by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As mentioned at the end of the last part of this post concerning the remarkable life and career of L.J. Rose of the Sunny Slope Ranch in the San Gabriel Valley, the English-led venture that acquired the nearly 2,000 acres devoted previously to horse-breeding, citrus raising and grape growing and wine making ended up as a financial debacle with issued stock amounting to far more than the ranch was worth—presumably under the notion that, with capital investment to boost, primarily, the wine-making and, secondarily, the citrus side, the value would skyrocket.
The late 1886 sale came during the fervor of the Boom of the Eighties which gripped greater Los Angeles for around two years, mostly during the Angel City mayoral administration of Rose’s friend and associate, William H. Workman, but the inevitable bust came by 1889. Around that time, Anaheim, or Pierce’s, Disease, a pest infestation, ravaged the region’s vineyards, wiping out entire sections, though Sunny Slope was not completely devastated. Still, the effect there was palpable and serious.
Into the first half of the 1890s, the operation continued and, while Rose owned a large amount of stock and seems to have been involved in management previously, his focus was almost completely on his biggest passion, the breeding and racing of trotters and thoroughbreds on his Rosemead (sometimes styled Rosemeade) property a few miles to the south of Sunny Slope. Even there, however, economic uncertainty seemed constant, as there were major losses of horses to untimely deaths on top of the capital intensive nature of the enterprise.
By 1895, matters were worsened considerably, exacerbated by a national depression that burst forth two years prior and severe drought, including that of the winter of 1893-1894. As prior parts here noted, Rose spent lavishly on a Bunker Hill mansion, invested heavily in real estate, including the boom towns of Inglewood and Redondo Beach beyond his earlier Lamanda Park project and large sums invested in a hotel and other projects at Ventura, and moved aggressively into mining, especially at his Rosemont copper mine near Tucson, Arizona.
With a predilection for “plunging,” as characterized by his namesake son and biographer, Rose had a knack for success, which he often attributed to luck, even with the most speculative of enterprises, but his 35-year run was challenged as never before when it came to mid-Nineties (often characterized as the Gay Nineties amid the worsening national economic inequality of the Gilded Age.)
While L.J., Jr., who went through significant financial problems with his ranch in Ventura County during the period, wrote that “my father was in no wise a politician,” the elder Rose frequent stood for and often was elected to political office, dating back to his service as Los Angeles County school superintendent in the mid-1860s. His most prominent role was in the California Senate for a term from 1887 to 1889 and he embarked on a pair of late-life campaigns within the Democratic Party nomination system for a seat in the national House of Representatives.
In 1896, he went through a grueling and often bitter nomination process against George S. Patton, the son-in-law of Rose’s longtime neighbor, Benjamin D. Wilson of Lake Vineyard and who became counsel and a business partner of rail tycoon and books/manuscripts/art collector Henry E. Huntington, whose estate was on former Lake Vineyard land, specifically a tract owned by another Wilson son-in-law, James de Barth Shorb. Some thirty rounds of deadlocked balloting took place before the selection of a compromise nominee, Harry W. Patton, no relation to George (whose son, George, Jr. became a famous World War II general.)
There was another effort mounted by Rose to secure the nomination for the same congressional district in 1898, though that, too failed. Meanwhile, Rose sought state patronage through a sinecure as the California bank commissioner, but Governor James H. Budd, the last Democrat to hold the office for four decades, passed on his application for the position.
In February 1899, reported the Los Angeles Record of the 20th, Rose went to Sacramento “seeking a political appointment to which a salary is attached,” purportedly saying, “any old thing will suit” and it was noted that the new governor, Henry T. Gage, though a Republican, was a long-time friend from greater Los Angeles.
The economic millstones around Rose’s neck weighed heavier as each year passed from the mid-Nineties onward. In early 1895, it was revealed that “selected acreage” of Sunny Slope was being sold by L.J. Rose and Company, Limited, the British corporation that purchased the ranch nearly a decade before, with the prominent San Francisco realty firm, Easton, Eldridge and Company as agents. That company had been involved in the greater Los Angeles area since the recent boom, notably prime property like the Wolfskill Tract, and also had such prominent land sales like the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino in modern Chino and Chino Hills.
The subdivision of part of Sunny Slope involved tracts from 5 to 20 acres and regarded those sections that were either unimproved or “in full bearing” devoted to citrus and deciduous (peaches, pears, figs, etc.) fruits. Touted was that the property had access from two railroad stations, the Lamanda Park, built by the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railway a decade before and then taken over by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, and the Sunny Slope operated by the Southern Pacific. Terms were 25% down and the remainder due from one to three years at 8% interest.
On 30 March, Easton, Eldridge and Company conducted a “Grand Auction Sale and Excursion” to Sunny Slope for the sale of 1,000 acres and advertisements promoted the “absolute fertility” of the soil, the provision of water through a recently formed Sunny Slope Water Company organized by the Rose company syndicate (this company still exists 130 years later and was the supplier for Walter P. Temple’s Town of Temple, now Temple City, when it was formed in 1923), and “a free collation” at noon before the sale an hour later. Visitors could take either rail line from Los Angeles (Southern Pacific) or Pasadena (Santa Fe) to the tract with a special fifty cent round trip fare offered.
The Los Angeles Express of 1 April reported on the “most successful sale” with it noted that some 1,500 people gathered under a large tent for the auction. George Easton, partner of brother Wendell, told the assemblage that “the property they were about to offer [was] the peer of anything in Southern California and by long odds one of the choicest properties that had ever been placed upon the auction block.” Easton also highlighted the two railroad lines, the newly established water company and the fact that stock in that firm came with purchased lots as well as “the guarantee from water taxes for all time to come.”
In the summer, Easton (whose son George D., an employee of the firm, married Rose’s daughter Maud in 1896) went to the Express to promote the water improvements to Sunny Slope, as well as to discuss colonization schemes, these being very popular in the region during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whether focused on European migrants, African-American colonies, or ones dedicated to communal or Socialist schemes.
Being an English syndicate-owned property, Sunny Slope was discussed as a place for up to 10,000 British settlers within a couple of years, with Easton telling the paper this would comprise “only the better class of people.” The firm had three other large properties for colonization in Modesto, Sacramento and Solano County, marketed to Europeans.
In November, the Los Angeles Herald ran a dual feature on the Sunny Slope Winery, providing some of its history under Rose’s management for a quarter century and heralding it, with no small amount of exaggeration, as having “by far the most famous vineyard in California” while the winemaking operation was declaring, with further amplification, that “the institution is one which all Californians are and should be proud of.”
Continuing that “its daring and enterprise are absolutely without limit,” the piece, only with the barest of disguises as advertising, talked as if the winery would not only operate for years to come, but continue untrammeled growth, though it soon was shuttered and ceased operations. This was not just due to its troubled economic state, but the fact that suburban development would continue to expand ceaselessly in much of the century to come.
In July 1896, however, another troubling sign was indicated when the Los Angeles Times of the 19th briefly reported that “a mortgage upon Sunny Slope, the domain of Hon. L.J. Rose” was filed and was “given by the L.J. Rose Company to the Railway Debenture Trust Company of London, Eng., for the sum of £58,000, or about $290,000.
Meanwhile, the Herald of the 6th observed that the Tucson Star commented on a late June sale of the Rosemont copper mine property to Lewisohn Brothers of New York City. It was added that “there is included in the transfer not only the group of mines, but the smelter and all machinery owned by L.J. Rose of Los Angeles” and partners.
Rose’s son wrote that his father, “having become enamored of some copper claims he had acquired in Arizona,” disbanded the Rosemead breeding operation, but a large sale of horses “was far from a success.” Moreover, the elder Rose, having subdivided the “Daisy Tract,” named for a daughter, in the hills northwest of downtown Los Angeles, which soon became the oil field opened by Charles Canfield and Edward L. Doheny, drilled several wells, but these came up dry. L.J. Rose, Jr. continued,
Father then made the crowning error of his spectacular career in spending something like $150,000 in erecting a smelter on his copper properties in Arizona, which ultimately resulted in a dead loss. Luck, the fickle goddess, seemed to have deserted Father. Nothing daunted him, however; he turned his attention more actively to the development of the orchards at Rosemead and derived great pleasure from spending two or three days of each week there, walking about the wild flowers, communing with nature.
By the end of 1897, it was reported that Easton, Eldridge and Company were “closing up the estate” of the British firm at Sunny Slope and the Times of 26 November recorded several sales of tracts, while it was advertised that choice land, including existing orchards, were still available.
Moreover, the paper recorded that the firm was “getting up a corporation to take over the Sunny Slope winery and manufacture wine,” with the plan to sell young wine, rather than store it—something that hearkened back to the earliest days of Rose’s operations. The winery, however, did not reopen and remained idle for several more years. In 1901, it was acquired by a New York company with local liquor and wine merchant, Henry J. Woollacott hired to manage the operation, but nothing seems to have come of this and the facility eventually gave way to later development.
As noted above, Rose pursued political office and appointed state government positions, with the comment of his that “any old thing will suit” in February 1899 an especially poignant and sad one, given what followed very soon afterward. With debts mounting, including more than a quarter million dollars owed to the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank of Los Angeles, of which Rose once was a stockholder and which was run by an old friend, Isaias W. Hellman, Rose became increasingly desperate to find some way out of the monetary morass in which he was mired.
In mid-May 1899, he traveled to San Francisco and Ventura, hoping to raise funds to address the worsening financial situation, with the Express relating that “for some time it has been an open secret that the Senator was in financial straits” and that “during the last few weeks it was known . . . that he was almost at the end of his resources.” He returned from the latter city and the Record recorded that was “apparently in his usual health and spirits” when he got back to his lavish Bunker Hill mansion.
Yet, while in Ventura and almost certainly after his final efforts of financial relief were rejected, Rose wrote a letter to his wife Amanda that was mailed at 11 p.m. of the 16th, informing her that he was economically “swamped” and that he was taking his life, telling her that his remains would be found in the chicken yard at the back of the home property.
She received the missive at 10 a.m. on the following day and, obviously horrified, Amanda and some of the Rose children could not bring themselves to go to the yard, so a daughter contacted her husband at his office in the nearby Bradbury Building and he rushed over. The Times, always prone to emphasizing drama, related what happened next:
Mr. Montgomery found his father-in-law lying face downward in a little hollow at the rear of the lot. His head reclined on his hat, and in one hand was clasped a bunch of carnations. The body was still warm, and when turned over, Mr. Montgomery detected a slight fluttering of the heart and pulse . . . [Rose was carried into the mansion] and for an hour and a half the doctors worked heroically, but in vain, to save the unfortunate man’s life.
When some of Rose’s clothing was removed in the effort to keep him alive, it was discovered that a package of morphine pills were found in a pocket and he swallowed 55 of them, with the report adding that a tenth of that was enough to cause death. Strikingly, Rose died exactly 23 years to the day that William Workman, also in despair over impending financial ruin, committed suicide at his house, still standing as part of the Museum.
When the private funeral was held at the Rose mansion prior to interment at Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights, the pallbearers included United States Senator Stephen M. White, William H. Workman, former sheriff and oilman William R. Rowland, old friend Thomas D. Mott, banker Herman W. Hellman and attorney and banker Jackson L. Graves.
It was reported that Hellman and his bank were “very lenient” to Rose as he struggled to extricate himself out of the difficulties which were ultimately insurmountable and that the mortgages covered the nearly 1,000 acres at Rosemead, the mansion, the Daisy Tract, half-interest in downtown property owned with James B. Lankershim, and Ventura property.
When the will was filed a few weeks later, it was found that Rose’s assets were essentially the same amount as his debt. In early October, a judge approved Amanda Rose’s petition, as administrator, to sell the mortgaged property to satisfy the debt of just over $270,000, with Farmers’ and Merchants’ paying the widow $5,000, presumably to help her financially. The Rose mansion went through a series of owners and was razed about a half-century after it was built.
Amanda, who lived roughly halfway between downtown and Westlake (now MacArthur) Park and then just south of that park, died in 1905 from complications of a stroke. There were eight children surviving her: Nina Wachtel (1854-1941), Annie Sanderson (1857-1906), Harry (1860-1936), biographer Leonard, Jr. (1862-1947), Guy, the well-known painter (1867-1925), Cora (Daisy) Montgomery (1869-1961), Mabel Pike Dixon (1876-1944) and Roy (1880-1934).
In its inimitable fashion of expression, the Times offered this assessment of Rose:
Accustomed to the blessings of wealth nearly all his life, and a successful in all his early undertakings, some of which were affairs of much magnitude, Senator Rose could not stand adversity when the evil days came. He did not give up in despair at once, but struggled manfully against fate until he saw the fruits of a lifetime of toil slipping away from him, without any hope of being able to retrieve his lost fortune. When he saw poverty and dependency on others for a livelihood in his old age staring him in the face, he determined to lay his burden down.
The life and career of Leonard J. Rose was a notable and instructive one, especially for the San Gabriel Valley and particularly during the quarter-century from 1860 to 1885. His work at Sunny Slope in raising fine horses, growing oranges and other fruit, cultivating vineyards and making what was likely the best brandy and wine in greater Los Angeles made him a key figure in the region.
Sadly, like William Workman, who was from a generation prior, the years of work as well as the accumulation of good fortune, amid the ever-present risks of speculation, brought a tragic end to Rose, but he deserves to be remembered for his four decades in our region.
As noted in the post, Rose died on the same day, 23 years after William Workman. Ironically, 1899 marked Workman’s 100th heavenly birthday, but his mind would not have found peace upon hearing of Rose’s death, which occurred also as a suicide under financial devastation as well. Adding to his sorrow, Workman’s house which he built in 1842 and lost in 1876, was lost to the bank one more time in 1899.
Workman’s namesake nephew, William H. Workman, must also have had very complicated feelings upon Rose’s death, especially when serving as his pallbearer – considering the manner of Rose’s death, the significance of the date of Rose’s death, and his close relationships with both Rose and his uncle.
L.J. Rose’s financial frustrations in his later years exemplify a common scenario faced by many entrepreneurs, both historically and in modern times, in the U.S. and abroad. These individuals often over-leverage themselves by borrowing extensively to expand their operations.
A Chinese proverb aptly captures this predicament: “Five lids to cover six pans” (六個鍋五個蓋), meaning there is always a shortfall. Another saying vividly describes the embarrassment of insufficient funds in business: “Dig east wall to repair the west wall” (挖東牆補西牆), indicating that soon there will be holes in every wall until the roof collapses.
Thanks, Larry, one reason for going so deeply into Rose’s story because of some of the parallels with William Workman, as you noted in another comment, though he was of the succeeding generation, including the significant risks of speculation. It is also very interesting to see the two proverbs and we appreciate you sharing those.