Historic Landmarks of San Francisco

Crime in the streets is nothing new to San Francisco. The early City was a wide-open frontier town, and from time to time the solid citizens found it necessary to take the law into their own hands. The vehicle they used was the Committee of Vigilance, which was formed, disbanded, and reformed several times during the lawless decades. It was the second Committee, of 1856, which decided to fortify its waterfront headquarters after being outlawed by the Governor of California in June of that year.

On the first floor of the headquarters building was a meeting room, courtroom, and stables. Cells were located on the second floor. The roof sported several small cannon, along with a steel triangle and bell for sounding alarms and calling Committee members to assembly. There were guns in racks inside and armed sentinels at strategic points. In front of the building, extended out into Sacramento Street, the vigilantes constructed a wall of sandbags eight to ten feet high. The Committee proudly christened its headquarters Fort Vigilance, but it was somewhat irreverently nicknamed Fort Gunnybags by outsiders.

The building was at the site of the hanging of James Casey and Charles Cora by the vigilantes. It was Casey's street murder of newspaper editor James King of William that had led to the formation of the second Committee of Vigilance.

Fort Gunnybags was periodically strengthened by the vigilantes. After the dissolution of the second Committee, the headquarters reverted to its former, more prosaic character, that of a commercial building.

Fort Gunnybags stood on the south side of Sacramento midways between Front and Davis Streets. An ornate plaque, complete with all-seeing eye, symbol of the vigilantes, is mounted in a low wall at this location. It was placed on the original building by the California Historical Landmarks League March 21, 1903, was lost when the building was destroyed during the 1906 fire, and then recovered and rededicated June 1, 1918, by the Historic Landmarks Committee, Native Sons of the Golden West.