by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Pressing on with our posts looking at some of the early history of walnut growing in greater Los Angeles, we move closer to the end of the 1860s, a decade of remarkable change in the region with the first half including ferocious flooding, devastating drought, outbreaks of smallpox and more, this occurring during the Civil War years. The second half, however, proved to be a pronounced improvement with a significant influx of migrants, modest improvements in transportation (including the first local railroad, the Los Angeles and San Pedro, connecting the town to the rudimentary port at Wilmington) and an increase in business.
What were the nascent stages of the first boom in the area included the supplanting of the cattle industry as the region’s economic backbone by an emerging agricultural bonanza that eventually became largely identified with orange growing. Grape raising and winemaking, however, long was a part of the area’s farming contingent, but increasingly important were other citrus fruits, namely lemons and limes; deciduous fruits, including apples, pears and peaches; and field crops like alfalfa, barley, corn and wheat.
Nuts were not as important as these, but walnuts were raised from about the mid-1850s onward, including by members of the Workman and Temple family in the eastern sections of the county at Whittier Narrows and the furthest reaches of the San Gabriel Valley. In the Angel City, the prime area of farming was south of the Plaza and the emerging downtown and this continued to be the case as the Sixties neared its end.
In an article titled “Fruit Trees,” the Los Angeles News of 16 January 1869, in which it was observed that, a few days prior, a substantial shipment of them was sent to San Diego, while each steamship leaving the Wilmington port “carries away large numbers of trees of almost ever variety, and wagons can be seen daily loaded with trees for the adjoining counties.” The advent of large nurseries in the Angel City was hailed because “all the valuable semi-tropical trees, such as oranges, limes, lemons, walnuts, citrons, &c, grow readily from the seed.”
The piece went on that “the seed can be planted from two to six inches apart, and requires but little care beyond irrigation and an occasional hoeing to keep them clear of weeds.” Moreover, “a few acres, thus planted, would produce several hundred thousand trees, which sell in the market at prices ranging from fifty cents to fifteen dollars each, according to age and quality.” It was added that those who had orchards and vineyards were hesitant to develop large nurseries for a lack of a market, but
Experience has proven, however, that the demand is larger than the supply, the nurseries being unable to supply the demand for home consumption; and now that it has become apparent that Los Angeles is to be the fruit and flower nursery of the Pacific coast, that branch of industry should be more largely engaged in. As a matter of profit there is no branch of industry that will produce such returns from so small an amount of capital and labor, and there is no possibility of producing a surplus of trees for the next twenty years.
One of those nurseries that issued a new advertisement just a few days later was that of Ozro W. Childs, who resided to the south of Elijah H. Workman (nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste and who was an avid agricultural experimenter) on Main Street near 11th Street, now a gritty industrial area.
Promoting his “Los Angeles Nursery and Fruit Garden,” Childs offered a wide variety of citrus and deciduous fruits, as well as almonds, chestnuts and walnuts, along with grapes and truck farmed crops like blackberries, raspberries and strawberries. He especially highlighted his fruit trees, such as the orange, in his advertising.
Other nurseries and shippers included those of Thomas A. Garey (a later co-founder of the suburban towns of Artesia and Pomona,) Maurice Kremer and the wife of Dr. Joseph Shaw, who may have been the first to promote a professional or organized nursery business in the Angel City. Garey’s Semi-Tropical Nurseries on San Pedro Street near Washington Boulevard had a similar diversity as Childs, but with different offerings.
By July, Kremer was advertising his ability to send fruit to Chicago, New York City and St. Louis by association with a San Francisco fruit house and this using the newly completed transcontinental railroad as he noted that “the [Central] Pacific Railroad gives us that facility.” The four fruits (nuts being generally included in that category) specified were oranges, lemons, walnuts and almonds. He added,
In view of the increase of our Fruit product, and the fact that the market of San Francisco will be insufficient in one or two years more, it becomes necessary for the Fruit raisers of this section to find an outlet for our increasing fruit . . .
I start in the Fruit business, if the Fruit raisers will give me their confidence. It will be to their advantage, and in fact a necessity, that these fruits should be as much as possible in one hand, so as to control the market and not come into competition with one another, in order to realize fair prices.
Perhaps Kremer’s San Francisco partner was the firm of J.W. Gale and Company, which advertised in Los Angeles newspapers, including “the Sale of Los Angeles Walnuts, Lemons, Oranges, Limes and Hops” sold on commission and consignment. Dr. Shaw was still living in late September when a party was thrown for a daughter and it mentioned in the News of the 29th that he “has about 100,000 orange, lemon, lime, walnut and other fruit trees,” a good number of which were ready for fall transplanting.
It was almost two-and-a-half months later that the widow Shaw promoted the nursery started by her husband and situated close to that of Garey on San Pedro Street. In addition to selling from 50,000 to 100,000 “very superior” lemon, lime and orange trees, she offered English walnuts from her Los Angeles Nursery.
By the end of 1869, with the Los Angeles and San Pedro in operation, clerk Stephen H. Mott took out an ad in which it was stated that “over 5,000 Young Trees” from one to four years old, including citrus and deciduous fruits, as well as walnuts, were “on the Railroad ground, and must be moved immediately, [and] therefore will be sold fifty per cent. below the usual price.” It appears that this land was a preexisting orchard acquired by the railroad company for future expansion.
From mid-September, the real estate firm of E.B. Frink and Company advertised for the sale, for $3,500, of “a Brick House and Ten Acres of excellent land within a half mile of the Court House,” this structure, built a decade earlier as a market house by Jonathan Temple, but soon reworked into the courthouse and other public offices, was generally a landmark in advertisements to place outlying property in comparison, “on which there is the growing crop and a variety of bearing fruit trees.” Beyond this, it was stated that there was “also a nursery of 500 walnut trees two years old and two acres of Mulberry trees” and “all is under a high state of cultivation.”
Further out from the city was the Marengo tract, formerly known as the property of J. Lancaster Brent, the powerful Democratic party boss in Los Angeles before he left to fight for the Confederacy during the Civil War. The 16 February edition of the News remarked that,
Upon the Rancho known as the “Brent place,” which is now under the control of Gen. H.B. Davidson, there has been planted thus far this season, 200 acres of Barley, 60 acres of corn, 250 walnut and 1000 each of orange and lemon trees. This place which is situated several miles from the city, cannot as we are informed, be bought for $30,000, although it was purchased about one year since by Mr. Benj. Holliday, of San Francisco, for $10,000 . . . for this advance in the value of land, we are indebted to the stream of immigration which has been directed to this county by the salubriousness of our climate, the productiveness of our soil and the progressive measures inaugurated by our citizens [one such “city-maker” was F.P.F. Temple] within the past eighteen months.
Henry B. Davidson was a first lieutenant and quartermaster (responsible for managing logistics, supplies and equipment) for the United States Army until the Civil War, when the Tennessee native returned to the South and became a Confederate Army general. After a brief postwar residence in New Orleans, he returned to California, and for almost a decade in the late 1870s through mid-1880s, was a federal inspector at the harbor at San Pedro/Wilmington. He was briefly deputy to the California Secretary of State and later worked as a civil engineer and an agent for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Marengo, named by Brent about 1855 after an Italian town that was famed for an 1800 battle in which French Emperor Napoleon defeated an Austrian army, became part of the town of South Pasadena, when that was established in 1888 during the much larger boom that burst forth in greater Los Angeles. Marengo Avenue is the best-known manifestation of that name today.
A few days later, the Los Angeles Star informed its readers that “the purchasing and planting of trees is now very general,” echoing what was said above about wagons hauling fruit trees to various locations, adding that “the prevailing kinds are semi-tropical, with the walnut and the more hardy and common fruits.”
The paper’s 6 March issue published a piece from the San Francisco Alta, under the heading of “Farming Lands of Los Angeles County,” discussed the fertile soil, though with warnings about some interior land that were very dry and not suitable for many crops, unless artesian wells could supply more than natural rainfall. It observed that wheat was risky because of the issue of rust, though barley and corn were safer and a decent return in terms of profit.
Aside from the crucial matter of water, the article allowed that “the advantage to emigrants is a climate that is soft and healthy,” though the relative isolation of greater Los Angeles to major markets, the nearest being San Francisco at almost 400 miles away, was a disadvantage. The piece continued that,
It is in special agriculture that Los Angeles county must expect to make its land profitable—oranges, lemons, limes, olives, walnuts, figs, honey, wine, silk and beet sugar. For all these the soil and climate are unusually well adapted. But there is so vast an area of rich land that the prices should be low, if we measure value by the demand for cultivation.
Again, artesian wells were emphasized as it was noted that “from the great mass of mountain chains overlooking this vast plain, abundant water flows in subterranean channels towards the sea.” Such wells were dug on the ranches formerly owned by the late William Wolfskill (Santa Anita, San Francisquito) in the San Gabriel Valley and their success would certainly be expected to inspire others.
The 6 April issue of the News informed readers that “this city is developing rapidly” and specified that “we have our orange, fig, and lemon groves, our vines, walnuts, and every luxury that the vegetable kingdom can produce.” The climate was highlighted and the soil prolific, so “hence it is that every steamer which reaches our port comes laden with a burden of human beings” who “wish to have a vine and fig tree,” but it asserted that it was best that “they will not sit under them except for a few moments of repose.” The piece concluded,
What we want here is capital and strong unbending energy, and with these the magnificent plain stretching from our snow clad mountains to the ocean, will blossom as the rose.
We previously noted that the county Board of Supervisors also acted as the Board of Equalization, setting the rates of taxation for all property and the Star of 1 May reported that walnut trees of greater than eight years of age were to be levied at $5 each, while those from three to eight years were to be at 50 cents.
The News of 1 June published a letter from Joseph S. Wilson, the commissioner of the federal General Land Office (which played a major role in California land claims) and in his second term in the office. With his knowledge of the region, he observed that “the climate of [greater Los Angeles] valleys . . . is not surpassed in any portion of the world” with enough water for irrigation. Wilson added that “the grapevine flourishes here luxuriantly, with some 6 million vines and production of about 1.5 million gallons of wine and above 100,000 of brandy.
After detailing the viticulture of the area, the commissioner continued that “the soil and climate of these valleys and uplands are equally well adapted to the growth of the orange, lemon, lime, citron, fig, olive, walnut, banana, almond, filbert and currant, and wheat, barley, corn, potatoes, cotton, tobacco and sugar cane thrive well.” Wilson, who paid particular attention to the German colony project at Anaheim, then a dozen years old, observed that an orange grove outside Los Angeles of 2,000 trees yielded 1,500 piece annually, but some were said to generate some 4,000 pieces.
A letter from “Next Week” in the Star of 31 July boasted, “we have a lovely and prosperous country” and “the harvest is over and abundant with livestock “sleek and fat,” corn in large amounts, the vine overloaded with grapes and the orange and other fruit trees “bending under their load of ripe and green fruits.” Anyone putting in a modicum of effort would succeed in “a climate that wafts health and pleasure to all by every breeze,” while it was proclaimed that “nature has done everything for us, and if we will but do our duty then we will make our entire country blossom as the rose” and “we will have thousands of population where we have hundreds now.”
Even as the writer predicted San Diego would be larger than Los Angeles, because of its natural harbor, it was claimed that the latter “will be the garden for [the former] and Arizona, with a monopoly in orange, lime, lemon, and walnuts; to every point a railroad will reach” and the missive ended with idealism embodied in purple prose prophesying,
We can truly each sit under our own vine and fig tree, with the golden globe of the Hesperides [apples] on our left and a goblet of rosy nectar [wine?] to our right; tranquility and cheerfulness will dwell under our roof tree, and health and love to all mankind glow in our hearts.
Just a few months after the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the 6 August edition of the News commented that grapes from the Golden State shipped to Chicago and New York City fetched fifty cents per pound and, if a projected more than 33 million pounds were so shipped the returns would be not far below $17 million compared to the quarter million dollars in 1868.
Because it was known that the Southern Pacific was looking to build through California towards Arizona (legislation in 1871 forced the company to go directly through Los Angeles in so doing), it was added that “the sale of semi-tropical fruits, such as oranges, limes, lemons, walnuts, &c.” would probably yield another $15 million in revenue.
The 11 September number of the Star averred that “it is generally conceded that this is the most interesting and important of the southern counties of the State” and that “Los Angeles county has become the home of the grape,” though “not on the grape alone are we dependent.” It listed a panoply of products, including walnuts, that existed “in equal luxuriance” and which constituted “everything that can be desired to promote men’s happiness or minister to his wants and luxuries” in what was deemed “the generous lap of mother earth.”
The paper estimated the county’s population as 8,700 in 1866, 9,500 the following year and currently somewhere around 20,000. It essayed the amounts of field crops and other agricultural products and provided the sum total of almost $3.8 million of assessed value, with farming inexorably on the rise and “our wealth progressing.” The Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad was mentioned as was the fact that, instead of one steamer per month landing at the rudimentary port, there were five. In all, it concluded, “these are marks of progress which show that our section of country is being appreciated” and the benefits of development were for all.
The News of 19 September printed the findings of the assessor for 1868 with the population pegged at about 14,500, far less than suggested above, almost 20,000 cultivated acres, including 6,000 in corn, almost as much in barley and 765 acres of wheat, along with dairy and honey production. There were 12,000 horses, 6,000 cows and calves, not far below 12,000 cattle and almost 210,000 sheep, as well as 35,000 chickens and 4,500 hogs.
As for fruit trees and vines, the latter totaled more than 3.8 million, yielding over 1.1 million gallons of wine and 86,000 of brandy. Orange trees were at 25,000 and the mulberry, heavily promoted for silk, were at 20,000. Peaches numbered 11,500 and apples totaled 6,600, with pears at 5,200. There were 3,000 lemon trees, 2,000 figs and 1,850 olives, while the number of walnuts were said to be 3,500.
Ten days later, the paper provided the financial value of some of these products, with the wine valued at 40 cents per gallon, totaling about $445,000 and the brandy, at $3 a gallon (this testimony to the higher quality and demand of the fermented and distilled product) or $257,000. 25 million oranges generated three quarters of a million dollars in revenue and, at $10 per tree, walnuts brought in a far more modest $35,000.
Lastly, we note the first of a series of articles on greater Los Angeles by Benjamin C. Truman, who later operated the Star and wrote articles and books as a preeminent booster of the region. The 30 October issue of the paper included his observation that there were 20,000 persons in the county (see above), just under a half being Spanish speakers, who only recently became a minority in an area and raised livestock or worked as farm laborers. More than a third were Americans “who have opened out the various branches of industry” and about a sixth were Europeans, with Jews and Italians are merchants and the French and German dominant in winemaking, though Truman added, “the different nationalities have all contributed to the development of Los Angeles county.”
Truman also followed the line of others about the farm products raised in the region, including walnuts, and professed that many “grow successfully and in great profusion,” with some exceptions. This included wheat subject to damage from fog and almonds that often did not grow because of problems with loss of blossoms, while cherries and plums suffered, but “all the other productions are sure” and citrus could, he said, be picked year-round. Figs had two crops and “the grape never fails,” while corn was bountiful and beef, mutton and wool were “second to none in the State in quality.”
So, as the first greater Los Angeles boom accelerated, the press made frequent note of the rising growth of agriculture, including the modest status of walnuts, and we’ll return next with part six taking us to the end of the 1860s.