Historical and biographical record of southern California; containing a history of southern California from its earliest settlement to the opening year of the twentieth century, Part 23

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: Chicago, Chapman pub. co.
Number of Pages: 1366

USA > California > Historical and biographical record of southern California; containing a history of southern California from its earliest settlement to the opening year of the twentieth century > Part 23

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FEES AND SALARIES.

The first fee and salary bill of California was based upon prices ruling in the mining counties where a sheriff's fees amounted to more than the salary of the president of the United States. The liberal fees allowed for official services soon bankrupted the treasuries of the cow coun-

ties, and in 1851 they were petitioning the leg- islature for a reduction of fees. It cost $100 to hold an inquest on a dead Indian and as vio- lent death's were of almost daily or nightly oc- currence, the coroner's office was quite lucrative. Some of the verdicts of the coroner's juries showed remarkable familiarity with the decrees of the Almighty. On a native Californian named Gamico, found dead in the street, the verdict was "Death by the visitation of God." Of a dead Indian, found near the zanja, the Los Angeles Star says: "Justice Dryden and a jury sat on the body. The verdict was 'Death from intoxication or by the visitation of God.' Bacilio was a Christian Indian and was confessed by the reverend padre yesterday afternoon." The jurors were paid $10 each for sitting on a body. Coroner Hodges made the champion record on inquests. October 20, 1851, he held eleven in- quests in one day. These were held on Irving's band of horse thieves and robbers who were killed by the Cahuilla Indians in the San Ber- nardino mountains.

The criminal element had been steadily in- creasing in Los Angeles. In 1851, a military company was organized to aid the sheriff in keeping order. November 24, 1851, the court of session ordered that the sheriff cause fifty good lances to be made for the use of the vol- unteer company. The pioneer blacksmith, John Goller, made the lances and was paid $87.50 for the job. Goller also made a branding iron for the county. The county brand consisted of the letters "LA" three inches long. In January, 1852, the house occupied by Benjamin Hays, under lease from Felipe Garcia, was sublet by him to the county for a court house for the balance of his term, expiring November 16, 1853. The sum of $650 was appropriated by order of the court of sessions to pay the rent for the agreed term. The first building used for a court house was the old government house that Pio Pico bought from Isaac Williams for the capitol. Pico had resided in it during his term as governor. After the conquest two com- panies of United States Dragoons were quar- tered in it. A contract was let, July 8, 1851, to build a jail and John G. Nichols appointed at $6 a day to superintend the job, but some mis- understanding with the city arising, the build- ing was not erected, and September 13, 1851, the court ordered the sheriff to sell the adobes now on hand for use of jail at the highest market price and turn the money over to the clerk of the court.

The first county jail was the adobe building on the hill back of the Downey (then Temple) block used by the troops for a guard house. There were no cells in it. Staples were driven

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into a heavy pine log that reached across the building and short chains attached to the sta- ples were fastened to the handcuffs of the pris- oncrs. Solitary confinement was out of the question then. Indian culprits were chained to logs outside of the jail so that they could more fully enjoy the glorious climate of California. In 1853, the city and county built a jail on the present site of the Phillips block, northwest corner of Spring and Franklin streets. It was the first public building erected in the county.

The legislature of 1852 created the office of county supervisor. The first election for super- visors of the county was held June 14, 1852, and the following named persons elected : Jef- ferson Hunt, Julian Chavis, Francisco P. Tem- ple, Manuel Requena and Samuel Arbuckle. The board held its first meeting on the first Monday of July, 1852. Arbuckle was elected chairman. The supervisors transacted the civil business of the county.

The machinery of the county's government was now in full working order. We will turn our attention to other phases of its development.

THE FIRST DECADE OF COUNTY'S HISTORY, 1850-1860.

LAND GRANTS.

In what comprised the original county of Los Angeles there were during the Spanish and Mexican regimes sixty grants of land made. These varied in size from a grant of 44-36 acres to the Mission of San Juan Capistrano to the Rancho Ex-Mission of San Fernando, granted to Eulogio de Celis, containing 121,619.24 acres.

At the time of the conquest about all the land fit for pasturage had been sequestered from the public domain in the form of grants. The oldest grants made within what is now the county of Los Angeles are the Nietos and the San Rafael. According to Col. J. J. Warner's historical sketch, "The Nietos tract, embracing all the land between the Santa Ana and San Gabriel and from the sea to and including some of the hill land on its northeastern frontier, was granted by Governor Pedro Fages to Manuel Nieto in 1784.'

"The San Rafael tract, lying on the left bank of the Los Angeles river and extending to the Arroyo Seco, was granted by Governor Pedro Fages, October 20, 1784, and the grant was re- affirmed by Governor Borica, January 12, 1798, to José Maria Verdugo." If, as Col. Warner claims, the "Nietos tract" embraced all the land between the Santa Ana and the San Gabriel rivers, from the sea to the hills, Nictos' heirs did not hold it. Subsequently there were a number

of grants made in that territory. The Mission San Gabriel, previous to 1830, had possession of several subdivisions of this tract such as Las Bolsas, Alamitos, Los Coyotes, Puente and others. After the secularization of the missions all the lands held by the padres, except small tracts in the immediate neighborhood of the mission buildings, were granted to private owners.

Shortly after the admission of California to the Union the long-drawn-out legal contests over the confirmation of the Spanish and Mex- ican grants began. These contests, in somc cases, were waged for years before the United States Claims Commission, the various courts and the land commissioner at Washington, bc- fore they were settled. Litigation often ruined both the contesting parties, and when the case was finally decided the litigants, like in "Jarn- dyce vs. Jarndyce," had nothing left but bundles of legal documents. Even when a claimant did win and the decisions of courts and commis- sions gave him undisputed possession of his broad acres, it often happened that a cancerous mortgage, the result of litigation, was eating away his patrimony. The land grants in Los An- geles have all been confirmed and it is to be hoped that they will remain so. No greater blight can fall on a community than an attack upon the validity of its title to its lands.

In early times the county officials followed the Mexican plan of designating districts and legal subdivision by ranchos. August 7, 1851, the court of sessions "ordered that the county of Los Angeles be divided into six townships named as follows; and to comprehend the ranchos and places as follows to each appropri- ated." The first of these was the township of Los Angeles. There are few now living who could trace from the description given in the records the boundaries of Los Angeles township fifty years ago. Here is the description :

TOWNSHIP OF LOS ANGELES .- "The city of Los Angeles and the following ranchos, to-wit: Los Corralitos, Feliz, Verdugos, Ca- huenga, Tujunga, San Fernando, ex-Mission, San Francisco, Piro, Camulos, Cañada de los Alamos, La Liebre, El Tejon, Triumfo, Las Vergenes, Escorpion, Los Cuervos, San Anto- nio de la Mesa, Los Alamitos, Vicente Lugo, Arroyo, Seco, Encino, Maligo, Santa Monico, San Vicentes, Buenos Ayres, La Bayona, Rincon de los Bucy, Rodco de Las Aguas, La Cienega. La Centinela, Sausal Redondo, Palos Verdes, San Pedro, Los Dominguez, Rancho Nuevo, Paredon Blanco, Los Serritos, La Jaboneria. Rosa de Castilla."

"The residence of the authorities shall be in Los Angeles city."

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

IMMIGRANTS AND OVERLAND ROUTES.

Cattle raising continued to be the dominant industry. To make it successful under the con- ditions then existing it was necessary to hold the land in large tracts. The demand for beef caused by the rush of immigration to the state raised the price of cattle until a well-stocked rancho was more profitable than a gold mine. The overland travel by the various southern routes, all of which converged in Los Angeles, gave a home market for a considerable amount of the home products.

The Sonorese migration began in 1848 as soon as the news of the discovery of gold in California reached Mexico. While these gold- seekers were called Sonorese or Sonorians, they came from the different states of Northern Mex- ico, but in greater numbers from Sonora. The trail from Mexico by way of Aristo, Tucson, the Pima villages, across the desert and through the San Gorgonio Pass had been traveled for three-quarters of a century. Another branch of this trail crossed the desert from Yuma to Warner's ranch ; and then by way of Temecula, Jurupa and the Chino, reached Los Angeles. Along these trails from 1848 to 1852 came the Sonorese migration. These pilgrims to the shrine of Mammon were a hard lot. They were poor and ignorant and not noted for good mor- als. From Los Angeles northward, they invaria- bly traveled by the coast route, and in squads of from 50 to 100. Some of them brought their women and children with them. With their few possessions packed on donkeys and mules they tramped their weary way from Mexico to the mines. They were not welcomed to the land of gold. The Americans disliked them and the native Californians treated them with contempt. The men wore cotton shirts, white pantaloons, sandals and sombreros. Their apparel, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, "changed not," nor did they change it as long as a shred of it held together. The native Californians nick- named them "calzonares blancos" (white breeches), and imposed upon them when an opportunity offered. The story is told of a native Californian alcalde or justice of the peace who had his office near the old mission church of San Luis Obispo. When a band of these Sonorian pilgrims came along the highway which led past the old mission, they invariably stopped at the church to make the sign of the cross and to implore the protection of the saints. This gave the alcalde his opportunity. Station- ing his alguaciles or constables on the road to bar their progress, he proceeded to collect fifty cents toll of each pilgrim. If word was passed back to the squads behind and they attempted

to avoid the toll-gatherer by a detour to the right or left, the alcalde sent out his mounted constables and rounded up the poor Sonorians like so many cattle at a rodeo, then he and his alguaciles committed highway robbery on a small scale. Retributive justice overtook this unjust judge. The vigilantes hanged' him, not, however, for tithing the Sonorese, but for horse stealing.

The Sonorian migration began to decline after 1850, and entirely ceased a year or two later. The foreign miner's tax and their persecution by the Americans convinced the Sonorians that there was no place like home. So they went home and stayed there.

A route by which a number of immigrants from Texas and some of the other Gulf states came in 1849 led through the northern states of Mexico until it intercepted the Sonora trail and then by that to Los Angeles.

The old Santa Fe trail to New Mexico; then across Arizona, following the Gila to the Colo- rado river, was another southern route by which a great deal of overland travel reached Southern California. In 1854, from actual count, it was ascertained that 9,075 persons came by that route. About one-fourth of the 61,000 overland immigrants who came to the state that year reached it by the southern routes. But the route by which the majority of the argonants of '49 and the early '50s reached Southern California led south from Salt Lake City until it inter- cepted the great Spanish trail from Los Angeles to Santa Fe at the southern end of Utah Lake. Immigrants by this route, crossing the Colorado desert, reached the San Bernardino valley through the Cajon Pass. Capt. Jedediah S. Smith, in 1826, was the first white man to reach Los Angeles by this trail. There was consid- erable trade and travel between Santa Fé and Los Angeles over the old Spanish trail before the conquest of California. The early immigra- tion from New Mexico came by this route. By it came J. J. Warner, William Wolfskill, the Rowland-Workman party, numbering forty-four persons ; B. D. Wilson, D. W. Alexander, Jolın Reed, Dr. John Marsh and many other pioneers.

For several years before the conquest, on ac- count of the hostility of the Indians, this trail had been little used, and to the great army of the Argonauts who crossed the plains in 1849 it was unknown. The belated immigrants of that year who reached Salt Lake too late to cross the Sierra Nevadas had the alternative pre- sented them of wintering with the Saints or of . finding a southern route into California and thus evading the fate that befell the Donner party in the snows of the Sierras. These de- layed Argonauts found a Mormon captain, Jef-

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ferson Hunt, late captain of Company A of the Mormon Battalion, who had recently arrived in Salt Lake by this southern route. He was en- gaged as a guide. A train of about 500 wagons started in November, 1849, for Southern Cali- fornia. After several weeks' travel, a number of the immigrants having become dissatisfied with Hunt's leadership, and hearing that there was a shorter route to the settlements than the train was pursuing, seceded from the main body and struck out westward across the desert. After traveling for several days together, they dis- agreed. Some returned to the main body; the others broke up into small parties and took dif- ferent directions. One of these parties, num- bering eleven persons, penetrated Death valley and all perished. Another, after incredible hard- ships and having lost several of their number on the desert, reached Los Angeles by the Soledad Pass. Another company, after weeks of wan- dering and suffering, reached the Tulare valley, where they were relieved by the Indians. The main body, with but little inconvenience, ar- rived in San Bernardino valley the last of Jan- uary, 1850.

After the establishment of the Mormon colony at San Bernardino, in June, 1851, the Salt Lake route became a well-traveled road, over which, up to the completion of the Union Pacific Rail- road in 1869, a large amount of freight and travel passed between the City of the Saints and the City of the Angels. By this route came a num- ber of the pioneer American families of Los An- geles. Among others may be named the Macys, Andersons, Workmans, Ulyards, Hazards, Mon- tagues.

COMMERCIAL CONVEYANCES.

San Pedro was, in 1850, as it had been for more than half a century before, the entrepot through which the commerce of the Los An- geles district passed. It was, next to San Fran- cisco, the principal seaport of the coast. In the early '5os all the trade and travel up and down the coast came and went by sea. No stage lines had been established in the lower coast counties. In 1848, and for several years after, the only means of getting to the city from the port and vice versa was on horseback. A cabal- lada (band) of horses were kept in pasture on the Palos Verdes. When a ship was sighted in the offing, the vaqueros rounded up the mus- tangs, lassoed them and had them saddled, ready for the passengers when they came ashore. As the horses were half-broken broncos, and the passengers mostly newcomers from the states, unused to the tricks of bucking mus- tangs, the trip usually ended in the passenger arriving in the city on foot, the bronco having

landed his rider at some point most convenient to him (the bronco,) not the passenger.

In 1849 Temple and Alexander had a general merchandise store at San Pedro, and did about all the forwarding business of the port. Goods were freighted to Los Angeles in carts drawn by two yoke of oxen yoked by the horns. The carts were similar to the Mexican carretas, 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 $20 a ton. In 1852, stages were put on the route by Banning & Alexander. Tomlinson put on an opposition line, and in 1853 B. A. Townsend was running an accommo- dation line between the city and the port and advertising in the Star, "Good coaches and teams as the county will afford." The stage fare was at first $10, then $7.50, dropped to $5, and as opposition increased went down to $1, and as the rivalry grew keener passengers were car- ried free.

The first steamer that ever entered the bay of San Pedro was the "Gold Hunter," which an- chored 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 1850 and 1851. In 1853 the "Sea Bird" was making three trips a month between San Francisco and San Diego, touching at Mon- terey, Santa Barbara and San Pedro. The price of a first-cabin passage from San Pedro to San Francisco in the early '5os was $55. The bill of fare consisted of salt beef, hard bread, pota- toes and coffee without milk or sugar. Freight charges were $25 a ton. It cost $io to transport a barrel of flour from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The trip occupied four days. The way ports were Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Monterey. There were no wharves or light- ers on the route; passengers and freight were landed in the steamer's boats. If the sea was very rough, the passengers were carried to San Francisco and brought back on the return trip. Sometimes when the tide was low they had to be carried from the boat to the shore on the sailors' backs. The sailor, like the bronco, some- times bucked, and the passenger waded ashore. Both man and beast were somewhat uncertain "in the days of gold-the days of '49."

The imports by sea greatly exceeded the ex- ports. Cattle and horses, the principal products of the county, transported themselves to market. The vineyards along the river principally within the city limits were immensely profitable in the early '50s. There was but little fresh fruit in the country. Grapes, in San Francisco, retailed

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

all the way from twenty-five to fifty cents a pound. The vineyards were cultivated by In- dian labor. About all that it cost the vineyardist for labor was the amount of aguardiente that it took to give the Indian his regular Saturday night drunk. So the grape crop was about all profit.

FIRST STATE CENSUS.

The first state censtis of California was taken in 1852. According to this census the county had a total population of 7,831, divided as fol- lows :

Whites-

Males 2,496

Females 1,597

Total 4,093 Domesticated Indians- Males 2,278

Females

1,415

The cattle numbered 113,475; horses, 12,173; wheat produced 34,230 bushels; barley, 12,120 bushels; corn, 6,934 bushels. Number of acres under cultivation, 5,587; grape vines, 450,000, of which 400,000 were within the city. This was before any portion of the county had been segre- gated. Its limits extended from San Juan Capis- trano on the south to the Tulares on the north. and from the sea to the Colorado river; of its 32,000 square miles, less than nine square miles were cultivated, and yet it had been settled for three-quarters of a century.

During the '50s the county grew slowly. Land was held in large tracts and cattle raising con- tinued to be the principal industry. At the El Monte several families from the southwestern states had formed a small settlement and were raising grain, principally corn. The Mormons, at San Bernardino, were raising corn, wheat, barley and vegetables, and selling them at a good price. One season they received as high as $5 a bushel for their wheat.

CHAPTER XXV.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY-Continued.

A GOLD RUSH AND GOLD PLACERS.

T HE famous Kern river gold rush of 1855 brought an influx of population. Some of that population was very undesirable. The gold rush made business lively for a time, but when the reaction came it left a number of wrecks financially stranded. This mining ex- citement had one good effect : it called the at- tention of the Angeleños to the mineral resources of their own county and indirectly brought about their development.

Francisco Lopez discovered gold in the San Feliciano cañon of the San Fernando moun- tains, March 9, 1841. Gold was discovered in several other cañons of this district and these placers were worked in a desultory sort of a way up to 1848. When the news of Marshall's discovery at Coloma reached Los Angeles, all the experienced miners left for the northern mines, and the gold placers of Los Angeles were abandoned. The Kern river gold rush brought a number of experienced miners to the county, and the San Fernando mines were again opened and a considerable amount of gold dust taken from them. It is reported that Francisco Gar- cia, working the mines with a gang of Indians, took out $65,000 in 1855. Gold was discovered on the headwaters of the San Gabriel river in 1855. In 1856 the Santa Anita placers, fifteen

miles from Los Angeles city, were discovered and mined; the miners making from $5 to $10 a day. In 1858 the Santa Anita Mining Com- pany was organized with a capital of $50,000, hydraulic works constructed, and the gulches mined. The mines paid well. During 1858 and 1859 the cañon of the San Gabriel was pros- pected for forty miles, and some rich placers located. Two hydraulic companies took ont $1,000 a weck each. Two Mexicans with a com- mon wooden bowl or batea panned out $90 in two days. In July, 1859, 300 men were at work in the cañon, and all reported doing well. The next year, 1860, was a prosperous season for the miners. Altogether since their discovery, over sixty years ago, it is estimated that the gold placers of Los Angeles have yielded not less than $5,000,000.

Notwithstanding the county was producing gold, grain and cattle, in the later '50s times were hard, money scarce and rates of interest exorbi- tant. "Eight, ten and even fifteen per cent a month," says the Southern Californian, "is freely paid for money, and the supply even at these rates is too meager to meet the demand." This state of affairs was caused largely by the reaction from the flush times of the early '50s. The na- tive Californians, the principal land-holders, were bad financiers. When times were good and money plentiful, they spent lavishly. When

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dry years came or the price of cattle fell from over-production, they did not retrench expenses, but mortgaged their lands to procure spending money. With such usurious rates of interest pre- vailing, it was only a question of the leniency of their creditors when they would be compelled to part with their ancestral acres.

THE SECOND DECADE, 1860-1870.

FLOODS.

The years 1859, 1860, 1861-62 were seasons of abundant rainfall. Indeed, the fluvial downpour of 1861-62 was altogether too abundant. Never before, within the memory of the oldest inhab- itant, had there been such floods. The season's rainfall footed up nearly fifty inches. The val- ley of the Sacramento became a vast inland sea and the city of Sacramento was inundated and almost ruined. Relief boats on their errands of mercy, leaving the. channels of the rivers, sailed over submerged ranchos, past floating houses and wrecks of barns, through vast flotsams made up of farm products, farming implements and the carcasses of horses, cattle and sheep, all drift- ing out to sea. The losses in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys footed up into the mil- lions. In Los Angeles county, on account of the smaller area of the valleys and the shortness of the rivers, there was but little loss of property. The rivers spread over the lowlands, but the 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 miles 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 scattered over the plains below the city, and furnished fuel to the poor people for several years. It began raining December 24, 1861, and continued for thirty days with but two slight interruptions.

FAMINE YEARS.

As a result of three successive years of abun- dant rainfall and consequent luxuriant pastur- age, the rancheros allowed their stock ranges to become overstocked. . When the famine years of 1863 and 1864 came, the dry feed on the ranges was soon exhausted, and cattle were slowly dying of starvation. Herds of gaunt, skeleton-like forms moved slowly over the plains in search of food. Here and there, singly or in small groups, poor brutes, too weak to move on, stood motionless with drooping heads, dying. It was a pitiful sight. The loss of cattle during the famine years was fearful. The plains were

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Historical and biographical record of southern California; containing a history of southern California from its earliest settlement to the opening year of the twentieth century, Part 23

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918 Publication date: 1902 Publisher: Chicago, Chapman pub. co. Number of Pages: 1366

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: Chicago, Chapman pub. co.
Number of Pages: 1366