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 24

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

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strewn with their carcasses. In marshy places and around the cienegas where there was a ves- tige of green the ground was covered with their skeletons; and the traveler for years afterwards was often startled by coming suddenly upon a veritable Golgotha-a place of skulls-the long horns standing out in a defiant attitude, as if defending the fleshless bones. It was estimated that 50,000 head of cattle died on the Stearns' ranchos alone. In 1860 the county assessment was $3,064,701; in 1864, $1,622,370.

Don Abel Stearns, one of the greatest of the cattle barons of Southern California, was re- duced almost to the verge of bankruptcy. In 1864 all of his landed possessions, consisting of seven ranchos, aggregating over one hundred thousand acres, and all of his city lots and lands were advertised for sale on account of the de- linquent taxes of 1863, the total amount of which was a little over $2,000. The lot on the south- east corner of Spring and Second streets, now worth a quarter of a million, was sold in 1863 for $37. Two thousand acres in East Los An- geles were sold in 1864 by the city council for fifty cents per acre. The purchaser took it under protest because the council would not sell him less. Never before had the people of the county been in such financial straits. To add to the miseries of hard times, the people were divided into two hostile factions-Union and Secession. The Civil war was in progress. The Confeder- ate sympathizers were largely in the majority in the county. While there were no active hos- tilities between the factions, there was a great deal of ill feeling. The Confederate sympa- thizers were loud in their denunciations of the government and the flag under which they were living and had lived all their lives. However, beyond a few arrests, these would-be Confeder- ates were not harmed.

Los Angeles furnished but one representative to the Union army-that is, one who was an actual resident of the city at the breaking out of the war-and he was Charles M. Jenkins, of the California Hundred. One company of the Native California Battalion was raised in Los Angeles and one in Santa Barbara. This bat- talion did service against the Indians in Arizona. Camp Latham was established at Ballona in 1861, and the Fourth California Infantry was stationed there for a time. Camp Dunn was es- tablished at Wilmington in 1862. All the sup- plies for the soldiers in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah passed through Wilmington. A small force was kept at Camp Dunn during the war. At one time a squad of sokliers was stationed at Los Angeles to keep the secessionists in check.

The great drought of 1863 and 1864 scaled the doom of cattle raising as the distinctive industry

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of Los Angeles. The plentiful rainfalls of 1865- 66 gave abundant feed, but the ranchos were thinly stocked and their owners were in no con- dition financially to add to their depleted herds. It was evident that the dynasty of the cattle kings was ended. Hereafter there must be new industries, new methods, new men, if the coun- try would thrive.

SUBDIVISION OF LARGE RANCHOS.

In 1868, what was known as the Stearns' ranchos, an immense body of land, containing about 150,000 acres, and lying between the San Gabriel and Santa Ana rivers, was sold to a syndicate of San Francisco capitalists. This tract contained the original ranchos of Los Coy- otes, La Habra, San Juan Cajon de Santa Ana, Las Bolsas y Paredes, La Bolsa Chica, and part of the Alamitos. It was divided into sections and subdivisions of sections in 1868, and put on sale in tracts of forty acres and upward. Immigration began to drift southward in 1868 and 1869 and a number of settlers purchased farms in the Stearns' ranchos and in others that had been divided or partially divided, and began raising grain. The soil was rich and the yield was enormous. As yet but little attention had been paid to fruit culture. The decade closed with the agricultural transformation of the county fairly begun.

THE THIRD DECADE-1870-1880.

RAILROADS."

The third decade of American supremacy in Southern California was an era of railroad build- ing and colony founding. The first railroad line constructed in the county extended from Los Angeles city to Wilmington. It was completed October 26, 1869. The legislature, in 1868, passed bills authorizing the board of supervisors of the county to subscribe $150,000 to the capital stock of a railroad between Los Angeles and Wilmington, and the mayor and common coun- cil to subscribe $75,000 to the same object. An clection was held and the bonds carried. Ground was broken at Wilmington, March 19, 1868, and the road pushed to completion. Freights and fare were high. It cost $6 to get a ton of freight from anchorage to Los Angeles. It cost a pas- senger a dollar and a half from the steamer on one of Banning's tugs to Wilmington and a dol- lar more on the railroad to reach the city. Yet nobody complained and the people clamored for more railroads. The Southern Pacific was build- ing a trans-continental line southeastward and there was a chance for Los Angeles on a through linc. After considerable negotiation be-

tween a committee of the people of Los Angeles and the directors of the Southern Pacific Rail- road, the Southern Pacific people proposed to build fifty miles of their main trunk line through Los Angeles county, twenty-five miles north from the city and twenty-five east, on condition that the people vote a subsidy to the company of five per cent of the taxable property of the county. The Los Angeles and San Pedro Rail- road, valued at $225,000, was to be part of the consideration.

An election was called, November 5, 1872, and the proposition accepted by the people. The total consideration, bonds and lands, given the railroad, amounted to $610,000. To appease the people of the southeastern part of the county and secure their votes for the bonds, the railroad company agreed to build a branel road to Ana- heim, twenty-seven miles. Work on the road was pushed vigorously and trains to San Fer- nando, the northern end, and to Spadra, the east- ern end, were run April 24, 1874. The great tunnel, 6,964 feet long, under a spur of the San Fernando mountains, twenty-seven miles north of Los Angeles, delayed the early completion of the road. On the 6th of September, 1876, the northern and southern ends of the road were united at Soledad Station, in a cañon of that name ; the golden spike was driven with a ham- mer of silver, and a train bearing the dignitaries of the company and invited guests passed over the road from San Francisco to Los Angeles. A grand banquet was held in Union hall, fol- lowed by a grand ball, which lasted till morning, when the San Franciscans returned to their home city on the first through train over the road from the Los Angeles end. The road was pushed on eastward, and in 1882 was completed to El Paso, where it united with the eastern end and Los.Angeles had a trans-continental road. The Anaheim branch was completed to that town January 17, 1875.

THE LOS ANGELES AND INDEPENDENCE RAIL- ROAD COMPANY was incorporated in January, 1875. The purpose of the company was to build a railroad beginning at Santa Monica and pass- ing through Los Angeles and San Bernardino and from there by way of the Cajon Pass to Independence, Inyo county. Work was begun at once and the first train between Los Angeles and Santa Monica passed over the road Deccm- ber 1, 1875. A long wharf was built at Santa Monica and ocean steamers stopped there for passengers and freight. The financial panie 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 Company, and that company pulled down the wharf because it did not pay to maintain two shipping points.

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

COLONIES.

Among the earliest colony projects of this decade was the San Pasqual plantation scheme. Its prospectus was published in the city papers during April and May, 1870. The advertise- ments stated that "The tract of land selected is a portion of the San Pasqual ranch in Los An- geles county, comprising 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 installments as follows : $10 per share at date of subscription 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." When the trees and vines should come into bearing it was pro- posed to divide the lands among the colonists on the plan that the Anaheim colony lands were divided among the shareholders in 1859. The projectors of the scheme were San Francisco and Los Angeles capitalists. Subscription books were opened at the office of R. M. Wid- ney in the Hellman Bank building. Stock in the company did not go off like the proverbial hot cakes. The scheme was a failure. Citrus fruit culture then was in its infancy, and a very young infant at that. The few orange orchards in the county were on the sandy land of the river bottom. The scheme of growing oranges on the gravelly lands of the San Pasqual was laughed to scorn by the wise old;timers who knew it all.

The most successful colony scheme of the 'zos was the Indiana Colony of California. It had its inception in Indianapolis. Ind., in the winter of 1872-73. Dr. T. B. Elliott was the originator of the scheme, and he, D. M. Berry, J. HI. Baker and Calvin Fletcher, its most active promoters. The committee sent out to view the land decided the San Pasqual rancho was the best location offered. An incorporation was effected under the name of the San Gabriel Orange Grove Association. The capital stock was fixed at $25,000, divided into 100 shares of $250 cach. In December. 1873, the associa- tion purchased Dr. J. S. Griffin's interest in the San Pasqual rancho, consisting of about 4,000 acres; 1,500 acres of the choicest land in the tract were subdivided into lots varying in size from fifteen to sixty acres.

January 27, 1874, the lands were distributed on the basis of fifteen acres to a share of stock, and the colonists who were on the ground im- mediately set to work planting their lands in oranges, raising grapes and deciduous fruits. "It is a singular fact," says Mrs. Jeanne C. Carr, "that there was not a professional and hardly a practical horticulturist or farmer among them." Nevertheless they made a success of fruit cul- ture and demonstrated the fact that oranges could be grown on the mesa lands. April 22, 1875, the settlement ceased to be the Indiana Colony and officially became Pasadena. To Dr. T. B. Elliott, the originator of the California Colony scheme, belongs the credit of conferring 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 absorbed by settlers that in four years after their purchase only a few small tracts remained unsold. In 1876, B. D. Wilson threw on the market about 2,500 acres lying castward of Fair Oaks avenue. This was the Lake Vine- yard Land and Water Company tract. The set- tlers on this tract were known as "east siders," while the original colonists were the "west siders," Fair Oaks avenue being the division line. A postoffice had been established March 15, 1875, but had been discontinued in Decem- ber of that year because no one cared to serve as postmaster at a salary of a dollar a month. September 21, 1876, L. D. Hollingsworth, who had erected a building and opened a store near the corner of Fair Oaks avenue and Colorado street, secured the re-establishment of the post- office, and the office was kept in his store. Thus was the germ of the city of Pasadena planted. but it took it nearly a decade to germinate. At the beginning of the fourth decade (1880) the "town consisted of a store and postoffice build- ing, a blacksmith shop, a meat market and a schoolhouse at the crossroads near the center of the settlement." The history of the city of Pasadena and a record of its wonderful growth belong in the fourth decade.

POMONA is a child of the colony era. While not incorporated as a colony, like Pasadena, it owes its origin to a co-operative colony-promo- ting association. Early in 1875. Louis Phillips sold to P. C. Tonner, Cyrus Burdick and Fran- cisco Palomeres 2,700 acres of the Vejar portion of the San José rancho. Tonner and his asso- ciates sold their purchase, shortly after they made it, to the Los Angeles Immigration and Land Co-operative Association. This associa- tion was incorporated December 10, 1874, with a capital stock of $250,000, divided into 2,500 shares, at a par value of $100 per share. Its

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officers were: Thomas A. Garey, president; C. E. While, vice-president ; L. M. Holt, secretary ; Milton Thomas, manager; R. M. Town, assist- ant manager, and H. G. Crow, treasurer. Its principal object was the subdivision of large land holdings and the placing of these on the market in small tracts for settlement. The asso- ciation surveyed and subdivided 2,500 acres of its purchase. The town of Pomona, located near the center of the tract, was platted and 640 acres adjoining the town site was subdivided into five-acre lots. The remainder of the 2,500 acres was cut up into forty-acre tracts. In No- vember, 1875, the town had a hotel, a drug store, a dry goods store, two groceries, a meat market and eight or ten dwelling houses. February 22, 23 and 24, 1876, a great auction sale of land and town lots was held on the town site. The first day's sale realized $19,000, which was a big thing in those days. The farm land brought an average of $64 per acre. A number of artesian wells had been sunk and a reservoir holding two and a half million gallons of water con- structed. The Southern Pacific Railroad, which, in conformity with the requirements of the sub- sidy granted by the county in 1873, had been built eastward twenty-five miles to Spadra, was extended to Pomona and that town became the railroad shipping point for Riverside, another colony of the early '7os. Pomona seemed to be on the high road to prosperity, but disaster struck it. First the dry season of 1876-77 dem- onstrated the need of a more abundant water supply, and next a disastrous fire on the night of July 30, 1877, swept away nearly all of the town. These disasters checked the growth of the town and settlement. In 1880 the popula- tion of the town was only 130. The next (lecade saw a wonderful growth in the town and country around.

SANTA MONICA was another town that was founded in this decade. Early in 1875, Senator J. P. Jones, of Nevada, and Col. R. S. Baker subdivided a portion of the Rancho San Vicente, lying on the mesa adjoining the bay of Santa Monica. The town was named after the bay. July 16, 1875, a great sale of lots was held at the town site. An excursion steamer came down from San Francisco, loaded with lot buyers, and the people of Los Angeles rallied in great numbers to the site of the "Zenith City by the Sunset Sea." as the silver-tongued orator of the Pacific slope, Tom Fitch, named it. Lots on the barren mesa sold at prices ranging from $100 to $500. The town's growth was rapid. In less than nine months after its founding it had 160 houses and 1,000 inhabitants. The Los Angeles & Independence Railroad had been completed to Los Angeles. A wharf had been

built and Santa Monica was becoming a ship- ping point of great importance. Then a financial blight struck the fortunes of Senator Jones. The railroad was sold to the Southern Pacific Railroad; the wharf was pulled down, and the town fell into a decline. In 1880 it and its sub- urb, South Santa Monica, had only 350 inhab- itants.

The decade that had been ushered in with a boom closed in gloom. The bank fail- ures of 1875-76 brought on a monetary crisis. The total failure of the Temple & Work- man Bank swept away the fortunes of many. The dry years of 1876-77 supplemented the bank disasters by killing the sheep industry that to a certain extent had taken the place of the cattle industry of the previous decade. The railroad to San Francisco had not proved a blessing. Freight charges were high and the price of grain low. It took about all the farmer received for his grain crop to pay freight, warehouse and commission charges. Indeed, he was lucky if after his crop was sold he did not have to borrow money to pay a deficit-mortgage his farm for the privilege of farming it. San Francisco was his only market. It was evident that the South- ern California farmer, with a market 500 miles away, could not compete with the grain growers of the central part of the state, with a market at their doors. Grain growing in the third decade of American occupation had been but little less disastrous than cattle raising in the second. What could the people do?

THE FOURTH DECADE-1880-1890.

The third decade had set in gloom. No roseate hues irradiated the rise of the fourth. The season of. 1880-81 was one of the dreaded dry years. The total rainfall was only 5.32 inches. Crops were a partial failure. There were, however, no such harrowing sights as were seen in the famine years. There were no cattle on a thousand hills, no sheep in the val- leys, starving to death. The flocks and the herds had disappeared. The more provident husband- men who now possessed the ranchos, once the domain of the cattle kings and their retainers, were able to provide sustenance for their stock, though the former and the latter rains came not. Irrigation had been made to rectify the shortcomings of nature, and works had taken the place of faith in noveñas .*

The next season showed a decided improve- ment. Crops were fair and prices good. The

*A term of nine days set apart for prayers, fre- quently resorted to during dry years in the Spanish and Mexican eras.

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Southern Pacific Railroad, pushing eastward, had opened a market for Southern California products in the mining regions of Arizona. The completion of the road in 1882 gave Los Angeles a trans-continental route, and immigration began to drift in-slowly and cautiously at first -then with more confidence and in larger vol- ume. The mortgaged farmers took the first opportunity to unload on the newcomers and chuckled over their success. But when they began to look around for reinvestment they found there had been a sudden rise in the finan- cial temperature. The newcomers brought money with them to develop their purchases and the wheels of industry began to go round. The seasons continued good, that of 1884 being a flood year. Rumors came of a railroad on the thirty-fifth parallel, building westward-rumors that later became a certainty.

BEGINNING OF THE BOOM.

In 1885 the Santa Fe system leased the right to run trains over the Southern Pacific road from Deming to Los Angeles. Later on it obtained an interest in the Atlantic & Pacific road be- tween Albuquerque and Barstow. From Bar- stow it constructed the Southern California Rail- road through the Cajon Pass to San Bernardino, and thence westward to Mud Springs, where it united with the San Gabriel Valley road, which it had absorbed. The completion of this road gave Southern California two complete trans- continental lines, and then the boom was on in carnest. It had begun in 1886 and gathered volume as it progressed. There had been a steady advance in the values of real estate from 1882, when the upward movement began, to 1886, but no inflation. Additions and subdivi- sions had been made in the okler cities and towns, but no new towns created. Early in 1887 town-making began and it went with a rush, a boom when once begun. As the Southern Cali- fornia Railway approached completion, town- making seemed to become epidemic. Within the first six months of 1887, between the eastern limits of Los Angeles city and the western line of San Bernardino county, a distance, by way of the Southern California Railway, of thirty-six miles, there were twenty-five cities and towns located-an average of one to every mile and a half of the road. On the Southern Pacific there were eight and thrown in between the parallel railroads there were three more-mak- ing a grand total of thirty-six cities and towns in the San Gabriel valley. The only limit to the greatness of a city was the boundary lines of the adjoining cities.

Other parts of the county were keeping pace with the San Gabriel valley in town-making.

Up on the mountains, down in the desert, and out on the arid mesa, town sites were located and town lots sold. What was to support these towns, the lot purchaser did not stop to con- sider. He hoped to find an easier dupe than himself, and sell at an advance. The more inac- cessible a town, the better the lots in it seemed to sell. Homberg's twin cities, Manchester and Border City, were located on the steep sides of the Sierra Madre mountains, overlooking the Mojave desert. The sites of the twin cities could be seen through a field glass on a clear day, and the casiest way to reach them was by a balloon. Yet Homberg sold about all of the 4,000 lots that he carved out of two quarter sections of government land, and realized about $50,000 by the operation. Chicago Park was located in the wash of the San Gabriel river, where the rocks were so thick that it was im- possible to drive a corner stake, yet its 2,300 lots changed hands. Santiago, with its 2,000 lots, was out on a waterless desert, where even the coyotes had to carry canteens when they crossed it. Yet fools rushed in where coyotes feared to tread, and-bought lots.

And yet the boom was not all bilk. There was legitimate speculation and there were honest real-estate agents. The fellows who blew the bubble to its greatest inflation were professional boomers, who had learned the tricks of their trade in the boom cities of the west. They came here not to build up the country, but to make money-honestly if they could make it no other way. It is needless to say they made it the other way.

The magnitude of our great real-estate boom can be more accurately measured by a money standard than any other. The total considera- tion named in the instruments filed for record with the county recorder in 1887 reached the enormous sum of $08.084.162. Yet this does not tell half the story. Thousands of agreements and contracts of sale were never recorded. Con- tracts were often transferred anywhere from one to half a dozen times as the property was resold, but when the deed was given the consideration named would be that of the first sale, although the last might be a hundred or a thousand per cent above the first. It is safe to say that the total consideration of all the sales made in 1887 in Los Angeles county alone reached $200,000,- 000.

The great booms of former times pale into insignificance when compared with ours. The capital stock of John Law's National Bank of France, with his Mississippi grants thrown in, only figured up about $15,000,000-a sum equal to our real-estate transfer for one month, yet the bursting of the Mississippi bubble very nearly

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

bankrupted the French empire. The capital in- vested in the Darien colonization scheme, which bankrupted Scotland an'I came near plunging all Europe into war, was only 220,000 pounds sterling, a sum about equal to our real-estate transfers for one day. We ought to feel proud of our boom.

The collapse began in the fall of 1887. Specu- lators had loaded up for the eastern dupes who were reported coming by thousands to the land of promise. The dupes did not come in great numbers and the visitors who came refused to be duped. Then the real-estate craze began to subside. Those who had loaded for profit tried to unload at cost. Some refused to believe the boom was over, and held on till their burthens crushed them. Others let go at once and saved something out of the crash that followed. Dur- ing 1888, the adjusting process was going on. Building was active and people still hopeful. In 1889 the outlook was gloomy. Even the most sanguine began to realize that the boom was over. The contraction in values was even more rapid than had been the expansion. Choice business lots and the sites of palace hotels in the new cities, that had been valued by the front foot, were now offered by the acre, and there were no takers. The fourth decade, like the third, closed in gloom.

THE FIFTH DECADE-1890-1900.

The financial depression in which the fourth decade closed did not last long. The energy and the push that had been evolved during the boom had received a momentary check, but they were not dead. There was no time to indulge in whin- ing or repining. Adversity had followed closely on the heels of prosperity and the necessity for bread and butter was more pressing than the need of new towns. The millionaire of a boom metropolis, when the doom of his phantom city had been pronounced, looked out upon a ghostly array of white stakes, often the only visible evi- dence of the city that was to be. If his city was not hopelessly buried under a mortgage, he plowed under business streets and the sites of tourist hotels and planted them with fruit trees or sowed them in grain.

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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 24

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