John Livermore

Who was John Livermore?

John Sealy Livermore was an American geologist who discovered or helped to discover four major gold deposits in northern Nevada.

Livermore was descended from a pioneer California family with roots in Maine. An ancestor, Elijah Livermore, built a grist mill and a saw mill on the Androscoggin River in 1791. The town of Livermore Falls, Maine, is named after him.

His great-grandfather, Horatio Gates Livermore, came to California from Maine during the Gold Rush in 1850, and later became a California State Senator from Eldorado County. His great-grandfather and his grandfather, Horatio Putnam Livermore, who came to California in 1856, used their Maine mill experience to become involved in the earliest days of hydroelectric power, helping to build the original Folsom Dam. His father, Norman Banks Livermore was a founding board member of Pacific Gas and Electric. His mother, Caroline Sealy Livermore, was a conservationist in the San Francisco Bay Area, working on protection of the Marin Headlands and Richardson Bay. Mount Livermore on Angel Island is named after her.