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 34
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During the succeeding ten years a number of transfers were made of the rancho or parts of it between B. D. Wilson, J. S. Griffin, Phineas Banning and others. Prior to 1870 the land had been used for pasturage of cattle and sheep. In April, 1870, the first scheme for planting a fruit growing colony on it was promulgated. In the Los Angeles Weekly Star, of April 30, 1870, and in subsequent numbers for several weeks, appears the prospectus of the "San Pasqual Plantation." I quote a portion of it:
"The tract of land selected is a portion of the San Pasqual ranch in Los Angeles County, com- prising 1,750 acres of the finest quality. A ditch which forms the northern boundary of the tract at a cost of $10,000 has also been purchased. The ditch furnishes in the driest seasons sufficient water to irrigate the entire tract.
"It is proposed to cultivate . this land with oranges, lemons, olives, nuts, raisins, grapes, etc., and to commence at once. For this purpose the above company has been formed, with a capital of $200,000, divided into 4,000 shares of $50 each. Payments to be made in regular and easy install- ments as follows: $to per share at date of sub- scription and $5 each year afterward till the whole amount is paid. All money to be used in paying for the land and cultivating the same." Officers, John Archibald, president; R. M. Widney, vice-president; W. J. Taylor, secretary; London and San Francisco Bank, treasurer; J. A. Eaton, general agent. Subscription books were opened at the office of R. M. Widney in the Hellman Bank Building; but evidently the stock did not go off like hot cakes. The scheme fell into a state of "innocuous desuetude" then passed from the memory even of the oldest inhabitant of Pasadena. The tract named in the prospectus is the "Widney tract," which Dr. Reid mentions but does not locate.
The colonization scheme that indirectly brought about the peopling of the San Pasqual had its in- ception in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the winter of 1872-73. It was to have been called the Cali- fornia colony of Indiana; but the colony did not materialize. The money panic that followed the failure of Jay Cooke and Black Friday in Wall
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street financially shipwrecked the projectors of the colony and left their committee that had been sent to spy out the land stranded in Los Angeles.
D. M. Berry, one of the most active promoters of the colony scheme, on the invitation of Judge B. S. Eaton, visited the San Pasqual rancho and was delighted with the valley. After his return to the city, he, J. H. Baker and Calvin Fletcher, all that were left of the projected California colony, went to work to organize an association to buy the San Pasqual lands.
At a meeting held in the real estate office of Berry & Elliott, that stood on what is now part of the site of the Baker Block, of Los Angeles, the following persons were present in person or represented by proxy: B. S. Eaton, T. F. Croft, D. M. Berry, A. O. Bristol, Jabez Banbury, H.G. Bennett, Calvin Fletcher, E. J. Vawter, H. J. Holmes, J. M. Mathews, Nathan Kimball, Jesse Yarnell, Mrs. C. A. Vawter, N. R. Gibson, T. B. Elliott (by proxy), P. M. Green, A. O. Porter, W. T. Clapp, John H. Baker.
It was decided to incorporate under the name of the San Gabriel Orange Grove Association. The capital stock was fixed at $25,000, divided into 100 shares of $250 each. In December, 1873, the association purchased the interest of Dr. J. S. Griffin in the San Pasqual rancho, consisting of about 4,000 acres. Fifteen hundred acres of tlie choicest land in the tract was subdivided into lots, varying in size from 15 to 60 acres. One share of stock wasconsidered equivalent to 15 acres of land; and when the distribution was made, Jan- uary 27, 1874, each stockholder made his selection according to his interest in the corporation. 'Tlie one and two share men were allowed first choice, and such was the diversity of the land and the diversity of taste that when the land was all appor- tioned each one had gotten the piece he wanted .*
The settlement was called the Indiana Colony, although the majority of the colonists were not ex-Hoosiers. The colony was a success from tlie beginning. The colonists were the right men in the right place.
"It was a singular fact," says Mrs. Jeanne C. Carr, "that there was not a professional, and hardly a practical, horticulturist or farmer among them: but the spell of the neighboring orchards and vineyards soon transformed them into enthu- siastic culturists of the orange and the vine."
April 22, 1875. the settlement ceased to be tlie Indiana Colony, and officially became Pasadena. To Dr. T. B. Elliott, the originator of the Cali- fornia Colony scheme, belongs the credit of con- ferring on Pasadena its euphonious name. The word is of Indian origin (Chippewa dialect), and means crown of the valley.
So rapidly were the Indiana Colony lands ab- sorbed by settlers that in four years after their purchase only a few small tracts were left unsold. In 1876 B. D. Wilson threw on the market about 2,500 acres, lying eastward of Fair Oaks avenue. This was the Lake Vineyard Land and Water Company Tract. The settlers on this tract were known as "east siders." while the original colo- nists were the "west siders," Fair Oaks avenue being the division line. Chance more often than design has fixed the location of our American cities, and so it was with the city of Pasadena. The Indiana colonists had planted the nucleus of their town on Orange Grove avenue, near Cali- fornia street, where the first schoolhouse was built and the first churches located; but a west- sider, L. D. Hollingsworth, built a small build- ing near the corner of Fair Oaks avenue and Colorado street, opened a store and secured the post-office, which had once been discontinued, because no one would serve as postmaster at the salary of one dollar a month. Then a black- smith shop and a meat market were located near the store, and B. D. Wilson donated near these five acres for a school site, and the germ of the future city was planted; but it was of slow growth at first. A correspondent in the Los A11- geles Herald, writing June 5, 1880, describes the town as consisting of "a store and post-office building, a blacksmith shop and a meat market at the cross roads near the center of the settle- tlement."
No one had dreamed as yet of a city in the val- ley. The people were devoted to orange culture, and their pride and ambition was to produce tlie finest citrus fruits in Southern California. At the great citrus fair held in Los Angeles, Marclı, 1881, Pasadena was awarded the first premium over all competitors for the largest and best ex- hibit of the kind ever made in the state, and again in the fall of the same year she carried off another first premium.
In the meantime, the town was growing in a leisurely way. The eastern tourist had found that it was a good place to stop at. The great Raymond Hotel had been built on the top of Ray- mond hill, where it could be "seen of all men;" and smaller hotels and boarding-houses opened their doors for the stranger and health seeker.
The San Gabriel Valley Railroad was opened for travel September 16, 1885, between Los An- geles and Pasadena.
Early in 1886 the first reverberations of the boom began to be heard. The great Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad system was seeking an outlet to the Pacific. Pasadena was destined to be on the main trunk line of this transconti- mental road. The city was designed for something
*Dr. Reid's History of Pasadena.
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
greater than a business center of the valley. The echoes of the boom grew londer. The five-acre school lot that B D. Wilson had donated the San Pasqual district ten years before was cut up into town lots, and on March 12, 1886, offered at auc- tion. When the sale was over it was found that the thirty-five lots carved ont of the school site had brought an aggregate of $44,772. Ten years before, when Wilson donated it, $400 would have been considered a big price for it. Such a per- centage of gain staggered the most enthusiastic Pasadenian; and the boom grew louder. It paid better to cultivate town lots than citrus fruits. So orange orchards were planted with white stakes, and the ax cut swaths through the groves for prospective streets.
Subdivisions and additions were thick as leaves in Valambrosia. The outlying districts-South Pasadena, Altadena, Lamanda Park, Olivewood, were doing their best to ontrival the metropolis of the valley. The whole valley and the foot- hills of the mountains seemed destined to become a city of vast proportions and magnificent dis- tances. At the acme of the boom, in August, 1887, a single acre in the business center of the city was valued at more than the entire rancho of 13,000 acres was worth 1 5 years before. Inflation of valnes had reached the bursting point, and the bubble burst. Then financial "disasters followed fast and followed faster." The "millionaires of a day," the boomers, saw their wealth shrivel and values shrink, until there was nothing left- nothing left on which they could realize.
When the boom was over-when the blare of brass bands and the voice of the auctioneer were no longer heard in the land, then the old-timers and the new-comers, or such of them as had not departed with the boom, proceeded to take an ac- count of stock. The exhibit was not encouraging. The real estate boomer and the cottony scale had devastated the orange groves, once the pride and boast of Pasadena. But avenging fates, in the shape of unfortunate creditors and victimized purchasers, drove away the boomers, and the cot- tony scale found its Nemesis in the Australian lady-bug. The indomitable courage and industry that created the groves rehabilitated them. Per- severance, coupled with intelligence, won. The outlying groves that were not wholly ruined were redeemed. Corner stakes were plowed under and streets planted with trees. After a two-years' struggle with debts and discouragements, the city, too, freed itself from its incubus. Since 1891 its course has been upward and onward.
After all, the boom was not an evil unmixed with good. Indeed, it is a question whether the good in it did not preponderate. The rapidity with which Pasadena was built in 1886 and 1887
has seldom been paralleled in the history of town building. In 1887 nearly $2,000,000 were in- vested in buildings, and these were mostly sub- stantial and costly structures. After the depres- sion was over these found tenants again, and building has gone steadily onward until to-day no other city of its size can show more palatial private residences or finer business blocks than Pasadena-the Crown of the Valley.
It is impossible to give an extended account of many prominent events in the history of Pasa- dena. The following annals of events will be found useful for reference. (Most of the data given is compiled from Dr. Reid's History of Pasadena. )
ANNALS OF PASADENA. 1873.
December 13-San Gabriel Orange Grove As- sociation incorporated.
1874.
Jannary 27-Distribution of lots in the asso- ciation to stockholders.
September 10-First school opened. Miss Jennie Clapp, teacher. (Now Mrs. F. J. Culver.) September 12-First election in Pasadena. (School.)
1875.
February 7-First sermon preached in Pasa- dena. Rev. W. C. Mosher, Presbyterian min- ister, delivered it.
March 12-First wedding, Miss Millie Locke to Charles H. Watts.
March 15-Postoffice established. Josiah Locke, postmaster.
March 27-First church organized (Presby- terian).
April 22-The name Pasadena officially adopted.
December 30-Postoffice discontinued.
1876.
First church building erected ( Presbyterian ).
September 21-Postoffice re-established. H. T. Hollingsworth, postmaster.
June 13-First death in the colony, William Green Porter, aged 8, son of A. O. Porter.
1879.
First hotel, the Lake Vineyard House, built.
February 14-Pasadena Lodge, No. 173, In- dependent Order of Good Templars, organized.
December 18-Pasadena Lodge, No. 151, An- cient Order United Workmen, instituted.
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
1880.
March 24-First Citrus Fair held in Pasadena. 1881.
Pasadena Packing Company started. First manufacturing industry in the town.
1883.
August 3-First newspaper, the Pasadena Chronicle, established. C. M. Daley, printer; Ben E. Ward, editor.
October 22-Pasadena Lodge, No. 272, F. & A. M., instituted.
1884.
February 26-Pasadena Public Library opened.
November 21-Pasadena Bank (now First National) organized.
1885.
March 3 to 6-Second great Citrus Fair held. September 16-First railroad, the Los Angeles & San Gabriel Valley, opened for travel.
October 10-First franchise for a street railroad in Pasadena granted to Stephen Townsend.
November 28-John F. Godfrey Post, No. 93, Grand Army of the Republic, organized.
December 30- Pasadena Lodge, No. 324, I. O. O. F., instituted.
1886.
March 12 -- Great auction sale of school house tract lots. Beginning of the boom.
May 13-Pasadena incorporated as a city. Population, 2,700.
September 27. Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation organized.
September 30 .- First street car line opened for public travel.
November 13-The Colorado Street Railroad line opened for travel.
November 17-Raymond Hotel opened.
1887.
February 9-First daily newspaper, Pasadena Star, issued.
October 8-City fire department established.
1888.
March-Pasadena Electric Light and Power Company organized.
April 12-First Board of Trade organized.
1889.
February 13-Grand Opera House opened. (Cost of building, $100,000.)
July 1-Free mail delivery commenced.
July 12- The Pasadena and Mount Wilson Toll Road Company incorporated.
1890.
March 12-Los Angeles Terminal Railroad, then known as the "Cross Road," opened for travel.
August 7-Pasadena Chapter, No 108, Order of Eastern Star, instituted.
Population (United States census) 4,882.
1891.
The Pasadena and Mount Wilson toll road completed.
April 23-24-President Benjamin Harrison and two members of his cabinet visit Pasadena.
November 2-Throop University opened.
December 10-Great wind and rain storm. Churches wrecked, houses unroofed and shade trees destroyed.
1892.
September 24-Mount Lowe named for Prof. Thaddeus Lowe.
Name of Throop University changed to Throop Polytechnic Institute.
October 21-Columbus Day celebrated with a grand parade.
1893.
July 4-First car ascends the great incline on the Mount Lowe Railroad.
August 23-Public celebration of the opening of Mount Lowe Railroad to travel.
December 21 -Father Throop Day.
1894.
Mount Lowe Observatory built.
April-Pasadena and Los Angeles Electric Railroad incorporated.
November 1-Pasadena Daily Nca's estab- lished.
1895.
February 19-Pasadena and Los Angeles Elec- tric Railroad completed.
April 14-Raymond Hotel destroyed by fire. June 15-Branch of Southern Pacific Railroad completed to Pasadena.
August-Trolley road from Echo Mountain to Alpine Tavern completed.
1896.
Lincoln avenue school house built.
Mount Lowe Railroad transferred to new man- agement.
Contest over change of right of way of the Southern California Railway, straightening curve in the line north of Colorado street.
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
1897.
Reorganization of the Pasadena and Los An- geles Electric Railway management; old organ- izers go out.
Annex to the Hotel Green completed at a cost of $225,000.
Hotel Painter changed to La Pintoresca.
Two hundred and sixty-three new houses built in Pasadena during the year.
1898.
May 7-Company I, numbering 102 officers and men, recruited in Pasadena, went to San Francisco as part of the Seventh California Regi- ment Infantry to take part in the Spanish war.
'Agitation of the municipal ownership of water begun. Water supply very limited.
Farmers' Club organized.
Lincoln Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church built.
1899.
California cycle way begun.
First Poultry Show held.
Southern California convention of Farmers' Clubs met; 42 clubs represented.
I 900.
January 1-Great Flower Festival held; fifty thousand people present.
July 7-Transfer of the Mount Lowe Railroad to the Southern Pacific Company.
September 21-Addition to the Public Library completed at a cost of $35,000. Capacity of the library building doubled.
West Hall of the Throop Polytechnic Institute completed at a cost of $15,000.
First Methodist Episcopal Church built; cost, $60,000.
Population (United States census) 9, 117.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
OTHER CITIES AND TOWNS.
OMONA, the third city of Los Angeles County in size, is a child of the colony era of the early '7os, when the Indiana Colony (now Pasadena) Santa Monica, San Fer- nando, the American Colony and Artesia were ushered into existence; while she bears the name of the Grecian goddess or nymph who was the patroness of fruits, it is not probable the founders of the town delved into Greek mythology to find a name. The name was no doubt a suggestion from the Grange-a bucolic secret order very pop- nlar in the county at that time. Pomona, Ceres and Flora were the three goddesses (personated at Grange meetings by three young ladies) who were supposed to look after the farmers' interests in fruits, grain and flowers. As the settlement was designed for a fruit growing colony, it was appropriately given the name of Pomona (the Goddess of Fruits).
Early in 1875 Louis Phillips contracted to sell to P. C. Tonner, Cyrus Burdick and Francisco Palomares a tract containing about 2,700 acres of
the Vejar portion of the San José Rancho. This rancho, containing about 22,000 acres, was origin- ally granted by Governor Alvarado to Ignacio Palomares and Ricardo Vejar, April 19, 1837. It lies in the eastern part of this county, adjoin- ing San Bernardino County.
Tonner and his associates sold their purchase shortly after they made it to the Los Angeles Immigration and Land Co operative Association. This association was incorporated, December 10, 1874, with a capital stock of $250,000, divided into 2,500 shares, at the par value of $100 per share. Its board of directors consisted of the following: Thomas A. Garey, president; C. E. White, vice-president; L. M. Holt, secretary; Milton Thomas, manager; R. M. Town assistant manager and H. G. Crow, treasurer. The prin- cipal object of the association was the subdivision of large land holdings and the placing of these 011 the market in small tracts for settlement. The company surveyed and subdivided 2,500 acres of its purchase. The town of Pomona was laid off in
I2
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
the center; 640 acres adjoining the town site was subdivided into five acre lots and the remainder of the 2,500 into forty acre tracts. In Novem- ber, 1875, the town had a hotel, a drug and pro- vision store, a dry goods store, a grocery and meat market and eight or ten dwelling houses. On the 22, 23 and 24 of February, 1876, a great auction sale of land and town lots was held on the town site. The first day's sale realized nineteen thousand dollars, which was a big thing in those days. The farm land brought an aver- age of $64 per acre. A number of artesian wells had been sunk and a reservoir holding two and a-half million gallons of water constructed. The Southern Pacific Railroad, which in conformity with the requirements of the subsidy granted by the county in 1873 had been built eastward to Spadra, was extended to Pomona, and the town and settlement seemed to be on the high road to prosperity. But disaster struck it; first was the dry season of 1876-77 and next a fire on the night of July 30, 1877, that swept away nearly all of the town. These checked the growth of the town and settlement. In 1880 the popula- tion was only 130. About 1881 it began to grow again. In 1882-83 Mills and Wicks developed a new artesian belt. From that time the town has grown steadily. December 31, 1887. it was in- corporated as a city of the fifth class. It is the business center of a rich agricultural district, the leading products of which are oranges, lemons, limes, olives, peaches, pears, prunes and apricots. Fruit growing is supplemented by hay, grain, potatoes, etc. Below the fruit belt are damp lands which produce large crops of alfalfa. The estimated output of oranges for Pomona this sea- son (1899-1900) is one thousand car loads. The Pomona Cannery has a capacity of 30,000 cans a day and gives employment during the canning season to 400 men, women and boys. The first newspaper in Pomona, the Times, appeared on the 7th of October, 1882. During the boom the paper was issued as a daily; but the daily edition was discontinued in 1891. The town and sur- rounding country supports three papers-the Times, Progress and Review. It has three banks. Nineteen churches supply the spiritual needs of the town, they are: First Day Advent, Seventh Day Advent, Baptist, Catholic, Christadelphian, Christian Science, Church of Christ, Congrega- tional, Episcopal, German Lutherau, Holiness, Methodist Episcopal North, Methodist Episcopal South, African Methodist Episcopal, Pentecostal Band, Plymouth Brethren, Presbyterian, Uni- tarian, Universalist. It has a public library con- taining 4,000 volumes. The Pomona Library Association was organized in 1887. The library as well as the reading room annexed are open
every day and evening. A marble statue of Pomona graces the library. Pomona has excel- lent schools with a corps of 40 teachers and alı enrollment of 1,250 pupils (1899). All depart- ments are complete from the kindergarten to the high school. Pomona is 33 miles easterly from Los Angeles by the Southern Pacific Railroad. The Santa Fe runs on the northern side of the city. A motor road from the business portion of the city to North Pomona station of the Santa Fe gives easy access to that railroad. The popula- tion of Pomona in 1890 was 3,634, in 1900 5,526.
SPADRA, on the Southern Pacific Railroad, thirty miles east of Los Angeles, is one of the oldest towns in the eastern part of the county. It was founded in 1866 by W. W. Rubottom. He built a commodious hotel here, which had a splendid reputation for excellent meals and en- joyed a liberal patronage in the old staging days. Spadra was for some time the terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad, when it was pushing its transcontinental road eastward. With the ex- tension of the railroad to Pomona and the rapid growth of that enterprising town Spadra fell into a decline.
CLAREMONT, the beautiful, as it was named by its enthusiastic founder, is a child of the boom. Its magnificent tourist hotel failed to at- tract the tourist. For a time it stood idle, then it was utilized for a college. Claremont is a thriving college town, the seat of Pomona Col- lege, a Congregational educational institution. The Pearson Hall of Science, costing $25,000, a gift to the college, was erected during the year I899. The greater part of the population is made up of college professors, students and the families of those who have located in the town to educate their children. The town is 36 miles east of Los Angeles on the Santa Fe Railroad.
LORDSBURG was laid out during the boom by I. W. Lord. An expensive hotel was built, which, after it had stood idle for some time, was sold to the Dunkers, or German Baptists, for a college. A Dunker settlement has grown up around Lordsburg. The country tributary is devoted to orange growing. The town is 33 miles east of Los Angeles, on the Santa Fe Rail- road.
SAN DIMAS is one of the many towns which owes its existence to the boom. It was laid off early in 1887 by the San José Land Company. It was designed by its founders to be the metropolis of the acreage possessions in the San José ranch. Lots sold readily for a time at fancy prices. The reaction came and prices fell. The town, however, recovered from its depression and has gone steadily forward. It is surrounded by good fruit lands. It has excellent railroad
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
facilities. It is on the main trunk line of the Santa Fe system and on the Covina branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad, twenty-nine miles by the latter and thirty-one miles by the former, east of Los Angeles.
GLENDORA, twenty-seven miles east of Los Angeles on the main transcontinental line of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, was founded in 1887 by George Whitcomb. The name Glendora is a combination of glen and the last syllables of Mrs. Whitcomb's name, Ledora. About 300 acres were subdivided into town lots and put on sale the latter part of March, 1887. Three hundred were disposed of on the first day of the sale. The town has made a steady growth. It has a beautiful location. Located on the upper miesa, its altitude places it in the frostless belt and renders it comparatively free from fog. The country contiguous to it is devoted to orange growing. The town is a shipping point for a large amount of citrus fruits.
AZUSA CITY is one of the cities of the boom. The town plat was surveyed in April, 1887, and the lots put on sale. So great was the demand for lots that purchasers stood in line in front of the office all night, and it is said $500 was paid for the second place in the line. The town built up rapidly for a time, then came to a halt. For the past four or five years its growth has been steady. It is a shipping point for the orange crop of a considerable district. It has a bank, a newspaper-the Pomo Tropic and an ice and cold storage company. It is located on the Santa Fe Railroad, 25 miles east of Los Angeles.
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