S01:E47
The Misfit Millionaire of the Stars: The Extraordinary Life of James Lick
Beneath the stone pier supporting the Great Refractor telescope atop Mount Hamilton in California lies a brass tablet bearing a simple inscription: ‘Here lies the body of James Lick.’ There is perhaps no more fitting resting place in human history for a man whose life was an improbable odyssey of spite, ambition, boundless wealth, and celestial wonder. Before becoming the wealthiest man in California and an architect of modern astronomy, James Lick was a penniless runaway driven by a broken heart and an unquenchable desire to prove his detractors wrong.
Born in 1796 in rural Stumpstown, Pennsylvania, James Lick began life as a humble carpenter’s apprentice. His fate seemed sealed when he fell deeply in love with Barbara Snavely, the daughter of a wealthy local miller. When Lick asked for her hand in marriage, the miller violently rejected him, pointing to his grand stone mill and declaring, ‘When you own a mill as large and costly as this one, young man, you may have my daughter.’ Humiliated and heartbroken, Lick made a fiery vow: he would not only amass a great fortune, but he would also build a mill that would reduce Snavely’s proud structure to insignificance.
Lick set out into the world with little more than his carpentry tools. He mastered the craft of piano and organ building in Baltimore and New York before boarding a ship for South America in 1821. Over the next quarter-century, Lick navigated political instability, revolutions, and disease across Argentina, Chile, and Peru. He built high-end musical instruments for wealthy colonial elites, carefully converting every peso into gold ounces. While in Lima, he formed a close friendship with an Italian confectioner named Domingo Ghirardelli—a bond that would later alter the culinary history of California.
By late 1847, sensing looming unrest in Peru and smelling opportunity in North America, Lick liquidated his South American assets. In January 1848, he stepped ashore in the sleepy, muddy hamlet of San Francisco with roughly thirty thousand dollars in pure gold and six hundred pounds of Ghirardelli’s chocolate. Just days later, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, igniting the legendary California Gold Rush.
While hundreds of thousands of fortune-seekers rushed madly toward the freezing mountain rivers to pan for gold dust, Lick did something far more shrewd. Knowing that real estate was the true bedrock of wealth, he bought up vast tracts of sand dunes, marshlands, and city lots throughout San Francisco for pennies on the dollar. Within years, the tiny port exploded into a bustling metropolis, and Lick’s barren parcels became the most valuable real estate on the Pacific Coast.
Despite his staggering wealth, Lick remained an utter eccentric. He wore threadbare, patched clothes, drove a battered wagon, and rarely socialized. Yet when he spent money, he did so with theatrical flair. In San Francisco, he erected the Lick House, the most luxurious hotel west of the Mississippi, featuring a dining room modeled after the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Near San Jose, he finally fulfilled his youthful vendetta: he constructed a breathtaking, multi-story flour mill finished entirely in polished solid mahogany and imported Spanish cedar—far outshining the old Pennsylvania mill of his past.
In his twilight years, having outlived his grudges and possessing no close heirs, Lick sought to immortalize his name. He initially drafted bizarre philanthropic plans, including colossal statues of himself and his parents overlooking the Pacific Ocean and a giant pyramid in downtown San Francisco. Fortunately, trusted advisors steered him toward science. Lick allocated the majority of his three-million-dollar estate to construct the world’s most powerful observatory atop Mount Hamilton.
James Lick passed away in 1876 in his modest room at the Lick House. When the magnificent Lick Observatory was completed in 1888, his remains were brought up the winding mountain road and interred directly beneath the massive telescope foundation. The spiteful carpenter who chased gold across continents now sleeps eternally beneath the heavens, forever tethered to the stars.
