Tesla, California
Tesla is the name of a major road leading to Livermore and passing many popular California wineries. However, Livermore has been world famous since 1952 for a different facility: the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. The gigantic complex of buildings has hosted some of the best-known scientists in the United States, and their research has been advancing nuclear weapons science and technology for the United States' government. Located one hour's drive from San Francisco, heading east, the laboratories still maintain a huge complex, and nearby is the area's newest industry, a vast array of private wineries.
Tesla Road's name dates back to the 1890s and to a nearby mining town called "Tesla". The town of Tesla is now gone but from 1898 to 1905 the community was the home of the largest coal mine in California. The company also developed the first successful coal briquette plant in the United States and the first glass factory west of the Mississippi. Tesla's meteoric rise was followed by a precipitous crash. By 1905, coal production had ceased, and by 1911, the town was abandoned. All that endured of Tesla was the name of the road running to Livermore, a classic Western case of boom and bust.
By the end of Tesla's short-lived boom, the developers and the investors in the coal mine and in its secondary industries were in financial ruin, and their names forever associated with financial chicanery.
The initial founders of the coal mining town were two Canadian brothers John and James Treadwell of Saint Andrews, New Brunswick. There they had learned the skill of carpentry. In 1869 they came by ship to San Francisco, where a building boom was on, and the two young carpenters were highly prized.
References
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