Behind the Bastards The War of the Eggs
Nov 17, 2020
Billy Wayne Davis joins Robert to discuss the war on eggs in gold rush era San Francisco, the dangerous practice of collecting eggs on the Farallon Islands, and the conflict between the egg company men and the lighthouse keepers. They also share their passion for duck eggs and duck fat.
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Gold Rush Created Food Scarcity
- San Francisco's gold rush boom created urgent food scarcity because infrastructure and farms couldn't scale quickly.
- High prices made basic staples like eggs and bread extravagantly expensive and profitable to sell.
Eggs Became A Luxury Commodity
- Egg shortages became catastrophic because miners ate local fowl and imported poultry often died or couldn't be sustained.
- That scarcity pushed San Franciscans to import eggs from as far as Chile at huge cost.
Murre Eggs Were Gigantic And Harvested Brutally
- The Farallon Islands were full of common murres whose eggs are softball-size and vividly colored.
- Early eggers harvested massive caches, sometimes smashing old eggs to force birds to relay fresh ones for collection.