by Paul R. Spitzzeri
After a meeting of the stockholders of the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Utah Railroad was held on 5 November 1888 and on the heels of the bizarre scenario in Pasadena involving its manager, Clarence W. Scott and the subsidiary Pasadena/Altadena Railroad, a major decision was announced. In its 16 November issue, the Herald reported on the recent creation of a new railroad: the Los Angeles, Utah and Atlantic Railway Company and whose “leading spirit” was John M.C. Marble, mentioned previously as a correspondent in 1890 with Richard Smith and who recently moved to the Angel City from Van Wert County, Ohio, where the Scotts were raised, and head of the new National Bank of California.
Los Angeles banker John M. Elliott, a prominent figure in the Angel City’s financial world and who later had a large avocado and citrus grove in the new North Whittier (Hacienda) Heights, near the Homestead, was the new firm’s president, while the holdovers from the previous company included Lewis R. Winans as vice-president and Scott as secretary.
In fact, Marble and Lester Scott were in the latter’s office when a reporter showed up to ask for an update. It was learned that the nascent endeavor “is the outcome” of the SPLA&U, which “has been transferred to the organizers of the present enterprise,” though the northern terminus was changed from Keeler to a direct construction to the Utah capital. The article reviewed the manifold advantages of a line from San Pedro to Salt Lake City, but noted that the project was “written up so much and so little done regarding them that the public naturally fight shy of anything relating to their building.” Still, it was felt that “this time it looks as if those interested in the new company are really in earnest.”
Notably, though, when Marble was asked for comment, his answer was hardly different from previous reports or reassuring to anyone following the developments of this proposed route, as he said, “well, we have not yet settled on a date we will actually put men on the road, but this I can assure you that we do not intend to let grass grow under our feet. We have not decided on the survey we shall follow, for there are several rights of way yet to be looked after.”
The Times of 13 January 1889 quoted from the industry publication, The Railway Age, and its edition of nine days prior as it, in turn, observed that a Cincinnati newspaper reporter was in Los Angeles and sent an account back to the Ohio metropolis concerning the Los Angeles, Utah and Atlantic. This included a report of the City of Los Angeles granting rights-of-way within its domain and the new firm acquiring the SPLA&U and another company, the Los Angeles and Ocean, which planned to build a line to Alamitos Bay, where the San Gabriel River empties into the Pacific at the city limits of Long Beach and Seal Beach.
Moreover, the piece also commented on the belief in the benefits of the line, especially in wresting business from the Central Pacific, parent company of the Southern Pacific and which controlled the main transcontinental railroad line west of Utah where the Union Pacific’s portion ended. Marble was mentioned as the recent president of the Cincinnati, Jackson and Mackinaw Railroad and was praised for his success in managing that line.
While the Los Angeles, Utah and Atlantic secured a franchise from the City of Los Angeles, including the granting of property east of the river from East Los Angeles (Lincoln Heights) to the city’s south boundary and on condition that the line, including a levee, was to be completed to Rattlesnake Island at San Pedro Bay within a year, no deed was ever executed and placed in escrow with a bank as stipulated.
After months of inactivity, a resolution was presented in late July to the City Council concerning this state of affairs and, after it noted how the ordinance was “of a most generous and liberal character,” and yet no real work had been done, it was passed. The city attorney, after the year expired in December 1889, then submitted a report to the City Council recommending a forfeiture of the agreement and a unanimous vote established an ordinance to that effect. Whether the bust that followed the Boom of the Eighties was a major factor or not, with this project dead, a new one soon arose.
The Herald of 28 August 1890 reported that articles of incorporation were filed the prior day for the Los Angeles Terminal Railway (LATR), which included as directors Byron F. Hobart of St. Louis, who became president and treasure; Richard C. Kerens, a railroad contractor from that city and later the United States Ambassador to Austria and Hungary; Thomas B. Burnett, who became general manager; Dan McFarland, whose father Albert was the long-time treasurer of the Los Angeles Times and who had extensive real estate interests from the Boom of the Eighties forward; and former Los Angeles mayor William H. Workman, who was chief executive when King wrote his letter to Smith as the SPLA&U was being formulated.
This time, a bona fide railroad was actually completed, though the original plans called for 140 miles of local lines to the harbor at San Pedro/Wilmington, north to Los Angeles and the west of Port Hueneme near Ventura and with branches to Altadena, to Glendale and Verdugo Canyon to its north and to Santa Monica and its wharf. There was again talk of extending east and north to Utah as the predecessor firms intended, but this never got beyond the discussion stage.
What ended up being finished was the route from the Angel City to Rattlesnake Island, which was renamed Terminal Island for the project. There were stops along that line named for Hobart (East Los Angeles), Burnett (East Long Beach) and Workman (near today’s South Gate). In late November, however, there was a merger with John Cross’ Los Angeles, Pasadena and Glendale Railway, which included his 1887 Los Angeles and Glendale line of 6.5 miles, as well as a route the LAP&G built of about that length into Pasadena and Altadena and nearly 2 miles from Glendale to Verdugo Park north of that town.
The consolidation, which included the retirement of the old stock of the Terminal company and issuance of new certificates to accommodate Cross’ allocation of more than $150,000 to the Terminal for its work, also included the Pasadena/Altadena Railway line of just over 7 miles. Over the next decade, the LATR mainly handled passenger traffic over its lines, including to the increasingly popular Terminal Island where some of the well-to-do of Los Angeles society, along with others, had vacation houses. Not long after the onset of the 20th century, fishing, including by Japanese immigrants, became a significant part of the island’s history, while heavy industry and a federal prison came later after annexation to Los Angeles and the Port of Los Angeles’ phenomenal growth.
In August 1900, copper mining tycoon William Andrews Clark, joined by his brother Ross and others, acquired a controlling interest in the LATR and, the following year, it was absorbed into the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad. That firm finally accomplished the objective of getting a transcontinental connection to Utah, but, instead of going through the northern San Gabriel Valley as originally conceived, Clark and company constructed a line that went south from downtown Los Angeles through East Los Angeles and Montebello, up the Whittier Narrows and along the southern edge of the San Gabriel Valley, including just a few hundred yards south of the Homestead, before it passed into the Inland Empire, up Cajon Pass and on its way to Salt Lake City. In the 1920s, the Union Pacific acquired what was long known simply as the Salt Lake line, bringing that connection to the UP full circle after some 35 years.
As for William B. King, the writer of the featured letter, he apparently got a decent windfall for his speculation on the purchase of Terminal Island. In August 1888, he was in Alameda near Oakland and took part control of the Alameda County Railway Company and, soon after, was involved in cable car and railroad projects in Oregon and the new state of Washington.
Early the following year, he acquired mines just north of the San Diego County town of Julian, where prospecting for gold began not quite two decades before. By 1895, it was reported that about a half-million dollars worth of the precious metal had been extracted from the mines operated by King’s Owens Consolidated Mining Company. How much profit he earned after all of the investment, including some periods beset with “extravagance, mismanagement and the consequent losses,” is not known.
In 1891, King married Grace Varney, whose father Thomas was a Gold Rush ’49er and wealthy Oakland capitalist. It was not known, however, until just after the marriage that Grace, who filed a protest regarding the Varney estate, which included a legacy for her, was actually Varney’s illegitimate child. King did have some of the Varney family as partners in his Julian mining ventures, as well a farming warehouse operation. Moreover, he was involved in mines at French Gulch, northwest of Redding, and an Oakland transportation company.
After about fifteen years in Oakland, King, who last worked in shipping, his wife and their daughters Nelda and Kathryn, relocated to Redlands, where King’s cousin was a jeweler. The move south might have been for health reasons as King, who was only 45 years old when he died in Monrovia, almost certainly at a sanitarium, for which the foothill city was well known at the time, in early May 1905.
It was noted in a San Bernardino newspaper that King, having transferred any property to his wife, left a $2,000 insurance policy to be handled through probate. She died in December 1927 in Elmira, New York, where she resided with her daughters. Strangely, in 1940, Nelda, who was a physiotherapist, was left a $65,000 bequest from a doctor, who, however, insisted in his will that she never marry anyone but him! When Kathryn, a home economist married several years later, her maid of honor was Nelda, who was still unmarried and later lived in Honolulu.
This letter from King to Smith is a fascinating document relating to transcontinental and local railroad planning during Boom of the 1880s Los Angeles, when the city was increasingly being recognized as a strategically important location in the American Southwest. This is especially important with the connection to the small port, which, after the Free Harbor Fight of the Nineties, gradually received more federal and other funding to become the major hub that is now the Port of Los Angeles, including Terminal Island.
I learned from these posts that many railroads in that era, which capitalists intensely competed to invest in, were actually very short. Examples include the Los Angeles/Glendale line at 6.5 miles, the Glendale/Verdugo Park line at 2 miles, and the Pasadena/Altadena line at 7 miles. There must have been solid reasons for these investments, as well as ways for investors to achieve short-term returns.