History of The Wells Fargo Bank

The Wells Fargo Bank was started in 1852 in part as a consequence of the Gold Rush in California. The company started as a banking and express company and has developed into a major banking institution in the western United States. The company survived the period of banking shakedown in the 1980s during the savings and loan scandal and the various bank failures brought about by bad loans and bad management. Wells Fargo has encountered some problems, but it has been reorganized under new leadership and seems to have weathered the storm that destroyed many other institutions either by scuttling them outright or by making it necessary for them to merge in order to survive.

The Gold Rush started in California in 1848 near Sutter's Mill outside Colema, California, and thousands of people seeking riches in gold streamed into California in the next few years. Before the Gold Rush, the Indian population stood at 150,000 and the non-Indian at 15,000, but after the rush started the latter climbed to 250,000 in four years. Two eastern businessmen, Henry Wells and William G. Fargo, had founded the American Express company in 1850. They watched the developments in California and realized that the many new immigrants to the region wanted to receive letters and packages from their homes and to send back their money earned in the mines to those homes. The settlers also wanted their gold protected and exchanged for coin, and businessmen flocking to the West to take advantage of the re

Related Essays

Bank Merger This analysis examines various questio .... banking giant Wells Fargo recently acquired Southern California rival First Interstate, in what might be the biggest bank merger in history (because the Wells .... (2073 8 )

A FINANCIAL HISTORY OF BANK OF AMERICA .... employees for the first time in company history. .... costs and domestic loans, the bank became profitable .... Richard Rosenberg, a 22-year Wells Fargo veteran, became .... (1250 5 )

Organizational Effectiveness for American Express .... The American Express Company has a long history. .... Wells and his vice president William Fargo formed Wells Fargo. .... When Fargo had difficulty cashing a check in .... (4063 16 )

American Express Annual Report Analysis Formed originally as a freight forwarder by Wells and Fargo (along with .... History and Nature of American Express' Business American Express was begun in 1850 .... (5832 23 )

ern end of the route. the completion of the transcontinental telegraph in October 1861 ended the Pony Express, though Wells fargo ran another Pony Express between Virginia City and San Francisco from 1862 to 1865. By 1858 the West was linked to the Mississippi by the stages of John Butterfield's Overland Mail, and eleven years later East and West were linked more firmly by the newly developed railway line, completed in only a few years and covering 1,700 miles across plains populated only by enormous herds of bison and Indian tribes. The completion of the first line, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads, ended the transcontinental staging empire built up by Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo lost its hold on transcontinental express and mail, and the company was faced with possible ruin. The owners of the company simply did not seem to believe that the railroad would be finished or that it would have this effect on their business. The Central Pacific formed the Pacific Union Express, and when the train reached Reno, the Pacific Union Express opened a stage line from that point to Virginia City in competition with Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo bought the Pacific Union Express in 1869 and obtained the contract to carry expres

Category: Business - H