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 25

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

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The professional boomers-the fellows of the baser sort-when the collapse came, betook themselves to pastures new. Retributive jus- tice overtook a few of them and they did en- forced service to the country in striped uniforms. When the county at large, in 1890, took an in- ventory to ascertain the profit or loss of the previous decade, there was a good showing of assets on the credit side. Los Angeles city had increased its population from 11,150 to 50,395

in ten years, and its assessed wealth from six to fifty million dollars. Pasadena, from a cross- roads grocery, had grown to a city of 5,000 in- habitants, with its banks, daily newspapers and palatial business blocks. Pomona, from 130 people in 1880, had increased to 3,634 in 1890. The county at large had raised the number of its people from 33,881 in 1880 to 101,454 in 1890, with 13,589 taken off to form Orange county. Its wealth had increased from $18,000,000 to $80,000,000.

As Pasadena had soared highest in the balloon of inflation, when the drop came she struck bot- tom the hardest. Her orange groves, once her pride and boast, had been mostly sacrificed on the altar of town lots; and what the boomer had left the cottony scale had devastated. But the boomer departed or ceased to boom, and the cottony scale met its Nemesis in the Australian lady-bug. Then the work of rehabilitation began ; and it is remarkable what perseverance, coupled with energy and intelligence, did in a short time. In less than two years Pasadena was on the high road to prosperity, and she has kept pattering along that road at a rapid rate ever since. The reaction throughout the county was equally rapid. After the entanglements in real- estate titles, that the boom had made, were readjusted the people pursued the even tenor of their ways, building up the real cities, plant- ing orange groves, increasing irrigating facili- ties and promoting new schemes for developing the country.

In 1893 came the bank panic, when nearly every bank in the county closed its doors, but in a few weeks all except two were doing busi- ness at the old stands.

At the beginning of the Spanish war, Los An- geles county furnished five companies of the Seventh Regiment California Volunteers, three from Los Angeles city, one from Pasadena and one from Pomona. This regiment, which was made up of volunteers from Southern Califor- nia, took its departure for San Francisco, May 5, 1898, amidst the plaudits of an immense mul- titude. It remained encamped there until the close of the war, when the volunteers were dis- charged. Company D, California Light Artil- lery, made up of volunteers from the southern counties, was sent to Manila and saw consider- able active service.

The most prominent event of the closing years of the fifth decade was the free harbor fight, a contest in which the Southern Pacific Railroad and a few of its local auxiliaries were arrayed against the people of the county in regard to the location of a harbor. The Southern Pacific Company, in 1891, had built a long wharf in the bay of Santa Monica at Port Los Angeles.

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

When the question of a free harbor came up, Collis P. Huntington, then the president of the road, used all his powerful influence in congress to secure an appropriation for a harbor at Port Los - Angeles. As this would be virtually con- trolled by him and would defeat an appropria- tion for a harbor at San Pedro, the people, with a few exceptions, opposed his scheme. The fight was a protracted one, but the people won. In 1898 congress voted an appropriation of $3,900,- ooo for the construction of breakwaters in the bay of San Pedro. The contract for their con- struction was let to Heldmaier & Neu, of Chi- cago, for $1,303,198.54. The Free Harbor Jubi- lee, which was celebrated at San Pedro, April 27, and at Los Angeles April 28 and 29, 1899, was one of the great events of the decade. On that occasion the first boatload of rock from the Catalina quarries was dumped on the site of the breakwater. Misfortune overtook the con- tractors. Neu was killed in a runaway at Los

Angeles before work was begun, and Held- maier failing to push the work, his contract was cancelled by the government. May 14, 1900, a contract was let to the California Construction Company, of San Francisco, for $2,375,546.05, over a million dollars above the former con- tract.

The three dry years with which the decade

and the century closed were not accompanied by the disasters which overtook the county in for- mer years of drought. Except in a few locali- ties, the people thrived and prospered, and the county increased in population during the decade 70,000.

LIST OF THE CITIES AND TOWNS OF LOS ANGELES WITH THE DATES OF THEIR FOUNDING AND THE POPULATION OF EACH ACCORDING

TO THE CENSUS OF 1900.

Founded.

Population.

Alhambra

1884

808

Avalon

1887

178

Azusa

1887

863

Burbank

1887

366

Claremont

1887

180

Covina.

1887

255

Compton

1869

636

Downey

1873

700

El Monte.

1853

266

Glendale

1883

200

Glendora

1887

492

Hollywood

1887

200

Inglewood

1887

200

Irvindale

1894

141

Lordsburg

1887

500

Long Beach.

1884

2,252

Los Angeles.

1781

102,479

Monrovia

1886

1,205

Pasadena

1875

9,117

Pomona

1875

5,526

Norwalk

1873

596

Newhall

1877

202

Redondo

1887

855

San Gabriel.

1775

737

San Fernando.

1873

200

San Pedro ..

1851

1,787

Santa Monica.

1875

3.057

South Pasadena

1885

1,001

Whittier

1887

1,590

Wilmington

1858

500

Only lowns whose population exceeds one hundred are in- cluded in the above list.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES.

SHAPING TIIE CITY.

F IFTY years after its founding, Los An- geles was like the earth on the morning of creation, "without form." It had no plat or plan, no map and no official survey of its boundaries. The streets were crooked, ir- regular and undefined. The houses stood at different angles to the streets, and the house lots were of all geometrical shapes and forms. No man held a written title to his land and pos- session was ten parts of the law; indeed, it was all the law he had to protect his title. Not to use his land was to lose it.

With the fall of the missions a spasm of terri- torial expansion seized upon the colonists. In 1834, the territorial legislature, by an enactment, fixed the boundaries of the pueblo of Los An- geles at "two leagues to each of the four winds, measuring from the center of the plaza." This gave the pueblo an area of sixteen square leagues or over one hundred square miles. Next year (1835) Los Angeles was made the capital of Alta

California by the Mexican congress and raised to the dignity of a city; and then its first-real- estate boom was on. There was an increased demand for lots and lands, but there were no maps or plats to grant by; and no additions or subdivisions of the pueblo lands on the market. All the unoccupied lands belonged to the munic- ipality and when a citizen wanted a house lot to build on, he petitioned the ayuntamiento for a lot, and if the piece asked for was vacant he was granted a lot, large or small, deep or shal- low, on the street or off it, just as it happened.

With the growth of the town. the confusion and irregularity increased. The disputes arising from overlapping grants, conflicting property lines and indefinite descriptions induced the ayuntamiento of 1836 to appoint a commission to investigate and report upon the manner of granting house lots and agricultural lands. The commissioners reported "that they had con- sulted with several of the founders and with old settlers, who declared that from the founding of the town the concession of lots and lands

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

had been made verbally without any other for- mality than locating and measuring the extent of the land the fortunate one should occupy."

"In order to present a fuller report your com- mission obtained an 'Instruction,' signed by Don José Francisco de Ortega, dated at San Gabriel February 2, 1782, and we noted that Articles 3, 4 and 17 of said Instruction provides that con- cession of said agricultural lands and house lots must be made by the government, which shall issue the respective titles to the grantees. Ac- cording to the opinion of the city's advisers, said 'Instruction' or at least the three articles re- ferred to, have not been observed, as there is no property owner who can show a legal title to his property."

The commissioners can not do otherwise but call attention of the Most Illustrious Ayuntami- ento to the evil consequence which may result by reason of said abuses and recommend that some means may be devised that they may be avoided. "God and Liberty."

ABEL STEARNS, CACILIO VALDEŻ, JOSE M. HERRERA, Commissioners.

Angeles, March 8, 1836.

Acting on the report of the commissioners, the ayuntamiento required all holders of prop- erty to apply for written titles. But the poco tiempo ways of the pobladores (colonists) could not be altogether overcome. We find from the records that in 1847 the land of Mrs. Carmen Navarro, one of the founders of the town, was denounced (filed on) because she could not show a written title to it. The ayuntamiento decided "that as she had always been allowed to hold it her claim should be respected, because she was one of the founders, which makes her entitled to a lot on which to live."

March 17, 1836, "a commission on streets, plazas and alleys" was appointed to report a plan for repairing "the monstrous irregularity of the streets brought about by ceding house lots and erecting houses in this pueblo."

The commission reported in favor of "formu- lating a plat of the city as it actually exists, on which shall be marked the names of the streets, alleys and plazas ; also, the house lots and com- mon lands of the pueblo." But nothing came of the report, no plat was made and the ayun- tamiento went on in the same old way, granting lots of all shapes and forms.

In March, 1846, another commission was ap- pointed to locate the bounds of the pueblo lands. All that was done was to measure two leagues "in the direction of the four winds from the plaza church" and set stakes to mark the boundary

lines. Then came the American conquest of California and the days of poco tiempo were numbered. In 1847, after the conquest, another attempt was made to straighten and narrow the streets. A commission was appointed to try to bring order out of the chaos into which the streets had fallen. The commissioners reported. July 22, 1847, as follows: "Your commissioners could not but be amazed seeing the disorder and the manner how the streets run. More particu- larly the street which leads to the cemetery, whose width is out of proportion to its length ; and whose aspect offends the sense of the beauti- ful which should prevail in the city. When discussing this state of affairs with the syndic (city attorney), he informed us that on receiving his instructions from the ayuntamiento he was ordered to give the streets a width of fifteen varas (about 42 feet). This he found to be in con- flict with the statutes. The law referred to is in Book 4, Chapter 7, Statute 10 (probably a com- pilation of the "Law of the Indies," two or three centuries old and brought from Spain to Mex- ico and from there to California). The law reads : "In cold countries the streets shall be wide and in warm countries narrow; and when there are horses it would be convenient to have wide streets for purpose of an occasional defense or to widen them in the form above mentioned, care being taken that nothing is done to spoil the looks of the buildings, weaken the points of de- fense or encroach upon the comfort of the peo- ple."

"The instructions given the syndic by the ayuntamiento are absolutely opposed to this law and therefore illegal."

It probably never occurred to the commission to question the wisdom of so senseless a law ; it had been a law in Spanish-America for centur- ies, and therefore must be venerated for its an- tiquity.

A blind, unreasoning faith in the wisdom of church and state has been the undoing of the Spanish people. Apparently the commission did nothing more than report. California being a warm country, the streets perforce must be nar- row.

The same year a commission was appointed to "square the plaza." Through carelessness some of the houses fronting on the square had been allowed to encroach upon it; others were set back so that the boundary lines of the plaza zigzagged back and forth like a Virginia rail fence. The neighborhood of the plaza was the aristocratic residence quarter of the city then, and a plaza front was considered high-toned. The commissioners found the squaring of the plaza as difficult a problem as the squaring of a circle. After many trials and tribulations the

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

commissioners succeeded in overcoming most of the irregularities by reducing the area of the plaza. The houses that protruded were not torn down, but the property lines of the house owners moved forward. The north, south and west lines each measured 134 varas and the east line 112 varas after "squaring."

The ayuntamiento attempted to open a street from the plaza north of the church (now West Marchessault street), but Pedro Cabrera, who had been granted a lot which fell in the line 'of the street, refused to give up his plaza front for a better lot without that aristocratic appendage which the council offered him. Then the city authorities offered him as compensation for the difference a certain number of days' labor of the chain gang (the treasury was in its usual state of collapse), but Pedro could not be traded out of a plaza front and thus sidetracked in his social status, so the street took a twist around Pedro's lot, a twist that fifty years has not straightened out. The irregularities in granting portions of the unapportioned city lands still continued and the confusion of titles increased.

In May, 1849, the territorial governor, Gen. Bennet Riley, sent a request to the ayuntamiento for a city map and information in regard to the manner of granting city lots. The ayuntamiento replied that there was no map of the city in existence and no surveyor here who could make one. The governor was asked to send a sur- veyor to make a plan or plat of the city. He was also informed that in making land grants within "the perimeter of two leagues square" the city acted in the belief that it is entitled to that much land as a pueblo.

Lieut. E. O. C. Ord of the United States Army was sent down by the governor to plat the city. July 18, 1849, he submitted two propositions to the ayuntamiento : "He would make a map of the city, marking boundary lines and points of the municipal lands for $1,500 coin, ten lots se- lected from among the defined lots on the map and vacant lands to the extent of 1,000 varas to be selected in sections of 200 varas wherever he may choose it ; or he would make a map for $3.000 in coin."

The ayuntamiento chose the last proposition- the president prophetically remarking that the time might come in the future when the land alone inight be worth $3,000. The money to pay for the survey was borrowed from Juan Temple at the rate of one per cent per month and lots pledged as security for payment.

The ayuntamiento also decided that there should be embodied in the map a plan of all the lands actually under cultivation from the princi- pal dam down to the last cultivated field below. 'As to the lots that should be shown on the map

they should begin at the cemetery (Calvary) and end with the house of Botiller (near Twelfth street). As to the commonalty lands of this city the surveyor should determine the four points of the compass, and, taking the parish church for a center, measure two leagues in each cardinal direction. These lines will bisect the four sides of a square within which the lands of the mu- nicipality will be contained, the area of the same being sixteen square leagues and each side of the square measuring four leagues .* The United States claims commission rejected the city's claim to sixteen square leagues, and in 1856 confirmed its title to four square leagues, the di- mensions of the old pueblo under the rule of Spain.

Lieut. Ord, assisted by William R. Hutton, completed his Plan de la Ciudad de Los An- geles, August 29, 1849. He divided into blocks all that portion of the city bounded north by First street and the base of the first line of hills, east by Main street, south by Twelfth street and west by Figueroa street; and into lots all of the above to Eighth street ; also into lots and blocks that portion of the city north of Short street to College street and west of Upper Main (now San Fernando) street to the base of the hills. On the "plan" the lands between Main street and the river are designated as "plough grounds, gar- dens, corn and vine lands." The streets in the older portion of the city are marked on the map, but not named. The blocks, except the tier be- tween First and Second streets, are each 600 feet in length and are divided into ten lots, each 120 feet front by 165 feet deep.

Ord took his compass course for the line of Main street, south 24° 45' west from the corner opposite José Antonio Carrillo's house, which stood where the Pico house now stands. On his map Main, Spring and Fort (now Broadway) streets ran in parallel straight lines southerly to Twelfth street. Travel, regardless of street surveys, persisted in keeping on the mesa and thus Main street, the principal thoroughfare to the south, was made to bend to the westward below Fifth, cutting off the lower ends of Spring and Fort streets.

The names of the streets on Ord's plan are given in both Spanish and English. Beginning with Main street they are as follows : Calle Prin- cipal, Main street; Calle Primavera, Spring street (named for the season, spring) ; Calle For- tin, Fort street (so named because the street ex- tended northward would pass through the old fort on the hill); Calle Loma, Hill street ; Calle Accytuna, Olive street; Calle de Caridad, Street of Charity (now Grand avenue) ; Calle de La

*City archives.

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Espranza, the Street of Hope; Calle de Las Flores, the Street of Flowers; Calle de Los Chapules, the Street of Grasshoppers (now South Figueroa street). Above the plaza church, the north and south streets, were the Calle de Eter- nidad, Eternity street (so named because it had neither beginning or end, or rather because each end terminated in steep hills). Calle del Toro, Bull street (so named because the upper end of the street terminated at the Corrida de Toro, the bull ring, where bull fights were held; it is now Castelar street) ; Calle de Las Avispas, Street of Hornets, or Wasps ; Calle de Los Adobes, Adobe street. The east and west streets were: Calle Corta, Short street; Calle Alta, High street ; Calle de Las Virgines, Street of Virgins, and Calle del Colegio, College street. This street, so named because the ayuntamiento had given the Catholic Church a grant of a tract of land for a college, is the only street north of the plaza that retains its original name.

Spring street was known as Calle de Caridad (Street of Charity) at the time of the American conquest. The town then was centered around the plaza and the present Spring street was well out in the suburbs. Its inhabitants were of the poorer classes, who were largely dependent on the charity of their wealthier neighbors around the plaza; hence the name, Calle de Caridad. North Spring is part of an old road made a cen- tury ago. It led around the base of the hills out to the brea beds, where the inhabitants ob- tained the crude asphaltum used for roofing. Ord evidently transferred Spring street's original name, La Caridad, to one of his western streets which was a portion of the old road.

Main street, from its junction with Spring south, in 1846 was known as Calle de La Alle- gria, Junction street. Los Angeles street was the Calle Principal. Whether the name had been transferred to the present Main street before Ord's survey I have not been able to ascertain. In the early years of the century Los Angeles street was known as Calle de La Zanja, Ditch street. Later on it was sometimes called Calle de Los Vinas, Street of Vineyards ; and with its continuation Calle de Los Huertos, Street of Orchards (now San Pedro), formed the principal highway southward to the Embarcedaro of San Pedro.

Ord's survey or plan left some of the houses, in the old parts of the city, in the middle of the streets and others were cut off from street front- age. The city council labored long and ardu- ously to satisfy complainants and to satisfac- torily adjust property lines to the new plan of the city. Finally in 1854, an ordinance was passed allowing property owners with no street outlet to claim frontage to the streets nearest their

houses. Gradually the city took the form that Ord had planned, and the "monstrous irregular- ity" that had amazed the old regidores disap- peared, but the streets widened instead of nar- rowing, as they should have done to accord with the Spanish street laws.

AMERICANIZING THE CITY.

Although the decree of the Mexican congress making Los Angeles a city was published in California in 1836, ten years later, when the Americans took possession of it, it was still known as El Pueblo, the town. Only in official records and communications did it rise to the dignity of a ciudad (city). American writers of the decade previous to the conquest all refer to it as the "pueblo;" and one of them, Hastings, who came to California overland in 1843, and wrote a book describing the country and telling how to get there, seems not to have hcard its real name, but calls it "Poabola, below;" and San José "Poabola, above." The act incorporating it as a city of the American regime was passed by the legislature April 4, 1850. Its area, according to that act, was four miles. Why the "legisla- ture of a thousand drinks" pared down its do- main of four square leagues that for seventy years, under monarchy, empire and republic, it had possessed without dispute, does not appear in the act nor in the city records.

As the members of that legislature were mostly "tenderfeet," recently the "plains across," they may not have known the difference between an English mile and a Spanish ligua (league), but the most charitable conclusion is, that they deemed four square miles area enough for a city of sixteen hundred people. Why incorporate chaparral-covered hills and mustard-grown me- sas, inhabited by coyotes, jack rabbits and ground squirrels? So they made it a mile each way from the plaza; and the city of Los An- geles half a century ago ended at Fifth street on the south ; on the north at the Catholic ceme- tery ; its eastern boundary just included the river and its western was hopelessly lost in the hills. No one on that side knew just where the city ended and the country began, and nobody cared, for the land was considered worthless.

Two different nations by legislative decree had raised Los Angeles to the dignity of a city. And yet it was not much of a city after all. Witlı- in its bounds there was not a graded street, a sidewalk, a street lamp, a water pipe or a public building of any kind belonging to the munici- pality.

The first city election under its American in- corporation was held July 1, 1850. The officers elected were: A. P. Hodges, mayor (who also held the office of county coroner); Francisco

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Figueroa, treasurer; A. F. Coronel, city asses- sor (also county assessor) ; Samuel Whiting, city marshal (also county jailer).

The first common council met July 3, 1850, and the first record of its doings reads : "Messrs. David W. Alexander, Alexander Bell, Manuel Requena, Juan Temple, Morris L. Goodman, Cristobal Aquilar and Julian Chavez took the oath of office in conformity with Section 3, Arti- cle XI, of the state constitution, before Jona- than R. Scott (justice of the peace), and entered upon the discharge of their duties as members of the common council of this city, to which office they had been elected by the people on the first day of this month." David W. Alexander was elected president and Vicente del Campo secretary. The members had been sworn to support the constitution of the state of Califor- nia, and yet there was no state. California had not been admitted as a state of the Union. It had taken upon itself the functions of a state. The legislature had made counties and cities and provided for their organization and govern- ment, and a governor elected by the people had approved the acts of the legislature. The state government was a political nondescript. It had sloughed off its territorial condition, but it could not become a state until congress admitted it into the Union and the slave-holding faction of that body, headed by Jefferson Davis, would not let it in.

The first common council of the city was patri- otic and self-denying. The first resolution passed was as follows: "It having been observed that in other places the council members were drawing a salary, it was unanimously resolved that the members of this council shall receive neither salary nor fees of whatsoever nature for dis- charging their duties as such." But some of them wearied of serving an ungrateful public and tak- ing their pay in honor. Before sixty days had passed two liad resigned, and at the end of the vear only two of the original members, David W. Alexander and Manuel Requena, were left. There had been six resignations in eight months ; and the first council had thirteen different mem- bers during its short existence.

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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 25

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