USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > Men of achievement in the great Southwest Illustrated. A story of pioneer struggles during early days in Los Angeles and Southern California. With biographies, heretofore unpublished facts, anecdotes and incidents in the lives of the builders > Part 2
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At the time of the admission of California into the Union, in 1850, the city of Los Angeles contained 1610 inhabitants, and the great territory known as Los Angeles county, 3530. It had been larger, but the gold excite- ment had drawn many away to the mines in the central portion of the State.
All attempts at public instruction up to 1850 had been few and unsuccessful. During the next three years several attempts were made to establish a school, but not until 1853 was there a determined attempt in this direc- tion made. In the tax levy of the previous year an item for schools was introduced, and three school commis- sioners were appointed by the Council. For some years after this, little progress was made, but in 1854 Stephen C. Foster was elected Mayor, and, being a man of high intellectual attainments, a graduate of Yale College, and of patriotic impulses, he gave earnest attention to providing proper public instruction for the youth of the city. The next year a school was erected at the corner of Spring and Second streets, where the Bryson building now stands. It was of brick, two stories high, and cost about $6000. It served for over thirty years as the principal school of the city. Later a second school was put up north of the Plaza on Bath street, now Olivera street. This was also used for school purposes until the great "hoom" took place, about 1886. Many of the prominent men of the city of the present day, as well as women prominent in society, were educated in these two schools, Foster was a kind of pioneer "Pooh-Bah," being Superintendent of Schools as well as Mayor.
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MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT IN THE GREAT SOUTHWEST.
The year in which California became a State, Theo lore Foster took steps to give the citizens of Los Angeles a paper. It made its first appearance-but not under Foster-May 17, 1851. It bore the Spanish name, "La Estrella"-"The Star." It was published in Spanish and English. This did not last long. The two languages were separated, and Los Angeles had two papers. In 1851 William H. Rand was one of the proprietors of The Star. He returned East after a short time, and became a famous publisher in Chicago as senior member of the firm of Rand & McNallv. Henry Hamilton became owner of The Star in 1856, and continued to publish an excellent weekly paper, with a short intermission, beginning in 1864, until 1873, when he sold the paper to Maj. Ben C. Truman, who conducted it until the time of its demise. Col. John O. Wheeler published a weekly paper -- The Southern Californian-in an old adobe on First street, between Spring and Broadway, near where The Times Building now is. About this time, William H. Workman came to the city from Missouri, and set type on Col. Wheeler's paper.
The first effort crowned with any kind of success in establishing a Protestant church in Los Angeles was in 1859. The first Protestant services of which any record remains were held by Rev. J. W. Brier, a Methodist who was passing through the city in 1850. This service was held in a private house where the Bullard building now stands. In 1853 Rev. Adam Bland was sent out by the Methodist church to found a society in Los Angeles. Mr. Bland remained in active ministerial work in and about Los Angeles for many years. In 1854 Rev. James Woods, a minister of the Presbyterian faith, came to Los Angeles. After a year of effort he organized a congre- gation, over which he presided for some years. In 1859 Rev. W. E. Boardman, also a Presbyterian, came and began the erection of a brick church building on the corner of Temple and New High streets. Mr. Boardman returned East before the edifice was completed. The building remained unused until 1863, when Rev. Elias Birdsall, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, come here, to whom the structure was turned over by the trustees in charge. The outcome was that, about 1868, the Episcopal Church paid back the money the Presbyterians had put into the enterprise, and acquired title to the property, which they held until 1884, when it was sold.
The Roman Catholic Church, which had presided over the founding of Los Angeles, continued to grow as the city grew. In 1858 the Sisters' Hospital was founded. The Sisters, who came from Maryland, began their minis- . trations in a small way in a private house ; then established themselves on San Fernando street, opposite where the River Station stands. Here they carried on their work for a quarter of a century, until they erected their present magnificent plant on Bellevue avenue. Another band of Sisters founded an orphan asylum in 1856, and worked zealously for many years, until they were able to erect their great edifice on Boyle Heights. St. Vincent's College was founded in 1855, and prospered so that it now has a large and well-equipped plant on the corner of Grand avenue and Washington street.
Grape-growing was carried on with some enterprise in the decade now under review. In 1857 shipments of grapes amounted to nearly 1,000,000 pounds, and of wine to 250,000 gallons. So important was the industry considered that in 1857 J. T. Warner published a paper called The Southern Vineyard.
Oranges had been planted by the mission fathers at San Gabriel as soon as the mission was founded. Wil- liam Wolfskill was the first resident of Los Angeles city to make much of an effort in this way. In 1856 he sold 400 boxes.
At the close of this decade, in the national election of 1860, the vote of Los Angeles stood: Breckenridge, 703 ; Douglas, 494; Lincoln, 356; Bell, 210.
MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT IN THE GREAT SOUTHWEST.
CHAPTER IV.
A PERIOD OF STAGNATION.
There was little growth in Los Angeles between 1860 and 1880. The outbreak of the war kept men North and South at home. After the close of the war the reorganization of society operated in the same direction. Nor was there much to draw men generally to so remote a section as Southern California, cut off as it was from all parts of the country, from lack of railroads by land and lines of steamers by sea. The stage coach was the slow, uncomfortable, costly and dangerous means of travel. Stock-raising continued to be the principal industry, and weather conditions made this very unprofitable. In 1862 the State was inundated by the greatest flood ever known. It spread over the State from Shasta to San Diego. The next nine years were marked for the most part by severe droughts. The two years after the flood, like the one before that, were as dry as that was wet. The plains were strewn with dead animals ; the cienegas, or springs, were piled with carcasses until the atmosphere
SCENE ON A CALIFORNIA SHEEP RANCH.
was fetid. In 1868 there was again rather more than an abundance of rain, but this was followed by another period of three dry years, in which cattle and sheep fared badly. Times were very hard. A few Southern people came in after the close of the war. They were mostly of the professional classes, and brought very little money with them. In 1863 Dr. John S. Griffin held a bill against the city for about $1000. He was unable to obtain payment in money, and forced to take city land. The city gave him nearly all that territory now known as East Los Angeles, at 50 cents per acre.
An event of very great importance came to pass in 1860. L. J. Rose came out from Illinois, bringing his wife. He passed from one end of the State to the other before determining where they should cast in their lot. After traveling over the length and breadth of California, he returned to the San Gabriel Valley and chose Sunny Slope as the most attractive spot he had ever seen. Rose proceeded to plant orange trees and vines, until about 1885 or 1886 he had nearly a thousand acres in vines and several hundred in orange trees. He also entered into the breeding of horses, and developed one of the best strains of trotters in the world. Twenty years after he set- tled in the San Gabriel Valley, Mr. Rose told the author of this sketch that he had then paid $127,000 in interest
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MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT IN THE GREAT SOUTHWEST.
on money borrowed to develop his property. He did as much as, if not more than, any other one person to demon- strate the wonderful fertility of the soil and semi-tropic suns of Southern California. In 1882 the grapes crushed at the Rose winery in one day were more than the total product of all the vineyards in Southern California in 1902.
The closing years of this decade witnessed the building of a good many business edifices of greater preten- sions than had gone before. The Bella Union Hotel, now the St. Charles, was built. The La Fayette Hotel, which stood where the St. Elmo is now, was also among the number. The United States Hotel, two stories of the present structure, was put up. Bell's Block, sometimes known as Mellus Row, an adobe building, with a half-story in wood above, on the corner of Aliso and Los Angeles streets, where Haas, Baruch & Co.'s fine whole- sale house now stands, was of this period. Don Abel Stearns, in 1865. put up the Arcadia Block on Los Angeles street, opposite where Aliso street comes in. This is still standing in an excellent state of preservation, and occu- pied for business purposes. In 1869 the Pico House was begun. It is now the National Hotel, a good three- story building, on Main street and the Plaza. In this same year John M. Griffith, who was engaged in the lumber business and in freighting from San Pedro to Los Angeles, built the first really modern house in Los Angeles. It stood on Fort street, now Broadway, where the Potomac building is now. When this latter building was erected by Griffith, the house was moved back on Hill street and again was remodeled during the past year into a Presbyterian church.
The first bank was opened in Los Angeles in 1868. Alvinza Hayward sent his son. James A. Hayward, down from San Francisco, and with ex-Gov. John G. Downey as partner, opened the banking house of Alvinza Hayward & Co. The bank was in the old Downey building, on Main street, a little north of Temple. Another bank was opened the same year by Isaias W. Hellman. It was known as the Hellman, Temple & Co. Bank, and the banking house was on Main street, where the Central Hotel now stands, almost directly opposite the rival institution. In 1871 the two banks were merged into the Farmers and Merchants Bank, which stands today by far the largest banking institution in the State outside of San Francisco. The Temple & Workman Bank was organized not long after the others, but this collapsed with the failure of the Bank of California, in San Francisco, on the death of William C. Ralston, in 1875.
Communication with the outside world was at all times in the early days a matter of very great interest to the people of Los Angeles. Soon after the American occupation, a ship was put on to ply between San Pedro and San Francisco, also two lines of stages from the landing to Los Angeles, with a system of freight wagons. Gen. Phineas Banning controlled one line from Wilmington and John L. Tomlinson one from San Pedro. The rail- road world has never developed sharper competition than existed between these two lines, and mankind has seldom seen anything more picturesque than the races between the rival stages on "steamer day," as the drivers whipped their horses into furious speed to see which stage would reach the door of the Bella Union first. An effort was begun as early as 1863 to get a railroad from San Pedro to Los Angeles. Gen. Banning served in the State Senate from 1865 to 1868, and in the last year a bill passed the Legislature by which the county of Los Angeles was authorized to issue bonds to the amount of $150,000, and the city $75,000 to aid in the construction of the road. Work was begun soon after, and in the fall of 1869 trains were in operation from the landing at Wilmington to the junction of Commercial and Alameda streets. The depot was where the Los Angeles Milling Company's mill now stands.
In 1869 the city leased the water system to Dr. John S. Griffin, Prudent Beaudry and Solomon Lazard for a period of thirty years. The company was to pay $1500 a year for its privileges, put the -system in, proper order, and keep it so, and at the end of the period sell the plant to the city at a price to be determined upon. The stockholders in this company put much money in their purses during the thirty years, and a couple of years ago, after much contention, sold out to the people at $2,000,000.
With the opening of the next decade came the era of railroads for Southern California. Thomas A. Scott had been working on a project to construct a line from Texas to San Diego. The Southern Pacific was building down through the San Joaquin Valley from San Francisco to Los Angeles. For a bonus of about $600,000 the California company agreed to come down over the Tehachepi and Soledad passes and to go on to San Bernar- dino, with a branch from Los Angeles to Santa Ana. The old Banning line from San Pedro was also to be made part of this Southern Pacific system. In February, 1873. work was begun on the line eastward over in East Los Angeles, and construction was pushed southward from Bakersfield. Work was also begun from Los Angeles northward, and in September, 1876, connection was made in the Soledad Canon by which Southern California obtained rail communication with San Francisco and thence East by the Central Pacific. By 1883 the line eastward through Arizona was completed through to New Orleans. Almost simultaneously with the South- ern Pacific enterprise, Senator John P. Jones of Nevada began the construction of a railroad from Santa Monica
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to Los Angeles, intending to push it on through Nevada to Salt Lake. The line from the ocean to the city was built. The failure of Jay Cook and his great Northern Pacific enterprise paralyzed all industries throughout the country, among them the road of Senator Jones. In 1878 the Santa Monica branch was sold to the Southern Pacific. The wharf at Santa Monica was demolished, but the road kept in operation. Los Angeles has had to wait twenty-five years for Senator W. A. Clark of Montana to take up the neglected thread of this enterprise and give Southern California rail connection with Salt Lake.
These railroad enterprises started what may be regarded as the first general real estate "boom" in Los Ange- les. All the business of the city was done on Main and Los Angeles streets, a block or two north and south of Commercial street. Property on Spring street, which in early days had sold for $50 per lot, had risen to $40 or $50 a foot. In 1873 these prices were nearly doubled for a while, but with the Jay Cook failure in the East and the Ralston failure in San Francisco, a crisis reached Los Angeles, and the Temple & Workman Bank closed its doors, never to open again. Downey closed the doors of the Farmers and Merchants Bank. I. W. Hellman had been in Europe, and had arrived in New York almost on the very day of the Jay Cook failure. He hastened across the continent to San Francisco, and secured a large sum of money from his friends. With this he made his way with all speed to Los Angeles. The morning after his arrival he threw open the doors of the bank, and there was a great rush of depositors to get their money. As fast as they were paid off they rushed into the street with sacks full of coin. There was no other bank in the city whose doors were open. What should they do with their coin? One by one they began to venture back to the counter of the Farmers and Merchants Bank and offer their money for deposit. One of the tellers reported the situation to Hellman, and asked if these people might reopen their accounts. "Oh, no!" replied the banker. "They wanted their money; they have it; we do not want it back." That stopped the run. The Temple & Workman Bank remained closed forever, and Tem- ple's real estate was thrown on the market. Portions of his land in the San Gabriel Valley, lying south of the Alhambra of today and stretching to the San Gabriel River, were sold for 50 cents an acre.
About 1867 Gen. Banning began an effort to get the Federal government to improve San Pedro Harbor. In 1869 George H. Mendell, a colonel of the Engineer Corps of the United States Army, was sent down from San Francisco to look over the situation. His report was very favorable. Congress appropriated $425,000 for the work, which later on was doubled, and with this the entrance was so deepened that sixteen feet of water was obtained on -the bar.
LOS ANGELES IN 1856.
2
3
1
(1) OLD UNITED STATES HOTEL.
(2) JUNCTION OF SPRING AND MAIN STREETS.
(3) LOS ANGELES STREET.
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MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT IN THE GREAT SOUTHWEST.
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CHAPTER V.
THE MODERN EPOCH.
The history of the Los Angeles of today centers in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The progress of the years had been slow. When California became American, the city of Los Angeles contained only about 1600 people. The great county of Los Angeles embraced nearly all Southern California, had but little more than 3500 persons. After twenty years, the census of 1870 showed a growth to 5614 in the city and 15,209 in the county. It was only about twice as large at the end of a decade; for just before the census of 1880 was taken, a mining excitement in Arizona drew off many people from Southern California. But influences were at work which were preparing for a period of advancement. The mission fathers had established the fact that Southern California soil was capable of producing marvelous results. The vine, the citrus family of trees, and the olive had been proved perfectly adaptable to the soil and climate of the country. L. J. Rose, J. de Barth Shorb and William Wolfskill had demonstrated this fact beyond the reach of controversy. In 1877 Shorb reported the sale of oranges from a seven-acre orchard at $7000. The crop was marketed in San Francisco. Wolfskill, in the same year, succeeded in shipping a carload to St. Louis, where the fruit sold at a profit, although the freight charges were $500. Such facts as these and the charm of the climate began to be known all over the country, and the eyes of many people began to turn to this portion of the globe.
But another mighty energy for the development of the country now began to make itself felt with new force. The existence of the weekly paper, The Star, has been noted. This was followed by The News, which, in 1867 to 1870, was the only daily in the State outside of San Francisco. In 1871 The Evening Express was founded by Jesse Yarnell, John Paynter and George A. Tiffany, all practical printers. Henry C. Austin, now a Justice of the Peace in this city, was the editor of the new paper, which was Republican in politics. Heretofore the public press had been Democratic. In 1873 C. A. Storke, now of Santa Barbara, established The Herald. In 1875 The Weekly Mirror was founded. This is now the weekly edition of The Times, which was begun as a daily in December, 1881. Joseph D. Lynch and the late James J. Ayres gained control of The Herald and Express. The local press began to tell the world at large of the many attractions held out by this part of the country to those in search of health or wealth. In 1880 The Herald put forth a midsummer illustrated edition, with articles on the soil, climate, orange culture, grape-growing and other local industries. This went to the ends of the earth. From that day to this, a period of over twenty years, no section of country ever had public prints so generally loyal to their section, so prescient as to the possibilities of a section, and so energetic in making these facts known to the world. Los Angeles city and all Southern California owe more to the local press and to the loyal, enthusiastic, energetic, able and eloquent newspaper men of the section than to any one other influence, if not more than to all other influences combined. The carefully-compiled matter that has been printed about the section in thous- ands of tons, and the eloquent praises of sun and soil, of scenery and opportunity to make money, have filled the world with detailed and intimate knowledge of all there is here to attract the seeker for health, for wealth or for pleasure.
The completion of the railroad to San Francisco and thence east by Salt Lake, and directly eastward through Arizona, opened the markets of the world to the products of Southern California, and opened this section to the health and pleasure-seekers of the wide world. Affairs were dead enough in 1880, and for two or three years following, but L. J. Rose was paying $20 a ton for grapes and the eastern markets were absorbing California fruits at remunerative prices. Still, of the comparatively few small and cheaply-built houses in the city, hundreds were untenanted. The owners would not rent them, so intent were they on selling and being done with a bad bargain, as they considered them. A house and lot could be had for less than the house had cost to build, and lots could be had at about any figure a buyer might offer. Col. Robert S. Baker, in 1875, had put up the Baker Block, a beautiful three-story structure, which to this day is an ornament to the city. In 1880 it stood almost tenantless. The census of this year showed that there were in the city a little over 11,000 people, and 33,881 in the county, which, by this time, had been cut down by the erection of San Bernardino county, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, so that it embraced only the territory of Los Angeles and Orange counties as they are now. Things moved very slowly for the next three years, but new blood had begun to come in. In the central part of the State there had been a very substantial increase in the value of lands suitable to the production of grapes or of deciduous fruits. Shrewd men began to turn their eyes to Southern California, where values were still very low. The conditions were slow to change. In 1882 T. D. Mott found some difficulty in selling 120 feet on Spring street by 165 on Fifth, the northwest corner, with a brick house of some pretensions on it, for
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MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT IN THE GREAT SOUTHWEST.
$3750. The same property had been sold in 1869 for $5000, and resold to Mott at the same price in 1873. In 1876 an offer of $9000 was refused for it, the asking price being $10,000. With the incoming of new blood and capital, in 1880 to 1883, things were beginning to change. The newcomers began to pick up unimproved property from the hands of the discouraged "old-timers" at very low prices. Along the crest of Bunker Hill lots were still pressed on the market at $5 a front foot and up to $10 on Grand avenue, then called Charity street. But tenantless houses began to grow scarce. By 1883 there were hardly any left. Then newcomers were obliged to buy lots and build houses. Property began to rise in value. The Express urged the property-holders on Spring and Main streets, near Temple and Commercial, to purchase the old Courthouse site, where the Bullard building now is, fronting on Main, Spring, Market and Court streets, and hold it to present to the Federal gov- ernment as a site for a Federal building. The Supervisors offered to sell the property for $50,000. About this time St. Paul's Episcopal Church sold 120 feet on New High street by 165 on Temple, the southwest corner, now the Courthouse grounds, for $10,000. Population continued to increase, and new residences to be needed. But the new buildings were nearly all cheap, one-story cottages, costing $1000 to $1500, being the universal rule with hardly an exception. The corners of First and Spring streets were still occupied by shacks. Small cottages occupied nearly all the space on First street between Main and Spring. By 1884 a decided change had taken place. Hon. C. H. Washburn had enlisted capital to put up a plant to light the city by electricity. It was a small affair on the corner of Alameda and Turner streets. A little later he built an electric railroad from the corner of First and Los Angeles streets to Pico Heights, where the Electric Railroad Homestead tract was laid out and put on the market.
There were a few venturesome people who began to see the great future which lay before Los Angeles, and launched enterprises in advance of the times. In 1882 Remi Nadeau purchased the southwest corner of Spring and First streets and put up the Nadeau Hotel as it stands today. So far was this from the business center that 110 one would rent it for hotel purposes. It was used as a rooming-house for several years. A couple of years later the late Maj. George H. Bonebrake and Hon. John Bryson bought the opposite corner and put up what is now the Los Angeles National Bank building. It was in 1888 that these same two men bought the Spring-street school site, on the northwest corner of Spring and Second streets, and put up what is now the Bryson building. For this they paid the city $1000 per front foot. Meantime, L. J. Rose crected a three-story building on Main street nearly opposite the Baker Block. Other business blocks continued to be put up near the business center. Most of the business was still confined to the district lying between the Plaza and First street. The County Jail was an old adobe, where the People's Store is at the present time, on the corner of Spring and Franklin streets. The late Louis Phillips of Pomona paid $500 a foot to the county for this property, and some time later erected the building now on it. In 1884 or 1885, Earl B. Millar erected a three-story brick building on the west side of Broadway, about midway between First and Second, and there were few people in the city who did not wonder if he would ever get a tenant to occupy it. By this time new people were coming in pretty freely. Railroad fares from the East had fallen a little. N. C. Carter and Phillips & Judson, men who had come here, one for health, the others for business considerations, began to go East and gather up parties to visit California on reduced rates for railroad travel. More houses continued to be built. There came a demand for building lots more remote from the business center, and tracts as far out as Pico and Figueroa streets were put on the market. The newcomers began to put up more pretentious houses. The cottage costing $1000 to $1500 gave place to two-story houses costing $2500 to $3000; but the progress was not at a rapid pace until quite up to 1885.
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