Contains personal correspondence of Samuel Morse, correspondence of the Pacific Improvement Company relating to liquidation of the company, and a report (12 v.) prepared for the Pacific Improvement Company in 1916, titled, "Iron, Steel, Coal & Coke on the Pacific Coast." Also includes annual reports of the Pacific Improvement Company.

S.F.B. Morse (1886-1969) was the great grandson and namesake of the inventor of the telegraph. Though his family was from Boston, he moved out to San Francisco, almost immediately after his graduation from Yale (where he was captain of the football team) in 1907. He became associated with the Crockers and after making a success of the Crocker-Hoffman Land and Water Company, which he managed, he was subsequently offered a position managing the Pacific Improvement Company in 1915. Since the heirs of the original owners of Southern Pacific (Stanford, Crocker, Hopkins, Huntington) had sold out the Railroad they were also interested in liquidating the Pacific Improvement Co., which had originally been the construction company for the railroad and had since become a holding company for many various concerns. The liquidation became Morse's job and he expedited about 90 percent of that task in his first five years on the job. However, the remainder of the job dragged on until 1967, almost fifty years later. Morse's most triumphant personal deal was buying Pacific Improvement Co. land on the Monterey Peninsula himself. The company that he formed of it in 1919, Del Monte Properties, became his pet and very profitable project because he developed that land into tremendously valuable resort and private real estate (i.e. Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, etc.).

42.5 Linear Feet (4 cartons + 12 volumes)

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