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 66

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 66

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).

Among the new enterprises that have been launched since the town took on a new growth are the establishment of two banks, each with a capital of $25,000, the lighting of the town with electricity and the erection of a depot by the Pa- cific Electric Company.

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.

The Glendale free library and reading room was established February 26, 1906. The library consists of about 200 volumes.

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 factory 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. It has two stores, four churches, a school with a good attendance.

SAN FERNANDO.

San Fernando is located on the Southern Pa- cific Railroad twenty-two miles north of Los An- geles. 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

396

HISTORICAL, AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

an attraction to visitors. A high school costing $20,000 was erected in 1905.

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 head- ed 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 be- gun 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 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 patronage. When the Los Angeles-Pacific elec- tric line was built to Santa Monica the road be- ing accessible 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 Holly- wood cost $100,000. The union high school was erected at a cost of $65,000 and two new gram- mar grade schools have been erected at a cost of $30,000 each. The Academy of the Immacu- late Heart of Mary costing $150,000 was com- pleted in 1906.

Hollywood has five church buildings and sev- .en church organizations. It has a free public library, established early in 1906. It contains about 700 volumes.

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. Barracks 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, wal- nut, fig, peach, pear and apple trees. A large part of the 738 acres that now belong to the Home is devoted to pasturage and raising hay for the dairy cows. The population of the home varies from 2,000 to 2,500.

Extensive improvements have been made at the Soldiers' Home during the years 1904-05. Among the most important of these are a cement storage reservoir of a million gallons, an ice- making machine and the construction of an ad- ditional 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.

COMPTON.

Compton is the third oldest town in the coun- ty 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

397

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

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 un- der the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal de- nomination 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 the first artesian wells bored in the county is near Compton.

The population of this thriving little city now (1906) numbers 1,200. It has a live weekly newspaper, a bank and a union high school. There are four church denominations, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational and Catholic, each own- ing its own building. The largest cheese fac- tory in Southern California (established in an humble way in 1880) has grown to large propor- tions. 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. Lynwood 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 buildings lots. The electric railway from Los Angeles to Long Beach was completed to Compton in 1903.

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 out- put has amounted to 2,500 barrels per day or nearly 1,000,000 a year.

After the boom Whittier increased very slow- ly in population. In 1900 the residents numbered 1,565. In the five years following the popula- tion 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 Whittier College.

All the leading religious denominations are represented. Whittier free public library was es- tablished April 9, 1900. The annual revenue from taxation is $1,500. The total number of volumes in the library (September, 1906) was 2,423. Andrew Carnegie in 1905 donated $10,- 000 to build a library building. A contract has been let for a building to be completed in Feb- ruary, 1907.

NORWALK.

Norwalk, seventeen miles from Los Angeles, on the San Diego branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad, is a flourishing village. It is the cen- ter of an extensive dairy country. There are numerous artesian wells in the district which afford abundant water for irrigation. Alfalfa, corn and barley are the principal agricultural products.

DOW NEY.

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 terri- tory tributary to it lies mostly between the old and the new San Gabriel rivers, which gives it splendid irrigating facilities. Downey has a school of eight departments and has recently es- tablished a high school. Bonds for the erection of a union high school building were voted in 1905 and a school 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 production. The town has a public library established in 1901. It has over 200 volumes.

398

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

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 contain 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 su- burban manufacturing town accessible from Los Angeles by rail and by the interburban electric line to Alhambra. It is named for its founder, Alfred Dolge. For the greater part of his life- time, 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 carried on more profitably in Southern California than in the east. Among the advan- tages 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 man- ufactured into the numerous articles in which that product enters, such as tapestries, linings,

saddlery, 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. About 300 hands are steadily employed ; many of these have bought lots in the town and built homes. A thriving manufacturing town has grown up around the works.

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. The high school building recently erected is a model school house. The school has an enrollment of eighty-two pupils and employs four teachers. A room in the high school has been fitted up for the recently established public library. The city has a bank, a newspaper and a number of busi- ness houses.

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 capital- ized for $88,000. During the boom of 1887 a considerable amount of the acreage was sub- divided into town lots, but being off the railroad the growth of the town was slow. Jannary I, 1906, the Pacific electric railway was completed to the town and its development became rapid.

399

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

To secure the extension of the road to Sierra Madre a bonus of $20,000 was paid to the rail- way company and about $5,000 was expended in securing rights of way. The Sierra Madre Library was established in 1887. It contains about 2,500 volumes. A membership fee of 25

cents a month, or $2 a year, is charged. To avoid the expense of a librarian the work of keeping the library open five times a week is undertaken by twelve ladies, each one of whom is on duty one month. Their sole remuneration is an annual membership fee to each one.

CHAPTER LVIII. LONG BEACH.

L ONG Beach has no ancient or medieval history. It is a modern town, a city of to-day, 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 Con- quest 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 con- tained 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 Fran- cisco, became the owner by foreclosure of a mortgage.

During the War of the Conquest General Flo- res kept a military guard at the adobe house of Temple 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 ran- cho and stocked it with sheep. It contained in all about 27,000 acres. The wool industry in the later '6os and early 'zos 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 or- ganization 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 educa- tors of that day had been instrumental in found- ing it. Willmore, who had been a teacher, was at one time connected with the Fresno colony. He became ambitious to found a similar colony in Los Angeles. Teachers were not numerous in Los Angeles county then, nor were their purses plethoric. Few if any of them took the opportunity offered to invest their scant savings in land by the sunset sea. Nor did other col- onists hasten to purchase themselves homes. The tourists were not greatly in evidence and the promoters of colony schemes and city found- ing were not so proficient in the power of per- suasion as they have become of late years.

It was a waste of words for a promoter to try to induce an old-time resident to buy colony

400

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

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 colo- nists and few of them ever became such. Ac- customed to measure land by the league it was impossible for them to entertain the idea of mak- ing a living off ten or twenty acres located in a rancho that for generations had been considered only fit for a slicep 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 takc from the Los An- geles Express of September 17, 1881: "Dr. R. WV. Wright, of the American colony, started east day before yesterday to bring out a lot of col- onists this fall. Mr. Willmore, manager of the colony, thinks from letters he has been receiv- ing 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 the county. A visit to the colony site had to be made by private conveyance from Los An- geles, twenty-two miles away. In a ten-line ad- vertisement in the Evening Express, setting forth the advantages of the colony, one of the chief attractions was its nearness to Los An- geles. "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 por- tions 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 company built a commodious hotel on the bluff between Pacific Park and the beach. A horse car line was built to the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad track, two miles away,

and a bob car met the trains and conveyed pas- sengers (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 gen- tlemen 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 Rail- road built a Y or spur track into the city and a dummy engine switched the rear car (which the Long Beach people were always instructed 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 disas- ters. 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 in- solvency 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 bur- thens 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 connection 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 from Pasadena to the ocean was celebrated by a grand excursion, No- vember 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 "Terminal," on the supposition that at no distant day it would became the terminus of a great transcontinental

401

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

route, a supposition that has in part become a fact. It is now the western end of the Salt Lake Road. Rattlesnake Island shook its om- inous 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 sum- mer cottages and came year after year to enjoy their summer vacation. The town grew stead- ily, 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 propor- tional 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 ef- fect of quick transportation between the seaside city and the metropolis was felt at once. Real estate advanced in value, building was stimu- lated and capital flowed into the quondam sum- mer 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 & Terminal Company began work in 1905 on the construction 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 dol- lars. The site of 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 Pa- cific, lies at the southwest extremity of the har- bor 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 removal of the railroad trestle bridge across the mouth of the San Gabriel river, the railroad company 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.

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 66

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