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 74
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It was a waste of words for a promoter to try to induce an old-time resident to buy colony lands. The pioneer's memory ran back to the time when he could have bought the rancho at "four bits" an acre, and he failed to see how the mere act of subdividing it into small tracts had increased its value a thousand per cent. The old pioneers were indeed poor material for colonists and few of them ever became such. Accustomed to meas- ure land by the league it was impossible for them to entertain the idea of making a living off ten or twenty acres located in a rancho that for gen- erations had been considered only fit for a sheep pasture or a cattle range. The promoters of the American colony, like those of Riverside and Pasadena, had to look to the east for their colonists.
The following item I take from the Los An- geles Express of September 17, 1881 : "Dr. R. W. Wright, of the American colony, started east day before yesterday to bring out a lot of colonists this fall. Mr. Willmore, manager of the colony, thinks from letters he has been receiving during the summer that there will be several hundred of them."
Notwithstanding Mr. Willmore's sanguine ex- pectations settlers did not rush to the colony site by the hundreds. They came slowly. The town site was two miles away from the only railroad line that reached the ocean in that part of tlie county. A visit to the colony site had to be made by private conveyance from Los Angeles, twenty- two miles away. In a ten-line advertisement in the Evening Express, setting forth the advantages of the colony, one of the chief attractions was its nearness to Los Angeles. "The visitor can go from Los Angeles to the colony and return the same day," so said this advertisement.
The colony did not flourish under Willmore's management. About a dozen cheap houses were built in Willmore City and a few tracts of land sold. In the spring of 1884 the Long Beach Land & Water Company bought the unsold portions of the colony lands and town lots. The name of the town was changed to Long Beach and Willmore and his city passed to oblivion. The new com- pany built a commodious hotel on the bluff be- tween Pacific Park and the beach. A horse car line was built to the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad tract, two miles away, and a bob car met the trains and conveyed passengers (the mule consenting) to the growing burg by the sea. Sometimes, when there was a rush of passengers, in modern parlance, "the juice gave out." or in the language of that time, "the mule bucked." On such occasions the gentlemen not only gave up their seats, but the whole car to the ladies, and either united their efforts to the driver's to turn on more power or quietly footed it to town. The pioneer Long Beach car system was somewhat eccentric and rather uncertain. The Southern Pacific Railroad built a Y or spur track into the city and a dummy engine switched the rear car (which the Long Beach people were always in- structed to take) into the town and brought it back to meet the train returning to Los Angeles. The people of the young city by the sea pointed with pride to their increased facilities of travel.
The great real estate boom of 1887 sent values soaring in Long Beach as it did in all the other towns of the county, but the aftermath of that promoter's harvest was a prolific crop of disasters. The hotel burned down and value of town lots shriveled up until it seemed as if the olden time price of "four bits" an acre for land was coming again. The town was drinking deep of the "gall of bitterness" and the bonds of insolvency seemed closing around it. The federal census of 1890 gave a population of only 564 souls. The town had been incorporated as a city of the sixth class in 1888, but its municipal burthens were too heavy for it, so it disincorporated. Through all there were hopeful souls who kept up their courage and their faith in the future of the town. The prospects of another railroad giving direct con- nection with Los Angeles caused a ray of hope to penetrate the gloom cast by the boom. The Terminal Railroad from Los Angeles to East San Pedro via Long Beach and Rattlesnake Island was completed in 1891. The completion of the road
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from Pasadena to the ocean was celebrated by a grand excursion, November 14, 1891. The people of Long Beach, in their eagerness to secure the road, gave the company the right of way along their ocean front. The road was named "Termi- nal," on the supposition that at no distant day it would become the terminus of a great transcon- tinental route, a supposition that has in part be- come a fact. It is now the western end of the Salt Lake Road. Rattlesnake Island shook its ominous name and became Terminal Island and a town grew up along its outer shore line, which bore the name "Terminal." It has become a favorite seaside resort. Long Beach has an- nexed it.
The increased railroad facilities gave Long Beach a new start on the road to prosperity. A Chautauqua Assembly had been organized there in 1884 and each returning year brought an in- creased attendance. Long Beach began business as a temperance town. Saloons were kept out of it and this kept away the promiscuous Sunday crowds. People who loved quiet and came to the seaside to rest, found Long Beach a good place to stop. They bought lots and built summer cottages and came year after year to enjoy their summer vacation. The town grew steadily, property advanced in value and the future of Long Beach was assured. The census of 1900 gave it a population of 2,262, an increase of four hundred per cent, the largest proportional gain in any city in Southern California.
The beginning of the new century (1901) marked the beginning of a wonderful era of prosperity for Long Beach. The Huntington interurban electric line from Los Angeles to Long Beach was completed in 1902, and the effect of quick transportation between the seaside city and the metropolis was felt at once. Real estate advanced in value, building was stimulated and capital flowed into the quondam summer resort until it aroused within it a desire to become a seaport. A syndicate of capitalists organized and subscribed capital to dredge a channel across the tide-swept flats and make Long Beach in reality a harbor city. The Los Angeles Dock & Termi- nal Company began work in 1905 on the con- struction of an inner harbor approximately one mile square and the channels entering it to be from twenty-one to thirty-two feet deep at low tide. The estimated cost of it is from a million and a half to two million dollars. The site of 28
the harbor comprises 800 acres of marsh lands, partly submerged, lying three miles east of the city of San Pedro. Long Beach bay, a widening out of the slough waters where the San Gabriel river channel opens into the Pacific, lies at the southwest extremity of the harbor site. There has been a contest between the directors of the Salt Lake Railroad and the managers of the Los Angeles Dock & Terminal Company over the re- moval of the railroad trestle bridge across the mouth of the San Gabriel river, the railway com- pany refusing to remove it. A recent order from the Secretary of War requires the company to remove it. This does away with the last obstacle to the making of an approach to the Long Beach harbor direct from the ocean.
Long Beach has recently increased her area by annexing the whole of the territory to the west, including a part of the harbor of San Pedro. Besides her western extension she has annexed the territory to the eastward down to Devil's Gate, giving her an ocean front of nine miles. The territory back to Signal Hill, four miles inland, has also been added to her municipal area. A recent attempt to extend her limits to the Orange county line was defeated by an adverse vote in the district sought to be annexed.
Building has kept pace with her expansion in area. In the past two years over three million dollars has been expended in the construction of new buildings. In 1905 a pier 1,800 feet long, costing $100,000, was built out beyond the break- ers. The Auditorium adjoining the pier, with a seating capacity of six thousand persons, cost $40,000. On the western side of the pier a bath- house has been erected at a cost of $100,000. Long Beach's school properties represent an ex- penditure of $380,000. There are ninety teachers employed. The census children in 1906 num- bered 4,123. A sewer system and a fire service have been added to her municipal equipment.
The Cosmopolitan, a men's club house, was completed in 1906. The Hotel Bixby, the most capacious hotel on the southern coast of Calı- fornia, was begun in 1905. It is built of rein- forced cement. As it was approaching completion a terrible catastrophe happened. On the 8th of November (1906), without warning, the supports of the fourth floor of the central wing of the building gave way, crashing down on the third floor, and so on to the ground floor. Ten work- men were killed in the wreck and a number in-
.
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jured. The first estimate of the cost of the build- ing was $500,000. After the disaster a second issue of bonds was made to the amount of $250,000.
In the federal census of 1910 Long Beach achieved the distinction of showing the largest gain in a decade of any city in the United States. Her population in 1900 was 2,253, in 1910 17,809, a gain of 690.8 per cent. In 1890 she had scarcely a showing on the map of the county. In property valuations the increase has been equally marked. The assessed valua- tion of city property in 1900 was $1,496,877, in 1910 $22,560,278.
The people in 1910 voted a bond issue of $245,000 for the purchase of 2,110 feet of front- age on an inland water way, being built within the city limits. This will give a deep water frontage of four and a half miles for ocean- going vessels. One of the big industrial enter- prises located at Long Beach is the Craig ship-
building plant. At one time it employed seven hundred men.
The city has completed a polytechnic high school at an expense of $250,000. Sixty teach- ers are employed in the high school and one hundred and seventy in the elementary schools.
The municipal auditorium has been recon- structed and additions made to it at a cost of many thousands of dollars. It is now capable of accommodating the largest conventions that will come to the coast. On Empire Day, 1913, a terrible accident occurred in this building. A portion of the floor gave way, precipitating on the strand below a number of people. Several were killed outright and others maimed.
Long Beach owns a Carnegie library build- ing valued at $47,000. The annual income of its library is about $25,000. It has a total of 33,000 volumes and conducts three branch libraries.
CHAPTER LXV. CITIES AND TOWNS BY THE SEASIDE
SAN PEDRO
Two hundred and twenty-seven years before the bay of San Francisco was discovered the ships of Cabrillo sailed into the bay of San Pedro. Sixty years passed and the keels of Sebastian Vizcaino's ships cut its waters. Then nearly two centuries passed before commerce found it. There is no record (or at least I have found none) of when the mission supply ships landed the first cargo at San Pedro. Before the end of the eighteenth century the port had become known as the embarcadero of San Gabriel. Very early in the last century the American fur traders and smugglers had found that it was a good place to do business in.
Just when the first house was built at San Pedro I have been unable to ascertain definitely. In the proceedings of the ayuntamiento for 1835, a house is spoken of as having been built there "long ago" by the Mission Fathers of San Gabriel. Long ago for past time is as indefinite as poco tiempo for future. I think the house was built during the Spanish era, probably between 1815 and 1820. It was a warehouse for the storing
of hides, and was located on the bluff about half way between Point Firmin and Timm's Point. The ruins are still extant. Dana, in his "Two Years Before the Mast," describes it as a building with one room containing a fireplace, cooking apparatus, and the rest of it unfurnished, and used as a place to store goods. Dana was not favor- ably impressed with San Pedro. He says: "I also learned, to my surprise, that the desolate looking place we were in furnished more hides than any other place on the coast. * W all agreed that it was the worst place we had seen * * yet, especially for getting off of hides; and our lying off at so great a distance looked as though it was bad for southeasters."
This old warehouse was the cause of a bitter controversy that split the population of the pueblo into factions. While the secularization of the missions was in progress, during 1834 and 1835, Don Abel Stearns bought the old building from the Mission Fathers of San Gabriel. He ob- tained permission from Governor Figueroa to bring water from a spring a league distant from the embarcadero, and also to build additional buildings ; his object being to found a commercial
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settlement at the landing and to enlarge the com- merce of the port. His laudable efforts met with opposition from the anti-expansionists of that day. They feared smuggling and cited an old Spanish law that prohibited the building of a house on the beach of any port where there was no custom house. The captain of the port pro- tested to the governor against Stearns' contem- plated improvements, and demanded that the warehouse be demolished. Ships, he said, would pass in the night from Santa Catalina, where they lay hid in the day time, to San Pedro and load and unload at Stearns' warehouse, and "skip out" before he, the captain, could come down from his home at the pueblo, ten leagues away, to collect the revenue. Then a number of calamity howlers joined the captain of the port in bemoaning the ills that would follow from the building of ware- houses. The governor referred the matter to the ayuntamiento, and that municipal body appointed a committee of three sensible and public-spirited men to examine into the charges and report. The committee reported that the interests of the com- munity needed a commercial settlement at the embarcadero; that if the captain of the port feared smuggling he should station a guard on the beach. This settled the controversy and the calamity howlers, too, but Stearns built no ware- houses at the embarcadero.
Freight passed from ship to shore and vice versa by means of the ship's boats. As the hide droghers kept their department stores on board ship, and lay at anchor until all their customers were supplied, or until they had spent all their money, there was ample time to bring from the ranchos the hides and tallow which were the medium of exchange in those days, consequently there was but little need of warehouses at the embarcadero in those days.
At the time of the American conquest of Cali- fornia, San Pedro was still a port of one house- no wharves stretched out over the waters of the great bay, no boats swung with the tide; nature's works were unchanged by the hand of man. Three hundred and five years before, Cabrillo, the discoverer of California, sailed into the bay he named Bahia de los Humos-the Bay of Smokes. Through all the centuries of Spanish domination no change had come over San Pedro. But with its new masters came new manners, new customs, new men. Commerce drifted in upon its waters unrestricted. The hide drogher gave place to the
steamship, the carreta to the freight wagon, and the mustang caballada to the Concord stage.
Banning, the man of expedients, did business on the bluff at the old warehouse; Tomlinson, the man of iron nerve and will, had his com- mercial establishment at the point below on the inner bay. Banning and Tomlinson were rivals in staging, freighting, lightering, warehousing and indeed in everything that pertained to ship- ping and transportation.
In 1871 the government began improving the inner harbor, and the work was continued for a number of years. A breakwater was built be- tween Rattlesnake Island (now Terminal Island) and Deadman's Island. By closing the gap be- tween the two islands the full current was forced through the narrow channel between Deadman's Island and the mainland. When the work was begun the depth of water in the channel was but two feet, while now it has been increased to eighteen. In 1880 the railroad was extended down to the old shipping point known as Timm's land- ing. The new town of San Pedro was located partly on the bluff and partly on the low land bordering the bay. Wharves were built, where all but the largest vessels unload their cargoes. During the boom the city of San Pedro spread over a large area. The securing of the appro- priation of $3,900,000 for the free harbor gave the town a fresh start on the road to prosperity.
The larger portion of the lumber trade from the northwest passing through Los Angeles and into Southern California and Arizona goes by way of San Pedro. The lumber vessels discharge their cargoes at the wharves of the inner harbor. Free Harhor Jubilee, celebrated at San Pedro on the 27th of April, 1899, was one of the memor- able events in the history of the town. Work on the harbor was inaugurated on that day by the dumping of a load of rock from the Catalina quarries on the site of the breakwater. President McKinley, in his library at Washington, touched the electric button connected with the wires that were to start the machinery for tilting the barge load of rock into the bay. The tilt was not a com- plete success, and part of the barge load of rock had to be unloaded by hand, but this did not at all dampen the enthusiasm of the thirty thousand spectators nor spoil their appetites for the viands of the barbecue. The celebration was completed at Los Angeles next day with procession, speeches and fireworks.
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Misfortune overtook the contractors, Held- meier & Neu, who undertook the building of the breakwaters that were to form the harbor. Neu was killed in a runaway at Los Angeles before the work was begun. Heldmeier failing to push the work, his contract was cancelled by the gov- ernment. His bid was $1,303,198.54. Bids were advertised for and the contract awarded, May 14, 1900, to the California Construction Com- pany of San Francisco for $2,375,546.05, over a million above the bid of the former contractors. The breakwater was completed in 1910. Rock to build the sea wall is shipped from Declez. in San Bernardino county, and the Chatsworth quarries.
No better index of the wonderful growth of Los Angeles county in the past ten years can be found than the record of the imports and exports of the port of San Pedro. In the year 1912 the commerce of the port amounted to 1,867,098 tons. Of this 1,282,595 tons were lumber and lumber products, and 584,501 tons were merchandise. Of the merchandise tonnage 436,641 tons were im- ports and 90,915 exports. In 1902 only 965 ves- sels entered the port; in 1912 there were 2,955. In 1902 their average net tonnage was 369 tons, in 1912 830 tons.
The fishing industry's output has increased in five years from 1,500,000 to 4,250,000 pounds.
Among the recent municipal improvements are a city hall costing $8,000, a new high school build- ing costing $50,000 and a modern sewer system on which has already been expended $60,000.
The Carnegie library building, costing $10,000, was completed early in 1906. The total number of volumes in the library at the time of removal into the new building was 1,822. The annual in- come received from taxation is $1,500.
For the dredging of the inner harbor at San Pedro congress in 1904 appropriated $100,000, with the further provision of $150,000 under the continuing contract system. Work was begun in 1905. An immense suction dredge, costing $120,- 000, was completed and installed and has been operated day and night. It is intended to pro- vide a depth of thirty feet at low water from the inner harbor entrance at Deadman's Island to the foot of the wharves and a depth of thirty- five feet from the wharves to the turning basin at Mormon Island.
WILMINGTON
In 1857 Phineas Banning, to put a greater dis- tance between himself and his rival, Tomlinson, and at the same time diminish the land transporta- tion to the city of Los Angeles, bought several hundred acres of land at the head of San Pedro slough. Here he laid off a town and built a wharf and warehouses. The Los Angeles Star of Octo- ber 2, 1858, gives the following account of the inauguration of the new shipping port :
"On Saturday last (September 25, 1858), P. Banning, Esq., commenced operations at San Pedro New Town, by landing for the first time at that place, freight and passengers. A num- ber of ladies and gentlemen from this city 'as- sisted' on the occasion. The change of loading from San Pedro to the New Town will be a great advantage to those engaged in transport- ing freight from the beach, as by this line the distance is shortened six miles, avoiding the hills on the present road. The land on which it is proposed to build the New Town is a fine flat, with water and wood in abundance, and all the facilities for irrigation. An arm of the sea reaches inland, with a channel deep enough to float any barge which may be used in the busi- ness, and the lighters can be brought up to the bank and their cargoes discharged as at a wharf. By enclosing a portion of the landing the freight can be at once warehoused; thence transported to Los Angeles by a route six miles shorter than the present. To reach this new landing, how- ever, the distance from the anchorage ground is increased, but to obviate this Mr. Banning has, with his usual promptness and enterprise, de- termined to place a steam tug on the station, by which passengers and freight will be transported from the steamer and shipping to the New Town wharf with safety and dispatch. This certainly is a very great advantage, of which the traveling public will no doubt be duly appreciative.
"The ceremony of inauguration consisted in towing a line of barges, containing passengers and freight, to the landing place. In ascending the channel, all hands, the ladies included, as- sisted in hauling the hawser; and when the pas- sengers were landed and the first bale of goods, the company united in wishing prosperity to Captain Banning and the New Town, pledging the same in bumpers of 'sparkling California.' Afterwards, a sumptuous entertainment was provided for the guests; next day was devoted
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to the pleasing amusements of yachting and fish- ing. This was one of the most agreeable parties of the season; and was conducted with that lib- erality and hospitality for which Captain Ban- ning is so famous. We say, prosperity to New Town and its enterprising proprietor. We may add, that San Pedro will not, for the present, be abandoned."
The new town or port was named New San Pedro, a designation it bore for several years, then it settled down to be Wilmington, named after Captain Banning's birthplace, Wilmington, Del .; and the slough took the name of the town. That genial humorist, the late J. Ross Browne, who visited Wilmington in 1864, thus portrays that historic seaport: "Banning-the active, en- ergetic, irrepressible Phineas Banning, has built a town on the plain about six miles distant at the head of the slough. He calls it Wilmington, in honor of his birthplace. In order to bring Wilmington and the steamer as close together as circumstances will permit, he has built a small boat propelled by steam for the purpose of car- rying passengers from steamer to Wilmington, and from Wilmington to steamer. Another small boat of a similar kind burst its boiler a couple of years ago and killed and scalded a num- ber of people, including Captain Seely, the popu- lar and ever-to-be lamented commander of the Senator. The boiler of the present boat is con- sidered a model of safety. Passengers may lean against it with perfect security. It is constructed after the pattern of a tea kettle, so that when the pressure is unusually great, the cover will rise and let off superabundant steam, and thus allow the crowd a chance to swim ashore.
"Wilmington is an extensive city located at the head of a slough in a pleasant neighborhood of sand banks and marshes. There are not a great many houses in it as yet, but there is a great deal of room for houses when the popula- tion gets ready to build them."
The catastrophe to which J. Ross Browne re- fers in the above extract occurred in the Wil- mington slough April 27, 1863. The tug and passenger boat, Ada Hancock, used for convey- ing passengers between Wilmington and the ocean steamers, blew up. The explosion was one of the most fatal on record. Of the forty- two persons on board only seven escaped unhurt. Twenty-seven men were killed outright and eight wounded. As the vessel was rounding a
sharp point in the channel, a sudden gust of wind careened her so far that the water rushed over her port guards onto her boilers and the explosion followed. Among the killed was Cap- tain Seely of the Senator, the vessel to which the passengers were bound; W. T. B. Sanford, Thomas H. Workman, Dr. Myles, Capt. W. F. Nye and Albert Sidney Johnston, son of the fa- mous Confederate general.
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