USA > California > California gold book : first nugget, its discovery and discoverers, and some of the results proceeding therefrom > Part 19
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The boom builders of 1887 and 1888 mnade the city; the settlers of 1892 are making the county. For this reason, therefore, there is little to remark in the growth of the city. An opera house, one of the finest on the coast, completed and dedicated ; a jail, just started and to be pushed to completion; one or two ware-houses and some stores and dwellings, with the power-house of the electric line, are about all the new buildings of the year.
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Across the bay Coronado is moving in the direction of an electric line from the ferry to the hotel, and for a double paved street on either side of the track for the entire distance. The hotel pier has been extended into the ocean and the Coronado railroad has been started on its extension across the islands connecting north and south to the south side of the harbor entrance at the old whaling station.
The bay itself has passed a memorable year. The war vessels of several nations have dropped anchor inside, and for the first six months the vessels of Uncle Sam's squadron were in almost constant attendance. During the year the trouble with the Pacific Mail Steamship Co. has been partially won, so that now these steamers call in their coming and going. The first of Uncle Sam's money to be spent on the bay since the old San Diego river dike was built has been expended this year on the quarantine station and wharf on the La Plaza side of the bay. These have been begun, but will need an additional appropriation to finish.
The exports and imports of the bay have not been materially changed from last year, at least in the aggregate. The imports have been general merchan- dise, coal and cement from foreign ports and lumber from domestic ports. Exports have been of grain and general merchandise, mostly to Lower California and San Francisco.
The growth of the back country increases from year to year, and the material wealth in orchards, vineyards and improved ranches is much larger than at any previous time. In the planting of citrus trees the Chula Vista section leads. Here hundreds of acres have been set to oranges and lemons, while
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many orchards previously planted are just coming into bearing. La Mesa, just east of [the city, Lemon grove, a little father east, and the Cajon valley have also planted largely of citrus trees, and the Escondido and Perris sections have done their part.
The Mesa Grande, Fallbrook, Elsinore, Perris, Poway, Capitan, Grande and Escondido sections lead in the planting of deciduous trees, and during 1892 those sections shipped dried fruits to the Eastern markets. Each of these localities, besides all other portions of the county, has made preparations to actively enter upon tree-planting this season, and the number of trees to be set out will be considerably over a million during the year 1893.
The raisin industry has been on the increase, and the shipment, which has aggregated upward of two hundred carloads, an increase of nearly 100 per cent over last year, is likely to increase in a still greater ratio hereafter.
In the matter of irrigation there has been a marked advance during the year, and several districts already formed are moving with success almost in sight. The Linda Vista district, just north of the city, has been successful in issuing bonds and in disposing of a portion of them. The district is now the owner of the water rights, dam sites, and rights of way of the Pamo Water Company, and with the sale of other bonds will be able to place water on the lands and show some of the great advantages of irrigation in southern California. The district has seen the advent of many settlers during the year and much improve- ment.
Progress is not limited alone to business and advance
VANDERCOOK E&P. COMPY
San Francisco and Bay.
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in values. It is shown in the large increase in the number of wealthy and well-to-do settlers who have found homes in the county. New settlers have come in and purchased land under the line of the San Diego flume, or within reach of the Sweetwater system, and are improving it., Inside the city limits irrigation has been successfully tried. Lot stakes and block lines in some of the " boom " additions have been plowed up, and the city water system now carries water for the irrigation for some hundreds of acres of lemon orchards.
San Diego appropriately rounds off and completes the history of California. The magnificent exhibits made in the Junior Fair at San Diego, during the spring of the World's Fair year, could be fairly dupli- cated in almost every county in the State. Probably no other could show a tomato tree nine months old, nineteen feet high, and with branches extending to a diameter of twenty-five feet, loaded with bloom and fruit on the first day of February, but all could present wonders as unspeakably strange to the agriculturists of the East, and enough to convince them that the claim of California that this whole State is really "God's own country," is an indisputable fact.
CHAPTER XIV.
RAILROADS.
A history of California would be incomplete which neglected to speak of the first transcontinental rail- road, which opened the eyes of the world to the feasi- bility of overcoming apparent impossibilities, and spanning a continent, bristling with engineering diffi-
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culties, with a continuous line of steel rails. The desirability of such a route was recognized by all thinking people, and the possibility of building it was earnestly and persistently discussed from within a very few years after the discovery of gold at Coloma.
The agitation of the subject became so universal that the Government was induced to take notice of it, and several surveys were made by Government engineers to establish the practicability of building a road from some point on the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean, and the objective point on this side was conceded to be San Francisco. The demand for a transcontinental line had become so pronounced in the winter of 1859-60 that the conventions of both the great political parties, which met in the latter year, were forced to take notice of it, and each inserted a plank in the platform on which its candidates asked for the popular support, fully en- dorsing the scheme and pledging its leaders to use every endeavor to enlist the Government in the behalf of a Pacific railroad. Up to this time Government and other engineers were united in the opinion that any route but that on the thirty-second parallel, known as the South- ern route, presented engineering obstructions which it would be impossible to overcome; or, if possible, the immense cost would prove an insuperable objection to its being undertaken by either the Government or pri- vate capitalists, or both combined.
Pending these earnest discussions, the Civil War was precipitated upon the country, blotting from the possibilities the Southern route, but making the con- struction of a road through the Western Territories to the Pacific an enterprise upon which might probably depend the very life of the Nation, and certainly the
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ability to retain control of the rich and important States and Territories grouped on the Pacific coast. For several years preceding 1860, the Government had spent about eight million of dollars annually to freight army and Indian supplies, and carry the mails on this line across the continent. One year of turbu- lence on the part of the Southern sympathizers on the Pacific coast would inflict a greater expenditure on the Government for the transportation of soldiers and war material, if it designed to hold possession of this section of the country, than it would cost to build and equip the whole line, provided it was possible to find a passage through the great natural impediments on either the central or northern routes. At any rate, and without the increased expense which would follow on the heels of a conflict on the Pacific, the average annual expenditure for carrying mails and army and Indian supplies was doubling up with startling fre- quency. However great and vital as were the reasons for building this route, no one seemed to possess the courage to suggest a way by which it might be accomplished, much less undertake the stupendous work.
At that time there were resident in Sacramento five gentlemen who were known to their fellow citizens as wide-awake business men ; capable, energetic and hon- est, but who never would have been selected as great organizing forces which could accomplish financial and engineering impossibilities. These were Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker and Theodore D. Judah. The four first named gentlemen were interested in obtaining quicker and cheaper means of sending supplies from their places
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of business in Sacramento to the active mining camps in Nevada, where the great bonanzas were then trans- forming men of no wealth into millionaires almost in a day. The fifth man was a thorough civil engineer, of some considerable experience, and possessing a wealth of rare judgment, which never made a mistake in regard to the grades and levels on a line which others had declared it impossible to utilize. Theodore D. Judah had thought much on the subject of a transcon- tinental road, and had viewed the mountains and canyons of the central route with the eye of an inspired surveyor. His knowledge and enthusiasm was precisely the leaven required to set the other four enthusiasts on the road which, difficult and disheartening in places, resulted in the grandest achievement ever accomplished by the same number of men in the history of the whole world. When the others spoke of the profits to be derived from a road to tap the Comstock camps, Judah pointed to the peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and recommended climbing these where national necessities would compel the Government to meet their road with one from the Missouri. The same necessities would compel the Government to back the road with its endorsement, and most likely, with its money. He combatted every objection to the route, and inspired a confidence in his judgment and his scientific attainments which was never withdrawn till his death, and which received the approval of suc- cess from Sacramento over the summit to the promon- tory. The pity of it is that death claimed Theodore D. Judah before the completion of the line proved his judgment superior to that of all the distinguished engineers employed by the Government, and who had
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repeatedly predicted disastrous failure for him and the courageous men who had staked money and reputation upon his assurances. All the work was performed on lines marked out by him, and his great worth remains green in the memory of the men who knew him well.
It is probable that the company organization for the building of the road across the Continent was completed in 1860 ; for on the anniversary of Washing- ton's birth, 1861, Leland Stanford moved the first shovelful of dirt in the commencement of the great work, and his earnest associates then and there con- secrated all the money, muscle and energy each poss- essed to the consummation of a work unmistakably inspired of God. From that time on there was no cessation of effort on the part of these men. If they ever lost faith for a little time in their ability to complete the work, the world knew nothing of it. Neither of the men was a "capitalist " as the term is now under- stood. They were simply industrious business men, with wills as firm as the rock of Gibraltar. They had counted the cost before engaging themselves to each other, and from the beginning till the end each was engrossed in sustaining, encouraging and strengthen- ing the hands of the others. It has been said by some of these men that the chief difficulties were found before the first hundred and fifty miles had been com- pleted. That is doubtless so. In their first appeal to the public they received a discouraging reception. The people of the coast could measure the necessities for the road with as much exactness as the officers of the Government, or the anxious loyal men of the East. They had as lively a knowledge of what the building of this line would mean for their chief city and their
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whole section. They had millions lying idle in some of the city banks, and exhibited themselves proudly as patriotic and public-spirited citizens. Could these men expect less than that those so prompt with speech would subscribe generously to a work for whose necessity they were at all times on record ? Listen :
The books were prepared, and a certain day exten- sively advertised as the occasion when . the million- aires of San Francisco would have an opportunity to enter their names for a limited number of shares. Not a subscriber darkened their door! Believing that the moneyed men of San Francisco would protest against the enterprise passing into the control of Eastern capitalists, and that the first appointment had been misunderstood, another day was advertised, and was equally barren of results, only that a Frenchman subscribed for ten shares of stock. If this experience was not sufficient to convince the officers of the road of one or two things, nothing could. Either capital- ists could say a great deal that was not meant, or they were going to have a trying time in creating confidence in their ability to exploit so great and necessary an enterprise.
There is no evidence that this sad disappointment of the projectors of the Pacific railroad ever depressed them, or caused a momentary doubt of the ultimate success of their undertaking. If the capitalists of California had adopted a procrastinating policy, the Congress of the United States was becoming more impressed with the vital necessity for promptness every day. The possibility of trouble with England had been made sensibly apparent by the Trent affair, and there was no way of knowing what other com-
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plications might arise. Without a railroad across the mountains, the Pacific coast was practically a prize held out to any foreign nation inclined to accept it. So in 1862 an act was passed authorizing the organiza- tion of the Union Pacific Company to construct the road from the Missouri river to the California boundary line, and the Central Pacific Company to construct the balance of the road through the State, it being understood that the most difficult part of the whole line was that part lying toward the eastern limit of California, or over the Sierra Nevada mountains.
The Union Pacific Company found it impossible to enlist capital, any more than could the Central Pacific, which was a corporation organized under the laws of California. But the latter, in the spring of 1863, began to build rapidly. The legislature of California had endorsed the company bonds to the extent of $1,500,000, and the city of San Francisco had subscribed for $600,000 of the company stock; several inland counties had also voted bonds in aid of the road. The progress made wasso promising that Congress, in 1864, modified the original contract to a considerable extent, and doubled the amount of the land grant. In 1866 the limit was taken from the Central Pacific Company as to its eastern end; and both companies were author- ized to build until a connection was made. The time in which the whole road was to be completed remained as fixed by the original contract-in July, 1876. No premium was offered by the Government for its earlier completion, as is usual in the case of shipbuilding and other great works authorized by Congress. If these men had been merely " worldly wise," instead of being patriotic citizens, a bargain might have been made
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with Congress, relieving them of at least 20 per cent of their obligations to the Government for every year they anticipated the contract time. This would have been an equitable arrangement, because every depart- ment of the government and every interest of the whole country was clamoring for the early completion of this great civilizing instrumentality. Had the Central Pacific Company been limited to the confines of Cali- fornia, as fixed by the contract of 1862, there can be no doubt that the Union Pacific Company would have required all the time allowed by that act to have reached the California boundary, and very probably would have been compelled to ask an extension of one or more years, as it was expected would be the case when the agreement was made by Congress.
There are some facts which make the wonderful work performed by these men appear the more remark- able. Every report made by Government engineers as to the impossibility of scaling the mountain ranges on the Central route; of the vast snowdrifts which assumed the proportions of avalanches, and would become insurmountable barriers during a large part of the year; the fact that the bonds were sold for green- backs, and the high-priced employes demanded and received gold, then at a high premium, and the further fact that tools and material had to be brought around Cape Horn, which was always slow and dangerous, commanding the highest insurance premiums known- all operated to intimidate capital, and render it almost impossible to place the securities any where in the world. It will thus be seen that the Government, so anxious for the completion of the road, so deeply interested in having that event hastened, involuntarily became a
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bear in the money markets of the world so far as the securities advanced bv it to these men were con- cerned.
Nevertheless, and notwithstanding these unexpected impediments, they anticipated the contract time by seven years. It had been assumed by engineers and practical men that because of the great natural disad- vantages under which the Central Pacific Company would labor, that the Union Pacific Company, having the assistance of all the railroad facilities of the settled portions of the Union, and an overcharged labor mar- ket to draw upon, would be able to reach the eastern boundary of California before the Central Pacific people could possibly overcome the obstacles on their shorter line, and that the former company would be waiting for them at the California boundary in July, 1876, or later, should the time have to be extended, as was expected. The facts are, that these giants had scaled the mountains, or dug away their peaks; had filled up the canyons; had covered in the road-bed for eighty miles with sheds which would withstand the crushing force of an avalanche of snow, and stood ready, with sledge hammer and spike, at the promon- tory, eight hundred and sixty-one miles farther than originally agreed upon, in May, 1869, completing the grand route seven years and two months sooner than was deemed possible by any railroad man or engineer- ing expert when the original contract was formulated by the Congress of the United States.
Few readers have not heard the remark made, accompanied by a sneer, that any four reputable busi- ness men could have accomplished the work in as thorough a manner as did Stanford, Huntington,
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Crocker and Hopkins. It is unfortunately true that there are large numbers of men so mentally constituted that they cannot commend what they lacked the ability to conceive. These might as truly declare that any reputable Jew could have led the Israelites out of Egypt. There was but one Moses, and his great ability as a leader did not rest in his name, but in the invincible power bestowed upon him by the Almighty. God never made a mistake in the selection of the instruments with which His ends were to be accom- plished. He selected the four-the five-and His guiding hand was never lifted from their shoulders for a single hour from the time soil was broken until Leland Stanford drove the last spike which united the uttermost ends of God's country, and gave civilization and prosperity an impetus which it had not before received since the fall of man. Shame upon the grum- blers.
After the work had been completed and the example set which was soon followed by other combinations of men, General Sherman, so near the Golden shore that he could espy the "gates ajar," gave this testimony to the glorious results it had achieved in one single direction out of the many:
"I now regard the Indians as substantially elimin- ated from the problem of the army. There may be spasmodic and temporary alarms; but such wars as have heretofore disturbed the public peace and tran- quility are not probable. The army has been a large factor in producing this result ; but it has not been the only one. Immigration and the occupation by industrious farmers and miners of lands vacated by the aborigines have been largely instrumental to that end ;
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but the railroad (the italics are the General's), which used to follow in the rear, now goes foward with the picket line in the great battle of civilization with bar- barism, and has become the greater cause. I have in former reports for the past fifteen years treated of this matter; and now, on the eve of withdrawing from active participation in public affairs, I beg to empha- size much which I have spoken and written heretofore. The recent completion of the last of the four great transcontinental lines of railway has settled forever the Indian question, the army question and many others which have hitherto troubled the country. I regard the building of these railways as the most important event of modern times, and believe that they account fully for the peace and good order which now prevail throughout our country, and for the extraor- dinary prosperity which now prevails in this land. A vast domain, equal to two-thirds of the whole surface of the United States, has thus been made accessible to the immigrant; and, in a military sense, our troops may be assembled at strategic points and sent promptly to the places of disturbance, checking disorders in the bud "
Hon. Justice David Davis, of the United States Supreme Court, in delivering an opinion of that august body on the Pacific Railroads, places upon record these historical facts :
"Many of the provisions in the original Act of 1862 are outside of the usual course of legislative action concerning grants to railroads, and cannot be properly construed without reference to the circum- stances which existed when it was passed. The War of the Rebellion was in progress ; and, owing to com-
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plications with England, the country had become alarmed for the safety of our Pacific possessions.
" The enterprise was viewed as a national undertak- ing for a national purpose; and the public mind was directed to the end in view rather than to the particu- lar means for securing it. Although the road was a military necessity, there were other reasons active at the time in producing an opinion for its completion besides protection of an exposed frontier. There was a vast unpeopled territory lying between the Missouri and Sacramento rivers which was practically worthless without the facilities afforded by a railroad for the transportation of persons and property. With its con- struction the agricultural and mineral resources of this territory could be developed, settlements made where settlements were possible, and thereby the wealth and power of the United States largely increased ; and there was also a pressing want, in time of peace even, of an improved and cheaper method for the transporta- tion of the mails, and of supplies for the army and the Indians.
"It was in presence of these facts that Congress undertook to deal with the subject of this railroad. The difficulties in the way of building it were great, and by many intelligent persons considered insurmount- able.
"The scheme for building a railroad two thousand miles in length, across mountains, over deserts, and through a country inhabited by Indians jealous of intrusion upon their rights, was universally regarded at the time as a bold and hazardous undertaking. It is nothing to the purpose that the apprehended difficulties in a great measure disappeared after trial, and that the
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road was constructed at less cost of time and money than had been considered possible. No argument can be drawn from the wisdom that comes after the fact.
"The project of building this road was not con- ceived for private ends, and the prevalent opinion was that it could not be worked out by private capital alone. It was a national work, originating in national necessities, and requiring national assistance. The primary object of the Government was to advance its own interests; and it endeavored to engage individ- ual co-operation as a means to an end-the securing a road which could be used for its own purposes."
Under an act of congress a railroad commission was appointed to investigate the condition of all the rail- roads in the United States which had received aid from the Government, and the truth of the charges made against them. It was composed of Robert E. Patti- son, now governor of Pennsylvania, E. Ellery Ander- son, of New York City, and David T. Littler, of Spring- field, Illinois. After the most thorough investigation, and after hearing the evidence of every one supposed to have knowledge of facts, this body of eminent men reported, as to adverse legislation:
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