24 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JUNE 5-11, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com River, north and east. There were two paths the city could take: to sell city lands to settlers at a fixed cost per yard, or auction them off to the highest bidder. Jacks first shows up in the city council’s minutes at a Nov. 6, 1851 meeting where the council approved a property tax (it is noted that Jacks asked to speak, but not what he said). Jacks continued making loans on properties—including to the city—and acquiring others, and engaging in various businesses like timber and dairy. He also served as county treasurer as early as 1852. By this time he had been under the wing of attorney Delos R. Ashley, who served on the council and became its president in 1853. Ashley urged the council to make a claim for Monterey’s pueblo lands before the U.S. Board of Land Commissioners. His colleagues agreed, and retained Ashley to act as the city’s attorney in that effort. He succeeded, first in 1856, and then successfully defended an appeal from the United States in 1858. At the same time he was ascending politically, becoming a state assemblymember from 1854 to 1855 and then a state senator from 1857 to 1858. In his capacity as a state legislator, he promoted two amendments to Monterey’s charter reducing its council to a weaker trustee model, and for the trustees to be able to sell off city land for “terms and for such price as may by them be deemed reasonable” to “pay for the expenses of prosecuting the title to the city before the [land commission].” There are no city council minutes from Jan. 27, 1854 until Jan. 24, 1859, a five-year gap. The first order of business at the Jan. 24 meeting was to approve paying 10-percent annual interest, starting in 1856, on the city’s debt to Ashley. The next day, Ashley presented a bill to the city for $991.50. The city did not have the money to pay it, so the trustees called for an auction on Feb. 9, 1859, to sell off the city’s lands to the highest cash bidder. The auction would take place on the steps of Colton Hall from 9am to 5pm, and was reportedly noticed in the Pacific Sentinel in Santa Cruz—there were no newspapers in Monterey County at that time. Jacks and Ashley were the only bidders, paying $1,002.50 for all the city’s pueblo lands—29,698 acres—plus an extra $11 to the city for the cost of the sale. In one fell swoop, Jacks and Ashley, two white men, suddenly owned all the land in the pueblo that didn’t already have a clear title. And because of the amendments to the city’s charter put forward by Ashley, the city was only empowered to raise revenue through leases and land sales, and no longer had the authority to levy taxes. Monterey, and its residents, ended up with nothing. The nature of the agreement between Ashley and Jacks is unclear, but Ashley continued helping Jacks in his schemes to acquire more land, and both repeatedly sued people they claimed were squatting on their city land and cutting wood from it. In the county register of plaintiffs and defendants dating back to 1850, Jacks’ and Ashley’s names pop up repeatedly—especially Jacks. All lots that didn’t have a clear title—and many didn’t, as they were passed down informally in Mexican times—were pursued aggressively via litigation. Jacks continued lending and foreclosing on properties and buying up interests in land claims, and his real estate empire continued to grow. In the late 1860s, he extended his holdings into the Salinas Valley, acquiring the 8,889-acre Rancho Chualar by loaning $3,000 to its owner for a business venture that ultimately failed, and Jacks was repaid with the land. Jacks disputed the government’s determination about the rancho’s size—he tried to enlarge it by some 3,000 acres, claiming they were lost in translation— and ultimately lost in court against those he claimed were squatting on his land. Ashley moved to Nevada in 1864 and then Washington, D.C. after he was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1865, and he sold his shares back to Jacks in 1869 for $500. In numerous letters Jacks wrote to Ashley—at the time Jacks was trying to enlarge his Chualar rancho’s boundaries in court—he implored him to not discuss their city lands matters in Washington. Ashley served in Congress until 1868, and when his health started failing moved from Nevada to San Francisco, where he died in 1873 at the age of 45. In the 1870s, Jacks and other businessmen who owned land in the Salinas Valley had a problem to solve: Southern Pacific’s rates to transport grain were onerous, and growers had no choice but to pay them. The solution, the men decided, was to cut Southern Pacific out of the equation altogether. In 1874 they invested $350,000 in bringing a rail line between Monterey and Salinas in a bid to undercut Southern Pacific’s high rail rates. The idea was to bring Salinas Valley grain to Monterey, then ship it to San Francisco by boat. Ideally, it would also bring tourists. Construction started in April and the rail was finished by October, just six months later. But the upstart rail line quickly foundered, as the bridge over the Salinas River repeatedly washed out in winter storms, requiring monthslong repairs. But the effort proved to be a catalyst: In 1879, Southern Pacific bought the Monterey & Salinas Valley Railroad out of foreclosure and replaced the rail line, connecting it directly to Castroville, in the alignment that still exists today. At this point, Jacks had already acquired the Pescadero and Point Pinos ranchos, and in 1880, he sold over 7,000 acres of that land for $35,800 to the Pacific Improvement Company, Southern Pacific’s land-owning subsidiary. The company also purchased 144 acres in Monterey (not from Jacks) for $5,300, and construction started on Hotel Del Monte. Rail, it was becoming clear to local businessmen, wasn’t just critical for agriculture, but for tourism. Before Southern Pacific was even on the scene, in 1875 Jacks donated five acres of land in what would become Pacific Grove to Methodists for the formation of a summer religious retreat. As folks started moving in to settle at the Methodist outpost, Jacks sold suburban lots to its newcomers, and the stagnating Monterey Peninsula started to see green shoots. But Monterey still had the problem of taxation, or lack thereof, due to the amendments to the city’s charter put forward by Ashley years ago. The city remained just a few dusty streets and shops. In the 1870s, a mounting frustration with that paradigm grew into two different efforts, both happening simultaneously. One was that the city launched a legal challenge to the 1859 city lands sale, arguing it was improper. But a lawsuit wouldn’t bring relief anytime soon, and the litigation dragged on for decades, with the sale ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1906. The other hope was a campaign to reincorporate the city, so that taxes could be levied to provide basic civic services. In 1875, that culminated in a David Jacks’ vast properties went as far north as the Salinas River mouth and as far south as Soledad, but most of his property was around the Monterey Peninsula. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS “The power of David Jacks is broken.”
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