by Paul R. Spitzzeri
In 1874, as greater Los Angeles’ first development boom neared its peak and boosterism rampant through the region, no one was quite as dedicated and devoted to promoting the area as Benjamin C. Truman. The veteran journalist, a Rhode Island native who also served as secretary to military governor and future president Andrew Johnson in Tennessee during the Civil War, purchased the Los Angeles Star from George W. Barter the prior year and wasted no time in doing whatever he could to push the advantages of Los Angeles and vicinity.
He published letters from a correspondent known only as “Viator,” which may well have been the editor’s nom de plume, while offering other articles that promoted individuals and businesses in the Angel City and its vicinity. Later in the year, Truman published the travelogues and promotional material as Semi-Tropical California, an early book that featured and highlighted the region.
This tenth part of our “Shell Game” post looking into some of the early history of walnut growing in greater Los Angeles focuses largely on the articles consistently published by Truman’s paper that mentioned the raising of the nut in areas visited throughout greater Los Angeles during the first half of 1874, with other material included, as well. This includes at the start of the year when advertisements for nurseries and land sales referred to walnuts.
For example, someone at a law firm, housed in the Temple Block, situated at the heart of the burgeoning town’s commercial core where City Hall now stands, advertised in the Los Angeles Herald at the end of the prior year, for 49 acres in the agricultural sector of town at its southern end along Washington Boulevard and near Vejar Street (now 14th Street) and Wolfskill Street (today’s Central Avenue). Just 400 yards from Washington Gardens, which recently was established by David V. Waldron as a pleasure park, the land offered a variety of trees, including apples, figs, oranges, peaches and walnuts, “all in full bearing” and watered by city-owned zanjas (water ditches) #3 and #4.
Another late December 1873 advertisement in the paper was for the Morris Vineyard, mentioned previously here for its unusually large walnut. This tract, owned by Moritz Morris, a merchant who was likely the first Jew to plant a vineyard in the Angel City, was along Main Street (actually, New Main Street according to a map shared by journalist Edmon Rodman) between Washington and Pico boulevards and extending west to Grand Avenue (then Grasshopper Street).
Also in the Herald, of 9 January, was a notice posted by “I.M. Vigne,” actually Jean-Marie Vignes, who was from a prominent vineyard and winemaking family in the Angel City, offering “orange, lemon, English walnuts, chestnut, olive trees, vines and cuttings of the best variety from a location on Alameda Street, a half-mile north of the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad (then controlled by the dominant Southern Pacific) depot. Today, just east of Union Station, Vignes Street runs north and then west to Main Street.
A new ad, from the Los Angeles Express of 21 January, from horticulturist Ozro W. Childs concerned the nursery on his extensive place on Main Street, south of town and a few blocks north of the aforementioned tract along Washington, was famed for its “varieties of fruit and ornamental trees including citron, lemon, lime, orange and “shaddock, or forbidden fruit.” The citron was given added attention, while also mentioned were almonds, apples, chestnuts, peaches, pears and walnuts, as well as “an almost endless variety of Fruit and Ornamental shrubs and trees,” with readers offered a price list on request.
Before we get to promotion from the Star, there were also these efforts provided to the Angel City papers by locals extolling the region to those in places in which they’d previously lived. In the 14 January edition of the paper, John Shirley Ward, who last resided in Tennessee, wrote back to his friends in Nashville (telling them that Truman, who previously published a paper and was an exceptional federal official there, is making a success in his paper, and is a writer of fine ability”) of “a glimpse of our winter in Los Angeles,” with the onset of the rainy season and, as he sat looking out the window of his house he saw a profusion of flowers, ripening lemons and oranges, vegetables, the grapevines shorn of their leaves, as well as the Sierra Madre [San Gabriel] mountains, clad in snow, to the north.
Insisting that his reverie was “no fancy sketch, but is literally true,” Ward added that,
The country for miles around this city will, in a few years be a tropical orchard. The orange, lemon, English walnut, lime, fig, citron, olive, almond, grape, apricot, apple, peach, pear, pomegranate, plum, and cherry grow here to a great perfection, while vegetables of all kinds grow to almost fabulous sizes.
He then provided a table in which he asserted that, with 100 acres of oranges, a grower would expend $25,000 at the end of a half-decade for the land ($6,000), 7,000 trees ($7,000), interest on a loan for both of $6,500, taxes and maintenance, but expect to earn $70,000 during that period. Ward insisted his calculations “are not visionary,” but based on the experiences of local orchardists, albeit on a smaller scale. A couple dozen Tennessee men with hundreds to invest could, he added, add limes and “the lemon and walnut might be grown to give variety.”
The Express of 5 February published an account that appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin and was penned in Los Angeles on 26 January and which observed that “much of this land is still uncultivated, inviting the ploughshare of the agriculturist, and holding out the promise of reward to moderate industry.” The unnamed writer confessed, “I have found more traces of enterprise, more evidences of faith among the residents of Los Angeles, in its future, than I expected.” This included “handsome buildings . . . which would do credit to any city” as well as “extremely pretty yards and gardens.”
Also cited was the public library, established in 1872 with Thomas W. Temple, grandson of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, as a founding trustee, and the first bridge (a covered one, no less) to cross the Los Angeles River. A visit to the Childs place was mentioned, including the 50-60 acres filled with fruit and nut trees, including the walnut, with “the vigorous growth” and “generous quantity” of produce considered ample evidence “that the soil is of an exceedingly fertile character.”
In its edition of 18 January, the Star provided its readers a “bird’s-eye view” of the Angel City with a subsection titled “What Makes Los Angeles A Perfect Garden Spot” that began by proclaiming that it was the citrus groves and vineyards that determined this. The account continued, “just imagine a collection of gardens, six miles square, and producing at all times of the year almost everything that grows under the sun” before adding,
One of the largest and most beautiful places in the city is the Wolfskill vineyard, containing 2,000 orange trees, 1,000 lemon trees, 500 walnut, 100 fig and 100 lime trees, and 55,000 grapevines. [After describing the Childs estate] Right in the heart of the city is Don Mateo Keller‘s place, containing 100,000 grapevines, 1,000 lemon, 500 orange, 100 lime, 100 olive, 200 walnut, and 100 fig trees. [Moving to the San Gabriel Valley and the properties of Leonard J. Rose and General George Stoneman] Near [the latter] is the vineyard of Col. [E.J.C.] Kewen, containing 75,000 vines, 800 walnut, 500 orange trees, and 300 each of lemon and olive trees.
An early example of the Star‘s featuring of varied locales within greater Los Angeles was in its 3 February edition as it highlighted East Los Angeles, now the Lincoln Heights neighborhood northeast of downtown. Its creators included Dr. John S. Griffin, who had extensive landholdings including what became Pasadena, and, for this article, his nephew Hancock Johnston (who was also the son of Confederate General Albert S. Johnston, killed in the 1862 Battle of Shiloh).
At the time of publication, 35 acres, or a lot under the 1850s surveys conducted by Henry Hancock, were subdivided and placed on the market with a main street called Downey Avenue, this being today’s North Broadway, which meets North Spring Street shortly after crossing the Los Angeles River. The Los Angeles City Water Company, a private firm given a 30-year lease to deliver the town’s precious fluid to residents, handled distribution.
Griffin and Johnston, along with ex-Governor John G. Downey, held 170 acres, all surveyed and marked off into blocks and lots, with the eastern portion including Griffin Avenue (the two streets east of that are Hancock and Johnston, while two streets west is Workman.) After the article discussed plans to connect Downey and Griffin avenues, the affordability of lots at $150 each, a loop available to visitors taking the Spring and Broadway route across the river and then on Downey to Griffin, south to the “Monte road,” meaning Mission Road before crossing the watercourse on that covered bridge to return to town, it was recorded that 27 lots were sold to date.
Also of interest is Johnston’s 30-acre spread just east of the 170-acre tract and of which the Star observed,
He has all kinds of semi tropical fruit trees growing (and some bearing,) and also apple, pear, peach, walnut, chestnut and pecan, (from the seed) olive, fig, and all kinds of ornamental trees, aromatic plants, shrubs and flowers.
Eight days later, the Herald highlighted another developing section far the southeast in what 15 years later became part of a new Orange County. The Southern California Semi-Tropical Fruit Association (Company) was launched in Healdsburg, north of San Francisco “and its stock was mainly taken by poor men” and the land used to acquire 106 acres northeast of Anaheim. There, it was reported, the organization “planted nearly the entire tract in semi-tropical fruits, principally orange, lemon, lime and English walnut.”
It was added that “a good many of these trees have been transplanted two years, and all are growing thriftily.” Water was to date derived from wells, but plans were afoot to build a water ditch, taking from the Santa Ana River, and which was expected to nearly triple land values from $17 to $50 an acre. Mirroring what Ward reported to his Tennessee friends, the Herald commented that an organization like the Southern California Semi-Tropical Fruit group could pool resources from “poor men” and get well-established with such a scheme.
On the 27th, the paper briefly reported that, amid the fact that “thousands of semi-tropical fruit trees are to be put out the coming season,” the Company “has just put out over six hundred English walnuts, and has holes dug for fifteen hundred orange, lemon and lime trees.” The superintendent of the orchard was Richard H. Gilman and, by June, the Herald remarked of the property, adjacent to that of former Los Angeles County school superintendent William M. McFadden:
Through this section of the county is a belt of land which is pronounced by orchardists to be the finest land to be found in Southern California, for the raising of semi-tropical fruits. [Noting that Gilman was elected to his job at the end of 1872 and bought the tract after much investigation in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties] One year ago the company bought some eight thousands two and three year old orange, lemon, lime and English walnut trees of Tho[ma]s A. Garey [at his Los Angeles nursery—see earlier parts of this post], and immediately proceeded to plant them out . . . Nearly forty acres are now set out to trees, and in another year the entire tract of one hundred acres will be put out to orchard.
By 1879, the community was christened Placentia as a school district was formed there and McFadden’s wife, Sarah, recommended the name, derived from the Latin word meaning “a pleasant place,” while there is also the Italian city of Piacenza, located in the northern Emilia-Romagna region.
Another Angeleno offering trees for sale as orchards quickly arose throughout greater Los Angeles during the region’s first boom was Milton Thomas, who began advertising in early February 1874. An Ohio native, Thomas settled with his family in Iowa as a young man and then came to California with his family during the latter stages of the Gold Rush. After some years in Stockton in the San Joaquin Valley, they headed to Los Angeles as the boom was newly underway.
The ad offered the sale of lemon, lime, orange and English walnut tree of four and five years vintage, with the latter deemed “the largest ever offered for sale in this county.” Promoting the low prices of his stock with discounts for larger amounts, Thomas also offered 80 acres, including a house and alfalfa on about a quarter of the tract, at the corner of Main and Jefferson streets and it appears this was his home place. Soon, in partnership with Garey, Luther Holt and others, Thomas would be part of a venture to develop the towns of Artesia and Pomona.
The Herald of 18 March, in an article on the experiment with white rye undertaken by an Angel City agriculturist, also reported that,
A farmer, some six miles south of the town, about five years ago set out twenty-five acres in walnut, almond, pecan nut, orange and lemon trees, giving but a bucket of water at the planting and leaving remaining water supplies to nature. The result has been very successful—there not being a healthier or more flourishing orchard in the vicinity.
Six miles south of the center of Los Angeles would be in the general Historic South-Central area, then outside the southern limits of the municipality. As has been noted in this post, it was this section to the south where most of the agricultural growth took place during this era.
Having covered the first three months of 1874, we’ll return next with part eleven taking us through the next quarter, meaning half-way through the year. Looks for that soon!