Description

Join us as we look behind the scenes with an interactive colorful slide show at the pioneering legacy of John Diedrich Spreckels with historian Dr. Sandra Bonura. She authored the popular and award winning biography, “Empire Builder: John D. Spreckels and the Making of San Diego”. You will be introduced to the man who almost single-handedly built our city after building empires in sugar, shipping, transportation, and construction up and down California and across the Pacific. After “discovering” our bankrupt village in 1887, he left everything behind to follow his heart. His moves were so decisive and sweeping that within a few years, he controlled the majority of all San Diego’s industry. He was at the forefront of innovation and at the top of the 20th century, one in fifteen San Diegans worked for a Spreckels-owned company. Spreckels’s biography is one of triumph and tragedy, a portrait of a family torn apart by money, jealousy, and ego with lessons for us all.