Read All About It in the Los Angeles Weekly Herald, 3 July 1875, Part Three

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

Continuing with our covering of the content in the columns of the 3 July 1875 edition of the Los Angeles Weekly Herald from the Homestead’s holdings, we note further references to the recently established coastal community of Santa Monica (meaning that this is its sesquicentennial [150th anniversary]. This includes the notable comment:

The Santa Monica excitement has its benefits as well as its disagreeable features. Papers all over the State, attempting to eliminate Los Angeles from the list of promising cities, give us so much gratuitous advertising that we will occupy a very prominent position with all immigrants. Unconsciously they are doing Los Angeles a benefit, for all we desire is an opportunity to compare the real worth of Los Angeles with that of the future city by the sea. No greater farce can be imagined than the pilgrim to Santa Monica, standing in its beautiful sands and reciting the florid description of the town, from the recent advertisements. Santa Monica lots will sell at San Francisco better than on the proposed site of the great city.

A core component of the Santa Monica project was the building of a branch line of the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad, the main route intended to tap the mines of eastern California in Inyo County, to the coastal community. The Herald remarked that a paper company from Philadelphia considered erecting a mill along the line “for the purpose of manufacturing the fibre of the cactus into paper pulp,” something that apparently had been experimented with elsewhere.

While the Santa Monica line was in active construction, and became the only part of the L.A.&I. to be operational, it was noted that the company, of which F.P.F. Temple was treasurer, was working in the Cajon Pass, the outlet from greater Los Angeles to the High Desert for that Inyo County terminus at its seat of Independence and that a major tunnel was 120 feet along and making progress at four feet daily, using steam-powered drills with diamond points. The paper commented that “the company seem determined to have its road in working order as speedily as possible.”

The Herald also cited a journal called the Stock Report, which reported that “the iron for the first forty miles of the railroad has been purchased and shipped” and that “the iron and platform cars will come here via the Panama [steamer] line, pursuant to a special contract.” Moreover, it was remarked that “the road will probably connect Los Angeles and Santa Monica by the 1st of August,” though that proved to be a couple of months too ambitions.” Lastly, the article stated that “it is the intention of the company to run a line of elegant steamers, after the style of the famous Long Island Sound boats, between Santa Monica and San Francisco,” so that the travel time from the latter to Los Angeles “will be reduced to twenty-four hours.”

Also of note was that it was understood that the L.A.&I. entered into a contract with the Electrical Construction and Maintenance Company of San Francisco “for the construction of a telegraph line from Santa Monica to this city, as soon as the material can be obtained.” It is not known, however, if work did start on the project.

Temple’s Rancho La Merced, in the Whittier Narrows and bounded by the Río Hondo (Old San Gabriel River) on the west and the new river, created during flooding in the winter of 1867-1868, to the east, was largely given over to agriculture. The Herald reported that “we saw yesterday some specimens of corn and hops, raised by Messrs. Dunsmoor & Cole, on the Temple ranch, which takes the premium thus far. One corn stalk was twelve feet high” and was but a fair average from the field from which it was taken,” while 12 acres of hops was to yield up to 30,000 pounds and “these crops were raised without any irrigation.”

With the county election just under two months away, being held on the first day of September, the paper remarked that “it is the duty of all reflecting citizens . . . to make an effort to elect the best men to county offices this Fall.” This was because, as the peak of the region’s first boom was at hand,

The county has been very prosperous and we have been on the flood tide of success. In time of prosperity we should take every precaution to avoid adversity, and the surest way to retain our position in the race is to elect competent and honest men to office. Low taxes and an economical administration of county affairs will do more to retain the prestige of Los Angeles county than tons of advertising sheets.

The thinking was that new settlers rated taxes as highest on their list of issues when choosing their next place to live and work and this was followed by “the character of the public officers.” This led the Herald to reiterate to readers, “we cannot have prosperity in city or county affairs without intelligent citizens, honest officers and economical government.”

Undoubtedly, the administration of county operations was crucial, though it might be added that, especially during a boom, a careful handling of economic development and growth was just as important, particularly as F.P.F. Temple, president of the Temple and Workman bank and one of the most active participants in the boom, was readying for a second run as county treasurer.

The paper ran an item concerning the meeting the prior day of the central committee of the Independent People’s Party, at which it was decided to hold a Los Angeles County convention at the end of the month “to nominate a full county ticket, to be supported by the Independent voters of the county at the coming election.” Among these was Temple, who was a Republican, though it obviously seemed better, amid Democratic dominance of local politics going back a quarter century, to cloak the party under the guise of the “Independent People’s Party” moniker. As we’ll note at the end of this post, the 1 September election proved to be taking place at a significant time amid dramatically shifting conditions.

With respect to immigration, we’ve also observed here the efforts of James De Long of Independence, Kansas in promoting greater Los Angeles as part of his extensive stay here in 1874-1875. A “Local Intelligence” item observed that he “is doing more to bring immigrants to Los Angeles than any other ten men” and “has managed to get the stream of immigration from the Southern counties headed this way. Another tidbit reported that “the average number of arrivals here is one hundred and fifty per day; departures, fifty; leaving one hundred daily to be added to the population of this and neighboring sections.”

A letter from Luther Hall, a physician and druggist from Junction City, Kansas, west of Topeka, who’d recently returned from California, including Los Angeles in March and April, and who spoke with someone near Kansas City about the “immense immigration” to the Golden State and the risks for those who headed there without adequate funds, much as he said happened in his state in 1872 and 1873.

It turned out that the gent spoken to was from a Kansas City newspaper and he, Hall, stated, twisted the conversation to make it sound like Hall was deprecating California when, in fact, he remarked “my future movements show my good opinion of your climate and State.” This led the correspondent to assert to the Herald,

As you and many others well know, while there I spent a good deal of time in investigating whether or no [sic], the valleys and country near Los Angeles, when filled up with people and towns, would justify us in opening a wholesale drug house there . . . Personally, I am arranging my affairs to leave here, and expect to be in your city with my family by the first of September, and for the purpose of opening an office there for the successful treatment of diseases . . .

Hall, who elsewhere in the edition was cited as saying he would being 30 other settlers “of a superior class,” and his family did return in late September and he, as he mentioned in his letter, opened a medical office at his residence on Hill Street between 2nd and 3rd streets. In May 1879, he acquired a large tract of land for more than $5,000 from Jesús Rubio Marron and the Los Angeles Express of the 27th reported that he “has purchased a fine site in the foothills heretofore known as the ‘Rubio Cañon,” with fine, broad views of the San Gabriel Valley and coastal areas and added “Dr. Hall proposed to improve the place and establish a sanitarium.”

This, in fact, because a major part of the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains as health-seekers flocked to the area because of tuberculosis and other issues and sought relief and cures for their maladies. Unfortunately, the Express reported in its edition of 24 May 1880 that Hall, having intended “to fit [his Rubio Canyon property] up for a sanitarium, but himself the victim of pulmonary disease, succumbed before he could carry out his contemplated work.”

Mention has been made in this post about the construction of the Southern Pacific railroad line east from the Angel City (and through the Workman family’s half of Rancho La Puente) on its way to the Colorado River at today’s Yuma, Arizona, while that line was also being worked on north of town to connect to San Francisco. For this essential transportation project, the paper observed that the firm ordered 10,000 tons of steel from two Pennsylvania companies for that eastern, and then southern, once past modern Palm Springs, route. It also mentioned that trains to the Colton station near San Bernardino would soon be in operation.

Under the heading of “Grapes and Wine,” the Herald noted that “as our grape crop is going to be large this year, no doubt a large quantity of wine will be made” before it went into a brief discussion of the similar positive prospects of the grape yield in France. A separate tidbit in a “Local Intelligence” column indicated that “the grape crop of this vicinity will com in towards the last of July and will be immense.

Another short note concerned the election of officers of the Los Angeles Boring Company, which in early April, leased out its oil well in the San Fernando field near modern Santa Clarita. This firm then engaged with the Lesina Oil Company to drill on the latter’s claim in that area, both companies had F.P.F. Temple as an officer. A separate item reported that “the Boring Company’s well at San Fernando is now down 170 feet, and is ejecting at the rate of 4,000 barrels of water a day.”

To add to an earlier mention of new schools in the city, there was the comment that “the School Board have purchased a lot on Brooklyn Heights and have already commenced the erection of a commodious school house” adding that “the site is one of the finest in the city for school purposes.” Brooklyn Heights was a new tract founded just above another new subdivision, established in April, called Boyle Heights and the former is now part of the broader neighborhood comprised of the latter.

John Rowland, the co-owner of Rancho La Puente with William Workman for more than 30 years, died in mid-October 1873 at the age of 82 years and was laid to rest in Workman’s private El Campo Santo Cemetery. The Herald remarked that “there was shipped yesterday a fine slab of marble to Mrs. Rowland of Puente, by F.C. Miller, from his marble works” and that this “is intended for the mausoleum [ground vault] of a late citizen of Puente,” namely her husband. The monument, still standing at the cemetery on the Homestead’s grounds, was made by Jacob Miller and we’ll look to put together a post on him and the marker this October when we feature Rowland for our next Tombstone Tales event.

Under the heading of “A Los Angeles Beat Caught,” the Herald cited an article from the San Francisco Call of 25 June regarding an interview with Alexander Craig, on his way to the Solano County jail in Fairfield on a swindling conviction, but held in San Francisco en route. The paper’s criminal news detective interviewed the convict, who wished to make it clear that, rather than abscond with the funds of “the poorer classes of people and those lacking intelligence,” he instead proclaimed, “my operations have been with citizens of this State who are known as among the most intelligent and wealthy.”

Inquired as to how long his criminal career spanned, Craig offered that,,

Well, since ’67. In that year I was teaching school at what is now called Downeyville [Downey], Los Angeles county [and which was previously Los Nietos]; but people soon found what my game was, and up went my situation. By the way, talking about Downeyville, puts me in mind that I beat ex-Gov. Downey out of $250—just borrowed the money, you know. I also beat a man named Workman, a big wine dealer down in Los Angeles, out of $650. Those are the kind of men I went after.

Whether the swindle of Downey was personal or through an official loan with his Hayward and Company bank, the first in Los Angeles, is not known. Nor is it clear whether Craig’s other victim was William Workman of Rancho La Puente, or his nephew William H. Workman, who became a winemaker with the estate of his father-in-law, Andrew Boyle, at what became Boyle Heights.

Craig claimed to have fleeced such prominent San Francisco capitalists as former governor Henry H. Haight, James Lick (owner of Santa Catalina Island), Michael Reese, Bank of California president William C. Ralston and former governor and Southern Pacific official Leland Stanford. How much of his eager telling of his victims was braggadocio or an attempt to impress even if the claims were false is the question, but the amounts were small, from $15 to $60. Craig, however, insisted that, upon serving his time, “I intend to turn over a new leaf and lead an honest life.”

Two other items of local interest included a “Letter from Orange,” another of the towns, like Westminster highlighted in part two, in the southeastern portion of Los Angeles County that became part of Orange County, when that was established in 1889. Correspondent D.A. Williams reported on a “Good Templars’ Festival” held there to promote abstinence from alcohol and leading the writer to proclaim,

The Orange people are whole-souled, hospitable and generous, as well as alive to the best interests of their town and community, and hence the saloon-man, with his pernicious traffic and influence is denied a place among them, which fact evidently shows their wisdom. A finer country and better crop prospects are nowhere to be found in this county than Orange.

The Herald offered its prognostication for the coming months as it asserted that,

The prospect is that Los Angeles county will have unexampled prosperity this Fall. The crops in many localities are unexpectedly large, and our county is the objective point of much of the immigration coming into the State. We charge our business men to guard faithfully the vital interests of our county.

In under two months, however, the ticking of the telegraph transmitted the terrible news of the failure of the Bank of California after a stock bubble with silver mines at Virginia City, Nevada burst. The panic swept through Los Angeles and a run on the two commercial banks, Downey’s Farmers’ and Merchants’, which he operated with Isaias W. Hellman, the former partner of Temple and Workman, and that latter institution, ensued.

While Hellman rushed back from a European vacation to skillfully steer his bank through the crisis, Temple and Workman could not reopen without a loan, which finally came from San Francisco capitalist Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin, whose sale of Virginia City silver stock made him a fortune but also precipitated the panic. The loan could not save the Temple and Workman bank, however, and it closed early in 1876.

Among the repercussions of the financial downturn was the halting of any work, beyond the Santa Monica branch line, of the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad and the development of that town, like all other recently established ones, such as Artesia, Compton, Orange, Pasadena, Pomona, San Fernando, and Westminster came largely to a standstill.

Temple was the only Republican (Independent) to win at the county election, which took place the day his bank suspended operations for over three months. Even after the institution’s collapse, he was permitted, albeit with a deputy handling day-to-day affairs, to serve his two-year term as county treasurer.

The Long Depression continued through the Seventies and into the early Eighties, but some growth ensued by the middle of that latter decade. Then came the direct transcontinental railroad link of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and the Boom of the 1880s that was many times bigger than its predecessor. Thanks to sources like this edition of the Weekly Herald, we better understand that inaugural boom and can share some of that through this “Read All About It” series.