by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Returning to our look at the more than a quarter century of the operations of L.J. Rose at his Sunny Slope Ranch, including viticulture and winemaking, horse breeding and citrus growing, we are now entering the period of the Boom of the Eighties, which followed the completion of a direct transcontinental railroad link by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe to greater Los Angeles at the end of 1885.
As the following year dawned, the Los Angeles Times, in its New Year’s Day edition, recorded that “the year 1885 was not a prosperous one for the vineyardists” as grape yields were only 50-60% of full ones “and the wine and brandy product would have fallen very short had it not been for the new vineyards that came into bearing,” with some 27,000 acres of bearing vines existing in the county.
The paper then commented that,
Stern & Rose, hitherto among the largest manufacturers, quit buying grapes from outside vineyards [in July 1885 as noted in part seven], and the tendency was to depress prices considerably. Another effect was to cause the erection of several wineries by owners of extensive vineyards and the enlargement of others.
Sunny Slope, described as “extensive and finely appointed,” produced, in 1884, 400,000 gallons of wine and 100,000 of brandy, but no statistics were given for the most recent year, though, applying the percentages above, it seems like that the totals were in the neighborhood of 200,000-240,000 of wine and 50,000-60,000 of brandy.
The San Gabriel Winery, founded by James de Barth Shorb of the San Marino Ranch, though, was said to have manufactured about two-thirds of its 1884 totals, which were 350,000 and 50,000, respectively. Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin’s Rancho Santa Anita had figures of 250,000 and 50,000, while brothers-in-law James F. Crank and Albert Brigden of the Fair Oaks Ranch in Pasadena produced 50,000 and 10,000 at their operation, which opened in 1885.
In the city of Los Angeles, where about a million gallons of product were made, some 40% of that came from the long-time firm of Kohler and Frohling, while the Los Angeles Wine Company produced another 20%. Mesnager and Company produced 100,000 gallons and were followed by Giacomo Tononi (80,000), Diedrich Mahlstedt (75,000) and Thomas Leahy and William H. Workman (40,000.) The last, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, had his vineyard and winery in the flats of Boyle Heights, on the east side of the Los Angeles River was elected the city’s mayor at the end of 1886.
The 30 March edition of the Los Angeles Herald reported that a boon to local shippers of wine and brandy came from “the late reduction in freight rates,” perhaps helped by the new transcontinental rail link and competition between railroad companies. It was noted that, in the previous month, the firm of Baer and Germain sent 79 shipments of wine and brandy to other parts of the country, while other shipments went to Europe. Mahlstedt sent 128 carloads or some 125,000 gallons of product. The paper added that Rose’s son, Harry, informed it that “the famous Sunny Slope winery had shipped, during the last month, thirty-four carloads of wine to the East” and that this constituted 150,000 gallons.
The Herald of 8 June observed that the senior Rose wrote a series of resolutions submitted to the city’s Board of Trade, precursor to the current Chamber of Commerce, and that these were unanimously approved and telegraphed to Washington, D.C. and senators Leland Stanford, the powerful former governor and member of the Big Four which built, through its Central Pacific Railroad, the western half of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad, and owned its subsidiary, the Southern Pacific, the dominant rail company in California, and George Hearst, whose son, William Randolph, later became a newspaper tycoon.
Other recipients included Nevada Senator John P. Jones, the prime mover in the 1870s of the development of Santa Monica and the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad (the latter sold to the Southern Pacific), Ohio Senator John Sherman (brother of Union Army General William Tecumseh of Civil War fame and former Secretary of the Treasury), and more. The message penned by Rose was:
That we are watching with much solicitude your kind efforts given to viticultural industry enactments, viz: taxing bogus wines [being passed off as genuine California products], and allowing free grape spirits for fortifying sweet wines. We regard this as the most important movement ever made for the prosperity of California.
The Board of Trade hosted, on 23 August, a gathering of “about one hundred of the prominent vine-growers and wine-makers of the county” for the establishment of an organization to represent their interests. The Herald of the following day reported that “Mr. L.J. Rose, of Sunny Slope, made a very clear and forcible address, showing the circumstances out of which the necessity for such an association has grown.”
After further discussion, Rose added that the group “was not meant to acquire or possess plants for producing grapes, nor for making wine” but “was simply to use all proper means to uphold the price of grapes” and he concluded with the admonition that all members of the organization “should pledge themselves not to sell grapes at less than a fixed price.” The name of the entity was decided as The Southern California Grape Growers Association.
Hearkening to his Board of Trade resolution, Rose discussed the “matter of free brandy for fortifying sweet wines” and securing a modification of law, including “the censorious and stringent measures” of its existing structure. Federal agents were doing the best they could to work with manufacturers, but the law and its enforcement “was crippling an important industry at its very inception” and continuing with the status quo “must diminish the federal revenue, by shutting up the wineries and distilleries.”
When officers were elected, Rose was unanimously chosen as president, while Workman was selected as treasurer and also was named by Rose to a three-person committee to recommend the base line of grape pricing. Further, the new chief executive “offered to lease to the grape growers who were not prepared to make wine, the use of his immense distillery in this city,” this being the former Tarbox facility where Macy (now César Chávez) and Mission roads meet just north of Workman’s place, “for the season, for the sum of $500.”
Not only was he applauded for this magnanimity, but Workman offered a resolution that the association support Rose should he choose to run for governor and this was adopted by acclamation of those present. Rose did not make a run for the state’s highest office, though he soon ran for and was elected to the state senate. Before the meeting concluded, he remarked that “the grape growers of Los Angeles should fix the price of grapes, and he would abide by it in whatever grapes he might buy,” despite his decision in 1885 to forestall acquiring the grapes of other growers, and stated “a concert of action was important and imperative.”
Following adjournment, Rose introduced the state’s Chief Viticultural Officer, Charles A. Wetmore, who gave a presentation at the Produce Exchange that evening on adulterated and sweet wines and the brandy tax. Rose again addressed the group to clarify the matter of whether brandy, as used for fortifying wine, was not subjects to a federal revenue tax, telling the assemblage “that such is the belief.” Readers of the post this week on John Rowland relative to an 1869 issue he faced will note that Rose added, “it has never been stated that there was a permission by any Commissioner of Internal Revenue or by any deputy that such fortification was permitted without paying tax.”
Not a great deal was found in the press about the Sunny Slope pedigree horse component, though the Herald of 13 March briefly noted that Rose’s “famous stallion, ‘The Moor,’ sire of Sultan and grand sire of all the rest of the great Sunny Slope stud,” was acquired by him in 1872 from a Milwaukee breeder, George C. Stevens. He was purchased with a trio of mares and a gelding and the account concluded that Stevens’ son-in-law, Louis Blankenhorn was with the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad.
The 2 May edition of the Los Angeles Times reprinted a report from the previous day from San Francisco that “the auction sale of blooded trotting horses raised by Mr. L.J. Rose on his Sunny Slope ranch” was held at the Bay District Park next to today’s Golden Gate Park. The animals offered were all sired by Sultan, with prices as low as $90 and as high as over $1,100, with the total of the sale being not quite $2,400. It was concluded, however, that only seven of the ten horses were sold “owing to unsatisfactory prices.”
Speaking of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad, Rose decided, as that line headed through the Sunny Slope area, to subdivide, in 1885, a tract called Lamanda Park (the first letter being for the first in his name and the rest for his wife Amanda). In March 1886, Rose acquired 80 acres in Maple Canyon above Monrovia near Sawpit Canyon and where a spring was to supply water to the tract.
A free May Day picnic was held at the Lamanda Park Hotel, with a Times ad stating that there was a band and a dance floor, while “ice cream, lemonade and other refreshments [were available] for those who desire.” Anyone who did not want to bring a basket lunch could purchase meals at the hotel, where horse teams would be watched while their owners enjoyed the food and music, not to mention the “swings and croquet set on the grounds” of the hostelry.
A few weeks later, the Herald of the 25th, also describing the new towns of Monrovia and Baldwin (Arcadia), briefly boosted Rose’s project:
Lamanda Park is a most beautiful and thriving settlement among the evergreen oaks of Sunny Slope on the L.A. & S.G.V. railroad that will soon be recognized as one of the large beautiful settlements on the Pacific coast. It already has a lumber yard, picnic park, store, hotel, wine factory, postoffice, livery stable, blacksmith shop and several cottages.
While Rose then embarked on a candidacy for the state senate, winning the 39th District seat in November, he also gave a keynote address at the Los Angeles Horticultural Fair at Turnverein Hall on Spring Street. The Times of 13 October reprinted the speech in full and there are some interesting and timely, including his statement that “our section has added at least 25 per cent to its population, and real estate values have almost doubled,” though the peak of the boom was yet to come.
Rose continued with the trenchant observation that “it now takes no prophet’s tongue to foretell that this whole southern section will be one vast garden, and the most populous country in the world.” As was typical of boosters, he lionized the climate and the fertile soil as essential ingredients to this vision before turning to some specific subjects, including the orange, of which he discussed the recently formed Orange Growers’ Protective Union.
This entity was launched “for the purpose of placing the fruit on the market in its most attractive form, to secure its intelligent distribution, to guard against over supplying any one locality, to get the most favorable freight rates, to find the best markets, the best variety to grow, etc.” He asserted that the Union had a demonstrable effect on the industry including that it “will command respect and consideration from all transportation companies,” as freight costs were, of course, always of concern. It would be several years yet before the refrigerated box car came into being and revolutionized the shipping of oranges and other citrus fruits.
As to grapes, Rose allowed that “I am better acquainted with that subject than any other” and felt that this was a topic which was most likely to have a “beneficial bearing on my fellow citizens.” There were, however, concerns. First, “we have but a very moderate supply of wine and brandy on hand, and with only perhaps a short crop of grapes in the State.” He lambasted that federal brandy levy and accused revenue officials of taxing based on what it expected the region’s manufacturers to produce, rather than what actually was made.
Rose also pointed to the fact that “grape growers in this county have relied too much on selling the grapes to a few manufacturers,” this would include Sunny Slope, though he didn’t mention his decision to halt purchasing from growers, which, as noted above, had a negative effect. Instead, he stated that more vines were planted and grapes harvested while “the manufacturers, [and] the plant to convert them into wine and brandy, are stationary.” This meant the inevitable decline in prices.
Rose went on to say that, in 1884, grapes were purchased for up to $22 a ton and the wine and brandy made from them cost 20 cents for dry wine and 65 cents for brandy, but, the following year, grape prices fell by half or more and the product’s prices declined correspondingly. With supply far outstripping demand, growers “rushed to sell, all fearing to be left behind” and
“the buyers took advantage of this panic.” The only remedy, as he saw it, was for each area or grower to become manufacturers, as well, making grapes and their products staples “that will keep and improve by age.” Despite current discouragement among growers, this idea, Rose believed, “is a silver lining to the cloud.”
As he’d always maintained, Rose argued that “we can raise more and better grapes in California . . . than any part of the world” and the Golden State “can and does make a better average quality of wine than even France or Germany,” though he did not distinguish between regions within the state. Asserting that “the world requires wine and brandy,” the viticulturist further averred that “California seems to be designed to fill a void which is gradually enlarging by reason of phylloxera,” which devastated French vineyards, saved only by importation of American stock that was largely from France and then grafted to others, “and worn-out soils of older countries.”
Rose returned to the idea of the legal system ferreting out bogus or adulterated from pure wines, as well as the “free brandy” lobbying that would allow the use of it to make port, Angelica and sherry, among others, that would “add much benefit to our grape industry.” To get legislation that would allow such “free brandy” to avoid the 90 cents per gallon tax would also aid Eastern manufacturers of wine and double output of “a healthful wine,” while boosting employment.
Importantly, Rose also addressed the temperance, the movement to curb alcohol manufacturing, sale and consumption and which was increasingly gaining momentum. While expressing his concern for abuse of alcoholic beverages, he dismissed total abstinence as counter to human nature, as “the general man requires a stimulant.” Rose made the notable comparison of “in women we find this desire finds vent in the tea cup,” while “man finds it in wine, whisky and brandy.” Moreover, he observed that there was no drunkenness problem in Europe, where wine and beer, being of lower alcohol content, predominated, while “America is the land of whisky” and where “beer is an innovation; wine yet a luxury.” The “drinking of pure, dry light wines” was his answer.
The Sunny Slope proprietor offered a brief review of horse breeding and he praised “Lucky” Baldwin’s Santa Anita operation and, when it came to success at the track, Baldwin’s was “far beyond that of any other stable of a like number” of horses. As for his stable, Rose referred to Stamboul, Alcazar and Soudan and rhetorically inquired, “it may be charged that we are boasting, but are we?” and continued,
Is is not true, what we claim? It may sound fabulous, but I have no desire to tone down facts to make them sound true. It is not to create envy or make odious comparisons that I write. I do it to teach the many young and bright faces before me, the good fortune that is about them, and to create a desire to improve their exceptional opportunities. An empire is growing up, with possibilities that are so glittering that they are dazzling.
Rose rhapsodized about the manifest natural beauty of California and did not look favorably on anyone who did not “grow enthusiastic and sing the praise of such a country.” Yet, within a month, Rose would sell Sunny Slope and that will take us to the ninth part of this post tomorrow.
A report from the Los Angeles Herald on March 30, 1886 cited in the post, highlights L.J. Rose’s exceptional logistical skills in transporting wine from California. Rose shipped 150,000 gallons in just 34 carloads, while D. Mahlstedt transported 125,000 gallons using 128 carloads.