USA > California > California of the South: Being a Complete Guide Book to Southern California > Part 5
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Few countries yield as great a variety of products as Southern California. In the list may be enumerated wheat, barley, corn, potatoes-Irish and sweet-and all kinds of vegetables, melons, berries, fruits of every variety found in the temperate and semi-tropical zones, including, in the latter, the orange, lemon, lime, fig, and banana, nuts, the vine, the olive ; also honey, wool, meat, fish, petroleum, asphaltum, some coal, and timber. Many others might be mentioned, but the list given will serve to show the wide range.
This wide range of products, together with the regu- larity of the yearly rainfall and the extensive systems of irrigation, make the country peculiarly exempt from the drawback of dry seasons, such as are found in many sec- tions east of the Rocky Mountains.
A feature to be noted in the agricultural and horticultu- ral products of Southern California is the relatively high valuation to the bulk, and the consequent cheapness of placing them in the markets where consumed. Wheat and barley, which are bulky, take ships in our own harbors for the ports of Europe, having to pay no railway charges over long lines. Corn is turned into lard and bacon at home, and has the whole interior of the mining Territories for a market. Fresh fruits and vegetables of all kinds go by the
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train-load to Arizona and New Mexico. Dried and canned fruits, which are produced in large quantities, go directly to Europe by sea. The orange, the lemon, and the lime are shipped by the train-load all over the Pacific coast, and eastward to the Territories and the Mississippi Valley. Raisins have the whole United States for a market. Wool, in excess of the consumption of the factories here, goes by sea to the East and to Europe. Wines and brandies lade in our own ports for all parts of the world. Petroleum has the whole Pacific coast for a market, as no other point has developed it in paying quantities.
The olive is just beginning to show its possibilities as a wealth-producer. It has been cultivated in the old mission orchards for a century, but now a rapidly-increasing acre- age is devoted to its culture. So valuable is it deemed in Southern Europe, that the kingdom of Italy alone has fif- teen hundred square miles of solid olive orchards.
Commercial Development.
In the earlier days of the Pacific coast, when gold was the one great product, and its quest in the mines the one absorbing pursuit of the inrushing population, trade-lines became fixed in certain channels. Every other industry of the coast was viewed only in its possible relation to the mining interests. San Francisco, as the shipping-point of the mining counties, became, by her location, and by the rapid accumulation of capital, the commercial metropolis of the whole coast. Between the California of that day and the East lay the little-known heights of the Sierra and the Rocky Mountains and the long reaches of almost track- less desert. Instead of the railroads of to-day, were only the scattered trails of the pioneers. Transcontinental traf- fic was an impossibility, and the ocean became the highway of trade. Everything in the shape of imports for Califor-
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nia came by sea to San Francisco, and was thence distrib- uted by sea along the coast north and south. Everything to be exported was gathered in to her wharves by vessels plying in a coastwise trade, and thence reshipped for the commerce of the world. The merchants from all over the coast went to San Francisco to buy their stocks of goods. The banks of San Francisco controlled the finance of the coast. Her commission-merchants fixed the prices of the products of the coast. When men spoke of the commerce of the Pacific slope, they meant the commerce of San Francisco. No other portion of the United States has ever been so dominated by the preponderating influence of one commercial center. It was an exceptional state of affairs, brought about by an exceptional train of circum- stances, and could not, in the nature of things, continue indefinitely.
About the year 1875 a great change set in. Like most far-reaching changes in the lines of trade, men were slow to perceive its drift. The merchants of San Francisco were slow to perceive it. Even now, when the trade of the coast has in a measure slipped from their grasp, under the work- ing of laws which must prevent it from ever returning, they scarcely seem to see what it all means.
The long, undisputed monopoly had the effect which it always has, of narrowing business methods and sapping energy. They became provincial in their ways of business. The trade which had to come to them they ceased to strive for. When it no longer bad to come to them, they had lost the art of striving for it, and could not meet the keen, wide-awake competition of business centers which began to reach out from the East.
The business men of San Francisco are to-day more ignorant of the drift of business upon the coast than are the merchants of Chicago and St. Louis. A runner of a prominent San Francisco house came into the office of the
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writer some months ago, and said he was soliciting orders from the houses here.
" Why," said he, "I am astonished at what I see. It has been eleven years since our house has had a man here, and I am astounded at the change !"
That sentence had in it one of the secrets of San Fran- cisco's loss of commercial supremacy upon the coast. I said to him : "Go home. You are too late. Chicago and St. Louis found out years ago that there was a country here, and people, and trade. They have men here every month. We do our trading directly with the East and with Europe. We can lay down our goods here more cheaply than you can yours in your city. We are now wholesaling. Our runners are now selling goods by sam- ple in your city, and underselling your own houses ! Go home, and tell your business men they have been asleep for a quarter of a century, and it is now too late. We intend for the future to dispute the trade of the coast with you."
He simply said : "I believe it. I can do nothing here. I am going home by the next train."
A representative of one of the leading San Francisco papers said recently to the writer : "There is no hope of a change in the business methods of San Francisco until the present generation of business men dies out, and new men fill their places."
And the end is not yet. It is only the beginning. The revolution was only hastened by the lack of foresight in San Francisco's business men. Back of it were immutable laws of trade which, had San Francisco possessed every energy and the keenest foresight, would in the end have worked out the same result - only, it might have been somewhat delayed.
What are the facts in the case ?
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Transcontinental Roads.
Attention has already been called, in that portion of this part which was devoted to the central belt, to certain marked features of the various lines across the continent. It may not be amiss to mention them again.
Both the Sierra and the Rocky Mountain Ranges grad- ually rise as they go northward, until their highest portions are found between the thirty-fifth and forty-third parallels. This is also the region of the highest mountain-passes, of the deepest snows, and of the severest winter storms. It is the line of the greatest reach of desert, and is the line across the broadest portion of the continent.
Under pressure of the war, and, in fact, as a military measure, and with the assistance of large Government sub- sidies, the Central Pacific Railroad was pushed across by this line to the Pacific coast. It is probable that even then the line would have been run farther south but for the un- settled state of the country through which it would have had to pass, and the possibility of its seizure by the South- ern armies.
Years went by, and other transcontinental lines were projected and built, but they did not follow the central route. Trade seeks, as a matter of economy and profit, the shortest lines between terminal points, the lowest grades, freedom from interruption by storms, and a productive tributary territory through which to pass. It did not find these upon the central route. It found them farther south. It was found cheaper to flank the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra rather than to cross them. And so the newer lines, even when starting from the East, on the central line, were deflected toward the south as they began to make the rise of the continent.
Lines which had crossed the Rocky Mountains found before them the high Sierra, while southward spread the
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easy slope of the valley of the Colorado, and then the low passes through the Sierra to the sea. Traffic from sea to sea found only thirteen hundred miles from the wharves of Galveston to the wharves of San Diego or San Pedro, and, instead of the interior desert of the more northern routes, the long, fertile valley of the Gila.
What has been the result ? The central line of railroad across the continent has now been finished for twenty years, and in all that time no second line has been built or even proposed over that route. The southern routes, on the con- trary, have practically three complete lines : the Southern Pacific, from New Orleans and Galveston, to Los Angeles and San Pedro ; the Atlantic and Pacific, which taps the Southern Pacific at Mojave ; the Atchison and Topeka, which reaches the sea at San Diego and at Los Angeles ; and now the Union Pacific proposes to extend itself by its Southern Utah branch southward along the easy grades of the inner plateau to the sea in Southern California.
One of these roads, the Southern Pacific, after reaching the sea at San Pedro, turns north ward again, as a coast-road to San Francisco.
By thus turning southward as they make the rise of the continent, these roads escape the great elevations and the steep grades of both the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra ; they escape the deep snows and the severe storms of the winter ; they gain, owing to the sharp eastward trend of the Pacific coast in Southern California, shorter lines to the sea
Another and very important gain is made. Instead of traversing for hundreds of miles the non-producing desert- lands of the central route, which can furnish to them little business either in the shape of way-travel or way-freight, they traverse the most fertile portion of the interior of the continent, the high timber and grass lands of New Mexico, and of Northern and Eastern Arizona, and then the long,
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fertile valleys of the Gila and the Colorado and their tribu- taries.
The productive capacity of these valleys has already been described. It is sufficient to add here that, sooner or later, with their almost unlimited area of deep, rich soil, and their practically inexhaustible supplies of water for irrigation, they must contain a dense population numbering into the millions, and with their traffic must furnish a large and profitable way-business to the Southern transcontinental lines.
Looking to the future, the richest and the most popu- lous of all the transcontinental routes from sea to sea will be that which takes in Southern California and these great fertile, interior valleys which lie back of it. With these facts from which to reason, it is not difficult to foresee the future drift of trade. The law of grades, the freedom from snow, the shorter lines, the productive way territory, and the greater aggregate of population, will inevitably draw the transcontinental traffic away from the central to the Southern route.
Even now it is found cheaper to ship freight intended for San Francisco by the way of Los Angeles than to send it across the Northern route by the Central Pacific, and a large portion of her traffic takes this line. With the devel- opment of the southern ports and the establishment of steamer lines, the Asiatic and island trade will land at these points, and so save the five hundred miles of extra railroad- ing, and the heavy grades of the Tehachapi on the line south from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Harbors.
The Pacific coast south of Puget Sound is, by nature, deficient in harbors. The only two good natural ports within the limits of the United States south of that point
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are San Francisco and San Diego. Of the harbor of San Francisco it is scarcely necessary to speak ; it ranks among the few great seaports of the world. San Diego, less known, is also one of the harbors turned off finished from Nature's hand. A landlocked sheet of water, some twelve miles in length, with a safe, deep entrance, carrying some twenty- three feet at low tide across the bar, it has the capacity to accommodate a large commerce. The California Southern line of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe road reaches tide-water there. It labors under the disadvantage of lying at the southern edge of the great area of agricultural land of Southern California, and opposite a higher portion of the Sierra, which rises again south of the San Gorgonio Pass.
The greater portion of the shipping of Southern Cali- fornia has, from the time of the earliest Spanish settlement, been done through the port of San Pedro, which lies farther north, and opposite the great body of agricultural lands and the center of population, besides being the port nearest to the low passes through the Sierra. This port, which is the chief shipping-point of Los Angeles, consists of an inner harbor, formerly shut off from the sea by a bar, and an open roadstead, sheltered from westerly winds by Point San Pe- dro, but exposed toward the south. For many years the business of the port was managed by a system of lighters, the vessels lying at anchor out in the roadstead. A portion of it is still so carried on. Several years ago, the Govern- ment, after three careful surveys, entered upon the work of improving the harbor. A breakwater, about a mile and a half in length, was constructed to confine the tide to one channel in its flow across the bar, and the scouring effect of the flow has been assisted by dredging. The channel through the bar, which, when the work was begun, only carried about a foot and a half of water at low tide, has now a depth of some ten feet.
The work of the present season is expected to deepen
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this to fifteen feet. It is estimated that the tidal flow will keep clear a depth of from eighteen to twenty feet when it is once opened.
Inside the bar is a ship-channel, several miles in length, with a depth at low tide of from fifteen to twenty-five feet. Many ships now enter-the deeper-draught vessels after partly unloading into lighters-and lie at the wharves to handle their freight. As the bar and the ship-channel are free from rocks, there is nothing to prevent clearing both by dredging to any desired depth. The design, however, of the work is to rest for the present with a channel through the bar of some eighteen feet.
The full plan of the harbor improvement involves the building of an outer sea-wall to inclose a portion of the open roadstead for the heaviest classes of vessels. The sur- veys have been made for this work, which, when completed, will afford ample anchorage and wharf-room for the deep- est-draught vessels and for the needs of the most extensive commerce.
The shipments through this port are very heavy, giving constant employment to a large fleet of steamers and sail- ing-vessels. In the one item of lumber, one hundred and twenty-five million feet entered through it during the last year. The harbor lies twenty miles south of Los Angeles City, and is its shipping-point. It is the terminal point of the Southern Pacific system of roads.
Some twenty miles north of San Pedro, and sixteen miles west of Los Angeles, is the new port of Ballona, the proposed sea terminus of the Atchison and Topeka system. A line of road has been completed from Los Angeles and is now in operation. Active work is being pushed in the development of the harbor. A channel has been opened to the sea from a large lagoon which extended for several miles just within the sand-beach ; piers have been built upon each side out through the surf ; and the work of dredg-
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ing is going on. It is yet a question as to the capabilities of development which the harbor may possess, but the plan is being energetically pushed, and the results so far are very satisfactory.
At other points along the coast are good roadsteads, as at Ventura, and at Santa Barbara, where, through the protection afforded by the channel-islands and projecting points of land, vessels lie at open sea-wharves most of the year with little difficulty.
The effect of the completion of an Isthmus canal, either by the Panama or the Nicaragua route, will be to stimulate in a marked degree the growth of these southern ports. The commerce which now strikes far out to sea in its long voyage around the Horn, because of the wind-currents, and only approaches the California coast as it nears the harbor of San Francisco, will then become largely a coastwise trade, and will pass more under the control of steam ; and as the shorter lines will be those nearest the land, it will naturally be tapped first by the southern ports.
The Channel Islands.
Mention has been several times made incidentally of the channel-islands. They deserve more than a passing men- tion. They are a unique and an important feature, espe- cially in the climatology of Southern California.
The effect which they have upon the climate of the mainland has already been discussed. The climate which they themselves possess has not been considered. Lying only from twenty-five to fifty miles out from the mainland, they yet possess some well-defined differences in climatic features.
Although there are no records to establish the fact, as these islands have been chiefly used for stock-ranges, with only an occasional visit from a party of the owners, and the
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transient summer campers who go to enjoy the fishing and in the quest of health, yet if they follow the general law of a diminishing rainfall as the distance from the Sierra is greater, they must have a much less annual precipitation than the mainland. The appearance and type of the vege- tation, and the comparative scarcity of springs and running streams, indicate the same fact. They are also much freer from the strong sea-breeze, which reaches its maximum in- tensity near the shore of the mainland, and also from the fog which forms along the immediate line of the coast. They are bathed in sunshine when the mainland opposite is enveloped in fog. In temperature they are more equable. Life upon them is much like life on shipboard. at sea, with- out the discomforts of a sea-voyage or the attendant sea- sickness.
A very noteworthy fact in their climatology, and one illustrating the effect which the cold current of the Kuro Siwo has upon the northern coast, and which the southern coast escapes by its deflection eastward, and through the shelter afforded by this chain of islands, is the fact that the climate of the outer tier of islands is much harsher than that of those nearer the mainland. The outer islands are nearer the current, possibly within the edge, of that cold northern stream, while the inner chain is surrounded by the flow of the return warm current from the south.
These islands are destined to gain a reputation as health- resorts which will be different from anything upon the mainland. Santa Catalina, twenty miles off the port of San Pedro, has been for years a place of resort during the summer months for parties of campers. The island has one very pleasant feature ; midway in its length it narrows and drops down until, instead of the high peaks, only a low sandy isthmus, but a few hundred yards across, connects the two portions. Upon the outer side of this isthmus the heavy ocean-surf rolls in continually, affording the finest surf-bath-
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ing. Upon the side toward the mainland there is no surf, only a gentle lapping of the swell upon the shelving sand. The curve of the land makes here a broad, open bay which is so still, and with water so transparent, that at depths of sixty and seventy feet the sandy bottom may be clearly seen, and the fish lazily swimming among the trailing strands of sea-weed.
A small steamer runs across from San Pedro at regular days for the accommodation of the campers, who go over in large numbers. A fine hotel is soon to be erected at this point.
Type of Civic and Country Life.
There are a number of exceptional features in the type of life which is growing up in Southern California. It is a type unlike that found upon any other portion of the coast, and, indeed, with scarcely a parallel within the United States. Most new lands go through the slow processes of a rude pioneer-life before the comforts and the conveniences of a matured civilization are a possi- bility ; and the first waves of population, while made up of the more energetic elements from older communities, are yet not marked by any high degree of cultivation or mental refinement. The class of immigration which has come to Southern California is, in many respects, the opposite of this ; it has been made up largely of the best and most highly-cultivated elements of older commu- nities.
Under the old Spanish regime, before the Mexican War, when the Anglo-Teuton was yet almost unknown in the land, the country, as headquarters of the Spanish colonial system for the coast, possessed many of the elements of a kindly and refined civilization. It was isolated, little known, slumbering away the years, like some dreary valley of peace. The years came and went, and the restless currents of the
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world swept by and left it undisturbed. Yet around the old missions, and upon the broad ranchos, and in the quiet pueblos, was a kindly, courteous, old-time life, which had in it none of the roughness of the frontier. The writer, coming to Los Angeles twenty years ago, while this old ranch-life was not yet in its decay, wishes here to pay at least a slight tribute to the kindly spirit of that type of civilization which is now rapidly passing away. It had in it nothing of the rush and the drive, of the restless energy which have come with the type which has supplanted it ; it possibly had fulfilled its mission, and the times were ripe for something else. Yet it came of a blood as truly and intensely American as that which dates from Jamestown or Plymouth Rock. It is even an older American blood, for it dates from the conquistadors and the shores of the Gulf, while yet the Anglo-Teuton had only coasted along the west shores of the Atlantic.
These two bloods share the Western Continent between them. As race-types they have absorbed all others. With a common mission and a common future, they should be friends. They met here, and were friends. The old Campo Santo and the Anglo-Teuton grave-yard hold in their rest- ful sleep hearts that beat as kindly for each other as though no bar of blood or religion ever stood between. The writer has known no warmer friends-none for whom a more ten- der feeling of kindly regret lingers through the years-than some whose greetings were worded in the courteous speech of Castile.
One face especially comes up from the past with the softened memories of years of personal friendship, and of many a pleasant day spent together in the old ranch-house -the face of Don Manuel Dominguez. It is a face wrinkled with the touch of nearly eighty years, eyes dimmed by age, yet having in them the light of a simple- hearted, honest life.
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"Your ancestors," he would often exclaim, when we were speaking of the future of the country, "crossed the. continent by one road, mine by another. For nearly three centuries we have between us possessed the land. We are not estrangeros ; we are Americans !"
As the old man lay dying, he said, gently, in Spanish, thinking, evidently, as his mind wandered, that he was bargaining for some purchase : "I will pay so much ; I will pay no more ; I will pay no less, for that amount is just."
I thought, as I heard him talking, that the remark was typical of the man, and was also typical of that older Span- ish life of which he was a lingering representative.
It is to this older, simple-hearted type of Spanish civ- ilization that a wave of Anglo-Teuton blood has come, un- like that which generally first reaches the frontier.
Before the days of transcontinental roads, the distance and the expense of removal were so great that only the more energetic and prosperous portion of the : American emigrating element found its way to this far-off region. After the building of the roads, and when the cost of travel was no longer a bar, the fact that there was practically no Government land in the country kept away that element which drifted to the frontier to take up land, and then, after a few years, sell out and move on. Then, the meth- ods of cultivation and the class of products involved time and outlay of capital before much return could be expected, and a higher average of intelligence in the cultivator. Orchards, and vineyards, and tropical fruits involved a style of cultivation and of management very different from the simple farming of wheat, and barley, and corn. The climate, too, as it became more widely known, began to at- tract the wealthy and cultivated element from all the East.
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