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 45
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"Whoever asks where Los Angeles is, to him I shall say : across a desert without wearying, be- yond a mountain without climbing ; where heights stand away from it, where ocean winds breathe upon it, where the gold-mounted lime- hedges border it; where the flowers catch fire with beauty; among the orange groves; beside the olive trees; where the pomegranates wear calyx crowns; where the figs of Smyrna are turning; where the bananas of Honolulu are blossoming; where the chestnuts of Italy are dropping; where Sicilian lemons are ripening ; where the almond trees are shining; through that Alameda of walnuts and apricots; through this avenue of willows and poplars; in vine- yards six Sabbath-days' journey across them; in the midst of a garden of thirty-six square miles-there is Los Angeles.
"The city is the product of one era of bar- barism, two or three kinds of civilizations, and an interregnum, and is about as old as Washing- ton's body-servant when he died the last time, for it is in its ninety-seventh year. You meet native Californians, wide-hatted Mexicans, now and then a Spaniard of the old blue stock, a sprinkle of Indians and the trousered man in his shirt and che. You see the old broad- brimmed, thick-walled adobes that betray the early day. You hear somebody swearing Span- ish, grumbling German, vociferating Italian, parleying in French, rattling Chinese and talk- ing English.
"Yesterday and today are strangely blended. You stroll among thousands of vines that are ninety years old and yet in full bearing. You pass a garden just redeemed from the dust and ashes of the wilderness. You pluck an orange from a tree that was venerable when Charles the | Fourth was king of Spain, and you meet a man who has sat down to wait six years for his first fruit. A drive through the old quarter of the
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city takes you to the heart of Mexico, with the low-eaved fronts, the windows sunk like niches il, the walls, the Italic-faced old porticos, the lazy dogs dozing about in the sun. In ten min- utes you are whirled between two long lines of new-made fragrance, such luxuriance of vegeta- tion, and nothing nearer like the 'waving sword at the Eastward' of the first homestead than the slashed saber-like leaves of the banana that holds up its rich, strange, liver-colored blossoms as if it were proud of them."
"If to one city more than another, of all cities I have seen, belongs the urbs in horto of Chi- cago's seal, Los Angeles is the place. It is not a city in a garden, but a garden in the city. The two are interwoven like the blossoming warp and woof of a Wilton carpet. We visited the vineyard and the wine-presses of Don Mateo Keller. It is in the heart of the city, and con- tains one hundred and thirty-seven acres, and has two hundred and ten varieties of grapes. In the season ten thousand gallons of wine are pro- duced daily, and there were two hundred thou- sand gallons ripening in the vaults."
At the close of its first century the business district of the city had traveled south as far as First street. The center of retail trade was the Baker block, and the fashionable hotel was the Pico house that looked down upon the old plaza. On the southwest corner of Spring and First streets, where the Hotel Nadeau stands, was a horse corral, and on the southwest corner of Spring and Second streets, where the Hollen- beck now stands, was another. Merchandising and manufacturing were closely associated. On the northwest corner of Main and Second streets and jutting half way across Second street was an iron foundry. On the corresponding corner of Spring and Second streets stood the old brick schoolhouse, built in 1854. On the lot just north of this stood the Mechanics' planing mill.
Lehman's Garden of Paradise, south of Third, fronting on Main street, was still a pleasure re- sort. Adam and Eve had been driven out of Eden and so had Lehman-not by a fiery sword,
but by a mortgage. The cactus hedge that fenced the Spring street front of the garden was still intact, but the tree of knowledge had been cut down, and the old serpent had been scotched. It may be necessary to explain that these deni- zens of Eden before Adam's fall were pieces of statuary that Lehman had placed in his garden to decorate it. George Lehman, better known as "Round House George," had opened his Gar- den of Paradise as a pleasure resort in the early '50s. It became quite popular. The adobe round house at the Main street entrance, where the Pinney block now stands, was a famous land- mark of early days. It was torn down about 1887. South of Second street, Main, Spring and Fort (now Broadway) were the principal resi- dence streets of the city.
In 1882 the financial depression that began in 1875 with the failure of the Temple & Workman Bank, eased up a little. The Southern Pacific Railroad, building eastward, had penetrated the mining regions of Arizona and New Mexico and had opened a market for the products of South- crn California. Its completion the same year gave Los Angeles direct connection with the east. The new transcontinental road, free from the deep snows in winter that often blockaded the Central road, became the popular winter route to California, and brought into Los An- geles immigrants and capitalists that were not slow to recognize the great possibilities of the country.
The Atlantic & Pacific, with connecting roads-the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé and California Southern-effected an entrance into Los Angeles over a leased track from San Ber- nardino in 1885. This gave Los Angeles another transcontinental road. In the spring of 1886 a disagreement between the roads brought on a rate war. Round-trip tickets from Missouri river points were sold as low as $15. Thousands of eastern people, taking advantage of the low rates, visited Los Angeles. They were delighted with the country, and either remained or went home to sell their possessions and return.
Real estate values went up rapidly in 1886, but in 1887 came that event that marks the turn- ing point in the city's history-the boom. The
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story of the great real estate boom of 1887 is told in another chapter of this book. The boom is usually regarded by historians as an unmiti- gated evil-a wild craze, a speculative mania, that deprived people of their senses and wronght their financial ruin. Such a view of it exag- gerates the evil done. While it had its tragic features and its comic as well, while it was the undoing of many plungers and unwise pro- moters, yet with all of its extravagances, its in- flation of values, its unsettling of previous condi- tions, its bursting of bubble fortunes, the good it did far overbalanced the evil.
In a hundred years business had traveled from its first center, the old Plaza, southward to First street, a distance of about four blocks. Between 1881 and 1886 it had crossed First street on Spring and Main and in a few instances had gone below Second street. The Nadeau hotel. the most imposing structure outside of the old business section, was completed in 1883. While designed for a hotel, it was too large a building for the travel of that time. A large room on the second floor originally designed for the dining- room, was rented to the Y. M. C. A., and was the first hall of that organization in the city. Another smaller hall was leased for a justice's court, and rooms on the second and third floors were let for lawyers' and doctors' offices. The rapid development of the real estate brokerage business in 1886-87 created a great demand for offices in the district between Temple and Sec- ond streets on Spring and Main, and the enor- mons rents that real estate agents were willing to pay for office room in this locality virtually drove merchants to seek new locations further south. Their former storerooms were subdivided into a number of cubby-holes, each one of which rented for more than the entire room had brought before.
As an example of the rapid advance in rents caused by the demand for real estate offices, this will serve as an illustration: An old one-story wooden building on Spring street south of First, that before the boom might have brought its owner a rental of $50 per month, was subdivided into stalls after the usual method (a bar of iron between each tenant's holding) and rented at
from $75 to $150 per month for a stall, prices varying as you receded from the front entrance. The rental of the building paid the landlord an income of about $1,000 a month. The building was so out of repair that the enterprising boomers who occupied it during a rain storm were compelled to hold umbrellas over them- selves and their customers while negotiating a deal in climate and corner lots.
At the beginning of the city's second century the selling price of lots on Spring street be- tween First and Second was $50 per front foot; below Second the value decreased rapidly. In August, 1861, the lot (60x165 feet) on the northwest corner of Spring and Sixth streets sold for $1,500, or $25 per front foot. This was considered a fair price as values ranged then. Five years later, with some cheap improvements added, the lot sold for $22,000. In May, 1883, the northwest corner of Spring and Second, 120x 165 feet (on which the first school house the city owned was built in 1854), was sold by the board of education to the city for $31,000, and a new site just south of Sixth, fronting 120 feet on Spring and the same on Broadway, purchased by the board for $12,500.
The council in 1884 erected the first hall owned by the city, on the rear 60 feet of its purchase, and in 1887 sold the frontage on Spring, with a depth of 105 feet, for $120,000, an increase of over 400 per cent in three years. Such unprecedented rise in values was a source of astonisliment to the old-time residents of the city, many of whom had hastened to unload their long-time holdings on the newcomers.
When the depression came in 1888 thie pes- simists, who had croaked dire disaster to the city, were disappointed that their prophesies proved false. The land boom of 1886-87 was followed by a building boom in 1888-89. The investors in high priced real estate were compelled to im- prove their property to obtain an income.
In 1884 the first cable railway, starting at Spring street, was built west over Second, Lake- shore avenue and First street to Belmont ave- nue. The projectors of the enterprise received a large bonus from the property holders on the western hills. It aided greatly in the settlement
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
of the hill district, but being cheaply constructed in 1892. The first line constructed was that on it was frequently out of repair and was finally abandoned.
The first electric street car line was built in 1885. Its route was along Los Angeles, San Pedro and Maple avenue to Pico street, and westward on that street to the Electric Home- stead tract, lying west of the old city boundary. Primarily the road was promoted to sell this tract. A common method of disposing of tracts in the early days was to build half a dozen or more cheap houses on the tract as baits or prizes. Lots were sold at a uniform price, but not located; when all were sold the lots were distributed at a drawing, and the purchaser who drew a prize house paid no more for it than the man who drew a hole in the ground. The Electric Homestead and a number of other tracts were disposed of by this method.
The electric railroad was not a success. The power frequently gave out and the passengers had the choice of waiting an hour or two until enough electricity was generated to move the car, or to walk to the city. The sheriff finally levied on the rolling stock and the road for debt.
The first attempt to introduce the trolley car in Los Angeles was a failure, and the promoter, Howland, died in poverty. Howland had intro- duced the lighting of the city by electricity in December, 1881. Six masts, 150 feet high, were erected at different points in the city between the Plaza and Seventh street and Grand avenue and Main street. The power house was located on the corner of Banning and Alameda streets.
In 1889 work was begun on the cable railway system. A line was extended on Broadway to Seventh and west on Seventh to Westlake Park. Another line extended from Seventh on Grand avenue to Jefferson street. From First and Spring a line ran on East First to Boyle Heights, and from the same point another ran on North Spring, Upper Main and Downey avenue to East Los Angeles. A million and a half dollars were expended in tracks, power houses and ma- chinery. All but the tracks were discarded a few years later, when electricity was substituted for steam and the trolley for the cable. The Los Angeles Electric Railway system was begun
West Second, Olive, First and other streets to Westlake Park. The people on the line of the road gave a subsidy of $50,000 to the promoters. The traction (or Hook) system was begun in 1895.
The horse car disappeared from the city streets in the last decade of the 19th century, and was relegated to the category of the carreta and the caballo de silla (saddle horse), the motors of travel in old pueblo days. The bob car and the mule held the right of way on Main street the longest of any of the principal streets. They were pushed off by the trolley in 1895.
In February, 1892, Messrs. Doheny and Con- non, prospecting for petroleum, dug two wells with pick and shovel on West State street, in the resident portion of the city. At the depth of 150 feet oil was found. From this small begin- ning a profitable industry has grown up. The oil belt extends diagonally across the northwest- ern part of the city. The total number of wells drilled within the city limits up to June, 1900, was 1,300, and the yield of these from the be- ginning of the oil development was estimated at 7,000,000 barrels, worth in round numbers about $6,000,000.
The oil industry reached its maximum in 1901. Over-production and the Standard Oil octopus caused a rapid decline in prices. From $1 a barrel in 1900 the price steadily declined until in 1904 it reached fifteen cents a barrel. Drill- ing new wells within the city practically ceased in 1903, and the unused derricks began to disap- pear.
When the oil industry was at high tide in 1899-1900, it was forced by a certain class of promoters to take on some of the wildcat char- acteristics of the great real estate boom of 1887. For a time it was no uncommon feat to incor- porate a half dozen oil companies in a day. The capital stock of these companies ran up into the millions, sometimes the amount paid in by the promoters reached as high as $10. The man on the outside was the fellow who put up the money to get inside-"to be let in on the ground floor" was a favorite catch phrase then. It was not necessary to own oil lands to incorporate a
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company. A promise of a lease of a few acres of a pasture field or a mountain cañon was suf- ficient. The profit to the promoters came from selling stocks, not oil. During the height of the oil boom stocks could be bought at all prices, from a cent a share up. Stocks in a new com- pany would be advertised at five cents a share, in a short time advanced to ten cents, then raised to fifteen cents, and when buyers began to lag the last call was sounded. "At the last stroke of the clock at midnight next Saturday the stock of the Grizzly Bear Oil Development Company will be advanced to twenty-five cents a share. Oil sand has been struck in the company's wells and all unsold stock will be withdrawn from the market in a few days." This "call of the wild" (cat promoter) hurried the halting, and there was a rush for the stock. Strange to say the clock of these promoters never struck twelve on Saturday night !
One company of enterprising promoters, to satisfy a crying need of the times-cheap stock- organized a company with a capital of $5,000,000 and placed its stock on the market at a cent a share. The stock advanced to two cents a share, and might have gone higher had not the boom burst and the company been forced to suspend- the sale of stock, their only asset. The oil stock mania gradually subsided. Beautifully litho- graphed certificates of stock were the only re- turns that many an investor could show for "very hard cash" invested.
Another of the forgotten enterprises of the closing years of the nineteenth century was the Belgian hare industry. An enterprising maga- zine writer made the discovery that the meat of the Belgian hare as an article of food was superior to beef or mutton and could be produced at a minimum of cost. This "back yard industry," as it was called, could be launched on a very small capital. A coop with a Belgian hare buck and doe and you were ready for business. The rapidity with which the mania spread was equaled by the rapidity with which the hares multiplied. It was a rare thing at the height of the epidemic to find a back yard that was not decorated with a rabbitry. While the ostensible purpose of the industry was to produce a food
product, the fad soon took the form of pro- ducing fancy stock at fabulous prices. Kings, lords, dukes, queens and princesses with their wonderful pedigrees pushed the plebeian Belgian out of business, or rather the pedigree maker converted the pleb into an aristocrat. A king with the red foot and peculiar markings on the back, sure signs of an aristocratic lineage, was rated at $1,000, and the queens and princesses ranged in value all the way from $25 to $500 each. Exactly what these high-priced hares were good for, except to sell to some one who liad been seized with an attack of the craze, no one seemed able to find out, or rather cared to find out. "When the supply exceeds the de- mand," queried the pessimist, "what then?" "Oh! that never can be; all the world wants hares and Southern California is the only place where they can be grown to perfection." The craze increased with every report of big profits from small beginnings. But there came a time when it was all supply and no demand. It was found that as an article of food the flesh of the most aristocratic of the red-footed gentry was not up to the standard of the despised California jack-rabbit.
Then came a scramble to get out of the busi- ness, but few of the operators did without loss. The lords, the dukes and the duchesses died, but not of old age, and the tenantless rabbitries were converted into kindling wood or chicken coops. History has kept alive for three cen- turies the story of the tulip mania of Holland, when a rare bulb sold for 13,000 florins and stolid Dutch merchants traded ships' cargoes for choice collections of tulip tubers that were of no utility and scant beauty. The Belgian hare boom of Southern California is forgotten, al- though in volume it was greater than the tulip craze of Holland. How much capital was in- vested in it it is impossible to say. Some of the wholesale rabbitries were incorporated with cap- itals ranging from $50,000 to $100,000. Experts made frequent trips to Europe for fancy stock. A magazine was published in the interest of the industry, and at its height from ten to twelve columns of liners in the Sunday dailies told those interested where they could find the highest
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rank of Belgian aristocrats. There were ex- perts in hare heraldry, who made good incomes by writing pedigrees for would-be aristocrats. Many of their pedigrees were works of art- the art of lying.
During the closing decade of the nineteenth century there was but little advance in the price of real estate outside of the choice business streets; prices in 1900 were lower than in 1887. The city had doubled in population and business had increased, but many of the property holders were staggering along under mortgages, the legacies of the great boom. These were the optimists who had implicit faith in the future of the city. The great financial depression that had spread over the United States in the middle years of the last decade of the century had been intensified in Southern California by a series of dry or drought years. It was not until the first year of the new century that light began to break through the financial gloom.
H. E. Huntington bought a controlling in- terest in the Los Angeles Electric Railway and began the building of a system of suburban or interurban electric railways to the different cities and towns contiguous to Los Angeles. The road to Long Beach was completed in 1902, to Mon- rovia in 1903, and to Whittier the same year. The seven-story Huntington building, corner of Sixth and Main, the entrepot of all Huntington interurban lines, was completed in 1903. These improvements, together with the extension of new street car lines in the city, stimulated the real estate market and brought about a rapid advance in values. Lots on South Main street
l:eld at $100 a front foot in 1900 sold five years later at $1,500, and frontage on South Hill street valued at $200 a front foot in 1901 sold in 1906 at $2,500. Real estate contiguous to the business district, but still residence property, had advanced in value in five years from one thou- sand to twelve hundred per cent.
The completion of the San Pedro, Los An- geles & Salt Lake Railroad in March, 1905, gave Los Angeles its fourth transcontinental line. The discovery of gold and silver mines in southern Nevada has made Los Angeles a mining center both for supplies and stocks. An idea of its rapid growth in buildings, wealth and population may be obtained from the number and amount of the building permits, the city assessments and the school marshal's returns :
Year
No. of Permits
Valuation
1901
2,730
$ 4,099,198
1902
4,655
8,981,974
1903
6,398
13,175,446
1904
7,064
13,409,061
1905
9,543
15,482,067
1906
9,408
18.273,318
City Assessments-Increase for each year :
Year
Value
Increase for the Year
1901
$ 70,562,307
$ 4,962,387
1902
86,410,735
15,854,428
1903
109,223,823
23,507,088
1904
126,126,563
16,202,740
1905
156,661,566
30,535,003
1906
205,767,729
49,106,163
j
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
CHAPTER XLII THE PASSING OF THE RANCHO
At the time of the conquest of California by the Americans the greater part of the arable lands west of the Coast range between San Diego and San Francisco was held in large tracts known as ranchos. These were devoted by their owners, the rancheros, to the rais- ing of cattle for their hides and tallow-the only commodities produced that would bear shipment to distant markets.
The rancheros were not all of Spanish or Mexican nativity, among them were Ameri- cans, English, Scotch, French, and a few rep- resentatives of other European nations. These men had become citizens of Mexico by natural- ization, married into Spanish families and had obtained land grants on the same terms as the native Californians. They had learned the lan- guage, embraced the religion and adopted the customs of the country. The rancho and the vaquero were Californian of the Mexica era. The cattle range and the cowboy were ad- juncts of the far west of a later American period. The romance of the former had de- parted before the advent of the latter.
The era of the rancho as a distinctive fea- ture of Californian colonization industry began with the rise of Mexican domination in Cali- fornia. While the great ranchos are spoken of as Spanish grants, but very few of them were granted while California was under the rule of Spain. The San Rafael rancho, lying on the left bank of the Los Angeles river and extending to the Arroyo Seco, was granted by Gov. Pedro Fages, October 20, 1784. The San Pedro rancho, lying along the ocean and the estuary of San Pedro bay, Col. J. J. War- ner claims, was granted the same year. The Santiago de Santa Ana rancho was granted in 1810. These are all Spanish grants made by Spanish governors and among the oldest grants in California.
As the Indian population at the missions de- creased the mission lands not in use were
granted to settlers, but it was not until secular- ization of the missions returned to the public domain the vast landed possessions held by these establishments in trust for their Indian converts, that the rancho era really began.
After secularization it was easy to obtain a grant of land. The individual seeking it ap- plied to the local official of the district in which the land was located. If on examination it was found the land was vacant and the appli- cant had the means to stock it, his applica- tion was sent to the governor for his approval. If found correct, the governor confirmed the grant and issued an expediente or official title. The largest area that could be granted in one expediente was eleven square leagues, the smallest one league (a Spanish league con- tains 4444.4 acres). There was no limit, how- ever, to the amount a ranchero could acquire by purchase.
To obtain judicial possession of a grant of land, application was made to the alcalde of the district, who, with two witnesses and a riata fifty varas in length, would go out on horseback and measure off the tract. The sur- vey, if it could be called such, was begun by throwing up a pile of stones or earth as an initial point, and planting a cross thereon. No compass directions were noted and a line was run by sighting to some natural landmark. This loose and indefinite method of establishing boundary lines opened a Pandora box of evils for the unfortunate landowners later on.
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