by Paul R. Spitzzeri
After flood, drought, smallpox and more contributed to a significant financial downturn in greater Los Angeles during the Civil War years, the postwar period not only included a rebound, but the region’s first boom period ensued. This included the migration of thousands of new residents to the Angel City and environs and marked the significant rise of agriculture as the cattle industry, long the backbone of the area’s economy, was badly damaged.
We’ve noted here, in two prior posts, how walnut raising was a small, but growing, part of the rise in farming, which was largely dominated by grape growing for winemaking, but also included the raising of field crops like wheat, corn and barley as well as of deciduous fruits, with former ranch lands devoted to grazing generally divided into smaller plots for these purposes.
As 1867 dawned, the Wilmington Journal cited the Alta California, a San Francisco newspaper, and its remark that,
The quality of tropical and semi-tropical fruits coming to [our] market from Los Angeles is as rapidly increasing as is the quality [quantity]. Already the lemons, oranges, limes, and walnuts, are coming forward in sufficient quantity and of such quality as to render importations from Europe or the Islands of the Pacific, for a part of the season, at least, unnecessary.
The article continued that an agent in the Golden State’s financial center represented such area growers as Leonard J. Rose, Benjamin D. Wilson and William Wolfskill “and other leading orchardists of Los Angeles,” told the paper that the quantity of products for the current season, the length of which was not stated, was larger than all of the previous year and that “they are sanguine that the native growth will, in two or three years more, at most, crowd the imported entirely out of the market.
After observing the better type of lemons being sent, while oranges were also “improving, both in size and flavor,” the account went on that, “the walnuts are far superior to the imported, the only trouble being that there are not yet half enough to meet the demand.” The piece concluded that “all these articles pay the producers handsomely, and there is no reason why a county can produce them in unlimited quantity should long remain second to any in the State in wealth and prosperity, if her people have only the energy to improve the great natural advantages with which they have been blessed.”
In its edition of the 18th, the Los Angeles News wrote about “The Profits of Fruit Trees” in which it confidently asserted, “we challenge the world to compete with this county in the products of agriculture,” as it claimed, in what was the first detailed reference to the nut so far located,
Last year, we were shown one English walnut tree, not more than twelve years old [recall from the first post in this series that the first local references date from 1855], the produced to its owner on one year’s crop, thirty dollars. In this city there is one orchard of walnut trees, of about two and one-half or three acres, that yielded to their owner annually about fifteen hundred dollars. This tree is remarkably healthy, requires very little water, and little or no cultivation; when properly thinned or pruned in the spring of the year, nothing more is required until the fruit is ready to gather in the fall. The trees we have mentioned have by no means reached their most profitable age, and will therefore improve and become more remunerative for several years to come; the nuts are of the best quality, and will bear transportation to any market, thus enabling the producer to readily dispose of his crop, if at any time the home demand should be less than the supply.
The bulk of the article talked about the greater profitability of the orange, this soon to become the preeminent symbol of our region, and, more briefly, the grape before concluding that “certainly there is no place where kind providence has done so much by combining a soil of unexampled fertility with the most luxurious and faultless of climates,” even as more migrants went to the north and “our fertile valleys remain uncultivated for the want of population.” Too much land was devoted to “grazing a few comparatively worthless cattle” or not even to that, when increased farming would be of great benefit to the individual and area.
The following day’s Journal cited the Alta California regarding the importation of greater Los Angeles crops, including oranges, lemons and citrons and then added its view that “Los Angeles county alone is capable of producing lemons, limes, oranges, citrons, figs, walnuts, almonds and grapes enough to supply the entire Pacific coast and leave a handsome surplus for exportation, and will do so in less than ten years from this time.” The citation of that schedule was overly ambitious, but, accounting for a timeline of a few decades, proved to be prescient.
The News of the 25th continued the boosting of the county’s agricultural prospects by remarking that,
The products of the various tropical fruit trees that grow in this county equal to any of the tropical climates, have proven to our farmers that their land will be more remunerative when planted in orange, walnut, lemon and lime trees, than when planted in any other crop known to the Pacific coast.
It added that the grape was dominant from early on in California’s European and American eras “and such trees as we have alluded to were only planted in small quantities for home consumption or ornament” and even these were more profitable then grapes so that “our farmers are now turning their attention to the cultivation of tropical fruits upon a large scale.”
Given that it was tree planting season, it was observed that “the activity in that line surpasses any heretofore known in this city” so that the fruits and walnuts mentioned were to be double in number those of 1866. The paper commented that “teams are daily seen in our streets conveying loads of young trees to the grounds where they are to be planted” with the result that “their rich and luxuriant foliage will indeed give to Los Angeles the appearance of a city of the tropics.
Also mention were castor oil beans and ground nuts [almost certainly meaning peanuts] as experimental crops, while wheat was being sowed in larger amounts—including on William Workman’s half of the massive Rancho La Puente, which was just then ready to be patented by the federal government after 15 years of a land claim mandated by a law passed by Congress. The News averred that “the old customs of the past,” meaning livestock grazing, which was what happened at La Puente and other ranches, “are being laid aside, and improvement is the order of the day.”
With it proclaimed that “everything bespeaks a bountiful harvest and a prosperous year,” even as abundant rainfall leading to flooding was to follow in the winter of 1867-1868, conditions were such that,
Altogether we may say that this county is now well on the road to agricultural grandeur; its gradual increase for the past five years, has placed that important interest upon a firm basis, and the increased enterprise already displayed in that line since the beginning of the new year, displays the confidence felt by our citizens in the climate and soil of our beautiful valleys.
Even a report in the News of 8 February of the theft of 60 walnut trees from the Los Angeles orchard of George Dalton (brother of Henry Dalton of the Rancho Azusa adjacent on the north to La Puente) indicated the growing value of the crop.
In its “The Profits of Fruit Raising” from the following day’s edition of the sheet, such local growers as Benjamin D. Wilson of Lake Vineyard in the San Gabriel Valley near the Mission San Gabriel and his oranges, and the lemon crop of Andrew A. Boyle (whose 207th birthday is this coming Monday the 29th) of Paredon Blanco, renamed Boyle Heights several years later by his son-in-law William Henry Workman, nephew of the Homestead’s founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, were featured.
The paper used these examples to exhort to readers that “a few acres of land, properly planted and cultivated, will produce a revenue equal to the large cotton plantations of the South, and proves beyond doubt that there is no country in the world where well directed labor is so remunerative as in the valley of Los Angeles.” After insisting that the lime was more profitable than the lemon or orange, though these latter became far more common, the News added,
The semi-tropical fruits that experience has proven to be so productive in this climate, such as the walnut, orange, olive, fig, lime and lemon, do not require any more attention that the common apple or peach tree . . . Nor is their any danger that the fruit will ever become less valuable than at present; the large preponderance of climate and soil . . . and the facility with which such fruits can be packed . . . and shipped to any part of the Pacific, or even the Atlantic States, renders it impossible to overstock the market.
As part of the surge in agriculture, it was observed that “it is not astonishing that during the past two months the demand for young trees has been greater than the supply, and hundreds of acres of land set out, and thousands will be set out next season from the extensive nurseries now being planted, that were unable to procure the trees this season.”
Once again, the paper gushed that,
With a climate of unequalled salubrity [sic] and a soil capable of yielding to the husbandman such unexampled returns for his labor, the future of Los Angeles must be as bright and prosperous as her most enthusiastic citizens could wish for.
The same edition took readers on “A Ride Through Los Nietos,” a township along the San Gabriel River, which at that time was today’s Río Hondo, but, during the ensuing winter floods changed course to the current channel. No area of greater Los Angeles more aptly represented the significant changes underfoot in the new boom as large numbers of Anglos, principally from the South, settled there in the post-Civil War years. The 1860 census at Los Nietos recorded just two dozen Americans and Europeans, but that of a decade later, enumerated more than 1,100, with a great many of these farming along the watercourse on that fertile soil.
The piece noted that the township, situated 14 miles from the port of San Pedro/Wilmington, “is supplied with water for irrigation and domestic purposes by that stream,” while the soil “of deep sandy loam, mixed slightly with clay” was such that it “produces corn equal to any of the best lands of the valley of the Mississippi.” Other crops mentioned were castor beans, hemp, hops and tobacco were among “a great variety of other products [which] are not equaled in productiveness in any other portion of the State,” while it was added that “finer samples of oranges and walnuts cannot be found in the tropics than are to be found in the valley.”
The principal landowner in the section was ex-Governor John G. Downey, but it was not mentioned that the former druggist and his partner, James P. McFarland, who, however, returned to his native South just as the Civil War was approaching, obtained their Rancho Santa Gertrudes about a decade before by foreclosing on a loan to Lemuel Carpenter, who was married to a member of the Guirado family that settled on the ranch in pre-American days and committed suicide in despair.
Los Nietos, which was soon reconfigured into the town of Downey, welcomed hundreds of new settlers in the prior year and these resided in “neat, well-built farm cottages” with commodious barns, willow fences “and well and conveniently constructed water canals, or zanjas, for the purposes of irrigation.” Orchards and vineyards were in such abundance and quality that “the whole valley shows signs of that prosperity that is born of thrift and industry” with the claim that the section could not be bettered anywhere in the Golden State. A bright future awaited with many more thousands expected there to send grapes, limes, lemons, oranges (and, presumably, walnuts) to market as ample demonstration that “Los Angeles county [will] become the great producer of semi-tropical fruits for the Pacific and Atlantic states.”
The Journal of the 23rd reprinted a lengthy essay published in the Sacramento Union and penned by Mathew Keller, one of the most colorful and exuberant of those orchardists and vineyardists operating in Los Angeles during the era. The piece was titled “The Wine and Grapes of 1866” and, of course, goes into some significant detail about that cornerstone of our regional agriculture, but Keller also commented that it was
our duty . . . to direct the attention of our people, at home and abroad, to the advantages of our soil and climate and the low value of lands, in order to encourage the cultivation of valuable products which can easily and abundantly cultivated in our State, and which can be produced in so few other places on the globe, viz: grapes, oranges, lemons, limes, citrons, shaddock [pomelo], almonds, walnuts, figs, olives . . .
As noted above, Keller also identified the critical importance of rail transport, which would mean that “we will have a market for more than we can raise” and reduce foreign imports.” Importantly, he supported a change in tariff policy in this regard for protection, for example, of winemakers, like him, and, of course, tariffs are very much a hot-button issue now.
Lastly, the agriculturist also spotlighted the vital matter of the radical change in local land tenure, as he observed,
The loss sustained by the large rancheros on their stump-tail stock [local breeds of cattle] in the years of drouth is working out a public good, and will lay open their large domains to the tillers of the soil at fair rates and will introduce a better class of animals. Some large landowners [Rowland and Workman?] still hold on to their immense domains with a deadly grasp, but taxation and California interests [this left unexplained] will soon rank them among the played out institutions of the nineteenth century.
This volume and wealth of material from Los Angeles-area newspapers in the first two months of 1867 amply reveal that significant changes underfoot with the region’s agricultural, including its still-modest walnut growing aspect, and we’ll plow ahead with part four carrying us further into that year and into the next, so join us for that.