2—
Heading West

California in the mid-1800s was a big, brawling, get-rich-quick dream. Like many other young men, twenty-three-year-old Joseph Knowland, a bonded farmworker in Southampton, New York, couldn't stop thinking about the fortunes lying in gold fields and waiting to be made in commerce. In late 1856 he booked passage on a steamer, the George Law , for the sea voyage from New York to Panama. He then boarded a rickety train, making a harrowing trip through the jungle across the isthmus to meet up with a second ship, the John L. Stephens , bound for San Francisco. On February 14, 1857, Joseph Knowland sailed through the Golden Gate. His arrival marked the beginning of a powerful California family. Joseph's son, Joseph R. Knowland, would serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and his grandson, William F. Knowland, would become U.S. Senate majority leader and a possible presidential contender.

Soon after arriving in San Francisco, Joseph Knowland set off for Yankee Jim's, a gold mining camp in Placer County, to search for his fortune. But within two years, faced with an illness and "not having found mining either profitable or agreeable,"^[1] he was back in San Francisco. Like many other disillusioned gold seekers, Knowland decided to take advantage of the numerous business opportunities in the Bay Area that arose with the influx of population during the Gold Rush.

After starting off selling oranges on the streets, Knowland worked at various jobs in the shipping and then the lumber industries. In 1863 he married Hannah Russell, originally from Maine. By 1867 he had

saved enough money to form a partnership in a lumber company with a young acquaintance, Jason Springer. This partnership dissolved after three years, but his next lumber company, established with Charles Franklin Doe, proved highly successful.^[2] In 1872 Knowland and his family moved across the bay to a cottage on the island of Alameda. Soon afterward, on August 5, 1873, his son Joseph Russell Knowland was born.

Just across the estuary from Alameda, Oakland was booming. The big push had come in 1869, when the transcontinental railroad was completed. Oakland was its western terminus, and from 1860 to 1870 the town's population more than tripled, to 12,000. New businesses popped up everywhere, some just to meet the needs of railroad travelers waiting to be ferried to San Francisco. Oakland had become, after San Francisco, the West Coast's second-largest city.

Oakland's boom helped Joseph Knowland, whose fame and fortune were growing. He became president and managing owner of the Gardiner Mill Company, which not only owned extensive forested property but also had its own fleet of ships to carry lumber. In 1882 he became part owner of Kerckhoff-Cuzner Mill and Lumber Company, where his lumber was sold. He bought a whaling ship, the Amethyst and interests in silver mines in Tombstone, Arizona. He also served as vice president of the 300-worker Kennedy Mining and Milling Company of Jackson in Amador County, a stockholder in the Alameda Bank, and a trustee of the Gas Consumers Association.^[3] In addition, Knowland took part in various civic affairs, becoming a trustee of the Old People's Home in Alameda, a thirty-third degree Mason, and a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

As Joseph Knowland was increasing his fortune, he was raising a son who showed more interest in newspapers and politics than in the lumber business. The Oakland Daily Times already had become one of the most influential Democratic papers in the state by the late 1860s and early 1870s. The Oakland Transcript also was being published at that time. A third rival, the Oakland Tribune , was conceived when Joseph R. Knowland was just three months old.

On a brisk November day, two businessmen sat down at a polished mahogany table in the quiet bar of Oakland's Grand Central Hotel. These two men, Benet A. Dewes and George B. Staniford, decided the town needed another voice: a Republican voice. The paper they visualized that day would reign over Oakland for more than a hundred years, long after the Times and Transcript had disappeared. On February 21,

1874, the Oakland Daily Tribune printed its first edition. It was described as "insignificant in size, but very respectable in its typographical appearance and editorial tone, being the joint production of two excellent printers and journalists."^[4] The four-page edition, printed on flimsy letter-size paper, proclaimed, "The paper is small but—so was Goliath once."

Forty-two years later, J. R. Knowland would buy a half interest in the Tribune and turn it into one of the most politically and financially successful newspapers in the state.