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 55
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The rock-built stone wall was sixty feet at its base and carried to the height of the piling ; at the top it was ten feet wide. Up to 1872 Congress had appropriated $425,000 for the im- provement of the inner harbor. After that the appropriations dwindled down to a mere pit- tance. In 1876, $30,000 was allowed. In 1878 what the Los Angeles Express calls a "pitiful appropriation" of $20,000, was set down by Congress for the improvement of the Wilming- ton harbor.
"This," the editor says, "is a mere fritter- ing away of the money devoted to this im- portant work. One hundred thousand dollars, available for all the improvement, would carry the work to completion and give us a harbor in a short space of time which would accom- modate a shipping fully equal to our growing maritime commerce. For less than half a mil- lion dollars the government has accomplished at Wilmington more than has been accomplish- ed at other new harbor points with millions. It has land locked the estuary and wrested from the ocean a sheet of water capable of affording shelter and safety to a large fleet of vessels. It has cut a channel across the bar which af- fords now a depth of fourteen feet at ordinary high water and of seventeen feet at the spring high tides. The channel, however, is only one hundred and fifty feet wide. It should be at least three hundred feet. The depth of water in the channel before the work was commenced was less than two feet. * *
"Having spent half a million to accomplish the important improvement already achieved, Congress ought to be eager to carry out its work to the successful conclusion of which it is susceptible. An additional $100,000 in hand would give us in a very short time a depth of twenty-four feet in the channel at high tide and enable the engineers to widen the entrance
to three hundred feet. This would give Los Angeles a better harbor than Charleston has, a far superior one to that of Galveston, and a better one than Mobile can boast of, and all for the insignificant expenditure of $600,000." * * * *
*
"The immense grain crops of our valleys this year will all have to be shipped abroad by way of Wilmington harbor. If vessels can be brought inside to docks, the money saved to the producers and the encouragement given to industry would be a handsome return to the government for its liberality." At this time (1878) and for several years later immense wheat crops were raised in the San Fernando valley. At one time thirteen clipper ships were anchored in San Pedro bay loading with grain for Europe.
Congress continued to dole out pitiful ap- propriations. In 1879, $12,000; 1880, $35,000; 1881, $33,000. In ten years from 1882 to and inclusive of 1892 the average appropriations were about $40,000 a year, about enough to keep the breakwater in repair. Even at this early day the spector of the Southern Pacific railroad monopoly haunted the harbor. There was a fear that that monopoly might acquire frontage enough to control the harbor. Sena- tor George Smith in the legislature of 1877-78 had introduced a bill to prevent the sale of marsh and tide lands in any of the harbors of the State. The Southern Pacific Company, which had acquired in 1874 the Los Angeles & San Pedro railroad with a terminus at Wil- mington, was quietly acquiring frontage on the harbor.
It had tried to have confirmed by the sur- veyor general the Trichenor claim to eight hundred and eight acres of harbor frontage. As the surveyor general was friendly to the cor- poration it was feared that he would grant its request. In 1871, when work was begun on the breakwater. Wilmington had hopes and aspira- tions of becoming a maritime city. The city was incorporated and in 1872 a board of city trustees was elected. But a city government with a full corps of city officers was too heavy a burden for the little burg. The board of trustees served out their time without doing anything and quit. Under the general act ceding the frontage of harbors to incorporated cities and towns located in front of them, Wil-
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mington claimed its harbor approaches. The claim was made that whatever power over the marsh and tide lands was acquired at that time was subsequently lost on account of the fail- ure of the people of Wilmington to follow up their act of incorporation by continuing to elect trustees after the first election.
The question of the ownership of the harbor frontage was fought out in the courts more than forty years later. The right-of-way was granted to the Southern Pacific company to extend its road to San Pedro by the surveyor general. On the inner harbor upon the northwest bank, about a mile and a half from old San Pedro, a settlement called Linville was established in 1877. This afterwards became San Pedro. In 1879 it had three stores, and seven families re- sided there. Further north was a small settle- ment called Fayal. These, with the town of old San Pedro, were the nucleus of the city of San Pedro. In 1881 the railroad was built from Wilmington to San Pedro ; this gave an impetus to the town. The Goodall-Perkins Steamship Company had acquired twelve hundred feet frontage on the inner harbor in 1878.
The Los Angeles Express of May 1, 1880, says editorially : "The Pacific Coast Steamship Company is doing some very substantial wharf work at San Pedro. The stone abutments and the approaches are of the most endurable char- acter and when the pier is projected to deep water, the company will have one of the finest landings on the coast. It is manifest that the steamship corporation mean soon bringing their steamers to dock in our inner harbor. When they do that, there will be no more chance to sneer at the government for the work it has
done to add to our coast another accessible and secure harbor. Thus a variety of circum- stances are combining to assure us of the early bringing of ship and wharf together in our harbor. The days of lighterage are rapidly drawing to a close and Los Angeles will soon enjoy the actual benefits of her harbor."
After the completion of work on the inner harbor, Capt. James J. Meyler, in, an address before the Chamber of Commerce in 1891, made these statements :
"The channel has deepened, widened and straightened. Where we had depths from six to ten feet in 1871 we have now from sixteen to twenty-two feet and the depth of eighteen inches on the bar has been increased to at least fourteen feet.
* * *
"Up to the present time about 133,000 tons of stone have been placed in the breakwater and there have been excavated only about 177,000 cubic yards of material, about 58,000 cubic yards of which was stone from a ledge of rock crossing the channel at the inner bar. From rough calculation, however, I estimate that at least 2,000,000 cubic yards of material have been removed from the channel, over nine-tenths of which has been done indepen- dently of dredging or blasting, the result of construction alone-the channel scouring itself under the action of natural causes. The total number of tons of exports and imports has been increased ten-fold since 1871. The collections of the port of Wilmington since 1882 have almost paid for the government construction and work in the harbor."
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE FREE HARBOR CONTROVERSY AND THE BREAKWATER
When the Southern Pacific Railroad Com- pany extended the Los Angeles and San Pedro railroad from Wilmington, where it had so long halted, to the strand on the inner harbor of San Pedro, it had no competitor to any sea- port on the southern coast. In 1875 Senator John P. Jones and Col. R. S. Baker founded the 22
town of Santa Monica on the Boca de Santa Monica. Senator Jones and several Los Ange- les capitalists, with the design of making the new town a seaport, built a railroad-the Los Angeles & Independence-and in connection with the road a wharf extending out into the bay eighteen hundred feet. The Pacific Coast
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Steamship Company's boats called at it for freight and passengers coming and going.
Competition cut the excessive freight rates and fares the Southern Pacific had been charg- ing. The hopes of the producers and consumers soared, but a blight struck their bright pros- pect. The Los Angeles & Independence rail- road came to a halt at Los Angeles. The South- ern Pacific railroad was completed from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 1876 and was be- ing pushed eastward. The short-haul road with no connection could not compete with the long- haul and was sold in 1878 to its rival. The Southern Pacific Company continued to oper- ate the road but allowed the wharf to fall into decay and it was eventually pulled down and the shipping transferred to San Pedro.
The next rival to San Pedro as a shipping point was Redondo, located on the southeastern corner of Santa Monica bay. The great real estate boom of 1887 had sown a plentiful crop of cities over the plains and along the sea coast. Owing to the configuration of the coast at that point it required but a short wharf to reach deep water. The salt works at the Saucel Re- dondo, which were extensively operated in the early '50s, had made this a shipping point, and the establishment of Camp Latham there in 1861 had brought some trade to this port. In 1888 a narrow gauge road was built to connect it with Los Angeles and a large amount of lumber was shipped in through this port. Being about twenty miles further north than San Pe- dro and the bulk of shipments coming from the north, it had an advantage over the old port. In 1891 the most dangerous rival to the ascen- dency of the Southern Pacific railroad in the monopoly of San Pedro harbor appeared in a corporation known as the Terminal Company. It was composed of St. Louis capitalists, chief among whom were R. C. Kerns and George B. Leighton. The purpose of the company was to secure terminals for a railroad on a deep water harbor that might be used by the com- pany or transferred to some transcontinental railroad seeking an outlet to the ocean.
The first move of the company was to buy the motor roads to Pasadena and Glendale. The next was to steal a march on the Southern Pa- cific Company by buying that succession of worthless sand dunes known as Rattlesnake Is- land. When it was reported that the company
paid the Dominguez heirs $250,000 for the sand bank people queried, "What can these St. Louis capitalists do with it to make it pay?" But when they constructed a railroad from Los Angeles with its terminus on deep water at East San Pedro, thus securing miles of ocean frontage on the western side of the island, Colis P. Huntington, who had succeeded Senator Stanford as president of the Southern Pacific Company, realized that he had a foeman worthy of his steel and the free harbor war was on.
Huntington decided that he would have a harbor of his own, where competition would be impossible and that the United States govern- ment would build it for him. The new port of the Southern Pacific was at the old Santa Mon- ica cañon. The railroad was extended about two and a half miles to the cañon by a cut and tunnel through the bluff to the beach. The Long Wharf, as it was called, was built out into the ocean forty-three hundred feet to five and one-half fathoms depth of water. The railroad was extended out to the end of the pier. Im- ports were transferred direct to the cars from ships at anchor beside the wharf and exports to ships without lighterage. The current report of the cost of the wharf was $1,000,000, which was probably thirty per cent more than it really cost. But the romance that clustered around this great work would have been rudely dispelled had some muck-raker in the halcyon days of the great wharf raked through the assessor's books to find what value the railroad company put on it for taxation. He would have found it valued at $50,000, and this value accepted by the "old guard"-the State Board of Equalization.
The Chamber of Commerce now comes into the limelight in the harbor fight. This was the new Chamber organized in 1888. The old Chamber organized in 1873 had been active in pushing forward work on the breakwater and securing appropriations for it, but had been dead a decade before the new Chamber was born.
The first move of the Chamber was to send two of its members, Gen. Charles Forman and Thomas E. Gibbon, to Washington to secure an appropriation for deep water improvements in the outer harbor of San Pedro. Mr. Gibbon was at that time the attorney of the Terminal Railroad Company. Senator Charles Felton,
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who had been appointed by the governor to fill out the unexpired term of Senator Hearst, deceased, before going to Washington had vis- · ited San Pedro and carefully examined into the need of government assistance. At the be- ginning of the congressional session of 1891-92 he presented the cause of San Pedro so forcibly that there seemed little doubt of a liberal ap- propriation being given.
The prospects of San Pedro were bright and its friends jubilant, but their hopes were blighted by a frost from Frye, of Maine. Wil- liam B. Frye, senator from Maine, was then (and for years afterwards) chairman of the committee of commerce. Throughout the long and bitter contest over the free harbor he was the untiring, unreasoning enemy of San Pedro and the unwavering friend and advocate of Huntington's Santa Monica scheme. When Senator Felton presented his appeal for $250,000 to begin deep water improvements at San Pedro, Senator Frye produced a telegram from a Mr. Hood, Huntington's chief engineer. the purport of which was that the holding ground of San Pedro bay was rock and unsafe for anchorage and that piles for piers could not be driven into it.
For more than a century ships had anchored in San Pedro harbor and had ridden out fierce southeasters without discovering the rock bot- tom of the bay. The Southern Pacific Com- pany itself for nearly two decades had advo- cated improvements at San Pedro and had pulled down Senator Jones' wharf at Santa Monica and transferred its shipping to San Pe- dro. Successive boards of government engineers had pronounced in favor of San Pedro as the best harbor site. All these facts counted for nothing with Huntington. He must have a harbor of his own where he owned the sea and land, where he would have no competitors : and the government must build it for him. With this object in view he used all the power- ful influence of his corporation in Congress, assisted at all times and occasions by his friend Frye of Maine.
Huntington, in 1894, after the completion of the Long Wharf at Port Los Angeles, as he called his shipping point, in an interview with the president of the Chamber of Commerce. Daniel Freeman, and Gen. Charles Forman, one
of the vice-presidents, said: "Now, I propose to be frank with you people. I do not find it to my advantage to have this harbor built at San Pedro and I shall be compelled to oppose all efforts that you or others make to secure appropriations for that site ; on the other hand, the Santa Monica location will suit me per- fectly, and if you folks will get in and work for that you will find me on your side-and I think I have some little influence at Wash- ington-as much as some other people per- haps." He ended the interview by saying : "Well, I don't know for sure that I can get this money for Santa Monica, I think I can; but I know d-d well that you shall never get a cent for that other place."
These domineering utterances of Mr. Hunt- ington should have caused a storm of indigna- tion. They did incense men who were fighting for a principle, but there are in all communi- ties men who are in all contests actuated by policy. The harbor contest divided the Cham- ber of Commerce and at one time it looked as if Huntington's scheme had a majority. A vote of the members was taken April 7, 1894. The vote stood "for San Pedro," 328; "for Santa Monica," 131. After that the sentiment of the Chamber crystallized on San Pedro.
The political upheaval of 1892 that put Gov- ernor Cleveland in the presidential chair for the second time and wrested from the Republi- can party the control of both houses of Con- gress, brought to the front a man who wielded a powerful influence in the Senate during the seven years of the free harbor war. Stephen M. White had come to Los Angeles in 1875 a young man just admitted to the bar. He soon gained prominence in the legal profes- sion. He served one term in the California Senate and became the leader of his party in the Legislature. Mr. White was appointed on the Senate committee of commerce. During the first years of his term he was not able to accomplish much. The times were out of joint for expenditures on harbors. The Wilson tariff engrossed the attention of the statesmen at Washington and the financial panic that struck the country in 1893 engrossed the attention of the bankers and business men at home.
*Willard's Free Harbor Contest.
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In 1895 the Free Harbor League was formed in Los Angeles. It attained a membership of about four hundred and did good work for the cause that it was organized to promote.
In 1896 two bills were reported in the lower house of Congress, one of $392,000 for the in- ner harbor of San Pedro, and one of $3,098,000 for the Santa Monica harbor. This scheme was engineered in the committee by Binger Herman, a congressman from Oregon. In a fit of spleen against Congressman Mclachlan of Los Angeles for opposing the Santa Monica appropriation, Herman had both stricken from the bill. When the River and Harbor bill came before the Senate committee, Frye of Maine came promptly to the front with the three mil- lion appropriation for Santa Monica. Senator White secured an amendment to the bill for the appointment of a board of engineers to decide which was the better harbor site, the money appropriated to go to the harbor that the en- gineers favored. The bill with the amendment and the $392,000 appropriation passed both houses in June, 1896, and was signed by the President. The Board of Engineers was ap- pointed with Rear Admiral John G. Walker at its head. Four of the members reported fa- vorable to San Pedro and one, R. P. Morgan, a civil engineer once in the employ of the Southern Pacific, came in with a report favor- able to Santa Monica. His report carried no weight.
Great was the rejoicing at Los Angeles when the report of the Board of Engineers was re- ceived, but the Southern Pacific people did not join in the jubilee. The long-drawn-out acri- monious contest was ended. Now the faction fight would cease and all would work in har- mony for the long-hoped-for harbor. Time pass- ed, but no bids for the breakwater were ad- vertised for. The people grew impatient. In- vestigation developed the fact that President McKinley's Secretary of War, Russell M. Al- ger, was delaying action apparently with the hope that Congress might again take up the harbor question and decide in favor of his friend Huntington. Appeals to Alger were met with trivial excuses or treated with indifference. After more than a year had been wasted and nothing done the President was appealed to and his secretary finally forced to advertise for bids. The apportionment for the harbor was
$2,900,000. The lowest bid was from a Chicago firm, Heldmeier & Neu, for $1,303,198, the highest from a New York firm for $4,595,516. This, it was believed, was put in at Alger's re- quest.
Another delay ensued in preparing specifica- tions, and finally, in January, 1899, Peter W. Neu, the junior member of the firm, came to Los Angeles to take charge of the work. A few weeks after his arrival he was killed by the overturning of a tally-ho coach. The senior member, Ernest Heldmeier, then took charge of the work.
Work on the breakwater was finally begun in April, 1899. Alger had wasted two years' time by excuses and trivial objections. The dumping of the first load of rock into the bay was to be celebrated by a grand jubilee at San Pedro. April 26, 1899, was the day dedicated to the event. Thousands of people found their way to San Pedro by all manner of conveyances except the automobile, which had not yet put in an appearance. The rock was to be dumped from the boat by an electric contrivance which was to turn the boat on its side. President McKinley was to touch the button that started the electrical works in the boat, but the ad- verse fates that had pursued the free harbor from its inception got in their work again. The boat refused to tilt and had to be unloaded by hand. There was a feast of barbecued meats promised the visitors. The roasting was done out of doors. The coast wind peppered the meats freely with sand and the smoke-discol- ored viands were not attractive. The next day, April 27, was celebrated by a fiesta at Los An- geles. The building of the harbor had been begun and it would be pushed to completion. No more delays by Alger, no more obstructions by Frye. The rock was to be obtained from Santa Catalina Island at a point near the isth- mus. Barges carrying from eight hundred to fourteen hundred tons were to convey it to the site of the breakwater.
But the adverse fates still pursued the great undertaking. Transportation of the material by sea proved too slow and uncertain a method of securing it. Construction was unnecessarily delayed, or at least so it was claimed. Alger could hang it up for nearly two years, but Heldmeier was allowed no days of grace and on the charge that the work was not being pushed
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forward fast enough his contract was cancelled by the government and bids advertised for. May 14, 1900, a few days over a year from the dumping of the first load of rock, the contract was let to the California Construction Com- pany of San Francisco for $2,375,546.05, over a million dollars more than the former contrac- tors were to receive. Transportation of ma- terial by barge and boat was abandoned. Rock was shipped from Daclez, in San Bernardino county, and from Chatsworth Park, over the Southern Pacific railroad. The cars were run out on trestle work on the line of the break- water and the rock dumped from the cars.
The breakwater as originally planned began 1800 feet from Point Firmin Bluff, and extend- ed eastward with an elbow near the middle. The gap between the shore line and the break- water was left for the escape of silt from the harbor. During the building of the breakwater it was found that silt did not lodge in the har- bor and the gap was closed. It was completed in 1910, eleven years after the first boatload of rock was dumped into the bay. The length of the breakwater is 9,250 feet, its cost $3,100,000. It is two hundred feet thick at the base and rises to an average height of sixty-four feet through the greater part of its length. It is twenty feet wide at the top.
"It extends from the shore out to the fifty- two foot contour and extends northeasterly in water varying from forty-eight to fifty-two feet deep at low tide. Up to low water it is a rub- ble-stone mound, the stones weighing from one hundred pounds up to fifteen to twenty tons. Two-thirds of them average more than one thousand pounds each. The superstructure, extending from low water to fourteen feet above, is laid from rectangular granite blocks, those on the ocean side weighing not less than 16,000 pounds."
"At the outer end a magnificent lighthouse has been built, rising approximately seventy feet above the water, and a flashing light of 140,000-candlepower has recently been in- stalled."*
Two decades have passed since the Long Wharf was finished and nearly a quarter of a century since the inauguration of the free har-
bor contest. Time and tide that wait for no man have dealt heavily with the Long Wharf, the pride of Huntington's life. No ships lie at anchor in his pristine harbor. No boats rise and fall with the tide beside his million dollar pier. Ship and rail long since ceased to come together there. Eaten by the worms, battered by the waves, deserted except by Japanese fish- ermen, that wonder of maritime architecture is rapidly falling to decay. Port Los Angeles is a shipless, sailless port, a port but in name-a memory-a has-been.
Of the men who were active in the great con- test that gave Los Angeles its free harbor, but who have since passed away from life's activi- ties, may be named John F. Francis, Stephen M. White, Charles Felton, Ferd K. Rule, D. C. McGarvin, R. J. Waters, W. C. Patterson, Col. S. D. Houghton and Charles Dwight Willard. Some of these lived to see the fruition of their labors, others passed away ere the work was completed. To name all who took part in the harbor contest would take more space than I can allot.
Among the earliest and most active may be named Thomas E. Gibbon, Gen. Charles For- man, Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, Major E. W. Jones, Henry T. Hazard, William H. Work- man, W. A. Spalding, Daniel Freeman, Harry Ellington Brook, J. M. Elliott, Dr. J. P. Wid- ney, W. D. Woolwine, L. W. Blinn, W. G. Kerckhoff, James McLachlan, J. O. Koepfli, Albert M. Stephens, John T. Gaffey, and many others. The acquisition of Rattlesnake Island with its large extent of harbor frontage by the Terminal Company was without doubt the real cause that induced Huntington to transfer his interest and his influence to Santa Monica and thereby precipitate the harbor controversy.
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