People were clamoring to get in the door in mid-July when Sandra Bonura arrived on her book tour at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas.
The following day, the scene repeated itself just 30 minutes north at the Aptos Branch Library, where a hundred people squeezed into a room, leaving dozens more standing outside.
“And the phone was ringing,” she said.
The San Diego-based historian’s latest book, “The Sugar King of California: The Life of Claus Spreckels,” had drawn crowds that she did not expect.
Some attendees came to reminisce about their days working at the Spreckels Sugar Company.
Others were driven by curiosity to learn more about the man whose name adorns streets along the coast of Monterey to Santa Cruz, or perhaps to learn about the small town of Spreckels, CA, located in the heart of the Salinas Valley and founded by Claus Spreckels himself in 1898 to house the workers of his company.
That legacy eventually was extended south, to Coronado, by heirs.
“What floats my boat,” Bonura said, “is when I can find that there is some incredible person who has been ignored by history.”
Bonura, a retired professor of education and school counseling, is also an author and researcher specializing in Hawaiian and California history. “The Sugar King of California” is her fourth published work.
The Sugar King
“The Sugar King of California” delves into the life of a German immigrant who arrived in America penniless at 17.
Years later, his ventures in the sugar trade, stretching from California to Hawaii, would make him one of the 10 wealthiest men in the world. By 1905, Spreckels’ estate was appraised at roughly $50 million, equating to more than $15 billion today.
According to Vickie Stone, the Coronado Historical Association’s curator of collections, Spreckels was equal to the business tycoons of his day such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan, but working on the West Coast.
In the wake of the gold rush, Spreckels found his way to San Francisco and set out to revolutionize the landscape of American agriculture.
With the creation of the nation’s largest sugar beet factory, he turned California’s Central Valley from arid lands into fields of irrigated crops, laying the groundwork for what we now know as the “Salad Bowl of the World.”
His crowning achievement, however, came when he introduced the sugar cube to American households, earning him the moniker of the “Sugar King.”
Spreckels in San Diego
Claus’ influence in San Diego began through his son, John, who inherited his father’s business acumen and entrepreneurial spirit.
Since the late 1800s, the Spreckels family name has been a well-known part of local history, reflecting their former influence over Coronado. Their holdings extended from the historic Hotel del Coronado to Belmond Park in Mission Beach, encompassing every downtown lot from the ferry landing to Horton Plaza — ferry included.
John D. Spreckels renamed D Street as Broadway and employed his steamships to deliver the first koalas to the newly established San Diego Zoo.
Stone said John initially supported his father’s sugar empire through his shipping ventures, which is what ultimately brought him to San Diego.
While Clause was the “Sugar King,” John, known as the “Sugar Prince,” used his family’s wealth to transform Coronado and the broader region.
“John was very involved in all things Coronado and with political, business, and social power – from city government to transportation to real estate,” Stone said via email.
Filling the gap
After publishing her third book, “Empire Builder: John D. Spreckels and the Making of San Diego” in 2020, Bonura was introduced to an article on Claus in “Der Spiegel,” one of the most widely circulated weekly news magazines in Europe.
[A translated version of the “Der Spiegel” article can be found here.]
“The article] made a splash in Europe,” Bonura said, which prompted her publisher to suggest writing a book about Claus.
She agreed and went back to doing what floats her boat: researching people who have been ignored by history.
From her home office, she worked with a German genealogist and historian to double-check names, dates and the Spreckels’ family tree, as well as the Hawaiian State Archives.
Yet the whole journey to write about the Spreckels started in Hawaii when she was doing research for her 2017 book “Light in the Queen’s Garden: Ida May Pope, Pioneer for Hawai‘i’s Daughters” at the Hawaiian State Archives in Honolulu.
“I kept coming across the name Spreckels, and I’m like, ‘I know that name, it’s in San Diego,” she said.
However, the documents that Bonura found about Claus either painted him “as a saint or a sinner because of his dealings with the Hawaiian monarchy.”
Returning to the mainland, Bonura learned more about the Spreckels at Coronado Historical Association. This is where she got in contact with descendants of the Spreckels family to see if they had diaries, pictures or other artifacts for her research.
So far, she has gotten in contact with about 20 members of the family.
“I’m a historian, so I find original research to the era,” she said.
On Friday, Aug. 30 at 1 p.m., Bonura discussed “The Sugar King of California” at the Coronado Public Library.
