USA > California > San Diego County > San Diego county, California; a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 14
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Mr. Horton died in San Diego in January, 1909, and his passing brought to a close a genuinely useful, beneficial and valorous life. There are many who remember his genial and social nature and his pleasant companionship and a still greater number who cherish the memory of his swift aid in times of adver- sity, of his hand ever outstretched to help his poorer brethren, of his constant courtesy and consideration. He left to California a city grown great during his life and with prosperity increasing after his death and to his family the priceless heritage of an untarnished name.
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CHAPTER XIV
A LUCRATIVE INDUSTRY
Every early visitor to San Diego refers to the hide-houses which stood out conspicuously near La Playa and which, for many years, served as the emblem of its commercial importance. The trade in hides and tallow was the significant thing during that quarter of a century-1821 to 1846-in which San Diego rested under the Mexican flag. The cultivation of the soil was a different story, and one full of human interest.
The members of the first expedition of Spanish settlers brought seed with them from Mexico and it was planted in the fall of 1769 on the river bottom, directly opposite Presidio Hill, probably at a place now known as Serrano's field. This first crop was a total failure. The ground was too low and the winter rise of the stream in 1770 destroyed the grain. The second crop was also a disap- pointment. It was planted too far away from the stream to be irrigated and, as it was a season of light rainfall, only a small quantity of maize and of beans was harvested. The third year the scene of operations was moved up the valley to a place called Nuestra Senora del Pilar, near the site subsequently occupied by the mission. The result was not immediately satisfactory, as only about twenty bushels of wheat were harvested, but the priests now bent their minds to the task in earnest, worked out crude methods of irrigation and finally established their agriculture successfully. By 1790 they were raising fifteen hundred bushels of grain annually, and the production rapidly increased.
There is no record of any further attempts at agriculture in the eighteenth century. If any of the soldiers tried it, they probably had a varied experience. It was the Spanish soldiers, who made the first gardens at Old Town. Doubt- less as they looked down from Presidio Hill they had an eye for choice spots of land where they would one day make a comfortable home for their old age and live under their own vine and fig tree, in the literal sense of the term. The very first house in Old Town was doubtless the tule hut of a retired soldier. And the pioneer of successful gardeners was Captain Francisco Maria Ruiz. He planted the spot which afterwards came to be known as Rose's Garden, and his pears, olives and pomegranates bore goodly crops for seventy-five or eighty years. These trees were planted early in the last century and it is only a few years since the last survivors of them, which happened to be pear trees, were removed. This pioneer garden was in the same block as the residence of George Lyons. The olive trees at the mission and the famous old palms at the foot of Presidio Hill, were the only plantings which antedated the orchard of Captain Ruiz.
There is no possible doubt that the two old palms were the first ever planted
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in California, and as such they constitute a most valuable and interesting his- torical exhibit. The seeds from which they sprang were a part of that remark- able outfit with which Galvez had thoughtfully supplied his expedition for the conquest of the new empire. They were planted in 1769, and there is good evidence that they bore a crop of dates in 1869, in honor of their one hundredth birthday. There is a tradition that they never bore a crop earlier than that- a freak of nature, if true. The historic trees were shamefully neglected and abused for many years. They were gnawed by disrespectful horses and fell victims to those thoughtless vandals who, for some inscrutable reason, never miss an opportunity to carve their own unimportant initials upon everything which the public is interested in having preserved unscarred. In April, 1887, a very modest fence was placed about the trees and now they bid fair to survive for many a generation.
By the year 1821 the little patches of cultivated land had multiplied at the base of Presidio Hill and even spread up and across Mission valley. Don Blas Aguilar, who was born at San Diego in 1811, recalled fifteen such rancherias, as they were called, which were occupied prior to the great flood of that year. At two places in the valley there were vineyards. Most of the rancherias were washed away or greatly damaged by the flood, which occurred in September or October and in a single night filled the valley and changed the course of the river. Large numbers of ripe pumpkins were brought down from the fields in the El Cajon country. Dana was able to buy in July, 1836, a bag of onions, some pears, beans, watermelons and other fruits.
The fine upper valley of the San Diego, including the El Cajon, was monopo- lized by the Mission Fathers ; hence, the military were compelled to look elsewhere for their grazing and farming lands. For grazing purposes, they took posses- sion of that fine district known in later times as the National Ranch, but called by the Spanish the Rancho del Rey, or Ranch of the King. Their grain fields were located at the Soledad, twelve miles up the coast. This latter valley was treated as the commons of the San Diego military establishment and later, of the Pueblo. The land was not divided into individual holdings, but farmed in common. A man cultivating a plot one year had the option of doing so the next season, an arrangement which continued until a short time before the Mex- ican war.
Agriculture never acquired any great importance in all the years of Spanish and Mexican domination. True, there is a record of grain exports in 1817, as already noted, and this is evidence of progress when it is remembered that it had formerly been necessary to import this staple from Mexico; but the exports never reached an important stage. The easy going inhabitants were well content if they produced enough to meet their own needs and their methods and implements were ridiculously crude. Until the Americans came, there were no plows in the country except those made of the fork of a tree shod with a flat piece of iron. Grain was cut with a short sickle, and horses threshed it with their hoofs.
LIVE STOCK AN EARLY FRUITFUL INDUSTRY
But while the agricultural experience was a hard struggle from the beginning, the live stock industry was rapidly developed without encountering any difficulties
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worth mentioning. It involved but little labor and that little was of a kind admirably suited to the Spanish disposition, for it could be done mostly on horseback with long intervals of rest between the periods of activity. The pas- turage was usually excellent and the cattle took care of themselves and multi- plied prodigiously. The Mission Fathers were of course also the fathers of the cattle business. It was not until the community acquired a population apart from that sheltered by the Presidio and the Mission that private herds began to appear, but the success of the Fathers inevitably attracted others into the profitable busi- ness of raising cattle on free pastures.
The Spaniards were lovers of horses and had them in such.plenty that it was frequently necessary to slaughter them in order to prevent serious interference with the cattle industry. The Californians-a term which described the whole resident population of Spanish or Mexican blood-were noted for their horse- manship, yet they seem to have taken no pains to breed good stock. This they might easily have done, for they had good Arabian stock to start with, and doubtless the horse might have become an important item for export. With the exception of a few shiploads sent to the Sandwich Islands in early days, this opportunity seems to have been neglected. There were a few sheep in early times but they never grew into large flocks-perhaps because they required more care than the Californians were willing to give them, or because the Californians were not fond of mutton.
The pioneer ship in the hide trade between New England and California was the Sachem of Boston, which first came to the coast in 1822. Her captain was Henry Gyzelaar, while the supercargo was William A. Gale, a man of consider- able note. He had been engaged in the California fur trade, and his glowing report of the resources and possibilities of the country was very influential in developing a fleet of trading ships and giving California its first boom. . The Boston merchants who became interested included Bryant & Sturgis, Trot, Bum- stead & Son, and W. B. Sweet. The important San Francisco firms engaged in this trade at the time were J. C. Jones and Paty, Mckinlay & Company. Captain Henry D. Fitch, the first great merchant of San Diego, was a member of the latter firm. The Sachem did not call at San Diego, securing a cargo elsewhere, but she was soon followed by other ships and a thriving trade in hides was established, which flourished until the Mexican war was well under way.
It was the custom of the hide ships to remain some time on the coast, going from port to port and bringing the hides which they collected to the large ware- houses at San Diego, there to be prepared for shipment and stored until ready for the homeward voyage. These trips up and down the coast occupied three or four months and seven or eight trips were required for the collection of a cargo, so that two years or more were often spent on the voyage. The best accounts of this trade is that contained in Dana's Two Years Before the Mast.
The cattle were slaughtered from July Ist to October Ist. The methods used were wasteful. About two hundred pounds of the best part of the beef were dried and put aside for future use, and the remainder thrown away, greatly to the satisfaction of the buzzards and wild beasts. The hides were prepared for shipment by immersing them from two to four days in large vats of brine in order to make them immune against the attacks of insects. They were then spread out on the beach and dried, then hung on ropes and beaten with a flail
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until all the dust and sand were removed, and, finally stored in the warehouses to await the sailing of the ships. A shipload ranged from twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand hides.
The tallow was dried out in large pots and poured into bags made of hides to cool, each bag containing from five hundred to a thousand pounds. In secur- ing the tallow the part lying nearest the hide was carefully removed and pre- pared for domestic use. A great deal of this grade of tallow went to Lima and Callao, to be used in making candles. The interior fat, weighing from seventy- five to one hundred pounds per animal, furnished the principal staple for export trade and was worth six cents per pound. This now seems very low but of course was due to the exceedingly small cost of producing cattle on the open range and to the heavy expense of shipping; otherwise the business could not have prospered with such enormous waste and such low prices for products.
For the purpose of storing the hides, a number of large warehouses were erected by the Boston firms at a point on the shore nearest the anchorage, known as La Playa (the beach), near the site of the present government quarantine station. These houses were framed in Boston, sent out in the ships and set up here. They were named after the ships and the names of four of them are recalled by old settlers as the Admittance, the California, the Sterling and the Tasso. There do not appear to have been more than four in existence at one time. For instance, Dana says there were four in 1836. They stood until some time in the '50s. E. W. Morse says he spent his first night on shore in April, 1850, in one of these old buildings, which was then used as a warehouse. Andrew Cassidy says there was only one of them standing when he arrived, three years later, and that it stood for several years after. Lieutenant Derby, who came in August, 1853, says there were then left the ruins of two of the old hide houses, one being the Tasso. Bartlett, in his Personal Narrative, states that when he was here in 1852, these houses were still standing "exactly as described by Dana in 1836," but this is clearly somewhat inexact. There were also warehouses in San Diego for the storage of the tallow which was to be sent to Peru or Mexico. No hides were exported to Peru or Mexico and no tallow to Boston.
The first hide house was built by the carpenter of the Brookline and occupied by James P. Arthur, mate of that ship, with a small party, while curing hides, in 1829. The Boston Advertiser says on his authority :
"They had a barn-like structure of wood, *
* *- which answered the pur- pose of storehouse, curing shop and residence. The life was lonesome enough. Upon the wide expanse of the Pacific they occasionally discerned a distant ship. Sometimes a vessel sailed near the lower offing. It was thus that the idea of pre- paring and raising a flag, for the purpose of attracting attention, occurred to them. The flag was manufactured from some shirts, and Captain Arthur writes, with the just accuracy of a historian, that Mr. Greene's calico shirt furnished the blue, while he furnished the red and white. 'It was completed and raised on a Sun- day, on the occasion of the arrival of the schooner Washington, Captain Thomp- son, of the Sandwich Islands, but sailing under the American flag.' So writes honest Captain Arthur. He further states that the same flag was afterward frequently raised at Santa Barbara, whenever in fact there was a vessel coming into port. These men raised our national ensign, not in bravado, nor for war or conquest, but as. honest men, to show that they were American citizens and
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wanted company. And while the act cannot be regarded as in the light of a claim to sovereignty, it is still interesting as a fact and as an unconscious indication of manifest destiny."
The following is a list of all the American trading ships which have been found, known to have called at San Diego during the life of the hide trade. A few of these were doubtless whalers, and there were probably others of which no record has been found; but it is believed this list contains the names of substantially all the hide ships :
1824, Arab Mentor. 1825, Sachem. 1825-6, Rover.
1828, Andes, Courier, Franklin, General Sucre.
1835, Pilgrim. 1836, Lagoda, Loriotte, Catalina. 1836-7, Kent.
1837, Rasselas, Sophia.
1839, Morse.
1829-31, Brookline, Louisa. 1829-32-34, Volunteer.
1840-1, Monsoon.
1841, Thomas Perkins.
1831-3-6-8-9-40-2-3-4, Alert.
1831-2-3-7-8-9-40-1-2-3-4, California.
1842-4-6-7, Barnstable.
1832-3, Plant.
1839-43-4, Fama.
1833, Newcastle.
1844, Menkar.
1833-38-45, Don Quixote.
1844-5, Sterling.
1833-36-43, Bolivar Liberator.
1845, Martha, Admittance.
1833, Harriet Blanchard.
1834, Roxana.
1846, Vandalia. 1847-8, Olga.
The hide and tallow trade practically ended with the transfer of California to the United States. This was a mere coincidence, due to economic rather than to political causes. New England found that she could get her hides cheaper somewhere else. The trade had marked the high tide of prosperity in old Cali- fornia days, and supplied an interesting and romantic episode in the history of the country. Excellent accounts of this period may be found in the writings of Bancroft, Dana, Robinson and Davis. The latter perhaps the most competent authority, estimates the total number of hides exported from California at about five million and the tallow at two hundred fifty million pounds.
Even after the cattle business passed mostly into private hands the missions profited largely from it, by means of tithes, a form of ecclesiastical tax scrupu- lously paid by the rancheros and diligently collected by the missionaries. This tax was collected, in some instance, as late as 1850 or 1851. The missions were also the principal customers of the American ships. Their cargoes consisted of sugar, tea, coffee, rum, silk, furniture, calico, clothing and blankets for the Indians, which they sold to the friars for cash and exchanged for hides. William A. Gale, Alfred Robinson and William Heath Davis did a large business with the missions for many years.
In Robinson's Life in California is an interesting account of the pains which were taken upon his first visit to San Diego in 1829, to entertain the good Father Antonio Peyri, founder of the San Luis Rey Mission, and especially to impress him with the excellence of the stores brought in the Brookline from Boston.
1840, Alciope.
1831, Harriet.
1841-2-3-5-7, Tasso.
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This entertainment seems to have proven quite profitable in the end. The mis- sionaries kept the first and for many years the only stores, from which they sup- plied the wants of their neophytes and sold goods to such as desired them. Their success soon stimulated emulation in this, as in other lines, and private fortunes began to grow. The first storekeeper at San Diego, and the only one for some years, was Captain Henry D. Fitch, who dealt in furs, hides and general merchandise. After the cattle business began to assume importance and private residences were established in the country, at every important rancho was main- tained a general store and depot of supply for the surrounding country.
With the growth of the hide and tallow trade, land began to assume more value and private holdings increased. Under the Spanish administration, only the king could make grants of land, and it was many years before the right was exercised toward any except the missionaries. The general laws of Spain pro- vided for the granting of four square leagues of land to newly formed settle- ments, or pueblos as they were called, upon certain conditions. As early as 1784, application was made to the governor by private individuals for grants of land, and he issued a few written permits for temporary occupation. Two years later he received authority to make grants of tracts not exceeding three leagues, not to conflict with the boundaries of existing pueblos, and on certain conditions which included the building of a stone house and the keeping of not less than two thousand head of live stock on each rancho.
It was considered that vacant lands outside the pueblos and missions belonged to the Indians, to be utilized by them whenever they should become sufficiently civilized. In 1793 it was reported that no private grants had been made, but a few years later a number were made near the presidios, subject to confirmation later on. Several governors in succession preferred to make these conditional grants and at the close of the eighteenth century the situation was this: The Presidio was without settlers, but expected ultimately to become a pueblo and was entitled to four square leagues of land whenever proper organization should appear ; and there were in the whole departinent twenty or thirty men engaged in raising cattle on lands to which they had only possessory permits, but none of these appear to have been at San Diego. In 1813 the Spanish cortes passed a decree relative to the reduction of public lands to private ownership, designed to improve agricultural conditions and reward the country's defenders. Lands might be granted to veterans and invalid soldiers.
This decree was unknown in California before 1820. One of the earliest of the grants made under this law was that of the Penasquitos. Rancho, of nearly nine thousand acres, to the veteran Captain Ruiz and Francisco M. Alvarado, on June 15, 1823. This grant was made against the earnest protests of the mis- sionaries, as conflicting with their boundaries. In a report made in 1828 are named the Rancho del Rey, now known as the National Ranch, where the Pre- sidio had two hundred and fifty cattle and twenty-five horses; the San Antonio Abad, which had three hundred cattle, eighty horses and twenty-five mules, be- sides producing some grain; the Penasquitos Rancho, with fifty cattle, twenty horses and eight mules; El Rosario, or Barracas, which had twenty-five head of live stock and some grain; and the San Ysidro stock range. It also appears from a statement of the missionaries in this year that the Temescal Rancho had been occupied by Leandro Serrano, majordomo at San Juan. In
PALMS AT OLD SAN DIEGO, PLANTED IN 1769'
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HISTORY OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY
January or March, 1829, Governor Echeandia granted one league at Otay to Jose Antonio Estudillo, and another to Maria Magdalena Estudillo.
From about 1832 grants were rapidly made of the public or unoccupied lands of California; and subsequent to the acts of secularization of 1833-4, it was the practice of the government to grant to individuals tracts of land belonging to the missions, but which were no longer used or occupied by them. In spite of the opposition of the priests, grants were constantly made by the government within the limits of the so-called mission domain, and this continued up to 1846, when the dominion of Upper California passed to the American government. And so it went on, until the country, except the mission and pueblo lands, had passed into private hands. A table showing these early land grants is given at the end of this chapter.
Theodore S. Van Dyke has written very instructively about these land grants in his City and County of San Diego. He says:
"Soon after the establishment of other missions in California, and the quiet- ing and gathering in of the greater part of the Indians around the missions, set- tlers from Spain and Mexico began to come in, and later on a few from the United States, England and elsewhere. Nearly all these settlers obtained grants of large tracts of land from the Mexican government, which have since been the cause of much litigation, envy and quarrelling. These grants were simply Mexi- can homesteads, given to settle the country just as the United States homesteads are given. for practically nothing.
"Instead of selling a man, as the United States then did, all the land he wanted for $1.25 an acre, the Mexican government gave it to him by the square league. The grants were made large partly as an inducement to the settler to go into such a wild and remote country, but mainly because the raising of cattle for the hides and tallow being the only industry, a large range was absolutely necessary for profit as well as the support of the band of retainers necessary for profit and safety. *
"The first effect of these large grants was to retard settlement. The county of San Diego, in common with the rest of southern California, was then believed to be a veritable desert of sand, cactus and horned toads, fit only for stock range at the rate of about one hundred acres to each animal."
Dairying was practically unknown among the ranchos and often there was no effort even to keep the tables supplied with milk. Davis says that he has fre- quently drank his coffee or tea without milk, on a ranch containing from three thousand six hundred to eight thousand head of cattle. Other methods were equally wasteful. The horns were not thought worth saving, and the Americans who chose were allowed to gather and ship all they cared to, without money and without price. These lax methods may be further illustrated by the fact that in 1840 the Mission of San Jose ordered the slaughter of two thousand bulls, which were killed simply for their hides, none of the meat, and little of the tallow, being saved.
Next to the cattle industry and the trade in hides and tallow, the fisheries made the most important contribution to the early commerce of San Diego. And the fisheries included the exciting chase for the sea otter, which was very valu- able for its fur. The otters were far more plentiful in the north, yet were fre- quent visitors to the San Diego coast, especially to the kelp beds off Point Loma Vol. 1 -- 8
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and La Jolla. The Indians were acquainted with the use of their furs when the Spaniards came, and one of the early cares of the missionaries was to train their converts to improved methods of catching them. The Indians do not appear to have been remarkably energetic hunters but enough skins were brought in to form an important item of export and a subject of contention between the com- mandants and the missionaries, both of whom thought themselves entitled to a monopoly of the traffic. The heyday of the Spanish trade was about the time of the Lelia Byrd affair, when virtually the whole population had skins to sell, openly or covertly, and the commandant had a collection of about a thousand confiscated skins.
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