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 44
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When the United States land commission in 1852 began its herculean task of adjudicating the Mexican land grants in California, the city of Los Angeles laid claim to sixteen square leagues of land. In 1853 Henry Hancock surveyed the pueblo land lying beyond Ord's survey into thir- ty-five acre lots. The blocks of this survey con- tained eight lots of thirty-five acres each. Han- cock's survey extended south of the city limits to Los Cuervos rancho, a distance of about three miles below the old pueblo boundary. It extended west to La Cienega, a distance of about two miles from the old pueblo line. All the terri- tory taken into the city by annexation on the south and west in 1896 and subsequently was once claimed as city land. In the Hancock survey the streets south of Pico were named after the presi- dents of the United States. Beginning with Washington, in regular succession followed Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Jackson streets; all of these, except pieces of Washington, Adams and Jeffer- son, that fell within the old pueblo limits, have long since disappeared from the map.
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South of Boyle Heights and east of the river the rancho of San Antonio curbed the city's ambition to expand in that direction. On the north and northwest the ranchos Los Feliz and the Verdugos encroached on the city's area, and the hostile owners refused to be surveyed into the municipality. On the east, from the center of the plaza, it was two leagues to the city line. The area of the city, according to the Hancock or Hansen survey of 1855 (the survey of 1855 was really made by Henry Hansen), was a frac- tion less than fifty square miles-a magnificent city on paper.
The United States commission in 1856 con- firmed to the city a grant of four square leagues (about twenty-seven square miles) and rejected its claim to all outside of that. After many de- lays, in 1875, nearly twenty years later, a United States patent was issued to the mayor and coun- cil, and then the greater Los Angeles of the early '50s shrunk to the dimensions of Gov. Felipe de Neve's pueblo of 1781-"one league to each wind measured from the center of the plaza."
Some of the Hancock survey lots in the south- west were called city donation lots. The term originated in this way :
The city in the early years of its American period was hard pressed for funds. It was land poor. Its pueblo lands brought it no revenue. Some Napoleon of finance originated a scheme to increase the municipal income. An ordinance was passed donating a Hancock survey lot (35 acres) to any person who would put it under cul- tivation and make improvements to the value of $100. When the title passed to a private owner the land became subject to taxation and the city thereby received a revenue. It was a brilliant stroke of finance for the time being, but it resulted in depriving the city of some of its finest holdings. At the time the offer was made there was no wild rush of "sooners" to secure a reservation. There was no land hunger then. Every one's appetite for land was satiated or could be easily satisfied, as land was about the cheapest commodity in the country.
Later on in the '50s and early '6os the pueblo lands were disposed of at various prices, rang- ing from $2.50 to $7.50 per acre. At these
prices most of the magnificent patrimony that the city of Los Angeles inherited from the old Spanish pueblo was frittered away. All that was left was a few tracts that were considered worthless. One of these is the tract included in Westlake Park, now the beauty spot of the city. The city council had offered the tract in vain at twenty-five cents an acre. The old-timers who had been accustomed to get a thirty-five acre lot of fertile land as a donation scorned to buy an al- kaline gulch at any price and the city was com- pelled perforce to keep it. Another of these patches of refuse real estate that the city fathers of old left to us is the site of Elysian Park. The heights and hollows of that now attractive park could not be cultivated then for lack of a water system and nobody would take them as a gift.
The most woeful waste of the city lands con- sidered from the viewpoint of today was in the disposal of a tract of land lying between Sev- enth and Ninth streets and extending from Main to Figueroa streets, known on the city map as the Huber tract. This magnificent body of land, containing about one hundred acres, was given to private parties for what seems to us the mak- ing of a very insignificant improvement-the dig- ging of an open ditch or irrigating canal. This ditch branched off from the Zanja Madre or mother ditch near Requena or East Market street, as it is now named, then flowed down be- tween Los Angeles and South Main streets, watering the vineyards and vegetable gardens that covered the present sites of business blocks and hotels; crossed Main street below Fourth street and flowed just south of the Union Trust sky-scraper, then zigzagged across the blocks be- tween Spring and Olive streets to Central Park ; the arid waste of which it watered and made tree-growing in it possible. Then it meandered out to the rural regions of Figueroa and Adams streets, where it irrigated the orchards and bar- ley fields of that sparsely settled suburb. Up to 1885 the ditch was open, then it was piped and carried underground. That irrigating canal, which has long since disappeared, cost the city, figuring the land given at its present value, near- ly as much as the Panama canal will cost the na- tion when it is completed.
It is quite the custom of some modern writers
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to abuse the olden-time councilmen for their lav- ish disposal of our city lands. It is not just to bring railing accusations against them for condi- tions that they could not foresee. Without water to irrigate them the pueblo lands were worthless. With irrigating facilities they could be made productive. Homes would be built on the arid wastes, population would increase and the city's exchequer, which was chronically in a state of collapse, would expand and become plethoric. To make two blades of grass grow where but one grew before is the secret of agricultural wealth. The olden-time city fathers well knew that neither the one blade nor the two blades would grow without water. Could they have foreseen that prosperity would plant houses where they planted trees and would grow sky- scrapers where they grew grain, they might have done differently and escaped the wailings and the railings of posterity. In giving away city lands for public improvements the city fathers followed the policy of our national government in the disposal of the public domain.
After the completion and acceptance of Ord's survey of the city lands in 1849, lots were of- fered for sale. For a lot 120 feet front by 165 feet deep, located on Main, Spring, Fort or Hill streets, between First and Fifth streets, the aver- age price was $50, or about forty cents a front foot. In the early '50s the city experienced its first boom under American domination. Ready- made houses were imported from New York and Boston. Brick and corrugated iron came into use for building. The passing of the adobe age began. The city was thriving. The cattle ranches were as productive as the gold mines. A full- grown steer that a few years before was worth $2 for his hide and tallow was now worth from $30 to $40 for beef. The cow counties of the south supplied the mines with beef. The sud- den acquisition of wealth from the increase in the value of their cattle engendered extravagant habits in the rancheros and their families, which later on brought financial distress to many of them.
Up to 1856 the city had been making a steady growth and was beginning to put on metropoli- tan airs. Then a reaction came. The rich sur-
face placers had been worked out, and the mines were no longer yielding large returns for small expenditures of labor and capital. But the severest blow to the cow counties came from the development of the agricultural resources of the central and northern connties of the state. Hun- dreds of miles nearer the mines, they could sup- ply the mining camps with products at prices with which the cow counties could not compete. The result was hard times in the south. Money in 1856-57 in Los Angeles commanded five, ten and even as high as fifteen per cent interest, com- pounded monthly. The unfortunates who had mortgages on their possessions at such usurious rates were on the down grade to financial ruin. To add to their misfortunes, 1856 was a dry or drought year. Thousands of cattle died of starva- tion, and those that survived were unmarketable. The year 1857 was but little improvement on its predecessor. Hard times continued, if, in- deed, they were not intensified. This was the beginning of the end of the cattle kings. They were compelled to mortgage their lands to tide them over the hard times. The high rates of in- terest absorbed their income and they could not reduce the principal of their loans. From 1858 to 1861 there was a spurt of prosperity. Don Abel Stearns built the Arcadia block, on the corner of Los Angeles and Arcadia streets. This was the finest business block south of San Fran- cisco and was said to have cost $80,000. In 1859 Juan Temple built what afterward became the court house on the plat bounded by Spring, Main, Market and Court streets. The old-timers pointed with pride to these as evidence that the city was destined to be the metropolis of the south.
During the year 1859 thirty-one brick build- ings and a considerable number of wooden ones were erected in the city. This was the biggest building boom in the history of the city up to this time.
In 1860 the telegraph line between San Fran- cisco and Los Angeles was completed, and the first message over the wires was sent by Henry Mellus, the mayor of Los Angeles, at 10 o'clock p. m., October 8th, to H. F. Teschemacher, presi- dent of the board of supervisors of San Fran-
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cisco. The Salt Lake trade, which began in 1855 over the old Mexican trail, now paralleled by the Salt Lake Railroad, had grown to be a very important factor in the business of Los Angeles. In one month as high as sixty wagons had been dispatched with freight for Salt Lake City. Seemingly the metropolis of the cow counties was floating on the high tide of pros- perity.
In 1861 reaction set in. The Civil war divided the people. Many of the leading citizens were sympathizers with the South and some of them joined the armies of the Confederacy. The value of real estate shriveled until it was hard to tell whether there was any value in it. One old- timer, who had loaded up with Ord survey lots, located between First and Fourth on Spring and Main streets, in the early '50s, at the prevailing price then of $50 a lot, desiring to go east in 1861, tried in vain to dispose of his lots at the price he paid for them ten years before. Finally some of his friends clubbed together and took them off his hands. It is said that misfortunes never come singly. It did seem during the first lustrum of the '6os as if they came in droves to the city and the country around. From 1861 to 1866 the metropolis of the south was a case of arrested development. Evolution had ceased and it actually retrograded.
In the winter of 1861-62 occurred one of the greatest floods in the history of California. The rivers covered the valleys and the cattle and horses were driven to the hills, where many starved to death before the waters subsided. The city water works, which the city had been bond- ing itself to build, were swept away, and the inhabitants had to fall back on the Indian and the olla for their water supply. It rained almost incessantly for thirty days and the city was cut off from all communication with the outside world, except by steamer. After the deluge came the drought. During the years 1863-64 there was the smallest rainfall ever known in Cali- fornia. As a consequence cattle in Southern Cali- fornia were very nearly exterminated and the doom of the cattle kings sealed.
Smallpox was raging among the Mexicans and Indians, and they were dying so fast that it was
difficult to find persons to bury them. There was a feud between the adherents of the Union and the secessionists, so bitter that a body of United States troops had to be stationed in the city to keep order. There was nothing to sell and money had become an unknown quantity to many. So impoverished were the people that no assess- ment for city taxes was made in 1863-64. The landed possessions of two of the richest men of the city amounting to a quarter of a million acres, were advertised for sale as the owners were unable to pay their state and county taxes, al- though the total of their taxes did not exceed $5,000. In 1863 an Ord survey lot on the south- east corner of Spring and Second streets, 120 feet front, sold for $37, or about thirty cents a front foot. Two thousand acres in East Los Angeles were sold in 1864 at fifty cents an acre. The purchaser, Dr. Griffen, took it under pro- test. He wanted to purchase eight hundred acres lying along the river for sheep pasture. As this would cut off access to the water for sheep or cattle, the city council refused to sell it un- less Griffen would take also the mesa land lying back from the river.
In 1865 light began to penetrate the financial gloom that hung over the old city. The Civil war came to an end. The defenders of the Union of States and its would-be destroyers sheathed their weapons and ceased hostilities. There had been no active hostilities between them. It had been principally a war of words. The Confederate sympathizers, who were largely in the majority, were loud in their denunciations of the govern- ment and flag under which they were living and had lived all their lives. However, beyond a few arrests for outspoken disloyalty they were not harmed-a marked contrast to the way the Union men were treated in the South, where a man endangered his life whenever he uttered a word in favor of the United States government. Los Angeles furnished but one representative to the Union army-that is, one who was an actual resident of the city at the beginning of the war --- Charles M. Jenkins, a member of the Califor- nia battalion, which was incorporated into the Second Massachusetts Cavalry. There was a company of native Californians recruited in
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Los Angeles in 1864 which did service against by Stevens & Wood near the postoffice on North the Indians in Arizona.
Plentiful rainfalls in 1865-66 restored confi- dence in Southern California, but the passing of the cattle barons had begun. There was abund- ant feed on the ranchos, but the owners were in no condition financially to replenish their depleted herds. The growth of the city was dependent upon the prosperity of the country adjacent. Its growth was slow. Rates of interest had been reduced, but it was hard to secure a loan at less than two per cent a month. The first of the modern improvements that we now deem so necessary to our existence introduced into the city was the granting to James Walsh, May 5, 1866, the exclusive right to lay gas mains in the city. He was to expend at least $5,000 in a plant and pipes and to furnish free gas for a lamp at a few of the principal street crossings on Main street, and also for the mayor's office. The price of gas at first was $10 a thou- sand cubic feet. When it was reduced to $7.50 a thousand it was considered quite a reasonable price, and people clamored for more street lamps. In September, 1868, the construction of the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad was begun. It was completed to Wilmington, October 26, 1869. The city had bonded itself to the amount of $75,000 and the county had invested $150,000 in it. There was bitter opposition to the bonding in certain quar- ters, but the bonds carried by a majority of thirty-nine votes. It was contended that the railroad would destroy freighting by teams, con- sequently there would be no use for horses and mules and no sale for barley. The pessimists wailed in vain; the progressive citizens pre- vailed. The road reduced the fare from the city to steamer anchorage from $5 to $2.50, cut the price of lumber $7.50 on the thousand feet, and reduced the freight on grain $5 a ton.
The first ice factory was started in 1868. It was conducted by Martin & Beath, where the city water works building now stands, on the corner of Alameda and Marchessault streets. The capacity of the plant was a ton and a half a day. The retail price of ice was five cents a pound ; wholesale rates, $4 a hundred pounds. About the same time the first soda fountain was set up
Spring street. The novelty of phiz for a time attracted customers, but soda water was not strenuous enough for throats accustomed to aguardiente; after the novelty wore off the siz- zling liquid ceased to attract.
The first bank in Los Angeles was organized in 1868 by Alvinza Hayward and John G. Downey under the firm name of Hayward & Co., capital $100,000. It was located in the Downey block.
The first street railroad franchise was granted June I, 1869, to R. M. Widney for a period of twenty years. The privilege was granted over the following named streets: Beginning at the junction of Main and Spring streets, thence along Spring to First, First to Fort, Fort to Fourth, Fourth to Hill, Hill to Fifth, Fifth to Olive, Olive to Sixth, Sixth to Pearl (now Figueroa). The road was completed in 1872. The next car line was built on Main street from its junction with Spring to Washington street. The motive power of the cars was the mule. Single fare, ten cents-the smallest coin in circulation in Cali- fornia. The car made a trip every half hour with the consent of the mule; otherwise the service might be irregular. Sometimes when the mules bucked it became necessary for the passengers to assist as motors.
The subdivision of the great ranchos into small tracts, which began in 1868, brought a migration of home-seekers to Los Angeles. They came by steamer or trecked overland. The city began to show the effect of the influx of more capital and new men. In February, 1870, the houses in the business portion of the city were numbered sys- tematically for the first time. It was not deemed necessary to number the dwelling houses. The first city directory was compiled the same year, but was not published until 1871. The directory contained seventy pages of names. The federal census of 1870 gave the population of the city 5,614, which was an increase of 1,215 in ten years. There were II0 places where intoxicating liquors were sold, an average of one saloon to every fifty-five inhabitants. The assessed value of all property in the city was $2,108,061.
The railroad bond issue was a live question in 1872. The Southern Pacific Company had made
HILL ST
FORT ST
SPRING ST.
MAIN ST.
Los Angeles from Tenth and Main Streets. 1873
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an offer to build twenty-five miles north and twenty-five east from Los Angeles city of the transcontinental line that it was building up the San Joaquin valley. The Texas Pacific met this with an offer to build from San Diego (the pros- pective terminus of its transcontinental line) a railroad up the coast to Los Angeles, giving the county sixty miles of railroad. The Southern Pacific countered this offer by agreeing to build, in addition to the fifty miles of its previous offer, a branch to Anaheim making in all seventy-seven miles. The recompense for this liberality on the part of the railroads was that the people should vote bonds equal to five per cent of the total taxable property of the county. The bond ques- tion stirred up the people as no previous issue had done since the Civil war. The contest was a triangular one, Southern Pacific, Texas Pacific, or no railroad. Each company had its agents and advocates abroad enlightening the people on the superior merits of its individual offer, while "Taxpayer" and "Pro Bono Publico," through the newspapers, bewailed the waste of the peo- ple's money and bemoaned the increase of taxes. At the election, November 5, the Southern Pa- cific won.
The city reached the high tide of its pros- perity during the '70s in 1874. Building was active. It was estimated that over $300,000 was expended in the erection of business houses, and fully that amount in residences.
The year 1875 was one of disasters. The great financial panic of 1873, presaged by that mone- tary cyclone, "Black Friday in Wall Street," had no immediate effect upon business in California.
The years 1873 and 1874 were among the most prosperous in our history. The panic reached California in September, 1875, beginning with the suspension of the Bank of California in San Francisco and the tragic death of its president, William C. Ralston. In a few days nearly every bank in California closed its doors. The two in Los Angeles, the Temple & Workman and Hell- man's, closed. The latter resumed business in a few days. The former made an attempt to stem the current of its financial difficulties, failed, and went down forever, carrying with it the fortune of many an unfortunate depositor. One of the bankers, William Workman, an old and highly respected pioneer, from brooding over the failure went insane and committed suicide. Temple died a few years later, a poor man.
The hard times following the bank failures were intensified by the drought of 1877, which brought disaster to the sheep industry of South- ern California. There was no business reaction during the remainder of the decade. The federal census of 1880 gave the city's population at II,- 183, an increase of almost one hundred per cent in ten years. The greater part of the gain was made in the first half of the decade. Railroad con- nection with San Francisco and Sacramento was made in September, 1876, but it opened up no new market for Los Angeles. Times continued hard and money close. The ruling rate of in- terest on mortgages was one and one-half per cent per month. The adoption of the new con- stitution of the state in 1879 did not improve mat- ters. The capitalists were afraid of some of its radical innovations.
CHAPTER XLI.
LOS ANGELES IN ITS SECOND CENTURY.
L OS ANGELES city rounded out the first century of its existence September 4, 1881. Its population then was estimated at 12,000. It began with 44. Its average yearly increase was 120, a slow growth as western towns grow. Its centennial celebration-a grand affair
for that time-was a quaint mixture of the past and the present, a curious blending of the new with the old. In that procession, largely made up of horsemen, rode the graceful cabellero on his silver-mounted silla de montar (saddle) with jingling spurs and swinging riata. In
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it, too, was the American newcomer astride patted himself appreciatively over his discovery of a turtle-shell saddle, knees pointing to if it pleased him, or slandered it maliciously if it did not. One of the very best descriptions ever written of Los Angeles when it was nearing the end of its first century can be found (if you can find a copy of the book) in B. F. Taylor's "Between the Gates." He visited Los Angeles in 1878. I copy a portion of his description : the zenith and hand gripping the saddle-bow. In a creaking old wooden-wheeled carreta rode Benjamina, an ancient Indian lady, who was the belle of Yangna when Los Angeles was born. Fashionable coupes, newly arrived, and rumbling road wagons that had crossed the plains in '49, pieced out the long line of varied vehicles that wound through the unpaved and unsprinkled streets on that centennial day. There were orations in English, in Spanish and in French. There was feasting and rejoicing in the ancient style and in the modern. The festivi- ties ended with a baili (ball) that was muy grande.
Through somebody's blundering, or possibly to give its first century the full measure of days, the 5th of September was celebrated instead of the 4th, the city's real birthday. Although for nearly half of its first century Los Angeles had been officially entitled to write itself a ciudad (city), yet it had not outgrown many of the characteristics of its pueblo days. When it passed its hundredth year there was not a paved street within its limits. The sidewalks were mostly graveled paths with cobble stones pro- truding. Everybody went to the postoffice for his mail. The telephone and the hello girl were unknown. Beyond the business center darkness brooded over lampless streets.
From Main street to the river, and below East Third street to the city limits was a succession of orange groves and vineyards with an occa- sional walnut orchard interspersed. Looking down from the western hills, which then had a few scattering houses upon them, the observer beheld stretching away to the south for miles a sea of green. Never before or since has the Angel City been so beautiful as she was in the closing years of her first century. The tourist was not much in evidence then. California on wheels had not yet made its pilgrimage of en- lightenment through the eastern states; nor was there a chamber of commerce to tell the story of our wonderful products and salubrious climate. Occasionally a newspaper correspondent or a bookmaker discovered the city and wrote it up or wrote it down as the fancy seized him-
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