USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > Los Angeles from the mountains to the sea : with selected biography of actors and witnesses to the period of growth and achievement, Volume I > Part 18
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Perhaps the most interesting window display in the city in the early '50s was that of Don Abel Stearns, wherein common candy jars filled with gold, from the finest dust to "chispas," or nuggets, could be seen from the street adorning the shelves. As gold and silver coin were scarce, the natives working the placer mines in the adjoining mountains made their purchases with gold dust. Tied in a red silk handker- chief, tucked into the waistband of their trousers, would be their week's earnings; this, poured carelessly into the scales and as carelessly weiglied, soon filled the jars. What dust remained was shaken out of its folds, and the handkerchief returned to its place. No wonder that the native became the victim of sharpers and money lenders; taking no thought of the morrow, he lived on, letting his inheritance slip from his grasp.
The pioneer second hand store of Los Angeles was kept
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by a man named Yarrow, or old "Cuarto Ojos" (four eyes), as the natives called him, because of the large spectacles he wore, and the habit he had of looking over them, giving him the appearance of having four eyes. Probably, however, this sobriquet attached to him because his glasses had four lenses, two in front and one on each side. His store was on the corner of Requena and Los Angeles streets, in the rear of where the United States Hotel still stands. The store room was a long, low adobe building with the usual store front of that day-a door and a narrow window. This left the back part of the long store almost in utter darkness, which prob- ably gave rise to the uncanny tradition that certain persons, of reputed wealth, but strangers to the town, had been enticed into his dark interior to their undoing, and that, like the fly in the spider's den, they "ne'er came out again." This idle tale was all owing to Yarrow's spectacles-for in those days all men who wore glasses were under suspicion, the feeling being that they were to conceal their general motives and designs, which were hidden by the masque of spectacles, and were suspected to be murderers.
In the "tienda" of "Cuarto Ojos" were heaped together all sorts and conditions of things, very much as they are now in second hand stores, but the articles differed widely in kind and quality from those found in such stores today. Old "Cuarto Ojos" combined pawn broking and money lending with his other business. In close contact with the highly colored shawls, rebosos, gold necklaces, silver mounted frenos and heavily embroidered muchillas, hung treacherous looking machetes, silver mounted revolvers and all the trappings and paraphernalia of the robber and the gambler out of luck, and forced there to stand and deliver as collateral for loans from old "Cuarto Ojos."
Coming up Requena Street and crossing Main to the southwest corner of Main and Court streets one arrived at the pioneer auction house of 1850. Here George F. Lamson persuaded the visitors to his store into buying wares that at the present day would find their way to the rubbish heaps of the city. This story is told of his sale of a decrepit bureau : "Ladies and gentlemen-ladies minus and gentlemen scarce,"
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said the genial auctioneer, "here is the finest piece of ma- hogany ever brought across the plains or around the Horn- four deep drawers and keys to all of them; don't lose this bargain, it is one in a thousand!" It was knocked down to a personal friend of the auctioneer for the modest sum of $24. After the sale the purchaser ventured to ask for the keys.
AN OLD-TIME LOCALITY The Plaza, Pico House and Old Gas Works
"Why," said Lamson, "when I put up that article I never expected you would be fool enough to buy it. There are no keys, and more than that, there is no need of keys, for there are no locks to it."
On Los Angeles Street in the same location where it stands today was kept by Sam C. Foy, stood and still stands the pioneer saddlery of Los Angeles.
Of the pioneer merchants of those days, Mr. Harris New- mark was the founder of a house still in existence. If any
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youth of Los Angeles would see for himself how honesty and strict attention to business commands success, let him visit the establishment of Mr. Newmark and his successors.
In the early '50s some merchants were accused of getting their hands into their neighbors' pockets, or rather of charg- ing exorbitant prices to the depletion of the contents of their neighbors' purses. These same merchants never refused to go down into their own pockets for sweet charity's sake. If a collection was to be taken up for some charitable object, all that was necessary was to make the round of the stores, and money was poured into the hat without a question of what was to be done with it. Now we have the Associated Charities and all sorts of charitable institutions, but for liberal and un- questioning giving, we take off our hats to the "stores of 1850."
Prof. J. M. Guinn, about twenty years ago, related to the members of the Southern California Historical Society the result of his researches concerning the advertising methods of pioneer Los Angeles merchants. Professor Guinn looked up the old files of the Los Angeles Star, which was the great newspaper of the town in the early days. Professor Guinn said :
Recently, in looking over. some copies of the Los Angeles Star of fifty years ago, I was amused and interested by the quaint ways the advertisers of that day advertised their wares and other things. Department stores are great advertisers, and the pioneer department store of Los Angeles was no ex- ception. Its ad actually filled a half column of the old Star, which was an astonishing display in type for those days. It was not called a department store then, but I doubt whether any of the great stores of Chicago or New York carry on so many lines of business as did that general merchandise store that was kept in the adobe house on the corner of Arcadia and North Main streets fifty years ago. The proprietors of that store were our old pioneer friends, Wheeler & Johnson. The announcement of what they had to sell was prefaced by the following philosophical deductions, which are as true and as applicable to terrestrial affairs today as they were half a century ago :
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"Old things are passing away," says the ad; "behold all things have become new. Passing events impress us with the mutability of human affairs. The earth and its appurte- mances are constantly passing from one phase to another. Change and consequent progress is the manifest law of des- tiny. The forms and customs of the past are become obsolete and new and enlarged ideas are silently but swiftly moulding terrestrial matters on a scale of enhanced magnificence and utility.
"Perhaps no greater proof of these propositions can be adduced than the evident fact that the old mercantile system heretofore pursued in this community with its 7x9 stores, its exorbitant prices, its immense profits, its miserable assort- ments of shop-rotten goods that have descended from one de- funct establishment to another through a series of years, greeting the beholder at his every turn as if craving his pity by a display of their forlorn, mouldy and dusty appearance. These rendered venerable by age are now considered relics and types of the past.
"The ever-expanding mind of the public demands a new state of things. It demands new goods, lower prices, better assortments, and more accommodations. The people ask for a suitable consideration for their money and they shall have the same at the new and magnificent establishment of
"WHEELER & JOHNSON,
"in the House of Don Abel Stearns, on Main Street, where they have just received $50,000 worth of the best and most desirable merchandise ever brought to the country."
When the customer had been sufficiently impressed by the foregoing propositions and deductions they proceed to enumerate, and here are a few of the articles:
"Groceries, soap, oil, candles, tobacco, cigars, salt, pipes, powder, shot, lead. Provisions, flour, bread, port, hams, bacon, sugar, coffee. Dry Goods, broadcloths, cassimeres, blankets, alpacas, cambrics, lawns, ginghams, twist, silks, satins, colored velvet, nets, crepe, scarlet bandas, bonnets, lace, collars, needles, pins.
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"Boots, shoes, hats, coats, pants, vests, suits, cravats, gloves, hosiery.
"Furniture, crockery, glassware, mirrors, lamps, chande- liers, agricultural implements, hardware, tools, cutlery, house furnishing goods, liquors, wines, cigars, wood and willow ware, brushes, trunks, paints, oils, tinware and cooking stoves.
"Our object is to break down monopoly."
Evidently their method of breaking down monopoly was to monopolize the whole business of the town.
When we recall the fact that all of this vast assortment was stored in one room and sold over the same counter we must admire the dexterity of the salesman who could keep bacon and lard from mixing with the silks and satins, or the paints and oils from leaving their impress on the broadcloths and velvets.
Ladies' bonnets were kept in stock. The saleslady had not yet made her appearance in Los Angeles, so it was the sales gentleman that sold bonnets. Imagine him fresh from sup- plying a purchaser with a side of bacon, and then fitting a bonnet on the head of a lady customer, giving it the proper tilt and sticking the hat pin into the coil of her hair and not into her cranium. Fortunately for the salesman, the bonnets of that day were capacious affairs, modeled after the prairie schooner, and did not need hat pins to hold them on.
The old time department store sales gentleman was a genius in the mercantile line; he could dispose of anything from a lady's lace collar to a caballada of broncos.
Here is the quaint advertisement of our pioneer barber. The pioneer barber of Los Angeles was Peter Biggs-a gen- tleman of color who came to the state as a slave with his master, but attained his freedom shortly after his arrival. He set up a hair cutting and shaving saloon. The price for hair cutting was a dollar-shaving 50 cents. In the Star of 1853 he advertises a reduction of 50 per cent. Hair cutting 50 cents, shampooing 50 cents, shaving 25 cents. In addition to his tonsorial services he advertises that he blacks boots, wait on and tends parties, runs errands, takes in clothes to wash, iron and mend; cuts, splits and carries in wood; and in short performs any work, honest and respectable, to earn a
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genteel living and accommodate his fellow creatures. For character he refers to all the gentlemen in Los Angeles. Think of what a character he must have had.
There is often both tragedy and comedy, as well as busi- ness, mixed up in advertisements. In the Star of forty-eight years ago appears the ad of a great prize lottery or gift enter- prise. It was called the "Great Southern Distribution of Real Estate and Personal Property," by Henry Dalton. The first prize was an elegant modern built dwelling house on the Plaza valued at $11,000. There were 84,000 shares in the lot- tery, valued at $1 each, and 432 first class prizes to be drawn. Among the prizes were 240 elegant lots in the Town of Benton. Who among you pioneers can locate that lost and long since forgotten metropolis of the Azusa-the City of Benton?
For some cause unknown to me the drawing never came off. A distinguished pioneer sued Dalton for the value of one share that he held. The case was carried from one court to another and fought out before one legal tribunal after another with a vigor and viciousness unwarranted by the trivial amount involved. How it ended I cannot say. I never traced it through the records to a finish.
Old ads are like tombstones. They recall to us the memory of the "has beens;" they recall to our minds actors who have acted their little part in the comedy or tragedy of life and passed behind the scenes, never again to tread the boards.
And now, in the Wonder City of the West, it is like hearing the tenuous voices of a dream to read these old advertisements and to pass in memory's review the long departed merchants of the Los Angeles that used to be.
CHAPTER XI
THE PORT O' SHIPS
California has a coast line approximately 1,000 miles in length, with only two natural harbors. It has bights innumer- able and many coast indentations that are no more than road- steads in which ships of small burden might anchor safely from a storm if the storm were not over violent. But it has only two natural harbors-San Francisco and San Diego.
Sometime in some far-away and forgotten age of the earth a seismic disturbance doubtless caused a mile or so of the coast line opposite the rocky farallones to sink into the sea, the waters of which immediately poured into a vast area of low valley lands and thus was formed the magnificent and peerless harbor of San Francisco. It was so named by Fray Junipero Serra in honor of the patron saint and founder of his order, San Francis of Assisi.
And the mile or so of land that an earthquake sank into the sea, thus forming an entrance to the harbor of Saint Francis was fitly and beautifully named the "Golden Gate" by Capt. John C. Fremont, the immortal "pathfinder," in one of his official reports to the Government at Washington.
Just how the harbor of San Diego was formed by Nature, we are not aware, having seen no account of it, but this would be beside the board, anyway. It is enough to know that it is there-the Bay of San Diego shining blue against the sea- beautiful and lovely, a haven not alone for ships, but a great port in which the armadas of the world could assemble with ease.
We are not to be misled by the maps that were made and sent to Spain by the ancient mariners who first sailed the coast of California. If they were to be believed, California fairly bristled with harbors. They even mapped California out as a great island.
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The fact is that almost any hole in the coast would do for a harbor for the little tubs of ships in which Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, the discoverer, and Sebastian Viseano and Sir Fran- cis Drake sailed in the old times of the sea. The wonder is that they sailed so far, and made conquest of the whole earth, indeed, in these little ships, aboard of which the man of the present day would not care to venture across the quiet and plaeid waters of the channel between San Pedro and the Island of Santa Catalina.
Wherefore, we are to observe that what might be con- sidered a port a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, would by no means constitute a port for the great ocean burden-bearers of today.
Now, as all the world knows, the port of the City of Los Angeles is the Bay of San Pedro. And it will doubtless prove interesting to know with what favor or disfavor that indenta- tion of the coast was regarded by the old-timers.
In his log book, referred to at more length in an early chapter of this book, we find that one Rodriguez Cabrillo, the discoverer of California and the first white man ever to lay eyes on San Pedro as far as we know, refers to the harbor as being "a Port enclosed and very good." But, as we have previously remarked, while the Bay of San Pedro in the year 1542 might have been "a Port enclosed and very good" for the little galleons of Cabrillo, we may as well be frank to admit that it wouldn't be anything like that at all for the present day liners and freighters that now find anchorage there in ever increasing numbers. However, Los Angeles cannot be so poor in gratitude as to fail to remember always that so great a sailorman as Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who was also the first sailorman to put into our harbor, was very complimentary to it.
Still, it was always regarded as a harbor, more or less, and when a ship was built at the Mission of San Gabriel a century ago, it was launched at San Pedro as being the natural and best adapted place from which to launch a ship.
It seems that Sebastian Viscano in the year 1602 also re- garded San Pedro (the original name of which, by the way,
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was San Miguel) with much favor. He also said it was a good port.
All these ancient reports of San Pedro, however, became little or not at all known to the commercial world, being buried in the archives of Spain throughout the long years of nearly two centuries when California was as much forgotten as . though the good Lord had never created it.
But in the year 1835 a Yankee sailor eame to California who made San Pedro and all the other harbors and ports of California familiar to commerce. And the way he did it was by writing about them in a book which was widely read and which had created, indeed, a profound sensation. This book was called "Two Years Before the Mast," and was written by Richard Henry Dana, a Harvard undergraduate, who, on account of an affliction of his eyes which jeopardized his sight, put out to sea from New England on a long voyage around the Horn.
Dana said that San Pedro when he saw it first, eighty-five years ago, was not a land-locked bay, but rather one with little more than a erescent-shaped shore, really an open road- stead protected mainly by the outjutting Palos Verdes Hills and the Island of Santa Catalina lying lengthwise with the coast and less than eighteen miles away. On the bluff at the foot of the hills, and facing the sea, a wooden shed was the only building Dana could see from the deck of his little vessel. He wrote in his story of this voyage:
"I learned to my surprise that this desolate-looking place furnished more hides than any port on the coast. It was the only port for a distance of eighty miles, and about thirty miles in the interior was a fine plain country filled with herds of cattle, in the center of which was the Pueblo of Los Angeles -the largest town in California-and several of the largest Missions, to all of which Los Angeles was the seaport."
Cargo from vessels was at this time taken to the land in small boats, while the merchandise-mostly hides-taken in exchange was rolled down the bluff and taken from the shore to the vessel in the same boats.
Twenty-four years later Dana again called at the port,
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and in the following words describes the changes that had already taken place in it:
"I could scarce recognize the hill up which we rolled and dragged and pushed our heavy loads. It was no longer the landing place. One had been made at the head of the creek, and boats discharged and took off cargoes from a mole or wharf in a quiet place safe from Southeasters. A tug ran to take off passengers from the steamer to the wharf-for the trade of Los Angeles is sufficient to support such a vessel.
"I walked along the shore to the new landing place where there were two or three storehouses and other buildings front- ing a small depot; and a stage coach, I found, went daily be- tween this place and the pueblo."
This stage line was for nearly forty years the common carrier between the pueblo and the harbor.
During this period many Americans settled in Los Angeles and it rapidly became the trading place of prime importance to the entire Southwest, and the harbor section grew to have a population of about 3,000 persons.
The time came at last when all these comparatively small traffickings became things of the past and Los Angeles had grown to be a real city with an ever-expanding fertile agri- cultural country back of it, with a transcontinental railroad running into it, and its affairs constantly assuming huger proportions.
Then the open roadstead at San Pedro and the one wooden wharf that ran out from it wouldn't do at all, and Los Angeles was stared in the face by the solemn fact that it had to have a real harbor and not one that was merely a make-believe.
And so, as it had always done when it needed anything, it went out and got it. If Nature had not made an honest-to- goodness harbor at San Pedro, then Los Angeles itself would make one there.
Thinking upon things like this, there are three outstand- ing facts of Los Angeles concerning which Nature did not provide for it and which it provided for itself. The first of these things is the railroad-a transcontinental railroad which was surveyed and was being constructed many miles away across the desert, leaving Los Angeles stranded and not
LOS ANGELES HARBOR, GATEWAY TO THE FAR EAST
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even within hailing distance of it. But Los Angeles went out to the desert and said to the railroad: "Hey, Railroad, you are overlooking a big bet; you just turn yourself around a little and run over here to Los Angeles." And the railroad did it. In later times it had no river to supply it with water. So it trekked 250 miles over hills and valleys and across deserts, found a river flowing from the eternal snows of the Sierras, bought it and paid for it and turned it into big pipes with the result that the city will have water and plenty of it as long as it lives. In the same way it had no harbor that could be called a harbor. So it just naturally went to work and dug out one.
When it came to the point that Los Angeles had to have a real harbor, there was a big fight over it-a long and a bitter fight. Men still not very old can remember it.
The fight was between the Southern Pacific Railroad and the people. The Southern Pacific Railroad wanted the harbor located at Santa Monica, which would not only be to the rail- road's advantage, but would give that once aggressive and pugnacious institution control over the commercial destinies of Los Angeles for all time to come. The people wanted the harbor at San Pedro, where it would be owned and controlled by the people. And, after years of acrimonious struggle and bickerings, the people won their point.
The story of the building of the Port of San Pedro, now known officially as the Harbor of Los Angeles, is of intense interest, and we are indebted to Mr. Christopher Gordon of the harbor commission for a relation of the following im- portant facts :
About 1870 the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad was built to connect Los Angeles with Wilmington. This road was later transferred to the Southern Pacific Company as an inducement for it to build from San Francisco through Los Angeles and on into Texas.
This railroad construction naturally gave a great impetus to the business of the port, and about this time the United States Government began to take a hand in improving it in the interest of navigation and commerce.
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At this time less than two feet of water covered the en- trance to the inner harbor at low tide.
In 1871 the Federal Government commenced jetty con- struction at Dead Man's Island, with a view to having the tides scour out a deeper channel to Wilmington. This plan was successful, and with a little dredging and the expendi- ture of about $400,000 such improvement in port conditions was effected that about 1885 a new realization of the port's significance was had and a movement was started to have the Government build a breakwater to protect the outer harbor.
The Southern Pacific about this time extended its Wil- mington branch on into San Pedro, and in 1891 the Los Angeles Terminal Railway built a railroad on Rattlesnake Island, thus opening up the east side of the harbor by rail communication.
The Government then undertook to build the breakwater, and this was completed abont 1910 at a cost of $3,100,000 and with a length of 11,050 feet.
Later, at its outermost end, a splendid lighthouse was built.
During these years much dredging was done by the Gov- ernment, not only in the main channel and turning basin, but also in the east and west basins, and later a considerable amount of dredging was done by the city in the east basin and in the Wilmington and the Mormon Island channels.
The harbor lines as fixed about this time have a length of about twenty miles-a pier line frontage that can be increased very considerably by the dredging of slips.
About this time the State of California transferred to the City of Los Angeles all its tide land holdings in and about the harbor, and these, after much litigation, became finally- to the extent of nearly 2,000 acres-the holdings of the city. Of these about 400 acres are in the outer harbor.
In 1906 Los Angeles extended its boundaries to the harbor district towns.
In 1907 the first Board of Harbor Commissioners of the City of Los Angeles was created by city ordinance. This Board proceeded energetically with the steps necessary to bring the harbor district within the corporate limits of the
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city, to the end that the financial strength of the big and growing city might be employed in developing its harbor.
Early in 1909, by act of the State Legislature, the con- solidation of the harbor municipalities with the city became possible. As an inducement to consolidation the city agreed to spend $10,000,000 in harbor development, and in August of that year the entire harbor district became a part of the city.
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