USA > California > California of the South: Being a Complete Guide Book to Southern California > Part 11
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At a recent meeting of the Los Angeles County Medical Society, Dr. F. T. Bicknell, the president, said * he had watched closely in the neighborhood where the Los Angeles sewage was used, for evidence of diphtheria, scarlet fever,
* "Southern California Practitioner," vol. ii, p. 116.
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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
or typhoid fever as a result, but had seen none whatever that could be traced to sewage as a cause. As Los Angeles increases in size, the sewage farm will be enlarged, and there are now numerous property-owners beyond the present sewage farm clamoring to be admitted to the syndicate who control it. The sewage in Southern California does the double work of fertilizing and irrigating, and is, indeed, a great boon.
FLORENCE is the only village in this township. It is six miles from Los Angeles, with which it is connected by the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Los Nietos Township, Long Beach, and Santa Fe Springs.
This immense township of nearly a hundred thousand acres lies just east of San Antonio and Wilmington Town- ship. It is naturally the best-watered portion of Los Angeles County. Old San Gabriel River, New San Ga- briel River, and Coyote Creek pass through its entire length of twenty-seven miles. Within its borders are nu- merous large ranches, small farms, and the following towns : Long Beach, Whittier, Downey, Artesia, Fulton Wells, and Norwalk.
LONG BEACH * is a delightful sea-side resort twenty-three miles from Los Angeles on the Wilmington branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad. There are several trains daily. Long Beach contains elegant hotels, a large Methodist Episcopal church, a Congregational church, good public schools, stores and livery-stables, but no saloons. Herein is one great point in which it differs from Santa Monica. In the latter place there are to be found all classes of so- ciety, from the veriest hoodlum to the most reputable citi-
* A new township, called Long Beach, has recently been created out of Long Beach and vicinity.
139
. LONG BEACH.
zen ; but in Long Beach no saloons are tolerated, and all objectionable elements of society are kept out.
The social life at Long Beach is of a kind that most delights people of refined tastes. There is nothing loud ;
Hotel, Long Beach.
there is much that is æsthetic. It is, par excellence, an edu- cational watering-place. The professor, whether male or female, hies himself here during the summer to breathe in new inspiration from the waves that beat hopelessly against
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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
the shell-strewed shore. The clerygman takes his semi- vacation here claiming that Bryant was never more mis- taken than when he said-
"The groves were God's first temples,"
but that first "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," and hither he comes for a more intense and direct communion with his Maker. The musician is to be found here, exchanging the music of the piano and violin for the never-ceasing melody of the ocean that sings him into a calm sleep ere night has scarcely overwhelmed the day. Ah, what a lullaby that is ! The sweet, peaceful song of heaven that began before man was made, just as the mother's cradle-song is always ready for her new-born child. The Chautauqua Assembly has its annual meeting here every summer.
The term Long Beach is not a misnomer, for here is a beach of hard white sand, as level as a floor extend- ing many miles each way. This beach is a perfect nat- ural race-course, and during the season spanking teams from the city can always be seen dashing over this superb driveway.
WHITTIER is a new town recently started by a body of Quakers from Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, who own around the town a large body of land. It is twelve miles east of Los Angeles and has an elevation of about fifteen hun- dred feet. All kinds of fruit and grain known to Southern California can be raised here. There is a commodious Friends' Meeting House, a public school, and a prospective college that is to be under the control of Friends.
The intention is to make this a health resort where in- valids can have pleasant boarding-places in quiet Quaker families, thus avoiding the bad features of a large hotel. Every person who visits Whittier should go to the top of the hill just back of the town. From this height looking
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WHITTIER .- DOWNEY.
west can be seen Los Angeles Valley, dotted with towns, and reaching away to the ocean, which is plainly visible ; while on the east is San Gabriel Valley, with the towns of Monrovia, Puenta, and Sierra Madre nestling close to the mountains in plain view.
SANTA FE SPRINGS is a neat village, with a Methodist Episcopal church, school-house, etc. This place has become famous on account of its iron sulphur wells. There are a half-dozen wells here that contain water rich in medicinal virtues. They are especially noted for curing rheumatism, dyspepsia, constipation, and kidney and skin diseases. There is no question about the efficacy of these springs, for many remarkable cures bear evidence of their worth.
This town is twelve miles from Los Angeles, and con- nected with Los Angeles by the San Diego branch of the California Central Railroad. A sixty-thousand-dollar hotel has been projected.
Two miles south of Santa Fe Springs is-
NORWALK, an attractive village with the usual quota of churches and school-houses. It is seventeen miles from Los Angeles, on the Santa Ana branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad. There are numerous artesian wells, al- falfa-fields, and corn-fields. Thoroughbred stock is profita- bly and extensively raised. Four miles nearer Los Angeles, on the same line of railroad, is-
DOWNEY, the center of a rich farming and dairy coun- try. One source of great profit in this vicinity is the crop of English walnuts. This crop is said to be more profitable than any fruit or grain. These walnuts sell by the ton at eight and a half cents per pound, and may be success- fully raised in almost any part of Southern California ; but the people of Los Nietos Township, especially in the vicinity of Downey, have paid the most attention to them. One resident of this town sold his seventeen-acre crop of walnuts for twenty-seven hundred dollars, being one
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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
hundred and sixty dollars per acre. Downey is settled principally by people from the Southern States, and its citizens are generally noted for contentment and hospital- ity. This vicinity is rich in water, and is just the place for the farmer. Here, corn is raised in great quantities. A castor-oil mill in the town indicates that castor-beans are a profitable crop.
The Los Angeles County Fair is held here each autumn, and will well repay a visit. Downey is not a health-resort, but it is by no means sickly. The Christians and Baptists have churches here, there are several secret societies, and excellent public schools.
San Gabriel Township.
This township lies just east of Los Angeles, and south of Soledad Township. It has the best reputation of any part of Los Angeles County for citrus fruits and vine- yards.
Its elevation varies from eight to twenty-five hundred feet, and from one side to the other it is noted as a resort for consumptives. It contains the city of Pasadena, and the villages of Alhambra, South Pasadena, Lamanda Park, San Gabriel, New San Gabriel, and Sierra Madre-a galaxy of surpassing beauty, with the Sierra Madre Mountains forming a majestic background.
PASADENA-an Indian word meaning "Crown of the Valley "-is now a city with a population of eight thousand. In 1873 it was a sheep-pasture, and was purchased by a party of Indiana capitalists for six dollars per acre. For a number of years it was called Indiana Colony. Mr. D. M. Berry, now of Los Angeles, was the manager of this enter- prise, and at that time, after a conversation with this san- guine man, people would smile at his ideas of the future of this place.
143
PASADENA.
It did seem too bad to see a man of Mr. Berry's ability wasting his time on such a forlorn hope. He would show that the soil was peculiarly adapted to fruit-growing ; that there was an abundance of good water ; that it was just the location for a great health-resort; that the climate was de- lightful, both in summer and in winter ; that the mountain- scenery was magnificent ; and that the indigenous flowers and ferns were constant sources of pleasure. From these premises he would claim that this beautiful place would soon teem with a great population, but his hearers would shake their heads incredulously and improve on Shake- speare by saying, " Alas, poor Berry ! a fellow of infinite jest and most excellent fancy."
To-day, we find Mr. Berry's sheep-pasture a city of ele- gant homes ; with thirteen thousand inhabitants ; with nu- merous street-car lines ; many very large and imposing school-buildings ; a well-selected public library in a build- ing that cost fifty thousand dollars ; four banks ; with planing-mills, fruit-canneries, and fruit-crystallizing works that give employment to hundreds of people ; numerous secret societies ; a very strong and wealthy Young Men's Christian Association ; Presbyterian, Congregational, and Baptist churches ; a Methodist Episcopal church that cost thirty thousand dollars, and a projected Universalist church that is to cost as much or more.
Pasadena is eight miles from Los Angeles, on the Cali- fornia Central Railroad. Trains go between the two cities about every thirty minutes during the day, the fare for the round trip being fifty cents. No person can afford to miss visiting Pasadena. The following extract from the "Southern California Practitioner," September, 1887, is from the pen of W. M. Chamberlain, M. D., a well-known physician of New York city. Dr. Chamberlain, at the time of writing, had already spent several winters in Pasadena :
144
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
" The chain of mountains, extending from southeast to north- west-from Bear Valley to San Fernando Tunnel-is known by the general name of the Sierra Madre. It is the link which connects the Coast Range with the greater range of the Sierra Nevada. It is about seventy miles long. Its peaks-San Antonio (Old Baldy), Cucamonga, San Fernando-are from seven to ten thousand feet high, and the in- tervening crest-line from four to six thousand feet. It is mainly of granitic rock, often much calcined and usually metamorphic. It is not a simple and single line, but a mass of mountains, having the same general strike or trend. It presents at Pasadena its almost precipitous wall, scantily covered with sage-brush and shrubs. Almost all the day the blazing sunlight rests upon its innumerable ridges, often bare, and the green ravines which divide them. Winding through and down its many canons come the streams which feed the life and beauty of the plains below. It rises like a barrier between the arid desert to the eastward and the seaward slope of Los Angeles County. It shuts off the desert winds which, sometimes cold and sometimes fiercely hot, are always dry and withering. It reflects the warmth of the southern and western sun. It arrests and condenses the water-laden clouds, which the trade-winds bring from the warm South Sea; and is the determining cause of the diurnal movement of the land and sea breezes. After sunset the cooled air begins to flow down from the mountains toward the sea; by the middle of the forenoon the heated air rises along the face of the mountains, and the sea-tempered air moves mountainward to fill the vacuum. Rarely does either current become more than a gentle breeze of from four to six miles per hour. After sunrise and after sunset come two or more hours of neutralized currents, when the chimney- smokes go straight upward, and one may carry an unshaded and unshaken flame whither he will. One who will be quiet, may have, from eleven to three, what temperature he may choose. The mer: cury may stand at 110° on the outward face of the southern piazza and at 78° on the outward face of the northern piazza.
" Between the Sierra Madre and the coast, and, in a general way, parallel to both, is an often-interrupted range of lower hills, called, as they go from the west to the east, the Santa Monica, Cahuenga, Verdugo, Arroyo, and San Jose Hills ; and between them and the Sierra Madre is inclosed the wide and beautiful valley of the San Gabriel River and its upland terrace or bench. Pasadena, which
145
PASADENA.
lies in the angle between the Arroyo and the Sierra Madre, is sepa- rated from the general San Gabriel Valley by a terrace about one hundred feet high at its western end, which slowly merges into the general plain as it goes eastward.
" Pasadena, with its outlying districts of South Pasadena, Olive- wood, Lamanda Park, Sierra Madre, and Monk's Hill, covers about twenty square miles.
"SOIL .- The soil is a gray gravel, more or less mixed with brown loam. It is light and porous; the waters go down and come up through it. It is said, on good authority, that there are large springs on the summits of the Sierra Madre. The surface drainage is small but the ground water is near ; for in many places good wells are easily made, and the plains and hill- sides here and there are studded with great oaks and sycamores, which go on in perennial growth through dry and wet years; and the groves and avenues of eucalyptus-trees show trunks, some a hundred feet high, grown from slips or seed in ten or twelve years. The soil produces freely all kinds of trees and fruits belonging to the sub-tropical and tem- perate zones. The apple and the apricot, the cabbage and the cac- tus, the grape and the guava, the oak and the olive, the pine and the palm, flourish side by side, each almost as well as in its native habitat.
" WATER .- The water hardly appears in its natural channels. As it comes down from the mountain ravines it is drawn off, in open ditches and in pipes, and distributed for irrigation and domestic use. One learns the use and beauty of water here in a way and a measure which . is seldom known in the East, for here the supply seems insufficient; there is more of it now than there used to be, and it is said to be capable of still further large development by tunneling the hills, and by sinking artesian wells on the plains. The pressure in Pasadena is sufficient to carry it to the top of the build- ings on the highest lands which are occupied. In its sensible prop- erties it is tasteless, inodorous, clear, lustrous, free from gas, and of natural temperature. Analysis shows it to be a considerably min- eralized water, containing enough of the alkaline salts to make it, in common parlance, rather hard. It carries 18.9 grains of solid matter to the wine-gallon, and would seem to be a feeble counter- part to the Carlsbad waters, as will be seen by the following com- parison :
7
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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
Analysis.
By Ragsky .- Spradel Spring, Carlsbad, Bo- hemia .*
By Hilgard-Uni- versity California. Sierra Madre water.t
Total of salts in winc-gallon
Grains. 361.00
Grains. 18.
Sulphate and chloride of sodium Carbonate of sodium
229.63
9.1
90.00
0.4
lime.
Carbonates of
magnesia
27.62
9.4
silica.
11.00
0.0
Phosphates, fluorides, etc
4.75
0.0
Iron, strontium, etc
Total
361.00
18.9
"Thus, the principal salts are the same and the ratio of their distribution, and of the total mineralization is, roughly, as 20.1. Chemically, the water seems to be 'deobstruent,'-i. e., it is very slightly laxative and diuretic, but not to such a degree as to be noticed by those who are accustomed to it. It does not produce increase of urination in the diabetic, or in the earlier stages of Bright's disease. Organic contamination will be found in it if it is taken from the open ditches or from vegetating reservoirs, but is not found in that which is piped direct from the source. The later con- dition will soon be general in Pasadena.
"RAINFALL .- The rainfall varies greatly in different years. The highest recorded is forty-seven inches in 1884; the lowest is five inches in 1876. Eighteen inches is considered a fair supply, and is about the actual average. The rain falls largely at night. It is rare to see more than four rainy days in succession. The season for rain is from November to May, during which period there will be sixteen to eighteen rainy days, in spells of two or three days at a time, and an occasional rainy night between two bright days. It is rare that a whole day is cloudy; but cloudless weeks are com-
* Reference, " Handbook of Medical Science."
t Letter from Professor Hilgard.
Sulphate of lime.
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PASADENA.
mon. Fogs are rare ; dews are light, and rarely noted except on low lands.
"TEMPERATURE .- The temperature is less absolutely equable than in the neighboring sea-coast towns. As Pasadena is not a station of the United States Signal Service, and Los Angeles is, I take the records of the latter place-distance from Pasadena seven miles :
TEMPERATURE.
PLACE.
Elevation.
Rain-days.
Cloudiness.
Humidity.
Rainfall.
Jan. and
Mar. and
April.
May and
June.
July and
Aug.
Oct.
Dec.
Mean
New York
122
41
73
43
27
41
62
72
55
34
48
Aiken, S. C
585 132
37
58
51
45
56
72
81
68
48
61
Jacksonville, Fla.
37 127
86
68
67
54
63
79
82
72
58
68
San Antonio, Texas
676 113
29
67
34
43
66
81
81
61
50
63
Los Angeles, Cal.
350
51
28
67
16
54
58
64
65
62
55
59
St. Paul
57.
New York
45.
Jacksonville
38.
San Antonio
38.
Aiken
36.
Los Angeles
11.
Difference of the means of the two coldest and the two warmest months.
Algiers. . .. 23 Mentone ... 33
"A much more instructive indication is obtained by noting the difference between the mean temperature of the hot and cold months, which is indicated graphically by the black lines, and arithmetically by the figures attached. It thus appears that Los Angeles has fewer rainy days, less rainfall, a much more equable temperature, closely approximating the ideal mean of sixty degrees. In dryness of the air Aiken exceeds it, but it must be remembered that Aiken is ten times as far from the sea as Los Angeles, and considerably higher in level, which is, in fact, not an average point for Southern California.
"I esteem the comparative cloudiness, taken in connection with the mild and equal temperature, as most significant. Weber, * quot- ing from the 'Proceedings of the British Royal Society for 1877 and
* Zicmssen's " Cyclopedia of Therapeutics," vol. iv, p. 41, and passim.
Sept. and
Nov, and
Feb.
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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
1878,' says : 'Light is inimical to the development of bacteria and the microscopic fungi associated with petrifaction and decay ; the preservative quality of light is most powerful in the direct solar ray, but can be demonstrated to exist in the ordinary diffused sun- light; and the actinic rays of the speculum have the greatest effect. . . . In the higher animal organisms, when deprived of light, oxida- tion does not take place so energetically, tissue-change and nutrition are impaired. . . . In winter an invalid in southern lands enjoys the sun and daylight for several hours longer than in high northern latitudes.'
"The long, bright day of Southern California, with unclouded sky, mild and even warmth, and gentle winds, invites the invalid to live in the open air, and protects him while there. .
"There are considerable differences between the local climates of Los Angeles and Pasadena; due to the differing distance from the sea (eighteen and twenty-six miles) and the differing elevation (three hundred and fifty and eight hundred to a thousand feet). Hu- midity is one of the most important factors in local temperatures. It tempers the sun's heat and checks the earth's radiation. It less- ens each extreme. It checks the rapidity of changes. In general terms the humidity varies immensely with the distance from the sea and the elevation.
" From the best comparisons which I have been able to make, in the absence of definite records, I think the mean relative humid- ity of Pasadena is about 60° as compared with 70° or 72° in the coast towns of San Diego, Santa Barbara, etc. In the same way the annual and diurnal range of the thermometer would be about 10° greater than in the towns named. The high point moves up. Pasadena is hotter in the summer, but not colder in winter, than Los Angeles ; the mean will therefore be higher. It is about 60° for the whole year at Los Angeles, and about 70° at Pasadena. The extremes are 32° and 100° at Los Angeles and 34° and 108º at Pasadena.
" Many of the older residents declare that the summer climate is fully as enjoyable as the winter. June is not always warmer than December; 80° Fahr. in the dry and breezy air of Pasadena does not seem as warm as 75° in the humid and sultry air of the East.
"CLINICAL HISTORIES .- In earlier days Pasadena was an outly- ing pasture-ground of the San Gabriel Plain, and subject to the ad-
149
PASADENA.
ministration of the Franciscan Mission of San Gabriel. For nearly twenty years, from 1830 to 1849, the Mexican governors curtailed the authority, fed upon the revenues, and parceled out the lands of the Church.
" When it became apparent that California would soon become part of the United States, Governors Alvarado and Pico made haste to distribute among their retainers and friends all the ungranted lands, and their grants were, for the most part, held valid by the Government of the United States. For the last twenty years these grants have been divided again and again, and have come into the market. Thus, in 1873, about fifteen hundred acres, held under the Garjias and Wilson grants, were sold to a colony of Indiana people. The financial crisis of 1873 practically broke up the organization, but some of its members remained, and from 1873 to 1876 some thirty-five families, containing one hundred and fifty members, settled upon the territory and have remained there. To these have been added, particularly within the last three years, strangers enough to raise the population to somewhat more than five thousand, among whom the old-timers are dispersed.
"There are no authentic records, in fact none of any sort, of the vital history of the original settlers; but by conversation with some of their number, and a comparison of their statements, I have derived the following information. From the time and efforts given to verifying its points, I believe it closely approximates actual facts.
"It must be remembered that a portion of these original immi- grants came as confirmed invalids, a larger portion on account of their inability or unwillingness to endure the harsher climates in which they had previously lived. Such a community could not be assumed to possess average vitality or expectation of life.
"They were obliged to create their homes on the new and arid soil of an upland plain. Only gradually did comfortable houses re- place the tents and shanties and 'adobes' in which for years they were harbored. Such conditions do not seem to offer average pro- tection to infancy and age and feeble life.
" But the record seems to say that there were thirty-five families, comprising, with children brought with them and children born here, one hundred and forty-nine persons.
" Allowing ten years as the average period of residence, and mul- tiplying one hundred and forty-nine by ten, we have fourteen
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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
hundred and ninety years of aggregate life. In these families thus aggregated, including old, the diseased, and the infants, there have occurred, in ten years, thirteen deaths; less than one per cent ! Most of these were from causes quite independent of local influences. Thus, the causes of death given are, cerebral tumor, one; diabetes, one ; apoplexy, one ; diseases of the lungs, four ; old age, one; heart- disease, four; children, four; thirteen in all.
"Several cases, said to be ' diseased lungs,' have issued in perma- nent recovery. There have been no cases of consumption among children born here, although hereditary pre-disposition must be pre- sumed for many. There has been no death in these thirty-five families from typhus or typhoid fevers, diphtheria, measles, or whoop- ing-cough. In the whole community, numbering now nearly five thousand people, I have been able to learn of but four deaths from scarlet fever and one from diphtheria in ten years. Twice in the last ten years there have been local evidences of diarrhoea and dysentery, mild in character and without mortality ; also a few cases of typhoid fever, all traceable to local causes-water contamination from open ditches and neglected reservoirs. These causes were promptly re- moved, with speedy suppression of the disease.
" It has been thought that miasmatic diseases are likely to come in, as the irrigating water is spread over an annually increasing area, and the land is shaded by increasing areas of orchards and groves.
"There are reasons for doubting the truth of this assumption. In one of the oldest orchards lives a family whose eight children have been reared on purely irrigated land. There has never been among them one case of miasmatic disease; though some of them are now adults. A few years since an ague-stricken colony of forty- three persons was brought from the 'bottoms' of the Tombigbee River, in Alabama, and placed on the oldest, lowest, and dampest ranches of the San Gabriel region. For two years ague was rife among them, but the residual effects of their former abode have been eliminated, and now ague is either unknown or very rare among them. A great improvement in their general appearance is noted.
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