From Braunschweig to Beverly Hills: Some History of Andrew H. Denker and Henry Hammel in Greater Los Angeles, 1856-1892, Part Two

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

As the 1880s dawned, with a long economic depression slowly easing, greater Los Angeles entered, in the first half of the decade, a period of moderate growth. This accelerated dramatically when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway completed a direct transcontinental link to the region at the end of 1885, leasing track from the rival Southern Pacific to get to the Angel City until it could get its own local lines completed.

For Henry Hammel, with more than a quarter-century of residence in Los Angeles, and Andrew H. Denker, whose years of living in the city were perhaps half that length of time, their successful management of hotels there and in the Kern County mining boom town of Havilah meant that they were prepared to welcome larger number of tourists coming to the area to take advantage of the excellent climate as well as recreation at our beaches and mountains, as well as to seek relief for health issues of various types, including lung-related ailments.

The pair also expanded their real estate portfolio substantially be investing in the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas (meaning “gathering of the waters,” with that precious fluid obviously crucial for Angelenos given limited natural supply) west of the Angel City. They amassed their landholdings there in pieces, starting with about 200 acres at the end of the 1870s and first years of the Eighties, with an early reference from the Los Angeles Commercial of 28 January 1881 recording a journalist’s visit to “the rich farm of Hammel & Denker in the Rancho de Las Aguas [sic]” where “great crops of grain are grown every year and the proprietors always make farming pay.”

The Los Angeles Herald of 8 May 1883 amplified this point about wheat when, when discussing recent rainstorms, the owners reported damage of early-sown crops, “but that it would not be injured from ripening.” The 18 July number remarked that the hoteliers brought a sweet corn specimen with a center ear joined by seven others all on the same stem, this being apparently a foretaste of an excellent yield.

On 5 August, it was commented that Hammel and Denker acquired 3,300 acres of the ranch from Remi Nadeau, another prominent Angeleno, for close to $23,000. This transaction was adjudged “a good bargain” and the Herald added that “Messrs. Hammel & Denker now have one of the most productive ranchos in the country, from which they supply both their hotels [the Cosmopolitan and the United States], besides have large crops for sale to shippers.” The 3 November edition reported that the duo intended to sow 3,000 acres of wheat as well as plant barley to feed to their growing herds of cattle and milk cows, with 4,000 acres devoted to agriculture the coming season.

The Rodeo de las Aguas was featured in detail in the Herald of 17 October, citing the “forcible example” of the Hammel and Denker partnership “as a specimen of how shrewd business men make money in California.” It was noted that the two possessed “about 3,500 acres, all surrounded by a board fence except for some foothill land near Coldwater Cañon, which is being cleared for the planting of a vineyard next winter.” The paper then observed,

One peculiarity about this rancho is that none of it is for sale at any price. The owners of this piece of earth are determined to keep it as long as they live. It is just what they want, and they are determined to cultivate it to the utmost extent that money and men can do.

Among the rancho’s features were a pair of fishponds, stocked with carp and catfish, respectively, and supplied from a stream coming south from the Santa Monica Mountains. Eight cows were pastured to provide butter, cream and milk for the two hotels, with a massive butter churn located adjacent to a creamery stocked with 600 pans on revolving frames to turn milk into cream. Skimmed milk and buttermilk were sent by flume to where hogs were kept and 1,000 Berkshire pigs “roam in fatness in the neighborhood of a generous corn crib.”

There were also stalls housing about a hundred horses “comprising the stalwart Normandy and the fleet-footed Morgan horses for work on the rancho. A granary stored the most recent crop of 60,000 bushels of wheat and barley, with some of it piles for seeding the next planting. Headers, reapers and a big thresher were in the inventory of equipment for this, while a grist mill was present and operated by literal horse power.

Water was brought up by a windmill operated by a turbine, so there was plenty for domestic uses “and for the large amount of stock that roam over the pasture and stubble fields.” The cattle herd numbered about 400, with “not far away a band of fat sheep,” so that, with the cows, cattle, pigs, sheep “and a field to produce green-corn, melons and potatoes at the cost of raising, it is no wonder that these great hotels make money.”

Moreover, it was recorded that using Rodeo de las Aguas to produce food for the Cosmopolitan and the United States hotels meant that its value was 400% higher than property used for “ordinary farming.” Therefore, “no wonder the ranch is not for sale” and it was reiterated that “the great profit of selling those products as prepared food on the table at retail,” rather than wholesale as with most farming, “must be evident to any person of intelligence.”

As Denker showed the reporter around the ranch, a notable stop was “at the mouth of Coldwater Cañon . . . [where] a tunnel has been thrust into the mountain side about 400 feet above the hacienda [ranch house], to the extent of 200 feet” and to be extended as far as necessary “to secure a proper supply of pure mountain spring water for the land below.” There was a good stream in the boring and it was expected that much more would soon be tapped, as the rock brought about had heavy iron content “and the water is delicious.”

A half-mile east, “a strong sulphur spring comes out on a bold crown of land that overlooks the ocean on the right,” with the lapping of waves overheard from that spot, while portions of the ranch “make a fine foreground to the picture” with excellent views of many areas of the region. It was mentioned that “here is to be erected a beautiful and spacious hotel . . . planted with semi-tropical fruits, where the frost never disturbs or destroys.” This, however, was not constructed.

The narrative continued, “after leaving this place, with odors like the fire of Sodom and Gomorrah, the next place of interest is a vast bed of Asphaltum and springs of oil that the hydrogen of the earth is heaving up to show mankind that the hidden springs lie down beneath their feet.” It was remarked that the area, including the La Brea tar pits and the future Salt Lake oil field, was part of a geologic corridor in the region extending to what soon be northeast Orange County—the Puente oil lands of William R. Rowland in modern Rowland Heights and Burdette Chandler’s Petrolia in Soquel Canyon near today’s Brea and Yorba Linda were busy projects at the time.

The reporter gushed that “it is difficult to conceive of more richness than is contained on such a ranch,” with its two yearly harvests effected without irrigation on fertile soil and the expectation that Santa Monica Mountains water would allow for distribution by pipes through the property. It was also anticipated that the sulfur spring and the oil pool “will doubtless bring millions to its fortunate owners and this led to the breathless conclusion,

Where else in the world can such a combination of advantages be found except in the queenly county of Los Angeles? Messrs. Hammel & Denker are proud of their farm, as well they may be. They are specimen Californians, and, like others of their kind, are showing the great, grand possibilities of the land. Nowhere else in the world have such achievements been made in agriculture and horticulture by a single man or a single firm, as in California, the Queen of the Union. And nowhere is this better shown than in the ranchos of Los Angeles county and in all parts of the same. “There is but one California, and one Los Angeles.”

Returning to oil, the Herald of 25 January 1884 informed its readers that it occasionally noted the presence of a belt to the Santa Ana River, though now it went as far north as Santa Cruz, though there were challenges in drilling through broken rock as well as cave-ins that required heavy iron casings. While oil was found in several places in the southern counties, Los Angeles County had the most production at all of 600 barrels per day. It was added that “on the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas of Hammel & Denker, it oozes out of the ground,” while at Rancho La Brea, oil and gas were present, although “no systematic effort has been made to obtain and save the oil for sale” to date.

A little over two years later, in its issue of 22 February 1886, the paper reported that this last problem was being addressed as “steps have been taken to develop more actively the supply of petroleum that lies in a subterranean basin across the whole county from east to west,” including the leasing of part of La Brea, with material for drilling a well on the ground. Additionally, “Messrs. Hammel & Denker, who own the Rodeo de las Aguas, west of La Brea, will also sink some wells near their petroleum springs in a short time.”

The Herald of 6 May remarked on “continued and intense excitement in regard to petroleum” including the report that “the great Standard Oil Company are very busy in prospecting the oil basins on the rancho of Hammer & Denker and rancho La Brea.” What it didn’t mention was the near monopoly that Standard, under the iron rule of John D. Rockefeller, established by this time. Even after the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed by Congress in 1890, he eluded its proscriptions by creating multiple Standard firms under the same directors and then brought them all under a holding company—finally, in 1911, the United States Supreme Court ruled these tactics a violation of the Sherman Act.

The article added that,

Messrs. Hammel & Denker will doubtless sink some wells in a short time on their portion of the oil basin in the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas. Oil gushes out of the rocks on this great rancho as it does in some of the hills in this city . . . On all sides the petroleum boom is spreading.

In fact, the general Boom of the Eighties was at hand. Another element of the excitement was the enthusiasm for railroad building, including streetcar and narrow-gauge rail systems radiating from Los Angeles, particularly to the south, west and southwest where most of the red-hot development was burgeoning. The 1 April 1886 edition of the Herald stated that Hammel & Denker were offered $1.25 million by the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, a Santa Fe subsidiary, for their holdings on the rancho, with the purported plan to also buy the adjoining Rancho San José de Buenos Ayres, recently purchased by John W. Wolfskill, and subdivide the pair to raise money to build a road from Los Angeles to Santa Monica.

The 17 August 1887 number of the paper contained news of a survey for a road from Los Angeles to Port Hueneme in Ventura County, including “over the Cienega, La Brea and Rodeo de las Aguas ranchos to and through the Coldwater Cañon [imagine if that was possible[; then to the Simi [ranch] and Hueneme.” It added that “those who doubt these reports,” which involved other proposed routes, “are informed that all of these lines have been surveyed and their advantages are being considered by three different railway companies” and that “there is no question or manner of doubt but one of these lines will be built.”

Meanwhile, agriculture was practiced on a significant scale on Rodeo de las Aguas, with the 9 November 1884 Herald, under the heading of “Millions in Our Foothills,” reporting that “last spring Messrs. Hammel & Denker tried the experiment of planting the foothills with fruit trees.” On the previously brush-covered slopes, “the proprietors last year cleared and plowed the land and late in the season, in the month of May, planted about 2000 fruit trees, consisting of peaches, pears, apricots, apples, plums and other deciduous fruits.”

The stock were leftovers from a nursery’s prior season, so was not considered of the highest quality, but the duo “planted them as an experiment and left them to the care of the soil and the climate.” It was remarked that the effort was such that, “the trees . . . have grown remarkably well and have exceeded all expectation” with “growth . . . so opulent that they have been trimmed in once or twice and are still showing a vigorous growth.”

The paper found this project to be very significant as its success would demonstrate the foothill sections could yield excellent fruit without the cost and work involved in irrigation and it concluded,

The result has been a surprise and a delight . . . and shows the inherent capabilities of our heretofore unoccupied high, dry mesas. This will be new incentive to the owners of the Crescenta Cañada and other high locations . . . [and throughout southern California] there is to-day a million acres of land that is as well adapted to orchard growing without irrigation as the lands of Messrs. Hammel & Denker. Intelligent work is what is needed, and that is always rewarded with success in this country. The success of the experiment which is herein mentioned will probably cause the planting of a million trees during the year 1885.

This boom-era burst of enthusiasm was, not surprisingly, over-wrought as it was much more complicated and challenging to develop higher-elevation foothill agriculture as suggested by the Herald. Another aspect of work at Rodeo de las Aguas, mentioned above, was further highlighted by the paper in its 17 August 1887 edition, as a correspondent subscribed as “Victor” rode out via the “Pico road,” now Pico Boulevard, and, on arrival at the ranch, “we found Mr. Denker busily engaged in carrying out their immense dairying” operation.

A tour of the facility including a demonstration of extracting cream from milk and the making of butter from the former with two-pound blocks covered in muslin stored “under a roof of ice,” while “everything about the dairy is kept clean as a pin.” Once the separation for the making of butter was handled, it was commented that “the milk lasts just like the pure cream, and is the finest that can be made.”

Denker showed Victor the corral where the 150 cows were kept and remarked “here is where all the milk comes from that makes such fine butter,” with a half-dozen laborers at work milking the animals.” The tour moved on to the horse stalls, “another still greater sight,” though “our allotted time was about up” and, as the group made ready to leave, Hammel arrived “and renewed our welcome to their lovely home.” Notably, Hammel informed the visitors that “there was over 3,000 acres of this ranch, which they had been raising grain on; but that dairying would pay better, and they would make it into a dairy ranch.”

The Herald‘s edition of 12 October followed up with the report that the ranch owners “are making one of the finest dairy houses in the State” including “a creamery and cheese making establishment, with all the modern improvements,” the enterprise promising to “be a great boon to Los Angeles, and furnish new butter, hard crisp and fragrant, all the year.” The facility was to handle some 5,000 cows with the product also meaning that “thousands of hogs can be fattened on the buttermilk.” The paper concluded, “such a manufactory will be a credit and a source of profit to its enterprising proprietors.”

Moreover, a railroad company was given a right-of-way for a line and, with a road through the Rodeo de las Aguas, Hammel asserted that he and Denker “would not take less than $5,000,000” for the property. It was added that “this land produces the finest of fruits, grain, corn and alfalfa—and without irrigation.” With so much activity at the ranch amid the frenzy of the boom, it was no surprise that the owners embarked on a project that mirrored so many in greater Los Angeles, the building of a new town.

For that, we’ll return with part three soon, so check back in with us for that!