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 48
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Halsey obtained seed from Central America and the Hawaiian Islands and planted nur- series. Dr. Halsey's nursery furnished trees for part of the Wolfskill orchard." The Ha- waiian orange was larger and sweeter than the Mexican orange of the mission.
There were no doubt small shipments of oranges to San Francisco in the early '50s, but there is no record of them. The Argonauts received almost all of their scanty supply of fresh fruit from Los Angeles. This supply consisted largely of grapes. Bryant estimated the quantity of wine and aguardiente produced in California in 1847 at 1,000,000 gallons. After the discovery of gold the wine production de- creased. It was more profitable to sell the grapes. The first record of the shipment of oranges that I have found was made in 1857. The oranges shipped during the season of 1857-58 amounted to 55,372 pounds, valued at $11,276, or about eight hundred boxes. This would be about $1.40 per box. The selling price in San Francisco was doubtless more than double the value given in the export report. In the export schedules, when all shipments were made by sea, oranges were mostly listed as fruit. It is impossible to ascertain the exact amount of oranges sent.
According to returns made by E. E. Hewitt, when he was superintendent of the Los An- geles & San Pedro Railroad, there were shipped from San Pedro to San Francisco during the orange season of 1871-72, 21,008 boxes of oranges. In the season of 1872-73, when there was a short crop, the number of boxes shipped was only 16,582.
The assessor of Los Angeles county reports for the year of 1871-2 the total number of bear- ing orange trees at 34,500, and in his return for 1872-3, 34,700.
In the early days of citrus fruit culture the Mexican lime held an importatnt place. It was a rival to the lemon. It grew on a bush that at- tained a height of from six to eight feet. Major Truman, describing the Shaw groves, says: "The lime trees are at all times loaded with ripe fruit and covered with blossoms, and it seemed to me that every twig had upon it limes of every size, from that of a grain of coffee to the perfected fruit. Not less than ten crops mature yearly on each of these trees. The income from each tree ranges from
$50 to $75 per annum. The limes are of the Mexican variety." The trees or bushes were easily propagated and were extensively planted. Hedges of them were set out around orchards. With the increase of the trees the revenue from them decreased. In the winter of 1880 came a cold snap and a killing frost. The lime, which was more tropical than semi-tropical, disappeared from the land of the afternoon
Orange planting increased slowly. It was not until after the subdivision of the great ranchos that it began to assume the dignity of an industry. In the later '60s and early '70s Wolfskill's groves were reported to be paying at the rate of $1,000 per acre net. This reported remuneration was probably exaggerated, but it was sufficient to induce the planting of orange groves wherever suitable land with irri- gating facilities could be secured.
The extraordinary profits made from oranges by Wolfskill and a few others who had bear- ing orchards started a boom of orange growing. Like the silk worm fad large profits were made from the sale of nursery stock. It was a very scrubby sort of tree that could be bought for $1, and a thrifty two-year-old commanded $2 or $3 at the nursery.
As it took about seventy-five trees to plant an acre it required considerable ready money to embark in the business. Many prospective orange growers, too poor to buy stock, raised their own from seed. It required two years longer to wait for returns, but with them money was more valuable than time. If oranges were apples of gold the seeds in those days were golden nuggets. The visitor to a grove might be indulged in a luscious orange, but at the same time he would be solicited "to save the seeds."
It took a seedling-orange tree eight or nine years to come into bearing. The problem of subsistence until he could realize on this invest- ment was one of the most difficult that the pros- pective orange producer had to solve. The space between the rows of trees was sometimes planted or sown with some cereal that might help to tide over the long wait for returns, but this was objectionable because it retarded the growth of the trees.
The expense of constructing irrigating ditches and securing water rights was another large item that must be met. In the olden days of Mexican domination the waters of the riv-
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ers had been granted to the abutting ranchos, the illy-defined riparian rights of these grants gave rise to interminable litigation. Some- times these contests assumed a more formidable aspect than lawsuits in a court of justice. Water wars were not uncommon. Armed men stood guard over zanjas (ditches) and even fought to the death in the defense of what they con- ceived to be their rights.
The story of the orange groves of Southern California-of trees laden with the golden ap- ples of Hesperides in midwinter-of groves white with bloom and the air filled with per- fume in the land of sunshine, "when the bleak winds of March" made the dwellers in the Eastern communities "tremble and shiver"- like that other California tale of long ago, of golden nuggets picked up in river beds and cañons, appealed to the imagination and to the pockets of home-seekers.
Then the colony era began. Men imbued with the same purpose banded themselves to- gether in the Eastern communities and either came themselves or sent representatives to "spy out the land." One of the first and one of the most successful of these was the River- side colony, founded in 1870.
After experiments with the raisin grape and deciduous fruits the colonists settled upon the orange as the fittest and most profitable for their soil and location. Fortunately for them a new species of orange was introduced into the col- ony. In December, 1873, L. C. Tibbetts, one of the colonists, received from the Agricultural De- partment at Washington, D. C., two small orange trees imported from San Salvador de Bahia, Brazil (Bay of San Salvador). The fruit of these trees was seedless and of a very fine flavor. As soon as the superior quality of this orange became known there was a rush for buds from the trees to bud the seedling orange. Millions of Washington navel trees, as the orange is now called, trace their ancestry to these two little waifs that wandered over seas and continents to their western home. One of them is still living. an honored pioneer of the city of Riverside. The next was the Indiana colony, founded in 1873. Later the name was changed to Pasadena. (For full account of the colony see Chapter LXVI.)
By the year 1885, orange growing had be- come the recognized industry of Southern Cali- fornia, and had been extended into the shel- tered valleys of Central and Northern Cali- fornia. The great ranchos lying back from the sea-coast upon which water could be had for irrigation were subdivided. Where but two decades agone, on arid, sun-burned plains cattle had died by the thousands of starvation, now groves of emerald green stretched away to the horizon's tip and the bones of the dead herds were ground into fertilizers to add more vigor- ous growth to the trees, and a deeper tinge to the golden fruit of the groves. It was a subject of congratulation to us that by our numerous experiments we had at last found the phil- osopher's stone that would transmute our baser products into gold. It was with a feeling of satisfaction that we pointed to the industry we had evolved-one that was at the same time a pleasure and a profit. But our self-com- placency was to be rudely shocked by what at first appeared to be a very insignificant cause.
A few years before, T. A. Geary, a nursery- man of Los Angeles, had imported some orange trees from Australia. These were infected with the Icerya purchasi, or as it was com- monly called, the cottony cushion scale. No attention, at the time, was paid to the parasite and no one dreamed of the baleful significance of the snowy flecks appearing here and there in the orchards and borne from tree to tree by the wind. The scale multiplied with wonderful rapidity and soon the leaves, branches and trunk of the tree affected were covered with a snowy mantle. The tender twigs died, the leaves turned a sickly yellow, the fruit shriv- eled and the tree was ruined.
Then it was that men realized the terrible character of the enemy that was taking pos- session of the land. Relentless in its march as the ruthless host of Attila-The Scourge of God-it left ruin and desolation in its path. It was not alone trees of the citrus family that were attacked, but deciduous trees, vineyards, shrubbery and flowers as well. Costly experi- ments were tried with sprays, mixtures and emulsions, comprising every deadly poison known to chemistry and science, but no ma- terial check was put to the increase of the in-
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sect pest. Some of the experiments were ef- fectual; they not only destroyed the Icerya, but the tree, too. It seemed as if the citrus in- dustry, built up with so much care and large expenditure of capital, was doomed. Orange growers who had been deriving annual incomes of $500 to $1,000 an acre found themselves threatened with financial ruin-not alone their incomes, but their capital, too, suddenly was swept away.
The orange groves in and around Los An- geles were the first to succumb to the cottony plague, but it was not the Icerya alone that wrought their final undoing. The real estate promoter lent his assistance. The cottony scale and the great real estate boom of 1887 ap- peared almost simultaneously in Los Angeles. At that time, stretching southward from East Third street to the city limits and easterly from San Pedro street to the river, covering an area of two square miles, was a succession of orange groves, the oldest in the country. These were the first smitten. Among them was the great Wolfskill grove, the pioneer orchard, planted nearly fifty years before. The trees towered up thirty to forty feet in height and some were a foot and a half in diameter. This grove was one of the show places of Los Angeles. It had been for years an unfailing source of revenue to its owner. It was the pride of the native, the lure of the tourist and an incentive to the pros- pective orange grower.
The cottony scale, insignificant in size and harmless in appearance, wrought its ruin. Its productiveness destroyed, the land was divided into city lots and the trees fell before the wood- man's ax and were cut into cordwood. The other groves adjoining shared the same fate. When the boom was over and the Icerya dead, all that was left to Los Angeles of its living border of green and gold was the blackened stumps of trees and the little white corner stakes of the real estate promoters. The growth of the city since has covered the site of the ruined groves with dwelling houses and fac- tories, but the urbs in horto-a city in a gar- den-once the characteristic of Los Angeles, departed with her lost groves.
But the orange industry was not dead, not- withstanding the ravages of the Icerya and the wail of the pessimist. The golden apples of Hesperides had not gone to join the cotton boll
and the silk cocoon in the haven of "has beens." The theory that nature always provides an an- tidote for every poison and a remedy for every evil within her domain proved true in this case.
There must be some parasite to prey upon the Icerya. As it had come from Australia there would be found its Nemesis. In the spring of 1888 Albert Koebele, of Los Angeles, was sent to Australia under pay and acting un- der instructions from the Agricultural Division of the Department of Agriculture. On arriv- ing there he found that although at one time the white scale had been very prevalent it had almost ceased to exist. Searching for the cause, he found its extermination was due to the Vedalia Cardinalis, a small bug about the size of a grain of popcorn, but with the appetite of an alligator. In California it was commonly called the Australian lady-bug. He secured a small colony of these in Australia and passing over to New Zealand he found them in much greater numbers.
Several colonies were sent to Los Angeles and colonized in some of the badly infested orchards. The Vedalia increased almost as rapidly as the Icerya had done. From different distributing points hundreds of colonies were sent all over the orange-growing districts. The annihilation of the Icerya was rapid and complete. In a very short time after the Vedalia began its work all that was left of the white scale was the little cottony tuft that had aided so much in distributing it throughout the orange and lemon groves. This tuft, its wind- ing sheet, adhered to the trees long after the Vedalia had sepulchered its body. The winds eventually whipped away these cottony flecks and the last evidence of the baleful presence of the cottony pest disappeared. With the dis- appearance of the white scale the Vedalia dis- appeared. That parasite seemed to be its natural and its only food.
After the passing of the Icerya the reclam- ation of the citrus groves began. Those that had not been injured by ineffectual remedies or too long neglected were redeemed and by careful nursing made productive. The groves in Los Angeles, Pasadena and Riverside that had fallen victims to the real estate promoter were beyond redemption. Unlike the Icerya, the Vedalia could not leave his winding sheet to flutter in the breeze. The orange industry
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once again was placed on a paying basis and it has remained there ever since, growing in importance and extent as the years go by.
In less than five decades, Southern California has been transformed from a land of cattle ranges to one of orange groves. In a third of a century the citrus industry has grown from a single carload shipment to forty-six thousand.
Sentiment as well as profit enters into the promulgation of the citrus industry. The aesthetic millionaire can afford to toy with an orange grove, not as a source of profit, but as a plaything, as a diversion, as a pleasure in creating a thing of beauty that to him will be the joy of a lifetime. The poor man who se- cures a few acres of wild land in the citrus belt can, by his own labor, create a source of income that will be certain and will increase as the years pass .* As an imaginative writer once put it, "A man with a counterpane of a farm and six hundred orange trees can sit in the shade and draw a star preacher's salary without pass- ing the plate."
The first carload of oranges from California was shipped to Chicago in 1877. It went via
*From "Cattle Range to Orange Grove," by J. M. Guinn, in the Pacific Monthly, October, 1910.
the Southern Pacific, Central and Union Pacific Railroads. The freight charges to its destin- ation were $500. The building of the Sante Fe system and the completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad via El Paso, by increasing com- petition and shortening the route, have reduced freight rates. Refrigeration, icing and pre- cooling of fruit cars have greatly reduced the loss from decay in transit.
But in all the decades that have passed since that first carload of oranges was shipped out of California, the problem of transportation has been the burning question of the industry. The contention between producer and carriers has gone on through all the years, and is today as vital an issue as it was years ago.
No other industry has so many intelligent and progressive men enlisted in it. The Cali- fornia Fruit Growers' Exchange, an organiza- tion composed of a majority of all the fruit growers in the citrus belt, regulates the ship- ping and marketing of the annual crop so as to avoid ruinous competition, and divides the proceeds of the sales on an equitable basis both to the small producer and the large. It is one of the most complete and best-managed corporations in existence for the disposing of agricultural products.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE OWENS RIVER AQUEDUCT
The history of the water system, or more properly the water systems, of Los Angeles, for there have been several, is told in Chapter LVI of this volume.
It is a story of roseate dreams and drear real- ities ; of schemes to outwit Jupiter Pluvius when he was withholding the aqueous downpour ; of submerged dams in the river and bed rock dams in the creeks; of vast storage reservoirs that would conserve the lush rainfall of the wet year against the famine dry years; of moun- tain lakes that were to be tapped and of moun- tain streams that were to be diverted from their course and brought down into the valleys. One of the dreams of prosperity that was to be realized by a bond issue for increased water de- velopment was indulged in in 1876.
The people of the city then had the idea that the Los Angeles river and the Arroyo Seco would furnish all the water they would need both for household and irrigation purposes for years to come. Had anyone broached the scheme of bringing water from Owens river he would have been regarded as a mild sort of lunatic. There was a subterranean flow in the river and its tributaries that if brought to the surface would supply every demand and usher in an era of great prosperity. In February, 1876, an election was called by the city council and bonds to the amount of $75,000 for increas- ing the city's water supply for irrigation were voted. One of the city papers commenting edi- torially on the project said :
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"This money will be used in initiating a sys- tem of irrigation which is destined not alone to supply water to serve the cultivable lands within the limits of the city, but also to reach the outside lands. If, as we are assured by the city surveyor, 17,000,000 gallons of water pass a given point above the mouth of the Ar- royo Seco every twenty-four hours during the dry season, and that water can be raised by means of a submerged dam to the surface, and sent into ditches at an elevation that will en- able us to establish storage reservoirs in the depressions of our adjoining hill lands, then this appropriation will inaugurate one of the most important works ever undertaken in this section.
"It will solve the irrigation problem for a very extensive district of Los Angeles county, for the system will supply water to all the lands between this city and the sea for several miles in width. It must be remembered that there are but two or three months in the year when irrigation is required here. Ordinarily the ground is moist enough everywhere up to the month of June. The surplus water of the winter can be stored to such an extent as to furnish an ample supply for the irrigating months.
"Just think of the prosperity which such a water system would inaugurate! One hundred thousand acres of land adjoining this city would be made as valuable for purposes of cultivation as are now the numberless garden spots within our city limits. The plains below the city would be turned into orange orchards and vineyards, and from here to the sea would be a stretch of country as beautiful as the Vale of Cashmere seems from Moore's description. Lands out- side of the city limits, instead of selling at $30 and $40 an acre, would command from $300 to $400. The only difference in the great value now existing between the two classes of lands is the fact that inside lands are entitled to water, while those outside are not. The city is willing to assume the expense and respon- sibility of establishing the fact that we can irrigate all the lands to the sea out of the waters of the Los Angeles river."
A series of reservoirs were constructed, but the growth of the city absorbed both the water supply and the land it was to irrigate. The Vernon and Harmony districts, at that time out-
side of the city, and once covered with orange groves and deciduous fruit orchards, no longer take their water supply through zanjas. The zanjas have disappeared and so have the reser- voirs and the orange groves. The city has absorbed them all.
A few years later a submerged dam was con- structed in the big Tahuenga, a tributary of the Los Angeles river. At first it promised to be a success. A grand celebration was held when the work was completed. The people of the San Fernando valley turned out to celebrate the event. The waters of the Arroyo arose to the top of the dam and the hopes of the pro- jectors arose still higher, but they were doomed to disappointment. The scheme was a failure. The waters disintegrated the bed rock on which the dam rested and the lake that had formed back of the dam disappeared in the quicksands.
When the zanjas constituted the water dis- tributing system of the city, the olden-time citi- zen was not frightened by the presence of bacilli or bacteria in his drinking water and the authorities were not worried by demands for an analysis of the zanja water to discover whether there were germs in it. If there were germs in it the bacteria might find it a very unwholesome element in which to exist accord- ing to a local by the editor of the Los Angeles Star, June 16, 1855:
"The zanjas that run into different parts of the city furnish the only water that can be had conveniently to a large number of our citizens, and it is obvious to every one that they should be kept as free from filth and polluted substance as possible."
"Day after day, from sunrise till evening, groups of females from 'snowy white to sooty black' can be seen at their daily avocation of washing clothes through nearly the entire length of our water canals-and very few of them, we are informed, take any care to pre- vent the filthy rinsings from running back into the stream. A stranger would be very apt to suppose that our canals were built for the pur- pose of carrying off the garbage and foul mat- ter that is continually accumulating within the precincts of a city instead of being the source from which a large portion of the inhabitants are supplied with water for domestic purposes."
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In March, 1852, the City Council had passed an ordinance "Relative to Public Washing," which prohibited by a fine of $3 the washing of clothes in any zanja except the "water canal that runs from the Little river." Evidently the ordinance was not enforced and fines were not collected.
Chapter LVI, giving a history of the water system of Los Angeles, closed with a brief sketch of the Owens river project. At its incep- tion it was regarded by many persons as but little more than an iridescent dream. There had been other projects promulgated that seemed far more feasible than this, that had failed. Would this solve the water problem of Los Angeles? Then the enormous cost of $23,- 000,000! If it failed it would bankrupt the city. The average intelligent citizen had a very in- definite idea where Owens river was located. It was somewhere beyond the Mojave desert at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada moun- tains. The distance to it was variously esti- mated at from two hundred to three hundred miles. It could be reached from Los Angeles by a trip with a team across the desert (the auto was not in evidence then for long jour- neys), or it might be reached by rail via San Francisco, five hundred miles, then to Nevada by the Union Pacific and by narrow gauge 10ad to the valley, a journey of one thousand miles.
Of the early history of the valley, and the story of the discovery of the river and lake very few of our citizens who grow enthusiastic over the Owens River Aqueduct, know any- thing, not even who Owens was for whom the river and the lake were named, although at one time he was a resident of our city.
When the project of tapping Owens river by an aqueduct and bringing its water to our city was first broached, Charles F. Lummis, then librarian of the City Library and a noted writer of California history, when asked to give some information in regard to the man for whom the river was named said: "The resources of the City Library have been ex- hausted but nothing has been found to give the desired information." As the years go by the question, no doubt, will recur again and again and perhaps receive the same answer.
I will digress from the general trend of my story to tell who Owens was, how the river
and lake were discovered and also to give a de- scription of the valley before the white man possessed it and of the Indians who roamed over the region desolate and drear where now the waters of the river flow peacefully down the aqueduct.
Owens river and lake were named for Rich- ard Owens, a member of Fremont's exploring party. Fremont was fitting out for his third expedition. He was desirous of having men with him inured to the dangers and privations of frontier life. Many of his men who had been with him on his two former exploring ex- peditions had joined him at his rendezvous near Independence, Mo.
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