by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The Homestead has long had an interpretive era of 1830-1930 in which it covers a good deal of ground dealing with the history of greater Los Angeles, with three focus decades chosen to allow us to better compare and contrast changes over that century. The bookends are the 1840s, when the Workmans settled on the site, and the 1920s, when the Temples’ ownership of the property marked the end of the family’s on-and-off ownership. In the middle is the 1870s, when the family achieved the acme of its activities in the economic, political and social realms, but also when the Temple and Workman bank disaster brought this to a sudden and dramatic halt.
The failure of the institution came as the first boom in the region went bust and which also resulted in the terrible tragedy of William Workman’s suicide—these events having both a deeply personal but also broadly societal impact. Notably, sources of information for the three focus decades reflect the challenges we have in gathering enough material to interpret the lives of the Workman and Temple family and their contemporaries in greater Los Angeles. Sources from the 1840s can be especially sparse, while those from the Seventies are certainly more common, though still frustratingly elusive in many cases, though the 1920s provides us a great deal more opportunity for information.
For the 1870s, one of our best available sources are newspapers, including three English-language dailies for much of that period, these being the Express, Herald and Star, while the Spanish-language La Crónica can also be found online, as the others are. Meanwhile, in the Museum’s historic artifact collection, we are fortunate to have a decent number of original issues of the trio first mentioned. The “Read All About It” series of posts on this blog is a way for us to share content from these papers and also provide some analysis to help us better understand and appreciate, in this case, the Seventies.
Here we delve into the pages of the 25 March 1875 edition of the Herald, which, after its founder, Santa Barbara native Charles Storke, got into trouble, was purchased by Angel City capitalists, who incorporated The Los Angeles City and County Printing and Publishing Company to manage the sheet. Its treasurer was F.P.F. Temple during the era which produced the issues we have in our holdings.
The “Local Brevities” column of tidbits includes a note that “our city palace is having a foundation of brick put under it,” which meant the city hall located in the Rocha Adobe, on the west side of Spring Street between Temple and 1st streets and which was sold to the city and county by Jonathan Temple more than two decades prior. For a time, the municipal headquarters was located across Spring in Temple’s Market House and, for more than a quarter century serving as the courthouse before it moved back to the Rocha Adobe for financial reasons. There was regular talk, however, of having a better quarters, though that didn’t happen until the 1880s.
Elsewhere, the paper remarked that “eastward the star of empire takes its way with the line of the railroad towards Arizona,” this referencing the expansion of the Southern Pacific’s railroad line into what is now the Inland Empire, east of the Homestead, for an eventual connection at the Colorado River where Yuma is now. A main line from northern California was in the process of construction through the rugged mountains north of Los Angeles with that route completed in September 1876, while a branch from Florence (South Los Angeles) to what became, in 1889, Orange County was also constructed during this period.
Other railroad-related items concerned a telegraph office opened at the El Monte depot, while it was reported that 18 cars went out to Spadra, now part of southwestern Pomona, with “the extraordinarily heavy shipments . . . made up principally of railroad material and supplies” for that extension work out towards modern Colton “and Panamint freight,” this last involving the mines in San Bernardino County on the western edge of Death Valley.
Separately on that main news page, the third of four in the issue, it was reported that the Southern Pacific’s superintendent Eldridge E. Hewitt, “is in receipt of official information from Mr. Huntington, now in New York, to the effect that a branch line will be pushed to the Southeast from Spadra, a distance of 100 miles, making rail communication with Indian Wells.”
It was added that iron and other materiel for the work was purchased “and the road will probably be completed by the end of the year” meaning that the project would be “within the distance of 100 miles from Fort Yuma,” thought it was more like 150. The news received by Hewitt came from Collis P. Huntington, one of the “Big Four” with Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker which owned the SP and whose nephew, Henry, became a major figure in greater Los Angeles in the first three decades of the 20th century.
A landmark historic structure at the Plaza, the center of Spanish and Mexican Los Angeles, is the Pico House hotel, completed in 1870, but embroiled in economic and legal tangles very shortly afterward, much of this involving its owner, Don Pío Pico, the last governor of Mexican California and a compadre of the Workman and Temple family, and Antonio Cuyas, who took the lease to operate the hostelry.
The hostile court fight between the two men lasted several years and the Herald remarked, “this interminable legal tangle seems to draw out longer the more it is unraveled, and we almost fear that, before it reaches an end, it will be time for the lion to lie down with lamb.” This crack concerned the Messianic Age, when a glorious future of harmony and peace was foreseen by Christians.
More positive was the report of “a rich musical treat” from a “performance of Profs. Fischer and Schad” which a representative accidentally came upon at a house and from which “the melody which they draw from a violin and piano surpasses anything that we have before heard in Los Angeles.” A lengthy editorial on “The Inspiration of Music” may have been brought forth from the experience and the rhapsody was such that the piece deserves some quoting:
What heart [is] so heavy and dull that it does not receive a thrill of delight under [the] grand harmony of sound? We have seen a whole audience delighted, thrilled, inspired and moulded into perfect accord by the harmony of music. There is a language in music that reaches the soul, infinitely above the power of words, which touches and vibrates upon the sweetest chords of man’s higher nature. Its effects, however, are none the less positive and lasting, for individuals and families, whose natures are softened and whose thoughts are inspired most by the sweet harmony of music, are more congenial and heavenly in their natures than those who are denied this source of pleasure.
Consequently, advised the Herald, “no investment compensates parents with richer rewards than the amount expended in making their homes vocal with music for their children, and corporations and communities who tax themselves for the erection of public halls, or parks where free concerts are given.” This expenditure would, it concluded, be more than worth it in terms of “preventing crime and refining the society around them.”
Speaking of crime, the last of the “Local Brevities” recorded that “a drunken fracas occurred in the upper portion [Sonoratown north of the Plaza and south of the Elysian Hills, where Chinatown is now situated] of the city last night.” An indigenous person, José Francisco, “was loafing around a house of ill-repute and well gone in liquor,” when he attempted to stab a woman only identified as Rosa.
Police Marshal Juan José Carrillo, later a mayor of Santa Monica and the father of actor Leo Carillo, and Officer Esteban Sánchez, appeared and arrested Francisco, but it was observed that as he “was taken down to the calaboose,” in the yard behind the city hall, “at least a hundred men and boys followed to give the affair due form and character.” Whether this meant that there were rumblings that Francisco should be lynched or not is not clear, however.
One of the new towns established during this first regional boom was Artesia, laid out by the Los Angeles Immigration and Land Co-operative Association southeast of the Angel City, and the name referred directly to the abundance of water found in digging artesian wells. The Herald commented that,
The second well put down by the Land Association at Artesia, has resulted in one of the largest, if not the largest, flow of water in the [Los Angeles] valley . . .
This additional certainty of getting a good supply of water for irrigating purposes has strengthened the faith of the people in the Artesia settlement, and has turned the attention of the public strongly in that direction.
While most accounts suggest that Artesia officially began with the establishment of a school district on 3 May, this earlier reference clearly shows that the town was settled before then, with the earliest sales of land there taking place recently and a second set of auctions to be held in a couple of weeks. With respect to that district, the paper added that the Association dedicated 10% of all sales at that first offering for the building of a school, with the fund holding $2,000, though the construction cost was expected to be double that.
Also of note was that the company “put down a fine artesian well on the public plaza and have donated it and the plaza to the public.” Moreover, in taking prospective buyers from Los Angeles to the new town and including lunch with the free trip, the founders, who soon moved to their Pomona project, “have done a good work for Los Angeles county by bringing into notice one of the finest tracts of land in the entire valley and selling it to actual settlers.” Consequently, it was asserted,
The result of this movement will be a very rich settlement of industrious farmers and a good village with a school house second to none in the country and consequently a good school . . .
When we take into consideration the fact that farming lands in the Eastern States are worth from $50 to $200 per acre and even more, and that one acre at Artesia will produce more than two or even three acres in the State of New York, people need not be afraid of paying too high prices for good irrigable lands here in Los Angeles at the prices now in vogue.
Close to Artesia was an interesting project called the Forest Grove Association, which has been previously featured here and which was devoted to planting eucalyptus trees imported from Australia in what is now Downey. One of its founders was F.P.F. Temple and its president was Robert M. Widney, an attorney, former District Court Judge and real estate developer.
A reporter from the Herald visited the grove and marveled at the rapid growth after just a year with the Association had about 300 boxed trees sprouting with the expectation that there would be “several hundred thousand trees on their grounds in Los Nietos,” as the area was long known. It was added that “the trees will be of sufficient size in four years to be valuable for timber or manufacturing purposes,” including for furniture, while the paper also lauded their potential use for “piles in our harbor-docks.”
This latter was thought to be worth millions and the article ended that “eucalyptus is a wonderful tree, and its merits yet to be made known to commerce will place it in the front rank for intrinsic value.” The problem, however, is that the tree did not serve the purposes for which it was intended, though the eucalyptus became a prominent part of our regional landscape, particularly as windbreaks for farms, groves and ranches.
Another future product of significance for what is now southeast Los Angeles County was the sugar beet, which took on greater importance as the United States tried to balance protections of American-produced table sugar, including from Louisiana, with a favored trade status with the Republic of Hawaii, which was annexed about a quarter-century later after a revolution led by Americans there.
The Herald‘s editorial page included a feature on the topic, telling readers that it “has received a number of letters from persons desiring information relative to the adaptation of the soil of Los Angeles valley to the growth of the sugar beet and what would be the encouragement toward the establishment of a beet sugar factory in this city.” At the last Agricultural Fair held in the area, a 140-pound example of the common beet was displayed, with reports of some beets weighing around 200, while the paper remarked that “a single acre of soil will product a great many tons of the common beet at one crop.”
A man named Wadsworth, said to the pioneer grower in California—the first plant for processing the product was opened in 1870 at Alvarado, now Union City, south of Oakland—was reportedly very interested in establishing a factory at Los Angeles, but gave up the idea because of illness. As for any specific encouragement, this the paper could not offer, though it did conclude,
We have many wealthy citizens, who would no doubt assist this as they have all other enterprises established here. If the opportunity offered the farmers would generally take stock, as nearly all of them can grow the sugar beet and the factory would thus afford them a ready market for one of the products of their farms.
By the end of the year, the economic collapse alluded to at the beginning of this post took place and it was not until 1887 that Richard Gird, a wealthy mining company owner from Tombstone, Arizona who bought the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, established sugar beet raising there and built a processing plant at the new town of Chino. Among his employees were the Oxnard brothers, who later established their namesake town with sugar beets grown there in great quantity. Then, in areas like Hynes and Clearwater, both now part of Paramount, as well as in Los Alamitos, sugar beets became a major crop well into the 20th century.
We’ll continue offering these “Read All About It” posts, especially focusing on this early to mid 1870s boom period, so check back in for those!