James Duval Phelan (April 20, 1861 – August 7, 1930) was an American politician, civic leader and banker.
Phelan was born in San Francisco, the son of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy during the California Gold Rush as a trader, merchant and banker. He graduated from St. Ignatius College in 1881.
He studied law at the University of California, Berkeley and then became a banker. He was elected Mayor of San Francisco and served from 1897 until...
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James Duval Phelan (April 20, 1861 – August 7, 1930) was an American politician, civic leader and banker.
Phelan was born in San Francisco, the son of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy during the California Gold Rush as a trader, merchant and banker. He graduated from St. Ignatius College in 1881.
He studied law at the University of California, Berkeley and then became a banker. He was elected Mayor of San Francisco and served from 1897 until 1902. He pushed for the reform City Charter of 1898 in San Francisco.
In the 1900s, Phelan bought land and water acreage in various places around the San Francisco Bay Area, and he obtained the rights to the water flow of the Tuolumne River in Hetch Hetchy Valley. Ethan A. Hitchcock, Secretary of the Interior under President Theodore Roosevelt, tried to stop Phelan, but Roosevelt decided that the wild area could be used for "the permanent material development of the region." Phelan's plans for the region included publicly-funded water and...
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