San Diego county, California; a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I, Part 22

Author: Black, Samuel T., 1846-
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Chicago, S.J. Clarke
Number of Pages: 540


USA > California > San Diego County > San Diego county, California; a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 22


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Considerable work has been done on the San Diego & Arizona railroad, which means so much to this locality by giving a direct railroad connection with the east and entire southwest.


Altogether fifty miles of track has been constructed. At the San Diego end there is forty miles of track extending from this city to a point in Mexico known as Valle Redondo. Beyond this point ten miles of roadbed has been graded and made ready for the laying of ties and rails. This extends from the far end of Valle Redondo to the Dupee property near Tecate valley.


The other ten miles of track has been laid to the east end of the road, having its terminus at Seeley in the Imperial valley. This stretch of completed road extends west from Seeley, passing through Dixieland. At Seeley it connects with a branch line of the Southern Pacific Railroad.


The distance from San Diego to Seeley over the surveyed line is one hundred and thirty-nine miles. With the sixty miles of roadbed graded there is only seventy-nine miles more of grading work to be done.


Practically all of the rights of way have been secured on the main line. Ter- minal property and rights of way in the city also have been secured. The ter- minal facilities are the best to be had in San Diego and cannot be duplicated. It


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includes a wharf franchise at the foot of Thirteenth street west of the Benson Lumber Company's yards, where the railroad plans the construction of wharves and docking facilities which will be superior to anything in this section and fur- nish the best of accommodations for the transportation of commerce to and from the southwestern states and Mexico.


The San Diego & Arizona railroad is being built on the very best possible lines. The grades are extremely low and the curvature is very slight. The maximum grade over the entire line will be 1.4, meaning a rise of but 1.4 feet to every 100 feet of track. Taking into consideration the two features of low grade and light curvature, it will be the best and most easily operated of any railroad over the mountains.


These features mean better service for passengers, as trains can be operated at high speed, and it will mean a great deal to the operating company on account of the low cost of operation, not only in handling the passenger traffic but in the maintenance of its freight service. The latter point especially appeals to the railroad men. Over the low grades and slight curves one engine can pull a great many more cars than on a road where the grades are steeper and the curves more acute.


The construction is of the heaviest and most permanent nature. In the level country 75-pound steel rails are being used, and in the mountains 90-pound rails are being laid. The ties, made of split redwood, are of an unusually large size. They are 7x9 inches, which is larger than either the American or English standard. The American standard is 6x8 inches and the English standard 7x8 or 6x9 inches. The best kind of rock and gravel ballast is being used on the roadbed and nothing is being overlooked in the way of securing perfect drainage. The largest bridges are built of steel and concrete, while the small ones are constructed of creosoted timbers and are finished with a rock and gravel ballast deck. The tunnel entrances are faced with block granite and strongly reinforced on the interior.


Engineers and railroad men of wide experience have inspected the work already completed. In every case they have declared it to be as good, and in some respects better, than any railroad construction they have ever seen. This fol- lows up the policy laid down by John D. Spreckels. When Mr. Spreckels de- cided to build the road and give San Diego direct railroad connections with the east, he determined that it should be of the best and no expense is being spared in making it such.


The grading work completed at this end of the line leaves about thirteen miles more of roadbed construction to be done in Mexican territory. Thirteen miles more of grading work will take the line across the international boundary into the United States near Campo, which is on the surveyed line a short distance beyond the boundary crossing point. About forty-two miles of road pass through Mexican territory.


There will be two tunnels between the present end of the graded roadbed and Campo. One of these will be 1,000 feet in length, in Mexico, just south of the line, and the other 600 feet in length, passing under the line.


The latter tunnel probably will be one of the feature attractions to tourists traveling over the road. Going west they will enter the tunnel in the United States and exit in Mexico, and traveling east, vice versa.


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There will be at least fifteen tunnels between San Diego and Seeley, their combined length being approximately three miles. The heaviest tunnel work will be in the Corriso gorge, east of Tecate divide, the highest point on the line, where an elevation of 3,668 feet is reached. This is located about half way be- tween Jacumba Hot Springs and Campo. From there it is mostly down grade to Seeley, which is forty-five feet below sea level. The longest tunnel will be 4,000 feet, approximately four-fifths of a mile.


The ten-mile section of roadbed in Mexico beyond the end of track and ready for the laying of ties and rails, passes through solid granite and is said to be one of the heaviest pieces of railroading in the west. Practically every foot of the way was blasted through solid granite. Some of the cuts and fills are tremendous. One of the fills contains 160,000 cubic yards and is sixty feet in height. This was done by team work and is said to be one of the largest team fills on record. The cuts through the rock are from fifty to seventy-five feet in depth, and the rock fills from seventy-five to one hundred feet in height.


A feature of this ten-mile piece of roadbed is that practically all of it can be seen from the present end of the track in Valle Redondo. From this station the road doubles back, ascending the mountain side on a low per cent grade, turns around again in the shape of a horseshoe, and continues the ascent of the moun- tain side almost parallel to the two lines of track below it. At the small end of the horseshoe curve the tracks come almost together. The base of the fill on the upper track touches the base of the fill on the lower track. The curve, how- ever, is very gradual, being almost two miles in length.


There are not many people in San Diego who have stopped to figure out the numerous advantages San Diego will obtain by the completion of the San Diego & Arizona railroad. Those who have given the proposition some consideration say the building of the new line probably will mean more to San Diego than any other enterprise begun in the history of the city.


The line to connect with direct roads from the east will open up an enormous back country, including the Imperial valley, Lower California, Arizona and New Mexico. It will lay at San Diego's back door the wondrously rich and fertile Imperial valley, which is now remote from the bay region on account of the lack of transportation facilities. It will open up a vast territory in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas for the exchange of commerce which San Diego could not hope to enjoy if the road was not built. It will open to development many thou- sand acres of good land in Lower (Baja) California which now is not cultivated. Large tracts of land in this section of Mexico will be settled and developed by virtue of the transportation facilities to be afforded. The land there is excellent for raising grain, beans and other dry farming products.


The railroad also will be the means of developing the eastern section of San Diego county, which is a splendid apple country and well adapted to the raising of deciduous fruits. This comprises the mountainous districts in the vicinity of Campo.


Products from the entire southwest will come through San Diego for ship- ment to the Orient and to north coast points. Trains running to the east will carry imports from Europe and eastern America coming here through the Pan- ama canal and imports from China, Japan and other countries of the far east.


The combination of railroad and harbor is destined to bring a wonderful era


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of prosperity to San Diego. Not only will it be a great factor in the develop- ment of the commerce of this port but will be the cause of bringing many new industries to San Diego.


It is definitely known that a number of large corporations have already made preparations to locate big plants here on account of the conveniences to be af- forded in shipping both by rail and water. Among these is Armour & Company, of Chicago, meat packers. This company has secured a large tract of land near Tia Juana, where it intends to erect and operate an immense slaughter house and packing plant by the time the new railroad is completed. The same company also has a site for a large storage plant in the city at the northeast corner of Seventh and K streets, where a temporary building was erected during the last year to handle the rapidly increasing local trade. Swift & Company also have similar plans for San Diego on the completion of the new road, according to report.


Frank B. Moson, president of the Green Cattle Company, of Hereford, Arizona, one of the largest cattle-raising corporations of that section, declared recently when on a visit here that San Diego is destined to become the greatest meat packing center in the west, rivaling Kansas City and Chicago.


Moson argues that the wonderful advantage of the Imperial valley as a fat- tening center, and its proximity to San Diego with its land-locked harbor, will place this port ahead of any other on the coast as a shipping point.


"The cotton seed and alfalfa grown in Imperial are wonderful as a fattening fodder for cattle," he said. "No better feed is found anywhere in the country. Arizona, New Mexico and the entire southwestern section will ship live beeves into Imperial valley for fattening. The advantage there is that the feed will not have to be shipped in. The climate in San Diego is most favorable for meat packing plants. The cool summers and mild winters make ideal conditions for securing and keeping help and inexpensive for keeping the meat in good con- dition."


Besides the meat there is the fish industry, which affords opportunity for de- velopment along an extensive scale. This should be an important source of reve- nue for the new railroad. The shipment of fruits of all kinds also will be an in- portant item on the revenue list.


The advent of the new railroad will also bring more steamship lines, espe- cially in the coastwise trade. A number of new companies already have made preparations to enter the local field, and the old lines are preparing for increased traffic.


The local lumber companies also will be important contributors to the traffic of the new railroad. They intend to go after all the trade of the southwest. Estimates already have been made of the amount of business it will be possible to get, having had solicitors in Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada during the last year.


A big item of the Arizona lumber business is the mining timbers. One lum- ber company of Bisbee, Arizona, has an order from the Copper Queen Mining Company to supply it with eighteen million feet of lumber during 1913. To supply the Arizona lumber market it is said that at least one trainload a day will be hauled over the San Diego & Arizona railroad. This trade now is handled


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through northern ports, with which San Diego cannot now compete on account of a lack of transportation facilities.


The rapidly growing cotton industry of Imperial valley also will be an im- portant factor in the freight revenue of the new railroad, that it is believed will be the cause of inducing capitalists to locate new industrial plants here.


In conjunction with the opening of the Panama canal, San Diego will receive many other advantages over other coast cities by the completion of the San Diego & Arizona railroad.


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CHAPTER XXIV


THE PRESS


(Reproduced from Smythe's History of San Diego.)


The first paper published in the city of San Diego was the San Diego Herald. The initial number appeared May 29, 1851, only twelve days after the first publi- cation of La Estrella de Los Angeles (The Star of Los Angeles). In September of the preceding year a small sheet called the San Luis Rey Coyote had been issued by some army officers stationed at that mission, purporting to be edited by one C. Senior (Si Senor). It was a comic journal, neatly written, and contained a map and some useful information, but it was not in any proper sense of the word a newspaper, and only one number was published. It is not known how many copies were published.


The Herald was at first a four-page, four-column paper, published every Thursday. The subscription price was $10 per annum and the advertising rates were eight lines or less, $4 for the first insertion and $2 for each subsequent in- sertion ; business cards at monthly rates and a discount offered to yearly adver- tisers. The reading matter in the first number, including a list of three hundred and twenty letters which had accumulated in the San Diego postoffice, filled five and three-fourths columns. The local advertisements made two columns, and those of San Francisco advertisers eight and one-fourth columns. The paper contained quite a little local news and was well set up and printed.


The editor and proprietor of this paper was John Judson Ames. He was born in Calais, Maine, May 18, 1821, and was therefore a few days past his thirtieth birthday when he settled in San Diego. He was a tall, stout, broad- shouldered man, six feet, six and a half inches high, proportionately built, and of great physical strength. His father was a shipbuilder and owner. Early in the '40s young Ames's father sent him as second mate of one of his ships on a voyage to Liverpool. Upon his return, while the vessel was being moored to the wharf at Boston, a gang of rough sailor boarding house runners rushed on board to get the crew away. Ames remonstrated with them, saying if they would wait until the ship was made fast and cleaned up, the men might go where they pleased. The runners were insolent, however, a quarrel ensued and one of the intruders finally struck him a blow on the chest. Ames retaliated with what he meant for a light blow, merely straightening out his arm, but, to his horror, his ad- versary fell dead at his feet. He was immediately arrested, tried for manslaughter, convicted, and sentenced to a long term in the Leverett street jail. The roughs had sworn hard against him, but President John Tyler understood the true facts in the case and at once pardoned him. After this, he was sent to school to com-


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plete his education. A few years later, being of a literary turn, he engaged in newspaper work and in 1848 went to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and started a paper which he called the Dime Catcher, devoted to the cause of the whig party in general, and of General Zachary Taylor's candidacy for the presidency, in particular.


After the discovery of gold, he joined the stream of immigrants and came to California by way of Panama, arriving at San Francisco, October 28, 1849, with- out a penny in his pockets. Borrowing a hand cart, he engaged in the business of hauling trunks and luggage. He always kept as a pocket piece the first quar- ter of a dollar he earned in this way. His financial condition soon improved and he formed a number of valuable friendships, especially among his Masonic brethren at San Francisco. He was present at the first meeting of any Masonic lodge in California, that of California Lodge (now No. 1), November 17, 1849. On the following 9th of December he became a member of this lodge, present- ing his demit from St. Croix Lodge No. 40, F. & A. M., of Maine. He also be- came interested in newspaper work, writing under the pen name of "Boston."


The question naturally occurs at this point: What was it which induced a inan thus situated to leave these friends and settle in a little town of five or six hundred inhabitants? Ames's own writings may be searched for the answer, in vain. It is scarcely sufficient to suppose that it was due to his desire for inde- pendent employment, for at that time the region could not support a paper which would pay its publisher a living. The matter has excited wonder in other quar- ters. Thus, a writer in the Sacramento Union says :


"A number of young but well defined interests called for the publication of an organ in this end of the Western American seaboard, though San Diego at that early day, no less than in later times, offered very little encouragement of the quality of local support to a newspaper. Any person who was willing to accept the chances of an easy living and endure the dull routine of a little out of the way place, holding on for advantages that must certainly come by and by, might publish a newspaper in San Diego successfully; and such a person seems to have been found in the conductor of the organ at that place. To him belongs the merit of establishing the press on that lonely shore."


The answer to this question rests upon the testimony of living men, to whom Ames disclosed it in confidence, and is strikingly confirmed by the whole policy of the Herald. Ames established the Herald as the organ of United States Sen- ator William M. Gwin, who expected to bring about the division of the state, the annexation of Lower California and the Sandwich Islands, and the construction of a southern transcontinental railway terminating at San Diego. This, of course, would have made San Diego the capital of the new state, and probably the most important city on the Pacific coast. That Gwin had the purposes mentioned and that the first transcontinental railway project was for a line on the thirty- second parallel and intended as an outlet for the southern states, are historical facts too well known to require proof. From the first, the Herald vigorously supported Senator Gwin's policies, the project of state division, and the south- ern transcontinental railway. Moreover, the surprisingly large volume of San Francisco advertisements in the Herald can scarcely be accounted for on any theory except that the paper was subsidized by means of these advertisements. It is scarcely reasonable to suppose that there was business enough here to justify


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San Francisco merchants in using more than half of Ames's space for their advertisements, at the start, and to keep this up for years. As a matter of fact, Ames took only a slight part in the public life of San Diego, and spent all the time he possibly could in San Francisco. Gwin failed in all these schemes. although he served as senator from California two full terms from 1849 to 1860. He also failed to keep his promise to Ames, and the editor's end, broken in health, fortune and ambition, was truly a sad one. But this is anticipating ; at the present point in our story, our editor is young, strong and full of hope.


In getting his paper established at San Diego, he had to overcome obstacles which, as he himself says, "would have disheartened any but a 'live Yankee.'" He issued a prospectus in December. 1850, and took subscription and advertis- ing contracts on the strength of it. Had his plans prospered, the Herald would have been the first newspaper printed south of Monterey, but delays and diffi- culties followed. He says in his first number :


"We issued our prospectus in December last, and supposed at the time that we had secured the material for our paper, but when we come to put our hand on it, it wasn't there! Determined to lose no time, we took the first boat for New Orleans, where we selected our office, and had returned as far as the Isth- mus, when Dame Misfortune gave us another kick, snagged our boat, and sunk everything in the Chagres river. After fishing a day or two we got enough to get out a paper, and pushed on for Gorgona, letting the balance go to Davy Jones' Locker. Then comes the tug of war, in getting our press and heavy boxes of type across the Isthmus. Three weeks of anxiety and toil prostrated us with the Panama fever by which we missed our passage in the regular mail steamer- the only boat that touched at San Diego-thereby obliging us to go on board a propeller bound for San Francisco. This boat sprung a leak off the Gulf of Tehauntepec-came near sinking-run on a sandbank-and finally got into Acapulco where she was detained a week in repairing. We at last arrived in San Francisco, just in time to lose more of our material by the late fire."


Some sidelights are thrown upon his adventures, by the way, by those to whom he related them more in detail. On arriving at Chagres, he found much difficulty in getting his outfit transported across the Isthmus. The only means of conveyance was by barges of canoes up the Chagres river to the head of naviga- tion at Gorgona or Cruces, and thence on the backs of mules to Panama. He engaged a bungo with a crew of native boatmen and started up the river. When the boat was snagged, the standard of the press, a casting weighing about four hundred pounds, was part of the sunken material and, although the river was shallow, the boatmen were unable to lift it up on the boat again. After watching their futile efforts for half a day, Ames lost his patience completely and, jump- ing overboard in a frenzy and scattering the boatmen right and left, he seized the press and placed it upon the boat himself. Arriving at Cruces, he experienced great difficulty in getting his goods transported by mules, and had to pay exorbi- tant prices. When he reached Panama he was compelled by the attack of fever to remain some time, along with a number of California immigrants waiting for the steamer. During this time of waiting, he set up his plant and published a paper called the Panama Herald, half in English and half in Spanish.


It would seem that a man of so much strength and tenacity of purpose was


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of the sort to make a success of his newspaper venture, at San Diego, and, in- deed, though the Herald was somewhat erratic, it never lacked in vigor.


Ames cast in his lot with the new town (Graytown, or Davis's Folly), which was then just starting. He had met William Heath Davis before coming, and the latter aided him to the extent of almost $1,000 in getting his press set up- a debt which was never discharged. The office of the Herald was over the store of Hooper & Company, at the corner of Fourth and California streets. About two years later, when the new town had proven a temporary failure, the Herald was removed to Old Town, and for the greater part of its life occupied the sec- ond floor of a building owned by Louis Rose, at the northwest corner of the Plaza.


Ames's frequent trips to San Francisco, doubtless for the purpose of looking after his political fences as well as his advertising patronage, began soon after his settlement in San Diego. It has been suggested that his readers, as well as himself, needed an occasional rest. Having no partner, it was his custom to leave the paper in charge of his foreman or some friend whom he could induce to undertake the burden. This course led to trouble on more than one occasion. It was quite the usual thing for an issue or two to be skipped at such a time. While he was away on these and other trips, it was Ames's custom to write long letters to the Herald, which he signed "Boston," and hence he became locally known as "Boston."


His first trip to San Francisco seems to have been October 30, 1851, when he left his foreman, R. M. Winants, in charge of the paper, "with a good pair of scissors and a vast pile of exchanges."


On January 24, 1852, he went to San Francisco again, leaving "the amiable trio, Vaurian & Company," to occupy the editorial chair. Vaurian was the pen name of a contributor to the Herald, whose identity is unknown.


In the latter part of August, 1852, Ames left for the Atlantic states and did not return until the following March. He left the keys of his office with Judge James W. Robinson, but in December a man named William N. Walton came to San Diego and representing to Judge Robinson that he had arranged with Ames in San Francisco to publish the paper, was allowed to take possession. He pro- ceeded to publish the paper in his own name from December 4th until Ames's return, March 19-21, 1853, when he suddenly disappeared. The only allusion Ames made to this affair upon his return was this:


"During our absence in the Atlantic states last winter, a friend to whom we loaned the keys of our office allowed a usurper to enter there, who made such havoc with our tools, to say nothing of the injury done to the reputation of the Herald, that it will take some time yet to get things established on the old basis.




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