The History of Wells Fargo

The Gold Rush

• President Wells and Vice President Fargo then founded a new branch of the company in California, the site of an economic boom as miners and businessmen moved west to try their luck in the California Gold Rush. They organized a new public company known as Wells, Fargo & Company, with Edwin Morgan as the first president. The company began operations in 1852, both in express freight hauling and in banking. Wells Fargo also served the public as a private gold exchange and as a messenger service.
  
  

Overland Express

• The company gradually expanded its network of freight, messenger and stagecoach services throughout the western United States. By the late 1850s the company had become a significant partner in the Overland Mail Company, which carried mail between the Mississippi River and the Pacific coast. Wells Fargo also ran the Pony Express for a part of that service's brief existence.
  
  

Expansion

• When the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, the slower and more hazardous stagecoach business began to decline. Wells Fargo began moving express freight aboard the railroads, and continued its banking business throughout the west. The company expanded to the east coast, Asia, and Europe. California's growing cultural and economic ties with the nations of the Pacific Rim allowed Wells Fargo to profit from investment in this region.
  
  

Earthquake and Aftermath

• The company merged its banking division with the Nevada National Bank in 1905. One year later, the company headquarters was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake, but the bank managed to save its vaults in the heart of the city and quickly recovered as San Francisco rebuilt. New investment flowed into California as a wave of migrants moved into the state during the 1920s and 1930s, allowing Wells Fargo to profit from the economic boom.
  
  

Moving Abroad

• The Wells Fargo Bank and American Trust formed in 1962 when the company merged with the American Trust Company, another California bank. The bank established new offices in Asia and Latin American. In the 1970s the bank profited from consumer lending, credit cards, real estate, pension management and savings accounts.
  
  

Mergers and Meltdowns

• Wells Fargo merged with Barclays Bank of California in 1988 and in 1998 with Norwest, a big Minnesota Bank. The company kept the name Wells Fargo and grew steadily through the next ten years by diversifying its operations through the Midwest. During the financial crisis of 2008, Wells Fargo remained in a healthy financial condition. The bank bought the troubled Wachovia Corporation in September 2008, which expanded its operations further into the southeastern United States. Through the economic crisis of 2008, when the market for credit and loans nearly collapsed, Wells Fargo remained solvent and profitable, making it one of the largest and strongest publicly owned banks in the country.