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 33

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

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Accordingly a small vessel was sent to the different islands and the various tribes were taken, one by one, to the mission of Santa Barbara. But while the last of the Indians were embarking at the island of San Nicolas and all were supposed to be on board, a child was miss- ing, and its mother, after frantically looking for it on the ship and adjacent rocks, rushed off to the interior of the island to seek for it. A storm was threatening, and the captain, after delaying as long as he dared, put to sea. The storm broke in all its fury, and the vessel, after narrowly escaping shipwreck, landed its living cargo at Santa Barbara. Before the vessel could return for the woman, it was wrecked and en- tirely lost, and as no other could be obtained at that time, the poor woman had to remain upon the island, where she lived alone for eigh- teen years. After the discovery of gold it was rumored that San Nicolas was inhabited. Sca etter hunters had frequently found human foot- prints on it. As the footprints were all alike it was concluded that there was but one person living on it, and many attempts were made to find out who this strange being was. Mr. Nid-

ever, of Santa Barbara, a pioneer who came to California twenty-five years ago, took up the search. He had been a Rocky Mountain trap- per, and was as expert as an Indian in following a trail. Visiting the island he discovered the tracks and followed them until he saw among the rocks of the island near the mouth of a cave a singular object on its knees skinning a seal. Upon approaching he found it to be a woman clad in a dress of feathers. When she saw him she jumped up, and with excessive joy ran to- wards him and seemed almost beside herself with delight at the sight once more of a human being. In her hand she held a rude knife-blade that she had made from a piece of old iron, probably obtained from the fragment of some wreck, and which she valued beyond anything in her possession. She was unable to make herself understood, except by signs. She will- ingly accompanied her rescuer to Santa Barbara. Father Gonzales of the mission tried to find some of the Indians who had been taken from the island eighteen years before, but none were discovered, and none of the Santa Barbara Indians understood her language.

"It appears from her narrative that after leav- ing the vessel in search of her child she wan- dered about for several hours, and when she found it the wild dogs which infest the island, even to the present day (1856), had killed and nearly devoured it. When she returned to the landing the vessel was gone with all her friends and kindred.

"From day to day she lived in hope, begniling the weary hours in providing her wants. With snares made of her hair she caught birds, and with their skins, properly prepared, she made her clothing; her needles were neatly made of bone and cactus thorns; her thread was of sinews from the seal. In these and many other articles found in her possession she exhibited much of the native ingenuity she possessed. Whether she still remembered her own lan- gutage or not will forever remain a mystery. She was very gentle and kind, especially to children, and nothing seemed to please her more than to be near them.

"The sympathy felt for her welfare caused the people to supply her, bountifully, with everything she needed, and very imprudently allowed her to eat almost anything she chose, and the result was that in about six months after her escape from her lonely exile she sickened and died, having undoubtedly been killed by kindness."

In the February number (1857) of ITutching's California Magazine the editor, in an article on The Indian Woman of San Nicolas, states that George Nidever, the gentleman who discovered

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the woman, had presented Capt. C. J. W. Rus- sell on his recent visit to Santa Barbara with a water-bottle made of grass, a stone mortar, necklace and other things made by the woman during her long and solitary residence on the island. He further states: "There is upon this island a good-sized cave in which she took up

her abode, and on the walls of which she had kept a rude record of all the vessels that had passed the island, and of all the most remarkable occurrences in her lonely history, such as seeing large quantities of seals, hailing of vessels in the distance, etc."

CHAPTER XXXII.

ORANGE COUNTY.

B Y an act of the legislature approved March 11, 1889, the territory now form- ing Orange county was cut off from the southeastern portion of Los Angeles county. The movement to form a new county out of that portion was begun twenty years before it was accomplished. The late Major Max Strobel of Anaheim was the originator of the scheme. In the fall of 1869 he drew up a bill creating the county of Anaheim and making the town of Anaheim the county-seat. The dividing line between the old and the new county began at a point in the Pacific ocean, three nautical miles southwestward from the mouth of the old San Gabriel river, thence running northeasterly, fol- lowing the channel of that river to an intersec- tion with the San Bernardino base line; thence cast on that line to the division line between Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.

Strobel had enlisted in his scheme the active co-operation of some of the wealthiest pioncers of the county. William Workman of the Puente, Temple, Rubottom, Fryer, Don Juan Foster, Ben Dryfus, A. Langenberger, and others, favored his project. Armed with numerously signed petitions and abundantly supplied with coin, Strobel appeared in Sacramento at the opening of the legislative session of 1869-70. Early in the session his bill passed the assembly with but little opposition. The hopes of the divisionist rose high, the new county was as- sutred. Anaheim became a political Mecca for office-secking pilgrims. Statesmen of Los Nic- tos and place hunters from San Juan counselled with the patriots of Anaheim, and parcelled out the prospective county offices among them.

Then came a long delay. Opposition to the scheme had shown itself in the senate. The people of Los Angeles city had awakened to the fact that they were about to be left with a large arca of mountains and deserts, and but very little elsc.

The new county took in all of the fertile val- leys of the Los Nietos, the San José and the Santa Ana. The delay lengthened. Strobel was

hopeful, but the opposition was working most vigorously. Gold would win, and gold he must have or all would be lost. The envious and un- charitable queried as to what had become of all the coin Strobel had taken with him, and inti- miated that he had been fighting the tiger in the jungles of Sacramento and that the tiger had the best of it. But the faithful gathered together their hard earned shekels, and the pro- cceds of many a gallon of wine, the price of many a bronco and many a bullock were sent to Strobel that he might convince the honest legislators of the richness and resources of the new county.

Another long delay and anxiety that was cruel to the waiting statesmen on the banks of the Santa Ana. Then one day in the ides of March the lumbering old stage coach, with its tri- weekly mail, rolled into the embryo capital of the new county. The would-be officeholders gathered at the postoffice, eager for the latest news from Sacramento. It came in a letter from Strobel. The bill had been defeated in the sen- ate, but he was working for a reconsideration and would be sure of success if more money were sent. To Strobel's last appeal even the most faithful were dumb.

Major Max Strobel, the originator of the division scheme and its most earnest advocate in its carly stages, deserves more than a passing notice. A soldier of fortune and a Machiavel in politics, he was always on the losing side. He was a man of versatile genius and varied re- sources, a lawyer, an editor, a civil engineer, an accomplished linguist and a man of education. Ile was a German by birth, and reputed to be of aristocratic lineage. A compatriot of Carl Schuurtz and Sigel in the German revolution of '48, on the failure of that movement, with Sigel, his intimate friend, he fled to this country. He drifted down to Nicaragua, and for a time filibustered with Walker. He finally located in Anaheim, where he bought a vineyard and en- gaged in wine making. But the life of a vine- yardist was too narrow and contracted for his

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genius; he was constantly branching out into new projects. He was one of the pioneer petro- leum prospectors of the state. In 1867 he sunk a great hole in Brea cañon, where, if he did not strike oil, he did strike the bottom of the purses of those whom he enlisted in his scheme. Even in this project his ill luck followed him. In the immediate vicinity of where he bored for oil thirty-four years ago, oil gushers abound to-day and fortunes have been made in oil.

After his failure to divide the county he start- ed a newspaper in Anaheim. It was to be the organ of county division. It succeeded in divid- ing the divisionists into two factions, the Strobel and the anti-Strobel, who waged a wordy war against each other through the columns of their respective organs, the Advocate and the Gascttc. Strobel's organ, The -People's Advocate, died from some cause, probably insufficient nutrition, and was buried in the grave of journalistic fail- ures. Strobel's last venture was the sale of Santa Catalina Island to European capital- ists.

Supplied with funds by the owners and rich mineral specimens from the island, he sailed to England and located in London. He succeeded in convincing a syndicate of English capitalists of the mineral wealth and other resources of the island, and negotiated its sale for a million dol- lars. A contract was drawn up and an hour set on the next day when the parties were to sign and the money to be paid. When the hour arrived for closing the transaction Strobel did not appear. Search was made for him. He was found in his room dead, dead on the very eve of success, for the sale of the island would have made him rich. Negotiations for the island were broken off by the death of Strobel. Nearly twenty years after his death it was sold for one- quarter of what he was to receive.

Strobel might be said to be the father of Orange county. He was the progenitor of the scheme that resulted in its creation, although he died years before it was born. After the death of Strobel, the management of the county division scheme was placed in the hands of a committee. The name was changed from the county of Anaheim to the county of Orange. the committee arguing that immigrants would be attracted by the name, forgetful of the fact that there were only about fifty other places named Orange in the United States. The north- eastern boundaries of the prospective county were contracted so as to leave out the San José valley, the people of that valley electing to re- main in the old county. A bill creating the county of Orange was introduced into the legis- lative session of 1872, but it never reached a vote.

In 1873 the division question drifted into poli- ties. A county division convention was held in Anaheim, and a man by the name of Bush from Santa Ana was nominated for the assembly. The policy of the divisionists was to force one or the other of the political parties to place Bush on its ticket to secure the division vote. In their conventions neither the Democratic nor the Republican party took any notice of Bush's candidacy. Ignored by both parties, he made an independent campaign, received a few votes and then passed out of the political arena for- ever.

In the legislature of 1874, Wiseman, nick- named the "Broadaxe" from the vigorous way he hewed the Queen's English, appeared as the champion of county division. Neither his pathetic appeals for the oppressed people of the prospective county of Orange nor his superla- tive denunciations of their oppressors, the coun- ty officials of Los Angeles, convinced the law- makers at Sacramento that the people were suf- fering for the want of a new county.

Another change was made in boundaries and name. The northern line of the prospective county drifted southward to the new San Gabriel river. In 1878 a bill to create the county of Santa Ana and making Anaheim the seat of its government was drafted. The name was a con- cession to Santa Ana, a concession, however, that failed to conciliate. The town of Santa Ana, that had no existence when Strobel pro- mulgated the division scheme in 1869, had now grown to be a formidable rival of Anaheim. It was ambitious to become a county seat itself, and vigorously combated the division projects of its rival. Local jealousies and the opposition of Los Angeles defeated the measure in the legislature.

In 1881 another division effort was made. Anaheim patched up a truce with her rival, Santa Ana. The vineyard city was to have the seat of government for two years, then it was to be a free-for-all scramble among all the towns and the one that could corral the most votes was henceforth to be the capital of the county of Santa Ana. Bills were introduced in both the senate and the assembly, but died on the files, smothered by "slickens" (mining debris), the absorbing question of that session.

The question of county division fell into a state of "innocuous desuetude." The rivals, Anaheim and Santa Ana, were preparing for the final struggle. It came in 1889. Col. E. E. Edwards, a resident of Santa Ana, was elected one of the members of the assembly from Los Angeles county. He introduced a bill to create the county of Orange and leaving the location of the county seat to a vote of the people of the

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new county. The northern boundary line had again drifted southward. Coyote creek had be- come the Rubicon, and it was only four miles north of Anaheim. Santa Ana in the change of boundaries had outgeneraled her rival and virtually decided the county seat question against her opponent. For twenty years Ana- heim had contended for county division. Now she opposed it, but in vain. The bill passed and was approved by the governor. In the county seat question Santa Ana won over all of her rivals. The county of Orange set up in business for itself, August 1, 1889, and so ended the long- est contest over the formation of a new county of any in the history of the state.

An election for county officers was held July 17, 1889, and the following named officials were chosen: Superior judge, J. W. Towner; sheriff and tax collector, R. T. Harris; district attor- ney, E. E. Edwards; county clerk, R. O. Wick- ham; auditor and recorder, G. E. Foster; treas- urer, W. B. Wall; county assessor, Fred C. Smythe; county superintendent of schools, J. P. Greeley; county surveyor, S. O. Wood; coroner and public administrator, I. D. Mills; super- visors, William H. Spurgeon, S. Armor, S. A. Littlefield, Jacob Ross and A. Guy Smith.

Orange county is bounded north by Los Angeles county, east by Riverside, south by San Diego and west by the Pacific ocean. It has an arca of 675 square miles, or 432,000 acres. All the area of Orange county, with the exception of a few hundred acres of mountain land, was covered by Spanish land grants. The old time ranchos south of the Santa Ana river except thie Santiago de Santa Ana belonged to the Mission San Juan Capistrano; those north were attached to the Mission San Gabriel. After the secularization of the mission, these ranchos, when they became depleted of cattle and horses, were granted by the governor on recommenda- tion of the ayuntamiento of Los Angeles to applicants who could comply with the law; that is, make certain improvements and stock the rancho with cattle.

SPANISHI RANCHOS IN ORANGE COUNTY.

The following named comprises the ranchos within the limits of Orange county: Mission Vieja or La Paz, Trabuco, Boca de La Playa, El Sobrante, Niguel, Canada de los Alisos, Lomas de Santiago, San Joaquin, Santiago de Santa Ana, La Bolsa Chico, Las Bolsas, half of the Los Alamitos, part of the Los Coyotes, San Juan Cajon de Santa Ana, Cajon de Santa Ana, part of La Brea and a part of La IIabra.

The Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, on which the cities of Santa Ana, Orange, Tustin and several smaller towns are located, is one of the

oldest grants in California. Col. J. J. Warner, writing in 1876, says, "During the first quarter of the present century, the Santiago de Santa Ana rancho was universally known among the people inhabiting the country, as one of the oldest ranchos, and there are many good rea- sons for the belief that its founding was con- temporary with that of San Rafael." (The San Rafael rancho 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, to José Maria Verdugo.)

"There is no room to doubt the statement that a grant of the Santiago de Santa Ana tract to José Antonio Yorba was made in 1810 by Gov. José Joaquin de Arrillaga, but in a parti- tion suit in the district court for this county, a few years ago, for the partition of that tract of land among the heirs and claimants, testimony was introduced which showed that the original occupant of that tract was N. Grijalva, who, as also his wife, died leaving only two children, both daughters; that one of these daughters married José Antonio Yorba and the other Juan Pablo Peralta, and it is far more probable that the former of these two latter persons obtained a new or confirmed grant from Arrillaga in 1810 than that Grijalva should have established him- self upon the tract without having obtained a grant from the governor. In this partition suit the court recognized the claim of the Peraltas as descendants of the original proprietor of the land."

The boundaries of the Santiago de Santa Ana as defined in the grant made in 1810, were the suminit of the mountains on the northeast, the Santa Ana river on the west, the ocean on the south, and a line running from what is now Newport bay to a certain Red Hill for the southwest boundary. The rancho contained 62,000 acres. During the great flood of 1825, the Santa Ana river left its old channel at a point about three miles easterly of where Orange now stands and cut a new channel for itself some ciistance southeasterly from its former one. Between the two channels there was about 13,000 acres. The rancho was surveyed by a United States deputy surveyor, and the new channel was taken as its western boundary, although all the old residents claimed that the old channel was the true western boundary. The rancho Las Bolsas was floated over the land between the channels.

THE SQUATTER WAR.

In the carly '70s, a number of settlers squat- ted on this land, claiming that it was govern- ment land. The land was covered with a heavy growth of willows and the squatters made a

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living by cutting and selling the timber for fire wood.

The squatters soon found that they could not hold the tract as government land, for since the river was the dividing line between Las Bolsas and the Santiago, the land must be in one or the other ranchos. Their next move was to buy the claims of the Yorba heirs to all lands outside of that portion of the Santiago de Santa Ana that had been partitioned among the heirs. The legal contest between the squatters and the Los Angeles and San Bernardino Land Company, the owners of the Bolsas grant, was waged in all the courts up to the supreme court of the United States. In that court Judge Stephen J. Field decided that since a United States patent had been issued to the Bolsas first it held over the Santiago, which, although the older grant, had been patented later than the other. He re- quired of the settlers a bond of $75,000 before he would grant an appeal. This ended the squatter war. They could not put up the bond. The settlers were evicted by the United States marshal and the land company, after a decade uf litigation, obtained possession of the disputed territory, but the timber was gone. The squat- ters really had the best of it.

SCHOOLS.

Orange county has most excellent public schools. Their efficiency is largely due to the untiring labors of Prof. J. P. Greeley, who has held the office of county school superintendent since the organization of the county. Through the efforts of Prof. Greeley the county possesses a larger teachers' library than any other county in the state. There are 2,300 volumes in the library. According to the first school census taken after the organization of the county (that of 1890) there were 4,011 children between the ages of five and seventeen. There were at that time in the county thirty-nine school districts and seventy-four teachers. The school census of 1900 gives 5,887 between the ages of five and seventeen. When the county was organized there was not a high school within its limits; now there are three.

The high school of Santa Ana was organized September, 1891. A fine new building, costing about $30,000, was completed in 1900. Ten teachers are employed in the school. The total enrollment of pupils last year (1900-01) was 243

Anaheim high school was organized in 1898. It employs four teachers and has an attendance of sixty-six pupils. Bonds have been issued for the erection of a high school building costing $12.500. The corner stone of the new high school was laid July 4, 1901.

Fullerton high school is made up of a union of six districts. It employs four teachers and has an enrollment of sixty-two pupils. A two- story high school building was completed and occupied in 1898.

The educational affairs of the city of Santa Ana are managed by a board of education con- sisting of five members. There are six primary and grammar school buildings. Thirty teachers are employed in these schools. Prof. J. C. Tem- pleton is the city superintendent and also the principal of the high school.

The pioneer school of the section now com- prising Orange county was the Upper Santa Ana, now Yorba. The first school opened in it was taught by T. J. Scully in 1857. Hon. William M. McFadden, school superintendent of Los Angeles county from 1870 to 1874, taught In the district a number of years. About fifteen years ago the name of the district was changed to Yorba, the city of Santa Ana taking the former name of the pioneer district.

Since the county set up in business for itself it has built a handsome court house costing over $100,000. The affairs of the county have been well managed. There has been a steady growth itt production and a healthy increase in popula- tion. The census of 1890 gave the population of the county at 13,589. In 1900 it had increased to 19,696, a gain of over thirty-three per cent. Although one of the smallest counties in the state, it ranks among the highest in fruit produc- tion. Over 1,500 car loads of citrus fruits are shipped out of the county annually, bringing a return of nearly half a million dollars. The dried fruits amount to about 2,000 tons.

The Orange County Park in the Santiago cañon is one of the finest natural parks in the state. The park is the gift of James Irvine and contains 160 acres, wooded with magnificent oaks and sycamores.

ILISTORY OF THE CELERY INDUSTRY.

Thirty-one years ago, when the author first visited the now famous peat lands of the West- minster and Bolsas country, these lands were known as ciénagas, and were regarded as worth- less. These ciénagas were tracts of swampy lands containing usually ponds of water in the middle skirted around with a rank growth of willows, tules and nettles. During the rainy season the entire area of the ciénaga was over- flowed. In the fall and winter these marshy lands were the resorts of millions of wild geese ; they were also the haunts of wild ducks and other water fowl, and were the favorite hunting grounds of the sportsmen of that day. The carly settlers counted the ciénagas as so much waste land, or rather as worse than waste, for

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the drier portions of these swamps were the lurking places of wild cats, coyotes, coons and other prowlers which preyed upon the settler's pigs and poultry.

Later on the larger of these swamps became the feeding places of wild hogs that subsisted upon the tule roots and wild celery growing there. About twenty years ago some of the smaller of these marshes were drained, cleared of their brush and vegetable growth and planted to corn. The yield was so prolific that these lands rose rapidly in value. The settlers organ- ized drainage districts and constructed canals to carry off the water, and these swamps were reclaimed. They became the most valuable corn and potato lands in the county. The abundant growth of wild celery upon which the wild hogs had fed and fattened before the reclamation of the ciénagas indirectly led to the experiment of growing tante celery upon them for the eastern markets.

The following sketch of the origin and growth of the celery industry of Orange county is com- piled from the Santa Ana Blade's Celery edition of February 7, 1901: "The first experiment in celery culture on the peat lands was made in 1891 on a tract of land south of Westminster known locally as the Snow & Adams place, on which several thousand dollars was expended, but without satisfactory results. E. A. Curtis, D. E. Smeltzer and others were the prime mov- ers in making the experiment the outcome of which was such a flat failure that all but Mr. Curtis gave up the idea. Mr. Curtis' pet scheme came to fruition sooner than was anticipated, for about this time he entered the employ of the Earl Fruit Company, and with the consent of the firm resolved to again give celery culture a trial.

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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 33

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