26. Monterey’s Most Hated Man
Thanks to his shady practices, David Jacks eventually came to own about 100,000 acres in Monterey County and its surroundings. Understandably, the locals hated his guts. They went so far as to form a league, which wrote him in 1872: “You have been the cause of unnecessary annoyance and expense to the settlers now if you don’t make that account of damages to each and every one of us within ten days, you son of a bitch, we will suspend your animation between daylight and hell“.
Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island, visited the area and wrote: “the town lands of Monterey are all in the hands of a single man. How they came there is an obscure, vexatious question, and rightly, or wrongly, the man is hated with a great hatred. His life has been repeatedly in danger. Not very long ago, I was told the stage was stopped three evenings in succession by disguised horsemen thirsting for his blood“. Calls were made to lynch and hang Jacks, and he had to take bodyguards with him wherever he went in the region.