That commodity was eggs.
One of the Farallon Islands with its many bird residents.
The Russian traderswere the firstto exploit this natural resource.
Then there were eggs, lots of them.
Eggs of the common murre bird.
Fried murre eggs had a very unappetizing look.
Worse still was the strong fishy aftertaste.
Almost immediately, the egg rush began, and the Farallon islands were crawling with egg seekers.
Eggs were laid between May and July.
Shortly after, the egging season would begin.
By the time the season was over in August, as many as 500,000 eggs would have been collected.
A group of men clean a week’s haul of seabird eggs.
The shirts had built-in pouches to make egg collecting easier.
Photo credit: Arthur Bolton/California Academy of Sciences
Gathering eggs on the South Farallon Island.
Brawls and fistfights were common, which sometimes escalated to stabbings and shootings.
Throughout the night the parties exchanged threats and taunted each other.
Two men from either side got killed and some half a dozen were wounded.
The government responded by granting the Pacific Egg Company the sole rights over the islands egging operation.
Egging was finally prohibited in 1881.
Since then, the bird population have recovered, and now there are 160,000 pairs on Farallon islands.
Common murres on the cliffs of Farallon Islands.
Photo credit:Tom Coates/Flickr
