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 78

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

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EL RIO.

El Rio was formerly known as New Jerusa- lem. It was founded by Simon Cohn in 1875. As about all the business of the town was in the hands of Hebrews, it took the name of the holy city of the Jews, with a prefix. It has consid- erable business. There is no synagogue in it. but it has a large Catholic church and parson- age. The Methodists had a church building there, but it has recently been removed to Ox- nard. El Rio is on the stage road between Mon- talvo and Oxnard, and about half way between San Buenaventura and Hueneme.

MONTALVO. .

Montalvo, five miles by railroad easterly from San Buenaventura, is a small town with one of the Southern Pacific Milling Company's great warehouses in it. It is the center of the apricot region. It was laid out in 1887, when the rail- road was built. The Chatsworth branch of the

Southern Pacific unites at this point with the old line via Sangus.

SATICOY.

Saticoy, on the railroad nine miles east from the county seat, was formerly known as the Springs. It is the principal town of the Santa Paula y Saticoy rancho. Saticoy and West Sat- icoy, two different settlements, are practically one for business. West Saticoy contains sev- eral churches and a school building that cost $10,500.

FILLMORE.

Fillmore began its existence at the advent of the railroad in 1887. From it is shipped the fa- mous brown building stone. It is surrounded by oil derricks.

BARDSDALE.

Bardsdale is on the old Sespe grant, and was named for Thomas R. Bard, who sold 1,500 acres to R. G. Surdam. The latter laid out the town in 1887.

CAMU'LOS RANCHO.

Camulos Rancho, made famous by Helen Hunt Jackson in her story of "Ramona," is in the ex- treme eastern end of the county, near the rail- road. Visitors have been debarred admittance to the ranch house, as it was in danger of being carried away piecemeal for relics.

Other post towns are Simi, thirty-four miles from the county seat ; Springville, fifteen miles away; Piru City, thirty miles; Newberry Park, a mountain town; and Timberville, also in the mountains.

THE ISLANDS OF VENTURA COUNTY.

ANACAPAS.

Ventura county includes within its area two islands-Anacapa. eighteen miles from the coast, and San Nicolas, distant eighty miles. The Anacapas are seven miles long and one wide. They are uninhabited. There is no water upon them. On the higher portions there is some vegetation. upon which a band of sheep subsists. obtaining water out of their feed. From the main land there appears to be but one island. Father Caballeria, in his History of Santa Bar- bara, writing of the Channel Islands, says:

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"One of them, formerly called the uninhabited island, was named Anacapa, meaning deceptive vision. This name the Indians had always ap- plied to it. The Indians were wont to ply be- tween the coast and the island with their canoes, and Anacapa island presents a complete decep- tion to the navigator. At times the island seems quite near, when in reality it is a long distance away ; and again it appears from afar a pano- rama brilliant with rich vegetation, while in fact it does not possess sufficient water to supply life's needs. The natives styled it for this reason Anacapa-false appearance, deceptive, illusory."

The Anacapas are eleven miles off Hueneme Lighthouse Point. They are separated from Santa Cruz Island by a channel four miles wide. There are three islands in the group. The extreme west- ern end is a cliff 980 feet high, two miles long at the base and about a half mile wide. There is a passage for skiffs ten feet wide between this and the next island, which is over 320 feet high and one mile long.

In December, 1853, the steamship Winfield Scott from Panama at midnight with a full head of steam struck with such force that she was wedged into the rocks. She was broken up by the rough seas. Her two hundred and fifty pas- sengers remained on the island eight days. They were taken off by the steamer California. The large gray rats that infest the island are said to have been brought there by the wrecked steam- er.

This island is separated from the third by a large gap, impassable for a skiff, as it is filled with rocks. There are many caves on the is- land. Some of these can be entered from the sea in a skiff in calm weather.

SAN NICOLAS.

In the Santa Barbara Gazette of November, 1856, I find this account of the massacre of the Indians on San Nicolas Island by the Aleuts of Russian America : "In 1811 a ship owned by Broodman & Pope, of Boston, commanded by Captain Whettemore, trading on this coast, took from the port of Sitka, Russian America, about thirty Kodiak Indians to the islands of the San- ta Barbara Channel for the purpose of killing sea otter, which were very numerous on these

islands. Captain Whettemore, after landing the Kodiaks on the island and placing in their hands firearms and the necessary implements of the chase, sailed away to the coast.of Lower Cali- fornia and South America. In the absence of the ship a dispute arose between the natives and the newcomers on account of the seizure of the females by the Kodiaks. The Kodiaks, possess- ing more activity, endurance and knowledge of war and having superior weapons, slaughtered the native males, old and young, without mercy.

"On the island of San Nicolas not a male, old or young was spared. At the end of a year Cap- tain Whettemore returned, took the Kodiaks on board and carried them back to Sitka. From that period little is known of this island till 1836, when Capt. Isaac Williams, collector of the port of San Pedro, visited the island in a small ves- sel and took on board all the Indians remaining, except one woman, who was left in the manner stated by Captain Russell in the California Mag- azine. The Indians of the island were of the type of the coast Indians, and were 110 doubt a part of them."

Retribution overtook Whettemore. His ship was captured the following year (1812) near the Sandwich Islands by the British ship of war Phoebe and he was taken to England a prisoner of war.

The following is Captain Russell's "Narrative of a Woman Who Was Eighteen Years Alone Upon the Island of San Nicolas, Coast of Cal- ifornia," referred to in the above extract from the Santa Barbara Gasette. It was published in Hutching's California Magazine, November, 1856, and probably is the earliest and one of the most reliable accounts of the lone woman of San Nicolas Island. I omit the introduction, which does not directly apply to the subject, and leave out the sentimental padding that the author stuffed into the story.

"One evening, while seated beside our quiet camp fire, placidly smoking our pipes, Mr. Nid- ever related to me the following remarkable his- tory: Twenty years ago the whole of the Indian tribes inhabiting this group of islands were en- gaged in a fierce and exterminating war with each other, and to such an extent was this dead- ly hostility waged that already the population

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· had very much diminished and would in all probability before many years become entirely extinct. To prevent this, and at the same time to ameliorate the condition of the Indians, the fathers of the mission of Santa Barbara Con- ceived the idea of removing them to the main land. For this purpose they visited the islands in company with a few partially civilized Indians and explained to them the advantages of re- moving to the mission. They finally consented to go, on promise of protection from their ene- mies being given by the fathers.

"Accordingly a small vessel was sent to the different islands and the various tribes were ta- ken, one by one, to the mission of Santa Barbara. But while the last of the Indians were embark- ing at the island of San Nicolas and all were supposed to be on board, a child was missing. and its mother, after frantically looking for it on the ship and adjacent rocks, rushed off to the interior of the island to seek for it. A storm was threatening, and the captain, after de- laying as long as he dared, put to sea. The storm broke in all its fury, and the vessel, after narrowly escaping shipwreck, landed its living cargo at Santa Barbara. Before the vessel could return for the woman it was wrecked and en- tirely lost, and as no other could be obtained at that time, the poor woman had to remain upon the island, where she lived alone for eighteen years. After the discovery of gold it was rut- mored that San Nicolas was inhabited. Sea ot- ter hunters had frequently found human foot- prints on it. As the footprints were all alike it was concluded that there was but one person living on it, and many attempts were made tc find out who this strange being was. Mr. Nid- ever, of Santa Barbara, a pioneer who came to California twenty-five years ago, took up the search. He had been a Rocky Mountain trap- per, and was as expert as an Indian in follow- ing a trail. Visiting the island he discovered the tracks and followed them until he saw among the rocks of the island near the mouth of a cave a singular object on its knees, skinning a seal. Upon approaching he found it to be a woman clad in a dress of feathers. When she saw him she jumped up, and with excessive joy ran towards him and seemed almost beside her-

self with delight at the sight once more of a human being. In her hand she held a rude knife- blade that she had made from a piece of old iron, probably obtained from the fragment of some wreck, which she valued beyond anything in her possession. She was unable to make herself un- derstood except by signs. She willingly accom- panied her rescuer to Santa Barbara. Father Gonzales of the mission tried to find some of the Indians who had been taken from the island eighteen years before, but none were discovered, and none of the Santa Barbara Indians under- stood her language.

"It appears from her narrative that after leav- ing the vessel in search of her child she wan- dered about for several hours, and when she found it the wild dogs which infest the island even to the present day (1856) had killed and nearly devoured it. When she returned to the landing the vessel was gone with all her friends and kindred.

"From day to day she lived in hope, beguiling the weary hours in providng her wants. With snares made of her hair she caught birds, and with their skins, properly prepared, she made her clothing; her needles were neatly made of bone and cactus thorns ; her thread was of sinews from the seal. In these and many other articles found in her possession she exhibited much of the native ingenuity she possessed. Whether she still remembered her own language or not will forever remain a mystery. She was very gentle and kind, especially to children, and noth- ing scemed to please her more than to be near them.

"The sympathy felt for her welfare caused the people to supply her bountifully with every- thing she needed, and very imprudently allowed her to eat almost anything she chose, and the result was that in about six months after her escape from her lonely exile she sickened and died, having undoubtedly been killed by kind- ness."

In the February number (1857) of Hutching's Califormia Magazine, the editor, in an article on "The Indian Woman of San Nicolas," states that "George Nidever, the gentleman who dis- covered the woman, had presented Capt. C. J. W. Russell on his recent visit to Santa Barbara with

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a water-bottle made of grass, a stone mortar, necklace and other things made by the woman during her long and solitary residence on the island." He further states : "There is upon this island a good sized cave in which she took up her abode, and on the walls of which she had kept a rude record of all the vessels that had passed the island, and of all the most remarkable occurrences in her lonely history, such as see- ing large quantities of seals, hailing of vessels in the distance, etc."

THE OIL INDUSTRY.

Next to Ventura's magnificent agricultural resources comes its wealth in petroleum. It is the pioneer county in oil production. The first attempt to utilize the oil from the seepages which abound in various parts of the county was made by George S. Gilbert in 1861. He put up a small refinery on the Ojai rancho and a similar one in the Santa Paula cañon, and made a fair quality of illuminating and lubricating oil. The experiment did not pay; the cost of production exceeded the profits.

In 1864 a company, composed of Leland Stan- ford, W. T. Coleman and Levi Parsons, com- menced operations in Wheeler cañon, Cache cañon and at several other points. They hoped to find light oil similar to that of Pennsylvania. With the imperfect machinery for boring then in use, they could not sink deep wells. Their development work was done by running tunnels into the ridges where the seepage showed the presence of oil. One tunnel in Wheeler cañon yielded fifteen barrels of oil a day, but as it was a heavy black oil they had no use for t. So the tunnel was abandoned and work ceased.

In the same year, 1864, the California Petro- leum Company, with a capital of $10,000,000, was organized in Pennsylvania by Col. Thomas A. Scott, the great railroad magnate of that day. The company purchased the Ojai, Colonia, Cal- leguas, Simi, Las Posas and Guadalasca ranchos. Machinery, tools, piping and everything needed in well boring were purchased in the east and shipped to California by water. Thomas R. Bard, late United States Senator of California, was sent to superintend the business of the company. Some of the machinery was lost while landing it

at Hueneme. In June, 1865, the first well was begun in Ventura cañon, seven miles from San Buenaventura, near a large pit of tar. It was not a success. Another was bored, but was also a failure. After considerable experimenting a gusher was struck, but it soon ceased to gush. Several tunnels were run into the hills. Some of these gave a fair yield of black oil, but that was not what the Pennsylvanians were looking for. After four years of experimenting with- out success, the company retired from the oil business, having sunk over $200,000 in prospect- ing.

About the time the Pennsylvania Company abandoned the field Messrs. Adams and Thayer began prospecting. They had purchased land in what is now Adams cañon with the intention of going into stock raising. From the oil indi- cations they imagined that oil stock might be the more profitable stock to raise. They devel- oped several small wells. In 1876 they sunk a well and obtained a fine quality of light oil, just what prospectors for a decade or more had been seeking. Later in the year the Pacific Coast Oil Company made an important strike in oil of the same quality. The oil business began now to as- sume importance. In 1883 Lyman Stewart, an experienced Pennsylvania oil man, came to Cal- ifornia and shortly afterwards W. L. Hardison came from the same state. They formed the Hardison-Stewart Company. This company and the Torrey cañon and Sespe companies were lat- er merged into the Union Oil Company of Cal- ifornia. One of the wells sunk by the Hardison- Stewart Company is 2,800 feet deep. Another in the same cañon, bored in 1888, has produced 122,000 barrels in a single year, worth at that time $4 per barrel. Well No. 16 of the Union Oil Company was a genuine gusher. It was estimated that 10,000 barrels of oil ran to waste before it could be capped. Oil development has steadily progressed in Ventura for a quarter of a century with no sign of decline. The princi- pal oil districts are Santa Paula cañon, Adams cañon, Torrey cañon, Sespe, Little Sespe, and Piru.

The strikes of the later 'zos developed the first oil boom of Southern California. Wherever a seepage showed a claim was located, then a com-

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pany was formed and stock sold. As the boom progressed, sharpers sunk holes and poured oil into them to entrap the confiding into purchas- ing claims or stock. The second oil boom of Southern California, that of 1900, is too recent

and too well remembered by those who were duped into purchasing wildcat stock to need re- cording here. History repeats itself sometimes, and so do oil booms.

CHAPTER LXVIII. ORANGE COUNTY.

F OR forty years after the subdivision of the state into counties the territory now included in Orange belonged to Los An- geles county. Up to 1868 that territory was held in large ranchos and the growth and develop- ment of its resources had been slow. It was sparsely settled. In 1869 there were but three school districts between the New San Gabriel river and the southeastern limits of the county. The total school attendance at the time for all of what now constitutes Orange county did not exceed one hundred pupils. The subdivision into small farms of the Stearns ranchos, nearly all of which were in the territory now included in Orange county, and the placing of the land on the market at low rates brought in a number of immigrants.

The country between the New San Gabriel river and the Santa Ana settled up rapidly. Ana- heim became the business center for this district and aspired to be the capital of a new county. The scheme to cut off an area of about one thou- sand square miles from the southeastern por- tion of Los Angeles county, and of this form a new county, was originated and actively agitat- ed in 1869, twenty years before its final ac- complishment. Mayor Max Stroble. an old res- ident of Anaheim, was the originator and most active promoter of the scheme. He secured the signatures of a number of signers to petitions praying the legislature for the creation of a new county. The reasons urged for county division were many, among others being the long dis- tance of the residents of the proposed county from the present county seat, the inconvenience and expense in reaching it over ungraded roads and unbridged rivers. The only public conveyance

then between the center of the disaffected dis- trict and Los Angeles was a tri-weekly stage. It cost $6 to make the round trip and used up two days' time. Now the electric cars make a round trip in two hours at an expense of only $1 to the traveler.

There was another reason more potent but not so prominent in the petition, and that was the spoils of office. The politicians of the populous center monopolized all the offices, while the dwel- lers in the distant districts were compelled to pay their proportion of the cost of government, but had no representation. It was the far cry of the Revolutionary fathers against British tyranny echoed back from the shores of the sunset sea- "taxation without representation." There was truth and merit, too, in the cause of the county divisionists and there were great hopes of its success.

Stroble drew up a bill creating the county of Anaheim and making the town of Anaheim the county-seat. The dividing line between the old and new county began at a point in the Pacific ocean, three nautical miles southwestward from the mouth of the old San Gabriel river, thence running northeasterly, following the channel of that river to an intersection with the San Ber- nardino base line ; thence east on that line to the division line between Los Angeles and San Ber- nardino counties.

Stroble had enlisted in his scheme the active co-operation of some of the wealthiest pioneers of the county. William Workman of Puente. Temple, Rubottom, Fryer, Don Juan Froster, Ben Dryfus, A. Langerberger and others favored his project. Armed with numerously signed peti- tions and abundantly supplied with coin, Stroble

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appeared in Sacramento at the opening of the legislative session of 1869-70. Early in the ses- sion his bill passed the assembly with but little opposition. The hopes of the divisionists rose high ; the new county was assured. Anaheim be- came a political Mecca for office-seeking pil- grims. Statesmen of Los Nietos and place hunt- ers from San Juan counseled with the patriots of Anaheim and parceled out the prospective county offices among them.

Then came a long delay. Opposition to the scheme had shown itself in the senate. The peo- ple of Los Angeles city had awakened to the fact that they were about to be left with a large area of mountains and deserts, and but very little else:

The new county took in all of the fertile val- leys of the Los Nietos, the San José and the Santa Ana. The delay lengthened. Stroble was hopeful, but the opposition was working most vigorously. Gold would win, and gold he must have or all would be lost. The envious and 1111- charitable queried as to what had become of all the coin Stroble had taken with him, and inti- mated that he had been fighting the tiger in the jungles of Sacramento and that the tiger had the best of it. But the faithful gathered to- gether their hard earned shekels, and the pro- ceeds of many gallons of wine, the price of many a bronco and many a bullock were sent to Stro- ble that he might convince the honest legislators of the richness and resources of the new county.

Another long delay and anxiety that was cruel to the waiting statesmen on the banks of the Santa Ana ; then one day in the ides of March the lum- bering old stage coach with its tri-weekly mail rolled into the embryo capital of the new coun- ty. The would-be office-holders gathered at the postoffice, eager for the latest news from Sacra- mento. It came in a letter from Stroble. The bill had been defeated in the senate, but he was working for a reconsideration and would be sure of success if more money were sent. To Stro- ble's last appeal even the most faithful were dumb.

Major Max Stroble, the originator of the di- vision scheme and its most earnest advocate in its early stages, deserves more than a passing notice. A soldier of fortune and a Machiaveli in

politics, he was always on the losing side. He was a man of versatile genius and varied re- sources, a lawyer, an editor, a civil engineer, an accomplished linguist and a man of education. He was a German by birth, and reputed to be of aristocratic lineage. A compatriot of Carl Schurz and Sigel in the German revolution of '48, on the failure of that movement, with Sigel, his intimate friend, he fled to this country. He drifted down to Nicaragua, and for a time fil- ibustered with Walker. He finally located in Anaheim, where he bought a vineyard and en- gaged in wine making. But the life of a vine- yardist was too narrow and contracted for his genius ; he was constantly branching out into new projects. He was one of the pioneer petro- leum prospectors of the state. In 1867 he sunk a great hole in Brea cañon, where, if he did not strike oil, he did strike the bottom of the purses of those whom he enlisted in his scheme. Even in this project his ill luck followed him. In the immediate vicinity of where he bored for oil forty years ago, oil gushers abound today and fortunes have been made in oil.

After his failure to divide the county he start- ed a newspaper in Anaheim. It was to be the organ of county division. It succeeded in divid- ing the divisionists into two factions, the Stroble and the anti-Stroble, who waged a wordy war against each other through the columns of their respective organs, the Advocate and the Gazette. Stroble's organ, The People's Advocate, died from some cause, probably insufficient nutrition, and was buried in the grave of journalistic fail- ures. Stroble's last venture was the sale of Santa Catalina Island to European capitalists.

Supplied with funds by the owners and rich mineral specimens from the island, he sailed to England and located in London. He succeeded in convincing a syndicate of English capitalists of the mineral wealth and other resources of the island, and negotiated its sale for a million dol- lars. A contract was drawn up and an hour set on the next day when the parties were to sign and the money to be paid. When the hour ar- rived for closing the transaction Stroble did not appear. Search was made for him. He was found in his room dead, dead on the very eve of success, for the sale of the island would have

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made him rich. Negotiations for the island were broken off by the death of Stroble. Nearly twen- ty years after his death it was sold for one- quarter of what he was to receive.

Stroble might be said to be the father of Orange county. He was the progenitor of the scheme that resulted in its creation, although he (lied years before it was born. After his death the management of the county division scheme was placed in the hands of a committee. The name was changed from the county of Anaheim to the county of Orange, the committee arguing that immigrants would be attracted by the name, forgetful of the fact that there were only about fifty other places named Orange in the United States. The northeastern boundaries of the pros- pective county were contracted so as to leave out the San Jose valley, the people of that valley electing to remain in the old county. A bill cre- ating the county of Orange was introduced into the legislative session of 1872, but it never reached a vote.

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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 78

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