They had been interested in going west and the gold rush was the impetus for it. The Wells Fargo Company organized in New York in March 1852. They arrived in San Francisco in July of 1852, where they established an office on Montgomery Street. By 1854, they had twenty-four offices in California. They struggled against the competition from Adams & Co. and Page, Bacon & Co. Then there was a depression in 1855 and both companies folded. Only Wells Fargo remained, quickly gathering a monopoly on all the business west of the Rockies.
The first vehicles they used were the Concord stages, shipped around South America and landed at San Francisco. Each stage cost about $1,500. The harnesses cost another $1,500. A good team of three horses could cost up to $3,000. The coaches were made by hand by Abbot and Downing. They were painted red with yellow and black trim. Each coach weighed a little over a ton and was designed to carry 15 passengers and their baggage.
San Francisco was their headquarters, but Sacramento was their base of operations, on route to all the major gold camps. In 1857, $43 million was taken out of California mines, most of it carried by Wells Fargo. By that time, they had eighty-seven express offices, mostly in California. That year they tried an experiment. They shipped the first ice to Los Angeles.
By 1861, Wells Fargo was shipping perishable foodstuffs such as oysters and butter to mining camps. They once delivered a fire engine pumper from Baltimore to Sacramento. Wells Fargo took over the Pony Express route when it folded in 1861. Before the Comstock boom, Wells Fargo had been strictly in the express banking business, and most of the material they transported
