Henry Meiggs

Henry Meiggs (July 7, 1811 – September 30, 1877), was a promoter/entrepreneur and railroad builder born in Catskill, New York.

Meiggs came to New York City in 1835 and began a lumber business that was ruined by the Panic of 1837. He restarted his business in Brooklyn, but again met with failure. Finding success in sending lumber to the Pacific Coast, he relocated to San Francisco during the peak of the California Gold Rush on the cargo ship Albany laden with lumber, which he sold there for twenty times its cost.

When Meiggs arrived in San Francisco in 1849, he, like many others, got into real estate speculation. In Meiggs' case, he promoted the possibility of piers along the north shore area, on the grounds that it was closer to the Golden Gate than the usual harbor, located just south of Broadway Street on the shore of what is today downtown San Francisco. Today, the site of Meiggs' Wharf, in its day a marvel extending two thousand feet into the Bay, is occupied by part of Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, and Pier 45. To that end, he built warehouses, streets and piers in the area, and constructed sawmills and schooners.

Meiggs became extended financially in trying to do this. In order to make ends meet, he illicitly obtained a book full of warrants on the Street Fund (which had little money in it), which the city's controller and mayor had fallen into the habit of signing by the book in advance. Meiggs forged the remaining information and raised money.

Before his fraud was discovered, Meiggs left San Francisco on October 6, 1854, in the brig American, heading for South America. According to him, he landed with only $8,000 (his fraud raised, by some accounts, half a million), lost it immediately, and had to pawn his watch.

Meiggs became a successful railroad builder, building the second railroad in Chile, between Santiago and Valparaíso. He also built many railroads in Peru, and died in 1877 in Lima, Peru while constructing a railroad in Costa Rica which was completed by his nephew, Minor C. Keith. He is said to have been the virtual dictator of Peru by that time, known as "Don Enrique", with interests ranging from silver mines to cleaning up the city of Lima by building a seven-mile-long park.

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