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The Admission Day Monument was commissioned by San Francisco
Mayor James D. Phelan for $12,000. Like the Mechanics Monument located nearby,
it was sculpted by Californian Douglas Tilden. It was unveiled on California
Admission Day (September 9) in 1897.&nbsp; 

The monument stood at the intersection of Mason, Turk and
Market Streets, near the Native Sons of the Golden West in San Francisco’s
Tenderloin District, from 1897-1948. It was moved from that location to expedite traffic in 1948. It was relocated to Golden Gate Park, home of many other public monuments.&nbsp;But lobbying from the Native Sons moved it back
to the Tenderloin District at Market, Post &amp; Montgomery streets in 1977.

[Native Sons Statue being moved from Market, Turk and Mason streets to Golden Gate park]. December 29, 1948. Photo ID #AAA-9489. SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY.

[Native Sons Monument at the intersection of Turk, Mason and Market streets]. 1906. Photo ID #AAC-4064. SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY.

Admission Day Monument (current location)

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Original site of the Admission Day Monument, also known as the Native Sons Monument and the Phelan Fountain.  Erected in 1897 to celebrate California statehood. It was moved to Golden Gate Park in 1948. But lobbying from the Native Sons led to it being moved again to Market, Post & Montgomery streets in 1977.

Original Site of Admission Day Monument

Highlights monuments celebrating early white settlement of California. Visit current and former locations of pioneer monuments throughout northern California.

Pioneer Monuments in Northern California

View pioneer-themed monuments and their former locations.

Relocating San Francisco's Pioneer Monuments

This short walk is located in a few blocks surrounding San Francisco's City Hall and includes a variety of museums and monuments as well as historic buildings, churches, and homes. 

Heart of San Francisco Walking Tour

Starting at the Tenderloin Museum, this tour will guide you through some of the complex and surprising history behind San Francisco's well-known Tenderloin district.

Tenderloin District of San Francisco Walking Tour

Eccentric millionaire James
Lick (1796-1876) included $100,000 ($2.8 million in 2015 dollars) in his will
to build a monument that would depict early California history. After selecting
the design and erecting&nbsp;the monument in 1894, thousands of San Franciscans
celebrated the monument's dedication in front of their new City Hall. City Hall
was destroyed by the fire that followed San Francisco’s enormous 1906
earthquake, but the 800-ton monument survived.

Design elements on the
monument depict white settlement of California from European exploration
through the Spanish mission era, Mexican period and the 1849 gold rush. The
center of the monument features a&nbsp;granite pedestal topped by a bronze
statue depicting "Eureka," the spirit of California.&nbsp; Scenes
from California history and portraits and names of famous Euro-Americans surround
that pedestal. These include: explorers Sir Francis Drake and Juan Rodriguez
Cabrillo; missionary Junipero Serra; military leaders John C. Frémont, Mariano
Guadalupe Vallejo, John D. Sloat, and Robert F. Stockton; trader Thomas O.
Larkin; and donor James Lick. James Marshall, who is credited with sparking the
California gold rush, appears along with John Sutter, on whose land he
discovered it.

Four statues originally flanked the
central pedestal. Allegorical female figures represent Commerce and Plenty. "Early
Days" depicts a Native American seated&nbsp;in front of a Catholic friar (representing
California’s Spanish mission era, 1769-1821) and a Mexican vaquero swinging a
lasso (representing the vast ranches of the Mexican era, 1821-1848). Another
depicts white American miners during the 1849 gold rush.

Few white residents of
the city perceived these images as offensive for the first half of the 20th
century. However, in the early 1990s, the Library Commission sought to move the
monument to make room for a new library. The proposed move, combined with
increased awareness of the treatment of Native peoples, led residents to
reconsider the monument. As leaders discussed the effort to move the monument
from its original location at the intersection of&nbsp;Grove, Hyde and Market
streets, they also addressed the nature of the monument.&nbsp; 
 
Rather than alter the statue, city leaders
responded to growing concerns about the monument by adding an additional plaque
in 1996 that discussed the often disturbing nature of conquest. The plaque
informs readers that over half of the Native population perished as a result of
the arrival of Europeans. Since that time, landscaping surrounding the statue
has made it increasingly difficult to see that plaque. 
 
In 2017, as Americans debated the removal of
Confederate monuments across the country,&nbsp;San Francisco's Art Commission
voted to remove the controversial "Early Days" bronze grouping.&nbsp; "Early Days" was seen as demeaning to Native peoples&nbsp;because it depicted a Spanish missionary and Mexican vaquero towering over a submissive American Indian man.&nbsp; After a year of public debate and legal wrangling, the "Early Days" statue was removed before dawn on September 14, 2018.

This monument was created in 1894 by Frank Happersberger and is one of the landmarks of the Civic Center Plaza area. At the time of its creation, few residents were concerned about the way the monument depicted Native Americans as subservient to European Americans. In recognition of the monument's biased interpretation of history, residents petitioned for an additional plaque that would provide historical context related to the creation of the monument. In September 2018, that portion of the monument was removed, leaving its pedestal empty.

San Francisco's Pioneer Monument

Prior to 1840, the first “city hall” of San Francisco was more of an abstract concept, moving back and forth between the back room of a hotel and a private room in a house, suffering constant displacement due to fires and political corruption. By 1869, those eager to settle and promote the city realized that San Francisco needed a spectacular metropolitan city hall to showcase the city's progress and promise. The site chosen was a triangular plot that had formerly housed a cemetery. The state appropriated the land and auctioned off parcels of the property to various interests in order to raise the $1.5 million necessary to&nbsp;cover the construction costs, with the intent to finish the grand hall in three years.

Construction began in 1870 and wasn’t completed until 27 years later at a total cost of $6 million. The project suffered from tremendous ineptitude and corruption from the outset. A succession of seven chief architects saw a building which was&nbsp;architecturally unsound, had&nbsp;major sewage problems, chimneys that wouldn’t draw smoke, and uneven floor surfaces that didn’t match up from section to section.&nbsp; The colossal mess came tumbling down in the great earthquake of 1906, and what was left burned in the “Ham and Egg” fire that ravaged the city during the quake’s aftermath.

Surrounding the old city hall were empty sandlots. The lots had been sold for development, but renovation plans were abandoned as the city hall project continued to drag out. It was in these sandlots that San Francisco’s tradition of protest demonstrations was born. Constitutional rights notwithstanding, American settlers in the West had a poor understanding of civic space and how to properly demonstrate for a cause. Because these were empty tracts near City Hall, the sandlots became an impromptu public square for the city’s many groups and associations.

The first congregants in the sand lots were the city’s impoverished, unemployed, and dispossessed -&nbsp;people suffering the brunt of “The Long Depression,” America’s first major economic downturn, lasting from 1873 -1880. The failure of the Bank of California only worsened an already terrible situation in the city. Many on the&nbsp;east coast flocked west to the coast’s only metropolis, San Francisco, in search of a better life. The completion of the trans-continental railroad in 1875 threw thousands of jobless Chinese into the San Francisco labor market, and directly into competition with the Eastern transplants seeking better fortunes.

Rampant unemployment and destitution from 1876-1877 strained the resources of the city’s benevolent associations and churches to the breaking point, as they were feeding thousands of people daily. The depression had migrated west, causing San Francisco’s unemployment rate to skyrocket. The city had no central labor authority and there was no government provision for the unemployed, worsening desperation and discontent.Beginning on July 16, 1877, a strike on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad incited increasingly bloody riots that swept through Pittsburgh, Albany, Chicago, and St. Louis, reaching San Francisco on July 21. With&nbsp;strife running at an all-time high, labor agitator, anti-Chinese organizer, and Workingmen’s Party of California founder Dennis Kearney (himself an immigrant from Ireland) led an anti-Chinese procession among the congregation and incited the crowds into what would become a bloody riot against&nbsp;San Francisco’s Chinese community. Kearney’s primary political gambit was scapegoating the current labor and financial conditions on the presence Chinese immigrants in the city. His words encouraged the rioters to seize upon and kill a Chinese man who was passing by. Emboldened by this murder,&nbsp;the crowd marched on Chinatown.

The Chinatown pogrom began on July 23rd and lasted until late July 24th. It claimed the lives of four Chinese residents and cost over $100,000 in property damage to Chinatown. Twenty laundries were destroyed by the rioters, who smashed the windows of the Chinese Methodist Mission by pelting it with rocks. The mob also attacked the wharves of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, because this shipping line was the primary mode of transportation for America-bound Chinese immigrants headed to California. Although the steamships were not burned, the wharves were partially wrecked. Rioters also burned the lumber and hay yards adjacent to the Pacific Mail wharves. The violence was finally halted late in the evening of July 24. It took the combined efforts of the police, the state militia, and more than 1,000 members of the citizen’s vigilance committee-each armed with a hickory pickaxe handle-to subdue the rioting

Currently occupied by the civic buildings and the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library, this site was the home of the original San Francisco City Hall, which was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. It is also the site where the Riot of 1877 started, igniting a 2-day pogrom against the city’s Chinese immigrant population. The new library was built between 1993 and 1996 and replaced the previous main library that had been damaged by the 1989 earthquake. 

San Francisco Public Library (Original City Hall)

Thousands of San
Franciscans celebrated the dedication of an 800-ton monument to white pioneers
in front of their new City Hall in 1894. Donated by eccentric millionaire James
Lick (1796-1876), the $100,000 ($2.8 million in 2015 dollars) monument depicted
early California history from European explorers through the 1849 gold rush.
City Hall was destroyed by the fire that followed San Francisco’s 1906
earthquake, but the Pioneer Monument survived.

Design elements on the
monument depicted white settlement of California from European exploration
through the Spanish mission era, Mexican period and the 1849 gold rush. The
center of the monument features a&nbsp;granite pedestal topped by a bronze
statue depicting "Eureka," the spirit of California.&nbsp; Scenes
from California history and portraits and names of famous Euro-Americans
surround that pedestal. Four statues flanked the central pedestal. Allegorical
female figures represented Commerce and Plenty. "Early Days" depicted
a Native American on his knees in front of a Catholic friar (representing
California’s Spanish mission era, 1769-1821) and a Mexican vaquero swinging a
lasso (representing the vast ranches of the Mexican era, 1821-1848). Another depicted
white American miners during the 1849 gold rush.

Few white residents of
the city perceived these images as offensive for the first half of the 20th
century. However, in the early 1990s, the Library Commission sought to move the
monument to make room for a new library. The proposed move, combined with
increased awareness of the treatment of Native peoples, led residents to
reconsider the monument. Native groups wanted to dump the monument in the San
Francisco Bay. Martina O'Dea of the American Indian Movement Confederation
argued that it "symbolizes the humiliation, degradation, genocide and
sorrow inflicted upon this country's indigenous people by a foreign invader,
through religious persecution and ethnic prejudice."1 But preservationists believed it should remain in its original location to
represent historic views at the time it was erected.

The enormous statue was
moved about 2 city blocks in July 1993. Rather than alter the statue, city
leaders responded to growing concerns about the monument by adding an
additional plaque in 1996 that discussed the often disturbing nature of
conquest. The plaque informs readers that over half of the Native population
perished as a result of the arrival of Europeans. Even that language was
controversial. The Roman Catholic church and Spanish government both opposed
proposed language describing the mistreatment of American Indians.

In 2017, as Americans
debated the removal of Confederate monuments across the country,&nbsp;San
Francisco's Art Commission voted to remove the controversial "Early
Days" bronze grouping from the Pioneer Monument. A legal challenge to its
removal was filed in early 2018.

Pioneer Monument by sculptor Frank Happersberger erected on this site in 1894 in front of San Francisco's new City Hall. It was moved in 1993 to make space for the new public library building. That move was protested by preservationists who wanted to keep it in its original location and by groups that opposed its depiction of Native Californians.

Original Site of San Francisco's Pioneer Monument

Also known as the Native Sons Monument and the Phelan
Fountain, the Admission Day Monument was erected to celebrate California’s 1850
admission to the Union. It was commissioned by San Francisco Mayor James D.
Phelan for $12,000. Like the Mechanics Monument located nearby, it was sculpted
by Californian Douglas Tilden. It was unveiled on California Admission Day
(September 9) in 1897.&nbsp; 

An 18.5-foot-tall Doric marble columnn designed by Willis
Polk rests on a paneled pedestal. A bronze winged female figure representing the
Genius of California stands atop the columnn. She holds a book inscribed “September
9, 1850,” the date California became a state. The angelic figure is said to be
modeled after the artist’s wife.

At the base of the columnn stands a miner representing the Youth
of California. The miner “rush[es]
forward with impetuous haste and cheer[s] lustily in triumphant enthusiasm.”1 Armed with a pistol, he holds a pick behind
his back and, waves a large American flag. The miner also honors the Native
Sons of the Golden West, to whom the monument is dedicated.

It is engraved with a declaration made by W.H. Seward to
U.S. Senate on California’s admission to the Union: “The unity of our empire
hangs on the decision of this day.”

The Admission Day monument was intended as a public drinking
fountain. According to the San Francisco
Call in 1895,

<blockquote>San Francisco is badly off for drinking fountains, and even
one of stucco or ordinary stone would be a boon to weary pedestrians, who too
often have to trudge along thirsty or patronize the saloon. A fountain such as
Mr. Phelan proposes to erect will make a draught of pure water an artistic joy.
It may even take the same hold on the public affection that the fountains in
Rome have, where the people linger to exchange the news and enjoy one moment
more of dolce far niente&nbsp;[sweetness of doing nothing] as they admire the sculptor's bronze and marble for
the hundredth time.2</blockquote>

Water poured out of the mouths of two bear heads symbolizing
California. Entwined rattlesnakes beneath the fountains represented the Sierra
Nevada mountains and the dangers of the Wild West.

The monument stood at the intersection of Mason, Turk and
Market Streets, near the Native Sons of the Golden West in San Francisco’s
Tenderloin District, from 1897-1948. It was moved to Golden Gate Park near many
other public monuments in 1948. But lobbying from the Native Sons returned it to
Market, Post &amp; Montgomery streets in 1977.

&nbsp;

Erected in 1897 to celebrate California statehood. Also known as the Native Sons Monument and the Phelan Fountain. It was commissioned by San Francisco Mayor James D. Phelan for $12,000. It was sculpted by Californian Douglas Tilden.

Admission Day Monument

<div>Original site of&nbsp;The Pioneer (also known as&nbsp;American Pioneer), which was sculpted by rancher-turned-sculptor Solon Borglum (1868-1922). Borglum sculpted&nbsp;The Pioneer&nbsp;for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in San Francisco, California. His older brother Gutzon would later carve faces of four United States presidents into Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Borglum’s&nbsp;Pioneer&nbsp;was an older bearded man, evoking an American national patriarch.&nbsp;His dignified pose atop a prancing horse evoked the nineteenth-century equestrian monuments to military leaders.&nbsp; Clad in rough Anglo-American clothing, he was armed with a rifle and ax that spoke to his work ethic, his economic aspirations, and his contributions to manifest destiny. With the rifle he would hunt to support his family, and will protect his family from both wild animals and wild Indians. With the ax he would transform untamed forests into civilized farmland and build a log cabin, that lasting symbol of white civilization. The statue merged martial pageantry and rough frontier realities. The statue at once honored white settlers for their willingness to face frontier privations – the “fine old men and women came first and made a way for us”1&nbsp;– and celebrated the mastery of “civilized” white society over the “untamed” wilderness and native peoples. The pioneer’s advanced age indicated that the frontier period had passed, giving way to a more settled and civilized society. Borglum’s&nbsp;Pioneer&nbsp;stood at the entrance to the Court of Flowers. It received a good bit of attention from fair visitors, including that of California native and United States Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane. In his remarks at the fair’s opening ceremony, Lane argued that the spirit of the American pioneer lived on in twentieth-century imperialism. Lane pointed to Borglum’s&nbsp;Pioneer&nbsp;statue as embodying those characteristics of civilized white manhood. “The greatest adventure is before us, the gigantic adventure of an advancing democracy, strong, virile, and kindly, and in that advance we shall be true to the indestructible spirit of the American Pioneer.”2&nbsp;Borglum’s&nbsp;Pioneer&nbsp;and its counterpart, James Earle Fraser’s&nbsp;End of the Trail, both spoke to the end of an era. They declared at the exposition that the frontier spirit lived, but was reborn and recast as leaders of the twentieth-century project of American imperialism.</div><div>Both fair organizers and visitors interpreted Borglum’s and Fraser’s statues as depicting the demise of indigenous peoples and coming of white civilization. One declared that “The symbolism of the ‘Pioneer’ and ‘The end of the Trail’ is … a very fine expression of the destinies of two great races.”3After the fair closed, the Exposition Company was responsible for cleaning up the site. They sold buildings, fixtures, and equipment to the highest bidder. Because they were made of staff (plaster, faux travertine and chicken wire), the buildings and artwork did not last as long as normal stone, brick or wooden buildings. Part of the fairgrounds became Golden Gate Park. The Palace of Fine Arts was spared, and later rebuilt on the same spot.&nbsp;But construction workers regraded most of the site for redevelopment, including the Court of Flowers where&nbsp;The Pioneer&nbsp;stood.Like most PPIE art,&nbsp;The Pioneer&nbsp;was made of plaster and abandoned after the fair closed. The Tulare County Board of Forestry acquired the heroic-sized sculpture for only the cost of shipping it from San Francisco to Visalia: $150. The statue was placed on a stone base in Mooney Grove Park in the late 1910s. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. It was severely damaged by an earthquake on May 28, 1980. While pieces of the statue are rumored to survive in private collections, only the stone base remains in Mooney Grove Park.</div>

Original site of Solon Borglum's Pioneer statue. The plaster statue of a bearded white man on horseback was created for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition.  It stood at the entrance of the Court of Flowers. After the fair ended, this area was razed for redevelopment. The statue moved to Visalia, California.

Original Site of The Pioneer

James Earle Fraser
first conceived of The End of the Trail while studying at the Chicago
Art Institute. During this time he assisted with the installation of sculpture
at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The sculptures of American Indians displayed
at the fair encouraged Fraser to produce this image. Fraser began work on a
model for the piece that drew on what he saw at the fair and on his childhood
experiences on the plains of South Dakota. A small bronze version of the work
won the John Wanamaker prize at the American Artists Association exhibition in
Paris, France, in 1898. He then produced a monumental version of The End of
the Trail out of plaster for San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International
Exposition (PPIE). It won a gold medal for sculpture at the 1915 fair.

The 25-foot plaster
statue stood in the Court of Palms at the entrance to the Expo, where it was
seen by nearly 19 million visitors.1&nbsp;At a time when hand-held cameras were
becoming widely available among middle-class audiences, Fraser’s statue “was
abundantly photographed and was one of the official photographer's best
sellers.”2&nbsp;Moreover,
models of Fraser’s sculpture depicting a tired American Indian man slumped over
his weary pony sold widely, helping to spread the impact of the work far beyond
the fair gates.

Twenty-first century scholars argue that James Earle Fraser (1876-1953)
intended End of the Trail as pointed
criticism of federal Indian policy that devastated Native peoples by forcing
them onto reservations.&nbsp; These scholars
suggest that Fraser sought to honor Native people’s survival in the face of
suffering.3&nbsp;Growing
up on a ranch in Mitchell, South Dakota, Fraser witnessed federal soldiers
forcing American Indians from their native lands onto reservations.&nbsp;In his memoirs he explained, “as a boy, I
remembered an old Dakota trapper saying, ‘The Indians will someday be pushed
into the Pacific Ocean.’” And Fraser later explained that he envisioned “making
an Indian which represented his race reaching the end of the trail, at the edge
of the Pacific.”4

It is possible that Fraser intended to protest Indian
removal policies. But both the Indian and his pony slump forward, despondent. His
spear hangs downward in defeat. The imagery reinforced early-twentieth-century Euro-Americans’
ideas about “vanishing” Indians. Many white Americans believed that “savage” Native
American culture would soon become extinct because it could not compete with
superior white “civilization.”

Most of the art at the PPIE celebrated the progress of Euro-American
civilization. Several pieces compared supposedly civilized whites to savage
peoples of color. And The End of the
Trail was paired with Solon Borglum’s heroic white Pioneer in a way that invited similar comparisons. So it is hardly
surprising that fair-goers read the statue as declaring or even celebrating the
disappearance of American Indians. Indeed, a published guide to sculpture at
the fair depicted the piece as a “conception of the end of the Indian race.” Having
traveled a long overland trail, he discovers that “the trail is gone and only
despair is his. So has it been with the Indian. His trail is now lost and on
the edge of the continent he finds himself almost annihilated.”5&nbsp;The Book News Monthly reported that 

<blockquote>Earle Fraser’s moving “End of the Trail,” balancing
Borglum's “Pioneer” in the Court of Flowers, smites at your heart-strings with
such pathos and mute appeal that you find yourself harking back to it many
times in your visit, for another glance at the spent horse and rider. The
drooping head, bent back, fagged body and limbs, of both the Indian and his
steed, spell a grim story of bitter defeat and utter despair.6</blockquote>

While Fraser may have intended to challenge the mistreatment
of Native peoples, the public clearly read his statue as celebrating the
natural demise of those red peoples in the face of a superior white culture.

After the PPIE closed, the Exposition Company was
responsible for cleaning up the site. They sold buildings, fixtures, and
equipment to the highest bidder. Because they were made of staff (plaster, faux
travertine and chicken wire), the buildings and artwork did not last as long as
normal stone, brick or wooden buildings. Part of the fairgrounds became Golden
Gate Park. The Palace of Fine Arts was spared, and later rebuilt on the same
spot.&nbsp;But construction workers regraded most of the site for
redevelopment, including the Court of Palms where&nbsp;The End of the Trail&nbsp;stood.

Like most PPIE art,&nbsp;The End of the Trail&nbsp;was
made of plaster and abandoned after the fair closed. The Tulare County Board of
Forestry acquired it and Solon Borglum’s The
Pioneer for the cost of railway freight to relocate them to Visalia,
California. The statues were placed on a stone base in Mooney Grove Park in 1919.
The National Cowboy &amp; Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,
acquired The End of the Trail in
1968. After restoration, it was placed on display inside that museum. A bronze
casting was returned to Mooney Grove Park.

Because Fraser never copyrighted The End of the Trail, others were free to adapt from his imagery. A
bronze copy of the statue was erected in Waupun, Wisconsin, in 1929. In the
1930s, Hardy Murphy and is horse, buck, posed at rodeos to mimic the slouched
pose of the Indian and pony in Fraser’s statue. (Singing cowboy Gene Autry and
his horse Champion later copied the trick to end of their rodeo act. Autry
would declare to the crowd that they were representing Fraser’s famous
painting, “End of the Trail.” Except End
of the Trail was a sculpture.) And in 1971, the Beach Boys used the image
in their album cover art for Surf’s Up.
Today, the image appears on belt buckles, bookends and other household objects.

The End of the Trail was sculpted by James Earle Fraser for display in the Court of Palms at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It was one of the most photographed sites of the fair, and has since become one of the most recognizable images in the country. After the fair closed, the plaster statue was claimed by residents of Tulare County, California, and relocated to Mooney Grove Park near Visalia. The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, acquired the original plaster in 1968. A bronze cast of the statue now appears in Mooney Grove Park.

Original Site of End of the Trail

The idea for San Francisco’s 1915&nbsp;Pioneer Mother&nbsp;monument was planted a decade earlier when a San Francisco resident viewed the city’s earlier pioneer monument. The sight of San Francisco’s&nbsp;Pioneer Monument&nbsp;towering over that city’s ruins in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake inspired in San Francisco society matron Ella Sterling Mighels a vision of a monument to pioneer mothers in her city. She worked tirelessly to promote her vision of a monument to pioneer women as a civilizing influence over the rough-and-tumble world of gold rush California. Like many women of her time, Mighels believed that women’s influence should be channeled through motherhood within the domestic sphere. While many white Californians shared Mighels’ racial vision, they were slow to embrace her vision of a monument depicting a seated pioneer mother holding church at her knee.Mighels’ efforts inspired the creation of the Pioneer Mother Monument Association (PMMA). Led by President Helen Sanborn, the association organized a fundraising campaign. They planned to erect a monument “symbolizing Motherhood, to be dedicated to the Pioneer Mothers of the West – the self-sacrificing women who, with their little ones at their side, braved the dangers and underwent the hardships and privations that are always incident to pioneer life.”1&nbsp;They envisioned a woman and two or three children in mid-19th-century clothing, with a gold miner father in the background or in a bronze relief panel on the statue’s base.Mighels and the PMMA struggled to raise support for the statue until the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) Woman’s Board got involved. The PPIE Woman’s Board sought to place the monument at San Francisco’s 1915 world’s fair. The PPIE was intended to celebrate San Francisco’s recovery from the 1906 earthquake. The&nbsp;Pioneer Mother&nbsp;monument would join the earlier monuments to California men that had survived that earthquake.&nbsp;Most PPIE buildings and sculpture were made from plaster. They were only intended to survive the length of the fair. For example, a larger-than-life male&nbsp;Pioneer&nbsp;and male Indian at&nbsp;The End of the Trail&nbsp;were headed for a landfill after the fair until citizens of Visalia, California, claimed them. In contrast, the&nbsp;Pioneer Mother&nbsp;was cast in bronze and would remain as a permanent gift to the city of San Francisco.The PMMA and various California pioneer associations pledged to fundraise for the project. But tension soon developed between John Trask, chief of the PPIE’s fine arts department, and the club women sponsoring the statue. Some of the women questioned Trask’s choice to commission a prominent eastern sculptor. They believed it should be done by a local artist. But Trask was a leading figure in the fine arts establishment. He was convinced that no California artist was qualified for a project of this significance. He gave the commission to his friend Charles Grafly instead.Grafly abandoned both Mighels’ image of a hoop-skirted woman holding church at her knee&nbsp;and&nbsp;the PPMA’s vision of a pioneer woman in a more practical prairie-style dress. Instead, Grafly sculpted a woman clad in the fringed buckskin and moccasins that many easterners associated with the Wild West.&nbsp; The sculptor surrounded his pioneer women with nude children symbolizing the future.Grafly’s model produced outrage in San Francisco because it blurred racial and gender identities. A decade earlier, Portland, Oregon, had welcomed a sculpture of&nbsp;Sacajawea&nbsp;as a tribute to white pioneer mothers. But in 1915, San Franciscans balked at Grafly’s depiction of a white woman dressed in Native clothing. Pressure from the Native Daughters of the Golden West and other women’s pioneer associations persuaded Grafly to replace the “costume of a primitive Sioux Indian squaw”2&nbsp;with a homespun gown and simple leather shoes. Under pressure from the female donors, Grafly also agreed to adjust the head covering.&nbsp; But even the final version lacked the wide brim characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century sunbonnets designed to protect white women’s fair complexions from the sun.Some of the clubwomen sponsoring the monument – including Mighels – also were outraged that Grafly insisted on depicting nude children.&nbsp; PMMA president Sanborn insisted that the children’s nudity made it impossible for the organization to raise public subscriptions to support the monument.&nbsp;But Grafly remained determined to maintain the allegorical quality of the children at her feet. Philanthropist and honorary president of the PPIE Woman’s Board Phoebe Hearst and U.S. Senator (and former San Francisco mayor) James Phelan finally brokered a compromise. They persuaded Grafly to make the boy’s genitalia “somewhat less conspic[u]ous,”3&nbsp;and thus less offensive to Anglo women’s genteel sensibilities.Public opinion of the revised statue was generally positive.&nbsp; More than one thousand people visited the artist’s studio to view the completed statue, which they agreed was a “symbolical masterpiece.”4&nbsp;Thousands of California schoolchildren contributed pennies and nickels toward erecting the monument, including $651.59 in San Francisco and $591.94 in Los Angeles (a total of about $30,000 in 2015 dollars).The&nbsp;Pioneer Mother&nbsp;monument was cast in bronze to make it a permanent fixture in San Francisco, but it received less attention at the PPIE than did the plaster&nbsp;Pioneer&nbsp;and&nbsp;End of the Trail. After the fair, those pieces were moved to Visalia’s Mooney Grove Park. But&nbsp;Grafly’s bronze&nbsp;Pioneer Mother&nbsp;was neglected and forgotten.&nbsp;A quarter-century later it was discovered, weather-worn and vandalized, in the near-ruin of the Palace of Fine Arts.&nbsp; Within three months of its discovery, civic and historic groups helped to restore the monument, and it was displayed at the Golden Gate International Exposition before being installed at its final site in a meadow in Golden Gate Park on December 8, 1940.

Original site of monument honoring early white female settlers of California. The tribute to early Euro-American California settlers was created for San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It was forgotten after the fair, but later restored and moved to its permanent location in Golden Gate Park in 1940.


Original Site of Pioneer Mother Monument

The 1915 World's Fair, known as the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) was held in San Francisco between February 20 and December 4, 1915. The main purpose of the event was to celebrate the successful completion of the Panama Canal, and was seen as an opportunity for the city to celebrate its recovery from the 1906 earthquake. A 635-acre site was chosen to host the fair along the Northern shore between Fort Mason and the Presidio, what is now the Marina District. The Palace of Fine Arts was one of ten palaces constructed for the exhibition. The other palaces were for Education, Liberal Arts, Manufacturing, Varied Industries, Agriculture, Food Products, Transportation, Mines and Metallurgy, and the Palace of Machinery.The Palace of Fine Arts was designed in a Roman/Greek style by architect Bernard Maybeck, with the palace itself resembling an ancient ruin. After the exposition, most of the new buildings were demolished, however the Palace of Fine Arts was allowed to remain thanks to the work of the Palace Preservation League. For a long time after the exhibition was over, the Palace was still used as an art exhibit. During the Great Depression, the decaying Robert Reid murals on the rotunda had to be replaced. From 1934 to 1942 the exhibition hall was home to eighteen lit tennis courts. And during the Second World War the building was requisitioned for the military to use for vehicle storage. From 1947 on the hall was put to various uses: as a city Park Department warehouse; as a telephone book distribution center; as a flag and tent storage depot; and even as temporary Fire Department headquarters. By the 1950s the Palace, which had only been built to last a short time, was becoming a real crumbling ruin.For this reason, the Palace was completely demolished in 1964, with only the exhibit halls' steel structure remaining. The buildings were subsequently reconstructed in a new permanent and light-weight structure. All of the decorations and sculptures were recreated and constructed anew. In 1969 the old exhibit hall became an exploratorium, and the next year became home to the 966 seat Palace of Fine Arts Theatre. In 2003 the City of San Francisco decided to restore the Palace, and by 2010 all of the works had been completed. In 2013, the exploratorium closed and moved to the Embarcadero.

The Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, is a monumental structure originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in order to exhibit works of art. It was rebuilt in 1965, and renovation of the lagoon, walkways, and a seismic retrofit were completed in early 2009. In addition to hosting art exhibitions, it remains a popular attraction for tourists and locals.

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre

The idea for San Francisco’s 1915 Pioneer Mother monument was planted a decade earlier when a San
Francisco resident viewed the city’s earlier pioneer monument. The sight of San
Francisco’s Pioneer Monument towering
over that city’s ruins in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake inspired in San
Francisco society matron Ella Sterling Mighels a vision of a monument to
pioneer mothers in her city. She worked tirelessly to promote her vision of a
monument to pioneer women as a civilizing influence over the rough-and-tumble world
of gold rush California. Like many women of her time, Mighels believed that
women’s influence should be channeled through motherhood within the domestic
sphere. While many white Californians shared Mighels’ racial vision, they were
slow to embrace her vision of a monument depicting a seated pioneer mother holding
church at her knee.

Mighels’ efforts inspired the creation of the Pioneer Mother
Monument Association (PMMA). Led by President Helen Sanborn, the association
organized a fundraising campaign. They planned to erect a monument “symbolizing
Motherhood, to be dedicated to the Pioneer Mothers of the West – the
self-sacrificing women who, with their little ones at their side, braved the
dangers and underwent the hardships and privations that are always incident to
pioneer life.”1 They
envisioned a woman and two or three children in mid-19th-century
clothing, with a gold miner father in the background or in a bronze relief
panel on the statue’s base.

Mighels and the PMMA struggled to raise support for the
statue until the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) Woman’s Board got
involved. The PPIE Woman’s Board sought to place the monument at San Francisco’s
1915 world’s fair. The PPIE was intended to celebrate San Francisco’s recovery
from the 1906 earthquake. The Pioneer
Mother monument would join the earlier monuments to California men that had
survived that earthquake.&nbsp; 

Most PPIE buildings and sculpture were made from plaster.
They were only intended to survive the length of the fair. For example, a larger-than-life
male Pioneer and male Indian at The End of the Trail were headed for a
landfill after the fair until citizens of Visalia, California, claimed them. In
contrast, the Pioneer Mother was cast
in bronze and would remain as a permanent gift to the city of San Francisco. 

The PMMA and various California pioneer associations pledged
to fundraise for the project. But tension soon developed between John Trask,
chief of the PPIE’s fine arts department, and the club women sponsoring the
statue. Some of the women questioned Trask’s choice to commission a prominent
eastern sculptor. They believed it should be done by a local artist. But Trask
was a leading figure in the fine arts establishment. He was convinced that no
California artist was qualified for a project of this significance. He gave the
commission to his friend Charles Grafly instead.

Grafly abandoned both Mighels’ image of a hoop-skirted woman
holding church at her knee and the PPMA’s
vision of a pioneer woman in a more practical prairie-style dress. Instead,
Grafly sculpted a woman clad in the fringed buckskin and moccasins that many
easterners associated with the Wild West.&nbsp;
The sculptor surrounded his pioneer women with nude children symbolizing
the future.

Grafly’s model produced outrage in San Francisco because it blurred
racial and gender identities. A decade earlier, Portland, Oregon, had welcomed
a sculpture of Sacajawea as a tribute
to white pioneer mothers. But in 1915, San Franciscans balked at Grafly’s
depiction of a white woman dressed in Native clothing. Pressure from the Native
Daughters of the Golden West and other women’s pioneer associations persuaded
Grafly to replace the “costume of a primitive Sioux Indian squaw”2 with
a homespun gown and simple leather shoes. Under pressure from the female
donors, Grafly also agreed to adjust the head covering.&nbsp; But even the final version lacked the wide
brim characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century sunbonnets designed to protect
white women’s fair complexions from the sun.

Some of the clubwomen sponsoring the monument – including
Mighels – also were outraged that Grafly insisted on depicting nude
children.&nbsp; PMMA president Sanborn
insisted that the children’s nudity made it impossible for the organization to
raise public subscriptions to support the monument.&nbsp;But Grafly remained determined to maintain the allegorical quality of the
children at her feet. Philanthropist and honorary president of the PPIE Woman’s
Board Phoebe Hearst and U.S. Senator (and former San Francisco mayor) James
Phelan finally brokered a compromise. They persuaded Grafly to make the boy’s genitalia
“somewhat less conspic[u]ous,”3 and
thus less offensive to Anglo women’s genteel sensibilities. 

Public opinion of the revised statue was generally
positive.&nbsp; More than one thousand people
visited the artist’s studio to view the completed statue, which they agreed was
a “symbolical masterpiece.”4 Thousands of California schoolchildren
contributed pennies and nickels toward erecting the monument, including $651.59
in San Francisco and $591.94 in Los Angeles (a total of about $30,000 in 2015
dollars).

The Pioneer Mother
monument was cast in bronze to make it a permanent fixture in San Francisco,
but it received less attention at the PPIE than did the plaster Pioneer and End of the Trail. After the fair, those pieces were moved to
Visalia’s Mooney Grove Park. But Grafly’s
bronze Pioneer Mother was neglected and forgotten. A
quarter-century later it was discovered, weather-worn and vandalized, in the
near-ruin of the Palace of Fine Arts.&nbsp;
Within three months of its discovery, civic and historic groups helped
to restore the monument, and it was displayed at the Golden Gate International
Exposition before being installed at its final site in a meadow in Golden Gate
Park on December 8, 1940. <div><div>

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Competing visions of pioneer womanhood collided in the creation of this statue sculpted by Charles Grafly. The tribute to early Euro-American California settlers was created for San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It was forgotten after the fair, but later restored and moved to its permanent location in Golden Gate Park in 1940.

Relocating San Francisco's Pioneer Monuments

Original Site of Admission Day Monument

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information