Emperor Norton and E Clampus Vitus

Above, Emperor Norton, the Emporer of the United States.

An interesting rendering (above) of Emperor Norton was posted at a E Clampus Vitus Facebook page. This got me to thinking that I should post a blog about the Emperor of the United States.

According to Wikipedia:

Joshua Abraham Norton, known as Emperor Norton, was a citizen of San Francisco, California, who proclaimed himself "Norton I, Emperor of the United States" in 1859. He later assumed the secondary title of "Protector of Mexico". 

Each year, the Clampers honor Emperor Norton on "Emperor Norton Day" at his grave in Colma, California (and, also, local watering holes). This generally is the opening event for each Clamper year.

SFGate posted an article on one such festival in 2002.

It begins with:

Once upon a time, there was a legend called California, a place where drunken miners studied obscure history and a madman could be king. 

That legend was real. And it survives today. 

The miners were the order of E Clampus Vitus, a society born in the Gold Rush and revived in the 1930s, described variously by its members as either a historical drinking society or a drinking historical society. 

Yesterday, hundreds of modern "Clampers," bathed in a mist of hops and cigar smoke, paid their annual honor to the Colma grave of the aforementioned madman: Joshua A. Norton, self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico -- died 1880. 

The annual event mingles two of the more absurd streams of California history: a madcap group that excludes women and celebrates drinking yet survives in a politically correct world, and a lunatic remembered fondly more than a century after he died penniless in a San Francisco gutter. 

Efforts had been underway to name part of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge after Emperor Norton by 2018, but resolutions to rename the bridge (or parts of it) went nowhere.

Above, the 1939 E Clampus Vitus plaque honoring Emperor Norton.

From Wikipedia:

In 1939, the group E Clampus Vitus commissioned a plaque commemorating Emperor Norton's call for the construction of a suspension bridge between San Francisco and Oakland, via Yerba Buena Island (formerly Goat Island), and they intended to place it on the newly opened San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. This was not approved by the bridge authorities, however, and the plaque was installed at the Cliff House in 1955. It was moved to the Transbay Terminal in 1986, in connection with the 50th anniversary of the bridge. The Terminal was closed and demolished in 2010 as part of the project to construct a new Transbay Transit Center, and the plaque was placed in storage.

To read more, go here.