USA > California > San Diego County > San Diego county, California; a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 18
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1907-09-John F. Forward. 1909-II-Grant Conard. 19II-13-James E. Wadham.
CHAPTER XX
SAN DIEGO GROWS APACE
San Diego's growth in the decade of the '8os was phenomenal, especially in the period running from 1886 to 1888.
Many things conspired to increase the growth of San Diego during the 'Sos. The completion of the Santa Fe railroad system was doubtless the largest factor, but this was contemporaneous with the development of water systems and other public utilities, and with the inauguration of the most aggressive enterprise in connection with Coronado. There were many lesser factors working to the same end, and it would have been strange indeed if San Diego real estate had not responded to these influences. Furthermore, there were national and even world wide conditions which fostered the movement. This decade witnessed an enormous expansion on the part of western railways and was marked by daring speculation in many different parts of the globe.
But when all these material influences have been mentioned there remains another which was far more powerful and which supplies the only explanation of the extraordinary lengths to which the boom was carried. This latter in- fluence was psychological rather than material but it was none the less effective on that account. The people were hypnotized, intoxicated, plunged into emo- tional insanity by the fact that they had unanimously and simultaneously dis- covered the ineffable charm of the San Diego climate. Climate was not all- there was the bay, the ocean, the rugged shores, the mountains-but the irre- sistible attractions were the climate and the joy of life which it implied.
If some one should suddenly discover the kingdom of heaven of which the race has dreamed these thousands of years, and should then proceed to offer corner lots at the intersection of golden streets, there would naturally be a rush for eligible locations, and this sudden and enormous demand would create a tremendous boom. It happens that San Diego is the nearest thing on earth to the kingdom of heaven, so far as climate is concerned. This fact was suddenly discovered and men acted accordingly. The economy of heaven is a factor which has never been much dwelt upon, and economic considerations were sadly neg- lected by those who went wild over real estate in the height of the boom. It was forgotten for the moment, that men cannot eat climate, nor weave it into cloth to cover their nakedness, nor erect it as a shelter against the storm and the night. Such a reminder would have seemed puerile at the time. The only vital question was: Can we find land enough between Los Angeles and Mexico to accommodate the people who are coming, and can we get it platted into addi- tions fast enough to meet the demand? If this question could be answered af- firmatively, it was enough. Obviously, the people would continue to come, prices
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would continue to soar, and everybody would get rich at the expense of his neighbor, living happy forever after.
Now there was reason in this logic, if it had only been tempered with com- mon sense. It is absolutely true that the climate of San Diego is a commodity of commercial value. Almost everybody would prefer to live here if they could afford the luxury. The mistake was in failing to create conditions which would make it possible for them to do so. This involved the prosaic matter of making a livelihood by some other means than exchanging real estate every few days at a profit. That process did not create wealth, but only exhausted it. What San Diego wanted in boom days and wants now is a means of producing new wealth to sustain that large element of its population which is not yet able to retire upon a competency, together with new population of the same kind that would like to come.
Probably no one could draw a true picture of the boom unless he lived through those joyous days and had a part in what went on. Fortunately, San Diego possessed a citizen peculiarly equipped for the work of observing and recording the phenomena of the times-a man who could see both the strength and the weakness of the situation, who united shrewdness with a sense of humor and was also gifted as a writer. This citizen was Theodore S. Van Dyke, author, hunter, engineer, farmer, lawyer and various other things. Above all he was Theodore S. Van Dyke. Speaking of the class of people who came, saw and bought, thereby making the boom, he says:
"It was plain that they were in fact buying comfort, immunity from snow and slush, from piercing winds and sleet-clad streets, from sultry days and sleep- less nights, from thunder storms, cyclones, malaria, mosquitoes and bed bugs, all of which, in plain language, means that they were buying climate, a busi- ness that has been going on now for fifteen years and reached a stage of progress which the world 'has never seen before and of which no wisdom can foresee the end. The proportion of invalids among these settlers was very great at first, but the numbers of those in no sense invalids, but merely sick of bad weather, determined to endure no more of it, and able to pay for good weather, in- creased so fast that by 1880 not one in twenty of the new settlers could be called an invalid. They were simply rich refugees.
"In 1880 the rich refugee had become such a feature in the land and in- creasing so fast in numbers that Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties be- gan to feel a decided 'boom.' From 1880 to 1885 Los Angeles city grew from about twelve thousand to thirty thousand, and both counties more than doubled their population. But all this time San Diego was about as completely fenced out by a system of misrepresentation as it was by its isolation before the build- ing of the railroad. Much of this misrepresentation was simply well mean- ing ignorance. But the most of it was pure straight lying so universal from the editor to the brakeman on the cars and the boot-black on the street that it seemed to be a regularly organized plan. So thorough was its effect that at the opening of 1885 San Diego had scarcely felt any of the great prosperity under full headway only a few hundred miles north.
"But when the extension of the railroad to Barstow was begun and recog- nized as a movement of the Santa Fe railway system to make its terminus on San Diego bay, the rich refugee determined to come down and see whether a
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great railroad was foolish enough to cross hundreds of miles of desert for the sake of making a terminus in another desert. He came and found that though the country along the coast in its unirrigated state was not as inviting as the irrigated lands of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, there was yet plenty of water in the interior that could be brought upon it. He found there was plenty of 'back country' as rich as any around Los Angeles, only it was more out of sight behind hills and tablelands and less concentrated than in the two counties above. He found a large and beautiful bay surrounded by thousands and thou- sands of acres of fine rich slopes and tablelands abounding in the most picturesque building sites on earth. He found a climate made, by its more southern latitude and inward sweep of the coast, far superior to that of a hundred miles north, and far better adapted to the lemon, orange and other fine fruits. He found the only harbor on the Pacific coast south of San Francisco; a harbor to which the proud Los Angeles herself would soon look for most of her supplies by sea; one which shortens by several hundred miles the distance from the lands of the setting sun to New York; a harbor which the largest merchant vessels can enter in the heaviest storm and lie at rest without dragging an anchor or chafing paint on a wharf.
"The growth of San Diego now began in earnest, and by the end of 1885 its future was plainly assured. A very few who predicted a population of fifty thousand in five years were looked upon as wild, even by those who believed most firmly in its future. Even those who best knew the amount of land behind it and the great water resources of its high mountains in the interior believed that twenty-five thousand in five years would be doing well enough. Its growth since that time has exceeded fondest hopes. It is in truth a surprise to all and no one can truthfully pride himself upon superior sagacity, however well founded his expectations for the future may be. At the close of 1885 it had probably about five thousand people. At the close of 1887, the time of writing this sketch, it has fully thirty thousand with a more rapid rate of increase than ever. New stores, hotels and dwellings are arising on every hand from the center to the farthest outskirts in more bewildering numbers than before, and people are pour- ing in at double the rate they did but six months ago. It is now impossible to keep track of its progress. No one seems any longer to know or care who is putting up the big buildings and it is becoming difficult to find a familiar face in the crowd or at the hotels."
This was written at the height of the boom. A more conservative note was sounded by Harrison Gray Otis, who was here in May, 1886, for the purpose of "writing up" Coronado beach, and incidentally expressed some opinions upon San Diego and its new boom :
"She has got it and is holding on to it with the tenacity of death and the tax collector. Values are 'away up' and movements in real estate active. I hear of a score of men who have made their 'pile' within a twelvemonth, and I know that a score more are pursuing the eagle on Uncle Sam's twenties with a fierce- ness of energy that caused the bird o' freedom to scream a wild and despairing scream, that may be heard far across the border of the cactus Republic. This is peculiarly a San Diego pursuit; you never see anything of the sort in Los Angeles, where the populace take care of the noble bird and encourage him
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to increase and multiply greatly. The Angelenos understand the national chicken business, you see.
"The boom in lots and blocks is by no means confined to the business center, but has spread far up the sage shrouded hills where the view is magnificent, but water scarce. While there are not lacking evidences of solidity in the move- ment of real estate in the more central portions of the town, I cannot avoid the conviction that the excessive inflation of outside lands is unhealthy, unsound and destined to bring disappointment to the inflaters, if I may coin a word. When unimproved blocks on the highlands, far from the center, and even from the outer edges of business, that a short time ago could be bought for $600, have been boosted in price to as many thousands there is afforded an excellent oppor- tunity for the cautious investor to stand from under, lest the mushroom-like struc- ture fall down and 'squash' itself right before his face.
"But San Diego is going ahead and is bound to be an important place one of these good days. She is partaking of the general and splendid prosperity of the whole southern coast and will continue to prosper according to her deserts. (No reference to sands.) Only it is regretful to see men who have already had more than their share of disappointment and weary waiting for the 'good time coming'-to see these men, some of whom still live here, planting financial seed that cannot sprout and spring until another long decade. What I mean spe- cifically is that unproductive outside lands at fancy prices are not a safe in- vestment in San Diego. So, at least, it seems to a man up a sagebrush."
Mr. Van Dyke wrote a story of the boom in January, 1889, in which he said :
"The great boom has had probably no sequel on earth. Cities had indeed grown faster and prices had advanced more rapidly than here. Greater crowds of people may have rushed here and there and far wilder excitement over lots and lands has been seen a thousand times. But the California boom lasted nearly three years, although the wild part of it lasted only about two years. It cov- ered an area of many thousand miles and raged in both town and country. And above all it was started and kept up by a class of immigrants such as has never before been seen in any part of the world, immigrants in palace cars with heavy drafts or certified checks in their pockets, a fat balance in bank behind them, and plenty of property left to convert into cash. Nearly $100,000,000 were by this class invested in southern California, and the permanent increase of popu- lation has been nearly 200,000 in the last four years.
"Some of the facts: First, there is scarcely an instance of any one building for his own use a house costing $5,000 or more in which the owner is not living today, or if he has sold it is living in another one. In other words, the people of means who settled here are almost to a man here today.
"Second, that whenever a man, whether rich or poor, has bought a piece of land and settled down to make it produce something, he is there today con- tented and doing well. In some places too many good houses have been built for sale only-a foolish thing generally, because the man who wants to pay over $2,000 for a house usually wants to follow his own tastes about it-its style and location. The good houses that stand empty after being once occu- pied by the owner, you may almost count on your fingers, while a piece of land abandoned after occupancy it is next to impossible to find.
"Third, that the country outside the cities and towns is settling today faster
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than three years ago, and that even the towns are growing, the floating popula- tion being steadily replaced by a permanent one. The new register, the school enrollment and average attendance list, the postoffice receipts, and all other means of comparison show a larger population today in every city of southern Cali- fornia than there was a year ago, when every building was overflowing with strangers.
"The true 'boom' period extends from the summer of 1886 to about February, 1888-about eighteen months in all-and this was precipitated by the repetition of what in 1885 had surprised every one-the increase of travel in summer in- stead of its diminution, as has always been the case. In the summer of 1886 people came faster than ever and it became very natural to ask where is all this going to end? Nearly every one of them bought something, nearly one-half of them became immediate settlers, and the majority of the remainder declared their intention of returning in the winter to build and remain. Such a state of affairs would have turned the heads of almost any people, but still the Cali- fornians kept quite cool. It required the professional boomer to touch off the magazine.
"In the summer of 1886 the professional boomer came. The business of this class is to follow up all lines of rapid settlement, chop up good farming land into town lots twenty-five or thirty years ahead of the time they are needed, and sell off in the excitement enough to pay for the land and have a handsome profit left over. The boomer came from Kansas City, Wichita, Chicago, Minne- sota, New York, Seattle and everywhere, and with the aid of a brass band and free lunch (which had a marvelous influence on the human pocket) he began his work. Most of them were in Los Angeles county but a few found their way to San Diego, enough to leaven the whole lump. By the Californians generally the boomer was pronounced a fool, and his twenty-five foot lots, brass band, free lunch, clown exhibitions, etc., laughed at. But it soon became the boomer's turn to laugh.
"A boom is a boom the world over, he said. In such times a lot is a lot. You can sell a twenty-five foot lot for $100 a great deal more easily than you can sell a fifty foot lot for $150. When the world gets a crazy fit, work it while it lasts for all there is in it.
"His reasoning quickly proved itself correct. He captured the tourist and the tenderfoot by the thousand, took in scores of old conservative capitalists from the east, who could talk as sensibly as any one about 'intrinsic value' and 'business basis,' etc., but who lost their heads as surely as they listened to the dulcet strains of the brass band and the silver tongue of the auctioneer. Rich old bankers, successful stock and grain operators, and smart folks of all kinds, who thought that they were the shrewdest of the shrewd, fell easy vic- tims to the arts of the boomer. Few things were more amusing than to see the price of a lot doubled and quadrupled upon these wise old chaps by a few cappers acting in well trained concert with the auctioneer. The most of the old boys thus taken in were exactly of the same class as those that have been lying around San Diego anxious to buy something, but afraid to examine it. Then they were fighting for a chance to pay two dollars apiece for brass dollars. Now when offered a sack of gold dollars for fifty cents apiece, they dare not open the sack to look at them.
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"The natives could not look on such scenes as these without being infected, and it was not long before they became entangled in the whirl. They not only laid out additions and townsites but bought lots of others ; not with any expecta- tion of using them, but with the same idea that all the others had-to turn them over to some one else in sixty days, at an advance of at least double or triple the amount of the first payment.
erty beyond what business could afford to pay. Farming property, in too many
"A necessary result of the folly was to raise the price of good business prop- instances, was raised too high in price, though nothing in comparison with city property.
"It would be idle to recount the many fools that met the incredible prices offered and refused, the monstrous prices paid by the lot for land that was worth only $50 or $100 per acre, and could not in any event be worth more than $100 a lot in ten years. The enormous supply was forgotten and folks acted as if there were but a few hundred lots left upon this favored corner of creation, toward which all were so eagerly rushing. The fact was, that if every train for the next ten years were loaded down with actual settlers, not more than half the lots laid out could be settled.
"So it went on for eighteen months with prices constantly rising; people coming faster than ever, and acting more crazy than ever. It soon became quite unnecessary to show property. It was greedily bought from the map in town by people who had no idea of even the points in the compass. * *
* Most of the speculators had no need to resort to the banks. Coin was abundant every- where. A man offering to loan money on mortgage would have been laughed at as a fool. As a matter of course, too many people bought diamonds and squandered the money in various forms of extravagance, instead of paying up and keeping even as they went along. But thousands more kept out of debt, and though disposed to take a hand in the game, played it cautiously.
"The hammer and saw rang all day long on every hand and improvements of every kind went on rapidly under the influence of abundance of money. The worst feature of this, however, was that in Los Angeles, and especially in San Diego county, little of it went into true development of resources. In San Bernardino county, most of it went into new waterworks and other things to develop productive power. But in other counties, especially our county, con- veniences for tourists and people yet to come absorbed the most of it. * * A very few aided such things, but fully ninety per cent of San Diego thought that bay and climate alone would build a great city, and many declared upon the street that they 'didn't care if you could not raise a bean within forty miles of San Diego.' The beautiful and fertile country back of it was of no moment whatever, and a railroad into it, such as is now building, wasn't worth talking of for an instant. The great flume went ahead, notwithstanding, and the country settled up without their knowing it. The necessity for a railroad to Warner's Ranch, at least, became so apparent that Governor Waterman and a few others got it started. Once started, its extension to the east would follow as a matter of course. The great majority of San Diego people had never been two miles east of town and didn't know that they had any back country and didn't care, thinking bay and climate all sufficient."
Of the literature of the boom, it would be embarrassing to even attempt to
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describe it in all its richness and variety. The best writers in the land were brought to San Diego and gave their talents to the service of the real-estate dealers. One of the ablest of these writers was Thomas L. Fitch, known as "the silver-tongued orator." Mr. Fitch easily outdid and outdistanced his fellow scribes in the glowing fervor of his panegyrics upon bay and climate. To this day the old San Diegans break into sunny smiles when you speak of Fitch and his boom literature. Let us take a single sample, and allow the reader to judge for himself. This was an advertisement written for the firm of Howard & Lyons, and was No. 12 (there were many more) :
"SPECIAL NO. 12
We knew it would rain, for all day long A spirit with slender ropes of mist, Was dipping the silvery buckets down Into the vapory amethyst.
"We knew it also because the wound which our uncle received in his back at the first battle of Bull Run (he was in Canada when the second battle of Bull Run was fought), throbbed all day Saturday. Now, if Saturday night's and Sunday night's rain shall be followed by one or more showers of equal volume, we will see our blear mesas covered with the vernal and succulent alfilerilla and all the streams will be running bank-full. Then there will be
Sweet fields arrayed in living green And rivers of delight.
Then the slopes of the arroyos will be flecked with the purple violets and pink anemones and white star flowers, and over all the windblown heights the scarlet poppies and the big yellow buttercups will wave in the breeze like the plumes and banners of an elfin army. And when you behold the earth covered with fragrant children, born of her marriage to the clouds, and when you know that this charming effect of a few showers can be increased and perpetuated the year round with a little water from the mains and a little labor with hoe and rake, you will be thankful to us for having called your attention in time to the Middletown Heights' lots.
"A non-resident who invested during the Tom Scott boom, and who has failed to sell since, for the same reason that induced the teamster not to jump off the wagon tongue, astride which he fell when the runaway horses started- because it was all he could do to hold on-a non-resident has sent us the title deeds for several blocks of the Middletown Heights' lots, with directions to close them out. Our motto is : Obey orders if you break owners, and the lots are therefore for sale at one-fourth their present and one-twentieth their future value.
"Call at our office and our assistant will take you in the buggy and show you these lots. Two blocks of them are situated not more than three hundred yards from the track of the California Southern Railroad Company, and a hundred yards further from the shore of the bay, and within a mile of the passenger depot. These blocks front India avenue and are in the slope at the base of the hill, just high enough to give you a good view of the bay and the sea. The Elec- tric Motor road will go up India avenue and will pass in front of these lots.
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They will be worth $1,000 each within a year. You can buy them this week for $125 each. It is a great chance-don't lose it.
Marcellus -- Who comes here ? Horatio-Friends to this ground.
"What matters it, dear friends, who it is that writes these Specials. Howard says it is Lyons, and Lyons says damfino. Whichever of the firm it is, or who- ever else it may be, the writer is doing a good work for San Diego, for these Specials are being copied in the eastern press and are possibly inducing both people and capital to come here. We append here a copy of a specimen letter received by us yesterday from a flourishing New England city :
Jan. 26, 1887.
Messrs. Howard & Lyons, Gentlemen: I am well acquainted with the won- derful growth of your beautiful section of country, receiving as I do papers, pamphlets, and letters from widely separated portions. In the San Diego Union I read your Specials concerning Oceanside and San Diego. I enclose check for $100, which please invest for me to the best of your judgment in a lot, as I have full faith that you will make good use of the money. Please give me a loca- tion with good view of the ocean. Very truly,
"We shall reward this gentleman's confidence and good judgment by sending him a deed for a lot that will grow rapidly in value before next Christmas.
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