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 46
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It cost but little to stock a range, cattle mul- tiplied rapidly and in a few years, with but little exertion on his part and almost no ex- penditure of money, the ranchero found him- self the owner of vast herds of cattle-a veri- table cattle baron. It required no continuous brain fag-no nerve-destroying worry, no scheming to outwit a competitor, no promo- tion of a trust to become rich in this lotus land of ease, in the halcyon days of the cattle barons.
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Given thousands of acres of fertile land, an army of retainers, a continually increasing band of cattle and a caballada (band) of horses, the baron who ruled over all this led a life of ease with dignity. The annual matanza was his harvest. The hides of the slaughtered cat- tle were dried and packed and the arrobas of tallow stored in caves to await the coming of the hide droghers with their department stores of merchandise and Yankee notions to barter.
The rancheros devoted a few of their my- riads of acres to the growing of grain, fruit and vegetables for their own use, but produced none for market because there was no market for such. The Indians did the work and took their pay in products of the soil and a scanty supply of clothing. The cattle barons built no palaces-their abodes were commodious, but not imposing-but stored away in trunks, chests and drawers in some of these adobe houses, to be worn on state occasions, were silks and satins and costly jewelry that a queen might envy. Alfred Robinson tells of a dress-suit that Tomas Yorba, the owner of the great Santiago rancho of 62,000 acres, used to wear on festal occasions. It cost over $1,000 and yet the manor of this feudal baron had an earthen floor. His daughter had one hundred and fifty dress patterns of the finest silk and satin, and jewelry to match. It might be added that the fashion changed about once in fifty years and the accumulated finery of one generation descended to the next. A man might wear his grandfather's hat and the grand-daugh- ter might wear the bridal robes of her grand- mother and still be in the fashion.
Bancroft, in his "California Pastoral," says of the Californians :
"As for houses, the climate was mild and the men were lazy. Opening their eyes in the morning they saw the sun; they breathed the fresh air, and listened to the song of the birds ; mounting their steeds, they rode forth in the enjoyment of healthful exercise; they tended their herds, held intercourse with each other and ran up a fair credit with heaven. How many among the statesmen, among the pro- fessional and business men and artisans of our present high civilization can say as much? It was their business to live, to do nothing but exist ; and they did it well."
The discovery of gold and the mad rush to
the mines in '49 and the early '50s for a time increased the wealth and power of the cattle barons. Their great ranchos were still intact. The demand for meat, in the mines and towns that sprang into existence after the discovery of gold, could be supplied only from the vast herds of the cow counties.
From the coming of the hide droghers down to the rush of the gold-seekers the price of cat- tle had not changed materially. Two to four dollars for a full-grown steer was the usual rate of exchange. The overwhelming tide of Argonauts that flooded California immediately after the discovery of gold upset all previous standards of value, and inflated the price of all the products of the ranchos. The standing price of cattle in hide-droghing days was in- creased a thousand per cent by the influx of gold-seekers. Full-grown steers in the early '50s sold at prices ranging from $30 to $40 each, and mustangs that had no marketable value in the olden time were elevated in price at least to the dignity of thoroughbreds. The ranchero who had cattle on a thousand hills, or even a thousand cattle on a hill, had a source of reve- nue more certain and more profitable than a gold mine. Cattle buyers from the mines came over the Tehachapi mountains, or down the coast in steamers, bringing with them sacks of gold; and golden twenties and octagon-shaped fifty dollar slugs became more plentiful in the old pueblo of Los Angeles than silver pesos had been in the days of the padres.
This sudden accumulation of riches turned the heads of the frugal rancheros and they spent with the prodigality of princes. General Val- lejo, one of the cattle barons of Central Cali- fornia, said in those early days he never thought of tipping the boy who held his horse with less than an ounce of gold, equivalent to $16. The rancheros had always been accustomed to card- playing, but bets in the olden days were at most a few pesos or a few horses or cattle; with the sudden accesion of wealth gambling became a passion and fortunes were lost at a sitting. One extravagance of the native Cali- fornian in the olden time was rich dressing- with the golden days of '49 this passion was increased a thousand-fold, and not alone was the passion for costly dress increased, but the taste for costly viands as well. The simple wines of their own make palled on their taste
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and the costly imported wines of France alone satisfied. Cattle ranges were more productive and more profitable than gold mines. Why save ?- spend while you have it-mañana (to- morrow) more cattle to sell, more money to spend. Come easy, go easy.
But a change was coming-slowly, but sure- ly. The first knell in the doom of the cattle barons had been sounded, but they heard it not. Each year less drovers came over the Tehachapi and the price of cattle was steadily falling. Poco tiempo-by and by-prices will go up again, said the ranchero. Unknowingly he was facing those problems that have been the bane of the producer since the dawn of civilization-cost of transportation and excess of production .*
In 1849 and the early '50s Argonauts were in such mad haste to reach California before all the gold was dug out of its hills and gulches that they thought of no other industry but gold digging. But after an experience with pick and pan, often disastrous, many of them sought other vocations.
At the time of Marshall's discovery of gold the great valleys of the San Joaquin and Sac- ramento were uninhabited except by Indians. Great bands of elk, droves of wild horses and herds of antelope and deer grazed upon the luxuriant grasses that covered these plains.
The speculative gringo-the nemesis of the easy-going native Californian-after figuring out the possibilities of a fortune in cattle rais- ing in these valleys, proceeded to put his scheme into operation. In 1852 the first ven- ture was made in driving cattle across the plains and was enlarged upon in 1853. It would seem like an exemplification of the old adage, "carrying coals to Newcastle," to bring cattle across the plains to California, where for years vast herds had been slaughtered for their hides and tallow.
In the early '50s of the last century young cattle could be bought in the western states at prices ranging from $5 to $10 each. Even if fifty per cent of a herd was lost on the journey across the plains the survivors could be sold at an advance sufficient to make a profit. The cattle brought across the plains were a vastly
superior breed to the lanky, long-horned, mouse colored native bovine.
The earliest official report of the number of cattle brought into the State that I have found is for the year 1854. It is taken from the Los Angeles Star. It is interesting to note the va- rious routes by which cattle as well as people came into the State in the early days. "The number of cattle brought into the State in 1854 was as follows: Via Nobles Pass, 24,025; via Beckworths Pass, 10,150; via the Gila route, 9,075 ; via the Sonoma Pass, 5,106; via Carson River route, 12,914: total, 61,270."
Of the total number arriving in the State, only those coming by the Gila route were brought into Southern California. Fifty thou- sand were thrown into the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and not only diminished the de- mand from the southern ranchos to that amount, but as these cattle were used for breed- ing it marked the beginning of the end of the cattle barons' prosperity.
Cattle ranges were acquired in the Sacra- mento and the San Joaquin valleys and along the foothills and stocked with American cattle. With the advantage of 300 to 500 miles nearer market in the mines and supplying a superior quality of beef at lower prices, the valley ranges were gradually absorbing the cattle trade and the cattle barons of the south found their source of wealth slipping away from them.
The newly-rich who have for a time reveled in wealth cannot readily return to simple liv- ing. The lush of luxuries that had come to the rancheros and their families in the flush days of gold mining when a cattle range with its herds was more profitable than a gold mine had created expensive habits that they could not or would not shake off. Money they must have and money they could have by mortgag- ing their ranchos. Their needs were pressing and the day of payment afar off. They had never experimented with that death gage, a mortgage. So mortgages were negotiated at ruinous rates of interest-five, ten and even fifteen per cent per month were promised. When the mortgages came due times were harder, money scarcer and prices of the pro- ducts of the ranchos lower, so the only resource left was to increase the mortgages by adding the accrued interest to the original debt and giving a new lien on their lands.
*From "The Passing of the Cattle Baron" by J. M. Guinn, in Pacific Monthly, September, 1910.
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A story that well illustrates this system of financiering was current among old-timers years ago. There were several versions of it. The following is as correct as can be given now :
Lemuel Carpenter, an early Californian, was the owner of the Santa Gertrudes rancho-a body of rich land covering a large portion of the Los Nietos country. Carpenter had a passion for gambling-a no uncommon form of dissipation among the rancheros. The new- ly imported game of faro that came with the gold rush fascinated him. Faro is a banking game in which the players play against the dealer, or banker as he is sometimes called. Fortunes were sometimes won in the days of gold, but more often lost, on the turn of a card. In miners' parlance the game was called "buck- ing the tiger." The name probably originated from the claw-shaped hook with which the dealer raked in his winnings. The tiger had clawed in Carpenter's last dollar, but he had discovered, or thought he had, the combination in which the cards were running and he was sure with more coin to stake he could win back his lost money and possibly break the bank, a consummation that would make him a hero in the gambling fraternity. He hunted up a local Shylock and negotiated a mortgage on his rancho for $5,000 with interest at five per cent per month, compounded monthly. Like John Oakhurst in Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat," Carpenter struck a streak of bad luck and he kept striking it. The faro dealer raked in his $5,000 and he could not pay the interest or principal of his mortgage. The debt soon doubled and the mortgage was again and again renewed at increased amounts until with
interest compounded over and over his indebt- edness amounted to $50,000; then Shylock took his pound of flesh-Carpenter's rancho-and Carpenter committed suicide. Thus the mag- nificent Santa Gertrudes rancho, worth today $1,000,000, was lost to its owner for the insig- nificant sum of $5,000, which now would scarce buy ten acres out of its twenty-five thousand.
Another element that contributed towards the passing of the olden time ranchos and hastened the financial ruin of the rancheros was litigation. The careless and easy-going methods of granting lands under Mexican domi- nation fattened many a lean and hungry lawyer under American rule. Lost expedientes, indefi-
nite boundaries, overlapping grants and the in- cursion of squatters, who sometimes coolly set- tled upon the lands of the rancheros and held them without leave or license from the real owners-all these were fruitful sources of law- suits.
As an illustration of indefinite boundary lines those of La Habra rancho, formerly in Los Angeles county but now in Orange county, give an excellent example and these perhaps are not the worst that could be found in the old records. "Commencing at the camino viejo (old road) and running in a right line 550 varas, more or less, distant from a small corral of tuna plants, which plants were taken as a land- mark, thence in a direction west by south run- ning along the camino viejo 18,200 varas to a point of small hills, at which place was fixed as a landmark the head of a steer ; from thence east by north passing a cuchillo (waste land) 11,000 varas, terminating at a hill that is in a direct line with another hill which is much higher, and has three small oak trees upon it, at which place a small stone landmark is placed; thence north by east 2,000 varas, ter- minating at the right line of the small corral of tunas aforesaid, the point of beginning."
In the course of time the camino viejo was made to take a shorter cut across the valley, the corral of tunas disappeared, a coyote or some other beast carried away the steer's head, the three oaks were cut down and carted away for fire-wood, the small stone was lost, the cuchillo was reclaimed from the desert and the La Habra was left without landmarks or boun- dary lines. The landmarks lost, the owners of the adjoining ranchos, if so inclined, could crowd them over onto the La Habra, or its owner in the same way could increase the area of his possessions, and the expanding process in all probability would result in costly litiga- tion.
Some of these legal contests over the owner- ship of ranchos were fought with persistence and bitterness, and were carried from one court to another until they reached the Supreme Court of the United States. It not infrequently happened that when the legal battle was fought to a finish all that the contestants had to show for years of litigation was a series of court de- cisions, from the lowest to the highest, and stacks of legal documents. The money-lenders
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who had furnished the sinews of war were the owners of the contested property. Litigation growing out of defective titles was the bane and curse of California for at least three de- cades after the conquest, and more men were killed in quarrels over the disputed ownership of lands than fell in all the battles of the con- quest.
Another element that served to embarrass the cattle barons was taxations. Under Mexi- can rule when cattle were slaughtered for their hides and tallow there was no tax on the land and cattle. The tariff on imports and the tax on men's pleasures and vices paid the very limited cost of governing. Under American rule, although the vices were multiplied the revenue derived from fines and from licenses for saloons and gambling houses fell far short of paying the cost of governing.
The county of Los Angeles was organized by the election of county officers April 1, 1850. At that election Don Antonio Coronel was elected county assessor. As about nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the newly created county spoke and understood the Spanish language only, it was necessary to have someone who spoke their language to explain to them the new system of raising revenue inaugurated by their conquerors.
Don Antonio's first assessment was made in 1851. He prepared no roll. The assessment was made on loose sheets, which have been lost. His total valuation of property footed up $2,882,949. The assessment roll for 1852 has been preserved. It is written in Spanish and has a fanciful title page-a work of the penman's art. Don Antonio did not order a number of great leather-bound machine-ruled volumes for his assessment rolls, as is the cus- tom now. He made his assessment roll him- self, binding, ruling and all. It consists of unruled sheets of Spanish foolscap pasted into leaves over two feet long and stitched into a book of thirty pages covered with blue calico. This one book contains the entire assessment for that year, also the poll-tax list.
The following are the principal items of that assessment :
Number of acres assessed. 1,505,180
Value of real estate. $748,606
Value of improvements 301,947
Value of personal property 1,183,898
The land assessed, except that included in orchard and vine lands within the city limits, was the ranchos. The thirty millions of acres in the county outside of the ranchos that be- longed to the public domain was not assessed. Don Antonio was economical in the use of paper and ink. He did not write out lengthy involved descriptions of the rancho giving boundaries by metes and bounds.
Here is a sample entry of Don Antonio's that, considering the large amount involved, has perhaps never been exceeded in brevity on an assessment roll :
"Eulogio De Celis-100,000 acres-Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando-value $12,500. Also sixty acres huerto (orchard) Angeles, value $700. Value of personal property, horses and cattle, $14,000."
The cruelty of fate that so often followed the ranchero decreed that in less than two score years the son and heir to this baronial estate should die penniless. Another entry reads : "Enrique Dalton-45,280 acres-Santa Anita Rancho-value $10,223, also 203 acres huerto -Angeles-value $1,000. (The Santa Anita is the rancho made famous in the annals of horse racing by the late Lucky Baldwin.)
Julius Verdugo was the largest land holder in the county at the time Coronel made his assessment. He was the owner of the mag- nificent Rancho San Rafael containing, accord- ing to Don Antonio, 114,000 acres and assessed at $24,000. No descendant of that great cattle baron owns an acre of that vast estate now.
Don Antonio estimated the island of Santa Catalina, owned by Covarubias, to contain 95,000 acres and assessed the acreage at $6,000, about six and a quarter cents (or half a real) per acre. It was then heavily stocked with wild goats, but these were not listed as per- sonal property. While the assessed value of the ranchos was low, almost farcical we would consider it now, when compared with present values, the personal property valuations were high. The olden-time rancheros resented this gringo innovation for raising revenue and evaded it whenever they could do so. With a cancerous mortgage eating away their posses- sions and a falling market, taxation bore heavily upon them.
The first board of county supervisors was elected June 14, 1852, and one of its first acts
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was to sit as a board of equalization. The pro- cess of equalizing by that board differed some- what from the methods of our present board and city council. The members of that first board of supervisors equalized mainly by "ang- menting," as they called it, the number of cattle and horses owned by some of the ranch- eros, who evidently had failed to count cor- rectly the number of animals they owned. One ranchero had two hundred and fifty wild horses added to his band at $10 each. The supervisors added to the assessment roll over one thousand wild horses that the owners had allowed to stray away from their assessment lists. An- other ranchero had a thousand cattle added to his list at $12 each, increasing his wealth $12,000, much to his disgust. But the most singular lapse of memory from the viewpoint of today was that of the land baron, who guessed eight hundred acres short of the true amount of land he owned. As it was worth only dos reales, or two bits an acre, it was not so strange that he should forget it. Today the owners of that forgotten realty would scorn an offer of $2,000 an acre-but no descendant of that ranchero of the short memory owns an acre of it now.
The cattle industry of the south-the con- comitant of the great rancho-had encountered such antagonistic elements of human invention as competition, litigation, taxation and usurious rates of interest, and though crippled still sur- vived. It was the adverse forces of nature that were to seal its doom. Deluge and drouth were to complete its final undoing.
The winter of 1855-56 heralded one of the dreaded dry years. One hundred thousand cat- tle starved to death in the southern coast coun- ties during the summer and fall of 1856. That year marked the turn of the tide of prosperity in the cow counties of the south.
Wallace, editor of the Los Angeles Star, soliloquizing on affairs that year, writes: "'Dull times,' says the trader, the mechanic, the farmer. The teeth of the cattle were so dull this year that they could not save them- selves from starvation. Business is dull- duller this week than it was last-duller today than it was yesterday. The flush days are past-the days of large prices and full pockets are gone." 19
The year 1858 was another of the dreaded dry years. There was no great loss of cattle that year, but their impoverished condition ren- dered them unfit for market and the failure of any return from their herds impoverished their owners as well. The winter of 1859-60 was one of excessive rainfall. During one storm in December twelve inches fell in twenty-four hours. Many horses and cattle weakened by starvation perished from exposure. But the Noachian deluge of California floods came in the winter of 1861-62. It began raining, De- cember 24, 1861, and continued for thirty days with but two slight interruptions. The Los Angeles Weekly Star, in its weather report of January 4, 1862, says: "There has been one shower since our last issue, but it lasted all the time-morning, noon and night. Day in and day out it has been rain, rain, rain."
The rivers rose to an unprecedented height. The Santa Ana rivaled the Father of Waters during a spring flood. It spread out to the Coyote hills, a distance of seven miles. The Los Angeles river swept away the city water works, carried off all of Elijah Moutton's land and property, thirty acres of vineyard, orange orchard, house and all it contained. The vine- yards of Dr. White, Wolfskill, Hammel and Denker, Huber and others that lined the west- ern bank of the river were washed away.
During the long and pitiless storm thousands of cattle unhoused and unprotected perished either from hunger and cold or by miring in the quicksands of the arroyo and marshy land. After the deluge, what? The great drouth and famine years.
The successive years of excessive rainfall produced great abundance of feed and the cattle multiplied rapidly. The rancheros en- deavoring to make up by numbers for the de- crease in value had allowed their ranges to become heavily overstocked. From over-pro- duction and the other causes enumerated the price of cattle had steadily declined until in the winter of 1862, full grown animals were sold in Los Angeles for $2 a head, the price in the old hide drogher days of thirty years be- fore.
The great drouth began in 1862-63, the rain- fall was less than four inches, and in 1863-64 it was but little more than a trace. By the fall of 1863 all vegetation had been licked up from
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the sunbaked plains by the hungry herds, and cattle were dying of starvation.
As the time for the rainy season approached the rancheros anxiously scanned the heavens for signs and portents of coming storms, but none appeared. The heavens were as brass and the former and the latter rains came not. The winter passed and the hot dry summer was upon them. Cattle were dying by the hundreds every day. Herds of gaunt, skeleton-like forms moved slowly over the plains in search of food. Here and there, singly or in small groups, poor brutes, too weak to move on, stood motionless with drooping heads, slowly dying of hunger.
The loss of cattle was fearful. The plains were strewn with their sundried carcasses and along the arroyos and around the cienegas where there had been vestiges of vegetation, the ground was covered with their skeletons and the traveler for years afterwards was often startled by coming suddenly upon a veritable Golgotha-a place of skulls-the long horns standing out in defiant attitude, as if protecting the fleshless bones.
Of the vast herds of cattle and manadas of horses that roamed over the Stearns' ranchos- bodies of land aggregating 200,000 acres- when the famine years began only a pitiful remnant was left when grass again covered the sun-parched plains ; and a perverse fate seemed to have decreed that the fittest should not be the survivors. The scrawniest mustang of the band survived, while the high-bred caballo perished. The remnants of the great herds that survived the famine years reveled in a luxury of abundant feed the succeeding years Nature, as if atoning for her cruelty, garlanded her Golgothas with wreaths of golden poppies and spread cerements of living green over the bleaching bones of her victims.
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