“The Social and Moral Condition of the People . . . Is First Class”: Some Early History of Compton, 1866-1876, Part Two

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

Returning to this post, which follows the Homestead’s participation as an exhibitor at the Founders Day event this past Saturday in Compton, we turn our attention to aspects of that city’s history during the first boom in greater Los Angeles, specifically the years from 1871 to 1876.

City founder Griffith D. Compton, having moved to the area in 1867, quickly became involved in many aspects of regional society beyond establishing the town and maintaining his farm. In 1869, after he and others in what was called the “Green Meadows” area between Los Angeles and Wilmington/San Pedro petitioned for a reduction in property tax assessments, he ran for the County Board of Supervisors, though narrowly lost election for a seat.

In 1871, he. as was F.P.F. Temple, who, with Fielding W. Gibson, sold the land to Compton for the new town, was a delegate and unsuccessful nominee for another supervisor run at the county Republican Party convention. This is interesting, given that Compton hailed from Virginia, so it may be assumed that he was among those in the border state who did not support secession, but wanted to preserve the union.

Later that year, meetings were held in Los Angeles to discuss and plan for the city’s future with respect to outside railroad connection, Compton took part in some of the most important aspects of these confabs. In mid-November, the Los Angeles Star reported that Compton residents (men, of course) voted him as one of three town delegates to a countywide meeting held in Anaheim.

After Congress gave the powerful Southern Pacific Railroad a charter to build a line from the Bay Area to Yuma, Arizona as the company sought to extend its operations through the Southwest, it did so on the condition that the line come through Los Angeles. In 1872, more local gatherings were held about how to work with the SP on not just a main line from the north that turned east through the San Gabriel Valley (and the Rancho La Puente), but a local line from Florence, north of Compton, to Anaheim.

The Star of 27 May, for instance, recorded that Compton was his town’s sole delegate (and Temple one of five from the Angel City) at a major gathering a couple of days prior of the planning Committee of Thirty at the courthouse. The next committee meeting was on 6 July and he was there, as well, and discussions focused on a special election before the county’s electorate (again, male voters with property only) for early November.

The conditions insisted upon by the SP included the handing over of the Los Angeles and San Pedro, the only local railroad line and which had a Compton station, and a subsidy comprising some 5% of the assessable property in the county, which amounted to just north of $600,000. While some locals demanded that an option for a subsidy to the Texas and Pacific Railroad, which intended to build to southern California, be added, the SP proposal won. For more than a decade, the company enjoyed a local monopoly, but having a major route through the area was beneficial.

As a long-time farmer in southern Illinois and near Des Moines, Iowa, as well as in northern California and his town, Compton long advocated for improvements in agriculture, including property in the community set aside for farming. In March 1874, he was named president of the Grange Co-operative Company, the “grange” movement to protect farmers from extreme rates of shipping by railroad companies as well as fees for using grain elevators. Others involved included the founders, the following year, of the agricultural colonies of Artesia (located near Compton) and Pomona.

Moreover, Compton greatly expanded his interest in real estate, which was opportune given the nature of this first boom in greater Los Angeles. In November 1873, for example, he advertised for the sale of 8,000 acres of undeveloped land, including access to water, for just $6 an acre, though the location of the property was not given. The following June, he took out an ad as a real estate agent for “first class farming land” along the LA&SPRR “and throughout the county” as well as in San Bernardino County, such as in what became Rialto.” Tracts from 40 to 1,000 acres could be had from $10 to $40 per acre.

Another business endeavor was his acquisition of stock in the newly formed Los Angeles Savings Bank, which opened its doors in summer 1874 in the Pico Building, formerly the home of Hellman, Temple and Company and a successor, The Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank. The bank was headed by Jonathan R. Slauson, whose namesake thoroughfare is a few miles north of Compton, with Jotham Bixby, owner of the nearby Rancho Los Cerritos, as a trustee.

Aside from 30 San Francisco stockholders, the roster of Angelenos numbered more than double that, including such local luminaries as Harris Newmark, Robert Widney, Alfred B. Chapman, Prudent Beaudry, Isaias M. Hellman, ex-Governor John G. Downey, Harvey K.S. O’Melveny, Benjamin D. Wilson, future Governor George Stoneman, William R. Rowland, Eduardo Pollorena, Manuel F. Coronel, Benjamin D. Wilson, William R. Rowland and the only woman, Ascencion Sepúlveda de Mott.

One of the earliest detailed descriptions of Compton was published in the Los Angeles Herald of 14-15 July 1874, with the first day’s report noting that

A railroad depot, a country tavern and store, one blacksmith shop, a neat little church costing $3,800, a nice public schoolhouse which cost nearly $4,000, two stories high, for a graded school, with a few farm houses scattered over the surrounding country, constitutes the village of Compton, if village it may be called, situated in as beautiful a section as can be found . . . The social and moral condition of the people of Compton is first-class.

Compton was thanked for conveying the reporter around the community, where it was approvingly observed that there were 200 children of school age in the district, where “a large and interesting Sunday school is maintained the year round,” and where it was heartening to see artesian wells “throwing their cooling streams into the air” and providing channeled water for farmers raising “as fine crops as grow anywhere.”

The unnamed visitor proclaimed that, for farming, Compton fared well in comparison to the nearby Los Nietos (where Downey, Pico Rivera and other modern cities are now), so that the former “is about equally renowned for its immense yield of corn, barley, vines, and all kinds of vegetables,” while fruit growing was also considered “a great success.” Yields of impressive size and frequency were mentioned with comparatively little labor, while willow grown as timber was found in large quantities along the Los Angeles and San Gabriel (Río Hondo) rivers and near to these watercourses.

Among the examples given from the especially fertile soil were cabbages of 36 pounds; a “hill” of sweet potatoes weighing 51 pounds; and three barley crops from one sowing and the last generating 50 bushels per acre. With such prodigious production, it was remarked that 40-acre or larger tracts could be had for $20 per acre, while the choicer lots of this size might fetch up to double that amount. Stock-raisers, tempted by interior lands at $5 an acre, were encouraged to consider Compton and vicinity because an acre could yield far for feed for the animals.

As to any concern about illnesses from being too close to rivers and marshy lands, the Herald insisted “there is malaria here; nothing to produce biliousness any more than in upland locations.” Returning to the “light, sandy loam” of the soil and the enormous growth of vegetation, the paper concluded,

From what has been said, is it not plain to be seen and cannot our Eastern friends understand that this land is cheap at thirty, forty, and even sixty and seventy-five dollars per acre? We say to immigrants, to all looking for homes in this beautiful valley—this most lovely section of Southern California—you will find these lands as we have described them . . .

Having spent that first day on the east of the town, the second day passed to the west, which was determined to be “a perfectly level but high country, lying as beautiful as land can lie, giving a view almost as far as the vision can reach over as lovely a region as pen can picture.” Here, the soil was heavier and harder, though not the clay (adobe) soil found more commonly inland and, while fertility was found as well, “irrigation is necessary for the growth and maturity of most crops except barley,” while corn sometimes did not require it.

It was averred that there were a trio of barley crops in three straight years from a single seeding and up to 50 bushels per acre, leading the Herald to exclaim, “Where else can this be done? Where can this be beaten?” While not all artesian well efforts were successful, those that struck water found bounteous flows and, returning to Compton’s property “one mile east of the village,” it was stated that “water enough is lost from the wells . . . to irrigate 1,000 acres of corn,” which needs lots of the precious fluid.

Traveling through that section west of the hamlet, towards modern Gardena, the reporter observed that there were tracts from 40 up to 3,000 acres for sale by Compton (the article was obviously a lengthy advertisement) “and waiting for the industrious husbandman to bring out their undeveloped and almost untold wealth.” Recalling again that those examples of fruit-growing were found to be of good quality, the piece went on to state that,

These lands, as well as those described east of the railroad, are owned principally by capitalists in Los Angeles, among whom are Gov. Downey, Mr. I[saias]W. Hellman, F.P.F. Temple, Esq., and are held at from ten to thirty dollars per acre, choice forty-acre lots reaching the last figure, while a two or three-thousand acre tract for colonization purposes can be bought for ten to twelve and a half dollars per acre.

Such a colony, it was declared, could be developed with wells and trees of several hundred dollars of expense, beyond houses, and become what “in five years’ time a prince might envy.” Tracts of 2,700 and 2,000 acres, respectively, were mentioned, the former having a trio of wells for stock raising and farmers were urged to consider the region “as the climate is so changeless,” other than wet and dry seasons. The paper estimated that with $15 per acre in investment in farming, but yields of $50, the profit was handsome.

The Herald then continued that,

We wish now to take our readers, in imagination, into Mr. Compton’s flower yard, garden, nursery and fruit orchard, and show them what we saw, where five or six years ago grew nothing but the wild grasses and flowers.

Viewed were nine varieties of grapes; orange and lemon trees; chestnuts; figs; apples; peaches; strawberries; many other fruits; and a hundred types of flowering plants. Compton also had an apple nursery of 12,000 trees comprising sixteen varieties imported from his former home state of Illinois in fall 1873 and planted the ensuing winter, with a loss to date of just 5%.

The article concluded with the observation that its two-part feature “is only a fair sample of the homesteads of the people in and around Compton and apologized to readers for the voluminous detail of any area two to three miles north and south and four or five east and west of the town. It offered that “we wish to show what the settler can now do . . . and he will find here as good society as can be found in any country place” much less being just a half-hour ride from Los Angeles.

Not as lengthy but still informative is a review of conditions in Compton from the Los Angeles Express of 16 June 1875, in which it was stated that Griffith “is agent for more than 100,000 acres of land in its vicinity,” though it seems certain that the paper accidentally added a zero to that figure. In any case, the paper observed “here is a hotel, store, church and school-house, the last two costing about $4,000 each,” along with some 100 families and that number of students studying in the school.

Given Compton’s devotion of Methodism, it was not surprising that the paper highlighted that “liquors are excluded from the settlement, and the society is good.” The fecundity of the soil, abundance of water (one farmer, Burlingame, had a lake and planned to stock it with trout) and stellar production of corn, barley and potatoes were also discussed. The piece closed with the note that Griffith was selling unimproved property at $20 to $40 an acre and that “almost any quality or quantity can be had at these figures.”

Just over two months later, however, came the stunning news of the failure of the Bank of California, the Golden State’s largest in the wake of the bursting of a bubble of Virginia City, Nevada silver mine stock. Among the casualties of the panic and deep depression that followed was F.P.F. Temple’s Temple and Workman bank. Like other recently-established towns, such as Artesia, Pomona, San Fernando, Tustin and others, Compton was very adversely affected by the economic malaise that settled in for several years.

Griffith Compton, however, pressed on with a variety of projects, including the 1878 offering of those apple trees, 80,000 in all, from his nursery; 30,000 budded and 20,000 seedling orange trees advertised three years later. He expanded his reach far outside of greater Los Angeles, including mining near Needles on the eastern extremity of the state in San Bernardino County and as a founder of the towns of San Jacinto (where he also was president of the bank) and Florida, now the Valle Vista area of east Hemet in Riverside County.

In the early 1890s, Compton played a leading role in the fight to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, serving as a delegate to the statewide Prohibition convention of 1892. This was befitting a good Methodist as was his 1890 involvement in a building committee for a new Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) structure in Los Angeles.

Though not considered among the best-known of the founders of the Methodist-affiliated (for about thirty years) University of Southern California, Compton was a founding trustee and maintained involvement for many years—in 1882 he moved to a fine house at Jefferson and Hoover, where a campus parking lot is today.

Strangely, when Compton died in January 1905 at age 84, there was no obituary of substance to be found in local papers—perhaps this was a request from him, as there was also a minimal funeral service. As for the two men whose subdivision of the northeast corner of Rancho San Pedro preceded the founding of Compton’s town, F.P.F. Temple, who served as county treasurer after the failure of his bank, but had a series of strokes from the stress of the loss of his institution and fortune, died in April 1880 at age 58. Fielding W. Gibson remained at his El Monte farm and died there at age 82 in 1891, lauded for “his uprightness and strict integrity,” as well as for “being a universal favorite of all who knew him.”

To a degree, the city of Compton benefited, as the region did, from the completion of a direct transcontinental rail line that ushered in the great Boom of the 1880s. Its population, however, remained below 1,000 until the 1910s, but another massive growth period during the Roaring Twenties brought a skyrocketing from about 1,500 to above 12,500 persons during that decade. The Great Depression and Second World War years saw modest growth, but postwar, the population leapt tripled to 48,000 by 1950 and to about 72,000 a decade later.

Compton was a whites-only city, with the same restrictive covenants keeping out persons of color found throughout most of greater Los Angeles (except such areas as Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles and South and South-Central Los Angeles.) Robert Lee Johnson’s excellent talk at the Founders Day event covered much of the postwar period, noting that his family, arriving in the early 1960s enjoyed nearby good employment, fine schools and a strong sense of community, even as “white flight” took place and a Black majority arose.

The Watts Riots of 1965, predatory loaning policies, the closure of aerospace and other industrial facilities and plants, the importation of drugs and rise of gangs and other issues were major factors to Compton’s circumstances, but what was made crystal clear in remarks by City Council members, Representative Maxine Waters, and residents is that Compton is not the community most outsiders assume it to be because of media misrepresentation and other factors. They touted the strong sense of a diverse community, including a large Latino population, and commitment to improving the quality of life in their city that was amply on display at the event and it was great to be there representing the Homestead.