In 1853, Alphonzo Bowers boarded a steamer bound for California in hopes of restoring his health. Plagued by obsessive tendencies, the 23-year old was mentally overworked. Three days shy of his destination, he was robbed of all his money while asleep in his berth. Upon disembarking in San Francisco, he discovered a dime in his vest pocket. In a gesture of his go-for-broke nature, he flipped it into the bay, and set off for the gold mines. Two months later, he returned with a bad case of sunstroke, still penniless.1
The scenario repeated itself over the coming decades. Compulsively drawn to big dreams, Bowers pushed himself to the point of physical exhaustion, only to end up empty-handed and buried beneath a mountain of debt.
Then, just as most friends had written him off as a seedy, obsessive crank, he hit pay dirt.
In a victory hailed as a “glorious triumph of nerve, patient industry, indomitable will, and heroism,” Bowers came into sudden wealth, and found himself anointed with Luther Burbank as one of Sonoma County’s genius inventors.2
The path to Bowers’ began in Petaluma. After his retreat from the gold mines, he found employment as founding principal of town’s first common school.3 Among the most fertile and ingenious minds the town had seen, Bowers distinguished himself as a wonderful and magnetic teacher, able to get the best work out of his pupils. In appreciation, students voted to name the rickety, one-room schoolhouse at Fifth and B streets after him.4
But Bowers’ restless nature got the better of him. In 1856, as a side business, he and the school’s sewing teacher opened a millinery store, leading to bankruptcy within a year.5 Two years later, the newly incorporated city of Petaluma imposed a tax for funding construction of a new schoolhouse on the site of the dilapidated Bowers School.
Bowers took the opportunity to resign as principal and open an office as a surveyor, topographer, and civil engineer.6
Surveyors were in high demand at the time. The California Land Commission had just completed its ownership assessments of the county’s 24 Mexican land grants, and the land grant owners—most of them American speculators by that time—were busy subdividing their holdings in sales to land-hungry farmers pouring into the county.7
Bowers lacked formal training in engineering, but growing up in Maine he was known as a mechanical savant, able to fix any machine in his father’s mills. By the age of 16 he had designed and constructed his first dam.8 He spent only a few months surveying in the field before becoming obsessed with the idea of creating the first topographical farm map of Sonoma County.9
For funding, Bowers relied upon commissions form land grant owners. The frenzied pace of subdivisions however turned the map project into a time-consuming quagmire, requiring frequent revisions and driving Bowers $15,000 ($435,000 in today’s currency) into debt. Having finally exhausted all his lines of credit, in 1863 he suspended work on the map and asked the county Board of Supervisors for $5,000 as a commission on 20 copies of the map.10
In support of his request, Bowers submitted a petition to the supervisors a signed by nearly 900 prominent citizens, as well as endorsements from the county assessors, who were anxious to use the map as a means of accurately assessing farm boundaries for taxes. They expected it would generate many times its commission price in increased tax dollars.11
That prospect troubled some large landowners, who filed a legal challenge, arguing the commissioning of such a map lay with the state, not the county. The challenge came at the height of the Civil War, which split Sonoma County into two political camps—pro-Confederate Democrats in Santa Rosa and pro-Union Republicans in Petaluma. Bowers’ own political leanings as an abolitionist and a member of the Republican state central committee were well known. In 1862, he made an unsuccessful run for state surveyor on the Republican ticket.12
Bowers responded to the legal challenge by lobbying the state legislature to pass the Bowers Map Bill, authorizing the county to commission the map.13 The matter then went to the Sonoma County grand jury, which argued the map bill was a grievous overreach by Union legislators seeking to impose their will upon the county. They urged the Democratic-dominated Board of Supervisors to disregard Bowers’ requests for payment, which they repeatedly did.14
In order to earn the money to finish the map, Bowers took a state position as a Deputy Surveyor General, traveling around the state. He made frequent trips to Petaluma to finish his county map as well as pressing his case with the county for the $5,000 commission.15
In 1866, Bowers released his topographical map of Sonoma County, printing 500 copies and offering them for sale to private landowners. He also donated copies to libraries and schools, and delivered 20 copies to county officials, billing the Board of Supervisors $5,000.16
County assessors were able to immediately generate an additional $8,000 in property taxes by using Bowers’ map to determine that 16,859 acres of Knights Valley were actually located in Sonoma County and not Napa County, as previously assumed. Still, supervisors refused to pay Bowers, the vote coming down to party lines.17
Bowers sued the county for payment in a case that ultimately made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, who decided in the county’s favor, ruling that the state legislature’s Bowers Map Bill did not impose a mandatory decision upon the county.18
Bowers refused to let the matter drop. In 1867, he published an 80-page booklet, “The History of the A.B. Bowers Map,” detailing the supervisors’ tawdry treatment of him.19 For years afterward he lobbied the state legislature to wage an investigation into the county’s handling of his request, finally succeeding in 1874 in convincing the state senate to pass such a bill, only to see Sonoma County Democrats kill it in the state assembly.20
Although his campaign against the county placed him deeper in debt, the studious Bowers received an education in the legal and legislative system that proved invaluable in his next obsessive pursuit—dredging up muck.
During the years he spent surveying Sonoma County, Bowers became intimately familiar with the Petaluma tidal slough and its adjacent wetlands extending north from San Pablo Bay. Known as the Petaluma Creek until 1959, when Congress formally renamed it the Petaluma River, the slough was Sonoma County’s primary means of transporting goods to and from the docks of San Francisco.21
California, which had been granted ownership of unsold federal marshes along the state’s waterways, began selling off wetlands on both sides of the Petaluma slough, on the condition the land be diked, drained, and reclaimed for farming or grazing so as to generate tax revenues.22
The subsequent elimination of wetlands, along with the rechanneling freshwater tributaries feeding into the slough, posed an increasing problem for using the slough as a commercial waterway. During rainy seasons, sediment from farm fields flowed into the slough, trapping ships in its muddy grasp and contributing to flooding at high tide.23 Dredging suddenly became critical to Sonoma County’s main waterway.
Dredging in the 1860s was conducted by a “steam paddies.” These were named for Irish laborers (nicknamed paddies). They, along with Chinese laborers, previously conducted California dredging by hand. The steam paddy used a clamshell or bucket to scoop up the muck and dump it into barges, to be carried away to a spoils site.24
One morning in 1864, over breakfast, Bowers had a vision of a new type of steam dredger, one that operated on hydraulics. He quickly sketched it out on a piece of paper.25 Bowers’ dredger used a rotary blade to cut up the hardened debris at the bottom of a waterway or marsh, then sucked that debris up in a long pipe that floated on the water for thousands of yards to a spoils area, where it could be used for building levees or landfill.
Despite being bankrupted by his mapping venture, three years later Bowers quit his job with surveyor general’s office to perfect a model of his dredging machine, moving between San Francisco and Petaluma, where he unveiled his first prototype in 1869. To finance it, he borrowed money and took the odd surveying job, including appointment to a board of engineers charged with remodeling the Mare Island Navy Yard in 1873.26
The U.S. Patent Office delayed processing of Bowers’ patent applications for several years. As he could not afford an attorney, he began his own study of patent laws, traveling to Washington, D.C. by train to secure his patents. Between 1884 and 1888, he was successful in obtaining 12 invention patents related to the dredger.27
By that time, rich and powerful dredging companies were building and selling hydraulic dredgers based upon Bowers’ model, making small modifications to claim them as their own. After receiving his first patent in 1884, Bowers brought lawsuits against more than a dozen dredging firms across the country.
In 1888, he won a major infringement suit against Colonel A. W. Von Schmidt of Oakland, setting a precedent that would decide his other lawsuits. The wealthy Von Schmidt tied the case up in appeals until 1897, when the district appeals court ruled in Bowers’ favor, awarding him a virtual monopoly of the hydraulic dredging machine business.28
By that time, 25 companies were using Bowers’ patented design for dredgers being sold around the world for $40,000 each ($1.4 million in today’s currency). Bowers sued them for royalties retroactive in some cases to the early 1870s. It was speculated Bowers stood to reap between $6 million and $15 million dollars ($200 million to $500 million in today’s currency).29
“The Midas touch of his genius,” wrote the Sonoma Democrat, “at last turns his ideas, wrought out in want and misery, into gold upon his bands.”30
A lifelong bachelor, the 67-year-old Bowers remained based in San Francisco, where he launched his own dredging company. He spent most of the next two decades traveling across the country as well as to Europe, Russia, Japan, China, the Philippines, and Cuba to consult on major dredging projects as one of the most respected civil engineers in the world.
He also established a reputation as something of a Renaissance man, giving talks and writing for a range of American and European journals on a range of topics, including politics, economics, sociology, religion, and poetry. In his spare time, he used his fortune to design and erect both public and private buildings.31
Bowers last visited Petaluma in 1905. Despite his wealth and fame, he still felt slighted by the county’s refusal to pay him for his Sonoma County map.32 In his eighties, he retired back in New England, where he continued to wage patent infringement battles and write articles for journals until his death in 1926 at the age of 96.33
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A version of this story appeared the Sonoma Historian, Fall 2022.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] William Walsh, “The Story of an Inventor,” Overland Monthly, January-June, 1897, pp. 166-179.
[2] “A Pioneers Visit,” Petaluma Courier, March 4, 1905; “A Bit of Local History,” Sonoma Democrat, January 16, 1897; “Great Future for San Pedro,” Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1908; Modern San Francisco 1907-1908 (Western Press Association, University of California, 1908).
[3] Walsh, pp. 166-179; “Petaluma Library Association,” Sonoma County Journal, December 1, 1855.
[4] “Bowers School,” Sonoma County Journal, October 6, 1855 “To the Public,” Sonoma County Journal, October 30, 1857; “Early History of Our Schools,” Argus, April 13, 1922.
[5] Ad, Sonoma County Journal, April 19, 1856; “Notice,” Sonoma County Journal, February 6, 1857.
[6] Ad, Sonoma County Journal, December 24, 1858; Ad, Petaluma Argus, February 12, 1861.
[7] James Gerber, “The Gold Rush Origins of California’s Wheat Economy,” http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1405-225320100002000; Petaluma Valley Historical Hydrology and Ecology Study.” SFEI Contribution No. 861, 2018. https://www.sfei.org/documents/petaluma-valley-historical-hydrology-andecology-study.
[8] Walsh, pp. 166-179.
[9] “A Valuable Map,” Sonoma County Journal, April 8, 1859.
[10] “Bowers Map Bill,” Petaluma Argus, May 20, 1863; Walsh, pp. 166-179.
[11] “The Other Side,” Sonoma Democrat, May 16, 1863.
[12] Republican State Convention,” Sacramento Daily Bee, June 20, 1861; “Proceedings of the Republican County Convention, Petaluma Argus, June 11, 1861.
[13] “To the Supervisors and People of Sonoma County,” Petaluma Argus, May 23, 1863.
[14] “Lacked the Power,” Petaluma Argus, February 11, 1863; “The Other Side,” Sonoma Democrat, May 16, 1863 “Grand Jury Report,” Sonoma Democrat, May 16, 1863; “Bowers Map Bill,” Petaluma Argus, May 20, 1863; “Constitution Answered,” Sonoma Democrat, December 8, 1866; “Rare Logic,” Petaluma Argus, February 14, 1867.
[15] Strategy, My Boy,” The Placer Herald, June 11, 1863; “Personal,” Petaluma Argus, November 3, 1864; “Alphonzo B. Bowers,” New York Times, January 25, 1926.
[16] “County Map,” Petaluma Argus, November 15, 1866; “Constitution Answered,” Sonoma Democrat, December 8, 1866; “Among Us Again,” Sonoma Democrat, April 19, 1873.
[17] “Bowers Map of Sonoma County,” Petaluma Argus, December 13, 1866; “County Map,” Petaluma Argus, November 15, 1866; Ad, Petaluma Argus, August 23, 1866; “Bowers Map,” Sonoma Democrat, November 17, 1866; No headline, Argus, February 7, 1867; “Reply to Jess O. Squires,” Petaluma Argus, December 27, 1866; “Rare Logic,” Petaluma Argus, February 14, 1867.
[18] “Our Santa Rosa Correspondence,” Petaluma Argus, December 20, 1866; “Bowers Map,” Sonoma Democrat, February 2, 1867; “Bowers Map Bill,” Sonoma Democrat, March 25, 1876.
[19] Alphonzo B. Bowers papers, 1657-1926, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, Online Archive of California.
[20] “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, April 3, 1874; “Bowers Map Bill,” Sonoma Democrat, March 25, 1876.
[21] “Petaluma Creek,” Petaluma Argus, December 5, 1879; Gerber.
[22] “Wetlands in the North Bay Planning Area,” San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, February, 1997, pgs. 7, 28. http://www.bcdc.ca.gov/planning/reports/WetlandsInTheNorthBayPlanningArea_Feb1997.pdf
[23] Petaluma Valley Historical Hydrology and Ecology Study.” SFEI Contribution No. 861, 2018. https://www.sfei.org/documents/petaluma-valley-historical-hydrology-andecology-study.
[24] Steam Paddy used on Petaluma Creek: “Straightening the Creek,” Petaluma Argus, February 11, 1862; David D. Schmidt, “David Hewes and His Steam Paddy Work,”www.foundSF.com. https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=David_Hewes_and_His_Steam_Paddy_Works
[25] “Bowers School,” Sonoma County Journal: November 3, 1855 (article notes that Bowers School was beginning its fourth term, implying the school opened in 1854, there being four terms a year then); “Our Common Schools,” Sonoma County Journal, December 18, 1857; “Our Public Schools,” Sonoma County Journal, December 28, 1860; Walsh, pp. 166-179.
[26] Walsh, pp. 166-179; Ad “Lost,” Petaluma Argus, December 4, 1869; Personal,” Petaluma Argus, June 13, 1879.
[27] A.B. Bowers Dredging Machine, patented August 21, 1888. https://patents.google.com/patent/US388253; Federal Reporter, Vol. 91: Bowers applied for patent in 1885; first patent issued on December 26, 1886; “Pacific Coast Patents,” Petaluma Argus, June 18, 1887, September 8, 1888; A Guide to the Alphonzo B. Bowers Papers, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, National Park Service, Online Archive of California
https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1m3nf2t3/entire_text/
[28] A Guide to the Alphonzo B. Bowers Papers; “Agricultural Items,” Petaluma Argus, September 22, 1876; Washington Davis, “Hydraulic Dredger: A peculiar Story,” Overland Monthly, Volume 44, December 1904, pp. 587-592.
[29] “Millions for an Ex-Petaluman,” Petaluma Argus, January 5, 1897; “The Bowers Dredger,” Petaluma Courier, April 6, 1897; “Bowers Brings Suit,” Petaluma Courier, November 27, 1908.
[30] “A Bit of Local History,” Sonoma Democrat, January 16, 1897.
[31] “A Pioneer’s Visit,” Petaluma Courier, March 4, 1905; “Great Future for San Pedro,” Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1908; Modern San Francisco 1907-1908 (Western Press Association, University of California, 1908).
[32] “Visit Here After Years,” Petaluma Argus, March 4, 1905.
[33] A Guide to the Alphonzo B. Bowers Papers; “Agricultural Items,” Petaluma Argus, September 22, 1876; “Alphonzo B. Bowers,” New York Times, January 25, 1926.