“Where Do These Hot Winds Come From?”: The Greater Los Angeles Wildfires of 1878, Part Two

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

In yesterday’s first part of this post, the discussion was about a series of wildfires that burst forth in several areas of greater Los Angeles in the second week of September 1878, during Santa Ana winds amid hot temperatures and dry conditions with brush that was like tinder, and some of these areas included today’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles and the unincorporated community of Altadena, which suffered grievously in last week’s horrific conflagrations. Other blazes were in the San Fernando Valley and in and near Cahuenga Pass, which linked that valley with the broad Los Angeles plain to the south.

Several weeks later, however, a new spate of fires erupted, though it is interesting to note that, prior to this, earlier in October, there were mentions of the previous blazes in one of the Angel City’s daily papers. The edition of the 10th of the Los Angeles Star discussed a tour of local apiaries, with bee-keeping being a busy profession in many areas of the region, principally in canyons and foothills, and with the unnamed reporter traveling along the base of the Hollywood Hills portion of the Santa Monica Mountains to “Cold Water cañon” deemed to be “the garden of the Cahuenga mountains.”

Here were “an intelligent class of settlers” enjoying “the rich soil, cool water and healthful climate,” but it was added that “the late devastating fires visited the upper portion of this cañon,” presumably near what is now Beverly Ridge Estates and near Mulholland Highway.” Luckily, the winds shifted, “directing the fiery fiend to the mountain’s crest, where he could better display his light, thus preventing his destructive march down the cañon and through the settlement.”

Continuing in a westerly direction, the journalist visited Edson A. Benedict, who kept his apiary in the canyon that bears his name above modern Beverly Hills. Next on the itinerary was “Uncle W.W. Stone,” probably the namesake of the canyon where Bel-Air is now and then “C. Burge,” who resided in a “romantic vine-clad cottage at the foot of the [Santa Monica] mountains” in a “location [that] is most romantic and beautiful.”

After this, the trip headed further west the “Fowerdale apiary in Monville’s cañon,” this being run by George Kilgore. A mile-and-a-half further up was the house of Guy C. Manville, whose surname was somehow recast in the naming of Mandeville Canyon, situated in today’s Brentwood neighborhood. This community was in the path of the Palisades Fire and which, in September 1878, was “in the midst of the burnt district” with Manville having “suffered a slight loss of household goods during the recent mountain fire.”

The second occurrence of wildfires were noted in the Los Angeles Express of 22 October, which reported and editorialized,

Last night mountain fires of considerable extent were visible in the San Fernando range [seemingly the Verdugo Mountains], almost due north of this city, and the inference is that some hunter or farmer or bee rancher has been careless again. These brush fires have prevailed in our portion of the State with alarming frequency of late and have swept over an unusually large extent of territory with more or less damage in every instance. It is time that rigid measures were adopted for their prevention. If a few of the men who, by their criminal carelessness, allow these fires to gain headway were roundly punished instead of being dismissed with light fines of ten dollars or such matter, the result would be efficacious.

As we know all too well now, though, assumptions are one matter and proof is quite another, this also being the situation with Dr. W.W. Edwards, who started a fire the prior month in what is now Altadena as he was attempting to clear brush. While he was arrested and an arraignment hearing held, Edwards was released, clearly on the determination that he broke no law.

Whatever the situation with the blaze of 21 October, the Express highlighted “the moral necessity for having such stringent laws,” though the use of that term of “moral” is notable when it comes to legal matters, especially if a fire’s damage was to involve personal safety and property as the foundation of seeking a criminal prosecution, based either on negligence or willful arson. With these conflagrations of recent weeks, the paper vividly observed,

A brush fire once under headway may be quickly past all human control. It licks up the tinder-like grasses and underbrush which always remain at the end of a long dry Summer, and with a strong wind to give it impetus, the flames leap forward with the rapidity of a flying steed. When it sweeps up a valley or mountain cañon the very least damage it can do is to destroy the feed and the timber.

The paper went on by noting the conflagrations easily torched grain fields and the houses, barns and outbuildings on these farms or the aforementioned apiaries so that they would “sweep away in a few moments the accumulations of years of toil.” Moreover, in some circumstances, “caught unawares in the impassable defile” of a canyon or other like landscape, persons “may suffer the most horrible of deaths.”

An illustration of this risk was what was mentioned in part one, as two men in Old Santa Monica Canyon, where Pacific Palisades is now, narrowly averted being killed by submerging themselves in a spring and a well. A likely “blood-curdling tragedy” may have been avoided, but such “is no guarantee for the future” as “these brush fires are dangerous visitors, and they should be dispensed with so far as it lies within human providence to do it.”

The trio of daily English-language papers, including the Los Angeles Herald, reported on the next eruption of fire, with the Star and Express reprinting brief accounts from Anaheim, in the southeastern part of the county (eleven years later, Orange County was carved out in that section). It was stated that “a fierce fire has been raging in the mountains back of Anaheim for two days,” this meaning the Santa Ana Mountains to the east, “and to-night the scene is grand beyond description.”

“Grand” is an interesting term, as well, because it was added that “a continuous belt of fire can be seen for eight miles” and it was anticipated that many thousands of acres of land used for sheep grazing (these animals having largely replaced the cattle decimated by floods and droughts in the 1860s) and bee-keeping were to be consumed. A major area of burning was the Rancho San Joaquín in the area encompassed today by such cities as Irvine and Newport Beach, though, while there were some accounts that suggested large losses were expected, including in lands owned for the last fifteen years or so by James Irvine, the 31 October issue of the Herald, cited the Santa Ana Herald‘s quote by the rancher that no damage was done to his ranch and that, actually, “the fires have really done the ranch more good than harm” perhaps in fertilizing for new growth.

The Express separately wrote on “Mountain Fires,” observing that “beside the extensive fires which are burning towards the north” and easily seen from higher points within Los Angeles, there were the blazes near Anaheim, so that “the circle of flame which surrounded our section some time ago seems to be in a fair way of repetition.” The paper cited an unidentified Anaheim newspaper as noting,

For the last two nights our people have had an opportunity of witnessing one of the largest fires which has ever been seen in this county. [Along the eight-mile belt of flame] . . . the fire was burning fiercely in the Santiago and Shrewsbury Cañons. Much valuable feed is being destroyed, and it will only be when the flames have nothing further to feed upon that they will die out. No human effort could stay their progress.

The mention of Santiago Canyon is a reminder that, in recent years, large-scale wildfires have occurred there with greater frequency and intensity, as elsewhere in the region, state and western portion of the country. Shrewsbury Canyon is now known as Harding Canyon, this being an adjunct of Modjeska Canyon, named for the famed Polish stage actor Helene Modjeska, whose house is a landmark. Also of note is that there was a silver mine boom in that area during 1878, as the late historian Phil Brigandi chronicled in great detail, though another report in the Herald of the 23rd was from a Chinese cook at a boarding house used by coal miners in Santiago Canyon and who reported that a hoisting works and other structures at the mine were consumed by the flames, while an express wagon driver barely made it through the intense heat of the fire as he passed through the area.

Another report from Tustin, founded a few years prior, was that the blaze broke out in a small canyon and “burnt clear across the San Joaquin Rancho” and joined an area that caught fire some five weeks before—about the time of the blazes mentioned in part one—and then died as the vegetation was consumed. It was separately reported that the conflagration began in Ladd Canyon, a tributary to Silverado, to the north of Shrewsbury/Harding/Modjeska canyons, with one theory was that it originated from an attempt to keep sheep from grazing in the mountains by burning off areas of feed.

Beyond this, the account noted that, in two places

The effect of these numerous blazes in the mountains is felt in the dryness of the atmosphere which prevails here and its unwonted degree of heat, which is noticeable at night even more than in the daytime.

Does the hot weather come from the mountain fires or the mountain fires from the hot weather? They are evidently connected, for they both come simultaneously, and the only proposition to be determined is which is the cause and which the effect.

Echoing this was the Herald of the 24th, which pondered that “it is a somewhat curious circumstance that mountain fires and a very high temperature in Los Angeles are frequently coincident.” The past two days hit 92 degrees and, while “we undoubtedly have warm weather without fires,” the paper concluded that “such a torrid temperature in October is doubtlessly largely due to this disturbing cause.”

The Express then expanded on the question of “Air Currents and Hot Weather” in its edition of the 25th, asking “is there a coincidence between the mountain fires which occasionally prevail in this section and the hot weather which seems to happen along always at the same time?” It observed that the two spates of blazes in recent weeks took place during sweltering conditions and, in September particularly, “the air was so dry and hot that, in some instances, it withered the tender leaves of trees and parched the less hardy vegetation.”

In towns, the pages in account and record books and newspapers warped and curled, while the newsprint “grew crispy and rattled at the touch.” The miserable weather was reflected, as well, in humidity, which, the paper noted, “registers an average of ninety-seven in this section,” but “fell to one or two” and “the very breeze which played upon us was heated as though it came from a distant blast furnace.”

Though it seemed obvious to link the hot, dry, windy weather to the fires, it was added that “the fires were to the north, east and south of us, while our prevailing winds were from the west” and these “blew from the ocean, which could not possibly be afire.” A further analysis, however, was that the region had summer days, from between three and nine in number, during which the weather was very hot and winds also intense, but wildfires were not in evidence, with these patterns believed to emanate from the Colorado desert to the east and southeast.

Yet, it was added, “a circumstance of our ‘hot spell’ during the Summer just past [September] was that the Colorado winds blew directly from the ocean.” This was considered anomalous and the same situation as with the mountain wildfires, leading the Express to query, “Where do these hot winds come from?” The next line of discussion, then, concerned air currents and long-time resident and surveyor Alfred Higbie, who was doing this work once when he observed that hot winds from the eastern interior were driven out over the Pacific, came into contact with westerly breezes and then headed back into the area. On another occasion, he reported noticing that hot winds came down the Cajon and San Gorgonio passes, joined forces and, apparently, blowing through Santa Ana Canyon, went beyond Anaheim and over the ocean nearly to Santa Catalina Island and then “meeting adverse currents,” returned and went over the port at Wilmington and on to Los Angeles.

The paper concluded that

We may remark, however, that the super-heated atmosphere . . . whether generated by flames in the mountains, sun-scorched on the plains of Santa Clara [Valley, north of Los Angeles] or baked over the Colorado sands, must be wafted to us by diverse and eccentric currents in the manner which Mr. Higbie described. Sometimes the modified sirocco [hot wind] is fended off by sheltering mountain ranges; sometimes it is turned full upon us by the same agency, and sometimes it takes a preliminary ocean voyage before pouring down on our devoted heads. We may be thankful that, with its multiform ways of coming, it comes so seldom.

The Herald of the 26th published a letter from O.F. Kimble of Cahuenga, who addressed the weather conditions and noted that the tinder-dry plant material of the region was invariably set alight by “careless hunters, but more often by coreless [sic] and indolent rancheros” and cited the example of A.H. Miller, who, the day before, used a torch on brush along the main road from Los Angeles, and “in less time than it takes me to relate it, the whole surrounding country was one dense flame.” Purportedly, several hundred acres were charred in just an hour before a southerly wind came up and prevented damage to thousands of acres of barley fields.

Kimble asked, “what are we to do in such cases? Are we to stand calmly by and see our homes and property destroyed through the carelessness of others, with no means of redress?” This, he asked on behalf of many who lived in foothill areas and wanted to know what punishment was to be meted out to offenders.” He added that, when Miller was asked why he set the fire, the reply was that he wanted to kill coyotes and wildcats, but the conflagration “damaged many neighbors, and hard it reached the adjacent [Santa Monica] mountains, God only known where it would have stopped.”

These early descriptions of widespread wildfires in late 1870s greater Los Angeles are notable for the comparison we can make to our own era, including the horrific blazes of the last week or so, though there are great differences, of course, in population, settlement in foothills, hillsides and canyons, as well as the flammable materials that are so pervasive in our everyday lives. Lastly, while no weather event can be directly tied to climate change, climatologists note that the warming of the planet will inevitably lead to stronger wind-driven wildfires and climate whiplash, varying between often very wet and extremely dry seasons, will also become more noted.

We end this post with this article by a climate scientist who lost his home in Altadena during the Eaton fire and which provides a powerful perspective, both compellingly personal and persuasively professional.