USA > California > San Diego County > San Diego > City of San Diego and San Diego County : the birthplace of California, Volume I > Part 18
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52
---
2
THE OLD COURTHOUSE
On Broadway between Front and Union streets. Photograph by Parker & Parker in Chamber of Commerce booklet issued in 1874. The old build- ing forms the central part of the present courthouse.
be built through by Thomas A. Scott, as told in another chapter of this book : but, with the failure of that plan in 1873 and despite hopes held until about 1878 that the Scott plan would materialize after all, the population dwindled or stood still, and progress was slow. The Federal census of 1880 gave San Diego County 8,618 population and the new city 2,637. The assessed valuation of the county in 1870 was $4,480,456. In 1880, ten years later, it had grown to only $4,995,469.
Between 1880 and 1885, however, San Diego registered a very decided growth, as evidenced by the assessed valuation of the county
126
CITY OF SAN DIEGO AND SAN DIEGO COUNTY 127
in that year ; the total was $11,707,737. A large part of that growth was due of course to the coming here of the Santa Fe Railroad, through its local connection, the California Southern; that railroad development is set forth in some detail elsewhere in this book. In 1890 the population of the city was 16,156, despite the loss sustained after the collapse of the "big boom," which ended in 1888. The county's population meanwhile had grown to 34,987.
San Diego had grown to be a city of some consequence. The boom brought it many improvements, but San Diego's progress was not due by any means to that alone. That healthy progress was easily discernible as early as 1885, as shown by this editorial com- ment in the San Diego Union, early in 1886:
"In point of fact, a great transformation is taking place. The new buildings, both in the business and residence sections of the city, are beginning to outnumber the old ones. The character of these improvements, too, in style of architecture and cost of con- struction, is notably superior. We are building for years and not for days. The work now being done bears the stamp of permanence. During 1855 there were erected 219 business and residence buildings, at a total cost, in round numbers, of $769,000. Nearly all of this construction was in the last half of the year, and a very large pro- portion of the capital thus invested was brought here from abroad. ** * The change in the outward appearance of San Diego is not more remarkable than that in the population of the city. The new comers decidedly outnumber the old residents. One who had been absent for a year, returning today, might fancy himself in a strange place, he would meet so many new faces on the streets and in the public places. A spirit of activity is in the very air in which live men move, and San Diego is full of live men today."
As early as 1870 an attempt was made in San Diego to furnish gas for lighting. The attempt failed, although machinery was in- stalled at some expense, and there was no renewal of the effort until 1881, when the San Diego Gas Company was formed. The in- corporators were O. S. Witherby, George A. Cowles, Dr. R. M. Powers, E. W. Morse, Gordon & Hazzard, Bryant Howard and M. G. Elmore. A plant in which petroleum was used was built at a cost of about $30,000 at Tenth and M streets. Two years later the fuel was changed to coal, and from that time on the venture was a success, the company's list of patrons making steady growth almost in every year.
Toward the end of 1885 the Jenney Electric Company completed a plant for the manufacture and distribution of electricity for light- ing. Street lights, the first being on tall towers well remembered in the present day, were turned on March 16. 1886. It was asserted then that much better lighting effects would have been obtained by more frequent, lower lights, and the truth of this assertion became evident in a short time : vet the old tower lights remained in service for many years after that.
The San Diego Telephone Company was organized in May, 1882, the officers being J. W. Thompson, president and treasurer,
128
CITY OF SAN DIEGO AND SAN DIEGO COUNTY
and Douglass Gunn, secretary. Other directors were A. Wentscher, J. A. Fairchild and Simon Levi. The company started out with only thirteen subscribers in June, 1882, but the number had grown to nearly 300 by 1887.
Street improvements in the early days were few. The streets were very dusty in summer and very muddy whenever it rained in the "winter" season. A few board walks helped out a little bit down- town, but there was felt to be little pressing need for more permanent improvement until some years after the boom. In 1886, however, after a long discussion in which prominent citizens took an active part, the city decided to hold a bond election for a sewer system, the need for which was evident by that time. At the election, which was held in the spring of 1887, when San Diego was growing with re- markable rapidity, the city voted $400,000 bonds for the sewer sys- tem. The work, which was carried on under a plan submitted by Col. George E. Waring of Newport, Rhode Island, was completed in the summer of 1888. It included 211,560 feet of pipe. The job was a good one, as shown by the constant use of the pipe to this day.
It was not until 1886 that San Diego had a street car line. The first cars, drawn by horses, ran two miles up Fifth street. Other lines were soon built up D street, now Broadway ; on H street, now Market, and on First street. On Jan. 1. 1888, at the height of the boom, San Diego had more than thirty-six miles of street railway either in operation or in construction.
Water development was started early in the history of the new city of San Diego. Necessity for a domestic supply dictated that movement. At first the development took the form of wells, from which water was peddled about town from wagons at the rate of "two bits" a pail. Some residents, the wealthier, sank wells of their own and used windmills to get a supply for home and garden. San Diego outgrew that method in the early seventies, and early in 1873 the San Diego Water Company was organized. Prominent in it were Jacob Gruendike, D. W. Briant. H. M. Covert, D. O. McCarthy, William K. Gardner. B. F. Nudd and Return Roberts. Covert was its first president. The engineers went up to Pound Canyon, at the southeast corner of the city park and drilled two wells and built two small reservoirs, into which the water was pumped. It was believed rather generally at the time that the supply thus obtained would be sufficient for a much larger population than San Diego then had, but by 1875 it was demonstrated that another source must be developed. So a reservoir was built on University Heights, and water was pumped from the bed of the San Diego river. A long tunnel helped to con- vey the water to the city, then on the lower levels and not at all on the "mesa," where later sections were soon built.
It was not until 1889 that the San Diego Flume Company, after many trials and tribulations, succeeded in bringing mountain water into the city. This system. of course, is the backbone of the present Cuvamaca water system, whose source of supply begins at Cuyamaca Lake.
CHAPTER XII
THE GREAT BOOM
Some writers have referred to the "great boom" of 1886-8 as a phenomenon. Some aspects of its development were certainly as weird as the ordinary phenomenon ; yet that word is hardly the one to apply to the period. There was nothing phenomenal about the prosperity which the country at large shared at about 1885: there had been a steady growth in many communities in Southern Cali- fornia, and in all that section people were learning that nowhere else were conditions more favorable for comfortable, healthful living. The fame of Southern California's matchless climate and the fertility of its soil and the possibilities of that soil for the earning of a living had begun to spread all over the United States. San Diego apparently was beginning to come into its own: the Santa Fe Railroad was running trains to the city ; there was here all that could be found at any other place in Southern California and in addition a superb harbor, the only real harbor on the Pacific coast of the United States south of San Francisco. Why should people not come to San Diego?
That people had heard of San Diego and wanted to share in its prosperity was evident in the summer of 1885. Those who lived in San Diego were well aware of the fact that the summers in San Diego were fully as delightful as the winters, but "tourists" had not learned that or were not ready to take advantage of the fact; they had come in winter and had departed for their homes when spring came. Yet in the summer of 1885 there was an influx of visitors and prospective residents that surprised the residents. These newcomers, or many of them, had money to invest and they seemed to be con- vinced in a short time that here was the best place on earth to invest it. Buying of real estate began to be brisk. When its force was evident, the professional "boomer," always near at hand in the western part of the country, began to come in. Soon there was speculation on a large scale. Here was a chance for people to make money by buying and selling real estate, and the people who were here and who came here took that chance-took it with avidity, as people will. Thus there was a "boom."
A large part of the "boom" was productive of very good results to San Diego. Buildings sprang up almost over night-not merely the despised "shacks" of the southwest but large, substantial struc- tures. Many of the business buildings had ornate trimmings of the "gingerbread" variety, to be sure, but their frames were solid, they were meant to stay and help provide office and store room for many years and the decorations after all were only an architectural failing of the period. There are a number of them still in San Diego,
129
130
CITY OF SAN DIEGO AND SAN DIEGO COUNTY
doing the service for which they were intended, and their days are far from over. It was the same way with the new homes; they spread far from the original confines of San Diego; the population increased in a little more than a year from about 8,000 to 21,000, and homes had to be built to house the new arrivals. The sudden pros- perity of San Diego also gave to various civic movements an impetus which long had been lacking, and tangible results followed.
The speculation of the boom period-the buying of a corner lot to sell it the next day or perhaps the next hour for twice the price just paid-that aspect of the boom was weirdly sensational. It is easy to see how ordinarily conservative, careful business men were influenced to join in the specuiation. For many months-about eighteen in all-it seemed that nothing was easier than to make money by buying and selling San Diego property ; the price kept going up day by day, so it seemed to be only common sense to buy today at a dollar so as to sell tomorrow at a dollar and a half or two dollars. The professional real estate men-or many of them-doubt- less were engulfed in the same craze as all the rest of the city. There were some fraudulent schemes of the boom period-the selling of "corner lots" under water or far out in the hills, miles from where the city might be expected to grow in twenty years, but it appears that most of these were hatched not in San Diego but in other places. San Diego's Chamber of Commerce exerted itself in a very com- mendable manner and to an equally commendable degree to expose those frauds.
The brass bands, the free excursions, the barbecues of the time were not frauds; they were simply the outcropping of the money- making excitement which gripped the whole city and into whose grasp fell practically all new-comers almost at the moment they stepped from train or steamer to San Diego streets. The new population was not all that could be desired; with the many upright citizens came some who were not so upright and who put speculation of the gambling variety far above substantial progress, and their arrival and stay in San Diego did much to disturb the even tenor of the town's old ways, but with the collapse of the boom most of the fly-by-night crowd left, and many who were of the kind that make good citizens remained and are here yet.
At the very height of the boom toward the end of 1887, Theo- dore S. Van Dyke, the noted and picturesquely brilliant writer, whose residence here had given him an excellent view of what had hap- pened to San Diego, wrote as follows:
"The growth of San Diego now began in earnest, and by the end of 1885 its future was plainly assured. A very few who pre- dicted a population of fifty thousand in five years were looked upon as wild, even by those who believed most firmly in its future. Even those who best knew the amount of land behind it and the great water resources of its high mountains in the interior, believed that twenty- five thousand in five years would be doing well enough. Its growth since that time has exceeded fondest hopes. It is in truth a surprise to all and no one can truthfully pride himself upon superior sagacity, however well founded his expectations for the future may be. At
131
CITY OF SAN DIEGO AND SAN DIEGO COUNTY
the close of 1885 it had probably about 5,000 people. At the close of 1887, the time of writing this sketch, it has fully 30,000, with a more rapid rate of increase than ever. New stores, hotels and dwell- ings are arising on every hand from the centre to the farthest out- skirts in more bewildering numbers than before, and people are pour- ing in at double the rate they did but six months ago. It is now im- · possible to keep track of its progress. No one seems any longer to know or care who is putting up the big buildings, and it is becoming difficult to find a familiar face in the crowd or at the hotels."
The advertising of the period is not without interest, even at this late day. The cream of this work was done by Thomas L. Fitch, well remembered by San Diegans of that time as "the silver-tongued orator." A sample of the kind of work which he did day after day to stimulate trade in San Diego property appears in the following advertisement of Howard & Lyons, taken from the Golden Era, a magazine then published in San Diego:
"No back country at San Diego!" sneers Los Angeles, squatting among her sloughs, and fearful that the scepter of empire may be speedily snatched from her fever-flushed hands.
"No back country at San Diego!" shouts San Francisco, gather- ing tolls upon highways she never built, watching with anxious eyes her dwindling commerce, and justly apprehensive that the Hawaiian and Australian, and possibly the China steamers, may seek nearer and cheaper and safer wharfage in the silver-gated bay of San Diego.
"No back country at San Diego!" squeak the little towns that fancy there will be no feast for them, except in the crumbs which fall from Los Angeles' table-cloths.
And the belated Eastern speculator, who might have bought land in our valleys a few years since at $5 an acre, and city lots at $10 per front foot : and who lacked the cash or the courage to invest then, now looks about him, and finds that, while he slept, the wand of progress has multiplied vahies by tens : and so, in the hope of dis- couraging the faint-hearted and keeping down prices until he can load up with cheap land, he likewise toots his little toot that "There is no back country to San Diego!"
"Liars and slaves!" as Mr. Macbeth remarked to the Western Union District Messenger who brought him a message to the effect that Birnam Wood was moving toward Dunsinane : "Liars and slaves," listen to the truth.
Los Angeles is a part of our back country. Flea-infested in summer, mired in winter, roasted at noonday, chilled at night, un- sewered, typhoid afflicted, pneumoniated Los Angeles. Smile not, oh five-dollar excursionists, but listen to the truth :
Just as soon as either of the two railroads now building. and both of which will be completed by fall-just as soon as either of these roads shall be completed. Los Angeles will be within three or four hours of San Diego. Railroad men will tell you-if they tell you the truth. as they do occasionally-that there can be no safer or better business than to carry freight to Los Angeles at a dollar and a half per ton, or less than the cost of lighterage from the
132 CITY OF SAN DIEGO AND SAN DIEGO COUNTY
steamer to the wharf at Wilmington, and as for the new goose- necked harbor at Ballona, why, if that winter resort for young ducks shall ever become an actuality as a harbor, it will never be for vessels drawing over ten feet of water.
Los Angeles city and county is part of the back country of San Diego : so is Ventura county, and so is the county of San Bernardino, and when we come nearer home there is the fat and fertile valley of the Tia Juana, there is broad and rich El Cajon, there are Escondido and Poway, San Bernardo and Santa Margarita and a dozen other valleys whose only outlet is by San Diego; valleys whose combined area of arable acres is greater than that of the State of Connecticut, valleys whose agricultural products will, when settled, be counted annually by millions. And further back on the hills beyond Lake Cuyamaca, hills covered with forests of oak and madrone and sugar pine, and draped with tangled vines and blossoming chapparal- hills from the summit of which you see on a clear night the Colorado glinting like a silver thread in the East, and the electric lights of San Diego sparkling like stars in the west-back on these hills there may be found in an area of a hundred miles in length and thirty miles and more in width, hundreds of ledges of gold-bearing quartz. San Diego county shipped over a million dollars in gold bars last year, the product of two or three mines, and this part of our "back country" is to quintuple its yield next year.
HOWARD & LYONS.
Some of those who extolled "bay and climate" in real estate advertisements at that time fell into verse, as witness the following, which appeared as a "border" to a page advertisement of La Jolla Park, which the Pacific Coast Land Bureau, R. J. Pennell, manager and auctioneer, put on the market toward the close of the boom .:
"The tongues of men were talking fast, As forth from San Diego passed A man whose banner did entice Admiring crowds-with grand device- 'La Jolla Park!' "
Advertising poets, however, must meet competition from other sections where real estate is being sold, so the poet, after a stanza or two, breaks forth with :
"'Oh, stay!' sweet Coronado cried ; 'And rest the buyers by my tide.' A kindly smile lit Pennell's eye. 'Best thanks-but first we haste to buy La Jolla Park.'"
And so on to this pleasing little selection :
"Pretty plots for residence, Country ranches rare, Lots to suit the most exacting- Block most anywhere."
133
CITY OF SAN DIEGO AND SAN DIEGO COUNTY
All this literature-pity's the truth !- had to appear under "Terms only Half Cash," in rather prominent type.
One of the most striking characters of San Diego's boom days was William H. Carlson, who came to the city from the northern part of the state and who later became assemblyman from this district and served two terms as mayor of San Diego. The extravagant optimism of the times was typified in this young man. He had started work as a page in the State Legislature in 1880 and soon became everybody's® friend because of his sunny disposition and his eagerness to serve, and this cheerful manner was always with him in business and politics. He was given to immaculate dress, yet never hesitated to soil both garb and hands if work demanded it. It is related, for instance, that one day when he was clad in a cool outing suit of cream color he saw a little dog run over by a wagon and that, without hesitating a second, he ran out to the middle of the street, picked up the badly injured animal and carried it, bleeding profusely, to a doc- tor's office that the poor brute might be relieved. This story was related to the writer not long since to illustrate the big-heartedness of this striking character of San Diego's boom days. On another occasion, when somewhat more dignifiedly garbed, wearing among other things a silk hat and an expensive white shirt, on a real estate excursion arranged by his firm of boosters, he was caught in a rail- way tieup on the waterfront and to try to mend the railroad and end an increasingly embarrassing delay, seized a heavy tie in a valiant effort to pry some errant rails back into place. In his political cam- paigns, particularly his first for the mayorship, he exhibited the same joyous spirit, shaking hand after hand. saying a kind word to each prospective supporter, winning friends by the score. And who cared much if an extravagant promise or two went along with the smile? All knew that "Billy" Carlson was one of the most cheerful sons of sunny San Diego. What is more, he got the necessary votes and won, not only once but twice, and completely flabbergasted the astute politicians of the period who had not reckoned on him as a strong candidate. But that is told in detail in another part of this story.
Carlson soon after coming to San Diego formed a real estate partnership with Albert E. Higgins, son of a pioneer of the city, and their firm, Carlson and Higgins, promoted many enterprises typical of the Southern California boom days. Principal of these was the exploitation of Ocean Beach, which in later years has come up to the expectations of the boom times and seems destined to become one of the great beach resorts of Southern California if the population of San Diego maintains its present rate of increase. In those days it was nothing but an expanse of sand running to the rocks near Sunset Cliff and bordered on the west by scrub growth of various kinds. Carlson's idea was to start another town there. So the firm built a considerable hotel on the bluff, took advantage of signs of oil, even then a speculative lure in this section, and started an oil well : also then began to build a railroad from San Diego to this new bonanza beach. Two parts of the line were actually built ; one section was constructed and operated more or less successfully from the foot of Broadway, then D Street, to Hawthorne Street, and the other ran across the backbone of Point Loma through the canyons. Those were
134 CITY OF SAN DIEGO AND SAN DIEGO COUNTY
the brass band days par excellence, and when construction work was to be launched, it was the occasion for a parade in which wagons of lumber, gaily decorated with flags and alluring signs, were sent forth, the band blaring out its part of the advertisement.
By May of 1888, at the height of the boom, Carlson and Higgins were ready for the barbecue, then the proper thing in real estate pro- motion. To get the crowd out a free meal was always a good bait. After the crowd had arrived and had been fed it was expected that lots would be sold, and there were always plenty of lots to sell. Some of the old-time stakes still stand like ghostly marks of the high tide of hope. some reaching far back from shore property in some San Diego sections to the foothills, where not even yet is there settlement. The crowd got out to Carlson's Ocean Beach properties without serious difficulty, and all had a fine time. But when the throng started home there was another story. Those were not the days of fast electric cars and of speeding automobiles or of smooth concrete roads, and when the railway system's western end gave way under the heavy pressure not even Billy Carlson's smile could mend mat- ters : and many in the throng spent a good part of the night in getting back to San Diego.
The excursion had not been a success, and Ocean Beach did not receive the necessary impetus: in fact, it had to wait many years for real growth. The big hotel stood deserted for many years and at last was burned.
When the boom bubble burst, Carlson did not lose his smile or geniality and he was soon heard from in the political arena.
When he came back to San Diego in 1920, after having got into very serious trouble through his enthusiasm and having paid a penalty for it, he came full of hope and confidence and on that oc- casion told a story which is well worth recording not only as a view of the past as compared with the present but as a human document. And here it is in part :
"I looked off at the mass of lights on the ships in the harbor, bevond them to the lights on North Island, and, honestly, it made a lump in my throat. That bay at night was nothing but a black waste, in my early days here. Some of us dreamed ahead and saw the re- flection of those lights, but we were laughed at. And now it has all come true! I've seen it !
"With all respect to the rest of this great, wonderful state of ours, I say that San Diego is its brightest spot. Here is the true opportunity of the future. I have come back because I believe that, and I believe that because I have seen the past.
"In 1896, when I was elected one of the five trustees to govern the city, I cast the deciding vote for the first sewer system. We voted $400,000 in bonds, to run twenty years. And we laid the system clear to 25th street on the east and Upas on the north,-clear out into the wilderness. People said we were crazy and that the city would collapse under the burden. Yet we paid up those bonds with- out noticing it, and the system installed then-it was built by the same man that sewered Chattanooga, Tennessee,-is the nucleus and basis of the system used today.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.