Editing Adolph Sutro (section)

== Mayor (1894–1896) ==
Sutro's reputation as a provider of diversions and culture for the average person led the politically weak and radical [[People's Party (United States)|Populist Party]] to draft him to run for mayor on their ticket. He won on an anti-big business platform, inveighing against the tight grip that the [[Southern Pacific Railroad]] had over local businesses. According to historian Alexander Saxton:
{{blockquote|Sutro was not exactly a Populist, but he was enormously popular, and especially with workingmen since he was thought to have defended the honest miner of the Comstock against the "interests." More recently he had served San Francisco as philanthropist on the grand scale and especially had endeared himself by fighting the Southern Pacific's grip on the city streetcar system. Sutro would have won on any ticket, and he was in fact elected by a landslide. It is clear however that his victory represented a non-partisan tribute to a very highly esteemed old man rather than a mass conversion to Populist principle: for while Sutro polled 50 percent of the city's vote, the Populist gubernatorial candidate, J. V. Webster, received only 11 percent, considerably less than his state-wide showing.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Saxton |first=Alexander |date=1965 |title=San Francisco Labor and the Populist and Progressive Insurgencies |journal=Pacific Historical Review |volume=34 |issue=4 |pages=421–438 |doi=10.2307/3636353 |issn=0030-8684 |jstor=3636353}}</ref>}}

Sutro was quickly considered a failed mayor, ill-suited for political work, and did not provide any popularity boost to the Populist party.{{citation needed|date=July 2023}}

At the time of his death, in 1898, his fortune was extensive and his legal affairs in disarray. As a result, his heirs fought bitterly over his holdings.

Many of Sutro's gifts to the city of San Francisco still exist and bear his name, such as Mount Sutro, originally Mount Parnassus (a lower hill nearby is the location of the [[Sutro Tower]]), and Sutro Heights and [[Sutro Heights Park]]. [[Sutro Baths]] became a skating rink and then was destroyed by a fire in 1966. The ruins of the baths (mostly the concrete foundations) are just north of the Cliff House. They are part of the [[Golden Gate National Recreation Area]].
(1894–1896)