by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As greater Los Angeles’ first boom progress through the end of the 1860s, the increase of walnut raising as part of the region’s burgeoning agricultural economy continued to attract media attention, though the nut was not as prevalent as citrus fruits, especially the orange, mulberries, as efforts were made to promote silk culture, and deciduous fruits of several types.
With the beginning of 1870, the Los Angeles News of 14 January published an advertisement from one of its two owners (the other being attorney and future judge Andrew J. King), Alonzo Waite, for his “Fine Homestead Property” on Main Street around 12th Street. This included a two-story house and 12 acres, on which were planted 100 orange trees from four to eight years old and the same number of walnuts from three to six years of age, as well as a nursery with lemons, limes, apple, apricot, peach and pear trees and water available from a well.
Separately, a short article pronounced the place a bargain and “in every way a desirable investment” with the offering made because Waite needed, for business reasons, to live closer to the downtown business area. The area of town in which he resided also included, to his north, the large properties of Ozro W. Childs, a nursery owner and enthusiastic experimentalist in agriculture, and Elijah H. Workman, who also grew a vide variety of plant life. In July 1870, Waite was recorded as having to remove walnut trees to allow for the eastern extension of Pico Street (Boulevard) through his property, this thoroughfare now going as far east as Central Avenue, though there is a section in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles.
Readers were advised that “those desiring to make a judicious investment will do well to examine this property.” Waite bought his tract in 1867 for $1,250 and sold it for $6,000, but it was apparently worth $1 million in the late 1880s boom that was much larger than the first one taking place in 1870. Someone joked in 1889 that if he’d only followed the suggestion of his surname, he could have cashed in and been very wealthy.
Waite, a native of Maine, who came to Los Angeles in his late teens and was a printer for the Los Angeles Star, launched the News with Charles R. Conway and ran it with King until it was shuttered in 1871. Four years later, he moved to the new town of Downey to operate the Courier for a half-decade and concluded his journalistic career running the Santa Ana Herald form 1881 until his death eight years later as Orange County was carved out of the southeastern portion of Los Angeles County.
Speaking of Childs, he took out an ad in the 15 January issue of the News from his Childs and Company’s Los Angeles Nursery and Fruit Garden for his 1869 crop of English walnuts (really, traced back to Persia), with it called “the Finest variety, Specially selected for seed.” In September, however, a flume with Zanja #5 in the city’s system burst and flooded part of his property “and injuring some fine walnut trees.” A couple of weeks later, Childs shipped almost 400 pounds of the nut by steamer to San Francisco.
About a month-and-a-half later, George H. Howard, son of the prominent attorney and future judge, Volney E. Howard, advertised in the News for 250 acres on the Rancho San Antonio’s western edge south of the city and along the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad, while he also offered small tracts “adapted to the Orange, Lemon, Walnut and Vine culture, with irrigating facilities” from the zanja (water ditch) system.
Among the new real estate projects of the time, following examples like Compton (which was developed on land owned by F.P.F. Temple and El Monte’s Fielding W. Gibson), was heavily promoted in spring 1870. San Francisco capitalists acquired some 1,700 acres of the Rancho San Pascual, northeast of Los Angeles, for what was, proclaimed the Star of 2 April, “an undertaking which will prove of the utmost benefit to the county at large.”
It was added that all of the property, “excepting a mound of about fifteen acres, could be irrigated” (Raymond Hill, perhaps?) thanks to a substantial canal, costing several thousand dollars, from the Arroyo Seco dug by the previous owners, Benjamin D. Wilson, Dr. John S. Griffin and Benjamin S. Eaton. The paper added,
The settlement will be known as the San Pascual Plantation—and it is to be planted with tropical fruits, the raisin grape, almonds, walnuts, and the mulberry . . . There will be 600 acres devoted to vineyard purposes; a large quantity of orange seeds will be planted, so that the company will have its own nursery; meanwhile, several thousand orange trees, two years old at present, have been contracted for . . . It is intended to fence in the whole tract, and put up such buildings as may be required this present year.
After reviewing the stock issue of 4,000 shares and price per share of $50 each, with the money to acquire the land and start cultivating. The Star concluded “we hope this project will be carried out to maturity” as “it will be of the utmost importance to this county” because, it advised readers, “it is well known that the lands at the base of the mountains are the best adapted to fruit and wine growing [?] of any in the county.” It cited the success of Wilson’s Lake Vineyard, L.J. Rose’s Sunny Slope and the Rancho de Azusa of Henry Dalton and predicted “the fruits planted on this settlement, will be more sought after, and will command a more ready market, than those of other sections of our county.”
The News of 30 April hailed the project as “among the enterprises which mark the dawn of a new era in this section . . . both in scope and magnitude,” observing that “the lands are among the best” in the area and “in a region celebrated for its healthful climate” and “are peculiarly adapted to the purposes intended.” The water resources from the ditch, pegged at a cost of $10,000, were further discussed and it was added that “on one of the most picturesque spots on the rancho a small town will be laid off, half-acre lots,” so San Pascual Plantation was one that the paper promoted for immigrants coming to the region. While this project did not success, the Indiana Colony that developed in 1873 became Pasadena.
The 7 May edition of the paper cited the San Francisco Alta for a report that,
During the past two or three years the residents of the Southern counties of California have been directing their energies to the raising of articles not generally cultivated. Many plants walnuts, figs, oranges, almonds, limes and lemons while others cultivated the castor bean, poppy and peanuts . . . It would be almost impossible, in the limited space necessarily occupied by a newspaper article, to allude individually to the different persons who have struck out from the beaten track, and been rewarded by almost incredible returns.
Among examples that were given in the San Gabriel Valley was “at the Old Mission grounds, on the San Gabriel river, a short distance from El Monte,” and it was claimed there were orange trees “nearly one hundred years old,” which would have been when the original Mission San Gabriel was founded there in 1771, and five feet around and from one of which fully 5,000 pieces were picked and yielding about $1 a piece.
Nearby was an orchard of limes of 80 trees per acre with $10 profit for each tree, while “the walnut and almond trees produce from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds each, and there are forty trees on each are of land,” with the nuts selling from fifteen to twenty-five cents per pound. In addition to San Pascual Plantation, the “Eden Dale” tract was mentioned, this apparently being property in what is now the Silver Lake neighborhood northwest of downtown.
Compton was briefly mentioned above and the 9 April issue of the Star reported that “Mr. C.E. White planted peanuts between the trees in his walnut orchard,” this being a common practice of cultivating truck-farmed crops in the areas between the widely-spaced trees, and finding success in so doing. Five days later, the News remarked that Jasper Babcock, of the Los Angeles Homestead Association, was the first to professionally raise chickens, hens and roosters, but also had, on his 20 acres, Japanese walnuts among his fruits and nuts.
A correspondent known only as “Bay City” commented in the Star of 7 May that “I suppose Los Angeles will be represented at the [state] Fruit Growers’ Convention” and that locals “ought to make very favorable terms with the railroad companies” for transcontinental shipments, so that “the vineyard and orchard proprietors ought to be able to carry on this trade with pecuniary benefit to themselves and the State.”
The writer continued that,
Every street corner has now an itinerant vendor of Los Angeles oranges, and in a short time they will entirely supersede the foreign article . . . It will certainly be the fault of southern fruit growers if foreign oranges are not completely driven out of the markets. And the same with walnuts. Last night men were selling these three pounds for twenty five cents, immensely superior to imported varieties.
The News of 30 June published a brief, but notable, piece asserting that “the latent agricultural wealth of Southern California is as yet unknown and unappreciated” while adding that “Los Angeles has the greatest amount of developed agricultural wealth” of the southern counties, “perhaps more than all the others combined.”
Boasting that “her semi-tropical products have already a world-wide reputation,” the paper pegged the county’s population at 30,000 and recorded that, in 1869, yields were 300,000 bushels of corn, a third of that in wheat, 385,000 bushels of barley, 700,000 pounds of wool and 50,000 pounds of peanuts. Moreover, the county contained “250,000 orange, fig, lemon, olive, mulberry, almond, walnut and other variety [sic] of trees” as well as north of 4 million grapevines.
There were, however, some problems with our region’s walnuts, as observed in the Star of 17 July, which reported that “these trees have shared, to a considerable extent, the blight of other fruit trees this year.” When an orchard was visited, it was noted that those trees facing the south were affected bacterial disease, although, it was added, “the trees seem to be recovering of late” because of “the discharge of electricity,” which may mean, lightning strikes, “by which all the tree family seem to have been materially benefitted.” A month later, the paper remarked that grape yields were excellent and “the orange and walnut crop will also be good.”
A report from Anaheim in the 25 August number of the Star included “B.S.” waxing eloquently about the wonders of the region as he headed there from Los Angeles six days prior, including the oft-remarked fact that the area had “a fertile soil, a climate equal to, and not surpassed by any under the canopy of heaven.” The town was described in some detail, including the 40-acre, poplar-bounded, tract of T.E. Schmidt, the author remarked that he had 36,000 grapevines, 2,000 orange trees, 2,000 citron and others trees, and 3,400 walnuts, all “yielding him a handsome revenue.
The annual report of the county assessor was published in the News of 6 October and the amount of cultivated land in 1869 topped 35,000 acres with about half irrigated, of which 2,600 was in wheat, 11,000 in barley and almost 10,000 in corn. In the “Fruit Trees and Vines” portion, it was stated that there were just under 4 million grapevines, with production of more than 1.1 million gallons of wine and 26,000 gallons of brandy. A quarter million mulberry trees were found and 34,000 oranges, along with 5,000 lime and 3,700 lemon trees.
For deciduous fruit, 11,500 peach trees were counted, with 7,100 apples and 5,200 pears, while olives, pomegranates and figs numbered 2,000 each. The number of walnuts were at 5,100. With respect to livestock, sheep totaled over 437,000, while cattle, including cows, calves and oxen approached 25,000 and there were north of 13,000 horses. Notably, however, it was anticipated that cultivated land was expected to be about 47,000 acres. Despite the aforementioned population figure, the assessor observed that there were 16,000 persons residing in the county.
Because of the completion the previous year of the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad, connecting the growing town with the rudimentary port at San Pedro/Wilmington, there were frequent reports of products shipped by rail to steamers for transport to San Francisco and other ports of call. Most shipments of walnuts were relatively small, generally several sacks for each, though the last day of 1870, the News recorded that 59 of these were sent out at the peak of the harvest. Rarely were individuals or companies mentioned, though Childs, Rose and the mercantile firm of Caswell and Ellis were identified.
Lastly, an unusual article in the Star of 30 December concerned “Atmospherical Phenomena” and having to do, apparently, with “a disturbed condition” that included “a want of force” in the spring “to draw the sap upward through the trunk and limbs of trees,” while, in the current month, “trees and vines [displayed] a most remarkable power of resistance against the effects of cold.” In this, it was reported that “the leaves of pear, peach, fig and walnut trees, and of grape vines, remained unscathed by frost, even with ice on the ground and frost on leaves.
Showing how little was yet known about agriculture and environmental conditions, perhaps tied to the El Niño and La Niña effects, the paper speculated,
Whether the cause of this extraordinary power to resist the effects of cold, presented by the trees, is to be sought in some peculiar condition of the trees, or in the immediate state of the atmosphere, there can be little or no doubt that the cause must be found, if found at all, in the disturbed condition of the atmosphere which has been so plainly indicated the past seasons.
We’ll look to continue our look at the early history of the walnut industry in greater Los Angeles, so stay tuned for more.