Three Times That Newspapers Used the Farallon Islands to Lampoon Emperor Norton
In mid August 1869, the transcontinental railroad had been completed for three months. The first passengers would not arrive in Oakland for another three weeks. But, with Oakland slated as the terminus, San Francisco was understandably nervous about the prospect of being cut off from the new railroad by a wide and bridgeless bay.
Seeking to exploit these anxieties, the Oakland Daily News published a satirical piece — in the form of a Proclamation of Emperor Norton, complete with a “Norton I” signature, but clearly a hoax and a prank — that had the Emperor calling for an absurd “bridge to nowhere” that not only bypassed San Francisco altogether but that pursued a meandering path “from…Oakland Point, from thence to the mountain range of Saucilleto and from thence to the Farallones” — a rocky outcropping of mostly uninhabitable islands and stacks 28 miles to the east of San Francisco’s Pacific coast.
This fake decree is the best-known example of a newspaper using “the Farallones” as a rhetorical device to skewer and scale down the empire of Norton I.
But it’s not the only example.