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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
Samuel 5. Black
SAN DIEGO
COUNTY CALIFORNIA
A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement
BY SAMUEL F. BLACK 1
ILLUSTRATED
-
VOLUME I
CHICAGO THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1913
1192411
FOREWORD
This work is a compilation of data gathered by others, much of which appears in Smythe's carefully prepared and authentic History of San Diego. Other sources of information were the San Diego Union, reference books obtained from the public library, and "The Story of the First Decade, Imperial Valley Cali- fornia," by Edgar F. Howe and Wilbur Jay Hall. Professor Samuel T. Black, whose name appears on the title page, was unable to completely fulfil his contract with the publishers so that a substitute became necessary and was supplied accord- · ing to prearrangement. This explanation is given in justice to Dr. Black and the publishers.
THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Glithen H ... x_26.50 (2Vols)
CONTENTS
CALIFORNIA
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LOWER CALIFORNIA. II
CHAPTER III
INDIANS OF LOWER CALIFORNIA.
17
CHAPTER IV
25
ST. FRANCIS AND HIS ORDER
CHAPTER VI
THE PIONEERS OF 1769
41
CHAPTER VII
47
CHAPTER VIII
THE END OF FRANCISCAN RULE
53
AMUSEMENTS OF THE CALIFORNIAN OF EARLY DAYS.
59
CHAPTER X
69
HABITS AND CUSTOMS OF THE CALIFORNIAN.
CHAPTER XI
THE ORIGINAL SAN DIEGO
79
CHAPTER XII
ALONZO E. HORTON, BUILDER OF CITIES.
89
CHAPTER XIII
SKETCH OF ALONZO E. HORTON
.. 103
V
I
LOWER CALIFORNIA IN 1768
CHAPTER V
3I
SETTLEMENT OF SAN DIEGO
CHAPTER IX
vi
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIV
A LUCRATIVE INDUSTRY . 107
CHAPTER XV
LOOKING BACKWARD 119
CHAPTER XVI
EARLY DAYS IN SAN DIEGO
125
CHAPTER XVII
SAN DIEGO COUNTY CREATED AND ORGANIZED IN 1850.
131
CHAPTER XVIII
REMOVAL OF COUNTY SEAT
143
CHAPTER XIX
SAN DIEGO RECEIVES A CHARTER .145
CHAPTER XX
SAN DIEGO GROWS APACE
CHAPTER XXI
16I
RAILROAD BUILDING
CHAPTER XXII
171
CHAPTER XXIII
TIIE ARIZONA & SAN DIEGO RAILROAD
CHAPTER XXIV
THE PRESS
.185
CHAPTER XXV
BENCH AND BAR
.21I
CHAPTER XXVI
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION
CHAPTER XXVII
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
.221
CHAPTER XXVIII
. ..... 229
CHAPTER XXIX
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL
.. ... 239
1.47
STREET RAILWAYS
177
. . 217
SCHOOLS OF SAN DIEGO
CONTENTS
vii
CHAPTER XXX
SAN DIEGO PUBLIC LIBRARY
.243
CHAPTER XXXI
POSTOFFICES AND POSTMASTERS OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY . . . . . . . 245
CHAPTER XXXII
.
. 249
SAN DIEGO CUSTOM HOUSE
CHAPTER XXXIII
FINANCIAL
257
PROGRESS
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
CHAPTER XXXVI
CLUBS OF SAN DIEGO
285
CHAPTER XXXVII
YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION
FRATERNAL BODIES
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXIX
CITY GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC UTILITIES.
. 305
CHAPTER XL
POPULATION, PARKS AND PROPERTY OF SAN DIEGO
317
CHAPTER XLI
HOTELS, THEATERS AND INDUSTRIAL FAIR
.321
SAN DIEGO'S HARBOR
. 329
CHAPTER XLIII
341
CHAPTER XLIV
SAN DIEGO-PANAMA EXPOSITION ....
351
CHAPTER XLV
NATIONAL CITY AND SUBURBS OF SAN DIEGO .365
... 265
CHAPTER XXXIV
.275
.291
295
CHAPTER XLII
CLIMATE AND ROADS OF SAN DIEGO
viii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XLVI
THE LITTLE LANDERS ..... .397
CHAPTER XLVII
LOCAL HISTORIC SPANISH FAMILIES 401
CHAPTER XLVIII
LOCAL HISTORIC AMERICAN FAMILIES
.415
CHAPTER XLIX
PALA INDIAN AGENCY-MINES
427
CHAPTER L
A JUGGERNAUT OF THE SEA
.435
THE MEXICAN WAR CHAPTER LI
.. . 439
History of San Diego County
CHAPTER I
CALIFORNIA
The physical geography of Alta California was very imperfectly known until after American explorers and scientists began to investigate it. None of the old residents or sojourners of Spanish blood, with the exception of here and there an engineer, like Alberto de Cordoba, or a navigator like Bodega y Quadra, was qualified for such a study, and no one paid any great attention to the subject further than to understand something about the general features and character of the country and particularly that portion lying on the immediate ocean coast between San Diego on the south and the latitude of Fort Ross on the north. This, a comparatively narrow strip, not more than forty or fifty miles wide, comprised all the white settlements and was substantially all that was known with anything like accuracy and particularity.
The extent of Alta California in ancient times was altogether indefinite. It cannot be said to have had boundaries either on the north or on the east. Spain originally claimed the entire northwest coast, and, in one sense, the whole coun- try, as far north at least as Nootka was supposed to be comprised in the prov- ince. Vancouver, who represented the English possessions in 1792, was aware of this claim, but considered the Spanish settlements at Nootka and at the entrance of the Straits of Juan de Fuca as merely temporary in their character and regarded San Francisco as the most northerly limit of what the Spaniards could claim by occupation. But on the other hand the English were quite as wild and extravagant as the Spaniards. They also claimed the entire coast as the New Albion, discovered and named by Francis Drake, and while they seized and held Nootka and other places in the far north under their claim, they asserted their same claim as far south as the mission of San Domingo in Lower Califor- nia. Vancouver insisted that it was at New Albion and belonged to England, though he admitted that the Spaniards frequently called the same country New California.
After the Nootka controversy, Spain made no serious attempt to assert her claims to what the English had seized, but there was no settlement of boundaries between the two nations, and it was not until the Americans, by the seizure of Oregon, came in like a wedge and spread them apart, that their respective over- lapping claims may be said to have come to an end. It was consequently not with the English but with the Americans that the long disputed question of the northern boundary of Alta California had to be settled, and as has already been fully explained, it was at last finally and amicably fixed at the forty-second
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2
HISTORY OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY
parallel of north latitude by the so-called treaty of Florida between the United States and Spain in 1819. But while the northern boundary was thus definitely established, the eastern boundary continued vague and undetermined. There was no telling exactly where it ran or where it ought to run, but there can be no doubt that the Spanish province politically known as California or the Californias, was understood to extend as far east at least as the Rocky mountains. Even down to the American conquest, although the Californians did not in fact occupy but a very inconsiderable part of the great Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and knew nothing except by report of the country east of the Sierra Nevada, they still claimed the Salt Lake regions and took it in high dudgeon that a few hardy American trappers and hunters presumed to tread its almost boundless wastes and pursue its wild beasts and equally savage human denizens to their desert fastnesses. Thus the eastern boundary of Alta California was never fixed until the entire country came into the possession and ownership of the United States, and it was then settled among the Americans themselves by the segregation of what is now the state of California from the vast area and its admission as such into the Union in 1850.
By the boundaries thus adopted and established California became restricted to a territory between the Oregon line on the forty-second parallel of latitude on the north, the southern boundary of the United States on the latitude of about thir- ty-two and a half on the south, the Pacific Ocean on the west and two lines diver- ging from a point near the center of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains on the east, one line running due north to the northern boundary and the other running due southeast to the Colorado river and thence following that river to the southern boundary. In general form it is a long parallelogram, about eight hundred miles in length northwest and southeast by one hundred and ninety in width east and west. More accurately speaking it may be said to resemble a wide felloe of a wagon wheel, with its convex side towards the ocean. It has a coast line of one thousand and ninety-seven miles and contains, according to official measurements, one hundred and fifty-seven thousand square miles, or over one hundred million acres of surface.
There are two main chains of mountains, the Sierra Nevada on the east and the Coast Range on the west. The Sierra Nevada chain which runs nearly parallel with the coast from the northern boundary to the latitude of Point Con- cepcion, is about four hundred and fifty miles long and seventy wide. With the exception of a small section east of Lake Tahoe, the entire chain is in the state of California. Its highest crest is near the castern side and varies from five thou- sand to eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, though there are occasional ridges that mount to over ten thousand and peaks to over fourteen thousand feet. Nearly the entire width is occupied by its western slope, which descends to a level of some three hundred feet above tide water, while the eastern slope, which is only live or six miles wide, terminates in the Great Basin, which itself has an elevation of from four to five thousand feet. Almost all the rain or snow. pre- cipitated upon the Sierra Nevada, falls upon the western slope. It consists gen- erally of water evaporated from the South Pacific Ocean, brought hither by regular currents of the winds and is condensed in sweeping up from the warmer into the cooler regions of the slope. When these winds have passed the summit. they are dry and drop no fatness on the other side. But on the western side the
3
HISTORY OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY
rain and snows are so abundant as to form numerous streams, which run west- ward at right angles to the course of the chain and cut the declivities into immense ravines, cañons and gorges.
A few peaks of the Sierra Nevada, notably Mount Shasta near the northern end, where the chain joins the Cascade Range of Oregon, and Mount Whitney near the southern end, rise into the region of perpetual snow and have small glaciers ; but as a rule all the snow melts where it falls and does not accumulate. While, therefore, in the winter and spring months the higher ridges and summits are covered with a deep mantle of frost, impassable to ordinary travel, they are in the summer and autumn months bare and clear and the temperature mild and pleasant, inviting excursionists. The greater portion of the foothills and lower mountains up to the height of about twenty-five hundred feet are covered with oaks, nut pines, manzanita bushes and various other trees and bushes, some ever- green and some deciduous, above which succeed great forests of coniferae to a height of six thousand feet, and out of this belt, here and there, rise bare ridges or jagged peaks. There are a few mountain lakes, the largest of which is Tahoe, a magnificent body of fresh water derived from melted snows, locked between nearly parallel ridges of the summit in latitude thirty-nine. It is about twenty miles long by ten wide and its surface six thousand feet above tide water. A few small valleys and flats are found at various points among the spurs, but as a rule the entire chain consists of immense ridges, heaped upon one another, and enormous chasms.
The Coast Range, consisting like the Sierra Nevada of various ridges, hav- ing a general northwest and southeast direction, wider in some parts and nar- rower in others, runs from one end of the country to the other. Its general height is from two thousand to six thousand feet. Its main or eastern ridge, which skirts the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, may be said to join the Sierra Nevada at or near Mount Shasta in the north, and thence to run in an almost unbroken line to the Tejon, southwest of Mount Whitney, where it again joins the Sierra Nevada, and from there the chain or the two chains combined run southeastwardly to the Colorado river. West of the main ridge and usually branches from it are various other ridges with valleys between, until the imme- diate coast is reached, and this consists mostly of a ridge or ridges making a number of prominent points and presenting throughout most of the distance a bold and precipitous shore line to the ocean, except where broken by rivers, creeks or bays. The eastern or main ridge of the Coast Range is the longest and most regular, having a nearly uniform elevation with only occasional peaks and passes, and being substantially unbroken, except near its middle, where the superfluous waters of the Sierra Nevada are drained off into the ocean.
Between the Sierra Nevada on the east and the main ridge of the Coast Range on the west lies the great interior valley of California. This consists of an immense plain, some four hundred miles long by fifty or sixty wide and nearly unbroken throughout its length and breadth, except by an irregular mass of steep and isolated heights near the middle of the northern half, called the Marysville Buttes. The northern half is drained by the Sacramento river, which runs southwardly, and the southern half by the San Joaquin, which runs north- wardly. Both these rivers rise in, and are fed almost exclusively by, numerous tributaries from the Sierra Nevada. They are, so to speak, the great veins which
.
4
HISTORY OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY
collect the waters of the interior basin and carry them back to the ocean. Their courses, after fairly reaching the plain, are in nearly straight lines through its center north and south, with a fall of less than a foot to the mile, till they empty nearly together, among great marshes of tules or bullrushes, with many connect- ing sloughs, into the salt water of Suisun bay. From this bay the surplus waters are carried westward through the Straits of Carquinez into San Pablo bay, thence southward by the Narrows into San Francisco bay proper, and thence westward through the Golden Gate into the Pacific.
The bay of San Francisco in general shape resembles a crescent, with one horn extending some forty miles southeastwardly and the other horn, including San Pablo and Suisun bays, extending some fifty miles, with a great curve. northeast- wardly. It is surrounded with mountain ridges, all of them having a general north- westerly and southeasterly direction. The southeasterly arm lies between two of these ridges, while the northeasterly arm on the contrary, instead of lying between ridges, cuts through all the ridges of the Coast Range and has a number of sepa- rate valleys between the ridges opening upon it, from cach of which it receives a small river or creek. The extent of country thus drained through the Golden Gate includes all of the great interior Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and. besides these, the magnificent Coast Range valleys of Napa, Sonoma and Peta- luma on the north and that of Santa Clara on the south.
There stands between the two arms of the bay of San Francisco, about thirty- five miles from the ocean and constituting a part of the main ridge of the Coast Range, a prominent mountain called Mount Diablo, or more properly. Monte del Diablo. Its peak, though only about four thousand feet high, is so isolated and occupies such an advantageous position with respect to the surrounding country. that the view from its summit embraces the entire drainage system thus described and commands one of the widest and most interesting prospects in the world. To the northeastward, eastward and southeastward, spread out like a map, with water courses flashing like silver ribbons or marked by lines of timber, and with cities, towns and villages dotting the plains as far as the eye can reach, lie the great inte- rior valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, and beyond them the dark, forest- covered, snow-capped line of the Sierra Nevada from Mount Lassen in the north to Mount Whitney in the south, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles. To the northward and northwestward, between intervening ridges and all opening, as it were, towards the spectator, lie the valleys of Napa, Sonoma and Petaluma, cach with its stream and its towns, and beyond them ridge after ridge and peak after peak of distant northern coast mountains. Sweeping around one's feet, so to speak, is the bay or series of bays, surrounded by heights and beautiful as the lakes of Scotland or Switzerland. To the westward, leading out between precipi- tous cliffs from the bay to the ocean which bounds the horizon, glances the Golden Gate, flanked on the north by the purple peak of Tamalpais and on the south by the building-covered hills of San Francisco. To the southward and southwest- ward are the Santa Clara valley and the inclosing mountains, growing gradually fainter as they recede, until they are finally lost in the distant southern haze.
No other spot on the globe presents at the same time so extensive and complete a view of a great drainage system, combining so many various and distinct ele- ments of interest and importance. But when one has cast his eyes over the immense landscape of nearly forty thousand square miles and taken in the entire
5
HISTORY OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY
amphitheater converging towards the bay at his feet, he has seen nearly all of Cali- fornia that is valuable, with the exception of the narrow but exceedingly rich west- ern slope of the combined Sierra Nevada and Coast Range from Santa Barbara to San Diego and several long but narrow valleys, drained by rivers emptying directly into the ocean, in the northwestern corner. There are two remarkably large and rich valleys, each with its correspondent river, near to and nearly paral- lel with the coast, the one coming from the northwest and the other from the southeast, and both running in nearly direct lines towards the bay but turning suddenly off before reaching it and emptying into the ocean with mouths nearly equidistant from the Golden Gate. The northern of these is Russian river, the southern the Salinas. Each is about one hundred and fifty miles long. Though the drainage in each case is independent, it may be considered as a part of the great San Francisco system as seen from Monte Diablo, the Russian river valley being, so to speak, a continuation of the Petaluma valley, of which it possibly once formed a part, and the Salinas valley, a continuation of the Santa Clara valley, though the two were evidently never connected.
The various ridges of the Coast Range have received different names. The main one is usually called that of Monte Diablo. West of it, north of Suisun and San Pablo bays, are those of Napa and Sonoma, and west of these, along the ocean, the Coast ridge. Those of Napa and Sonoma join, so to speak, with that of Monte Diablo at Mount St. Helena, and then the combined ridges, after widen- ing out to inclose a large, elevated body of pure, fresh water, twenty miles long by from two to ten wide, called Clear lake, run off with numerous spurs into the north and northwest, some towards Mount Shasta and some towards the coast. The Coast ridge also widens as it goes northward, with numerous spurs, one forming Cape Mendocino and others joining and interlacing with spurs from the main ridge to form the Trinity and Klamath mountains. The entire north- western portion of California is very rough, with long, rapid rivers, running through deep cuts, and very small valleys. Opposite the Golden Gate and con- tinuous with the Napa mountains, separated from them only by the Straits of Carquinez, are the Contra Costa mountains, forming the eastern shores of San Pablo and San Francisco bays. This ridge runs southeasterly to join that of Monte Diablo east of San Jose. The San Francisco peninsula is a continuation in like manner of the Coast ridge, separated from it only by the Golden Gate. It runs southeasterly and joins the main or Monte Diablo ridge at the head of the Santa Clara valley. A portion or rather a spur of it, just south of San Fran- cisco, is called the San Bruno. At its lower end, between the headwaters of the Santa Clara valley and the Salinas river, this ridge is called the Gabilan. West of the Salinas river and between it and the ocean are the Santa Lucia mountains. They run from the . Point of Pines southeasterly to join the main ridge near the Tejon. South of Santa Lucia are the San Rafael mountains north of the Santa Inez river and the Santa Inez mountains between that river and the Santa Barbara Channel. From the Tejon, where the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range meet, the combined ridges extend southeastward to Mount San Bernardino, a peak some sixty miles directly east of Los Angeles and nearly twelve thousand feet high. Thence one series of ridges run, in the same gen- eral southeasterly direction, to the Colorado river and another series to the west shore of the Gulf of California. . West of this main ridge or series of ridges
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HISTORY OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY
are several intermediate ones or spurs until the coast is reached, along which, as along the entire coast of California, with only occasional breaks, is a coast ridge extending all the way from the Santa Inez ridge at Santa Barbara to San Diego and thence into and along the whole length of lower California. The main chain from the Tejon to the Colorado river is called the San Ber- nardino range, the ridge running from San Bernardino towards lower California, the San Jacinto. Northwest of Los Angeles are the Santa Susanna, Santa Monica and San Fernando mountains, northeast the San Gabriel, and southeast the Santa Ana and Temescal. The southwestern corner of California about San Diego, like the northwestern corner about Klamath river is very moun- tainous. It has numerous rich though small valleys, but unlike the Klamath country, it has no rivers large enough to be constant.
The northeastern corner of California, northeast of the Sierra Nevada, con- sists of a high, dry, volcanic country, with a few lakes, more or less salty, and long stretches of treeless, herbless deserts, the whole generally known, from the scoriae, obsidian and ashes scattered over its surface, as the Lava Beds. But the real, genuine deserts of the country, the land of absolute aridity, is the southeastern portion, comprised between the combined Sierra Nevada and Coast Range on one side and the Colorado river on the other. In the upper or northern part of this vast desolation between the Sierra Nevada and an outlying desert ridge, and nearly directly east of San Francisco, is Mono lake, the "Dead Sea of California." It is eight miles long by six wide, a sheet of thick, heavy, alkaline and fishless water. About a hundred miles further south is Owen's lake, fifteen miles long by nine wide, of much the same character. East of Owen's lake, be- tween two desert ridges and near the boundary line, is a depression some thirty miles long by ten wide and several hundred feet below ocean level, called by the significant and appropriate name, of Death's Valley. It is the sink of the waterless Amargosa or River of Bitterness. South and southeast of Death's Valley and Owen's lake and the Sierra Nevada are the wide stretches of the Mohave desert, with here and there a sink or a mud lake, and southeast of that, reaching to the Colorado river, the Colorado desert. These deserts are hot. sandy barrens, without vegetation except a few yuccas, cacti and thorn bushes, with occasional shifting sandhills or treeless and herbless ridges of rock. A portion of the southerly part of the Colorado desert, like Death's Valley, is lower than the level of the sea or the Colorado river, and sometimes, on occasions of great floods, the river breaks over its banks and sends a large stream called New river, a distance of a hundred miles and more northwestwardly to be drunk up by the thirsty sands.
Of the rivers of California the only ones that are navigable for any con- siderable distance for schooners and steamboats are the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. Their larger tributaries that come from the Sierra Nevada are constant streams but are torrents, with an average fall of a hundred feet per mile until they emerge into the plain, where they are usually still swift and full of shifting and shallow sandbars. The Sacramento river runs the whole length of the Sacramento valley, but the San Joaquin emerges from the mountains about half way up the San Joaquin valley and above that point there is no con- stant drainage. Some thirty or forty miles above the great bend of. the river is Tulare lake, a body of water ordinarily called fresh but in reality more or less
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HISTORY OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY
brackish, forty miles long by thirty wide, and above that Kern and other small lakes, which are supplied by streams coming from the Sierra on the east and south. Most of these streams and almost all of the creeks have a continuous flow only in the winter and spring months. In the summer and autumn they dry up or sink before reaching their mouths, sometimes reappearing on the surface again for short distances, but in many cases presenting for many miles of their lower courses gravelly and sandy beds perfectly dry, while their upper courses flow full streams. Between Tulare lake and the great bend of the San Joaquin there is a depression or slough, through which the surplus waters of the lake and upper part of the valley are carried off into the river in seasons of flood, but in the summer and autumn and in dry winters, there is no communication and a person can walk dry shod from one side of the valley to the other. Around these lakes for many miles and along the communicating sloughs, and along almost the entire length of the San Joaquin and lower half of the Sacramento river and over a vast territory of low ground about their mouths, are exten- sive tracts of swamp lands covered with tules. Those about the mouths of the rivers and forty or fifty miles up, as far as the ocean tides extend, are salt marshes; those above, fresh-water marshes. It was from the immense tracts of tule swamps in the San Joaquin valley that it received the name of the Tulares or the Tulare country from the old Californians, who occasionally pur- sued Indian horse and cattle thieves into its recesses. Like most of the streams of the Upper San Joaquin valley, all the coast rivers running towards the ocean, south of the Salinas, sink or dry up in the lower portions of their courses in the summer and autumn months, and the Salinas itself often shrinks to a mere thread. The streams emptying into the ocean north of San Francisco are more con- stant, but there is this peculiarity about some of these northern rivers and par- ticularly Russian river, that in the summer time when they are small streams, the ocean throws up bars of gravel and sand across their mouths and frequently closes them entirely in, until the floods of winter break through the barriers and reopen the passages.
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