The Schwinn is pretty solid - built like a tank. Gets me out, when bike-riding is nearly the only exercise that appeals. (Jogging tends to hurt, and exercise classes via Zoom seem dispiriting.)
I used my newfound freedom today to visit Masonic lawn cemetery, and the adjacent justly-famous Sacramento City Cemetery, where so many august Forty-Niners were interred.
The Mark Hopkins tomb seems the biggest there. Cost $80,000 in 1878 money.
Mark Hopkins (1813-1878).According to Wikipedia:
Mark Hopkins (September 1, 1813 – March 29, 1878) was an American railroad executive. He was one of four principal investors that funded Theodore D. Judah's idea of building a railway over the Sierra Nevada from Sacramento, California to Promontory, Utah. They formed the Central Pacific Railroad along with Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Collis Huntington in 1861.
...When the California Gold Rush began, Hopkins created the "New England Mining and Trading Company", a group of 26 men each of whom invested $500 to purchase goods and ship them to California for sale. On January 22, 1849 Hopkins left New York City on the ship Pacific. After rounding Cape Horn, the ship arrived in San Francisco on August 5, 1849.
Hopkins opened a store in Placerville, California, but it did not succeed and he relocated to Sacramento where he opened a wholesale grocery in 1850 with his friend Edward H. Miller. Miller would later be secretary of the Central Pacific Railroad.
...In 1855, Hopkins and Collis P. Huntington formed "Huntington Hopkins and Company" to operate a hardware and iron business in Sacramento.
In 1861, as part of The Big Four, he founded the Central Pacific Railroad. Sometimes called "Uncle Mark", he was the eldest of the four partners and was well known for his thriftiness (it was said that he knew how to "squeeze 106 cents out of every dollar",[2] a reputation that gained him the post of company treasurer. Noted American historian Hubert Howe Bancroft quotes Collis Huntington as saying, "I never thought anything finished until Hopkins looked at it". Bancroft described Hopkins as the "balance-wheel of the Associates and one of the truest and best men that ever lived." A Whig and later associated with the Free Soil Party, Hopkins was an abolitionist and an organizer of the Republican Party in California.
Mary and Mark Hopkins had no children of their own. Mary adopted Timothy Nolan, the adult son of her housekeeper, who took the Hopkins name and was given an administrative position at the Union Pacific Railroad. Despite Hopkins' thriftiness, his wife managed eventually to persuade him to build an ornate mansion at the top of Nob Hill in San Francisco, California, close to the mansions of other Central Pacific founders. The construction commenced in 1875. The architects were the prominent San Francisco firm of Wright and Sanders and the project manager was architectural engineer William Wallace Barbour Sheldon, who worked for Hopkins under the Southern Pacific Improvement Company.
By then, Hopkins was having health problems and in 1878 died aboard a company train near Yuma, Arizona. At the time of his death, the house was not complete and was eventually finished and occupied by Mary. The structure later burned to the ground in a fire caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In 1926, the Mark Hopkins Hotel (currently InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco) was built on the site.
Hopkins is buried in Sacramento Historic City Cemetery (aka Old City Cemetery) in Sacramento, California.
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