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 73
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The Battle Creek Sanitarium Company pur- chased the hotel built in the boom of 1887, and has remodeled it and opened it as a health resort.
During the year 1910 Glendale erected a municipal electric lighting plant at an outlay of $60,000. A Union high school was built in 1909 costing about $65,000. In 1912 a city hall was erected-the building and furnishings necessitating an expenditure of $7,500.
Glendale has a $12,000 Carnegie library building, furnished with a library of 1,300 volumes, established in 1911. It is supported by a city tax. Glendale had a population of 2,740 according to the federal census of 1910. It claims now (1915) a population of 5,000. The building permits for the year 1914 reached $750,000. Glendale recently incorporated as a city of the fifth class.
BURBANK
Burbank, on the Southern Pacific Railroad, nine miles north of Los Angeles, is one of the many towns of Southern California that was started in 1887. It was a town of magnificent promise in its early days. A large furniture fac- tory was built in 1888, a street car line was projected through the town and a dummy line connected Burbank with Los Angeles. None of these enterprises are in operation now. The town has a good agricultural territory tributary to it and is prospering.
The extension of the Glendale Steam Motor Car line was projected, but it never materialized. The city was for some time a case of arrested development. It had an awakening when, in 1912, the trolley cars from Los Angeles clanged through
and has established a Chamber of Commerce. It has an excellent Union high school established in 1909.
San Fernando is located on the Southern Pacific Railroad twenty-two miles north of Los Angeles. Hon. Charles Maclay laid out the town in 1874. It was the terminus of the railroad going north, from 1874 to 1877, when the long tunnel was completed. The Maclay College of Theology was founded here by Hon. Charles Maclay in 1885, who gave it an endowment of lands and erected a building for its occupancy. The school was removed to the University at West Los Angeles in 1894. The Methodists. Presbyterians and Catholics have churches in the town. The old buildings of the San Fernando Mission, two miles distant from the town, are an attraction to visitors.
San Fernando is the oldest city in the San Fernando valley. The Owens river project has given it a new growth. Its people hope to derive great benefit from irrigation drawn from the waters of the aqueduct. At a recent elec- tion held the people of the upper valley by an almost unanimous vote signified their desire to be annexed to Los Angeles. At an election held May 4, 1915, in Los Angeles it was voted into the city.
During the year 1914 San Fernando city voted bonds to the amount of $150,000 for a new Union high school. There are twelve teachers employed in the school.
NEWHALL
Newhall, thirty miles from Los Angeles, is the most northerly town in the county. Near it the first oil strikes in Southern California were made in 1862 by a Pennsylvania company headed by Tom Scott. Illuminating oil then was worth from $2.50 to $3 a gallon in Los Angeles. At 800 feet they secured a well of black oil which they could not refine and the business was abandoned. In 1876 operations were begun again and since then the business of oil producing and refining has been carried on to a limited extent in the vicinity of Newhall.
HOLLYWOOD
Hollywood, near the entrance to the Cahuenga pass, was laid out in 1887 by H. H. Wilcox, but
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made slow growth. A dummy railroad from the end of the Temple street cable line connected it with the city. The road failed for want of patron- age. When the Los Angeles-Pacific electric line was built to Santa Monica the road being ac- cessible to the town Hollywood took on new life. It has grown rapidly in the past few years. It is in the great lemon producing district and is in what is called the frostless belt.
Its population in 1900 was 500, five years later it numbered 2,000. Its assessed valuation in 1905 was $2,129,500. It supports three banks and two weekly papers. The Hotel Hollywood cost $100,- 000. The union high school was erected at a cost of $65,000 and two new grammar grade schools have been erected at a cost of $30,000 each. The Academy of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, cost- ing $150,000, was completed in 1906.
Hollywood has church organizations for nearly every denomination. It has a free public library. established early in 1906.
SHERMAN
"Sherman is a railroad town eight miles from Los Angeles. It is the headquarters of the Los Angeles-Pacific Railroad Company, which owns the electric line between the city of Los Angeles and Santa Monica. The power house and the shops of the electric road are located here. The town has a postoffice, several stores and a Con- gregational Church. There are some handsome residences in its immediate neighborhood.
THE SOLDIERS' HOME AND SAWTELLE
The Soldiers' Home cannot be ranked among the towns of Los Angeles county, though its population makes it a very important commercial factor by supplying a market for a large amount of agricultural products. In 1887 the board of managers of the National Soldiers' Homes of the United States visited California to locate a Soldiers' Home for the Pacific Coast. They were met at Los Angeles by a committee of the Board of Trade and one from the G. A. R. (the author representing Stanton Post). Several sites were offered. A tract of 600 acres, four miles easterly from Santa Monica, was finally selected. Bar- racks have been built capable of accommodating 2,000 men, a chapel, hospital and other buildings necessary have been erected, waterworks and reservoirs constructed, and about fifty acres
planted to orange, lemon, walnut, fig, peach, pear and apple trees. A large part of the 738 acres that now belong to the Home is devoted to pas- turage and raising hay for the dairy cows.
Extensive improvements have been recently made at the Soldiers' Home. Among the most important of these are a cement storage reservoir of a million gallons, an ice-making machine and the construction of an additional barrack at a cost of $28,769.
The Los Angeles-Pacific Electric Railway Company extended its road so as to bring freight and passengers to the buildings of the Home. The town of Sawtelle has grown up at the main entrance to the Soldiers' Home. The families of some of the inmates of the Home reside in the town. There are several business houses in the town.
Sawtelle is tributary to the Soldiers' Home. The three thousand inmates in that institution contribute to the city's business, and pension day at the Home is an important date for Saw- telle. Sawtelle is a city of the sixth class. It has paved streets, a fire department, electric lights and a branch of the Free County Library.
Sawtelle had a population of 2,143 in 1910. It has made a rapid growth since then. It now claims a population of 3,500. The assessed valuation of the city property was $1,100,000 in 1914.
COMPTON
Compton is the third oldest town in the county of Los Angeles. It was laid out in 1860 by the Rev. G. D. Compton, after whom it was named. The tract on which it is located is known as the Temple and Gibson tract. Temple and Gibson bought four thousand acres of the San Pedro rancho from Dominguez in 1865 for thirty-five cents per acre. In 1867 Mr. Compton bought a portion of this tract, for which he paid $5 per acre.
The town was organized especially under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal denomination and a frame church was erected by the society in 1871 at a cost of $3,000. It was also designed for a temperance colony, but has had to fight the saloon element a number of times.
The country around is devoted to dairy farms. It is well supplied with artesian water. One of
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the first artesian wells bored in the county is near Compton.
It has a live weekly newspaper, a bank and a Union high school employing eighteen teachers. There are four church denominations, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational and Catholic, each own- ing its own building. The largest cheese factory in Southern California (established in an humble way in 1880) has grown to large proportions. Its product during the twenty-five years of its existence has exceeded in value a million dollars. This establishment, the Anchor cheese factory, in the year 1904 received 6,397,536 pounds of milk and manufactured 72,941 pounds of cheese. Lyn- wood dairy, one of the largest in California, keeps a herd of 210 cows. Much of the territory formerly devoted to pasturage in the immediate neighborhood of Compton has been subdivided and sold for building lots. The electric railway from Los Angeles to Long Beach was completed to Compton in 1903.
Compton, in the nearly fifty years of its existence, has never experienced a boom. Its growth has been steady-never over stimulated nor unduly depressed. A $60,000 rubber fac- tory was built in 1910, which gives employment to one hundred and fifty men. Its Chamber of Commerce has been active in starting many civic improvements which have greatly bene- fited the town. Its population in 1910 was 922.
Compton has a branch of the Los Angeles County Free Library established in June, 1913, also a Union high school library.
WHITTIER
Whittier is known as a Quaker town. It was settled by a colony of Quakers from Indiana, Illinois and Iowa in 1887. The population is not all of the Quaker persuasion. The state reform school is located here; for its maintenance the state contributes about $3,600 monthly. A branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad runs into the town. The Quaker Colony Canning Company of Whittier is one of the largest fruit canneries in the state. It is capitalized for half a million dollars. There are a number of productive oil wells in its immediate neighborhood. The output has amounted to 2,500 barrels per day or nearly 1,000,000 a year.
After the boom Whittier increased very slowly in population. In 1900 the residents numbered 1,565. In the five years following the population increased to 5,000. Improvements have kept pace with the increase of the inhabitants.
In 1904 there were one hundred new houses built. A union high school costing $60,000 was constructed and a $10,000 addition made to Whit- tier College.
All the leading religious denominations are represented. Whittier free public library was established April 9, 1900.
Few towns in Southern California can boast of a better location than Whittier ; surrounded by oil fields, lemon and orange groves and wal- nut orchards, it has all the elements that make for a steady and prosperous growth. Within the past five years it has invested $175,000 in a municipal water system, $110,000 in a sewer system, and has put $165,000 in a polytechnic high school. Its bank deposits amount to over two million dollars.
Whittier College dates its founding with that of the town. It is noted for thoroughness of instruction and stands high among the colleges of California.
The population of Whittier in 1910 was 4,550, in 1900 1,590 and in 1890 585. Whittier has an excellent public library containing (1915) about 11,000 volumes. It owns a $20,000 Carnegie library building.
NORWALK
Norwalk, seventeen miles from Los Angeles, on the San Diego branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad, is a flourishing village. It is the center of an extensive dairy country. There are numer- ous artesian wells in the district which afford abundant water for irrigation. Alfalfa, corn and barley are the principal agricultural products.
DOWNEY
Downey, the business center of the Los Nietos valley, was founded in 1874, when the Anaheim branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad was built. It has had a steady growth. The territory tribu- tary to it lies mostly between the old and the new San Gabriel rivers, which gives it splendid irri- gating facilities. Downey has a school of eight departments and has recently established a high school. Bonds for the erection of a union high school building were voted in 1905 and a school
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house erected. The Downey Champion is one of the oldest newspapers in the county and is ably conducted. The town is the center of walnut pro- duction.
Downey city is the capital of the Los Nietos valley. The old business centers of fifty years ago-Gallatin and Alameda-have passed down and out and are forgotten. It is the entrepot of a rich farming, dairying and poultry raising district. A large amount of the English walnuts produced in Los Angeles county come from the neighborhood of Downey. It has two banks, an excellent high school and a public library.
RIVERA
Rivera, ten miles southeast of Los Angeles on the surf line of the Santa Fe Railroad, was founded in 1887. Its location, in the heart of the Upper Los Nietos valley, about midway between the new and the old San Gabriel rivers, gives it the command, as a shipping point, of a large amount of the products of that fertile district. The country around it is largely devoted to the production of the English walnut.
ARTESIA
Artesia is in the dairy district. The lands in its neighborhood are adapted to alfalfa. A con- siderable quantity of grapes are grown here. It is connected with Los Angeles by an electric railway.
SANTA FE SPRINGS
Santa Fe Springs, originally Fulton Wells, was started as a health resort. It has a large hotel. The iron sulphur wells here are reported to con- tain water rich in medicinal virtues. The town is twelve miles from Los Angeles, on the San Diego branch of the Santa Fe Railroad.
DOLGEVILLE
Dolgeville was founded in 1904. It is a suburban manufacturing town accessible from Los Angeles by rail and by the interurban electric line to Alhambra. It is named for its founder, Alfred Dolge. For the greater part of his lifetime he was engaged in the manufacture of felt in New York state. After careful investigation he decided that the manufacture of that article could be car- ried on more profitably in Southern California than in the east. Among the advantages to be considered were cheap fuel. Oil fuel for the
production of live steam is used in the processes of manufacture. This is cheaper and better than coal. Another advantage over the east was in the securing of wool at lower cost direct from the producers.
In 1904 two large factory buildings were built and fitted up with the most modern and labor- saving machinery used in the business. Not only is the wool turned into felt, but the felt is manu- factured into the numerous articles in which that product enters, such as tapestries, linings, sad- dlery, billiard table covers, piano hammers, shoe soles, shoe uppers, felt boots, shoes and slippers. This is the only felt factory in the United States turning out the finished product from the raw wool.
Alfred Dolge brought some of his best hands from New York to manage his factories. In 1906 about 300 hands were steadily employed ; many of these bought lots in the town and built homes.
ALHAMBRA
The town of Alhambra was founded in 1885. It is seven miles east of Los Angeles and is con- nected with that city by the Southern Pacific Railroad and by the Electric road. Its growth has been slow but steady. It has in its vicinity some of the finest orange groves in the county. Its yearly shipment of citrus fruit ranges from 1,500 to 2,000 carloads. The town was incor- porated as a city of the sixth class in 1903.
Few cities in the San Gabriel valley have made such rapid progress in the past decade as has Alhambra. Within easy distance of Los Angeles and having an excellent car service, it has become popular as a suburban residence town. It has a most excellent school system. In 1914 school bonds to the amount of $200,000 were voted. Two grammar schools and a high school have been built from this bond issue. Its high school has an average daily attendance of 292.
In 1912 a new city hall was built at a cost of $50,000. A new library building is in the course of construction, and when completed and furnished will cost $45,000. Over $100,000 has been expended in street improvements in the past two years. Many new homes have been erected. Its population in 1910 was
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5,021 Its public library contains about 14,000 volumes.
SIERRA MADRE
The Sierra Madre villa was one of the earliest suburban resorts of Los Angeles county. It was built in the early '70s and was for years a favorite country hotel for tourists and visitors from the city. The villa is now occupied as a hospital for the treatment of nervous diseases.
In 1882 the late N. C. Carter purchased a part of the Santa Anita rancho and subdivided it into small tracts. These were sold to settlers and set to vines and orange trees. The Sierra Madre Water Company was organized in October, 1882, and water brought upon the tract. It is capitalized for $88,000. During the boom of 1887 a con- siderable amount of the acreage was subdivided into town lots, but being off the railroad the growth of the town was slow. January 1, 1906, the Pacific electric railway was completed to the town and its development became rapid. To secure the extension of the road to Sierra Madre a bonus of $20,000 was paid to the railway company and about $5,000 was expended in securing rights of way. The Sierra Madre Library was estab- lished in 1887.
Sierra Madre was incorporated in 1908 as a city of the sixth class. A recent bond issue furnished funds to the amount of $110,000 for a municipal water plant. Its free public library now contains 5,700 volumes. It owns a library building that cost $3,500. The population of Sierra Madre in 1910 was 1,303. Its estimated population now (1915) is 2,000.
WATTS
Watts is a town of the present century. It was known in its early years as a town of cheap lots. Lots at "$1 down and $1 a week" gave homeseekers a bit of earth on which they could erect a shelter and save paying rent. Many industrious mechanics availed themselves of this opportunity and secured homes.
Watts has made a steady growth since its founding and improved in appearance with age. A $25,000 brick school house was erected in 1910. Gas, electric lights, paved streets and brick business blocks give it a city cast. "The town of Watts" is no longer the butt of jokes by would-be wits. Its population in 1910 was 1,922. It established a library in 1913 and has about 2,000 volumes on its library shelves.
TORRANCE
Torrance was founded in the summer of 1912. It is seventeen miles from the city hall in Los Angeles. It was founded for a manufacturing center. The chief incentive in its founding was to secure large sites for factories at a minimum cost. A million dollars was invested in the purchase of land, waterworks, a sewer system, street grading and side-walks. Six factories lo- cated in the town at its founding, namely : The Union Tool Company, making oil well tools; the Pacific Metal Products Company, making oil containers; the Southern California Shoe Company ; the Torrance Pearl Manufacturing Company, making pearl buttons; the Moore Truck Company and the Hendrie Rubber Com- pany, making automobile tires. Torrance has an elementary public school employing two teachers and the beginning of a high school
EAGLE ROCK CITY
Eagle Rock City takes its name from the historic rock that has been a landmark of the valley for more than a century. A peculiar formation of the rock, which towers up from the plain, presents on its face the outlines of an immense spread eagle and gives rise to the name of the town.
Eagle Rock City is six miles from the busi- ness center of Los Angeles, with which it is connected by an electric car line. It was not large enough to get into the federal census in 1910, but late in 1911 it incorporated as a city of the sixth class.
It has completed a $10,000 Carnegie library building and has just dedicated a $10,000 Women's Club house. A bank building and a Masonic Hall were erected in the city in 1912. In 1913 Occidental College began the erection of its new buildings adjoining the town. These were completed and occupied in September, 1914, and add to the attractiveness of the little city.
VAN NUYS
Van Nuys is named for one of the former part owners of the great ex-Mission Rancho of San Fernando valley. The town is located on the Sherman Way. That picturesque boulevard in connection with the state highway gives thirty-five miles of the finest roadway on the Pacific coast.
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Van Nuys was founded in 1911. It is in the midst of a fine agricultural district. Poultry raising is one of the coming industries of this district of the valley. A $70,000 high school is approaching completion ; a branch of the Los Angeles County Free Library has been estab- lished in the town; and a Masonic Lodge or- ganized. The site of the town was a barley field when the last federal census was taken, consequently there was no numbering of its inhabitants.
OWENSMOUTH
Owensmouth derives its odd name from the claim that it is near the mouth of the Owens river aqueduct. It aspires to be the metropolis of the San Fernando valley. It has made won- derful progress in the two years of its existence.
It has a bank with a capital of $40,000; a gram- mar school that cost $50,000 and a high school in the course of construction that will cost when completed $100,000.
Owensmouth is on the Sherman Way. This road is sixteen miles long, one hundred and fifty feet wide for most of the distance and one hundred and thirty for the remainder. It is as smooth and level as a polished floor. On both sides of the road stretching throughout its length, rose bushes have been planted, and back of these shade trees. At night one hundred and forty five-light fixtures and five hundred and forty three-light illuminate the driveway. Sherman Way, which cost $600,000, is one of the great attractions of the valley and is a popular highway for automobile parties.
CHAPTER LXIV. LONG BEACH
Long Beach has no ancient or medieval history. It is a modern town, a city of today, of rapid but substantial growth. The territory within its limits is part of the Cerritos (Little Hills) rancho and a portion of the rancho Los Alamitos (The little poplars or cottonwoods). The former rancho was owned by Juan Temple at the time of the American Conquest of California. Over the Cerritos marched Stockton's sailors and marines in August, 1846, hauling their cannon on ox-carts to capture the capital city, Los Angeles. The Los Alamitos contained 28,000 acres. It was owned by Don Abel Stearns. In 1864 it was advertised for sale on account of $152 delinquent taxes. Small as this amount now seems for even a twenty-five foot lot on the beach, in 1864 there was not a man bold enough to risk that amount upon a rancho from which there was no income to be derived. The cattle on it had starved to death in the dry years of 1863-64 and there were none left in the country to restock it. A year or two later Michael Reese, a money loaner of San Francisco, became the owner by foreclosure of a mortgage.
During the War of the Conquest General Flores kept a military guard at the adobe house of Tem- ple on the Cerritos to watch the Americans. The
Cerritos was a famous rancho. The cattle on it died during the famine year of 1864.
In 1865 Jotham Bixby & Co. bought the rancho and stocked it with sheep. It contained in all about 27,000 acres. The wool industry in the late '60s and early '70s was quite profitable. For some time after the Bixbys purchased the rancho over 30,000 head of sheep were pastured on it and the annual production of wool reached 200,000 pounds. In 1880 the Bixbys sold 4,000 acres to a company for a colony site. The organ- ization was known as the American Colony. The land was subdivided into five, ten and twenty acre tracts and put on the market at a low figure.
A town was laid off fronting on the ocean and named Willmore City after one of the promoters of the colony scheme, W. E. Willmore. How transitory is fame! Few of the present inhab- itants of the prosperous city of Long Beach know that in its infancy their city bore another name. Willmore lost all his property and died in poverty.
During the '70s a number of colonies had been founded in Fresno county. These were largely devoted to the culture of the raisin grape. One of the most successful of these was a teachers' colony. Some of the leading educators of that day had been instrumental in founding it. Will-
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more, who had been a teacher, was at one time connected with the Fresno colony. He became ambitious to found a similar colony in Los An- geles. Teachers were not numerous in Los Angeles county then, nor were their purses plethoric. Few if any of them took the oppor- tunity offered to invest their scant savings in land by the sunset sea. Nor did other colonists hasten to purchase themselves homes. The tourists were not greatly in evidence and the promoters of colony schemes and city founding were not so proficient in the power of persuasion as they have become of late years.
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