by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with our look into the pages of the 1926 annual report of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners and the Port of Los Angeles, when it was going through a tremendous period of growth commensurate with that of the Angel City and its environs, the section on railroads noted several lines operating at the facility.
A Municipal Terminal Railroad, with nearly sixty miles of lines, had two areas of operation. On the west at San Pedro was the Pacific Electric Railway, while at the east at Wilmington was the Union Pacific. Both served as contracting agents for the municipality “in the performance of switching services, connecting the transcontinental railroad systems with the steamship lines” in the important linkage between land and sea travel.
Under the leadership of Henry E. Huntington, the Pacific Electric was, as the report noted, “the largest electric interurban system in the world,” though, after his retirement, the firm was acquired by the Southern Pacific, with the system comprised of 1,162 miles of track and served more than 50 incorporated communities in four counties as far as 70 miles from Los Angeles.
It was added that, “while primarily a passenger road,” the PE “supplies Los Angeles Harbor and much of Southern California with a modern, fast and reliable freight transportation service, advantageously situated for industrial, commercial and development activities.” At one point it shipped fewer than 1,000 freight carloads annually, but was then handling more than 200,000 carloads and operated north of 3,100 cars and 66 electric locomotives.
With this dramatically expanded business, it could tie in to steamship freight hauling through 350 stations within the region “and making a general interchange of carload and less than carload freight with all railroads at Los Angeles, participating in transcontinental rates and other joint rates to intermediate territory.” This, of course, was beyond its passenger conveyance through special trains to steamer lines.
Regarding the Union Pacific, it was noted that the major American railroad company “has been identified with the growth of Southern California since 1905, when, with Senator Clark, the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad Company opened its line from East San Pedro [Terminal Island] to Salt Lake City, having taken over the Los Angeles Terminal Railway which had completed a line from East San Pedro to Los Angeles in 1893.”
In 1921, Clark sold the line, which runs just south of the Homestead across San José Creek, paralleling the older Southern Pacific line through the southern San Gabriel Valley after its eastward turn once reaching Los Angeles. In the five years since, it was added that the UP “has expended at Los Angeles Harbor and in Southern California many millions of dollars in the improvement of its line and terminal facilities, and the purchase and improvement of industrial property.”
This included a Mission Revival passenger station at East San Pedro with an image shown here, while the UP was praised for its “spirit of helpfulness, co-operation and expenditures of vast sums of money” and its “unlimited faith in the steady growth and development of [the] Los Angeles Harbor area and the back country served.”
A main competitor of the UP was the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe which “has recently made connection with the Municipal Terminal Railroad waterfront tracks” at the Port and this was considered “one of the principal events occurring during the past year” because this marked the third transcontinental linkage to the harbor.
Unnamed experts were cited as opining that this “will create greater competition for harbor trade, insuring added construction and future growth of the port.” The deal was struck in August 1923, though a grade crossing issue led the California Railroad Commission to deny continuance of the work—the building of the Anaheim Street Viaduct over Dominguez Slough, however, solved the difficulty.
The Southern Pacific, dating to 1887 in its presence at the harbor, came into the Port’s east end at Wilmington and ran through a diagonal southwest and along the main channel’s west side to a slip near Timm’s Point in San Pedro, with a branch continuing to near Fort MacArthur. The powerful company secured tidelands owned by the State of California that later caused conflict with Port plans, so, in 1917, a settlement was reached with the City of Los Angeles in which the SP deeded rights-of-way in certain areas and the City the option to buy wharves it built within those locales.
It was reiterated that the SP was the first railroad to serve the harbor area—actually, it acquired the Los Angeles and San Pedro, the first local line, in 1872 as part of deal following a county vote to provide it subsidies for local railroad construction—thought it was mentioned that “its business is now confined to handling freight only.” This was because, once the railroad took over the Pacific Electric, passenger service was handled by the latter.
Like the Union Pacific, the SP had “a commodious and modern passenger station,” this one being in San Pedro, while it had nearly 10 miles of track at San Pedro and over 7 at Wilmington that it built, along with a wharf covering 215,000 square feet at the latter and a slip at the former with 125,000 square feet. It also boasted a tie-treating facility at Wilmington with a capacity of 6,300 railroad ties daily.
Under “Dry Docks and Shipbuilding,” the report observed that the Los Angeles Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Corporation had a construction and repair facility with slips for new building projects and wharves for repair, while there were shops for machining, sheet metal working, pipe and copper rendering, blacksmithing, joining and others. A floating drydock had a lifting capacity of 12,000 tons and marine railways for smaller vessels. A system of shear legs allowed for transferring heavy shipments for craft to rail cars.
Bethlehem Shipbuilding, a division of the famed steel company and which became the largest shipbuilding firm in the country, was “ideally located on Terminal Island” with room for larger vessels handled “with safety and dispatch.” The facility was deemed to have “the same high standard of service for which the Bethlehem organization is noted throughout the entire shipping world and could handle any size craft with 37 acres containing 16 shops such as those mentioned for the Los Angeles firm and others involving carpentry, patterning, painting, yard service. All of the aforementioned railroads, excepting the Santa Fe, served the facility, while wide concrete roads provided easy truck and car access.
With regard to “The Fishing Industry,” it was stated that
For some time Los Angeles Harbor has held first place in the world for packing tuna. There are practically 1200 large and small tuna fishing boats engaged in the fishing industry serving the wholesale fish markets and seven large operating canneries.
Now Los Angeles Harbor leads the United States in sardine packing. New England formerly produced the most sardines, and during the past year California packers have out-stripped that district by a considerable margin.
A table showed the remarkable expansion of the packing of one-pound oval sardine cans with a growth of five times from 212,000 to 1,078,000 cases and 10,200,000 to 52,000,000 cans over the previous five years. For tuna, the growth was not as much, but was still very impressive with cases rising from under 350,000 to over 1,250,000 cases and under 17 million to north of 60 million cans.
Notably, all of the tuna stayed within the United States, while 80% of the sardines were exported and it was added that “it is a known fact that canned sardines are cheaper than fresh fish caught and sold in the markets of the Orient.” Another interesting comment concerned exports of by-products, with fish-meal sent to Japan as fertilizer, with a “very high grade” version used in Japanese rice paddies as well as local citrus orchards, while other products were used for shortening, soap, food for poultry and paint oil.
The Pacific Coast Borax Company occupied a nine-acre site in the Inner Harbor at Wilmington and had 800 feet of frontage with plenty of room for expansion. Sodium borate, mined by the firm since the early 1870s, is used for detergents and cleaners, pest control products, glass, ceramics, pottery, fire retardant, and others. The firm’s location was stated to be ideal considering access to borax mines in the deserts northeast of Los Angeles, as well as the factors of excellent transportation, fuel oil sources, and the climate, housing and labor conditions of the region.
Turning to leisure, there was a brief section on “Yachting” with it noted that there were over 300 “pleasure craft” at the two anchorages at each section of the harbor, with the California Yacht Club on nearly 200,000 square feet along the inner section at Wilmington on a lease from the Board of Harbor Commissioners and occupying a club structure. A “prominent yacht enthusiast” was cited as claiming that there would some day be 10,000 craft valued at $200 million at the Port, with $20 million in business brought to it and three times that amount generated for the city through equipment, supplies and other auxiliary items.
An important local tourist destination was and is Santa Catalina Island and service there was then conducted by the Wilmington Transportation Company, founded by the Bannings of Wilmington but sold along with the island to Chicago chewing gum magnate, William Wrigley, Jr. Two ships, the “Avalon” and the “Catalina,” which each cost Wrigley more than $1 million, traversed the route twenty-six miles from the Port and carried more than 600,000 passengers.
Beyond this, there were 8 towboats and 15 barges for use in the harbor with the latter included those for hauling cargo, derricks, rock and water, while two of he former were the most modern of their kind and cost some $125,000 each and there were plans to build a tow boat each year “to take care of the ever increasing harbor business.”
The “Operation Report” observed that, while the 1925-1926 fiscal year “was one of great encouragement,” it was not as strong as the years ending in 1922 and 1923, though it added “still Los Angeles Harbor seems to be holding its own, and the present conditions are more normal than they were two years ago. A table showed that increases in dockage, wharfage, revenue, outbound and inbound tonnage and the aggregate of these latter, all increased, with inbound totals well north of 20% and dockage at nearly 19%.
During the year, wharves were added at four berths, adding well north of 1,800 linear feet, with a couple having transit sheds nearly complete and another having a main channel just about finished. Details were also provided about their uses, with one being for sending out case oil, another for loading and unloading bulk materials from cars to ships, and another, with two sections, used as municipal lumber docks.
A table showing the number of vessels, divided by those that were inbound, outbound, and handled within the Port, as well as fishing boats for the last three months of the fiscal year but not guided by pilots, handled by the facility’s pilots, and dollar amounts was provided. It showed that there were over 3,500 craft, with the inbound ones outnumbering counterparts by 60, along with 236 that were intra-harbor and 54 fishing boats during that limited period. The value given was not far under $184,000 and it was noted that the staff included seven pilots, two boat handlers and a clerk and service was provided year-round including at least one pilot on-duty overnight.
Lists of steamship lines, tanker lines and lumber companies were also provided and we’ll return tomorrow with a final third part looking at the reports of the Port engineer and controller, the revenue statement, receipts and disbursements, a commerce statement, a financial report and more to be examined.