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 52

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 52

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).

Section 2. The number of Councilmen shall be seven; the first election of City officers shall be held on the second Monday of May next.

Section 3. The Corporation created by this Act shall succeed to all the rights, claims, and powers of the Pueblo de Los Angeles in regard to property, and shall be subject to all the liabili- ties incurred, and obligations created by the Ayun- tamiento of said Pueblo.

.312

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

CHAPTER XLV.

LOS ANGELES CITY-Continued.

THE EVOLUTION OF A METROPOLIS.

N the previous chapter I have quoted in full the act to incorporate Los Angeles as a city. It will be noticed that the act provides that "all that tract of land included within the Pueblo de Los Angeles as heretofore known and ac- knowledged shall henceforth be known as the City of Los Angeles." Section 3 of an "Act to provide for the incorporation of cities," passed March 1I, 1850, limited the area of a city to four square miles. Evidently the legislators of the fall of '49 and spring of '50 did not take into con- sideration the possibilities of the growth of Cali- fornia cities. I

The Pueblo of Los Angeles had begun busi- ness in 1781 with four square leagues, or about twenty-seven square miles, and, as previously stated, the year (1834) before it was raised to the dignity of a ciudad by the Mexican Congress, the Departmental Assembly had expanded its boundaries to include sixteen square leagues, or over one hundred square miles. A provision in the act of incorporation of 1850 gave the council three months in which to pare down the limits of the city to the standard fixed by the legislature- four square miles.

Two nations by legislative decrees had made a city of Los Angeles. Yet it was not much of a city after all. Within its bounds there was not a graded street, a sidewalk, a water pipe or a public building of any kind belonging to the municipality.

The first city election under its American in- corporation was held July 1, 1850. The officers elected were: A. P. Hodges, mayor (who also held the office of county coroner) ; Francisco Figueroa, treasurer; A. F. Coronel, city asses- sor (also county assessor) ; Samuel Whiting, city marshal (also county jailer).

The first common council met July 3, 1850, and the first record of its doings reads thus :

"Messrs. David W. Alexander, Alexander Bell, Manuel Requena, Juan Temple, Morris L. Good- man, Cristobal Aguilar and Julian Chavez took the oath of office in conformity with Section 3, Article XI, of the state constitution, before Jona- than R. Scott (justice of the peace), and en- tered upon the discharge of their duties as mem- bers of the common council of this city, to which office they had been elected by the people on the first day of this month." David W. Alexander was elected president and Vicente del Campo secretary. The members had been sworn to support the constitution of the State of Califor- nia, and yet there was no state. California had not been admitted as a state of the Union. It had taken upon itself the function of a state. The legislature had made counties and cities and provided for their organization and government, and a governor elected by the people had ap- proved the acts of the legislature. The state government was a political nondescript. It had sloughed off its territorial condition, but it could not become a state until congress admitted it into the Union and the slave-holding faction of that body would not let it in.

The first common council of the city was a patriotic and self-denying body. The first reso- lution passed was as follows: "It having been observed that in other places the council mem- bers were drawing a salary, it was unanimously resolved that the members of this council shall receive neither salary nor fees of whatsoever na- ture for discharging their duties as such." But some of them wearied of serving an ungrateful public and taking their pay in honor. Before six- ty days had passed two had resigned, and at the end of the year only two of the original members, David W. Alexander and Manuel Requena, were left. There had been six resignations in eight months; and the first council had thirteen dif- ferent members during its short existence.

The seven members elected to the first council,

313

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

with the exception of Alexander Bell, had been either native born or naturalized citizens of Mex- ico, but the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo made them citizens of the United States. The coun- cil re-enacted many of the ordinances of the old ayuntamiento and enacted some new ones to suit the conditions then existing in the city. I append a few to illustrate the issues with which our first legislators had to contend when Los Angeles became an American city :

Art. Ist. The city's prisoners shall be formed in a chain-gang and occupied in public works. Art. 2nd. All city prisoners must be sentenced within two days.

Art. 3rd. When the city has no work in which to employ the chain-gang the recorder shall, by means of notices conspicuously posted, notify the public that such and such a number of prisoners will be turned over to the highest bidder for priv- ate service, and in that manner they shall be dis- posed of for a sum which shall not be less than the amount of their fine and for double the time which they were to serve out at hard labor.

Art. 6th. Every citizen of the corporation shall as a duty, sweep in front of his habitation on Saturdays, as far as the middle of the street, or at least eight varas.

Art. 7th. No filth shall be thrown into zanjas (canals) carrying water for common use, nor into the streets of the city, nor shall any cattle be slaughtered in the same.

Art. 9th. Every owner of a store or tavern, and every person that lives in a house of more than two rooms facing to the street shall put a light at the door of said house during the first two hours of every dark night.

Art. Ioth. Every shop or tavern shall close in winter at eight o'clock and in summer at nine o'clock at night.

Art. 12th. The washing of clothes in the zan- jas which furnish water for common use is pro- hibited.

Art. 13th. Whosoever shall walk the streets in a scandalous attire or molest the neighbors with vells or in any other manner, shall be taken to jail, if the hour be late for business or the of- fender be intoxicated, and afterwards at the proper hour, or when again sober, the recorder shall impose a fine of not less than ten dollars, nor more than twenty-five, which must be paid on the spot, otherwise the offender shall be sent ro the chain-gang. for the space of from ten to twenty-five days.

Art. 14th. The same penalty shall be imposed for playing cards in the street, regardless of the kind of game, likewise for playing any other

game of the I:ind played in houses that are pay- ing a tax for the privilege. If he be an Indian he shall pay a fine of three to five dollars or be imprisoned eight days in the chain-gang.

In the original draft of the ordinance, Article 2 prohibited "the carrying of firearms or blank arms" within the city limits, and Article 3 pro- hibited the discharge of the same, "except in de- fense of home and property." At a subsequent meeting the committee on police reported that it found "that the second and third articles, al- though they were useful, were difficult to enforce ; it has withdrawn the same and today submits in lieu thereof others which it deems more expe- dient." These are Articles I and 2, quoted above, and relate to the sentencing of prisoners and their sale to the highest bidder. The police evidently found it healthier and more lucrative to capture and sell drunken Indians for revenue than to cap- ture white desperadoes for carrying guns or col- lect fines from them for shooting up the town.

The following "Ordinance Relative to Public Washing," adopted March 27, 1852, illustrates a phase of domestic economy in early days that has long since disappeared. In the early '50S there was no system of water distribution ex- cept the Indian and his water buckets. To have carried enough water from the river to do the family washing would have been a stupendous undertaking for the lazy Indian. So the "wash" instead was carried to the canal that runs from the "little river."

"All persons," so reads the ordinance, "who may find it necessary to wash articles of any kind near the habitable portions of the city will do it in the water canal that runs from the little river, but will be bound to place their board or washer on the outer edge of the border of the canal, by which means, although they use the water, yet the washings from the dirty articles are not per- mitted, under any pretence, to again mix with the water intended for drinking purposes.

"The infraction of this ordinance will subject the delinquent to a fine which shall not pass three dollars, at the discretion of the mayor.

"B. D. WILSON,

"MANUEL REQUENA, Mayor. "(Pres. of the Common Council.)"

314

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

At the time this ordinance was adopted there was an island of considerable size in the river between the old Aliso road and First street. The portion of the river channel running on the west- ern side of the island was known as the "little river."

The most difficult task the members of that first common council had before them was the Americanizing of the people of the old ciudad. The population of the town and the laws were in a chaotic state. It was an arduous and thankless task that these old-time municipal legislators had to perform-that of evolving order out of the chaos that had been brought about by the change of nations as rulers. The native population nei- ther understood the language, the laws nor the customs of their rulers, and the newcomers among the Americans had very little toleration for the slow-going Mexican ways and methods they found prevailing in the city. To keep peace be- tween the various factions required more tact than knowledge of law or lawmaking in the legislator. Fortunately, the first council was made up of level-headed men.

The Indian was one of the disturbing elements that worried the city fathers; not the wild ones of the mountains who raided the ranchos and stole the rancheros' horses and cattle and were shot on sight, but the ex-neophytes of the mis- sions. The mission Indians constituted the labor element of the city and country. When sober they were harmless and were fairly good labor- ers, but in their drunken orgies they became veritable fiends, and the usual result of their Sat- urday night revels was a dead Indian or two on Sunday morning; and all the others, old and young, male and female, were dead drunk. They were gathered up on Sunday after their carousal and carted off to a corral. On Monday they were sentenced to hard labor for varying terms. At first they worked in the city chain gang on the streets, but the supply became too great and the council passed an ordinance (given else- where in this chapter), authorizing the auction- ing of them off to private parties for double the amount of their fine. Evidently auctioning In- dians to the highest bidders paid the city quite a revenue, for at a subsequent meeting, after

the passing of the above-named ordinance, the recorder or police judge was authorized to pay the Indian alcaldes or chiefs the sum of one real (twelve and a half cents) out of every fine collected from Indians the said alcaldes may bring to the recorder for trial. A month or so later the recorder presented a bill of $15, the amount of money he had paid the alcaldes out of fines. At the rate of eight Indians to the dol- lar the alcaldes had evidently gathered up a hun- dred and twenty poor Los.

The whipping post was used to instill lessons of honesty and morality into the Indian. One court record reads: "Chino Valencia (Indian) was fined $50 and twenty-five lashes for stealing a pair of shears ; the latter fine (the laslies) was paid in full; for the former he stands committed to the chain-gang for two months." At the same session of the court Vicente Guero, a white man, was fined $30 for selling liquor to the Indians- "fine paid and defendant discharged." Drunken- ness, immorality and epidemics, civilization's gift to the aborigines, settled the Indian question in the old pueblo-settled it by exterminating the In- dian.

When the United States land commission in 1852 began its herculean task of adjudicating the Mexican land grants in California, the city of Los Angeles laid claim to sixteen square leagues of land. In 1853 Henry Hancock surveyed the pueblo land lying beyond Ord's survey into thir- ty-five acre lots. The blocks of this survey con- tained eight lots of thirty-five acres each. Han- cock's survey extended south of the city limits to Los Cuervos rancho, a distance of about three miles below the old pueblo boundary. It extended west to La Cienega, a distance of about two miles from the old pueblo line. All the terri- tory taken into the city by annexation on the south and west in 1896 and subsequently was once claimed as city land. In the Hancock survey the streets south of Pico were named after the presi- dents of the United States. Beginning with Washington, in regular succession followed Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Jackson streets ; all of these, except pieces of Washington, Adams and Jeffer- son, that fell within the old pueblo limits, have long since disappeared from the map.

315

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

South of Boyle Heights and east of the river the rancho of San Antonio curbed the city's ambition to expand in that direction. On the north and northwest the ranchos Los Feliz and the Verdugos encroached on the city's area, and the hostile owners refused to be surveyed into the municipality. On the east, from the center of the plaza, it was two leagues to the city line. The area of the city, according to the Hancock or Hansen survey of 1855 (the survey of 1855 was really made by Henry Hansen), was a frac- tion less than fifty square miles-a magnificent city on paper.

The United States commission in 1856 con- firmed to the city a grant of four square leagues (about twenty-seven square miles) and rejected its claim to all outside of that. After many de- lays, in 1875, nearly twenty years later, a United States patent was issued to the mayor and coun- cil, and then the greater Los Angeles of the early '50s shrunk to the dimensions of Gov. Felipe de Neve's pueblo of 1781-"one league to each wind measured from the center of the plaza."

Some of the Hancock survey lots in the south- west were called city donation lots. The term originated in this way :

The city in the early years of its American period was hard pressed for funds. It was land poor. Its pueblo lands brought it no revenue. Some Napoleon of finance originated a scheme to increase the municipal income. An ordinance was passed donating a Hancock survey lot (35 acres) to any person who would put it under cul- tivation and make improvements to the value of $100. When the title passed to a private owner the land became subject to taxation and the city thereby received a revenue. It was a brilliant stroke of finance for the time being, but it resulted in depriving the city of some of its finest holdings. At the time the offer was made there was no wild rush of "sooners" to secure a reservation. There was no land hunger then. Every one's appetite for land was satiated or could be easily satisfied, as land was about the cheapest commodity in the country.

Later on in the '50s and early '6os the pueblo lands were disposed of at various prices, rang- ing from $2.50 to $7.50 per acre. At these

prices most of the magnificent patrimony that the city of Los Angeles inherited from the old Spanish pueblo was frittered away. All that was left was a few tracts that were considered worthless. One of these is the tract included in Westlake Park, now the beauty spot of the city. The city council had offered the tract in vain at twenty-five cents an acre. The old-timers who had been accustomed to get a thirty-five acre lot of fertile land as a donation scorned to buy an al- kaline gulch at any price and the city was con- pelled perforce to keep it. Another of these patches of refuse real estate that the city fathers of old left to us is the site of Elysian Park. The heights and hollows of that now attractive park could not be cultivated then for lack of a water system and nobody would take them as a gift.

The most woeful waste of the city lands con- sidered from the viewpoint of today was in the disposal of a tract of land lying between Sev- enth and Ninth streets and extending from Main to Figueroa streets, known on the city map as the Huber tract. This magnificent body of land, containing about one hundred acres, was given to private parties for what seems to us the mak- ing of a very insignificant improvement-the dig- ging of an open ditch or irrigating canal. This ditch branched off from the Zanja Madre or mother ditch near Requena or East Market street, as it is now named, then flowed down be- tween Los Angeles and South Main streets, watering the vineyards and vegetable gardens that covered the present sites of business blocks and hotels; crossed Main street below Fourth street and flowed just south of the Union Trust sky-scraper, then zigzagged across the blocks be- tween Spring and Olive streets to Central Park ; the arid waste of which it watered and made tree-growing in it possible. Then it meandered out to the rural regions of Figueroa and Adams streets, where it irrigated the orchards and bar- ley fields of that sparsely settled suburb. Up to 1885 the ditch was open, then it was piped and carried underground. That irrigating canal, which has long since disappeared, cost the city, figuring the land given at its present value, near- ly as much as the Panama canal will cost the na- tion when it is completed.

It is quite the custom of some modern writers

316

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

to abuse the olden-time councilmen for their lav- ish disposal of our city lands. It is not just to bring railing accusations against them for condi- tions that they could not foresee. Without water to irrigate them the pueblo lands were worthless. With irrigating facilities they could be made productive. Homes would be built on the arid wastes, population would increase and the city's exchequer, which was chronically in a state of collapse, would expand and become plethoric. To make two blades of grass grow where but one grew before is the secret of agricultural wealth. The olden-time city fathers well knew that neither the one blade nor the two blades would grow without water. Could they have foreseen that prosperity would plant houses where they planted trees and would grow sky- scrapers where they grew grain, they might have done differently and escaped the wailings and the railings of posterity. In giving away city lands for public improvements the city fathers followed the policy of our national government in the disposal of the public domain.

After the completion and acceptance of Ord's survey of the city lands in 1849, lots were of- fered for sale. For a lot 120 feet front by 165 feet deep, located on Main, Spring, Fort or Hill streets, between First and Fifth streets, the aver- age price was $50, or about forty cents a front foot. In the early '50s the city experienced its first boom under American domination. Ready- made houses were imported from New York and Boston. Brick and corrugated iron came into use for building. The passing of the adobe age began. The city was thriving. The cattle ranches were as productive as the gold mines. A full- grown steer that a few years before was worth $2 for his hide and tallow was now worth from $30 to $40 for beef. The cow counties of the south supplied the mines with beef. The sud- den acquisition of wealth from the increase in the value of their cattle engendered extravagant habits in the rancheros and their families, which later on brought financial distress to many of them.

Up to 1856 the city had been making a steady growth and was beginning to put on metropoli- tan airs. Then a reaction came. The rich sur-

face placers had been worked out, and the mines were no longer yielding large returns for small expenditures of labor and capital. But the severest blow to the cow counties came from the development of the agricultural resources of the central and northern counties of the state. Hun- dreds of miles nearer the mines, they could sup- ply the mining camps with products at prices with which the cow counties could not compete. The result was hard times in the south. Money in 1856-57 in Los Angeles commanded five, ten and even as high as fifteen per cent interest, com- pounded monthly. The unfortunates who had mortgages on their possessions at such usurious rates were on the down grade to financial ruin. To add to their misfortunes, 1856 was a dry or drought year. Thousands of cattle died of starva- tion, and those that survived were unmarketable. The year 1857 was but little improvement on its predecessor. Hard times continued, if, in- deed, they were not intensified. This was the . beginning of the end of the cattle kings. They were compelled to mortgage their lands to tide them over the hard times. The high rates of in- terest absorbed their income and they could not reduce the principal of their loans. From 1858 to 1861 there was a spurt of prosperity. Don Abel Stearns built the Arcadia block, on the corner of Los Angeles and Arcadia streets. This was the finest business block south of San Fran- cisco and was said to have cost $80,000. In 1859 Juan Temple built what afterward became the court house on the plat bounded by Spring, Main, Market and Court streets. The old-timers pointed with pride to these as evidence that the city was destined to be the metropolis of the so11th.

During the year 1859 thirty-one brick build- ings and a considerable number of wooden ones were erected in the city. This was the biggest building boom in the history of the city up to this time.

In 1860 the telegraph line between San Fran- cisco and Los Angeles was completed, and the first message over the wires was sent by Henry Mellus, the mayor of Los Angeles, at 10 o'clock p. m., October 8th, to H. F. Teschemacher, presi- dent of the board of supervisors of San Fran-

317

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

cisco. The Salt Lake trade, which began in 1855 over the old Mexican trail, now paralleled by the Salt Lake Railroad, had grown to be a very important factor in the business of Los Angeles. In one month as high as sixty wagons had been dispatched with freight for Salt Lake City. Seemingly the metropolis of the cow counties was floating on the high tide of pros- perity.

In 1861 reaction set in. The Civil war divided the people. Many of the leading citizens were sympathizers with the South and some of thein joined the armies of the Confederacy. The value of real estate shriveled until it was hard to tell whether there was any value in it. One old- timer, who had loaded up with Ord survey lots, located between First and Fourth on Spring and Main streets, in the early '50s, at the prevailing price then of $50 a lot, desiring to go east in 1861, tried in vain to dispose of his lots at the price he paid for then ten years before. Finally some of his friends clubbed together and took them off his hands. It is said that misfortunes never come singly. It did seem during the first lustrum of the '6os as if they came in droves to the city and the country around. From 1861 to 1866 the metropolis of the south was a case of arrested development. Evolution had ceased and it actually retrograded.

In the winter of 1861-62 occurred one of the greatest floods in the history of California. The rivers covered the valleys and the cattle and horses were driven to the hills, where many starved to death before the waters subsided. The city water works, which the city had been bond- ing itself to build, were swept away, and the inhabitants had to fall back on the Indian and the olla for their water supply. It rained almost incessantly for thirty days and the city was cut off from all communication with the outside world, except by steamer. After the deluge came the drought. During the years 1863-64 there was the smallest rainfall ever known in Cali- fornia. As a consequence cattle in Southern Cali- fornia were very nearly exterminated and the doom of the cattle kings sealed.

Smallpox was raging among the Mexicans and Indians, and they were dying so fast that it was

difficult to find persons to bury them. There was a feud between the adherents of the Union and the secessionists, so bitter that a body of United States troops had to be stationed in the city to keep order. There was nothing to sell and money had become an unknown quantity to many. So impoverished were the people that no assess- ment for city taxes was made in 1863-64. The landed possessions of two of the richest men of the city amounting to a quarter of a million acres, were advertised for sale as the owners were unable to pay their state and county taxes, al- though the total of their taxes did not exceed $5,000. In 1863 an Ord survey lot on the south- east corner of Spring and Second streets, 120 feet front, sold for $37, or about thirty cents a front foot. Two thousand acres in East Los Angeles were sold in 1864 at fifty cents an acre. The purchaser, Dr. Griffen, took it under pro- test. He wanted to purchase eight hundred acres lying along the river for sheep pasture. As this would cut off access to the water for sheep or cattle, the city council refused to sell it un- less Griffen would take also the mesa land lying back from the river.

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 52

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