Finance History | 424 Montgomery Street — Gold Dust Across a Counter in July 1852

People treat Wells Fargo as a national bank that always lived in a stagecoach logo.

The first Pacific office was a two-story brick book on Montgomery Street.

On 18 March 1852 Henry Wells and William G. Fargo, already directors of American Express, organized Wells, Fargo and Company in New York after the parent board refused a California extension.

Edwin B. Morgan of Aurora, New York, was the first president.

Wells, Fargo, Johnston Livingston and James McKay sat on both boards.

The articles were eastern paper.

The work was western gold.

Samuel P. Carter for express and Reuben W. Washburn for banking opened the San Francisco house at 424 Montgomery Street, on the east side of the street north of California.

On 13 July 1852 the first California bank transaction of the new firm was recorded at that counter.

A Sacramento office opened the same day in the B.F. Hastings building at Second and J Streets.

The San Francisco rooms handled gold dust, paper drafts and loans in a city that already had Page, Bacon and Company and Adams Express as competitors.

The mechanism was simple.

Miners needed a buyer for dust, a way to send value east, and a name that would still be standing when the next ship came in.

Wells Fargo bought the dust, sold the draft, and contracted independent stage lines to move the boxes.

By 1918 the combined express network listed about 10,000 offices.

During the First World War the federal government nationalized the express business.

What remained in San Francisco was the bank.

The present tower at 420 Montgomery Street stands on the same block as the 1852 counter.

The 1852 brick is gone.

The address is not.

Photo: Historic Wells Fargo Building, 85 Second Street, San Francisco, public domain via Wikimedia Commons and the California Supreme Court Historical Society. The 1852 counter stood one block west on Montgomery.