by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With a collection of 1870s Los Angeles area newspapers in the Museum’s collection, we have sources of information often not otherwise available about the first boom period in the region, one in which F.P.F. Temple was an active participant with a wide array of business enterprises including in the fields of banking, oil, railroads and real estate, among others, with his father-in-law William Workman alongside as a “silent partner,” investing money but otherwise having little, if any, involvement in these activities.
In 1874-1875, Temple was treasurer of The Los Angeles City and County Printing and Publishing Company, a firm comprised of stockholders including Mayor Prudent Beaudry that issued the Los Angeles Herald, a paper launched in fall 1873 by Charles A. Storke of Santa Barbara. When Storke was unable to make the project succeed, it was taken over by creditors and the printing and publishing company was formed to manage the paper, which, much later, merged with a William Randolph Hearst competitor and became the Herald-Examiner.
For this “Read All About It” installment, the 3 February edition of the paper, an emphasis is on railroads, but this is hardly unexpected giving the paramount importance of these to the growth of Los Angeles (and any other town or city at the time) as it sought to consolidate its expanding position as an economic hub of southern California and the American Southwest. As has been noted here frequently before, the local Los Angeles and San Pedro line between town and the rudimentary port at Wilmington (formerly East San Pedro) was completed in 1869, the year the transcontinental railroad was completed.
Three years later, after being forced by a Congressional charter to go through Los Angeles as it built a line to Yuma, Arizona, the Southern Pacific Railroad, the dominant firm statewide, secured a subsidy from Los Angeles County voters that gave it some $600,000 and control of the local line. In addition to bringing in a line through very rugged mountainous terrain from the north and then going eastward through the San Gabriel Valley and the Workman family’s portion of Rancho La Puente, the SP built a line from Florence (South Los Angeles) to Anaheim i what was still, until 1889, part of Los Angeles County.
In April 1874, a small depot was completed near the houses of the Workman and Rowland families, about where the town of Puente would be established a little more than a decade later, as the SP continued its work to Spadra, a hamlet now in southwestern Pomona. While locals were certainly glad to have passenger and freight access to the railroad, many chafed at the idea that the powerful San Francisco company held a regional monopoly.
Some of them, including ex-Governor John G. Downey and Temple, who were also rival bankers, decided to embark on an enterprise to change the situation and formed, also in April 1874, the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad, which had Downey as inaugural treasurer and Temple as its president. Because there was a silver mining boom in eastern California, specifically areas of Inyo County like Cerro Gordo, Panamint, and others and bullion was generally taken to Los Angeles by mule teams before shipment by sea to San Francisco and elsewhere, the idea of constructing a railroad more than 200 miles to that region made a great deal of sense.
The problem was that there simply wasn’t enough local capital to make the project viable. John P. Jones, a mining magnate from Nevada who bought a United States Senate seat from the silver state and who was deeply invested in Panamint, saw an opportunity to not only benefit himself in that area, but also with a new seaside resort town he was developing called Santa Monica. Purchasing a majority interest in L.A.&I. stock, Jones assumed the chief executive role with Temple moving to the treasurer slot after Downey departed and then made sure that a branch line from Los Angeles to Santa Monica, where a wharf for shipping was built, was completed first.
With Jones’ funds and national connections, the L.A.&I. moved swiftly, including a dramatic last-minute battle with the SP in “claiming” the vital Cajon Pass as part of the line to the northeast. Grading, roadbed and tunneling work was conducted there, but the push, as noted above, was the route to Santa Monica, from a station site at San Pedro and 6th streets outside of Los Angeles to the coast—much of this is now the Expo light rail line route.
With respect to L.A.&I. work, the Herald briefly reported that “the surveyors have completed their survey of a preliminary line . . . to a point five miles north of Spadra” and added “so far the route is all that could be expected” in terms of its quality. That reference to five miles would indicate that the company proposed to build its line roughly along the route later utilized the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe as, during the next great regional boom, in the late 1880s, it extended its transcontinental route to Los Angeles and that distance north of Spadra includes today’s cities of San Dimas and La Verne.
In a separate report, the paper opined that “the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad seems to be a substantial verity” as it cited a letter from an unnamed San Francisco capitalist, who wrote that he was ready to head to the east coast and buy iron for the track “provided that the people of the counties through which the road is to run will subscribe the amount of stock promised (three hundred thousand dollars.)” Asserting that this was a certainty and settles any question of the building of the line, the Herald continued,
The permanent prosperity of all the counties through which it runs—freight and passage at low rates—ultimate connection with some Atlantic road—a good market for all the products of the Southern part of the State—a wharf to deep water, by which we will evade the enormous expense of lighterage [such as at Wilmington/San Pedro] and the handling [of] freight twice, and a perpetual dividend of a large per cent to the stockholders—all these matters are settled provided our citizens will take the stock to the amount of $300,000. Of course they will take it.
It was stated that the road would employ 500 laborers and 20% of that total “were engaged in this city yesterday to go to work on the road.” The Herald even claimed that many of these workers would invest in a share of stock and not miss a 15% assessment quarterly because they would see the wisdom of investing in a project in which they were employed. Averring that “it is a good thing and ought to be divided among the people,” the paper noted that, even if the average person did not invest, men of means would.
Addressing ongoing concerns and criticisms of such large-scale (for the place and time) project, i was continued that “the road will be built, and the old fogies, growlers and tricksters” should quit the bellyaching and take stock in “an enterprise which is worth more to this country than anything which has ever been presented to them before.” If the first shipments of iron for the track was to arrive in May, as intended, it was time to get those subscriptions realized as “our operators must be active to be ready to receive it by that time.”
On a broader scale, the idea of a southern transcontinental line was another major concern of that day’s Herald. When the federal government began its surveys for the first line, the routes identified as the easiest and cheapest were to southern California via Arizona, New Mexico and Texas from Arkansas. With the work done under the oversight of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, later president of the Confederacy in the Civil War, northern interests had no intention of allowing such a route, so the one built across the central plains to San Francisco was undertaken.
Now, a decade after the war’s end and with Reconstruction about to be halted, there was a great deal of interest in reviving that southern transcontinental route, with Thomas A. Scott’s Texas Pacific Company receiving a great deal of attention as that firm looked to build to San Diego. In fact, a last-minute addition to the November 1872 subsidy vote referred to above provided an alternative to the SP in the form of assistance to Scott’s company, though the option lost badly.
The paper noted that there was no further support in Washington, D.C. for supporting the SP while not doing so for the Texas Pacific, while it was also asserted that guarantees were wanted that any federal subsidies would only go to companies that were committee to building and operating a transcontinental railroad, rather than sell or merge with another company upon receiving funding. The Herald understood that Scott had a verbal understanding with a Congressional committee about this, but it wanted to see this in a contract and “if this can be done, we shall at last secure an overland road which is not controlled by the managers of the road we now have,” that is, the SP.
Colonel Bryant L. Peel of Los Angeles, an associate of Temple in oil prospecting in modern Santa Clarita, wrote a separate letter to the paper addressing the bald designs of the SP in monopolizing Pacific coast railroading, while asserting that Scott and the Texas Pacific would only involve healthy competition. Peel, a native of North Carolina, also repeated the common view that it was time for the South to get its share of railroads, given how many more lines were in the North at the time and noted the general economic benefit for the nation in a southern transcontinental line, though he concluded with:
That road will open up the richest territory on the continent and in the most delightful climate, and furnish homes for millions of people who are now tenants in cabins where they are one-third of the year blockaded with snow-banks and icicles.
Under the heading of “How Matters Stand Now,” the Herald reported that the SP “realized the utter hopelessness” of its goal, though a bill introduced in Congress with Rep. Sherman O. Houghton, who lost his reelection campaign in 1874 and through which the company “hoped to secure for themselves the shortest route from the South into San Francisco, and this head off TOM SCOTT” and his Texas Pacific project.
Evidently seeing the writing on the wall, the SP agreed to remove provisions from the bill “and secure on the route from Gilroy to Tehachapa [sic] Pass.” A short letter from the railroad company’s Vice-President David D. Colton to William J. Brodrick, secretary of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce (precursor of the present organization) noted the SP’s agreement to eliminate a section of the Houghton bill.
A Chamber committee composed of Downey, Robert M. Widney and Myer J. Newmark wrote to Houghton and Rep. John K. Luttrell stating that, if there had been changes to the bill as reported, the Chamber was supportive and also that it also was in agreement about the granting of the same congressional aid and all privileged to the Southern Pacific as to the Texas Pacific.” The trio said as much in a response to Colton, as well.
Another item of railroad interest concerned statistics on traffic on the Southern Pacific within Los Angeles County during 1874 and the “magnificent showing” included the exporting of nearly 13,000 bales of wool; over 127,000 bars of silver bullion from those interior mines; nearly 25,000 boxes of fruit; just shy of 53,000 sacks of corn; about 15.5 thousand sacks of barley; close to 7,500 barrels and kegs of alcoholic beverages; and just above 3,600 barrels and cases of honey.
These were determined to be the most important of the products shipped out, but there was concern about the accuracy of imports of general merchandise, though the large receipts of building material was obviously telling about the growth of Los Angeles. Specifics for the several stations (Los Angeles as obviously the main one; Compton and Wilmington on the Los Angeles and San Pedro line; Downey and Anaheim on the Florence route; San Gabriel, El Monte, and Spadra on the eastern line; and San Fernando heading north toward the connection to San Francisco, effected in September 1876) were provided.
We can assume that the Workmans and Temples would have sent their products through the El Monte station, with the large exports being field crops like barley, beans, corn, hops and wheat, along with nuts, honey and beeswax, as well as wool. It does seem surprising, however, that there is no record of the exporting of alcoholic beverages, given that William Workman had an active winery operation, managed by his grandson (and future Homestead owner) Francis W. Temple, underway at La Puente.
The “Local Brevities” section was a bit on the sparse side, references being made to land auctions at Artesia and Cucamonga; that farming in Compton (established on a tract developed by Temple and El Monte’s Fielding W. Gibson a decade before) was going well for the season; and that 150 workers were employed on the SP’s extension from Spadra to San Bernardino with the same number soon expected as soon as tents could be found to house them. There was also a brief report from the recent Board of Supervisors meeting, mainly concerning roads and bridges.
Lastly, there is an interesting item related to the notorious bandido, Tiburcio Vásquez, whose long criminal career, said by some to be a form of so-called “social banditry” in response to oppression, came to an end in 1874 when he was captured by a posse sent by Los Angeles County Sheriff William R. Rowland (son of Rancho La Puente co-owner, John) to a ranch house in what is now West Hollywood. Vásquez tried to rob Alessandro Repetto, whose ranch is in the present Monterey Park area, by having Repetto’s son withdrawn $800 from the Temple and Workman bank, but F.P.F. Temple, seeing the flustered young man making the request, sent for Rowland. An initial attempt at capture was unsuccessful, with Vásquez and his men making a daring and dangerous escape through the Arroyo Seco and other portions of the rugged San Gabriel Mountains.
When the bandit chieftain, wanted for the murders of three persons at Tres Piños in San Benito County nor far from Vásquez’ hometown of Monterey, returned to the area, however, Rowland concocted a plan that led to his arrest. While waiting at the jail in Los Angeles for extradition to the north, Vásquez was likely our area’s first criminal celebrity, subject to many visitors, having his photo taken to raise funds for his defense, and being subject to a hurriedly composed play about his capture.
He was then put on trial at San José for capital murder, but the Herald reported that his “nephew” (the two were related through marriage) Clodoveo (rendered in the Herald as “Cleovara”) Chávez (born in 1849) wrote a trio of letters in January in Spanish to residents of San José and Hollister, situated to the south. One of these was reprinted in full, with Chávez, who was purported in Los Angeles when Vásquez was nabbed, acknowledging his complicity in crimes committed by “the Captain of my company” and stating that he had “fled to Mexico” before learning that “Vasquez was under sentence of death.” Consequently, the missive continued,
I have returned as far as this place [Hollister], with the aim of disclosing the falseness of the evidence sworn to against him, and in case the Vasquez should be hanged, to quietly mete out recompense, because I do not believe that I am in need of resources or lack sufficient valor to take him [out of jail] or die in the attempt. I wish to see the result. For this reason I let you know that if Vasquez is hung by his enemies . . . then you will know if I know how to avenge the death of the Captain. I do not expect you to set him free, but I do not not want him hung, because he was not bloody.
Chávez tried to take the blame for what happened at Tres Piños, stating that he “neglected the orders that were imposed on us,” adding that, if his claim was not enough to keep Vásquez from the noose, “then you will have to suffer as in the time of Joaquin Murieta,” the infamous, part-mythical precursor said to have been killed in 1853.
If his leader was to be mitigated as requested, Chávez continued, he would disappear and never be heard from again in California; otherwise, he warned, “the just with the unjust alike will be punished, according to law,” though what this meant was left unexplained. Historian John Boessenecker wrote that Chávez was committing crimes in Cerro Gordo, where Temple and Workman had extensive mining and water investments, when he learned of the conviction and sentence of Vásquez, leading him to go to Hollister.
When the bandido was executed at San José on 19 March, his lieutenant made an appearance in Hollister, but he soon left and committed more crimes in Inyo County before leaving California. He ended up in Arizona and was killed for reward money, his head (like that said to be of of Murrieta more than two decades before) cut off and taken to California for identification—it was said to have destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Boessenecker’s account will certainly be of interest to those curious to know more about Chávez.
There’ll be plenty more issues of 1870s greater Los Angeles newspapers to be featured in the “Read All About It” series, so be sure to check back for those.