|
Adolph Heinrich Joseph Sutro (April 29, 1830 – August 8, 1898) was the 24th mayor of San Francisco, and first German-American Jewish mayor, serving in that office from 1894 until 1896. He is today perhaps best remembered for the various San Francisco lands and landmarks that still bear his name. ==Sutro Tunnel== Born to a Jewish family〔(American Jerusalem: "Jews and the Making of San Francisco - Adolph Sutro (1830–1898)" ) retrieved June 19, 2015〕 in Aachen, Rhine Province, Prussia (today North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany), Sutro, educated as an engineer, arrived in the United States at age 20. In 1860, he introduced himself to William Ralston of the Bank of California and introduced his plans for de-watering and de-gassing the mine shafts of the Comstock Lode by driving a tunnel through Mount Davidson to drain the water. Sutro incorporated the Sutro Tunnel company and raised US$3 million, a considerable fortune through this work in Nevada. He included the miners in his scheme, and planned to sail to Europe to negotiate with the Parisian Bank, but the Franco-Prussian War commenced in the middle of July 1870. Sutro was stymied, but out of the blue came an offer from a London bank led by a banker named McClamont, who offered $750,000 in gold per year for the Comstock. According to historian Samuel Dickson, "... Sutro set off blasts of dynamite, ... leading the way for tunnel diggers. He fought avalanches, mud slides and poisonous gases. He dug air shafts to relieve the danger; the shafts filled with water, one of them to the depth of nine hundred feet. He fought cave-ins and solid rock. Through the grueling months, day after day and month after month, he marched ahead of his men, stripped to the waist, laboring with them, sweating with them, facing death with them, and in the end, winning through with them to victory." Adolph Sutro became King of the Comstock because his tunnels drained three to of water a day, rented by mine owners at an average of $10,000 a day, "all moneys accumulated for his stockholders." Sutro saw that better German pumps were becoming available, that the Comstock was going even deeper than his drainage tunnel and diminishing in metal output, and sold out before conditions worsened further, departing rich for San Francisco. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Adolph Sutro」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|