San Francisco, the gleaming mecca of all things tech, got its big break during another era of innovation: the Gold Rush of the mid-19th century. Before then, several hundred people lived in Yerba Buena, which became San Francisco in 1847, after the territory was seized by the United States during the 1846 Mexican-American War. After gold was discovered in 1848, the population began to explode. Jews were among the first people to arrive; coming mostly from Bavaria, they sought both to escape anti-Semitism at home and to set up new businesses in a just-beginning-to-boom town. “In many ways, they were the founders of San Francisco,” says Jackie Krentzman, executive producer of American Jerusalem, a documentary film about San Francisco’s Jewish history.
For Rosh Hashanah in 1849, some 30 Jews gathered in San Francisco to usher in the New Year. (A plaque in the 700 block of Montgomery Street commemorates the occasion; services were held in a tent.) Many of the Jews, who had been peddlers and shopkeepers in Europe, applied the same skills in the new country, selling supplies to gold miners. Eventually, some businesses run by these immigrants became household names. The most famous was Levi Strauss, who came from Bavaria and invented denim blue jeans. Adolph Sutro, also from Germany, was trained as an engineer but started out in California as an unsuccessful tobacconist. Eventually, he managed to raise enough money to build a tunnel through Mount Davidson in San Francisco in order to remove gas and water from mine shafts. After selling his shares in the tunnel for millions, Sutro went on to become a real estate investor (at one point he owned one-twelfth of San Francisco) and eventually mayor of San Francisco.
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