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 32

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 32

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).

Don David W. Alexander was captain of the port from 1844 to 1846. After the conquest, in 1846, Commodore Stockton reappointed him to the position. He, in partnership with Juan Temple up to 1849, had a general merchandise store at San Pedro and did about all of the for- warding business of the port. Goods were freighted to Los Angeles in carts, each cart drawn by two yoke of oxen yoked by the horns. The carts were similar to the Mexican-carrétas, ex- cept that they had spoked and tired wheels in- stead of solid ones. A regular freight train was composed of ten carts and forty oxen. Freight charges were $1 per cwt.

During the Mexican era and for four or five years after the conquest the only means of con- veying passengers from San Pedro to the city was on horseback. A caballada (band of horses) was kept in pasture near the landing, when a vessel was sighted entering the harbor the mustangs were corraled, lassoed and saddled, ready for their riders. If the riders happened to be new- comers unused to bucking broncos the passenger sometimes parted company with his steed on the journey and arrived in the city on foot. In 1852 stages were put on the route by Banning & Alex- ander. In 1853 J. J. Tomlinson put on an oppo- sition line, and wagons drawn by horses super- seded the Mexican ox-carts in conveying goods.

The rivalry and racing between the stages of Banning and Tomlinson furnished many an ex- citing episode to the passengers between the port and the city in the early '50s. Banning and Tomlinson were rivals in freighting, lighterage, warehousing, and indeed in about everything per- taining to shipping and transportation.

Banning conducted his business in the ancient

177

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

adobe warehouse on the bluff and had besides it some smaller buildings under the bluff. Ton- linson built a warehouse wear Captain Timm's place. He liad a wharf (partly made of the hull of an old schooner) which extended out over the reef. His stage house, stables and corrals for his mules and horses were located near the ware- house.

When the stages were first put on between San Pedro and Los Angeles the fare was ten dollars then seven dollars and fifty cents-and finally it was fixed at five dollars. When rivalry was keen between Banning and Tomlinson passengers were sometimes carried for a dollar. Before the completion of the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad, in 1869, the regular fare was two dollars and a half from steamer to the city. Freight was ten dollars per ton.

The first steamer that ever entered the Bay of San Pedro was the Gold Hunter, which anchored in the port in 1849. She was a side-wheel vessel which made the voyage from San Francisco to Mazatlan, touching at way ports. The Gold Hunter was followed by the steamers Ohio, Southerner, Sea Bird and Goliath, in 1851, and the America in 1854. The line at first was owned by a New Orleans company. Later on it was purchased by "Commodore" John T. Wright. Semi-monthly trips to San Pedro and monthly to San Diego were made regularly. The price of passage in the cabin between San Pedro and San Francisco in the early '50s was fifty-five dollars. The cabin bill of fare consisted of salt beef, hard bread, potatoes, and coffee without milk or sugar. Freight was twenty-five dollars per ton. The trip occupied four days. The way ports were Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Monterey. There were no wharves or lighters on the route; passengers and freight were landed in the steamer's boats. About 1860 the fare had been reduced to $25 and freight to $15 per ton. In 1869 the fare was $20, and it remained at that figure until the S. P. R. R. was completed from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

In 1858 Banning, to put a greater distance between himself and his rival, founded the town of New San Pedro on a tract of land that he had some time previously acquired from Manuel Dominguez and which was located at the head of the San Pedro slough. Here he built a wharf and warehouses and removed all his shipping and freight interests.

During the Civil war he had a monopoly of the lighterage business, and the locating of Camp Drum near the town which was now called Wil- mington gave the place quite a boom. All the army supplies for the troops in Arizona and New Mexico passed through it and there was a con-

siderable force of soldiers stationed at the camp in the town. Tomlinson died and Captain Timms, after an ineffectual rivalry with Banning, failed. Then Banning had a monopoly on all the trade and travel of Southern California and Arizona; it all had to arrive and depart on his boats and stages; Wilmington was the great seaport of the South.

That genial humorist and traveler, the late J. Ross Browne, who visited Wilmington in 1864, thus describes the town and the conditions that existed there then:

"Wilmington is an extensive city, located at the head of a slough, in a pleasant neighborhood of sand banks and marshes. There are not a great many houses in it as yet, but there is a great deal of room for houses when the popula- tion gets ready to build them. The streets are broad and beautifully paved with small sloughs, ditches, bridges, lumber, dry-goods boxes, and * the carcasses of dead cattle. % *

"The city fathers are all centered in Banning, who is mayor, councilman, constable and watch- man-all in one. He is the great progenitor of Wilmington. Touch Wilmington and you touch Banning. It is his specialty-the offspring of his genius. And a glorious genius has Phineas B., in his way. Who among the many thousands who have sought health and recreation at Los Angeles within the past ten years has not been a recipient of Banning's bounty in the way of accommodation ? His stages are ever ready-his horses ever the fastest. * * I retract all I said about Wilmington - or most of it."

Early in the '50s Los Angeles made an effort to secure the Salt Lake trade. The Mormons there had a good liome market for their products-the overland travel to California taking their agricul- tural surplus and paying for it in coin. It was difficult for the Mormons to procure mercantile supplies. The road to the west of Salt Lake over the Sierra Nevadas and that to the east over the Rocky Mountains were usually blocked by snow half the year. The road to Los Angeles was open summer and winter and trade sought the most available route.

Just when the first venture in trade by this route was made I have not been able to ascertain. I find in the Weekly Star that Banning & Alex- ander, in May, 1855, dispatched for Salt Lake a wagon train of fifteen ten-mule teams heavily freighted with merchandise. The venture was a successful one financially. The teams returned in September, consuming four months in the round trip. The route was by the old Mormon trail through the Cajon Pass, across the desert to the Rio Virgin, then up that river and over the divide to the Salt Lake Valley.

178

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

In the Star of February 11, 1859, we read: "The trade through and from Los Angeles to Utah is rapidly on the increase. Since the first of January there has left this city about sixty wagons loaded with goods for that market, the value from $60,000 to $70,000. There is now on the way here not less than one hundred tons of goods in transit to Utah. The transportation will take abont one hundred six-mule teams."

March Ist: "Since the first ult., including those that will leave to-day, there has left this city 110t less than one hundred and fifty wagons loaded with goods for Utah. The gross valne of the goods here must be about one hundred and eighty thousand dollars."

March 11th: "Goller & Tomlinson sent forty teams to Salt Lake loaded with merchandise."

"In April, Bachman & Co.'s agent returned from a three-months' trip to Salt Lake with six loaded teams of goods. His own share of the profits amounted to $2,000 per month."

The trade of Los Angeles increased and ex- tended away beyond Utah-into Idaho and Mon- tana.

Mr. H. D. Barrows, correspondent of the San Francisco Bulletin, writing under date of January 26, 1866, says: * : * * "Last winter they commenced coming down from Bannock, Idaho, four hundred and fifty miles beyond Salt Lake, after goods and live stock. Considerable num- ·bers of both horses and sheep were driven from here to Bannock and Boise. This winter there are parties here after goods all the way from Helena, Montana, five or six hundred miles be- yond Salt Lake, away up near the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers. Thirteen or fourteen hundred miles of land transportation for heavy freight by mule trains seems appalling, but there is no help from it a portion of the year. In summer they get supplies up the Missouri River to within 175 miles of Helena.

"One of these parties (Mr. Lusk) is loading ten teams and offers thirty cents per pound for con- siderable additional freight that he has not facili- ties for transporting himself. He expects to be two and a half to three months on the road, ar- riving in Montana in early spring, when, for a well assorted stock, he can get his own prices."

One of the novel means of transportation during the '50s in California and Arizona was a train of camels. During Pierce's ad- ministration, in 1856, some astute individual connected with the War Department conceived the brilliant idea that the camel might be successfully used in transporting government supplies to the military stations in Califor- nia, Arizona aud New Mexico. Accordingly Commodore David D. Porter was authorized to

purchase in Africa a certain number of camels. With the assistance of Philip Tedro, known as "Hi Jolly," seventy-six camels were purchased and shipped under charge of "Hi Jolly" to Indi- anola, Texas. From there they were sent to Al- buquerque, New Mexico, where a caravan was made up under the superintendence of Ned Beale to proceed to Fort Tejon, California. The expe- dition consisted of forty- four citizens and an escort of twenty soldiers. The camels packed about 1000 pounds and found their own subsistence on the way. Their route from Albuquerque to Fort Tejon lay along the thirty-fifth parallel. The caravan made several trips between Albuquerque and Fort Tejon, and were used between different military stations in California and Arizona. They were frequently seen in Los Angeles. The Starof January 8, 1858, says: "A drove of fourteen camels under the management of Lieutenant Beale arrived in Los Angeles. They were on their way from Fort Tejon to the Colorado River and the Mormon country; and each animal was packed with one thousand pounds of provisions and military stores. With this load they made from thirty to forty miles per day, finding their own subsistence in even the most barren country, and going without water from six to ten days at a time." July 21, 1858: "The camels, eight in number, came into town from Fort Tejon after provisions for that camp. The largest ones pack a ton and can travel (light) sixteen miles an hour." It would seem that with such qualifica- tions-carrying a ton, traveling sixteen miles an honr, and going ten days at a time without water-that the experiment of navigating the sandy wastes of the Southwest with the "ship of the desert" ought to have been a success, but it was not. The American soldier and teamster could not be metamorphosed into an Arabian camel driver and the camiel himself could not be- come accustomed to American ways and methods. There was always trouble, mutiny and discord on an expedition in which the camel was the ship- ping agent. Finally the government condemned the whole camel outfit and sold the animals to two Frenchmen, who took them to Reese River, Nevada, where they were used in packing salt to Virginia City. From there they were taken to Arizona and were used for some time in packing ore from the Silver King mine to Yuma down the Gila River. The Frenchmen were no more suc- cessful in adapting themselves to the habits of the camel than were the American soldiers, so, tiring of their hump-backed burden-bearers, they turned them loose upon the desert near Maricopa Wells. Their ungainly forms looming up sud- denly on the desert frequently stampeded the 11111les of the freiglit trains and scattered wagons

179

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and freight over the plains. The drivers, out of revenge, shot the camels. In the fall of 1882 several were caught and shipped east for a show. A few may yet be running wild in the deserts of Southern Nevada; and thus disastrously ended the first and last experiment of navigating the arid wastes of the Southwest with the "ship of the desert"-of utilizing the camel in America.

RAILROADS.

The scheme of uniting Los Angeles with its port, San Pedro, by railroad was agitated for a number of years before it was put into effect. As early as May, 1861, the state senate passed a bill authorizing the board of supervisors of Los An- geles County to subscribe one hundred thousand dollars and the mayor and common council to subscribe fifty thousand dollars to the capital stock of a railroad between Los Angeles and San Pedro. In 1863 an act for the construction of such a road passed both houses of the legisla- ture. In December, 1864, the scheme was again discussed in a convention of citizens of Los An- geles and San Bernardino, but nothing came of it. The terribly dry years of 1863 and 1864 had paralyzed all business in the southern country.

In 1866, when Hon. Phineas Banning was in the senate, he introduced a bill to build a road from Los Angeles to Wilmington. Remonstrances were filed against this as it would make the ter- minus of the road four miles from steamboat an- chorage, and would put the merchants and trav- eling public to the expense of lighterage and to delays from low tides and the uncertain channel of the Wilmington slough; and, besides, an "ad- ditional debt of one hundred thousand dollars," in the opinion of the protestants, "would so oppress the taxpayers of the city as to make their burdens unbearable." The project slum- bered two years longer. In 1868 bills were passed by the legislature authorizing the board of supervisors of the county to take and subscribe one hundred and fifty thousand dollars towards the capital stock of a railroad between Los An- geles and Wilmington, and the mayor and com- mon council to subscribe seventy-five thousand dollars toward the same object. An election was called for March 24, 1868, in the various pre- cincts of the county to vote upon the question of granting a subsidy. The result of the election was favorable. Ground was broken at Wilming- ton September 19th following, and work was pushed vigorously. The cars for the railroad were all built at Wilmington, and a shipyard was established there in which a tug and passage boat for harbor duty was built.

On October 26, 1869, the last rail was laid, and the project that had been agitated nearly a decade

before was finally completed, and great was the rejoicing thereat. Freight and fare were still high. It cost six dollars to get a ton of freight from anchorage to Los Angeles, and Banning taxed you a dollar and a-half to take you from the steamer on his tug up the slough to Wilmington, and the railroad charged a dollar from there to the city; yet nobody complained, the charges were so much less than formerly. The advent of the railroad stimulated the growth of the city and increased its trade; the old pueblo grew ambitious to become a railroad center.

A new overland railroad was projected. It was to cross the continent by the Southern route. Starting from Lathrop, on the Central Pacific road, it was proposed to build a road up the San Joaquin Valley to its head, then cross over the Tehechapai range and down into the Mojave desert; from there its route was uncertain. It might go eastward to the Colorado on the thirty- fifth parallel, or, if sufficient inducements were offered, it might come down the Soledad Cañon and over the San Fernando mountains into Los Angeles and thence eastward to the Colorado. Negotiations were entered into between a com- mittee of thirty citizens and the magnates of the Southern Pacific, as the road was called. After considerable parleying the following agreement was reached: the Railroad Company would, within fifteen months after the announcement of a favorable vote on the proposition hereinafter named, agree to construct within the County of Los Angeles fifty miles of its main trunk road leading from San Francisco via Visalia through San Bernardinoto the Colorado River, connecting at Yuma with the Texas Pacific. Twenty-five miles of this were to be built north ward and twen- ty-five eastward from Los Angeles. This left the southeastern portion of the county out in the cold and objection was raised. To appease that portion the company agreed to build a branch road to Anaheim, to be completed in two years. In consideration of the foregoing the people were to vote a subsidy to the railroad company of five per cent. on the taxable property of the county. Two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars of this was to be paid in stock of the San Pedro and Los Angeles Railroad owned by the city and county, and three hundred and seventy-seven thousand dollars in twenty-year bonds of the county bearing seven per cent. In addition to this the city was to donate sixty acres for depot grounds. An election was called for Nov. 5, 1872, to vote on the proposition. The Texas Pacific had made a proposition to build from San Diego a railroad up the coast to Los Angeles, giving sixty miles of railroad in the county. The previous year (1871) a franchise had been

180

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

granted to Tom Scott to build from some point in Texas an overland line to San Diego. A lively contest ensued between the two roads to secure the acceptance of their several propositions. The war was really a triangular contest. The voters were divided between the Texas Pacific, the Southern Pacific and no subsidy to any rail- road. Pamphleteers and newspaper correspon- dents painted in roseate hues the era of prosperity that would dawn upon us when the neigh of the iron horse broke the stillness of our unpeopled wastes. "Taxpayer" and "Pro Bono Publico" bewailed the waste of the people's money and bemoaned the increase of taxes. The battle was fought to a finish and at the election on Nov. 5, the Southern Pacific won. The total donation amounted to about $610,000; and the gift of the Los Angeles and San Pedro road virtually gave the Southern Pacific control of the San Pedro Har- bor and a monopoly on our transportation that clung to us for years with the evertightening grip of the Old Man of the Sea.

The company began work both on the line northerly to San Fernando and easterly to Spadra. The first trains from Los Angeles to these two points were run April 24, 1874. Work on the Anaheim branch was commenced in the winter of 1873-74 and the first through train reached that town Jan. 17, 1875. This branch was sub- sequently extended to Santa Ana. The long tunnel situated about six miles north of San Fer- nando and twenty-seven miles from Los Angeles is the great engineering feat of this road. It passes under a spur of the San Fernando moun- tains and is six thousand nine hundred and sixty- four feet or nearly a mile and a quarter in length. Fifteen hundred men were employed on the work for over a year. The total cost was estimated at two million dollars.

The northern and the southern ends of the road were united September 6. 1876. Three hundred and fifty-five invited guests from Los Angeles met a deputation of fifty persons from San Francisco, including the Mayor of that city, and the President and Board of Directors of the road at Soledad station, where the point of union was made. Col. Charles Crocker, President of the road, drove the last spike, which was made of solid gold, with a silver hammer .* Speeches were made by Col. Crocker, Gen. D. D. Colton, Ex-Governor Downey, Mayor Beaudry, Mayor Bryant, Governor Stanford and Gen. Banning. After the celebration all of the party repaired to Los Angeles, where a grand banquet was held in

Union Hall (now the Jones Block, 175 N. Spring St.), followed by a grand ball which lasted until morning, when the San Franciscans returned to their home city on the first through train over the road from the Los Angeles end.

LOS ANGELES AND INDEPENDENCE RAILROAD COMPANY was incorporated in January, 1875. The purpose of the company was to build a rail- road beginning at Santa Monica and passing through Los Angeles and San Bernardino and from there via the Cajon Pass to Independence, Inyo County. Work was begin at once and the first train between Los Angeles and Santa Moni- ca was run December 1, 1875. A long wharf was built at Santa Monica and the ocean steam- ers stopped there for passengers and freight. The financial panic of 1875 and the dry years that followed put an end to the extension of the road. In 1878 it was sold to the Southern Pacific Rail- road Company. That company pulled down the long wharf because it interfered with its business at Wilmington, or rather because at that time it did not pay to maintain two shipping points.

THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA RAILROAD, as the western end of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe system is called, was completed in May, 1887. It asked no subsidy or concession, but paid for what it got. It absorbed the Los Angeles & San Gabriel Valley Railroad, which had been completed to Duarte in November, 1886. The Southern California road branched off from the Atlantic and Pacific at Barstow and came through the Cajon Pass to San Bernardino, and thence westward to Mud Springs, where the union was made with the San Gabriel Valley road, which had been extended eastward from Duarte to the point of union.

The Santa Fe system had in 1885 leased the right to ruu trains over the Southern Pacific road from Deming to Los Angeles. It obtained an interest in the Atlantic & Pacific between Albu- querque and Barstow, and the ownership of the Sonthern California road, and thus secured an un- broken line between Los Angeles and Chicago. The advantage of two transcontinental roads was felt immediately. Emigration poured in rapidly, real estate advanced in value unprecedentedly and the population of Los Angeles increased more in three years than it had done in a century. A few years later the Santa Fe obtained by purchase the Atlantic & Pacific road to Mojave. From there, using the Southern Pacific tracks, it con- nects at Bakersfield with what was formerly the Valley Road, which it has absorbed, thus giving it connection with San Francisco. The Santa Fe, in 1886, built from Colton, a road to San Diego, by way of Temacula and Fallbrook, but the great flood of 1889 destroyed the road through

*The spike and hammer were made and presented to the Com- pany by L. W. Thatcher, at that time a prominent jeweler of Los Angeles.

181

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL, RECORD.

the canon. That portion was not re-built. The Coast Line to San Diego was built in 1891 and this now constitutes part of its transcontinental system. It has also a branch to Santa Monica.

THE TERMINAL RAILROAD, or rather the east- ern end ofit from Los Angeles to Altadena, is built of the wreckage of several rapid transit, narrow gauge and dummy lines, the products of the boom, all of which came to grief when that financial bub- ble, "the boom," burst. The western end of it, from Los Angeles to San Pedro, via Long Beach and Rattlesnake Island, now Terminal Island, was completed in 1891. The opening of the road from Pasadena toits ocean terminus was celebrated November 14, 1891, by a grand excursion under

the management of the Pasadena Board of Trade. Its name, "terminal," was adopted on the suppo- sition that at no distant day it would become the terminus of some great transcontinental line. The supposition has not yet become a fact, but its managers and the public generally live in hope that it soon may be. Its acquisition of Rattle- snake Island gives it a magnificent ocean frontage, and the completion of the free harbor will make it immensely valuable.

Since the above was written the Terminal has been sold to the Salt Lake road or rather a large interest in it has been sold to Senator Clark, of Montana, who proposes to push the road through to Salt Lake.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

MISCELLANY-MAINLY STATISTICAL.

HE following statistics of population, schools, assessments, city and county, and vote at presidential elections, with the exception of two or three items, have been compiled from official sources. They are presented in con- venient form for reference:

POPULATION OF LOS ANGELES CITY.

Years.

No. Inhabitants.

1781 (founded)

official

1790.

141

1 800

315

1810

415

1820

650

1830

estimated

770

1840

1,250

1850

official

1,610

1860

4,399

1870

5,614

188c

11,183

1890

50,395

1 900.

102,479

POPULATION OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY.

1850

official

3,530

1860

II,333

1870.

15.309

1880

33,881

1890

101,454

1 900

170,298

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.

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 32

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