A history of California and an extended history of its southern coast counties, also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present, Volume I, Part 46

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1184

USA > California > A history of California and an extended history of its southern coast counties, also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present, Volume I > Part 46

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Sec. I. All that tract of land known as the Presidio of San Diego, included in the survey made by Lieut. Cave J. Couts, first Dragoons, U. S. A., for the Ayuntamiento of San Diego, shall henceforth be known as the City of San Diego, said limits not to exceed an area of more than ten square miles; Provided, nothing in this chapter shall be construed to divest, or in any manner to prejudice any rights or privileges which the Presidio may hold to any land beyond the limits of the charter, and its municipal jur- isdiction shall extend to said limits and over the waters of the Bay of San Diego to the extent of one marine league from the shore.

From this section it appears that San Diego was two and a half times larger than Los Ange- les at the time of its incorporation. The legis- lative act incorporating the latter city cut down its area to four square miles. The charter of San Diego provided for the government of the city, a mayor and common council to consist of five members, a city marshal, a city attorney, as- sessor and treasurer. The election was held on the first Monday of May, 1850. Joshua H. Bean was elected mayor, Charles P. Noel, A. S. Wright, Charles Haraszthy, William Leamy and C. R. Johnson were chosen members of the council. Jose Antonio Estudillo was elected treasurer. Juan Bandini was assessor, T. W. Sutherland, city attorney and Agostin Harasz- thy, city marshal- he was also sheriff of the county.

The majority of the members of the first coun- cil belonged to that class designated by the na- tive Californians as "patriotas del bolsa" (patri- ots of the pocket), men who were willing to sacri- fice themselves for their country provided the country put up the coin to pay for the sacrific- ing. Their first act was to vote liberal salaries to themselves and their compeers. The first jail built by the first city marshal cost the city $7,- 000. It was built out of cobble stones and the very first prisoner incarcerated dug his way out of it with his pocket knife.

After two years trial the municipal machinery was found too ponderous for the size of the city. The tax-burdened people petitioned the legisla- ture to repeal the city charter. February 12, 1852, an act was passed revoking the charter and creating a board of three trustees to whom was entrusted the government of the town.

POSTOFFICE ESTABLISHED.

August 14, 1848, Congress enacted a law att- thorizing the postmaster-general to establish postoffices and appoint deputy postmasters at San Diego, Monterey and San Francisco and to make "such temporary arrangements for the transportations of the mail in said territory as the public interest may require; that all letters con- veyed to or from any of the above-mentioned places on the Pacific, from or to any place on the Atlantic coast, shall be charged with forty cents postage; and that all letters, conveyed from one to any other of the said places on the Pacific coast shall pay twelve and a half cents postage."

276

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

SAN DIEGO A PORT OF DELIVERY.

The revenue laws of the United States were extended over the territory and waters of Upper California and collection districts established therein by Congress March 3, 1849. San Fran- cisco was made a port of entry and a collector of customs appointed.

San Diego and Monterey were made ports of delivery and another port was to be established at or near the junction of the Gila and Colorado rivers and deputy collectors were to be appoint- ed at the ports of delivery. The collector at the port of entry (San Francisco) was allowed the munificent compensation of $1.500 per annum. and the fees and commissions allowed by law. The yearly salary of the collector would scarce pay his office rent for a month in the flush days of '49. when the rent of a very ordinary adobe casa (the Parker house) was $125.000 a year. The deputy collectors were allowed a salary of $1,000 a year and fees and commissions. The position of deputy reventie collector on the Gila was not a fat office either in salary or fees. The risk of having their hair raised by the hostile Yumas prevented a scramble for the office of deputy collector at the port of delivery "at or near the junction of the Gila and Colorado." I fail to find any record of the appointment of a collector for that port. A body of troops had to be stationed at the port to prevent the In- dians from collecting scalps. All violations of the revenue laws of the United States committed in Upper California were to be prosecuted in the District Court of Louisiana or in the Supreme Court of Oregon. The litigant in a suit brought at the Port of San Diego had the alternative of a two thousand mile trip the "plains across" to Louisiana or a two thousand mile voyage up the coast to the capital of Oregon for trial. San Diego continued to be the port of delivery for all Southern California until 1853. when San Pedro and Santa Barbara were raised to that dignity.

THE PIONEER RAILROAD.

San Diego, very early in the American period of its history, was inspired with the ambition to become the terminus of a transcontinental rail- road. May 14, 1853. a great railroad meeting was

held in the pueblo. Capt. J. Bankhead Magruder of the United States Army was president, and J. Judson Ames of the Herald acted as secretary. Hope animated the lonely pueblo by the bay and enthusiasm ran riot in its glorious climate. A railroad was building westward through Texas. It was proposed to connect with this road at El Paso. The distance was nearly a thousand miles and the estimated cost of the road from El Paso to San Diego was placed at $24,000,000. True that was an immense sum of money in those days when the total amount of all the ap- propriation made by congress that year footed up only $41,000,000, nevertheless the people of San Diego were sanguine that Providence and Uncle Sam would aid them in building the road.

In 1854 the railroad scheme assumed a tangi- ble form. November 7 of that year articles of incorporation of the San Diego & Gila Southern Pacific & Atlantic Railroad were filed with the secretary of state at Sacramento and a charter granted to run fifty years. The capital stock was placed at four million dollars. The road was to commence at some point on the bay of San Diego and run easterly through the county of San Diego to the Colorado river at or near the mouth of the Gila a distance of about 150 miles. It was "to be of the same gange and scale as the Mississippi and Pacific Railroad now being constructed through Texas and El Paso." A board of thirteen directors was elected. E. W. Morse. I .. Strans and J. R. Getchell of the in- corporators made affidavit that an amount equal to $1.000 for each mile to be built had been sub- scribed.

The California Legislature of 1855 passed an act authorizing the president and board of trustees of the city of San Diego to convey to the president and board of directors of the San Diego and Gila Southern Pacific and Atlantic Railroad Company two leagues of pueblo lands to aid in the construction of said road. The act was approved April 30, 1855. to take effect May 15. 1855. An election was to be held six months after the passage of the act at which the electors were to vote "grant" or "no grant." If "grant" carried, the pueblo lands from the water front back were to be surveyed and the two presidents were to select alternate lots until the railroad

277

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

.company had secured enough to make its quota of two leagues.

October 19, 1855, an election was held under the provision of the act and the vote was unani- mous to donate the two leagues of land to the San Diego & Gila Southern Pacific & Atlantic Railroad. The railroad seemed to be assurred. It was building westward. Texas would donate it 256,000 acres of land when it reached the western boundary of that state and twenty-five miles would be completed by August. 1856.

But the work did not begin on the western end. There was rivalry in California over routes. There were advocates for a southern route, a central and a northern ; and railroad building in California was neutralized by antagonistic rail- road schemes. Then came the great financial panic of 1857 and railroad projecting and rail- road construction both east and west came to a standstill. An act of the legislature approved May 2, 1861, extended the time of beginning work on the road fifteen years from November 7, 1855. The Civil war was in progress. Texas was doing her best to dissolve the Union. She had no money to build railroads and San Diego could not go it alone. In 1868 the charter pro- visions were extended six years. In 1869 James Pascoe, engineer, was appointed to proceed im- mediately to survey a route from San Diego to the Colorado river. This seems to have been the last act in the drama of the many syllabled railroad. Its beginning and its ending were within the pueblo of San Diego, but the two leagues of pueblo lands were not part of its as- sets when it died.

THE AWAKENING.

After its failure to become the terminus of a great transcontinental railroad, San Diego sank into a comotose state. The steamers came twice a month, unloaded a few packages of freight and landed a few passengers and took their depart- ure. Then the town drowsed for another fort- night until the steamer's gun again broke the stillness. As Phoenix once said of San Diego: "Its residents care very little about what is go- ing on in other places and the residents of other places care very little about what is going on in San Diego."

The Herald was dead and "big Ames," the rustler, had departed for new fields. For eight years there was no newspaper to chronicle the few happenings, and the town seemed to be lapsing into the old poco tiempo ways of Mexi- can days. Indeed, up to 1867 San Diego, town and county, had retained the Mexican customs and conditions of carly times more nearly un- changed than any other town or county in the state. Their awakening from a Rip Van Winkle sleep, not of twenty years, but of twenty lus- trums, was the work of one man. April 6, 1867. Alonzo E. Horton landed in San Diego. He had come down from San Francisco to build a city. The outlook was not encouraging. Old Town was appropriately named ; anything new in it would be out of place. It had the appearance of having been finished years before and then forgotten. New Town consisted of the govern- ment barracks, officers' quarters, the piles of the Davis wharf and a few houses that had escaped the "wreck of matter," the soldiers had made. Horton was not discouraged. The bay was there. The climate was there and there he de- termined to build a city.

Horton induced the town trustees to offer a tract of land lying east of New Town on the shore of the bay for sale. At the public sale in May, 1867, he bid off a tract of nearly 900 acres of the pueblo lands at twenty-six cents an acre, and had it surveved and platted as Horton's Ad- dition to San Diego. The tract is now the cen- ter of the city of San Diego. He put his tract on sale. It went slowly. very slowly at first. His returns for the year 1867 were but $3.000. He gave away land to anyone who would agree to make substantial improvements. He deeded lots to churches, for hotels and other improve- ments. He built a wharf, and in 1869 began the erection of the Horton house. the largest hotel at that time in Southern California.

That genial writer. Ben C. Truman, who wrote up Southern California before Nordhoff or Charles Dudley Warner ever saw it, draws these two pictures of Father Horton when he was doing missionary work for San Diego.

HORTON AND HIS TOWN.

"Two years ago ( 1867), New Town seemed to

278

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

be among the things that were. Only two fam- ilies were living here, and but three houses were left standing. . About this time a Mr. A. E. Hor- ton came this way and purchased from the city six quarter-sections of land, adjoining the plot known as New Town; and, having it surveyed, called it Horton's Addition. A few months af- terward, a little, wiry, rusty-looking man might have been seen upon the streets of San Fran- cisco, with a long tin horn in his hand, said long tin horn containing New San Diego and Hor- ton's Addition (on paper) purchased by the lit- tle gentleman with the long tin horn for the sum of $220. Lots of people laughed at the rusty- looking proprietor of the long tin horn, and said he was a fool, who had thrown away his money ; and many a quarter-section had the trustees to sell to all such real-estate spooneys. When Hor- ton would shell out the contents of that long tin horn and show you where the main street would run, and where his wharf would be located, and offer to give you a block of twelve lots just to help the town along, you shook him indignantly because he did not present you the deed, fully recorded, and all at his own expense; and then ten to one, you would have voted him a bore had he tendered you the deed in person instead of not transmitting it by mail.

"Two years have passed away, and as the con- tents of that long tin horn described, in point of site, facilities for living, climate, etc., it is the most comfortable, and one of the most flourish- ing towns in Southern California, if not in the state."

"I met Mr. Horton yesterday. He looks just as he did two years ago. I should judge that he had on the same suit of clothes now as then. But he no longer packs around that long tin horn. He rides behind a good horse, and re- sides in an elegant mansion, with a garden ad- joining, containing all kinds of vegetables and flowers, and all kinds of young fruit and orna- mental trees and shrubs. There are two hun- dred and twenty-six blocks in Horton's Addi- tion, each containing twelve lots 50x100 feet. Early in the history of the town Mr. Horton gave away some twenty odd blocks, and sold twice that number for a few hundred dollars a block.

During the past year he has sold over a hundred thousand dollars' worth of lots, and is selling blocks and lots at large figures daily. Many blocks are worth and held by him and others at from $4,000 to $6,000 each, while none can be purchased for less than $2,000 each. Mr. Hor- ton has been very generous, and has helped many a poor man to get along, provided he seemed inclined to help himself. He has given each of the denominations a piece of ground whereupon to erect a church, and has liberally subscribed towards the putting up of a pretentious edifice. He is also about to give to the town a library, having already purchased $1,000 worth of books of Messrs. Bancroft & Co., and sent an order to the Messrs. Harper's for a $1,000 worth more. He has also tendered the use of his wharf to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and it is be- lieved that the steamers of this line will touch at San Diego in a short time."

The seed that Horton had sown now began to bear fruit. The rumor that there was a city building on the bay of San Diego had gone abroad, and people came to buy lots. Another rumor, too, had spread and that was that the long talked of thirty-second parallel railroad was a certainty. The San Diego & Gila Southern Pacific & Atlantic Railroad had become a mem- ory-not a pleasant one to many an old-timer who had helped to exploit it in the long ago. Another transcontinental road was forging to the front. Now, it was the Memphis. El Paso & Pacific that was to span the continent. Its ob- jective points were Norfolk, Va., on the At- lantic, and San Diego on the Pacific. Gen. John C. Fremont, the Pathfinder, was its presi- dent. He would find a path for the railroad. He had gone to Europe to float its bonds. Al- ready it was reported that he had sold ten mil- lion dollars' worth of twenty year, six per cent bonds. The road would certainly be built. The man who dared to doubt was damned by every loyal San Diegoan. True, it was a relict of "be- fore the war," but it was claimed that it still had a legal existence. The year 1869 closed with a monster railroad meeting in Horton's hall. Gen. Thomas S. Sedgwick, chief engineer of the Memphis, El Paso & Pacific, and Gen. Volney E. Howard were the chief speakers. They

279

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

aroused the enthusiasm of the audience to the highest pitch. The dream of decades was about to become a reality.

In the fall of 1869 the drift to San Diego re- sembled an old-time "gold rush." The author has a vivid recollection of a voyage down the coast on the old Senator in October of 1869. Every berth had been sold a week before the vessel sailed, and then the agents of the com- pany sold standing room. The steamer's cooks and waiters commenced feeding the passengers about six o'clock in the morning and kept it up with slight interruptions till nine at night. The dining saloon was small and the crowd on board necessitated the setting of the tables many times. When all had been fed the tables were cleared, the passengers without berths bunked on the tables, under the tables, or wherever they could spread their blankets. All or nearly all were bound for San Diego to buy lots. The railroad was coming; San Diego was destined to rival San Francisco, and the lot buyers wanted to grow up with the city. Many of the speculators were old Californians who had not struck it rich, but were sure they were on the right road now. One old '49er, in the spring of 1850, had owned a lot on Montgomery street, San Francisco, and had sold it for $400; now it was worth $100,000; he would secure a lot in San Diego and hold on to it and grow in wealth as the town grew in size. And so the talk ran all day and far into the night, of bay and climate, of house lots and business blocks, of transcontinental railroads and Oriental steamships, which were sure to build up a mighty metroplis in the Southland.

August. 4. 1868, Joseph Nash erected the first store in New Town. Its entire population then numbered twenty-three souls. In the spring of 1870 the city had upwards of 800 buildings, with a population of 3,000. Among its sub- stantial improvements were two magnificent wharves, costing in the aggregate $80,000; a flouring mill with a capacity of 300 barrels a day; several warehouses, half a dozen hotels, two breweries, a boot and shoe factory, a bank and two newspapers.

The Horton house was completed and opened October 20, 1870. It cost nearly $150,000 and was then "the most elaborate, attractive and

spacious hotel outside of San Francisco." The editor of the Bulletin, in a two-column write-up of its attractions, classifies it with the great ho- tels of the world; his enumeration of the great hostelries of thirty-six years ago is interesting. He says: "What the Grand hotel is to Paris ; Langham's to London; the Astor, Fifth Avenue and St. Nicholas to New York; the Continental to Philadelphia; the Tremont and Parker's to Boston; Barnum's to Baltimore; St. Charles to New Orleans ; the Galt to Louisville; the South- ern to St. Louis; the Sherman and Tremont to Chicago; the Grand, Lick, Occidental and Cos- mopolitan to San Francisco, and the Pico house to Los Angeles, the Horton House is to San Diego." S. W. Churchill was its first manager.

Fate, fire and the march of improvement have doomed all these great caravansaries on the Pa- cific coast named in the above extract. The Grand, Lick, Occidental and Cosmopolitan of San Francisco were wiped out of existence in the great fire that followed the earthquake of April 18, 1906. The Pico house changed to the National hotel has degenerated into a two-bit lodging house and the Horton house was demol- ished in 1905 to give place to the great U. S. Grant hotel which will be to the San Diego of the 20th century what the Horton house was in the 19th. Father Horton removed the first brick when the work of demolition began.

The act authorizing the construction of the Thirty-Second Parallel, the Southern Trans- Continental, the Southern Pacific, the Texas Pa- cific Railroad (for it was called by all these names) failed to pass at the session of congress in 1869-70; but at the next session the act char- tering the Texas Pacific with its branch the Southern Pacific passed by a two-thirds vote on the 3rd of March, 1871. Then there was great rejoicing in the city by the bay. The Bulletin says : "As we go to press our city is in a blaze of glory. Fifth street looms up like an immense conflagration. Bon-fires, fireworks, anvil firing and rejoicing are the order of the night." And they had cause to rejoice. For years they had been yearning for a railroad with that "hope deferred that maketh the heart sick:" and now their longings were soon to be satisfied by the "Greatest Railroad of the Age," as the Wash-

280

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ington Chronicle pronounced it. That paper said: "No act of the Forty-first Congress will be longer remembered to its credit than that authorizing the construction of a great trans- continental iron highway from the eastern boundary of Texas, near Marshall, via El Paso, to the town of San Diego, on the bay of that name in the state of California." How transi- tory is fame! Both the railroad and the Forty- first Congress have long since been forgotten.

The act of congress authorizing the building of the railroad settled the question in the minds of the San Diegoans. To doubt its building was treason to San Diego. The future of the city was assured; and a brilliant future it was -- San Diego, the seaport of the Occident and the entrepot of the Orient. Branch roads were pro- jected into the back country. San Bernardino was clamoring for railroad connection with the metropolis of the south, and Tom Scott was mak- ing overtures to Los Angeles for a coast rail- road from that city to San Diego. The trade of the Orient would eventually pass through San Diego to the east. There were rumors of an Oriental steamship company in the formative stage. The Panama steamers began stopping at the port, and the Bulletin said: "We hail this event as only second to that in which is record- ed the passage of the Southern Pacific Railroad bill." The prices of real estate went up; indeed, under the circumstances it would have been im- possible to keep them down. The Bulletin of March 25 says: "The real estate transactions of the past week are larger than ever before in the history of San Diego and must appear rather nauseating to those newspapers which have been sneering at San Diego for the past year. By the way, we know a gentleman of San Jose who purchased a block on Fifth street two years ago for $600 and was damned by a paper of his town for so doing. He has been offered $8,000 for the same since the bill passed."

Horton sold $83,000 worth of lots in two months after the passage of the bill and a num- ber of real estate agents were doing their best to supply the demand. The boomers like Silas Wegg dropped into poetry and a song first sung at a concert in Horton's hall became the popu- lar ditty of San Diego. It contains a consider-

able amount of truth and some poetry. I give a few sample stanzas :

"Away to the west, where the sun goes down, Where the oranges grow by the cargo,

They've started a town, and are doing it up brown,

On the bay of San Diego.

"The railroad, they say, is coming that way, And then they'll be neighbors to Chicago; 1 So they built a big hotel, and built it mighty well, In the town of San Diego.

"There the grass is ever green, and no fleas are ever seen, And pleasure-seekers often on the bay go, Spread their canvas to the gale, as merrily they sail, On the bay of San Diego.

"The lawyers there are plenty; I can mention more than twenty.

And some are bigger scoundrels than Iago, But they all get a share of the plunder floating there, The lawyers of San Diego."

April 14, 1871, the postmaster-general ordered a change of the name of the postoffice at South San Diego to San Diego. So New Town, South San Diego and Horton's Addition became simply San Diego.

December 27, 1871, an election was held to vote upon the issue of bonds to the amount of $100,000 to be proffered to any railroad company that would build a railroad connecting San Ber- nardino with San Diego. The bond issue was carried with an overwhelming majority. San Bernardino also held an election and voted a bond issue equal to five per cent of its taxable property for the same purpose.

The Bay Shore & Coast Road to Los Angeles met with disaster. . \t the election held in Los Angeles county to vote on the issue of railroad bonds, the Texas Pacific Coast Line and the Southern Pacific to Yuma were competitors. The Southern Pacific won, securing bonds and other subsidy to the amount of $610,000.

In 1872, "Father" Horton, as he was familiar-

281

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ly called, erected a large building for the Texas Pacific Railroad offices, but the employes of that corporation never occupied it. It was after- wards used as a city hall. Grading was begun on the roadbed of the Texas Pacific in the lat- ter part of 1872, but was not pushed with a great deal of vigor. About twelve miles of roadbed in all were graded.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

A history of California and an extended history of its southern coast counties, also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present, Volume I, Part 46

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918 Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company Number of Pages: 1184

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1184