Thomas Edison’s man in Santa Cruz
The Golden Gate Villa is the crowning glory of Beach Hill, built by the legendary Major Frank McLaughlin. He lived many adventures, in a career so wide-ranging it included Wild West lawmen, the Wizard of Menlo Park, and U.S. presidents as his intimate friends.
Susan Dormanen has long been his biographer, dating from her residing at the Golden Gate Villa in 1991, and writing its centennial history. In my own research on McLaughlin, the problem has always been the chronology of his adventures. What is not in doubt is that his villa was the setting for both triumph and tragedy.
McLaughlin said he was born in 1845, probably in Newark, New Jersey, of Irish ancestry. He had a jovial nature, and well-groomed manner. As a teen, he fought for the Union in the Civil War, where he likely picked-up his fine marksmanship. After the war, the nation was to be united with the construction of the Transcontinental Railway, so he became a Civil Engineer to take advantage of jobs building the Union Pacific. He headed west with the railroad, having adventures along the way, serving as a major in the National Guard, and a stage coach driver. In 1869, the golden spike marked the completion of the Transcontinental Railway.
McLaughlin returned to Newark soon after, where he became a policeman. This led to a friendship with Thomas Alva Edison, a 23-year-old inventor who’d moved to Newark in 1870, and was hiring craftsmen to build his stock tickers. McLaughlin went to work for Edison, then in 1876, Edison brought McLaughlin and several other men to found his Menlo Park laboratory, the world’s first Research and Development facility. Edison’s genius was often improvements on other people’s inventions. Here in 1877 Edison invented the phonograph, and carbon telephone transmitter, an improvement to Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone.
These were exhibited at the Paris world’s fair of 1878. Fairgoers hailed his phonograph as a miracle of science (listened to through earphones), while some thought it had to be ventriloquism. Edison called the phonograph a book for the illiterate, a task-master for memorization, or a way to make dolls talk. The fair also exhibited the head of the Statue of Liberty, with interior supports by Gustave Eiffel (whose namesake tower would not appear until the 1889 fair). McLaughlin promoted the phonograph throughout Europe.
When McLaughlin returned to Menlo Park on Aug. 1 1878, Edison was discussing the idea of a small monorail mail delivery missile. He envisioned it on poles like a telegraph, with a missile-like compartment to deliver mail faster than a train. McLaughlin wondered if something similar might not also be developed to transport ore from mines.
In 1879, McLaughlin married the widow Margaret Loomis, and adopted her daughter Agnes, two woman who were the loves of his life. When Edison’s interest turned to the light bulb, the life of the bulb was based on the life of the filament, so many substances were tried, finding great promise in platinum. Edison sent McLaughlin west in search of platinum deposits, giving him $500,000 for the exploration. McLaughlin stopped at Dodge City, a town only 8-years-old, and was appointed deputy by Marshal Bat Masterson, along with Wyatt Earp. Earp once vowed to shoot McLaughlin on sight for what he’d said. But when they at last met in a saloon, after a tense moment, Earp said, “You wouldn’t have said what you did, unless you thought it was true,” and Earp left.
In 1880, McLaughlin settled in Oroville, California, with his wife and daughter, only to learn Edison was now pursuing tungsten as a more efficient filament. However, Edison told McLaughlin to invest the money in gold mining. With Dr. Ray V. Pierce’s backing, McLaughlin built the Big Bend Tunnel for $750,000, running 12,000 feet long, completed in 1887, including a water-powered electric generating plant to operate pumps and hoists for mining. While an engineering success, gold was not found in sufficient quantities.
McLaughlin pursued other grand plans, with backing from Edison and the California governor, he went to England to propose a venture to build a massive wall diverting the Feather River from its bed to mine the river-bottom. Due to a misunderstanding, he told the English its dollar-value, and they paid him in 12,000 pounds. The mas
McLaughlin said he was born in 1845, probably in Newark, New Jersey, of Irish ancestry. He had a jovial nature, and wellgroomed manner. As a teen, he fought for the Union in the Civil War, where he likely picked-up his fine marksmanship.
sive enterprise was an engineering wonder, which Edison made the firstever construction site with night lighting. It was constructed from 1892 to 1896.
Meanwhile, McLaughlin vacationed with his family each summer in Santa Cruz, in a small Beach Hill house he named “Golden Gate Cottage” after one of his mining ventures. As the State Militia held its annual camp meetings at Santa Cruz, Major McLaughlin liked to entertain the officers lavishly.
McLaughlin attended the World Middleweight Championship match in New Orleans on January 14, 1891, betting $17,000 on Fitzsimmons to defeat Jack Dempsey. Fitzsimmons fought Dempsey for 13 rounds, knocking him down a dozen times, but each time, the badly wounded Dempsey got up. Fitzsimmons finally won in a knock-out. McLaughlin decided to build the finest house he could with the $25,000 winnings.
He hired Holy Cross Church architect Thomas J. Welch, moved his cottage down Second Street, and built a Queen Anne Shingle-style mansion in its place. It’s 35 rooms included a music room, library, billiard room, refrigeration room, wine cellar, massage room, and open porch atop the tower. The outbuildings were a greenhouse, carriage shed and stables. The carriage entrance brought one into the central stair hall, with a stain glass window at the stair landing, believed to represent his daughter Agnes in one of her party costumes. McLaughlin was friends with Teddy Roosevelt, whose gift of elephant hides were used to wallpaper the dining room. The McLaughlins loved to host fancy events for the leading lights of town or state.
In 1896, McLaughlin became Chairman of the California Republican State Central Committee. His diplomatic talents were such that William McKinley credited McLaughlin with delivering the California vote. McLaughlin attended McKinley’s inauguration, congratulating his vice president as well, Teddy Roosevelt. There was much good will from this election, as McLaughlin turned down a post in McKinley’s cabinet, and a nomination for California governor, or state senator.
When Edison’s patented film strip and projector were first exhibited in New York in 1896, McLaughlin made arrangements with Edison to bring them to Santa Cruz for a special showing at the Palm Theater in 1897, on the southeast corner of Pacific Avenue and Laurel Street. That year, his great diversion wall, moved the Feather River to begin mining the riverbed, only to discover the gold miners had already done it, leaving rusty pans and picks behind. This was a great humiliation.
Then on March 24, 1902, the Western Power Company was formed to create a hydroelectric plant on the Feather River. Pierce got McLaughlin to incorporate a rival Eureka Power Company on July 3, to utilize the Big Bend tunnel for hydroelectric power. Western Power didn’t want competition, and was ready to buy out McLaughlin, when the 1906 Earthquake destroyed San Francisco. Their sole reason for hydroelectric power was gone. So were most convention halls. So McLaughlin invited the State Republican Convention to Santa Cruz, to use Golden Gate Villa, the Sea Beach Hotel, and the Boardwalk Casino.
However, by the time the delegates arrived in Santa Cruz, the Casino had burned down, and was replaced with a circus tent. Machine boss Abe Reuf was working behind the scenes to get the Republican anti-corruption Progressives out of office. When this was exposed, the convention became known as “The Shame of California.” Then on Nov. 16, McLaughlin’s beloved wife died, a crushing blow for both father and daughter. A year later, they celebrated a special mass at Holy Cross on the anniversary of her death.
That afternoon, County Bank president and former Lt. Governor Wm. T. Jeter received a phone call from McLaughlin, who said, “I have killed my daughter, and taken poison!”
Jeter rushed to the Villa, but it was too late. How could someone so beloved, and so devoted to his family, do this?
As his friends pieced the puzzle together, they found McLaughlin was broke. He’d pawned or sold most of the jewelry, taken loans from his secretary unable to pay her back, and had only $21.60 in cash. In addition, a string of good investments had gone bad. He was cheated out of his shares in the successful Western Power Co. hydroelectric plant. The rich Cananea Copper Mine in Sonora, Mexico, in big demand for electric wires, had lost value due to a panic, strike and riot. And the clean-running Ocean Shore Electric Railroad under construction, had serious earthquake damage. McLaughlin couldn’t pay for his daughter’s wedding, his secretary said he had to carry a gun for fear of enemies, and he wrote that hiding his poverty from his wife and daughter for seven years was driving him to madness.