Historical and biographical record of Los Angeles and vicinity : containing a history of the city from its earliest settlement as a Spanish pueblo to the closing year of the nineteenth century ; also containing biographies of well known citizens of the past and present, Part 22

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1901
Publisher: Chicago : Chapman Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 996

USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > Historical and biographical record of Los Angeles and vicinity : containing a history of the city from its earliest settlement as a Spanish pueblo to the closing year of the nineteenth century ; also containing biographies of well known citizens of the past and present > Part 22

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Just where the postoffice was first located I have not been able to ascertain. In 1852 it was kept in an adobe building on Los Angeles street, west side, between Commercial and Arcadia. In 1854 it was located in the Salazar Row on North Main street, just south of where the St. Elmo Hotel now stands. In January, 1855, it was moved to Los Angeles street one door above Commercial street. From there when James S. Waite, publisher of the Weekly Star, was postmas- ter it was moved to the Old Temple Block, which stood where the north end of the Downey Block now stands. Its next move was into an adobe building that stood on the present site of the Bullard Block and from there it was taken to the old Lanfranco Block on Main street. In 1858 it moved up Main street to a building just south of the Pico House; then after a time it drifted down town to North Spring street, a few doors below Temple street. In 1861 it was kept in a frame building on Main street opposite Commercial street. In 1866 it again moved up Main street to a building opposite the Bella Union Hotel, now the St. Charles. In 1867 or 1868 it was moved to the northwest corner of North Main and Mar- ket street and from there about 1870 it was moved to the middle of Temple Block on North Spring street. H. K. W. Bent moved the office to the Union Block, now Jones Block, on the west side of North Spring street. From there in 1879, when Colonel Dunkelberger was postmaster, it was moved to the Oxarat Block, on North Spring street near First; here it remained eight years.

Its location on Spring gave an impetus to that street that carried it ahead of Main. In Feb- ruary, 1887, the postoffice was moved to the Hellman Building, southwest corner of North Main and Republic street; from there it was moved down Broadway below Sixth street. It made its last move in June, 1893, when it reached its present location on the corner of South Main and Winston street, where after more than forty years of wandering through the wilderness of streets, at last it reached its Caanan-a home of its own. The present building was completed in 1893, at a

cost, including the site, of $150,000. It was found to be too small for the accommodation of the Federal offices and postoffice. The recent ap- propriation of $250,000 will enlarge the building to meet the demands of the city. In early times the duties of the postmasters were light and their compensation small. In the winter of 1852-53 10 mail was received at the Los Angeles office for six weeks. In 1861, on account of the floods, there was no mail for three weeks and some wag labelled the office "To Let." The fixtures of the office in those days were inexpensive and easily moved. From Colonel Wheeler's wash tub the Los Angeles postoffice gravitated to a soap box. It seemed in early days to keep in the laundry line. In 1854-55 and thereabouts the office was kept in a little 7x9 room on Los Angeles street. The letters were kept in a soap box partitioned off into pigeon holes. The postmaster, at that time, had a number of other occupations besides that of handling mail. So when he was not attending to his auction room, or looking after his nursery, or superintending the schools, or acting as news agent, or organizing his forces for a political campaign, he attended to the postoffice, but at such times as his other duties called him away the office ran itself. If a citizen thought there ought to be a letter for him he did not hunt up the postmaster, but went to the office and looked over the mail for himself.

Upon the arrival of a mail from the states in early times there were no such scenes enacted at the Los Angeles postoffice as took place at the San Francisco office; where men stood in line for hours and $50 slugs were exchanged for places in the line near the window. There were but few Americans in Los Angeles in the fall of '49 and spring of '50 and most of these were old timers long since over their homesickness. The stage coach era of mail carrying continued later in California than in any state east of the Mis- sissippi; and it may be said that it reached its greatest perfection in this state. The Butterfield stage route was the longest continuous line ever organized and the best managed. Its eastern termini were St. Louis and Memphis; its western

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terminus San Francisco. Its length was 2,881 miles. It began operation in September, 1858, and the first stage from the east carrying mail reached Los Angeles October 7, 1858. The schedule time at first between St. Louis and San Francisco was twenty-four days, afterwards it was reduced to twenty-one days. The first service was two mail coaches each way a week, for which the government paid the stage company a subsidy of $600,000 a year. Later on the service was in- creased to six stages a week each way and the subsidy to $1,000,000 a year. This wasin 1861, when the line was transferred to the central route. In1 1859, when the government was pay- ing a subsidy of $600,000 for a semi-weekly serv- ice, the receipts for the postal revenue of this route were only $27,000, leaving Uncle Sam over half a million out of pocket.

The Butterfield route from San Francisco southward was by the way of San Jose, Gilroy, Pacheco's Pass, Visalia and Fort Tejon to Los Angeles, 462 miles. Eastward from Los Angeles it ran by way of El Monte, Temecula and Warner's Ranch to Fort Yuma. From there by Tucson to El Paso it followed very nearly what is now the route of the Southern Pacific Railroad. From El Paso it ran northward to St. Louis, branching at Fort Smith for Memphis. Los Angeles was proud of its overland stage. It got the eastern news ahead of San Francisco, and its press put on metropolitan airs. When the trip was first made in twenty days the Weekly Star rushed out an ex- tra with flaunting headlines-"Ahead of Time." "A Hundred Guns for the Overland Mail," "Twenty Days from St. Louis." After this fit- ful flash of enterprise the sleepy old ciudad lapsed into its poco tiempo ways. The next issue of the Star sorrowfully says: "The overland mail arrived at midnight. There was no one in the postoffice to receive it and it was carried on to San Francisco;" to be returned six days later with all the freshness gone and all the easteril news in the San Francisco papers. There were no overland telegraph lines then. Los Angeles never had a mail service so prompt and reliable as the Butterfield was. The Star in lauding it says: "The arrival of the overland mail is as regular as the index on the clock points to the hour, as true to time as the dial is to the sun." After the Civil war began in 1861 the southern route was abandoned. The Confederates got away with the stock on the eastern end and the Apaches destroyed the stations on the western end. After the Butterfield stages were trans- ferred to the Central Overland route via Salt Lake City and Omaha, the Los Angeles mails were carried from San Francisco by local stage lines via the Coast route, but the service was often

very unsatisfactory. The completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 1877 gave nis quick and reliable service.

It is impossible to obtain any reliable data of the revenues of the Los Angeles postoffice in the early years of its existence. In 1869 the post- master and one boy clerk did the business of the office in a small room in the Temple Block, North Spring street. The salary of the postmaster was $1,400 in greenbacks, worth at that time about 70 cents on the dollar, making his pay less than $1,000 a year in gold. The relative rank of Los Angeles in 1869 compared with some other cities of California, which it has since passed in popu- lation, is shown by the rate of salary of the post- masters of these cities at that time. Los Angeles, salary $1,400, Marysville $3, 100, Stockton $3,- 200, Sacramento $4,000. In 1887 the gross re- ceipts of tlie Los Angeles office were in round numbers $74,000; those of the Sacramento office $47,000 and the salaries of the postmasters the same.

From a pamphlet giving a review of the Los Angeles postoffice in 1887, published by E. A. Preuss, then postmaster, I extract the following data: Number of clerks 27, carriers 21. There were no branch offices or stations. The post- master had petitioned the department to establish a branch office in East Los Angeles and had hopes that his petition might be granted. The allowance for the salaries of 27 clerks January I, 1888, was $17,315; "making an average salary for each clerk of $645 or less than $54 per month." The total gross receipts of the office for 1887 were $74,540.98. The total cashı re- ceived for money orders and postal notes, $466,053.98, total caslı handled $1,838,048.35; being an increase of $702,280.97 over the year 1886. Stamp sales exceeded $120,000 for the year 1887. This was the year of the "boom," when the office handled the mail of over 200,000 transients. The office was then located on North Main street, near Republic. Two long lines of men and women every day extended from the delivery windows upand down Main street wait- ing their turn to get their mail.

From a report of Postmaster Jolin R. Mathews made when he retired from office, March 1, 1900, I take the following statistics: Total receipts of the office for 1899-$228,417.61; total salaries paid $132, 513.69; number of clerks 41 ; carriers 62; clerks at stations 12; railway postal clerks 46; total 161. An appropriation of $250,000 for enlarging the Federal Building was obtained by Hon. Ste- phen M. White before the close of his term as United States Senator. This is now available and the enlarging of the building will soon begin.

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CHAPTER XXVI.

EARTHQUAKES, FLOODS AND DROUGHTS.

F THERE is one characteristic of his state of which the true Californian is prouder than another, it is its climate. With his tables of temperature and records of cloudless days and gentle sunshine, he is prepared to prove that California has the most glorious climate in the world. Should the rains descend and the floods prevail, or should the heavens become as brass and neither the former nor the latter rains fall, these climatic extremes he excuses on the plea of exceptional years; or should the earthquake's shock pale his cheeks and send him flying in affright from his casa, when the temblor has rolled by and his fright is over, he laughs to scorn the idea that an earthquake in California is anything to be afraid of, and draws invidious comparisons between the harmless shake-ups of this favored land and the cyclones, the blizzards and the thunderstorms of the east. The record of earthquakes, floods and droughts in this chap- ter may seem to the reader, as he peruses it, a formal arraignment of our "glorious climate," but he must recollect that the events recorded are spread over a period of 130 years, and he must recall to mind, too, that the aggregate loss of human life in all these years from all these cli- matic tragedies is less than that inflicted by a single cyclone in some of the northwestern states.

EARTHQUAKES.

That there are periods of seismic disturbance, when earthquakes seem to be epidemic in a coun- try, is evident. At the time of its first settlement California was passing through one of these peri- ods. Among the earliest recorded climatic phe- nomena, noted by Portolá's expedition, is the frequent mention of earthquake shocks. Father Crespi, in his diary of this expedition, says of their camping place, July 23, 1769, "We called this place El Dulcisimo Nombre de Jesus de Temblóres,* because four times during the day we had been roughly shaken up by earthquakes. The first and heaviest trembling took place at

about I o'clock and the last near 4 o'clock in the afternoon. One of the gentiles who happened to be in camp was no less scared than we, and began to shout aloud, invoking mercy and turn- ing towards all points of the compass." Again, when the expedition encamped on the Porciun- cula River, August 2, he says, "During the evening and night we experienced three consecu- tive earthquake shocks." When encamped on the Santa Clara River a few days later, he notes the occurrence of two more shocks.

Hugo Reid, in his letters descriptive of the founding of San Gabriel Mission, says: "The now San Gabriel River was named Rio de Los Temblores, and the building was referred to as the Mission de Los Temblores. These names were given from the frequency of convulsions at that time and for many years after. These con- vulsions were not only monthly and weekly, but often daily."

The stone church of the San Gabriel Mission was, during the course of its construction, several times injured by earthquake shocks. In 1804 the arched roof had to be taken off and one of wood and tiles substituted. The walls were cracked by an earthquake and had to be repaired several times; the original tower was taken down and the present belfry substituted. There were frequent convulsions in the northern districts at San Francisco; in 1808 there were eighteen shocks between June 21 and July 17, some of them quite severe. The seismic disturbances that had continued from 1769, culminated in a series of severe shocks in 1812, which year was long known in California as "el ano de los tem- blóres," the year of the earthquakes. On Sun- day, December 8 of that year, the neophytes of San Juan Capistrano were gathered at morning mass in their magnificent church, the finest in California. At the second wave of the temblór the lofty tower fell with a crash on the vaulted roof of masonry, and in a moment the whole mass of stone and mortar came down on the congrega- tion. The officiating minister escaped by the door of the sacristy and six neophytes were saved,

*The sweetest name of Jesus of the Earthquakes.

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but the rest, forty in number, according to official reports, were crushed to death, though the mis- sion records show "that 39 were buried in the next two days and four more bodies later,"* making the total killed 43. At Santa Inez Mis- sion the church was thrown down, but there was no loss of life. At Purisima Mission the earth shook for four minutes. The church and nearly all the adobe buildings were shaken down.

At Santa Barbara the buildings were damaged, new springs of asphaltum opened; the so-called volcano developed new openings and the people fled from the town in terror. At San Gabriel it overthrew the main altar, breaking the St. Joseph, St. Dominic, St. Francis and the Christ. It shook down the steeple, cracked the sacristy walls and injured the friars' house and other buildings.t The temblórs continued with great frequency from December, 1812, to the following March. It was estimated that not less than three hundred well defined shocks were experienced throughout Southern California in the three months following December 8. After that there was a subsidence, and mother earth, or at least that part of her where California is located, ceased to tremble.

In 1855, 1856 and 1857 there was a recurrence of seismic convulsions. July 11, 1855, at 8:15 P. M., was felt the most violent shock of earth- quake since 1812. Nearly every house in Los Angeles was more or less injured; walls were badly cracked, the openings in some cases being a foot wide. Goods were cast down from shelves of stores and badly damaged. The water in the city zanjas slopped over the banks and the ground was seen to rise and fall in waves. On April 14 and May 2, 1856, severe shocks were experienced, occasioning considerable alarm. Slight shocks were of frequent occurrence.

January 9, 1857, at 8:30 A. M., occurred one of the most memorable earthquakes ever experi- enced in the southern country. At Los Angeles the vibrations lasted about two minutes, the mo- tion being from north to south. It began with gentle vibrations, but soon increased to such vio- lence that the people rushed into the street demoralized by terror. Women shrieked, chil- dren cried and men ejaculated hastily framed prayers of most ludicrous construction. Horses and cattle fled wildly over the plains, screaming and bellowing in affright .¿ It was most severe in the neighborhood of Fort Tejon. Here a chasm, from ten to twenty feet wide and extend- ing from thirty to forty miles in a straight line northwest to southeast, opened in the ground and

closed again with a crash, leaving a ridge of pul- verized earth several feet high. Large trees were broken off and cattle grazing upon the hill- sides rolled down the declivity in helpless fright. The barracks and officers' quarters, built of adobe, were damaged to such an extent that the officers and soldiers were obliged to live in tents for sev- eral months until the buildings were repaired. The great earthquake of 1868, which shook up the region around the Bay of San Francisco, was very light at Los Angeles.

The Owen's Valley earthquake that occurred March 26, 1872, was, next to the great "temblór" of 1812, the most destructive of life of any that has visited California since its settle- ment. The houses in the town of Lone Pine, Inyo County, where the greatest loss of life oc- curred, were built of loose stone and adobe, and it was more owing to the faulty construction of the buildings that so many were killed, than to the severity of the shock, although it was quite heavy. It happened at 25 minutes past 2 o'clock in the morning, when all were in bed. Twenty- six persons were killed in Lone Pine and two in other places in the valley. Los Angeles was pretty thoroughly shaken up at the time, but no damage was done and no one was hurt. The last seismic disturbance in Southern California that caused damage was the San Jacinto earth- quake, which occurred at 4:30 A. M. December 25, 1899. It damaged a number of buildings in the business part of San Jacinto, a town near the base of the San Jacinto Mountains in Riverside County. It shook down part of the walls of a brick hotel in Hemet, three miles northwesterly from San Jacinto. A brick chimney in the hotel was turned entirely around. At the Saboda Indian reservation, a few miles from San Jacinto, six squaws were killed by the falling of an old abode wall. They were sleeping in an old house. When the shock came the walls fell inward, crushing them to death. No other lives were lost. Shocks continued at intervals for several weeks. In the mountains southeasterly from San Jacinto great crevices were discovered where the earth had opened and in some places had gulped down tall trees. Mount Tauquitz gave forth suspicious rumblings as if about to break out into a volcanic eruption, but subsided.

FLOODS.

The reports of the climatic conditions prevail- ing in the early days of California are very meagre. Although the state of the weather was undoubtedly a topic of deep interest to the pastoral people of California, yet neither the dons nor the padres compiled meteorological tables or kept records of atmospheric phenomena. With their

* Bancroft's History of California. Vol. II.

+ Bancroft's History of California, Vol. II

# J. Albert Wilson's History of Los Angeles County.

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cattle on a thousand hills and their flocks and herds spread over the plains, to them an abund- ant rain-fall meant prosperity, a dry season starvation to their flocks and consequent poverty. Occasionally we find in the archives that a pro- cession was ordered or a novéna promised to some certain saint if he would order a rain storm, but there is no mention of prayers being offered to cut short the pluvial downpour. Consequently the old weather reports, such as they are, show more droughts than floods, not that there were more, but because people are more inclined to bewail the evils that befall them than rejoice over the good.

The only record of a flood that I have been able to find during the last century is in Father Serra's report of the overflow of the San Miguel (San Gabriel) and the destruction of the first crop sown at the old mission of San Gabriel in the winter of 1771-72.

In 1810- 11 there was a great flood and all of the rivers of Southern California overflowed their banks. In 1815 occurred a flood that ma- terially changed the course of the Los Angeles River within the pueblo limits. The river abati- doned its former channel and flowed west of the suertes or planting field of the first settlers; its new channel followed very nearly the present line of Alameda street. The old fields which were situated where Chinatown and the lumber yards now are were washed away or covered with sand, and new fields were located in what is now the neighborhood of San Pedro street.

In 1825 it again left its bed and drifted to the eastward, forming its present channel. The memorable flood of that year effected a great change in the physical contour of the country west of Los Angeles City. Col. J. J. Warner in his "Historical Sketch of Los Angeles County," says: "In 1825 the rivers of this county were so swollen that their beds, their banks and the ad- joining lands were greatly changed. At the date of the settlement of Los Angeles a large portion of the country from the central part of the pueblo to the tide water of the sea through and over which the Los Angeles River now finds its way to the ocean was largely covered with a forest interspersed with tracts of marsh. From that time until 1825 it was seldom, if in any year, that the river discharged even during the rainy season its waters into the sea. Instead of having a riverway to the sea, the waters spread over the country, filling the depressions in the surface and forming lakes, ponds and marslies. The river water, if any, that reached the ocean drained off from the land at so many places, and in such small volumes, that no channel existed until the flood of 1825, which by cutting a riverway to tide

water drained the marsh land and caused the forests to disappear." Colonel Warner says in

the sketch preceding: "The flood of 1832 so changed the drainage in the neighborhood of Compton and the northeastern portion of San Pedro ranch that a number of lakes and ponds covering a large area of the latter ranch lying north and northwesterly from Wilmington which to that date had been permanent became dry in a few years thereafter." The drainage of these ponds and lakes completed the destruction of the forests that Colonel Warner says covered a large portion of the country south and west of the city. These forests were in all probability thickets or copse of willow, larch and cotton- wood similar to those found on the low ground near the mouth of the Santa Ana and in the swampy lands of the San Gabriel River thirty years ago. In 1842 occurred another flood similar to that of 1832.

In January, 1850, the Argonauts of '49 had their first experience of a California flood. The valley of the Sacramento was like an inland sea and the city of Sacramento became a second Venice. But instead of gondolas, the citizens navigated the submerged streets in wagon boxes, bakers' troughs and crockery crates; and in rafts buoyed up by whiskey kegs. Whiskey in hogsheads, whiskey in barrels and whiskey in kegs floated on the angry waters, and the gay gondolier as he paddled through the streets drew inspiration for his song from the bung hole of his gondola.

In the winter of 1852-53 followed another flood that brought disaster to many a mining camp and financial ruin to many an honest miner. A warm rain melted the deep snows on the Sierras and every mountain creek became a river and every river a lake in size. The wing dams and the coffer dams that the miners had spent piles of money and months of time constructing, were swept away, and floated off toward China, fol- lowed by the vigorous but ineffective damns of the disappointed and ruined gold hunters. In Southern California the flood was equally severe, but there was less damage to property than in the mining districts. There was an unprecedented rain fall in the mountains. At old Fort Miller, near the head of the San Joaquin River, an ag- gregate of 46 inches of water fell during the months of January and February.

The winter of 1859-60 was another season of heavy storms in the mountains. On December 4, 1859, a terrific southeaster set in and in forty- eight hours twelve inches of water fell. The waters of the San Gabriel River rose to an un- precedented height in the cañon and swept away the miners' sluices, long toms, wheels and other

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mining machinery. The rivers of the county overflowed the lowlands and large tracts of the bottom lands were covered with sand and sedi- ment. The preceding season had been a dry year; the starving cattle and sheep unsheltered from the pitiless rain, chilled through, died by the thousands during the storm.

The great flood of 1861-62 was the Noahian deluge of California floods. The season's rain- fall footed up nearly 50 inches. The valley of the Sacramento was a vast inland sea and the city of Sacramento was submerged and almost ruined. Relief boats, on their errands of mercy, leaving the channels of the rivers, sailed over inundated ranches, past floating houses and wrecks of barns, through vast flotsams made up of farm products, farming implements and the carcasses of horses, sheep and cattle, all drifting out to sea. In our county, on account of the smaller area of the valleys, there was but little loss of property. The rivers spread over the lowlands, but stock found safety from the flood on the hills. The Santa Ana River for a time rivaled the "Father of Waters" in magnitude. In the town of Anaheim, four iniles from the river, the water ran four feet deep and spread in an unbroken sheet to the Coyote hills, three miles beyond. The Arroyo Seco, swollen to a mighty river, brought down from the mountains and cañons great rafts of driftwood, which were scat- tered over the plains below the city and furnished fuel to the poor people of the city for several years. It began raining on December 24, 1861, and continued for thirty days with but two slight interruptions. The Star published the following local: "A phenomenon-On Tuesday last the sun made its appearance. The phenom- enon lasted several minutes and was witnessed by a great number of persons."

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Historical and biographical record of Los Angeles and vicinity : containing a history of the city from its earliest settlement as a Spanish pueblo to the closing year of the nineteenth century ; also containing biographies of well known citizens of the past and present, Part 22

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918 Publication date: 1901 Publisher: Chicago : Chapman Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 996

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1901
Publisher: Chicago : Chapman Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 996