San Francisco went from ~1,000 to 25,000 people in a single year during the Gold Rush, with almost no chickens. Eggs were $1 apiece — a significant sum when a building lot in most American cities cost less than a dozen eggs here.

The solution was murre eggs from the Farallon Islands, 25 miles offshore. One company locked it down and was pulling 500,000 eggs a month at peak. Their quality-control method involved walking through every colony and destroying every existing egg before collection — so anything you found on the way back was guaranteed fresh.

When a competitor tried to break the monopoly, it ended in a gunfight. One dead on each side. Murder conviction, then acquittal on a technicality.