Archeological Mother Lode : Dig Unearths Gold Rush-Era General Store in San Francisco

Millions of Gold Rush-era artifacts, including jars of olives, 135-year-old bottles of whiskey, pottery crocks filled with butter and a crate of 1841 Army surplus rifles, have been unearthed here in an archeological dig that provides a colorful glimpse of this city’s rough-and-tumble past.

The artifacts are the remnants of W. C. Hoff’s General Store, which was built on a pier over San Francisco Bay and destroyed by fire in 1851. Archeologist Allan Pastron, who supervised the dig, calls the find “the most comprehensive collection of Gold Rush-era artifacts ever found.”

Many of the estimated 2 million artifacts were preserved because at the height of the fire the store’s floor collapsed, sending the entire inventory into the bay. In the years since, landfill has extended the waterfront six blocks and the site of Hoff’s store is now prime real estate surrounded by high-rises.

The dig is on the financial district site of a proposed 33-story office building, part of a three-building, $33-million complex that also includes the renovation of the old Federal Reserve Bank building. The area has long been thought to contain significant archeological sites, and the developers, Embarcadero Ltd., paid for the excavation, as required by San Francisco law, after an exploratory bore uncovered signs of the artifacts.

Pastron, initially hired to do the exploratory bore, found pieces of hardwood that he first thought were remnants of a sunken ship. Within weeks of when full excavation began, however, it became apparent to Pastron and his 10-member crew that they had uncovered a store. They began finding shovels, tins of snuff, barrels of salt pork, nails and spikes--all in large quantities. Pastron researched the site at several Bay Area archives and determined that they had uncovered Hoff’s store.

The archeologist described Hoff’s as “kind of a rough-and-ready store. It reminded me of the Woolworth’s store I used to go to when I was a kid, an amazing collection of anything and everything all in a jumble.”

Pastron, who has worked on nine other archeological digs in the San Francisco area, said this one was especially difficult because the artifacts were in a compacted two-foot-deep layer of earth eight feet below the level of the bay. This forced the crew to continuously pump water out of the dig site and to use special techniques to separate the artifacts from the mud that encrusted them.

Although other digs in the area during the last 10 years have uncovered similar debris, Pastron said this dig is significant because many of the artifacts can be traced back to specific people and events. For example, in addition to merchandise from the store, the items recovered have included a brass medallion, a sword and brass buttons that belonged to an Army officer who had quarters above Hoff’s store.

The excavation, which began in December, 1985, was completed earlier this month. Once all the artifacts have been cleaned and catalogued, some will be loaned to Bay Area museums. The rest will be displayed at the renovated Federal Reserve Bank building.

Era in Detail

The artifacts add detail to what is already known about Gold Rush-era San Francisco, Pastron said. It was a time of lawlessness and chaos. More than 200,000 people poured through San Francisco between 1849 and 1851 on their way to the gold fields of the Mother Lode.

The real fortunes, however, were not made by the gold seekers but by merchants like Hoff, who stayed in San Francisco and charged the miners outrageous prices for supplies, said Marvin Nathan, a professor of humanities at San Francisco State University who teaches a course in San Francisco history.

“My feeling is that the people who did the best of the Gold Rush never ever went up to the Mother Lode,” he said. An apple might have cost $5, a blanket $50 to $100 and bricks were $1 each at a time when the average wage was $5 to $7 for a 70-hour week.

However, Nathan added, “You have to understand that San Francisco was several thousand miles from the rest of civilization; supplies were scarce and shortages were common.”

The mass migration of thousands of people, and the large quantities of gold dust circulating through the town brought other problems to San Francisco. Among them were the roving gangs of thugs. The two most notorious gangs were the “Hounds” and the “Sydney Ducks,” according to Nathan. The Ducks were a group of British criminals who immigrated to San Francisco after serving time in Australia, the penal colony for the British Empire.

A favorite tactic of the Ducks was to set one end of the town on fire and go on a looting spree at the other end when everyone rushed off to put out the fire. Between 1849 and 1851, six fires burned 3,000 buildings in the city. It was those fires, set by the Sydney Ducks, that destroyed Hoff’s store.