54 Facts About Claus Spreckels

Adolph Claus J Spreckels was a German-born American industrialist in California and Hawaii, during the kingdom and republican periods of the islands' history.

Claus Spreckels founded or was involved in several enterprises, most notably the company that bears his name, Spreckels Sugar Company.

Claus Spreckels was the eldest of six children of the farmer John Diederich Claus Spreckels and his wife Gesche Baak, a family that had occupied a homestead in Lamstedt for many generations.

Claus Spreckels grew up in Lamstedt and attended elementary school.

Already disliking New York City and sensing an opportunity, Claus Spreckels soon sold his share of the grocery business there to his brother-in-law and bought out Bernhard's San Francisco grocery, relocating there with his family in 1856.

Claus Spreckels partnered again with Claus Mangels and with a younger brother, Peter Spreckels, to start a brewery and sold off his grocery business soon after.

Beermaking required constant monitoring for temperature, something that might be ignored when a shift change happened, requiring Claus Spreckels to come in late at night and monitor the process himself.

Claus Spreckels later stated that he often slept no more than four hours per day for months on end.

Claus Spreckels saloon was located in the same area as George Gordon's San Francisco and Pacific Sugar Refinery and frequented by some of its workmen.

Claus Spreckels had overheard a conversation between these workmen discussing the wastefulness of the sugar refining process at their factory, which allowed large amounts of sugar liquor to overflow and run into the sewers.

Claus Spreckels sensed that if the refinery could still turn a profit while wasting so much of its product, then the profit potential in sugar must be enormous.

In 1863, Claus Spreckels decided to go into the sugar refining business, leaving management of the brewery in the hands of his partners.

Claus Spreckels had his eldest son John accompany him on this extended trip and included him on factory tours so that he would learn the business as well.

In 1864, Claus Spreckels opened the Bay Sugar Refining Company, the first of a series of sugar refining enterprises, establishing a factory at Union and Battery Streets, near the San Francisco waterfront.

In 1865, Claus Spreckels told his partners that he wanted a substantial amount of the company's profits reinvested in doubling the size of the refinery.

Claus Spreckels then quit the company, selling controlling shares to Meese and Meyer, later stating that he preferred to "start afresh rather than being hampered by the conservatism of frightened little men".

Claus Spreckels set about learning the details of the specialized processes of sugar beet agriculture and refining, which were relatively little-known in the United States, even taking a workman's position in a beet sugar refinery in Magdeburg for several months.

Claus Spreckels returned to California in early 1867, with a supply of sugar beet seeds that he had brought back from Germany.

Claus Spreckels publicized sugar beet growing to farmers around the Central Valley, promising great profits, but was unable to find growers due to the highly labor-intensive nature of the sugar beet-growing process.

Claus Spreckels instead set about returning to the cane sugar refining business.

Claus Spreckels opened the California Sugar Refinery, located at Eighth and Brannan Streets in San Francisco, in April 1867.

Claus Spreckels again partnered with Peter Spreckels and Claus Mangels and brought in new partners Frederick Hagemann and Henry Horstman.

Claus Spreckels introduced granulated sugar and sugar cubes, which had been recently developed in Europe, to the American market.

Claus Spreckels's doctors advised him to withdraw from all business activity.

Claus Spreckels left management of the California Sugar Refinery in the hands of his partners and spent the next 18 months over 1869 and 1870 traveling with his family in Europe.

Claus Spreckels returned to San Francisco in early 1871 with his health and vigor fully restored.

Claus Spreckels was hailed in the Hawaiian and California press as the "Sugar King".

Claus Spreckels purchased six blocks of land in the Potrero Point area in an industrial part of San Francisco several miles south of downtown.

Claus Spreckels developed housing and hotel space for over 200 workers, and the new neighborhood at Potreo Point would become the core of the area later known as Dogpatch.

Claus Spreckels used some of his wealth to purchase, beginning in 1872, the former Mexican land grant Rancho Aptos, a large tract of ranch and timber land in Aptos, California.

Claus Spreckels built a large resort hotel, and not far away, an extensive ranch complex.

Claus Spreckels was one of the original investors in the Santa Cruz Railroad, which began operation in 1875 and passed through his land on its run between Santa Cruz and Watsonville.

Claus Spreckels induced others in the area to plant sugar beets, as well, and built the Soquel Beet Root Sugar Company, a small refinery in nearby Soquel in 1874, where it operated for five years.

However, Claus Spreckels eventually decided to establish his own plantations in Hawaii and traveled there one year later.

That same year, Claus Spreckels incorporated the Hawaiian Commercial Company with Hermann Schussler, a San Francisco area engineer best known for overseeing construction of the Crystal Springs Reservoir.

Together, they made arrangements where Claus Spreckels would lend the king money and in return, Gibson and he would increase the Claus Spreckels' land holdings and water rights.

Kalakaua was able to secure a loan from a London creditor and paid off his debt to Claus Spreckels, freeing him of the latter's influence.

Claus Spreckels purchased the Pacific Commercial Advertiser in Hawaii in 1880 and became a publisher.

In 1893, following a bitter lawsuit that pitted him against his two youngest sons, Gus and Rudolph, as well as the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, which he opposed, Claus Spreckels handed off his Hawaii properties and businesses to his business partner William G Irwin and his two eldest sons, John and Adolph, with the intention of focusing his resources on his beet sugar business in California.

In 1888, Claus Spreckels established the Western Beet Sugar Company in Watsonville, which was at that time the largest beet sugar factory in the US By 1890, his main growing operations had shifted to the Salinas Valley, so he built the 42-mile narrow-gauge Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad to ship his sugar beets from the fields near Salinas to Watsonville.

In 1899, Claus Spreckels opened an even larger factory closer to the main sugar-beet fields.

Claus Spreckels was the president of the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railroad, which was founded in 1895 and sold to the Santa Fe Railway in 1900.

Claus Spreckels had an often-contentious relationship with other powerful business figures and interests, both in the United States and in the Kingdom of Hawai'i.

Claus Spreckels was a strong advocate for continuation of this system, arguing that sugar could not be produced economically without a reliable supply of cheap labor.

The majority of San Francisco newspapers of the era did not endorse the Chronicle's reporting on the issue, claiming that the labor conditions on Claus Spreckels plantations were acceptable and, in fact, much better than those on sugar plantations in the Caribbean, a position later supported by independent investigations by the Portuguese and Norwegian governments.

John D Spreckels issued a statement via his newspaper, the San Francisco Call, claiming that neither he nor Claus Spreckels had anything to do with the recruitment of these laborers.

In December of 1908, Claus Spreckels developed a common cold, which in his weakened condition gave way to pneumonia, and he died in his San Francisco home on December 26,1908.

Claus Spreckels interred in the Spreckels Mausoleum at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma.

Claus Spreckels remained under control of Claus Spreckels descendants until a 1949 buyout by Charles Edouard de Bretteville, a relative of Adolph's wife, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels.

Claus Spreckels is headquartered in Brawley, California in the Imperial Valley and operates a beet sugar factory there.

Claus Spreckels shut down operations entirely in 2016, by which time it had been the last remaining sugar producer in Hawaii.

Claus Spreckels lent his assistance to William Matson when he first founded Matson Navigation Company.

Claus Spreckels financed many of Matson's new ships, including Matson's first ship, called Emma Claudina and named for Claus Spreckels' daughter.

In 1899, Claus Spreckels gave the city of San Francisco a classical-style outdoor music structure to frame one end of the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park.