USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume I > Part 22
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The triumph was not achieved in a day, for the validity of the pueblo titles occupied the attention of the courts for many years, and the disputes concerning them were not finally settled until the so-called pueblo decisions were rendered in 1864 and 1866, by which the government relinquished and granted to the City all the lands included in such pueblos. Meanwhile until public sentiment proved strong enough to finally carry the day, there were cases of squatting in all parts of the City, and occasionally they were attended with serious consequences. In 1853 something like a pitched battle occurred between a squatter and a deputy sheriff, who sought to eject him and the official was killed. There were several other encounters during this year and these were not always between persons holding alcalde titles and squatters, but between the squatters themselves, who were quite as ready to dispute possession with each other for the lands to which they held no title whatever, owing to the disposition manifested to carry to its logical conclusion the theory that ownership did not vest in anyone who could not or did not occupy and hold the premises.
In the settlement of these controversies juries ceased to be of value. If a man was killed in defending a piece of property claimed by him, no matter how clear his title, it was impossible to obtain a conviction. There were always plenty who, influenced by the belief that the Spanish and Mexican grants were all tainted with fraud, and that all the sales made on the authority of the military governors were corruptly conducted, were ready to stand by the squatter, or at least would not lend their aid to maintain the claims of men they believed to be unconscionable speculators and grabbers. This feeling in a measure abated as the years wore on. A decision rendered by the state supreme court in October, 1853, confirming the alcalde grants, contributed greatly to allaying the passions growing out of the
Squatters and the Jury System
The Interior and the City Squatter
Titles in Doubt Many Years
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grabbing propensities of the period, but there were repeated disturbances of the security of owners between that year and the final adjudication of the matter by the supreme court of the United States.
The decision of the state supreme court in substance was that by the laws of Mexico towns were invested with the ownership of lands; that by the law, usage and custom of Mexico alcaldes were the heads of ayuntamientos or town councils, and as executive officers of the towns they rightly exercised the power of granting lots within the towns, which were the property of the towns; that before the mili- tary occupation of California by the army of the United States San Francisco was a Mexican pueblo or municipal corporation and entitled to the lands within her boundaries, and finally that a grant of a lot in San Francisco made by an alcalde, whether a Mexican or of any other nation, raises the presumption that the alcalde was a properly qualified officer, that he had the authority to make the grant and that the land was within the boundaries of the pueblo. The effect of this decision was to legalize many fraudulent alcalde grants and it was severely criticized on that account, but it had the merit of practically settling a question which was causing much friction, and it soon was accepted as the best mode of bridging over a serious trouble.
While it effectually disposed of the doubts concerning the alcalde titles it did not give complete security to owners. Disturbance arose in another quarter, which at first was not regarded as serious, but soon occasioned great concern. A French- man named Jose J. Limantour was the cause of disquiet. He claimed that he had advanced to the Mexican governor in 1843 the sum of $4,000, and had received for the same a grant of land in the neighborhood of Yerba Buena, which had it been held valid would have covered the site of the City like a blanket. At first the peo- ple were disposed to regard Limantour's pretensions lightly, but they soon per- ceived that they were backed by a great deal of what seemed like important evi- dence. The land contained in the alleged grant to Limantour was embraced in several parcels. One conveyed a tract running from the line of the pueblo of Yerba Buena, distant 400 varas from the settlement house of Richardson, to the southeast, beginning at the beach on the northeast and following it along its edge, turning round the point of Rincon on the southeast and following the bay as far as the mouth of the estuary of the mission, including the salt water and following the valley to the southwest, where the fresh water runs, passing to the northwest side about 200 varas from the mission, to where it completed two leagues northeast and southwest to the Rincon.
The second granted two leagues beginning at the beach at the ancient anchor- age of the port of San Francisco, below the castle, following to the southeast, pass- ing the presidio and following the road to the mission and the line to the south- west as far as the beach, which ran to the south from the port, taking the beach to the northwest, turning round Point Lobos and following to the northeast along the beach of the castle for 200 varas, and continuing as far as the estacada, the place of beginning.
In addition to these tracts comprising four square leagues Limantour also claimed the islands of Alcatraz, Yerba Buena, the Farallones and a square league on the island of Los Angeles opposite Racoon straits and other tracts throughout the state, all of which were apparently conferred upon him for the sum of $4,000. The boundaries as laid down in the alleged grant were of the vaguest sort and
San Francisco a Mexican Pueblo
The Fraudu- lent Liman- toor Claim
Trying to Grab the Whole City
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suggested fraud, but it required several years to rid the City of the incubus. It was not until April 22, 1858, that a decision was given which finally disposed of Limantour's claim, which the United States Attorney General Jeremiah S. Black declared was the most stupendous fraud, the greatest in atrocity and magni- tude the world had even seen perpetrated.
The Land Commission
The land commission which passed upon the Limantour claim, and numerous others equally fraudulent, but representing more modesty than was displayed by the Frenchman in his effort to grab nearly the whole of San Francisco, was greatly assisted in its labors by the intelligent work of Edwin M. Stanton, afterwards war secretary, during the war of secession, who succeeded in making such use of the material in the archives assembled under the direction of Captain Halleck, that the City began to breathe more freely, but the period of uncertainty endured during the whole of the decade, and all the claims were not finally disposed of until the closing years of the nineteenth century.
Titie Uncer- tainties is Obstacle to Growth
But uncertainties attending land titles did not impede the growth of the City. Owners were subjected to annoyances, and breaches of the peace were of frequent occurrence because of the unsettled condition of affairs, but clouds on titles did not seem to affect values very seriously, for the optimism of the people made them confident that matters would come out all right in the end. It would be possible to fill volumes with the details of the conflicts in the courts over claims growing out of the vicious system prevalent under Mexican rule of disposing of lands with- out adopting anything remotely resembling careful registration, or attempting to properly define the boundaries of the grants made. Absolute neglect, failure to survey and a total absence of system produced many complications for a people who, by their energy, made the lands of California valuable, but the Spaniards and their successors, the Mexican administrators, might claim that they were troubles we brought on ourselves, and that if they had not been disturbed in their possession of the soil there would have been none, for it would never have been made valuable enough to quarrel about.
The assertion that the complications brought about by the loose land grant system did not retard development applies only to the City, and must be qualified by the observation that its growth was indirectly affected by the retardment of interior progress through the retention of immense tracts of farming land in the hands of men who showed little disposition to make any better use of them than the original grantees from whom they had obtained them by one method or an- other, and not always in a fashion to reflect credit on Americans. During a con- siderable period California was menaced by the possibility of having fixed upon it a system of land monopoly or large holdings which, had it been perpetuated, must have permanently arrested the diversification of industry, and made the state lag in the work of developing its resources, and of creating homes for a happy and prosperous people.
Thriving on Disorder
It would be difficult to trace the origin of all the evil effects described as result- ing during the earlier period of San Francisco's development under American rule. During the Fifties adversity, crime, bad government, insecure titles, shameless grafting, all were powerless to prevent the town going ahead. For a while it seemed to thrive on disorder, and in spite of the contradictory evidence there is no reason to believe that even the best sentiment of the period was well disposed to carry through any thorough measures of reform. The drastic means adopted to put a
Big Interior Land Holdings
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stop to rampant criminality are quoted to support the assumption that the so-called better elements in the community had the matter of bringing about good govern- ment much at heart, but there are too many attending circumstances connected with their efforts to permit the claim to pass unchallenged. Men with property to pro- tect may always be relied upon to act as the bulwark of social order when emer- gencies arise, but it is unfortunately true that they are often, through negligence or indifference, the direct cause of the disorders and criminality which they, in wrathful moments, seek to suppress.
San Francisco's history abundantly illustrates this propensity, and in their proper place will be found descriptions of events which will amply support the charge of contributory negligence on the part of those whose duty it was, by the exercise of vigilance and attention to civic duty, to make it impossible for the worst elements of society to control. The mere relation of certain proclivities, and what they tended to, will show that in most instances the spectacular displays of civic house cleaning would have been wholly unnecessary had the decent inhab- itants, the members of the class whose personal interests are directly subserved by the preservation of order, and who are the chief sufferers when disorder reigns, always set a good example, one calculated to inspire the belief in the evil minded that they cannot profit by defying the conventions prescribed by civilized societies.
It is with the view of making clear and emphasizing the fact that absorption in the struggle for wealth was indirectly responsible for the troubles of the years which brought the Vigilantes on the scene, that the conditions of growth in popu- lation and wealth will be described in advance of the political shortcomings of the inhabitants of San Francisco during the years preceding the overturn of law and order in 1856. It is only by contemplating the processes of accretion that a just estimate of the performances of that year and of 1851 can be obtained. The study of the events preceding and accompanying these ebullitions of popular wrath will reveal the fact that the pioneers were men of extraordinary energy and intel- ligently enterprising, but it will also disclose that they were the victims of a laxity due to the shaking off of the restraints imposed by an older civilization, which, while they may not always be sincerely regarded as desirable by those who accept them nevertheless exercise a powerful influence and tend to the elevation of society.
Contributory Negligence of Good Citizens
Absorbed in the Struggle for Wealth
CHAPTER XXI
THE LAYOUT AND BEGINNINGS OF A BIG CITY
NOT MANY PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS AT FIRST-INDIVIDUAL EFFORT THE CHIEF FACTOR IN THE UPBUILDING OF THE EARLY CITY-PRACTICAL NEEDS ATTENDED TO BY PIO- NEERS-THE FIRST CITY HALL-CONFIDENCE IN FUTURE GROWTH OF THE CITY -- YERBA BUENA COVE FILLED IN BY PIONEERS-HIGH RENTS-MERCHANTS ABLE TO PAY BIG RENTALS-EFFECTS OF EXCESSIVE SPECULATION IN 1853-OPPOSITION TO RECTANGULAR STREET SYSTEM-MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP AND CARE OF STREETS- MISSION PLANKED ROAD-PROVIDING FACILITIES FOR SHIPPING-A WATER FRONT LINE-PERMANENT WATER FRONT LINE ESTABLISHED IN 1851-THE COUNTRY AND THE CITY-STEADY DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY-EARLY WATER SUPPLY-A LAKE MERCED PHENOMENON.
HE writer of the "Annals of San Francisco," in surveying CO the condition of the City in 1854, pessimistically remarked that there were no parks, nothing but Portsmouth and two SEAL Y or three other squares, none of which had any green grass. O He spoke of contemplated thoroughfares, and other proj- OF SAN ects having for their object the improvement of the municipality, but he mourned the fact that there was not foresight enough to provide future "breathing holes" for a population which he pre- dicted would be numbered by hundreds of thousands. He stigmatized the failure to make provision for future needs as a serious oversight and attributed it to avarice.
Avarice and ignorance, allied with indifference, were justly chargeable with the omission he denounced, as was also the unfortunate disregard of the topograph- ical requirements exhibited in laying out the City. He declared that "the eye was wearied and the imagination stupefied in looking over the numberless squares-all square-building blocks, and mathematically straight lines of streets, miles long, and every one crossing a host of others at right angles, stretching over sandy hills and plains and chasms. Not only is there no public park or garden," he added, "there is no oval, circus or anything ornamental, nothing but the four squares alluded to," which he already had told us were utterly destitute of grass, and no better than the dusty plazas bequeathed to them by the indolent native Californians.
It has been shown that some of the pioneers were not wholly regardless of the graces and comforts of civilization, and that there was an early display of good taste in architecture, but all the evidence we have of development along esthetic lines indicates the narrowest sort of individualism. There were numerous excel- lently constructed buildings, which would have been an ornament in a much more populous city, but they were erected for the personal gratification and profit of the
Few Public Improve- ments
Avarice and Ignorance Denonneed
A Narrow Individoal- Ism
157
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owner. Public buildings there were none until the middle of 1851, when a theater known as the Jenny Lind was purchased for $200,000 to serve as a city hall. It was wholly unsuited for the use to which it was put, and was destitute of external attraction. The council responsible for the acquisition was accused of jobbery and David Broderick, who at a public meeting spoke in favor of the purchase, was severely criticized.
Practical Needs Receive Attention
But while parks and plazas and green grass received scant consideration it cannot be said that the pioneers were backward in the matter of making the City habitable. They proceeded with vigor in the work of creating streets and grading in order to make communication easy and succeeded in an incredibly brief space of time in accomplishing results that were a tribute to their enterprise and a substan- tial benefit to the community. Perhaps men confronted with such a task as that which San Franciscans took upon themselves in the early Fifties may be exonerated from the charge of civic indifference because they disregarded the superfluous, and posterity would doubtless readily excuse them on that ground if it were not for the fact that the disposition to ignore the public needs while struggling for private gain was manifested during many years subsequent to the period when good judg- ment and common sense demanded that the practical needs of the community should first receive attention.
Labor Conditions
The essentials received attention as soon as the labor conditions were such as to permit the carrying out of projects of improvement. During the rush to the mines, when the City was practically deserted by its inhabitants, who had joined the searchers for gold, and while every successive installment of immigrants re- mained in San Francisco only long enough to fit out for the work of digging the precious metal, it was simply impossible to make any considerable progress. In 1849 streets were still ungraded and their condition was so bad that miring was no unusual occurrence on the best thoroughfare. No sanitary regulations were imposed and people deposited rubbish where they pleased. For a while it was found more expedient to use bags of coffee, cases of tobacco and barrels of spoiled provisions to make crossings or fill up holes than to cart the nearby earth or rock to the places where needed.
Rush to Mines Continues
There was no appreciable abatement of the rush to the mines during the two or three years immediately following the discovery at Sutter's fort, but the tide ceased to flow only in one direction long before the attraction of the placers dimin- ished. Not everyone who went to dig for gold succeeded in finding what he was after, and many soon abandoned the quest and repaired to the City, where they thought they could mend their own fortunes by serving the more fortunate hunters, who resorted to San Francisco whenever they struck it rich to enjoy themselves and were more frequently than otherwise, parted from their hard earned nuggets and dust and obliged to return to the diggings to procure more or were reduced to the necessity of abiding in the town and getting a livelihood as best they could.
The working element available from this source, reinforced by constant arrivals, to whom the temptation of the large wages offered proved more alluring than the chances of the diggings, soon began to produce an impression on the ragged sur- face of the town site, the habitable limits of which were daily being extended to meet the requirements of the increasing population. The charter framed by the legislature April 15, 1850, fixed the southern boundary or the city limits at a distance of two miles from Portsmouth square, making its line run parallel with
Extension of City Limits
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that of Clay street on the north. The western line was one and a half miles dis- tant from the center of the square and paralleled Kearny street on the east, and the northern and eastern boundaries were made the same as those of the county of San Francisco.
These lines indicated confidence in the future growth of the City and the area prescribed seemed to furnish abundant room for expansion. The original survey, made by O'Farrell, had long before 1850 proved insufficient in that regard, and habitations of all kinds had spread far beyond the district in which the streets were laid down. But the principal operations carried on by individuals and by the authorities in that year were confined to seventeen or eighteen streets in the section between Battery and Taylor and Bush and Francisco. Within this district the thoroughfares were all graded and planked, and in several blocks sewers were laid. The longest improved street running north and south was Battery, which extended from California to Market. Sansome was only put in condition between Bush and Broadway. Montgomery and Kearny extended only from California to Broadway, and Dupont was passable between Sacramento and Broadway. The work on the east and west streets was not as extensive as on those running north and south, the hills offering formidable obstacles to the young community. Bush street was graded and planked between Battery and Montgomery, and California started at the bulkhead and stopped short at Montgomery. Washington and Jackson stopped at Dupont and Pacific reached to Kearny.
Simultaneously with these grading operations there was carried on the work of recovering from the waters of the cove of Yerba Buena more level space on which to erect business structures. The early annalist of San Francisco likened the City at this stage to "those other queens of the sea Venice and Amsterdam," but pointed out that "where the latter had canals for streets and solid earth beneath their first pile founded buildings," San Francisco over a great part of its most valuable busi- ness district "had still only a vast body of tidal water beneath the plank covered streets and beneath the pile founded houses themselves." It took some years to change this feature, but by degrees all the spaces between the wharves and under the buildings were filled, the sand and the earth removed from the hills brought to grade contributing to that result.
The energetic work during the summer greatly improved the condition of the streets, which were pronounced measurably passable toward the close of 1850. In 1851 the legislature reincorporated the City, extending its boundaries in a southerly direction and the work of grading and planking the streets was prosecuted with increased vigor. But there was as yet no serious encroachment on spots outside of the business district, which lay within the boundaries of the tract or space traversed by the seventeen or eighteen streets before referred to when the grading operations were mentioned. In 1851 there was still a valley in the locality that is now Second and Mission streets, and it was made attractive by a grove of evergreens. Telegraph hill was used for residence purposes to a limited extent but the disposition to keep to the improved section was pronounced and this stimulated the owners of property to reserve and make habitable the region fur- ther south. Market street, which at that period was a sand dune of no mean proportions, was cut through from Battery to Kearny streets in the year following. A machine known as the steam paddy was employed and did excellent work in
Confidence in Future Growth
Filling in Yerba Buena Cove
Energetic Work Im- proves Con- ditions
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removing and leveling the sand hills and effected speedy transformations which the satisfied denizens of the growing City were inclined to speak of as "magical."
Making a City Site
They were certainly entitled to be characterized as wonderful for they com- pletely altered the aspect of the site as viewed from the water three of four years earlier and made it nearly unrecognizable to those who returned to it after a sojourn of a year or so in the mining region. These visitors found in place of the quagmires they were familiar with, well planked streets which were tolerably free from mud and dust, and many of them provided with sewers. The thoroughfares were lined with buildings of various sorts, some of them of impressive dimensions with attractive exteriors. There were shops where luxuries and necessaries of all kind could be found, and plenty of good hotels and restaurants, and the com- placent opinion freely expressed by those enjoying the benefits of these exer- tions was that San Francisco was rapidly attaining the dignity of a metropolis.
High Reuts
To this belief the active real estate dealer and speculator freely contributed by word and action. The latter took the form of putting up rents to rates which sound fabulous, but were apparently freely paid. In 1853 we are told the com- monest shop rented at from $200 to $400 a month and that stores of any size brought $1,000 for the same period. The demand for quarters played its part in fixing the valuation of real property with the result that enormous prices were demanded and paid for choice lots which had been purchased by the original owners only a short time before for a song. By this time the City was deriving some benefit from the increased appreciation and demand for its property. On the day after Christmas of 1853 there was a sale of water front lots, 120 in all, which realized $1,193,500. Four small blocks extending from Davis street eastward, and between Sacramento and Clay, divided into lots 25x59.9 sold from $8,000 to $9,000 a lot, the corners commanding $15,000 to $16,000. A few larger lots brought from $20,000 to $27,000.
Values Purely Speculative
This enhancement was out of all proportion to the value at the time, and was based wholly on the speculative assumption that the abnormal conditions created by the enormous production of gold would continue indefinitely. It disregarded the fact that the opportunities for extension were not restricted, and ignored the experience of the two years following the gold discovery during which there was a tremendous modification of the demands of landlords. In 1849 the Parker house, a two story frame structure, was rented for $120,000 a year, and there were several mercantile concerns that paid from $30,000 to $70,000 in the year mentioned. One building with less than thirty feet frontage brought $36,000 a year.
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