. He landed in South America and began using his talents to build the second railroad in Chile. He became rich again. Then the economy went sour. In 1877, he died.

He was said to have paid back the million dollars in money that he absconded with in San Francisco and he tried to get a bill passed in California that said that he could not be tried for any illegal act that happened before 1855. It failed to pass. The indictment against Meiggs, stemming from the fraud, was squashed by the governor. His reason was that Meiggs had rehabilitated himself.

Meigg’s Wharf eventually was absorbed by new facilities along North Beach where Fisherman’s Wharf is now.

Rediscovering the Peninsula by Darold Fredricks appears in the Monday edition of the Daily Journal.