Major Frank McLaughlin, The Mastermind Behind the Creation of the Golden Gate Villa

by Sue Dormanen

Santa Cruz's romantic Golden Gate Villa stands as the sole legacy of the McLaughlin family. Completed in 1891, the mansion is a fitting monument to a fascinating family, and the extravagant era in which they flourished and declined.

Major Frank W. McLaughlin was a dominant figure in California's mining industry at the end of the 19th century. An early partner of Thomas Edison, McLaughlin was known as the "King of the Feather" for his engineering exploits on that river and in the surrounding gold fields of Butte County, where he made and lost several fortunes. The Major also was prominent in state politics, and influential on the national scene. He hosted President Teddy Roosevelt at his Villa, and was offered a cabinet position by President McKinley.

In newspaper accounts of the era, McLaughlin emerges as an adventurous, big-thinking, somewhat larger-than-life figure, given to sumptuous entertaining, daring wagers and practical jokes. He fathered no children of his own, but married Margaret Loomis, a widow who suffered ill health. He appears to have been devoted to his step-daughter, Agnes Loomis McLaughlin, a much admired and sought after debutante who never wed. In the end, this family of fortune leaves us in a mysterious tragedy, which remains a subject of lasting curiosity.

Frank McLaughlin was born about 1840, whether in New York or New Jersey is unclear. As a young man he served on the police force in Newark, and began a life-long friendship with Thomas Edison. After a short stint in the Union Army, he was, by 1864, an engineer on the Union Pacific Railroad, helping push tracks across the Plains. His military title most likely stemmed from later activity in the California state militia rather than his brief Civil War record.

McLaughlin acquired an impressive reputation with the six-gun driving stage coach through the Wild West and as a Dodge City deputy to Marshall Bat Masterson, who called him "one of the quickest men on the frontier." He earned fame as one of the few men to publicly challenge Wyatt Earp and live to tell the tale. Sources vary as to the time and place of their falling out over a decision Earp made while refereeing a prize fight. The Santa Cruz Sentinel told the story thus:

Always a Foe of Earp

Major McLaughlin was unsparing in his denunciations of the rascality of Wyatt Earp, and it was said up and down Market St. that Earp had vowed to shoot McLaughlin on sight... When the two encountered one another at Johnny Farley's Peerless saloon, Earp and the Major had a staring match for a thrilling instant in which the petulant pop of the pistol was expected by all. But the Arizona gun man saw that he could not intimidate or face down the man who had been through many a gun play on the western frontier, and so he said with a tone smacking something of apology: 'I know, Major McLaughlin, that you would not have made such remarks unless you believed them to be true,' and left the saloon while the man he was supposed to kill on sight took his time over his drink, uttered a few jocular remarks for the benefit of the bystanders, and went his own way with a nerve seemingly shaken not at all.

McLaughlin returned East in 1877, to court a buxom New Jersey widow described as "large as her suitor's ideas." It was said McLaughlin "never settled for the petite when the mammoth was available." During this time, the Major renewed his friendship with the century's most famous inventor. Edison was developing the incandescent light bulb, needing only a dependable material for filaments in order to market his discovery. He commissioned McLaughlin to prospect for a suitable mineral in California.

Before his second departure for the West in 1879, McLaughlin married Margaret Loomis and adopted her young daughter Agnes.

In California, the partners' mining interests soon turned toward gold. The Major eventually controlled some of the richest properties on the Feather River, yet rarely invested his own money. Rather, he organized stock companies that he managed for a hefty salary. This unusual arrangement later led to ugly rumors among his detractors, of which the ever-controversial McLaughlin had as many as any successful, flamboyant entrepreneur.

The Major promoted several impressive projects in Butte County during the 1880s — a nine-mile tunnel at Big Bend, a 30-mile flume at the Miocene Hydraulic Mine, the United States Hydraulic Mine at Cherokee, where 40 million gallons of water a day was jetting into the mountainside. Some, not all, were marked successes. He also was involved in large orange and olive orchards around Oroville and in developing the Thermalito Land Colony with its impressive Bella Vista Hotel. By 1890, the large-thinking Major had conceived his biggest project: a great wall to divert the Feather from its bed so placer gold could be mined from the bottom.

Armed with letters of recommendation from Thomas Edison, two senators and California's governor, McLaughlin traveled to England to attract financing for his new project. His reception by the Court of St. James was so successful that newspapers noted: "not since Benjamin Franklin had an American made such an impression on English society." Due to a misunderstanding about currency (while he was talking dollars, his British investors were thinking pounds,) McLaughlin came home with $12 million, a larger sum than even he had envisioned. The brash error seems characteristic of Major.

The work, which would take a thousand men four years of labor, was underway by 1892. A canal 40 feet wide and 6,000 feet long was dug alongside the river. The stone retaining wall, 12 feet wide at its base and up to 20 feet high in places, was said to resemble the Great Wall of China. By 1896, it was known as one of the West's greatest mining feats and visited by engineers from around the world. Edison provided the first electric lights ever used on a construction site, and work continued around the clock. The expansive Major was a genius at self-promotion and the press was highly attentive, building suspense throughout the country.

When the great wall reached 7,000 feet in length, a dam was built which threw the river from its bed into the canal on the other side. A crowd cheered as McLaughlin himself stepped into the drained bed to lift the first shovelful of gravel. A return of at least $100 million was expected on the $12 million investment. Yet within a year, the great undertaking had collapsed in bankruptcy.

McLaughlin's miners found rusted picks and buckets instead of gold nuggets on the Feather's bed, evidence of an earlier raid. Half a century before, with little fanfare, the forty-niners had diverted the river with a wooden flume at the same site, harvesting a fortune. What they'd left behind wasn't worth the taking. Old-timers in Oroville, knowing the Major's grandiose enterprise was doomed to failure, had kept the secret for years to enjoy a last laugh on the Easterner who had been too successful on their home turf.

The $12 million loss was a heavy blow to the English stockholders. They were enraged to learn that McLaughlin, true to his habit, was not an investor and had suffered no losses, but rather had drawn a handsome salary over the years. So unhappy were the British backers that Queen Victoria asked Scotland Yard to investigate. Upon arrival in Oroville, the evidently somewhat timid investigator was promptly scared off by the pistol-packing Major.

In frustration and indignation, perhaps trying to drown out the chortles of the old-timers, McLaughlin dynamited his dam, returning the river to its original bed. For years the great wall remained as a memorial to perhaps the cruelest disappointment of California's fickle gold country, where disappointments were said to be "as common as hangings." In 1963 the completion of the Oroville dam submerged the last traces of one of the West's great mining adventures, and one of its greatest failures.

Upon his departure from Oroville, the resilient Major devoted himself to politics. On his management of the U.S. Senate campaign of Colonel Burns, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported:

No Fear of a "Bad Gun"

There was never any doubt of his physical courage or his willingness to accept a challenge from any bad gun man. When he was managing the campaign of D. M. Burns for the United States Senate there were many threats that he would be killed, and one day in the corridor of the Golden Eagle Hotel in Sacramento he met Major Goucher of San Diego, who was supposed to have a particular grudge against him. Major McLaughlin calmly spat in Major Goucher's face and pushed him with his left hand. Goucher made no effort to resent the insult and afterwards said: "I was too wise to be taken in by that old frontier trick. He spat in my pistol eye, and pushed me off with his left hand, so that he was free to draw on me with his right."

Shortly after moving into the Golden Gate Villa, McLaughlin became very involved in national politics. So effective was the Major during the 1896 presidential campaign, he was personally credited with carrying the state for McKinley, "the sound money candidate." The Santa Cruz Surf reported, "Two years ago Major McLaughlin entered the arena of practical politics in California as Chairman of the Republican State Central Committee in 1896, to lead a forlorn hope (the election of a Republican president)... conducting a campaign on lines new to California." He proceeded to win a "victory so striking and so unexpected that he could have had anything in the gift of the Administration as a reward..." McLaughlin attended inaugural events at the invitation of the new president, but he declined the offer of a seat in McKinley's cabinet, as he refused requests to run for governor in California.

Hailing him as "in some respects a bigger man than Caesar, whose refusal of a crown was very feeble," the Sentinel concluded that, "The happy man is the contented man, and the contented man does not want anything. Major McLaughlin, who does not want state or federal office — refuses to accept an appointment brought to him on a stick — must be a happy man."

It seems the Major would have agreed, at least during his first years at Golden Gate Villa when he entertained lavishly, and composed a carefree epigram for his house: He who enters here leaves all cares behind.

His sense of humor was often noted in the local press. An item titled, "The Major's Little Joke," describes how McLaughlin, "a great practical joker," melted down some bronze solder into what "looked for all the world like gold dust and nuggets." When it was admired by a visitor, the Major explained it was from a new strike he had just made, and gave his friend a handful to be made into a breastpin for his wife. The hapless fellow took the "gold nugget" to Shreve & Co., with an order that it be made into a pin. The article was returned stamped, "value 5 cents per pound," along with a bill for $3.50 for the fine work.

The joke was on McLaughlin in "The Major's Misery," an item that told how, due to his "robust proportions" and overconfidence in the matter of a wager staking a $500 suit of new clothes on the outcome of the election of Governor Gage, the Major ended up footing the bill for two complete outfits: one he prematurely ordered to fit his own generous measurements and one for W.W. Foote, who actually won the bet. However, an accompanying editorial noted the wager's "deeper significance," claiming, "The Major's discomfiture was as essential to the political equilibrium of California as the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo was to the peace of Europe." The report notes, "He had to thrust aside the nomination for Governor, but he selected his candidate, 'armed and equipped' his forces and announced his intention of electing Gage by a majority of twenty thousand... It is difficult to tell which side was more surprised by the results, the victors or the vanquished. But they all doffed their hats to the Major... his was the generalship and to him was due the exploit." Evidently the bet the Major lost concerned only a "slight deficiency" in the 20,000-vote margin of victory McLaughlin had predicted!

During these years, hospitality in the grand style continued at Golden Gate Villa, although the family appears to have largely ignored their neighbors while preferring to socialize with a worldly mix of San Francisco, East Coast and European millionaires. Locally, an aura of mystery evolved around the McLaughlins, the town's curiosity having to make due with glimpses of mother and daughter attending Holy Cross Church or arriving and departing the Southern Pacific depot, and with newspaper accounts of entertainments to which few Santa Cruzans were invited. Due to her mother's ill health, Agnes McLaughlin often served as hostess.

The adored only child of a rich papa, Agnes presents a puzzling mixture of the frivolous and the devout. A pet dog, which one account claimed she bathed in eau de cologne, accompanied her everywhere. Despite the constant round of parties, she was noted to attend mass every morning in a gleaming phaeton pulled by a jet black horse with a stylish way of going. Mrs. Lena MacLachlan of Burlingame, herself a boarder pupil at Holy Cross School around the turn of the century, tells how she would line up with the other little girls to watch Agnes's daily arrival at the church, and how they would compete for the role of "Miz McLaughlin" when they played at dressing up. One of the few extant photographs of Agnes shows her with a slightly dreamy expression, strumming a guitar with Prof. Hastings and his "Ladies Orchestra."

Agnes had long been betrothed Sam Rucker, a successful furniture dealer and former mayor of San Jose, California. A series of dinners given in her honor as far back as February 1893, were thought to have marked her engagement. Yet somehow the marriage never came off.

It was discovered that Agnes was also secretly betrothed to a mysterious New Jersey suitor at the time of her violent death.

On the morning of November 16, 1907, Agnes attended an early mass at Holy Cross Church in memory of her mother, who had died on that date two years before. Upon returning home she retired to her upstairs tower bedroom and lay down to rest on her sleighbed of girlish birds-eye maple.

Aware that she was napping, the Major sent her maid out on an errand. Near 11 a.m., he softly entered her room, put a 44 caliber pistol to his beloved daughter's temple, and fired a bullet through her head.

At the inquest, his friend and banker William Jeter recounted receiving a telephone call from McLaughlin between 10 and 11 that morning: "Please come to the house immediately." Jeter replied that he could not come at once, but would be there as soon as he was at liberty. Then McLaughlin spoke in a changed tone. "You must come at once. I have just killed my Bob (his pet name for Agnes) and I am going to kill myself."

True to his word, the Major swallowed a fatal dose of cyanide of potassium and drew his last breath as his friends arrived. Incredibly, Agnes was found alive. Doctors could do nothing for her terrible wound and she died at 6:30 that evening.

The news sent shock waves through the state, where it occupied front pages for days. One friend of the family offered to kick the chief of the Sentinel downstairs if he didn't remove the unbelievable headline from the street-front bulletin board "MAJOR FRANK M'LAUGHLIN KILLS DAUGHTER AND HIMSELF... AS FORTUNE WANES LOSES THE LURE OF LIFE." The San Francisco Examiner eulogized McLaughlin as one of the "most hospitable and most popular men in California." In one of his multitudinous last letters the Major composed his own obituary, "During my life I did much good and but little evil..."

The welter of farewell letters and instructions left by McLaughlin at his death indicates he had painstakingly planned his desperate act. In an explanation to Jeter he wrote of financial reverses he had hidden from the world, his dread of poverty and horror of leaving Agnes unprovided for: "To leave my darling child helpless and penniless would be unnatural and so I take her with me to our loved one. She is the very last one who could face this world alone." His long-lost cares had at last come home to roost.

"O! Why did he do it?" one friend was quoted, echoing the thoughts of all. "His friends were numerous and were willing to pay any indebtedness he owed. He could have asked and thousands, even hundreds of thousands, would have been at his disposal." It seemed incredible that a mere change of fortune could drive so resourceful a man to such an act. After all, McLaughlin's star had set several times before, only to rise again brighter than ever. According to Jeter, his friend's resources "were not particularly low" at the time. The Sentinel's final epithet for the Major was "the man of mystery," noting, "we know of no one in Santa Cruz who knows as much as the age of either the Major or his daughter at the time of their demise."

In his last letters the Major appears pitiably anxious to pay off creditors and provide for the family servants. Even the diamond ring he wore was to be sold, to send Agnes's maid back East to her home. But those most familiar with his estate professed that, "there was more than sufficient to liquidate all liabilities, with a large surplus." And the demands were substantial. McLaughlin's personal secretary, who claimed he had once offered to marry her, filed a $15,000 suit for back salary , about the cost of two fine houses in Santa Cruz at that time. Yet there is no mention of the curiously well-paid Miss Busteede in the inquest proceedings.

Some assumed McLaughlin was shattered by the notoriety of his Feather River failure. Others surmised he was more humiliated than impoverished at being outdone by unscrupulous cohorts in a later Big Bend electric power scheme, which he had counted on to recoup his waning power. The devastation of San Francisco society in the previous year's earthquake was no doubt another blow to the Major's equilibrium. As in the 1989 quake, the damage to his Villa was largely superficial, toppled chimneys and fallen plaster. But seeing the lives of powerful friends reduced to shambles in a moment's time must have heightened the sense of his own vulnerability.

None of the theories seemed to lay the question to rest.

Friends recalled that Agnes had lately confided how distraught her father was as the anniversary of his wife's demise approached. Mrs. McLaughlin's death certificate gives the cause of death as "locomotor ataxia," progressive deterioration of the spinal cord. There was a hushed but persistent rumor through town that the long-suffering lady had at last succumbed to a social disease. A story circulated that the Major entered the receiving vault where his wife's corpse had lain for two years, and made his own investigation of the remains. Mrs. McLaughlin's body had not been buried, as the Major wished it sent East with his own when he died, that they might be laid to rest together at the New Jersey church where they had married. The gossip was that neither had the lady been embalmed.

The envy that had dogged his success and celebrated his failure in the gold fields resurfaced with a vengeance at the Major's death. Santa Cruz society, perhaps resentful for being largely excluded from the lavish parties hosted at the Villa, professed itself scandalized that the Major and Agnes, no blood relation, had continued living together after Mrs. McLaughlin died. The sought-after Miss McLaughlin remaining unmarried into her thirties was taken as evidence that her father could not bear to give her to another man. Announcements of Agnes's marriage to Sam Rucker were actually sent, but the wedding was cancelled at the last moment. And no one could account for the mysterious second fiancé who claimed a posthumous engagement with Agnes.

Among the faded news clippings of the tragedy is one disturbingly truncated sidebar:

NEWARK MAN CLAIMS TO HAVE

BEEN BETROTHED TO MAJOR'S

DAUGHTER

NEWARK, N.J., NOV. 18. - Agnes McLaughlin was to have married Christian R. Wolters, a prosperous commission merchant of this city. [It is hard to understand how the Major could have felt his daughter unprovided for, if engaged in marriage.]

That last timid sentence set in parentheses, as if one dared not speak the insinuation aloud.

At end, the Major's feelings are not open to speculation, for does any man lie with his last words? In McLaughlin's last words: "I love her so and so I take her with me." It cannot be known if he harbored a guilty passion for his step-daughter, or simply could not bear to be left alone and aging in the Villa he had created for the pleasures of society. No autopsy was performed. After his own postmortem investigations of his lady, the Major had the forethought to instruct the family physician, Dr. F.E. Morgan: "Please see that we are not cut up, at least that my pure sweet child is not." On the outside of the envelope was scrawled: "Dear Doc. Please do me one last favor and chloroform our poor old cat."

Catholicism forbade the remains of a suicide inside the church, but Father P. J. Fisher of Holy Cross consented to perform a requiem mass, because he was convinced the Major was not sane at the time of his death. After private services at the Villa, Sam Rucker accompanied the bodies of all three McLaughlins back East, to be buried at the church where the couple had wed years before. The site of the churchyard, thought to be either in New York or New Jersey, has not yet been located.

The Golden Gate Villa itself stands as the remaining key to mystery. (More Information on House History) For if a man's home reveals his character, it is likely this gracious mansion, where the echo of light-hearted cheer still lingers, was built by a generous soul. And a sense of sanctuary emanates from the epigram McLaughlin composed for his home, which still hangs framed at the entry to the Villa: He who enters here leaves all cares behind.