Jacob Shew San Francisco bm.  Beginning on the East Coast as a merchant seaman, Jacob Lorillard Van Bokkelen, shown here, found his way to San Francisco where he rapidly gained a reputation for leadership in ridding the city of criminal elements. Moving to Virginia City, Nevada, while still in his thirties, Van Brokkelen played a pivotal role in the early history of the state while becoming the proprietor of a beer garden and saloon. Nothing in his event-filled life, however, matched the impact of his departure from Virginia City.Van Bokkelen’s drinking establishment attracted the “better sort” of Virginia City residents, mine owners, merchants, and professional people. He located the place a mile or so outside the bustle of town, amidst the sagebrush and trees of Six Mile Canyon, below. In that peaceful setting customers could sip their beer and whiskey while admiring the antics of the bachelor proprietor’s pet spider monkey while likely gossiping about the man himself.Tales would be told of Van Bokkelen’s coming to Virginia City in the late-1850s and quickly establishing himself as a hardware dealer on Taylor and B Streets, later becoming an agent for the Giant Powder Company of San Francisco, the first United States firm to produce dynamite under license from Alfred Nobel. Blasting powder and booze were Van Brokkelen’s “bread and butter.”Attention also would be paid to Van Bokkelen’s rapid rise to local celebrity when he was named first the Assistant and then General Provost Marshal of Nevada early in the Civil War. Shown in that uniform in the photo that opens this post, Van Bokkelen headed the Union’s military police, charged with keeping order among soldiers stationed in the territory and the civilian population. His soldiers, outfitted like the Nevada troopers shown here, also hunted and arrested deserters, spies, and others suspected of disloyalty; confined prisoners; maintained records of paroles and oaths of allegiance; controlled the passage of civilians in military zones, and investigated the theft of Government property.By all accounts, Van Bokkelen acquitted himself well. Toward the end of April 1860, the Paiutes and their allies, the Bannocks and Shoshones, gathered at Pyramid Lake, Nevada, for a conference on continued white intrusion. It ended in a battle. During the conflict, the Provost Marshal was credited in keeping peace and order in Virginia City, a scant 50 miles from the fighting. Van Bokkelen was similarly praised for maintaining calm in 1865 following the assassination of President Lincoln. After the war Van Bokkelen continued his peacekeeping duties during a 1873 political struggle over management of the Nevada state penitentiary known as the “The States Prison War.” When an ousted warden refused to relinquish the job, Nevada’s Gov. “Old Broadhorns” Bradley ordered him to moblize a force of 60 men with artillery to surround the prison. Pointing out to the warden that further resistance would cause casualties and possibly allow prisoners to escape, Van Bokkelen helped defuse the situation peacefully.Just as important as Van Bokkelen’s achievements as Provost Marshall was his role in obtaining statehood for Nevada. Strong political pressure from Washington was behind Nevada becoming the 36th state entering the Union in 1864, giving the President Lincoln three more electoral votes, and for Republicans, increased representation in Congress. Van Bokkelen was one of five Virginia City residents chosen to the Statehood Constitutional Convention of 1864. He subsequently was elected the first president of the Nevada State Legislature.While these accomplishments were well-known to those frequenting Van Bokkelen’s drinking establishment, they probably were unaware of his earlier exploits. He was born in 1822 in New York City into a large family headed by his mother, his father having “gone South.” The 1850 census recorded Jacob as a merchant seaman who already had advanced to “supercargo,” representing the ship’s owner on board the vessel and responsible for watching over the cargo and its sale.One of his ocean voyages had taken Van Bokkelen to San Francisco, where in 1849 he decided to remain. The City by the Bay at that time was a community beset by the presence of criminal gangs, often in league with city officials. In 1851 seven hundred prominent San Francisco citizens formed a “Committee of Vigilance that took the law into their own hands, including hanging individuals found guilty of serious crimes. Shown here as a younger man, Van Bokkelen was registered as Vigilante No. 173. He was elected Chief of the Vigilante Police and given broad powers of investigation and arrest. His work in helping clean up San Francisco won him election in 1854 as an alderman.My guess is the massive silver strike known as “The Comstock Lode” caused Van Bokkelen to leave San Francisco for Nevada. As shown below, Virginia City was bustling with activity. While there is no evidence of his attempting to mine, his provision of explosives to miners and mines proved lucrative, providing him the money to build his beer garden and saloon. His patrons also must have discussed the New Yorker’s cavalier attitude toward dynamite, boasting that he had such confidence in the product that he stored it in his apartment when inventory grew too large for his store. What Van Bokkelen’s fellow citizens likely did not know was that he also apparently was experimenting with more volatile explosives. In August 1973 the New York Times printed a letter from a man named White that stated:“When I visited Gen. Van Bokkelen, he told me that he would soon have a blasting agent in the market that would excel giant powder [dynamite].” On my asking what it was, he turned to [six] cases and opened them, showing me the gun-cotton saturated with nitro-glycerine, together with the cotton pulp mixture.”At 10:45 p.m. on June 29, 1873, a huge explosion rocked Virginia City. When the dust and smoke cleared, ten people were found dead, among them General Van Bokkelen. Van Bokkelen’s body was found in a corner of his room, “his features so bruised and charred as to be unrecognizable,” read one newspaper account. Other victims were three local merchants, a female hotel owner, three other men and an eight-year old girl. Many were killed by falling timbers and bricks. One man died when he was stuck by an iron door hurled the distance of 100 feet. Other potential victims had to be rescued by the fire department.A number of Virginia City buildings were destroyed or severely damaged. They included the Bank of California, Armory Hall, Daly’s Saloon, a grocery store and a building that used the upper floor as a lodging-house. The city went into mourning and flags were flown at half mast. The city’s Fourth of July celebration was canceled and the money collected for it used to burying the dead. Subsequent days were filled with funeral processions wending through the gates of the local graveyard.