by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Greater Los Angeles’ first boom period began to crest in 1874 as the fervor of development was given voice in the Angel City’s newspapers and the drumbeat of boosting and promotion became faster, louder and more insistent. The role of walnuts in regional agricultural was nowhere near as significant as with citrus, especially oranges, but it was part and parcel of the increase in that vital economic engine.
One of the many new projects taking the large ranchos of the Spanish and Mexican periods and yielding subdivisions of smaller farm plots and townsites was Cucamonga, some 40 miles east of Los Angeles. Angel City banker Isaias W. Hellman and others took possession of the ranch at the start of the decade and the Los Angeles Star of 2 May observed that,
That the new proprietors intend to make their valuable estate one of the finest properties in Southern California must be evident from the fact that this year they have planted 40,000 foreign grape vines. There are 160,000 bearing vines on the place at present. They have also planted this season 1,200 orange, lemon and lime trees, and 3,000 English walnuts, and will continue to add from time to time . . . In point of natural beauty of location Cocamonga [sic] can successfully dispute the palm with any estate . . .
Another somewhat recent development, described in the Star of the 6th, was East Los Angeles, now the Lincoln Heights neighborhood northeast of downtown, where promoters Dr. John S. Griffin and his nephew Hancock M. Johnston were highlighted for their raising of barley and rye on some 350 acres across the Los Angeles River out of a total of 2,000 in the property, of which 170 were laid out for the townsite.
Within the latter were 30 acres reserved by Griffin for a home estate and which was occupied by Johnston and “an extensive park in front of the residence is planted with English walnut, Italian chestnuts, pecans, almonds, and the choicest varieties of foreign grapes, besides oranges, lemons, limes, olives and pomegranates,” not to mention other fruits and vegetables and magnolia, palm and rubber trees. Windmill-powered wells fed a reservoir, with Griffin intending to expand the latter, with the doctor hoping to show others that use of groundwater could open up thousands of acres to cultivation in the region and the paper concluded, “the result of his experiment will doubtless constitute an instructive chapter in the history of this section.”
The next day, the Star took readers south of downtown to the 130-acre property of the Wolfskill family, along Alameda Streets between 4th and 7th streets, and it was observed that the vineyard was rapidly being removed, with up to 60,000 vines dug up and used for firewood. This was blamed on the federal government allowing more imports of alcoholic beverages, so, “the entire area thus denuded of vines will be planted to orange, lime and lemon trees . . . the orchard will consist of between 7,000 and 8,000 trees.” Currently, there were 2,000 oranges, 500 lemons and 400 limes.
Yet, the paper continued,
To our view, one of the most charming and noticeable features of the place is the walnut grove covering about two acres. The trees were planted 30 years ago at a distance from each other of 40 feet each way. Their branches meet and interlace in every direction, and when in full summer foliage a more than twilight gloom pervades the grove. The trees are literally full of young walnuts. Mr. Louis Wolfskill [a son of the founder, William, who died in 1866] informs us that in favorable seasons the crop of the two acres nets about $500, something over $8 to the tree.
In a series titled “Home Views: The Vineyards and Orange Groves of Los Angeles City,” the first installment of which was about the property of Ozro W. Childs, situated on Main Street at 11th Street, the Star of the 18th observed that “among the early settlers of [American-era] Los Angeles few have met a larger or better deserved measure of success” than the Vermont-born farmer and nursery owner.
The paper added, “his orchards and nurseries in the western part of the city are models of careful, systematic and successful cultivation.” The 50-acre tract included, along the eastern or side facing Main, “a beautiful avenue of alternate walnut and apricot trees, than which we have seen nothing more lovely even in this lovely region.” His efficient use of the space was demonstrated by the fact that, among the trees, there were 300 orange; 100 lime; 300 lemon; 500 more of these that were young and not bearing; 100 Italian chestnuts; 300 walnuts; 50 apricots; 50 nectarines; 50 apples; 300 pear; 25 fig; 200 peaches and 500 almonds, along with 1,000 other trees and 10,000 grape vines.
This was just a small number compared to the 20,000 examples of the above that comprised the Childs nursery and “additions to the stock on hand are being constantly made,” with his reputation for quality being such that he found it hard to keep up with demand. The Star concluded its summary by remarking,
Nearly all of [orchard] trees are in the full flush and splendor of maturity, and at this particular season the vigor and perfectness of their foliage forms as pleasing a spectacle as the eye could wish to rest upon.
The Los Angeles Express of the same day included a report from the San Gabriel Valley, specifically the Dew Drop estate of Luther H. Titus, near the properties of Kewen, Rose and Wilson and in present-day San Marino. Titus settled there in 1872, but quickly became known for the beauty and productivity of the place, with a visitor in March, commenting on the house and a summer house surrounded by lemons, oaks, olives and oranges. Roses, oleanders and evergreen shrubs were also noted, while, to the southeast, was a panorama of “a broad and verdant valley of ravishing beauty.”
Oaks and wildflowers permeated the valley view and, in the distance, “the horizon is shut in by a range of gracefully curving lands, between us and the ocean.” The visitor added that Dew Drop also contained a profusion of “almost every variety of fruit trees—the peach, the pear, the pomegranate, the apricot, the apple, the almond, the walnut, the mulberry, the most of which are now in blossom (and now they are all in full leaf).”
The following day’s issue of the Express produced an account of a visit to the eastern extremity of Los Angeles County in what long was the Rancho San José, granted in 1837 to the prominent Califonios Ygnacio Palomares and Ricardo Vejar, the latter occupying the southern and the former the northern sections. Vejar, who died in 1882, lost his holdings during the tough economic period of the early 1860s, but resided in an adobe house nearby in what is now the city of Walnut and Louis Phillips, an eastern European Jew, took possession. Palomares died in 1864, during the worst of the drought and as smallpox took three of his children, but descendants, including his son Francisco, remained on San José.
With the boom, Francisco decided to subdivide some of his holdings and an unnamed visitor wrote in the Express that they visited an aguaje, or spring, that “was as pretty a little sheet of water as ever thirsty wayfarer thanked God for.” The clear liquid bubbling from the ground was such that “a taste of its limpid flow is as pure and refreshing as ever brought solace to the parched lips,” while the spring “irrigates a splendid grove of orange and walnut trees.”
Reference has been made several times in this post to the property of Dr. Joseph and Harriet Shaw, in the burgeoning agricultural district south of Los Angeles along San Pedro Street and in the vicinity of Washington and Jefferson streets. The second edition of “Home Views” in the Star, published on the 20th, called the 35-acre place (lots were set out in these sizes in the late 1850s) a tourist destination and where hospitality, including lunch and a glass of wine, were assured.
After noting that it was expected, within a few years, that the farm would be “an orchard devoted exclusively to oranges, Sicily lemons and limes,” with 2,500 each of the first two trees and 1,000 of the last planted within the last couple of years, the account recorded that there were 200 oranges, 20 each of the lemons and limes, 300 apricots, 200 apples, 20 walnuts, 20 peaches and 200 grapevines. Harriet was a rare woman nursery operator and it was added that “there are about 75,000 trees of different varieties” in it, with rapid sales bringing new plantings until the orchard conversion was realized “by which time the worthy couple think they need give themselves no further trouble in that direction.”
The third part in the series featured the property of Mathew Keller, roughly adjacent on the east to the Wolfskill place along Alameda Street, and it was said of him that,
For twenty years he has been engaged in the culture of the vine and of the various semi-tropical fruits, and has probably contributed as much as any one to demonstrate the capacities of the soil of this section of the country.
The ranch manager, A.S. Storrs, conducted a tour of the 75-acre establishment and informed the Star that there were 400 orange, 1,000 lemon and lime, and 150 walnut trees, as well as 75,000 vines on the main section, while thousands more vines were in a lower portion, “which, however, it is intended shall give way,” as we saw with the Wolfskill vineyard, “to new orange groves,” with the new trees planted among the vines until maturity, when the latter were to be torn out.
In its edition of the 28th, the properties of T. Jefferson White, mentioned earlier as the location of Independence Day celebration speeches and just east of the center of town along Aliso Road near today’s Union Station, and John D. Woodworth. White’s 47-acre “Casalinda” was the topic of a “Home Views” feature and it was stated that those heading to the San Gabriel Valley knew of the place’s “magnificent avenue of walnut trees” leading to the residence and providing the kind of shade canopy mentioned about the Wolfskill grove. The place had 11,000 grapevines and among its trees were 210 oranges, 125 peaches, 40 lemons and limes, and 80 walnuts, with 150 new oranges set out during the last season.
Adjacent to Casalinda was the 12-acre property of Woodworth, who had 7,200 grapevines and trees like oranges (80), limes (50), lemons (40) and, while no walnuts were listed, it is worth including this in our account because it was said that Woodworth had 2,000 grapevines that were planted ninety years prior. The account asserted that “this small but beautiful estate is the site of the first vineyard that was planted in the city of Los Angeles,” which was founded as a Spanish colonial pueblo in 1781. The Star wondered what history could be told if the “gnarled and sturdy” vines could speak and that they provided grapes for burials, weddings and other religious ceremonies, but “none of these patriarchal vines show signs of any diminution of vigor.”
June brought far fewer references to walnuts than in previous months, but Cucamonga was the subject of two accounts, with the Express of the 16th recording, from a Santa Barbara journalist, that the ranch had 2,800 walnut trees, along with 3,000 oranges and 200,000 grapevines. The Star two days later, however, provided different statistics for “A Most Commendable Enterprise,” stating that there were 160,000 vines, of which 40,000 were foreign varieties, and that there 1,200 oranges and 3,000 walnut trees,” in what was termed “the old vineyard,” so it may be that the Express included other portions of the ranch in its article, especially as the Star noted “these vineyards and groves are not included in the homestead tract” in the subdivision.
The Star of the 17th provided another “Home Views” feature, this of Inverness, named for a famed location in Scotland, homeland of the owner, Col. Norman C. Jones, who was part of a warehouse association in Wilmington in which F.P.F. Temple was a major investor. The 48-acre tract was not far southeast of the Childs estate, situated along Vejar Street (now 14th Street), Kohler Street and Wolfskill Street (this latter since renamed), this being east of San Pedro and west of Central. This is a pretty gritty industrial area now, but was said to be “one of the prettiest places in Los Angeles” 150 years ago.
Jones acquired the property the prior year and it was planted to grapes and oranges, but enough work was conducted so that “certainly nowhere in our wonderings [wanderings] throughout the city and county have we seen thriftier or finer vineyards and orchards than are to be found at Inverness.” The orange grove was cited as a model of “strength and symmetry” as well as very productive and there were 150 of these trees with 200 young ones, along with 30,000 grapevines, 75 limes, 150 lemons and 100 walnuts, with the place said to be better than any visited in term of investment of a minor sum of money for a yield “into a perfectly appointed suburban home.”
The same day’s Herald reprinted portions of a letter from an Iowa newspaper figure, who marveled at the agricultural scene at Riverside, founded several years prior, though mature oranges and walnuts were not expected until 1875. In reviewing the situation throughout greater Los Angeles, the unnamed visitor commented that the orange and lime yields might be the mot lucrative of any crop in the nation, adding that “the lemon, English walnut, olive, almond, and raisin-grapes are also very profitable and they all do very well here.”
We’ve noted early in this post that members of the Workman and Temple family raised walnuts over about eight decades, specifically William Workman, his son-in-law, F.P.F. Temple and Temple’s sons John and Walter, but the Star of 5 June included, in that “Home Views” series, its review of “Mr. Elijah H. Workman’s Place.” The nephew of William Workman, residing directly north of Childs,
is the fortunate possessor of seven acres in the western part of the city, which in about four years’ time he has managed to beautify and adorn and improve to an extent which to any one not to some extent, at least, familiar with the wonder-working powers of our soil and climate, would seem rather to be the work of a quarter of a century than of less than one-fifth of that term. Mr. Workman seems to have almost exhausted the whole field for selection in stocking his flower garden. To catalogue the numerous varieties would really do no good.
Beyond the aesthetics of his landscaping, especially fuchsias and roses, the paper observed that there were 150 seven-year old orange trees and other mature ones that Workman transplanted in 1870 when he acquired the place, along with 75 each of lemons and limes, 125 walnuts, of which 35 were bearing, 40 newly bearing almonds, 30 peach and a smattering of apricots, nectarines, pears, plums and pomegranates.
More exotic and deemed “more for show than use” were chestnut, hickory, magnolia and persimmon trees, while there were also apple and quince trees. Blackberries, raspberries and strawberries were also in abundance, while rarities included rubber, gum arabic and bananas, the latter of which included West Indian and Chinese types. The Star added that all of the trees and “everything on the place” were introduced by Workman since his acquisition “except a few walnut trees in the front yard” and it was added that, within four years or so, a good income was to be expected.
Notably, Workman told the paper that he purchased the property intending to live on it for life and had no small amount of anxiety as he developed it, but the Star also reported that,
Mr. Workman remarked, however, although the products of the place would most certainly pay a handsome interest on the investment the rapid growth of the city in all directions seemed almost like a warning to him that the inevitable rise in the value of the property would render its subdivision necessary . . . Let us hope that as his property increases in value, the value of the products of the place will increase with it to such an extent as will enable him and his children and their children to snap their fingers at the tax collector, and remain for generations in possession of the paternal acres. After all we shrewdly expect that the only division of the property which will ever take place, will be the parcelling [sic] off of building lots to the olive branches of the Workman family. So mote it be.
Once the boom went bust two years later, prognostications such as these as well as assumptions like those made by Workman, proved to be problematic, though the much bigger Boom of the 1880s, during which his brother, William H., was mayor of the Angel City did bring subdivisions of this, the Wolfskill place and others, to pass.
We’ll stop here and return with a thirteenth part, so come back and read more then about early walnut history in greater Los Angeles.