USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > A history of California and an extended history of Los Angeles and environs : also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present, Volume I > Part 41
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1881-82
7,574,926
1902
113,976,897
1882-83
9,294,074
1903
169,226,936
1883-84
12,232,353
1904
201,509,786
1884-85
14,781,865
1905
232,610,753
1886-87
18,448,535
1887-88
27,803,924
1888-89
39.476,712
1889-90
46,997,10I
1890-91
49,320,670
1891-92
45,953,704
1892-93
45.310,807
1893-94
47,281,778
1894-95
47,396,165
1895-96
48,814,145
1896-97
52,242,302
1897-98
52,140,293
1898-99
60,930,266
1899-1900
64,915,326
1900-0I
67.576,047
1901-02
70,562,307
1902-03
86,416,735
1873
$9,845,593
1874
12,085,110
1875
14,890,765
1876
14,844,322
1878
15,700,000
1880
18,503,773
1864-65
1884
30,922,290
1887
89,833,506
1867-68
1889
93,647,086
1869-70
16,273,535
1906
305,302,995
1907
375,719,358
(See Chapter Twentieth Century Los Angeles.)
CITY ASSESSMENTS.
Up to 1860 the city assessments seem to have been included in the county. The assessed value of the city's real estate and improvements were segregated, but the values of the personal prop- erty were "lumped" on the roll.
During the fiscal year of 1863-64, when calam- ities were affecting the city in the shape of a dry year and a fearful epidemic of small-pox, there seems to have been no city assessment made, as there was almost no value in real estate and it was impossible to collect delinquent taxes by selling land, for the reason that nobody wanted any. The city fathers, no doubt, considered it a
Year.
1885-86
255
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
Year.
Total Assessment for Each Fiscal Year
1903-04
$109,983,823
1904-05
126,126,563
1905-06
156,661,566
1906-07
205,767,729
(See Chapter on Growth of City by Decades.)
BANKS OF LOS ANGELES CITY.
The first bank in Los Angeles city and county was organized early in 1868 by Alvinza Hayward of San Francisco and John G. Downey of Los Angeles under the firm name of Hayward & Company, capital, $100,000. The banking rooms were in the old Downey block recently demol- ished to give place to the new postoffice. Later in the same year the banking house of Hellman, Temple & Co. was established. Hellman after- wards became associated with Downey in the former bank, which took the name of The Farm- ers & Merchants' Bank. The latter bank was reorganized as the Temple & Workman Bank. Its banking house was in the then newly erected three-story building at the junction of North Spring and Main streets. It was a very popular bank and carried large deposits. In the crisis of 1875, when nearly every bank in the state closed its doors for a time, the Temple & Workman Bank temporarily suspended. It made an at- tempt to resume business, but a short run upon it closed it forever. Its failure was a terrible dis- aster to the southern country. Its creditors lost all their deposits. So complete was its collapse that $300,000 of its assets were sold by the re- ceiver under an order of Judge Hoffman of the United States Court for $30. The bank had been woefully mismanaged.
The second bank in point of age is the First National, organized as the Commercial Bank in 1875. It recently absorbed the Los Angeles Na- tional and the Southwestern National. To give a history of all the banking institutions of Los Angeles would occupy more space than I have at my command. At the close of the year 1906 Los Angeles had an even half hundred banking institutions. Of these nine operate under national charter, fourteen under state charter, five are trust companies and thirteen savings banks. There are several commercial corporations doing a banking business. The paid-in capital stock of
all the banks of Los Angeles city at the close of the year 1906 was estimated at $11,183,133, the deposits exceeded $100,000,000. The remarkable growth of Los Angeles in recent years in popula- tion, business and commercial importance is well illustrated by a comparison of the yearly totals of exchanges.
The following are the clearing house totals for the past ten years :
1897 $ 63,663,969
1898
74,413,508
1899
90,261,931
1900
122,692,555
1901
161,466,671
1902 245,516,094
1903
307,316,530
1904
345,343,956
1905
479,985,298
1906
578,635,517
POPULATION OF LOS ANGELES CITY.
1781 (founded) official. 44
1790
14I
1800
66
315
1810
66
415
1820
66
650
1830
estimated.
770
1840
1,250
1850
official.
1,610
1860
4,399
1870
66
5,614
1880
11,183
1890
50,395
1900
102,479
1910
16
319,198
POPULATION OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY.
1850
official.
3,530
1860
11,333
1870
66
15,309
1880
33,881
1890
101,454
1900
170,298
1910
594,13I
Vote of Los Angeles county at each presiden- tial election from 1856 to 1904, both inclusive, figured on the basis of highest vote cast for any elector :
256
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
1856-Republican 522
Prohibition 343
Democratic 722
1888-Republican 13,803
Native American I35
Democratic 10,110
1860-Republican 356
Prohibition 1,266
Breckenridge, Democratic 703
Douglas, Democratic 494
Bell and Everett 20I
Prohibition 1,348
Populist 3,086
Democratic 744
1896-Republican . 16,891
1868-Republican
748
Democratic and Populist 16,043
Democratic
1,236
Prohibition 787
1872-Republican 1,312
Socialist 108
Greeley, Democratic 1,228
1900-Republican 19,293
O'Connor, Democratic 650
Democratic 13,253
1876-Republican 3,040
Prohibition 996
Democratic 3,616
Socialist 1,448
1880-Republican 2,915
1904-Republican 27,538
Democratic 2,855
Democratic 18,694
Greenback 306
1908-Republican 41,483
Prohibition IO
Democratic 22,076
1884-Republican
5,596
1912-Republican 75,593
Democratic
4,684
Democratic 55,IIO
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
MINING RUSHES AND REAL ESTATE BOOMS.
T NO the Argonauts of '49 and the early '50s Los Angeles was known as a cow county. Few, if any, of these seekers after the golden fleece who entered the land of gold by the southern routes knew that the first gold dis- covered in California was found within the limits of the despised cow county, that the first gold rush took place there and that many of its mount- ain cañons were rich in the precious metal. The pilgrims to the shrine of Mammon saw the hills and plains covered with thousands of cattle. They found the inhabitants calmly indifferent to the wild rush to the mines. To the gold seekers such a country had no attractions. Its climate might be salubrious, but they were not seeking climate; its soil might be rich and productive, but they had no use for a soil unmixed with gold dust. They hurried on over the Tehachapi range or up the Coast route to the northern mines.
The first discovery of gold in California was
made by Francisco Lopes in the San Feliciano cañon of the San Fernando mountains, March 9, 1841 : A full account of this discovery is giv- en in Chapter XXIII of this volume.
The famous Kern river gold rush of 1855 brought an influx of population. Some of that population was very undesirable. The gold rush made business lively for a time, but when the reaction came it left a number of wrecks finan- cially stranded. This mining excitement had one good effect : it called the attention of the Ange- lenos to the mineral resources of their own coun- ty and indirectly brought about their develop- ment.
The Kern river gold rush brought a number of experienced miners to the county. Some of these disappointed in the Kern river mines turned their attention to prospecting in the mountains of Los Angeles county. A party of prospectors in April, 1855, entering the mount-
1892-Republican 10,226
Democratic 8,119
1864-Republican 555
257
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
ains by way of the Cajon pass, penetrated to the headwaters of the San Gabriel river and found good prospects. Captain Hammager with a company of prospectors the same year went up the cañon and discovered diggings that panned out $5 to $6 a day.
The Santa Anita placers, about fifteen miles from the city, were discovered in 1856. The dis- coverers attempted to conceal their find and these mines were known as the "Secret Dig- gings," but the secret was found out. These mines paid from $6 to $10 a day.
Work was actively resumed in the San Fer- nando diggings. Francisco Garcia, working a gang of Indians, in 1855 took out $65,000. It is said that one nugget worth $1,900 was found in these mines. In 1858 the Santa Anita Min- ing Company was organized, D. Marchessault, president ; V. Beaudry, treasurer ; capital, $50- 000. A ditch four miles long was cut around the foot of the mountain and hydraulic works constructed. Upon the completion of these works, February 15, 1859, the company gave a dinner to invited guests from the city. The success of the enterprise was toasted and wine and wit flowed as freely as the water in the hydraulic pipes. The mines returned a hand- some compensation on the outlay.
During the year 1859 the canon of the San Gabriel was prospected for forty miles and some rich placer claims located. On some of the bars as high as $8 to the pan were obtained. The correspondent of the Los Angeles Star re- ports these strikes: "From a hill claim four men took out $80 in one day." "Two Mexi- cans, with a common wooden bowl or batea, panned out $90 in two days." "Two hydraulic companies are taking out $1,000 a week." In July, 1859, 300 men were at work in the cañon and all reported doing well. A stage line ran from the city to the mines. Three stores at Eldoradoville, the chief mining camp of the cañon, supplied the miners with the necessaries of life, and several saloons furnished liquid re- freshment and excitement.
The editor of the Star, in the issue of De- cember 3, 1859, grows enthusiastic over the mining prospects of Los Angeles. He says : "Gold placers are now being worked from Fort
Tejon to San Bernardino. Rich deposits have been discovered in the northern part of the county. The San Gabriel mines have been worked very successfully this season. The San- ta Anita placers are giving forth their golden harvest. Miners are at work in the San Fer- nando hills rolling out the gold and in the hills beyond discoveries have been made which prove the whole district to be one grand placer." Next day it rained and it kept at it continuously for three days and nights. It was reported that twelve inches of water fell in the mountains during the storm. In the narrow canon of the San Gabriel river the water rose to an unpre- cedented height and swept everything before it. The miners' wheels, sluices, long toms, wing dams, coffer dams, and all other dams, went floating off toward the sea.
The year 1860 was a prosperous one for the San Gabriel miners, notwithstanding the dis- astrous flood of December, 1859. The increased water supply afforded facilities for working dry, claims. Some of the strikes of that season in the canon have the sound of the flush days of '49: "Baker & Smith realized from their claim $800 in eight days;" "Driver & Co. washed out $350 of dust in two hours."
In the spring of 1862, Wells, Fargo & Co. were shipping to San Francisco from their Los Angeles office, $12,000 of gold dust a month by steamer and probably as much more was sent by other shippers or taken by private parties; all this was produced from the San Fernando, San Gabriel and Santa Anita placers. In the past forty years a large amount of gold has been taken out of the San Gabriel placers- how much it is impossible to say. As late as 1876 there were two hydraulic companies work- ing in the cañon. One company reported a yield of $1,365 for a run of twenty-six days, working five men-an average of $10.50 a day to the man. Placer mining is still carried on in a desultory way every winter in the San Fer- nando and San Gabriel mines. But a limited amount of capital has at any time been employed in these mines, and the methods of working them have been unsystematic and wasteful. With more abundant capital, with improved ap-
258
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
pliances and cheaper methods of working, these mines could be made to yield rich returns.
In the winter of 1862-63 placer mines were discovered on the Colorado river and a rush followed. Los Angeles profited by it while it lasted, but it was soon over.
In 1863 there was a mining boom on the island of Santa Catalina. Some rich specimens of gold and silver quartz rock were found and the boom began. The first location was made in April, 1863, by Martin M. Kimberly and Dan- iel E. Way. At a miners' meeting held on the island April 20, 1863, the San Pedro Mining District was formed and a code of mining laws formulated "for the government of locators of veins or lodes of quartz, or other rock contain- ing precious metals and ores (gold, silver, cop- per, galena or other minerals or mines) that may be discovered, taken up or located in Los Angeles county, San Pedro district, state of California." The boundaries of San Pedro dis- trict were somewhat indefinite; it included "all the islands of Los Angeles county and the Coast Range of mountains between the northern and southern boundaries of said county."
The first discoveries were made near the isthmus on the northwestern part of the island. The principal claims were located in Fourth of July valley, Cherry valley and Mineral hill.
A site for a city was located on Wilson Har- bor. Lots were staked off and Queen City promised to become the metropolis of the min- ing district of Catalina.
Numerous discoveries were made. Within nine months from the first location notices of claims to over a hundred thousand feet of leads, lodes or veins, with their dips, spurs and angles, were recorded in the recorder's office of Los Angeles county and probably three times that number of claims were located that were either recorded in the district records on the island or were not recorded at all. Assays were made of gold and silver bearing rock, that ranged from $150 to $800 a ton. Stock com- panies were formed with capital bordering on millions-indecd, a company that had not "mil- lions in it" was not worth organizing in those days. It is needless to say that the capital stock was not paid up in full nor in part either. The had burst.
miners believed implicitly in the wealth of their mines, but they had no money to develop their claims nor could they induce capitalists to aid them. The times were out of joint for great en- terprises. Washoe stocks had flooded the lo- cal mining market and the doubtful practices of mining sharks had brought discredit on feet and stocks. Capital from abroad could not be induced to seek investment in mines on an island in the far Pacific. The nation was en- gaged in a death struggle with the Southern Confederacy and there was more money in fat government contracts than in prospect holes.
The boom collapsed unexpectedly - burst by "military despotism." There were rumors that this mining rush was a blind to conceal a plot to seize the island and make it a rendezvous for Confederate privateers, from which they could fit out and prey upon the commerce of the coast. Many of the miners were southern sym- pathizers, but whether such a plot was serious- ly contemplated is doubtful. If such was incu- bating, the government crushed it before it was hatched. A military force was placed on the island and the following order issued :
Headquarters, Santa Catalina Island, February 5th, 1864.
Special Order No. 7.
No person or persons other than owners of stock or incorporated companies' employes will be allowed to remain on the island on or after this date; nor will any person be allowed to land until further instructions are received from Washington. I hereby notify miners prospect- ing or other persons to leave immediately. By order.
B. R. WEST, Captain Fourth California Infantry Command- ing Post.
After such an invitation to leave the miners stood not on the order of their going-they went-those whose sympathies were with the Confederacy breathing curses against the tyrant Lincoln and his blue-coated minions. After the withdrawal of the troops, September 15, 1864, a few of the miners returned, but work was not resumed, the excitement was over-the boom
259
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
THE GREAT REAL ESTATE BOOM OF 1887.
The following account of the real-estate boom of 1887 is compiled from a paper written by the author of this history and published in the Annual of the Southern California Historical Society for 1890. The writer describes what he saw and heard :
"In the history of nearly every great Ameri- can city there is an epoch which marks a turn- ing point in its civic life. The great epoch in the civic life of Los Angeles is that which is always spoken of as 'The Boom.' An event is referred to as occurring 'before the boom,' 'dur- ing the boom,' or 'after the boom.'
"By the 'boom' is meant the great real-estate bubble of 1887. Boom, in the sense we use it, is intended to express a sudden inflation of val- ues; and on the western side of our continent it has superseded the older used and more ex- pressive word, bubble. Boom, 'to rush with violence,' is better suited to the dash, the im- petuosity and the recklessness of western spec- ulators than the more effeminate term, bubble. Boom has come into our literature to stay, how- ever unstable it may be in other places.
"Communities and nations as well are sub- ject, at times, to financial booms-periods when the mania for money-making seems to become epidemic. The South Sea Bubble; the Darien Colonization Scheme; the Mississippi Scheme of John Law; the Northern Pacific Railroad Bubble of Jay Cooke-have each been followed by financial panics and Black Fridays, but the experience of one generation is lost on the suc- ceeding. Experience as schoolmaster is too often a failure.
"There were no booms in Los Angeles under Spanish or under Mexican rule. Then all vacant lands belonged to the pueblo. If a man needed a building lot he petitioned the comisionado, or, later on, the ayuntamiento, for a grant of a lot. If he failed to use the lot it was taken from him. Under such conditions neither real-estate booms nor real-estate agents could flourish.
"After the discovery of gold in California, Los Angeles experienced its first real-estate boom. In 1849 the Ord survey lots were put on the market and a number of them sold.
There was a great demand for houses. Build- ings framed and ready for putting together were shipped around Cape Horn from Boston, New York, London and Liverpool.
"As the gold excitement decreased the city gradually sank into a comatose state-took a Rip Van Winkle sleep for twenty years or thereabouts. Times were hard, money scarce and real-estate low. Markets were distant, transportation was high and most of the agri- cultural lands were held in large tracts. These conditions began to change about 1868. The Stearns ranchos, containing about 200,000 acres, were subdivided. Settlers from the New England and northwestern states began to come in and the push and energy of these began to work a transformation in the sleepy old ciudad and the country around. Between 1868 and 1875 a number of the large ranchos were sub- divided, several colonies were promoted and new towns founded.
"From 1875 to 1881 was a period of financial depression. The Temple-Workman Bank fail- ure, a succession of dry years that ruined the sheep industry, overproduction, high freight rates and a poor market for our products brought the country to the verge of bankruptcy. The building of the Southern Pacific Railroad eastward gave us a new and better market for our products in the mining regions of Arizona and New Mexico. The completion of this road in 1881 gave us a new transcontinental route and immi- grants began to arrive from the eastern states. The price of land steadily advanced and grad- ually we recovered from our financial depres- sion.
"Up till 1886 the growth of our cities and towns had kept pace with the growth and de- velopment of the surrounding country, the cry- ing need for new cities and towns had not been heard. The merits of the country had been well advertised in the eastern states. Excursion
agents, real-estate dealers, and the newspapers of Southern California had depicted in glow- ing colors the salubrity of our climate, the va- riety of our production, the fertility of our soil and the immense profits to be made from the cultivation of semi-tropical fruits. The last link of the Santa Fe Railroad system was ap-
260
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
proaching completion. In the spring of 1886 a rate war was precipitated between the two trans- continental lines. Tickets from the Missouri river points to Los Angeles were sold all the way from $1 to $15.
"Visitors and immigrants poured in by the thousands. The country was looking its love- liest. Leaving the ice and snows of Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas, in three or four days they found themselves in a land of orange groves, green fields and flower-covered hills. In the new land they found everybody prosperous, and these visitors returned to their homes to sell their possessions and come to the promised land.
"The immediate causes that precipitated our great real-estate boom of 1887 may be briefly enumerated as follows :
"First. The completion of a competing con- tinental railroad, with its western terminus at Los Angeles, and an era of active local railroad building and railroad projecting in Southern California.
"Second. High prices for all our products, an easy money market and employment, at high wages, for all who wished it.
"Third. An immense immigration, part of it induced to come on account of a better climate and greater rewards for labor, and part of it attracted by reports of the large profits to be made by speculating in real estate.
"Lastly. The arrival among us of a horde of boomers from western cities and towns-patri- ots, many of them, who had exiled themselves from their former places of abode between two days-fellows who had left their consciences (that is, if they had any to leave) on the other side of the Rockies. These professionals had learned the tricks of their trade in the boom cities of the west when that great wave of im- migration which began moving after the close of the war was sweeping westward from the Mississippi river to the shores of the Pacific. These boomers came here not to build up the country, but to make money, honestly if they could not make it any other way. It is needless to say they made it the other way.
"During 1884-5-6 a number of lots were put on the market, but these were made mostly by subdivisions of acreage within or of additions
immediately joining the older established cities and towns. Very few new town sites had been laid off previous to 1887. As the last section of the Santa Fe Railway system approached completion the creation of new towns began, and the rapidity with which they were created was truly astonishing. During the months of March, April and May, 1887, no less than thir- teen town sites were platted on the line of this road between Los Angeles and San Bernardino and the lots thrown upon the market. Before the close of 1887, between the eastern limits of Los Angeles and San Bernardino county line, a distance by way of the Santa Fe Railroad of thirty-six miles, there were twenty-five cities and towns located, an average of one to each mile and a half of the road. Paralleling the Santa Fe on the line of the Southern Pacific Railroad, eight more towns claimed the atten- tion of lot buyers, with three more thrown in between the roads, making a grand total of thirty-six cities and towns in the San Gabriel valley. The area of some of these was quite extensive. 'No pent-up Utica contracted the powers' of their founders. The only limit to the greatness of a city was the boundary lines of the adjoining cities. The corporate limits of the city of Monrovia were eight square miles ; Pasadena, with its additions, the same; Lords- burg spread over eight hundred acres; Chicago Park numbered nearly three thousand lots, lo- cated in the wash of the San Gabriel river. The city of Azusa, with its house lots and suburban farm lots, covered an area of four thousand acres.
"The craze to secure lots in some of these towns is well exemplified in the first sale of lots in Azusa. The founding of the city of Azusa was intended to satisfy a long-felt want. The rich valley of the Azusa de Duarte had no com- mercial metropolis. Azusa city was recognized by real-estate speculators as the coming com- mercial center of trade for the valley, and they thought there was money in the first pick of lots. The lots were to be put on sale on a certain day. Through the long hours of the night previous and until nine o'clock of the day of sale a line of hungry and weary lot buyers stood in front of the office where the lots were to be sold.
261
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
Number two claimed to have been offered $1,000 for his place in the line; number three sold out for $500; number fifty-four loudly pro- claimed that he would not take a cent less than a cool hundred for his chance. Number one was deaf to all offers; and through the weary hours of the night he clung to the 'handle of the big front door,' securing at last the coveted prize-the first choice. Two hundred and eighty thousand dollars worth of lots were sold the first day. The sale continued three days. Not one in ten of the purchasers had seen the town site, not one in a hundred expected to oc- cupy the land purchased.
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