“An Interesting Biography That Would Have Some Hypnotic Attributes”: Read All About It in the Los Angeles Express, 23 May 1873, Part Six

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

After the fevered ferment of the Boom of the 1880s, which mostly occurred when William H. Workman was mayor of Los Angeles, inevitably, dissolved into a bust that was followed by some challenging years during the ensuing decade, including a national depression and several years of regional drought, there was still significant growth in the area.

In those years, Laurel Canyon, in what are now called the Hollywood Hills, was still very much a rural area among the Santa Monica Mountains, and one of its more eccentric denizens was Frederick M. Shaw, who had grand designs for an “sanitary hotel and industrial college,” an artificial harbor and the ability to fly using a constructed wing system among other interests and areas of purported expertise frequently expressed in letters to the editors of Angel City newspapers.

As the 1890s dawned, though, Shaw had another recurring issue involving legal matters. A long-time nemesis was Edward C. Watson, who tangled with the “Sage of Laurel Canyon” in the Eighties, and who was arraigned on the last day of April 1891 when Shaw filed a complaint with a justice of the peace claiming the Watson attacked him with an ax at the beginning of the month. That apparently went nowhere.

Seven months later, however, Shaw was hauled before the same jurist on two charges, for stealing ten dollars worth of material from Watson and for “exhibiting a deadly weapon” to Peter Giesdahl, though nothing seems to have come from these legal matters either. What did reoccur, as well, that year was his scheme for flying, as a letter to the Los Angeles Express of 5 September featured regarding ideas from “the philosopher from Little Mount Olympus,” this latter apparently being a new name for his Canyon domain.

The paper prefaced the inventor’s remarks by observing “he now informs us that the time is fast approaching when he must take the public into his confidence regarding the wings he has devised.” Notably, the paper felt Shaw offered “much plausibility” in his ideas, with the apparatus said to be especially important for invalids to travel, so that the paper wondered if “the sky may some day be darkened by flocks of invalids hastening to Southern California.” As for details of the invention, Shaw submitted that,

The wings are made of aluminum for the framework and silk for the web, and will be an almost exact imitation of the condor’s wings. They can be put on and off as easily and quickly as a corset, and will weigh from nine to twenty-five pounds, to carry weights of persons from 75 to 225 pounds. They will be made here at first, for three sizes and weights only, as the “plant” to make them will cost from a fourth to a half million dollars. They will be sold at prices about the same as a first-class wheel [bicycle] made of the same material.

He added that cheaper aluminum prices meant that “their manufacture can be carried on here at a profit, to supply the whole world with wings,” one can imagine the product being called “Angel’s Wings” or something of that sort, while he mused that “it is a beautiful thought to think how suffering humanity everywhere can be relieved by their use.” He even propounded that human birds could follow steamers across the ocean and use their decks for landing for breaks.

Shaw continued that he was over his “anxiety as to being cheated out of the benefits of the discovery” and would take any profit from their sale “to build the artificial harbor I have contracted with our association to have completed in three years from the 25th of September, at a cost of fifteen millions of dollars.” While the Express remarked favorably on this “fascinating picture of future possibilities,” it cast doubt on the funding.

It did remark that, “when the inventor shall some day come flying triumphantly from Little Mt. Olympus to alight in the streets of Los Angeles, capital will perceive that he has a good thing, and will be eager to get an interest in the invention.” In the meantime, absent of any such successful exhibition of Shaw’s invention, “the world will remain incredulous concerning the merits of his device.”

The next flight of fancy appeared in the Express of 23 February 1892, as Shaw informed readers that, nearly two decades before when he was to “represent Southern California at the Vienna Exposition” of 1873, he tried to patent “a new model and propeller for seagoing craft.” After claiming that his idea would transform control of the sea for Uncle Sam (he added that the name came from his great-uncle who was surgeon-general during the War of 1812—and who knows if this was true?), the writer discussed how his propeller concept, with these placed amidships within channels or grooves on the craft’s bottom and of such a diameter and blade length that more power and speed, of up to 30 miles per hour.

As for the hull of the craft, this was to be from air-tight, hollow metal tubes, which “would give an unusual buoyancy” and that, in combination of the powerful propellers, meant that “the ship could be made to fairly skip from one great wave to another in a heavy sea. In other words, the craft would partially fly in reality.” Shaw insisted that “this is no chimerical idea” and offered that his human bird wing system (which, he noted, required the advanced development of pectoral muscles) was an example of “hard practical usage” for such a concept. He asserted,

To actually fly from one wave to another is what the flying fish do, and in so doing avoid their enemies. If a ship can do the same, and there is no good reason why she cannot, she can not only avoid her enemies, but overtake them at pleasure. This kind of navy is what we must have before we venture on a foreign war, or, in other words, by having this kind of a navy a foreign war can always be avoided.

Shaw then took an earlier quatrain he’d penned about human flight and added nine more in what he titled “Aspiration.” A few lines suffice to get the point across:

Who knows but what the brain of man

May yet devise a skillful plan

By which the wings may be devised

And so our hopes be realized?

Why not? For when the human will

Is backed and cheered by human skill,

The things that seemed beyond their ken

Are fathomed by the sons of men.

The steamboat, railroad, printing press,

That make men’s labor so much less;

The telegraph, the telephone,

Were all in ancient times unknown.

Then why should not the human mind

New means of locomotion find?

Why not think on till by and by

The problem’s solved, and we shall fly?

The artificial harbor returned again to public view in summer 1894 as the Express of 18 July reported that “the sage of Little Mount Olympus, is still vigorously working on his pet project, to establish a harbor near Lake Ballona,” this being the first time located in which a specific site was propounded, this being where Ballona Creek empties into the Pacific and which others, including F.P.F. Temple and his Centinela project in the mid-Seventies, considered as a port location.

Moreover, the paper continued, “incorporation papers have been drawn . . . and soon will be filed” as “some prominent residents” were listed as stockholders of The People’s Ocean Transit Company. The account noted that “Colonel” Shaw “has drawings showing breakwaters made of steel caissons to inclose about three square miles of anchorage and to have a north and south entrance, with tall iron light towers.” The company was to buy craft and operate a seagoing transportation concern, while “part of the proposed plans are to build a railroad around to Laurel canyon, to connect with the Cahuenga Valley road, which is being extended from Hollywood to the canyon.” Shaw remarked that he would soon open a Boston office “to promote the enterprise and float the bonds of the company.”

Nine days later, the Express published another of Shaw’s artificial harbor essays in which he stated that his 1873 trip to Europe included examining similar concepts, but with concrete blocks to be used as breakwater material, though these, he added, failed in ensuing storms. Hence, his scheme was that “the section of an equilateral triangle was adopted to obviate the difficulty” along with having “three segments of a circle with middle segment overlapping to make sallyports [openings amid the fortifications].”

Shaw claimed, as he’d done before, that well-known engineer James B. Eads was “my consulting engineer” and gave an “unqualified indorsement of my plans,” though there is no way to know if this was the case. Regardless, the projector now insisted that “the plans are perfected and the work begun” including the alleged construction of four steel towers to be 300 feet high and 150 feet wide at the base. He went into some detail about these massive structural elements were to be placed including their being secured by tripods of steel skin and of three feet diameter at the base and one at the top, while filled with rocks to hold them down and melted asphalt to maintain the shell.

Two legs of the tripods were to be braced with a triangular form and third allowed to swing by a bolt that connected all three at the peak so that it could be placed horizontally “between the barges and over the ground where the caissons are to rest.” These latter elements were to be filled with concrete and rock (though apparently not the asphalt called for in an earlier iteration.) Shaw concluded by averring that “the cost of the work will be $5,250,000, one-fifth of which sum is subscribed,” though no details were provided about who was said to have taken stock in the Ocean Transit Company.

It may be that the first published image of Shaw appeared in the Express of 2 March 1895, the drawing depicting the bespectacled inventor with a walrus mustache and a stern visage busily at work at an angled desk. An accompanying feature remarked,

There is without doubt no better known character in Southern California than Col. F.M. Shaw, “The Sage of Little Mt. Olympus.” Col. Shaw, unlike most people who come to California to make their homes, has a history, and he is proud of it. If you should happen across the Colonel, and by chance should ask him about his physical, scientific, psychic, political and matrimonial experiences he would regale you with an interesting biography that would have some hypnotic attributes.

He was, the article went on, a world traveler who broke bread with diplomats, talked shop with scientists and employed his “skillful logic and incontrovertible arguments” to “rout keen and astute statesmen.” From his “sylvan retreat” in Laurel Canyon, Shaw descended in an old coat and blue jeans, hauling potatoes in a sack, evidently for his sustenance, while also carrying a copy of Scientific American or the North American Review.

It was added that he was a prolific letter-writer to the press, though “he has never been guilty of offering poetry to the callous-minded editors.” While the artificial harbor was cited, along with his thoughts on ocean navigation and “devices for propulsion through the air by means of flying machines,” so, too, was his idea of a canal from Los Angeles to the Pacific. He commented on weather and the geologic stratifications of the area, while “on the oil question,” this recently becoming a substantial and fast-growing industry, “he has displayed a wonderful amount of scientific research and acumen.”

The piece continued that though Shaw “has many detractors, he has the satisfaction of ultimately seeing them discomfited and ‘turned down,” while it was propounded that “there are no elements of deceit or hypocrisy” in his many pronouncements even as these were free of “hindering modesty or detracting timidity” in offering his views on seemingly any topic. He claimed to have discussed ideas with Darwin, Spencer and other prominent scientific figures, though the Express allowed that “on account of his brusqueness he has made enemies” when a bit of tact would have ameliorated his conflicts. Still, it concluded, “Col. Shaw is the very embodiment of good nature and self-satisfaction. In other words, there are no flies on Col. Shaw.”

The Los Angeles Times of 11 April 1895 observed that “the familiar sage of Little Mount Olympus” and the “erratic genius of Laurel Canyon” was a “peculiar individual” who, over two decades, “has been working in his own mysterious way upon such abstruse problems as aerometers, flying machines, and the construction of a mammoth artificial wharf at Santa Monica,” with the last considered his “pet hobby.” Whether his stated figure of $110,000 spent on developing his plans had any reality to it or not, his new firm apparently had former city treasurer and county sheriff James C. Kays and former council member and Chamber of Commerce treasurer Levi N. Breed and Shaw’s brother, Charles, of Fresno, among the quintet of directors, though, while “on paper . . . [the] proposed artificial harbor looks feasible,” it was doubted that construction would ever happen. Notably, listed stockholders included the last California governor Henry H. Markham, future mayor Arthur Harper, and Victor Ponet.

Just before Valentine’s Day 1896, Shaw attracted media attention for his announced marriage, at age 66, to a woman not that far from being a half-century younger and secured a license, though when the purported bridge and groom failed to show up for a reserved dinner at the well-known establishment of Jerry Illich, the Montenegro-born restaurateur, who was also said to be a People’s Ocean Transit stockholder, bellowed into the phone to a reporter, “That man is cr-r-azee. He has not got five cents to buy him a tamale.”

Two months later, Shaw wrote to the Los Angeles Herald, which opined that he was “more or less known around these parts” and whose “views are strictly original . . . [and] somewhat novel.” It seemed to joke that Collis Huntington of the Southern Pacific, which had the former Los Angeles and Independence Railroad wharf site at Santa Monica as its favored local harbor, as the “Free Harbor Fight” loomed over whether that location or the port at San Pedro/Wilmington (this last won out) was to received federal financial support for development, should be made aware of Shaw’s concept.

Shaw claimed that the famed scientist Louis Agassiz, on a visit to California in 1871, proposed that ancient ice flows from the Sierra Nevada Mountains created plateaus along the Pacific coast. Shaw asserted that he’d found one of these, of some two miles in extent and shaped like a horse’s foot, between Ballona and Santa Monica, presumably what became, not quite a decade later, Venice. Consequently, he wrote, “on this basis the arrangements have been made to construct an artificial harbor, containing within its protective arms, three square miles of anchorage.”

The 11 August edition of the newly launched Los Angeles Record, under the headline of “His Little Schemes,” was told by Shaw that “his plans have recently been meeting with good success,” so that the prospect of the realization of his “dearest dreams” invested in the harbor project was such that “he now feels assured that he can succeed.” Of course, the paper observed, “when he gets the money from the sale of the wings he will at once prosecute work on his harbor site,” where a new component was a proposed observatory. The piece remarked that Shaw “has disposed of a half interest in his wings for $1,000,000, and with this proposes to push his harbor scheme,” to which the obvious question is whether the million dollar story wasn’t worth a plug nickel.

From this point, nothing of substance was found about Shaw for nearly three years as these grandiose plans and talk of millions of dollars of investment shriveled. The 18 April 1899 edition of the Express briefly reported that he went before the county Board of Supervisors to request buoys be placed off the shore of Santa Monica to help in the navigation of steamships he claimed he was building with a force of 150 men—none of this, of course, being the case.

As we close the 19th century part of Shaw’s story, a valentine from the Express on that day in 1896 to the “Little Mt. Olympus” resident seems relevant:

Let others roar

Oh, Colonel Shaw

Of Cupid’s freaks and pranks

You’re not afraid

Of sprightly maid

Or railroad schemes or banks

We’ll return in a couple of days with the final part of this post concerning the last days of Shaw, so be sure to join us then!