The Emperor of The United States

Welcome back to Dave Does History, where we dig into the fascinating, bizarre, and often unbelievable stories of the past. Today, we’re heading to Gold Rush-era San Francisco—a city teeming with fortune seekers, rogues, and visionaries—to meet one of the most extraordinary characters in American history: Joshua Abraham Norton, better known as Emperor Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.

Now, Norton wasn’t a political leader, a general, or a businessman of great success—at least not in the long run. Instead, he was a self-declared monarch, a man who simply proclaimed himself Emperor, and—here’s the kicker—San Francisco played along.

For over twenty years, Emperor Norton issued proclamations, dissolved Congress, abolished political parties, and even called for the construction of a bridge across San Francisco Bay—decades before the Bay Bridge became a reality. And while some thought he was mad, others believed he had simply transcended the insanity of the world itself.

So, how did a bankrupt businessman transform himself into an Emperor? And why, more than 140 years after his death, are people still fighting to name a bridge after him?

Let’s start at the beginning—Joshua Abraham Norton was born in 1818 in England, but his family moved to South Africa when he was just a child. His father, a successful businessman, gave Joshua a solid education and a chance to learn the world of trade. But when his family’s fortunes began to decline, Joshua left South Africa, arriving in Boston in 1846 before making his way to San Francisco in 1849, right in the middle of the Gold Rush.

Now, there’s some debate about how much money he had when he arrived—some sources claim he had $40,000, while others say he built his fortune through investments. Regardless, by the early 1850s, he was a successful businessman, dealing in real estate and commodities. By some accounts, his fortune had grown to $250,000—a staggering amount in those days. He was a man on the rise, part of San Francisco’s elite.

And then… he made one bad deal.

In 1852, a famine in China drove up the price of rice in San Francisco, creating a golden opportunity for investors. Norton, always on the lookout for a profitable deal, agreed to buy a shipment of Peruvian rice for 12½ cents a pound, believing he could sell it for triple that amount.

But within days, several more ships arrived, flooding the market with better quality rice and sending prices crashing. Overnight, Norton’s once-promising investment became a disaster.

Desperate to void the deal, Norton took the sellers to court, claiming he’d been misled. The legal battle dragged on for two years, and in 1854, the California Supreme Court ruled against him, forcing him to pay the full amount. He was financially ruined.

By 1856, Norton had lost everything. He declared bankruptcy, and his once lavish lifestyle was reduced to living in cheap boarding houses, scraping together a living where he could.

Between 1856 and 1859, Norton largely disappeared from public life. What he did during those three years is a mystery—some say he sank into a deep depression, others claim he began seeing himself as a visionary leader.

Then, on September 17, 1859, he made his dramatic return—not as Joshua Norton, the failed businessman, but as… Emperor Norton I, Emperor of the United States.

That day, he walked into the offices of the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin and hand-delivered a proclamation, which the paper gleefully published:

“At the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton… do hereby declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States.”

And with that, Joshua Norton ceased to exist.

San Francisco could have dismissed him as a lunatic, but instead… they embraced him. The newspapers printed his proclamations for entertainment, but there was an undercurrent of respect and affection in the way the city treated their self-declared Emperor.

For the next twenty years, Norton ruled from the streets. He patrolled the city, inspecting its public works, attended government meetings as if he were presiding over them, and issued imperial decrees, some of which were actually… pretty insightful.

Though many considered him a harmless eccentric, some of Emperor Norton’s proclamations were remarkably ahead of their time.

• • He abolished Congress and political parties, blaming them for corruption and division. Given modern political gridlock, maybe he was onto something!

• • He advocated for racial equality, demanding that Black citizens be allowed to ride public streetcars and attend schools—radical ideas in the 1860s.

• • He defended Chinese immigrants, warning that anyone who sought to harm them would face the wrath of the Emperor.

• And, perhaps most famously, he called for the construction of a bridge connecting San Francisco to Oakland—a vision that would eventually be realized in 1936 as the Bay Bridge.

Even as he lived in poverty, he was never without friends—his rent was often paid by admirers, restaurants fed him for free, and he was always welcome at theaters and public events.

When he died in 1880, an estimated 10,000 people attended his funeral, and The San Francisco Chronicle ran the headline “Le Roi Est Mort”—The King is Dead.

Even today, San Francisco has not forgotten its Emperor. For years, there have been efforts to rename the Bay Bridge after him, but bureaucratic roadblocks have prevented it. The most recent attempt in 2022 sought to add “Emperor Norton Bridge” as an honorary secondary name, but the California legislature failed to act on it.

However, in 2023, the city finally honored him by renaming part of Commercial Street “Emperor Norton Place”, near where he once lived.

So, what do you think? Should we finally rename the Bay Bridge in his honor? Is Norton a lesson in how to turn personal failure into something far more meaningful? Or was he simply an eccentric who got lucky in a city that loved characters?

One thing is certain: Norton was a man ahead of his time, and San Francisco has never had another Emperor quite like him.