by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Perusing the pages of 1870s Los Angeles newspapers as part of the “Read All About It” series of posts, we learn a great deal about the history of the region in ways not generally available otherwise and today’s post covering the 23 February 1875 edition of the Los Angeles Herald provides plenty of information of an area at the peak of the area’s first development boom, which began in the late Sixties.
The paper, owned by a company of which F.P.F. Temple was treasurer and Mayor Prudent Beaudry, a major Los Angeles developer, was president, decided that “The Event of To-Day” was the long-promoted auction of land at the new townsite of Artesia. The brainchild of the Los Angeles Immigration and Land Cooperative Association, whose officers later in the year founded the town of Pomona, Artesia was heavily promoted in the Angel City press with the Herald observing,
The great Artesia land sale commences to-day and will continue for three days. We have given all the information to be had relative to this, and can add nothing more that will be of benefit to contemplated purchasers beyond the assurance that the gentlemen who are cutting up this large tract into small lots are among our first [finest] citizens.
Those founders, whose surnames of Garey, Gibbs, Gordon, McComas and Thomas will be familiar to those who know Pomona, purportedly wanting anyone investigating Artesia to be well informed of its location, quality of soil and irrigation potential. Moreover, the paper noted, they offered free transportation to the site and “afforded every facility for a full and thorough examination” of it. The name, of course, referred to the abundant supply of water from artesian wells and which “adds greatly to the value” of a community expected to “soon settle up.”
Another major cooperative real estate development venture of the time was Centinela, in which Temple was heavily invested as president of the company launching the enterprise, and which, after a February auction, was subject to a second sale on 12 April and to continue for five days. Embracing the ranchos Centinela and Sausal Redondo, the townsite was described much as the promoters of Artesia hyped it.
In an editorial page piece titled “Advance in Real Estate,” the Herald brushed aside concerns about the boom and expressed abundant enthusiasm and complete confidence in the region’s future growth:
A correspondence asserts that we are riding on the crest of a panic wave. We should not know what this means did he not follow it with the assurance that real estate in and about Los Angeles is held at an exhorbitant [sic] figure and sold at a fictitious valuation. We are not so confident as our correspondent that a collapse in real estate prices must come at an early day. We doubt if it will come at all.
The paper continued that the past two years included a doubling of local land valuations and that, in 1873, “there were plenty of people who did not buy land because they thought prices were too high and would soon come down.” This did not happen and, yet, naysayers a year prior proclaimed that “the pinnacle is reached and the reaction is at hand.”
To these doubters, the Herald asserted that the peak wasn’t even a year off and cited an example of property of Main Street across from the Temple Block, the center of the Angel City’s commercial district, that, three months before, was offered for $300 per frontage feet and just sold for $500. The paper added that “this for bare land does not look as though we had touched high water mark” and, as desirable as such commercial property was, “land all over and all around this city has been steadily advancing for the last three years.”
The claim was that “if our business and population continues to increase” as it had been “there is every reason to believe that it will continue to advance in like proportion during the next three years.” With a full measure of brimming boomtime attitude, the Herald concluded its commentary by boasting “this is the richest valley on the Pacific Coast and Los Angeles should, and we believe will, become the second city in the State.” The primary metropolis, of course, was San Francisco and boosters in the Angel City long sought to emerge from the enormous shadow cast by it.
In another piece labeled “Over Sensitive,” the paper addressed concerns that the Southern Pacific Railroad was not moving quickly enough to complete its line from the north to Los Angeles—a route forced upon the firm by Congress when a charter was granted to the powerful firm to build a line from the Bay Area southeast to the Colorado River at Fort Yuma in the Arizona Territory.
Local SP superintendent Eldridge E. Hewitt (who’d managed the local Los Angeles and San Pedro line before it was handed over to the SP when voters in November 1872 approved a subsidy to the latter as part of its plans to bring that northern line here as well as build local ones) took out a notice assuring that his bosses were to secure rights-of-way for a tunnel in the mountains north of Los Angeles and build as soon as possible. The Herald, however, expressed some skepticism about the presumption of what Hewitt stated and it continued,
The HERALD is disposed to feel kindly toward the Southern Pacific Company—certainly it will deal fairly with them—but they should not feel too sensitive over slight manifestations of distrust on the part of the citizens of this city and valley. The people have not forgotten that for and in consideration of a certain bundle of bonds to them paid in hand, the Southern Pacific Company agreed to build the main trunk of their road through this city, and they have reason to believe that it is due to no lack of effort on the part of the company that Congress has not passed a bill authorizing the building of the road eighty miles Northeast of Los Angeles.
Moreover, there was a three-year term in which the line from San Francisco to Los Angeles was to be completed, but the paper added that locals “have strong reasons for believing that the company used all means in their power” to seek an extension from Congress to delay the completion of the road for another decade.
Other unnamed “trifling indications” existed to lead Angelenos to hazard uncertainties “as to the entire trustworthiness of the corporation’s memory” and the Herald repeated that the SP manifests an undue sensitiveness over a few hazy doubts as to its good faith and honesty.” The bottom line, the paper concluded was that,
The Southern Pacific Railroad Company may regain the faith the people of Los Angeles valley once had in them, but to do so they must relearn a lesson they appear to have forgotten, which is that faith without works is a thing that feeds on itself, and, like a bear, is liable to suck itself to death, or at best come out of the struggle so thin that it will scarcely make a shadow.
Part of the context for this is that the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad, established in 1874 with Temple as president and then reorganized when silver king and Nevada United States Senator John P. Jones took a majority of stock, became president with Temple relegated to treasurer, and directed that a branch line be built to his new seaside town of Santa Monica, was a viable threat to the hegemony of the SP in regional railroading.
In the local news page, another Artesia item reported that the developers ordered that a $4,000 schoolhouse be built in the townsite and commented that “this is a matter of great importance to those who propose to locate on the land they purchase of the company.” After repeating that the promoters had free passes to those wanting to visit the tract, the paper ended with the note that “hundreds of those who have visited the lands will go down to-day with a view of purchasing.”
The prior day was the celebration of the birthday of George Washington and the Herald reported that the holiday “was quite generally observed” and “commemorated in a manner worthy [of] the birthday of the Father of His Country.” While the day started off nicely, a strong southerly wind kicked up “and whirled the dust about in rather an unpleasant manner for sight-seers and paraders.” Still, plenty of bunting was displayed and “if nothing else, our city looked patriotic,” while federal offices and the courts were closed and not much activity took place among the Angel City’s businesses.
At 2 p.m., a parade was held featuring the Improved Order of Red Men fraternal society, which actively promoted patriotism, at the head and military companies and the volunteer fire department were also involved in a separate parade. The route was south of Main Street to Fourth Street, west to Fort Street (renamed Broadway in 1890) and then north to First, east to Spring and then to the hall of the Turn-Verein Society founded by German residents of the city.
A good deal of information was provided about the Red Men and the exercises sponsored by the organization, including a quartet of male singers accompanied by piano, a prayer by school superintendent Dr. William T. Lucky, a reading of part of the famous poem, “The Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (whose visage is part of a painted glass representation on a door in the Library of La Casa Nueva at the Homestead), and an oration by attorney Will D. Gould.
Gould’s address traced some of the history of the Red Men—he being an officer of the local “tribe”—and noted that the order “kept their camp fires burning and contributed their unity and love of freedom to the preservation of our national independence.” The lawyer was accounted to have “displayed a pleasing voice” which held the attention of his auditors and he was followed by the offering of a benediction to close the exercises. How the Red Men squared their organization with the plight of America’s indigenous people when it came to “unity and love of freedom” and independence is a notable question.
The military companies and volunteer firefighters, meanwhile, had their line of march south on Spring to Third Street and then continued apparently to Sixth Street, about the furthest south you could go without venturing into the outskirts of the city, and then east to Main and then northward to the Plaza. A countermarch then went south to the triple intersection of Main, Spring and Temple at the north end of the Temple Block and then continued south on Spring to the volunteer firehouse for dismissal.
Those participating in this second parade were complimented on “their bright uniforms and new arms” while the fire engine “was tastefully decorated with ribbons of patriotic colors.” In the evening, the Los Angeles Guards’ armory at Stearns Hall, situated on the corner of Los Angeles and Arcadia streets, where U.S. 101 runs through downtown now, “was the grand culmination of the day’s proceedings” comprised of a ball. The paper ended its coverage by noting “there was a full attendance, and the hall presented a gla-day appearance with the gay uniforms and the rich attires of the ladies flitting to and fro in the mazy.”
Two days prior at the Court House, situated in Jonathan Temple’s Market House which he built in 1859 south of the Temple Block, a lecture on love was given by Jennie Leys, whose “discourse was varied and rich, copious and magnificent, abounding in splendid imagery and pathos,” though she spoke too quickly and digressed into subjects other than the one promoted. This was because, the paper added, “she declared herself only the mouth-piece for some spirit who possessed her.”
When Leys stuck to the matter of love, she did so in a manner deemed “really elegant,” but
when she attempted to impress the audience that the new philosophy of spiritism, is to be the grand instrument to bring about this reign of love on earth, it was a sad failure. Her controlling spirit must work that part of his lecture up in better style.
An evening presentation was on sectarianism and this was adjudged to be “very good,” though the Herald added that “spiritism is only to add another to the long list of sects.” When Leys, or the spirit which moved her, predicted earthquakes, pestilence and wars as “the preliminary step to a great moral revolution in the world’s history,” the paper responded that “if she had said there would be none of these for five years we should have been startled.” It concluded that her insistence that Spiritualism would lead to “the reign of purity and love” was “an open question at best” and that “the peculiar sect” had to do more than “produce such good results.”
Content in these newspapers was almost completely written by and for men, so it is interesting to note a piece “About the Ladies’ Dress Reform” in which a “Lady Gladdys” commented on changes in women’s clothing in New York City and Boston rebelling against movements emanating from France that were considered unhealthy. The new idea was to have “perfectly free action for the vital organs, thus abolishing all tight-fitting waists,” lessening the amount of material used “over the lower part of the body” while “increasing it upon the legs and arms,” and reducing the weight with fewer and lighter skirts with better support from the shoulders.
After identifying such new pieces as the “chemiloon” and the “Gabrielle underskirt” along with a polonaise overskirt and short sack dresses for outdoor wear, the article concluded with:
Several of our Los Angeles ladies have already adopted the new costume and others are enquiring the way. Will not some of our good dress-makers join the new dress reform, and thus become public benefactors in the cause of health and happiness?
Lastly, an interesting article titled “Southern California” concerned a lecture given in Boston by J.A. Johnson, editor of the Santa Barbara Press, who also gave the presentation in New York City. Among the speaker’s topics was the growth of greater Los Angeles, including Wilmington where Benjamin D. Wilson “a wealthy resident, offered great inducements to skilled laborers who would settle” at the town next to the harbor that recently received its first federal funds for dredging and a breakwater and which became the massive Port of Los Angeles.
Johnson spoke of the importance of oranges (as well as lemons and limes) to the future of the region and noted the profitability involved. After adding that the Angel City had about 12,000 residents, a third of which were from the eastern United States, it was stated that “one of its most prominent citizens, Mr. F.P.F. Temple, came from Boston, about twenty years ago.” It was actually nearly thirty-five years prior that Temple migrated from his hometown of Reading, northwest of Massachusetts’ principal city. The speaker also mentioned the success of the area’s vineyards before turning to other sections of southern California.
As for the derided prediction of the region “riding on the crest of a panic wave,” this actually was very much the case. The seven-year boom soon went bust following the collapse of a Virginia City, Nevada silver mine stock bubble that led to the failure of the California Bank in San Francisco. The telegraph sent the news south and a panic burst forth in Los Angeles, leading eventually to the cratering of the Temple and Workman bank early in 1876. The tanking economy meant that new towns like Artesia and Pomona went moribund for a time.
With respect to the Southern Pacific, though, it did complete its line to the City of Angels later that year and 1885 marked the completion of a transcontinental rail line to the region by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe that ushered in the much larger Boom of the Eighties. Those 1870s boom towns generally experienced a renaissance during that period, as well.
Check back for more “Read All About It” posts on historic Los Angeles newspapers in the Museum’s holdings and the content they include about our region.