Back Aa

Sixty Years in Southern California 1853-1913

<h2>CHAPTER XLI THE SOUTHWEST ARCHÆOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1898-1905</h2> A cloud, considerably larger than a man's hand, flecked the skies at the dawn of 1898 and troubled many who had been following the course of events in Cuba. So, too, like the thrill sent through the nation at the firing on Fort Sumter, the startling intelligence of the destruction of the United States battleship Maine electrified and united the people. Along the Coast, intense excitement scarcely permitted Westerners to keep themselves within bounds; and instant was the display of patriotic fervor, Southern Californians willingly shouldering their share of the unavoidable war burdens. On January 22d, John G. Nichols, several times Mayor of Los Angeles and always a welcome figure on the streets, died here at the age of eighty-five years. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_706a.jpg" width-obs="251" height-obs="319" alt="" /> Isaias W. Hellman </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_706b.jpg" width-obs="239" height-obs="321" alt="" /> Herman W. Hellman </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_706c.jpg" width-obs="247" height-obs="342" alt="" /> Cameron E. Thom </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_706d.jpg" width-obs="228" height-obs="326" alt="" /> Ygnácio Sepúlveda </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_707a.jpg" width-obs="464" height-obs="345" alt="" /> Main Street, Looking North, Showing First Federal Building, Middle Nineties </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_707b.jpg" width-obs="432" height-obs="301" alt="" /> First Santa Fé Locomotive to Enter Los Angeles </div> Colonel Harrison Gray Otis, soldier, Union officer, Government official in Alaska and President of the Los Angeles Times publishing company, was appointed by President McKinley, on May 27th, a Brigadier-General of the United States Volunteers, following which he was assigned to a command in the Philippines, where he saw active service until honorably discharged in 1899, after the fall of Malolos, the insurgent capital. During General Otis's absence, his influential son-in-law, the large-hearted, big man of affairs, Harry Chandler, Vice-President of the corporation, was general manager of the Times; while L. E. Mosher was managing editor. In 1897, Harry E. Andrews joined the Times staff, in 1906 becoming managing 617 editor and infusing into the paper much of its characteristic vigor. In 1899, Hugh McDowell, who had entered the employ of the Times four years before, began his long editorship of the Times' magazine, a wide-awake feature which has become more and more popular. During many years, Mrs. Eliza A. Otis, the General's gifted wife, now deceased, also contributed to both the Times and the Mirror. From the beginning, the paper has been Republican and in every respect has consistently maintained its original policies. Especially in the fight for San Pedro harbor, it was an important element and did much to bring the energetic campaign to a successful termination. Paul De Longpré, the French artist who made his mark, when but eleven years old, in the Salon of 1876, was a distinguished member of a little group of Frenchmen arriving in the late nineties. In 1901, he bought a home at Hollywood and there surrounded himself with three acres of choicest gardens—one of the sights of suburban Los Angeles—which became an inspiration to him in his work as a painter of flowers. De Longpré died in Hollywood, on June 29th, 1911. On August 23d, my excellent friend, Dr. John Strother Griffin, for nearly fifty years one of the most efficient and honored residents of Los Angeles, died here. A career such as should inspire American youth is that of Henry T. Gage (long in partnership with the well-known bibliophile, W. I. Foley,) a native of New York who in 1877, at the age of twenty-four, began the practice of law in Los Angeles, to be elected, twenty-one years later, Governor of California. A handsome man, of splendid physique—acquired, perhaps, when he started as a sheep-dealer—he is also genial in temperament, and powerful and persuasive in oratory; qualifications which led to his selection, I dare say, to second the nomination at Chicago, in 1888, of Levi P. Morton for the Vice-Presidency. Ex-Governor Gage's wife was Miss Fannie V., daughter of John Rains and granddaughter of Colonel Isaac Williams. April 27, 1899 was printed large and red upon the calendar 618 for both Los Angeles and San Pedro, when the engineers, desiring to commence work on the harbor in true spectacular fashion, brought a load of quarried rock from Catalina to dump on the breakwater site. President McKinley sent an electric spark from the White House, intended to throw the first load of ballast splashing into the bay; but the barge only half tilted, interfering with the dramatic effect desired. Nevertheless, the festivities concluded with the usual procession and fireworks. Movements of great importance making for a municipal water-system occurred in 1899, the thirty years' contract with the assigns of John S. Griffin, P. Beaudry, S. Lazard and others having expired on July 22d, 1898. An arbitration committee, consisting of Charles T. Healey for the Company and James C. Kays—long a citizen of importance and Sheriff from 1887 to 1888—for the City, failed to agree as to the valuation of the Los Angeles City Water Company's plant, whereupon Colonel George H. Mendell was added to the board; and on May 12th, 1899, Kays and Mendell fixed their estimate at $1,183,591, while Healey held out for a larger sum. In August, the citizens, by a vote of seven to one, endorsed the issuing of two million dollars of City bonds, to pay the Water Company and to build additional equipment; and the water-works having been transferred to the municipality, five commissioners were appointed to manage the system. During August, 1899, the Reverend Dr. Sigmund Hecht of Milwaukee took into his keeping the spiritual welfare of Los Angeles Reformed Jewry; and it is certainly a source of very great satisfaction to me that during his tenure of office his good fellowship has led him, on more than one occasion, to tender the altar of the Jewish temple for Christian worship. Scholarly in pursuits and eloquent of address, Dr. Hecht for sixteen years has well presided over the destinies of his flock, his congregation keeping pace with the growth of the city. Incursions of other jobbing centers into Los Angeles territory induced our leading manufacturers and wholesalers to combine for offensive as well as defensive purposes; and on 619 October 11th, 1899, in answer to a call, an enthusiastic meeting was held in Room 86, Temple Block, attended by J. Baruch, J. O. Koepfli, J. Saeger, R. L. Craig, L. Kimble, L. C. Scheller, George H. Wigmore, F. W. Braun, C. C. Reynolds, I. A. Lothian, W. S. Hunt, A. H. Busch, M. H. Newmark and others, who elected Baruch, President; Koepfli, First Vice-President; Reynolds, Second Vice-President; Scheller, Treasurer; and Braun, Secretary. A couple of weeks later, A. M. Rawson was named Secretary, Braun having resigned to accept the Third Vice-Presidency; and on November 3d, the Associated Jobbers of Southern California, as the organization was called, was re-christened the Associated Jobbers of Los Angeles. Meanwhile at a quiet luncheon, Koepfli and Newmark had entered into negotiations with Charles D. Willard, with the result that, when Rawson withdrew on February 28th, 1900, Willard assumed the duties of Secretary, holding the office for years, until compelled by sickness, on January 18th, 1911, to relinquish the work. On February 21st, 1900, Baruch having resigned, M. H. Newmark began a service of twelve years as President. The strength of the organization was materially increased when, in March, 1908, F. P. Gregson, well up in the traffic councils of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad, assumed the management of the recently-established traffic bureau. On April 10th, 1908, after many years of hardship, financial trouble and disappointment, during which the Executive Committee and Secretary Willard had frequent conferences with J. C. Stubbs and William Sproule (then Stubbs's assistant) of the Southern Pacific, and W. A. Bissell, of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad, it became evident that more equitable rates for shippers into the San Joaquín Valley and elsewhere could not peaceably be obtained. A promised readjustment, lowering Los Angeles rates about twenty per cent., had been published; but at the request of the San Francisco merchants, the new tariff-sheet was repudiated by the transportation companies. A rehearing was also denied by them. The Associated Jobbers then carried the case before 620 the newly-created Railroad Commission and obtained concessions amounting to fifty per cent. of the original demands. Guided by their astute Traffic Manager, F. P. Gregson, the jobbers, not satisfied with the first settlement, in 1910 renewed their activity before the Commission; and on the 15th of the following February, still further reductions were announced. The last rates authorized in 1912 are still in effect. In 1899, James M. Guinn, after some years of miscellaneous work in the field of local annals, issued his History of Los Angeles County, following the same in 1907 with a History of California and the Southern Coast Counties. As I write, he has in preparation a still more compendious work to be entitled, Los Angeles and Environs. At half-past four o'clock on the morning of December 25th, a slight shock of earthquake was felt in Los Angeles; but it was not until some hours later that the telegraph reported the much greater damage wrought at San Jacinto, Riverside County. There, walls fell in heaps; and a peculiar freak was the complete revolution of a chimney without the disturbance of a single brick! Six squaws, by the falling of their adobes at the Reservation some miles away, were instantly killed. When day dawned and the badly-frightened people began to inspect the neighborhood, they found great mountain-crevices, into some of which even large trees had fallen. Toward the end of the nineties, Henry E. Huntington sold much or all of his large holdings in the San Francisco railways and began both to buy up Los Angeles railway stocks and to give his personal attention to the city's traffic-problems. At the same time, he bent his energies to the crowning work of his life—the development of the various interurban electric systems focusing in Los Angeles. In 1902, the road to Long Beach was completed; and in the following year electric cars began to run to Monrovia and Whittier. In 1903, the seven-story Huntington or Pacific Electric Building at the corner of Main and Sixth streets was finished. The effect of these extensive improvements on local commerce and on the value of real estate (as well as their influence on the growth of population 621 through the coming of tourists seeking the conveniences and pleasures of social life) cannot, perhaps, be fully estimated—a fact which the people of this city should always remember with gratitude. During the winter of 1899-1900, business cares so weighed upon me that I decided temporarily to cast off all worry and indulge myself with another visit to the Old World. This decision was reached rather suddenly and, as my friends insist, in a perfectly characteristic manner: one morning I hastened to the steamship office and bought the necessary tickets; and then I went home leisurely and suggested to my wife that she prepare for a trip to Europe! About the first of January, therefore, we left Los Angeles, reached Naples on February 1st and traveled for nine months through Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. I returned to my birthplace, Loebau, which in my youth had appeared of such importance; but although somewhat larger than it used to be, it now nevertheless seemed small and insignificant. While making this tour of Europe, I revisited Sweden and renewed my acquaintance with the families that had been so kind to me as a boy. Time had lamentably thinned the ranks of the older generation, but many of the younger, especially those of my own age, were still there. Those only who have had a similar experience will appreciate my pleasure in once again greeting these steadfast friends. I also reviewed numerous scenes formerly so familiar. It is impossible to describe my emotions on thus again seeing this beautiful country, or to convey to the reader the depth of my respect and affection for her intelligent, thrifty and whole-souled people, especially when I remembered their liberal encouragement of my father about forty years before. Thanks to the indefatigable labors of Mrs. A. S. C. Forbes of Los Angeles, the beautiful ceremony of strewing flowers upon the restless ocean waters in honor of the naval dead was first observed at Santa Monica on Memorial Day in 1900, and bids fair to become an appropriate national custom. 622 Señora António F. Coronel entrusted to the Chamber of Commerce, on June 6th, the invaluable historical souvenirs known as the Coronel Collection; and now[43] for years these exhibits, housed in the Chamber of Commerce Building, have been one of the sights of the city, a pleasure and a stimulation alike to tourist and resident. A good anecdote as to the transfer of this collection is related on the authority of Miss Anna B. Picher, President of the Boundary League and the lady who made the first move to secure the interesting League mementos now preserved and displayed at the County Museum. When the matter of making the Coronel heirlooms more accessible to the public was brought to Señora Coronel's attention, she not only showed a lively interest, but at once agreed to make the donation. She imposed, however, the condition that Miss Picher should bring to her M. J. Newmark and John F. Francis, then directors, in whose integrity and acumen she had great confidence. This was done; and these gentlemen having pledged their personal attention and sponsorship, the Señora committed the historic objects to the Chamber of Commerce for the benefit, forever, of all the people. The Los Angeles Herald, on July 7th, passed into the hands of a group of stockholders especially interested in petroleum, Wallace R. Hardison being President and General Manager, and R. H. Hay Chapman, Managing Editor. At the same time the newspaper's policy became Republican. The Harvard School was opened, on September 25th by Grenville C. Emery and was the first notable military academy for youth in Los Angeles. After many terms of successful work under Congregational auspices, the School has passed to the control of the Rt. Reverend J. H. Johnson, as trustee for the Episcopal Church, which has acquired other valuable school properties in the Southland; Professor Emery remitting fifty thousand dollars of the purchase price in consideration of a promise to perpetuate his name. A tunnel was put through Bunker Hill—by the way, one of 623 the highest of downtown elevations—from Hill Street to Hope on Third, in 1901, bringing the western hill district into closer touch with the business center of the town and greatly enhancing the value of neighboring property. The delay in cutting through First and Second streets, which would afford so much relief to the municipality, is a reproach against the good sense of the City. The Los Angeles Express, which enjoys the honor of being the oldest daily newspaper still published in Los Angeles, and which, for fifteen years, has been so well managed by H. W. Brundige, was sold in January to Edwin T. Earl, who moved the plant to a building erected for it on Fifth Street between Broadway and Hill. Earl came to Los Angeles in 1885, having previously for years packed and shipped fruit on a large scale. In 1890, as a result of the obstacles handicapping the sending of fresh fruit to the East, Earl invented a new refrigerator car with ventilating devices; and unable to get the railroads to take over its construction, he organized a company for the building of the conveyors. On selling out to the Armours, Earl made large investments in Los Angeles real estate. A few years ago, the Express was moved to Hill Street near Seventh. Possibly owing to the renewed interest in local historical study, the Express, in 1905, commenced the republication of news items of "Twenty-five Years Ago To-day"—a feature of peculiar pleasure to the pioneer. William F. Grosser, who died on April 15th, was long active in Los Angeles Turnverein circles, having popularized science before institutions and lecture-courses existed here for that purpose. A native of Potsdam, Prussia, Grosser came to Southern California via Panamá, and on settling in Los Angeles, laid out the Grosser Tract. Having been an advanced student of astronomical science and microscopy, and possessing a good-sized portable telescope, he was soon in demand by societies and schools, for which he lectured without financial remuneration. One of Grosser's sisters, Mrs. A. Jelinek—whose husband, a Boston cabinet-maker, had an interesting part in the carving of the chair made from "the spreading 624 chestnut tree" and presented to the poet Longfellow by the school children of Cambridge—has been for years an honored resident of Ocean Park, where she was one of the early investors. A granddaughter is Fräulein Elsa Grosser, the violinist. On April 24th, Samuel Calvert Foy died, aged seventy-one, survived by his wife and six children. A little town in Ventura County, bearing the name of the famous student and author, recalls the death near here in July of Charles Nordhoff, whose pioneer book, California: For Health, Pleasure and Residence, published in the early seventies, did more, I dare say, than any similar work to spread the fame of the Southland throughout the East. Charles Brode, who died in August, first saw Los Angeles in 1868, when he came here to nurse Edward J., my wife's brother, in his last illness. He then opened a grocery store at South Spring Street near Second, and was active in Turnverein and Odd Fellow circles. The mention of Brode recalls the name of one who has attained distinction here: even as a messenger boy at the California Club in the eighties, Oscar Lawler gave promise of an important future. He had come from Iowa as a child, and his personality, ability and ambition soon brought him prominently before the Bar and the people. He served as United States Attorney for this district from 1906 until 1909, when he became Assistant to the Attorney-General of the United States. He is high in Masonic circles, being Past Grand Master of the Masonic Grand Lodge of California. In 1901, he married Miss Hilda, daughter of Charles Brode. Catalina Island, in the summer of 1902, established wireless connection with the mainland, at White's Point; and on August 2d, the first messages were exchanged. On March 25th of the following year began the publication of the Catalina newspaper known as the Wireless. After graduating from the University of California in 1902, my son Marco attended for a while the University of Berlin; after which he returned to Los Angeles and entered the house of M. A. Newmark & Company. The women of California, in the late eighties, wishing to 625 pay Mrs. John C. Frémont an appropriate tribute, presented her with a residence at the northwest corner of Hoover and Twenty-eighth streets, Los Angeles where, on December 27th, 1902, at the age of seventy-eight years, she died. Mrs. Frémont was a woman of charming personality and decidedly intellectual gifts; and in addition to having written several meritorious works, she was engaged, at the time of her death, on her autobiography. Her ashes were sent East to the banks of the Hudson, to be interred beside those of her distinguished husband; but her daughter, Miss Elizabeth Benton Frémont, has continued to reside here in the family homestead. On the site of one of my early homes, the corner-stone of the new Chamber of Commerce was laid on March 28th with impressive Masonic ceremonies. The principal address was made by Jonathan S. Slauson. Ferdinand K. Rule was then President of the Chamber; and the Building Committee consisted of M. J. Newmark, Chairman; A. B. Cass, Homer Laughlin, F. K. Rule, H. S. McKee and James A. Foshay—the latter for sixteen years, beginning with the middle nineties, having demonstrated his efficiency as Superintendent of City Schools. Early in 1903, G. A. Dobinson, a Shakespearian student and teacher of elocution, induced me to build a hall on Hope Street near Eleventh, connected with a small theater; and there, in the spring of 1904, he opened the well-known Dobinson School, which he conducted until 1906. Then the Gamut Club, an organization of 1904—whose first President was Professor Adolph Willhartitz,[44] the artistic German pianist—moved in. The pioneer experiments with the navel orange have already been referred to; a late episode associates the luscious fruit with a President of the United States. On May 6th, amid great festivity participated in by all Riverside, Theodore Roosevelt replanted, in front of Frank Miller's Mission Inn, one of the original, historic trees. William K. Cowan came to Los Angeles as a jeweler in 626 1887, later embarked in the bicycle trade and was one of the first men in Los Angeles to sell automobiles, at length building in 1903 at 830 South Broadway the first large garage here. Some months later, if I recollect aright, witnessed the advent on our streets of a number of horseless carriages, and I was seized with a desire to possess not one, but two. My acquisitions were both electric, and soon I was extending, right and left, invitations to my friends to ride with me. On the first of these excursions, however, one of the machines balked and the second also broke down; and to make a long story short, no mechanic in town being sufficiently expert to straighten out the difficulty, I soon disposed of them in disgust for about seven hundred dollars. In 1903, a notable change was made, and one decidedly for the better interests of the public schools, when one hundred citizens, pursuant to a change in the City's charter, selected a non-partizan Board of Education consisting of John D. Bicknell, Joseph Scott, J. M. Guinn, Jonathan S. Slauson, Charles Cassatt Davis, Emmet H. Wilson and W. J. Washburn. On October 23d the Southwest Society was founded here by Charles F. Lummis with Jonathan S. Slauson as its first President; Charles F. Lummis, Secretary and W. C. Patterson, Treasurer. Associated with these officers were J. O. Koepfli, M. A. Hamburger, General H. G. Otis, Henry W. O'Melveny, Major E. W. Jones, J. A. Foshay, the Right Reverend Thomas J. Conaty, J. D. Bicknell and others. In the beginning, it was a branch of the Archæological Institute of America; but so rapid was the Society's growth that, in three years, it had fifty per cent. more members than belonged to the thirty-year-old parent organization in Boston, with which it remained affiliated until 1913 when it withdrew in order that all its funds might go toward the maintenance of the Southwest Museum, a corporation founded in 1907 as the result of the Southwest Society's labors. The first plant of the Los Angeles Examiner, a newspaper owned by William Randolph Hearst, was installed in 1903 by Dent H. Robert, then and now publisher of the San Francisco 627 Examiner. The paper, illustrated from the start, made its first appearance on December 12th and sprang into immediate favor. R. A. Farrelly was the first managing editor. The office of the paper was on the west side of Broadway near Fifth Street, where it remained for ten years, during which it rendered valuable service to the community, notably in conducting a successful campaign for the sale of seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars' worth of school bonds which had hitherto proven unmarketable. In the meantime, Robert had been succeeded, first by a Mr. Strauss, and then by Henry Lowenthal and William P. Leech, while Farrelly was followed by Foster Coates, Arthur Clark and W. P. Anderson. In 1908, the enterprising Maximilian F. Ihmsen assumed the responsibilities of publisher, and at the same time Frederick W. Eldridge became the efficient managing editor. Under the able direction of these experienced men, this morning daily has attained its highest prosperity, marked by removal in the fall of 1913 to the Examiner Building at Broadway and Eleventh Street. Abbot Kinney, foreseeing a future for the tide-flats and lagoons south of Ocean Park, in 1904 purchased enough acreage whereon to build the now well-known Venice, which, as its name implies, was to be adorned with canals, bridges and arcades. Through Kinney's remarkable spirit of enterprise, a wonderful transformation was effected in a single year. Such in fact was the optimism of this founder of towns that, in order to amply supply the necessary funds, he closed out important city holdings including the Flat Iron Square, lying between Eighth and Ninth, and Main and Spring streets, the Abbotsford Inn property and the large southeast corner of Spring and Sixth streets, at present occupied by the Grosse Building. Kinney's foresight, courage and persistence have been rewarded, the dreams of his prime becoming the realities of his more advanced age. The task of building here a King's Highway—El Camino Real—intended to connect all the missions and presidios between San Diego and Sonoma was undertaken in the troublous days of Don Gaspar de Portolá and Father Junípero Serra; 628 but time in a measure obliterated this landmark. Since 1904, however, such kindred spirits as Miss Anna B. Picher—for nearly twenty years a zealous toiler for the preservation of our historic monuments, and whose zeal in behalf of the royal road was paramount—Mr. and Mrs. A. S. C. Forbes, Dr. Milbank Johnson, R. F. Del Valle, Mrs. C. R. Olney of Oakland and Frank Ey, Mayor of Santa Ana, have so caused the work to prosper that at the present time much of the original highway is about to be incorporated with the good State roads of California. The first bell for one of the mission-bell guide posts (designed, by the way, by Mrs. Forbes) was dedicated at the Plaza Church on August 15th, 1906; and since then some four hundred of these indicators have been placed along the Camino Real. An interesting attempt to transplant a small Eastern town to California was made in 1904 when Alfred Dolge, the founder of Dolgeville, New York (and the author of the elaborate work, Pianos and their Makers, published in 1911 at little Covina), established Dolgeville in Los Angeles County, opening there, with three hundred or more operatives, a felt works for piano fixtures. The experiment had been undertaken because of expected advantages in the supply of wool; but changes in the tariff ruined the industry, and after some years of varying prosperity, Dolgeville was annexed to Alhambra. A syndicate, styled the Los Angeles Herald Company, whose President was Frank G. Finlayson, in 1904 bought the Herald, at that time under the editorial management of Robert M. Yost. Future generations will doubtless be as keen to learn something about the preserving of albacore, commonly spoken of as tuna, as I should like to know how and by whom sardines were first successfully put into cans. The father of this industry is Albert P. Halfhill, a Minnesotan drawn here, in 1892, through the opportunities for packing mackerel on this southern coast. In 1894, we find him organizing the California Fish Company, soon to be known as the Southern California Fish Company. In 1904, Halfhill, while experimenting with various 629 western sea-foods, accidentally discovered the extraordinary quality of the albacore, a briny-deep heavyweight so interesting to the angler and so mysterious to the scientist. As a mere bit of gossip, Halfhill's assurance that M. A. Newmark & Company purchased the first canned tuna is entitled to mention. The Turnverein-Germania took a notable step forward this year by buying a lot, one hundred by three hundred feet, on South Figueroa, between Pico and Fifteenth streets; and on September 3d, 1905, the new club building and gymnasium were formally opened. William H. Workman in 1904 was elected Treasurer of the City of Los Angeles for the third time, his first term of office having begun in 1901. This compliment was the more emphatic because Workman was a Democrat and received four thousand five hundred votes more than his opponent—and that, too, only a month after Roosevelt had carried Los Angeles by a majority of thirteen thousand. In a previous chapter, I have described the vender of tamales and ice-cream, so familiar through his peculiar voice as well as his characteristic costume. About 1905, another celebrity plying a trade in the same line, and known as Francisco, appeared here and daily made his rounds through the more fashionable Westlake district. He had a tenor voice of rare quality and power, and used it, while exquisitely rendering choice arias, to advertise his wares. Such was his merit that lovers of music, as soon as his presence was known, paused to listen; with the natural result that business with Francisco was never dull. Whenever a grand opera company came to town, the Italian was there, in a front seat of the gallery; and so great was his enthusiastic interest in the performance of those whose voices were often inferior to his own, that he could be seen, with gaze fixed on the proscenium, passionately beating time as if to direct the orchestra. Seven or eight years ago, the long-favorite Francisco was foully murdered, and under strange circumstances; leading many to believe that, having perhaps degraded himself from his former estate and fleeing, 630 an alien, to an unknown land, he had fallen at last the victim of a vendetta. In 1905, I took part in a movement, headed by Joseph Mesmer, to raise by subscription the funds necessary to buy the old Downey Block—fronting on Temple and North Main streets, and extending through to New High—for the purpose of presenting it to the National Government for a Federal Building site. Unusual success attended our efforts, and the transfer to Uncle Sam was duly made. In the meantime, an appropriation of eight hundred thousand dollars had been secured for the building, and it was with no little surprise and disappointment when the bids for construction were opened, in May, 1906, that the lowest was found to be nearly a million dollars. This delayed matters until the following fall. In October, the site at the corner of Main and Winston streets was sold for three hundred and fourteen thousand dollars; and the deficiency having thus been supplied, it was not long before the new building was in course of construction. Desiring to celebrate the fifty years which had elapsed since, perched upon an ox-cart, he rode into Los Angeles for the first time, William H. Workman on January 21st gave a banquet to five hundred pioneers in Turnverein Hall, the menu being peculiarly mejicano. The reminiscences, speeches and quips were of the friendliest and best; and the whole affair was one that recalled to both host and guests the dolce far niente days of dear old Los Angeles. On February 21st, the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad was completed—the fourth transcontinental line, with its connections, to enter Los Angeles. In the spring, A. C. and A. M. Parson bought a tract of land on Alamitos Bay and there, at the mouth of the San Gabriel River, founded Naples, with features somewhat similar to those at Venice; but unlike the latter town, the new Naples has never developed into a crowded resort. Arriving in California in 1869, at the age of seven, Frank Putnam Flint, a native of Massachusetts concerning whom much of importance might be related, was elected in 1905 631 United States Senator from California. His brother, Motley H. Flint, high in Masonic circles, has also enjoyed an important career, having long been associated with many local public movements. An optimist of optimists, still young though having passed more than one milestone on the road to success, Willis H. Booth came to Los Angeles a mere lad and is a product of the Los Angeles High School and the State University. Before, while and since filling the office of President of the Chamber of Commerce, Booth has been identified with nearly everything worth while here and gives promise of an important and interesting future. He is now one of the Vice-Presidents of the Security Trust and Savings Bank. In August, Juan B. Bandini, second son of the famous Don Juan, died at Santa Monica. Two of Bandini's daughters were noted Los Angeles belles—Arcadia, who became the wife of John T. Gaffey, of San Pedro; and Dolores, who married into the well-known literary family, the Wards, of London. Strenuous efforts were made in 1905 to house the Historical Society of Southern California, which, incorporated on February 12th, 1891, boasts of being the oldest organization of its kind on the Coast and the only one doing State work; and the Legislature appropriated one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for a building. Governor Pardee, however, vetoed the bill—an act which later contributed to the endowment, by the State, of the comely County Museum in which the Historical Society now has its home. In the spring of 1905, the then eight-year-old town of Redondo, with her large hotel and busy wharf, and famed for her fields of carnations, became the scene of one of those infrequent, but typically American, real estate frenzies which come suddenly, last a few days and as suddenly depart. This particular attack, not to say epidemic, was brought on by one or two newspaper headlines announcing to the breakfasting reader that Henry E. Huntington had decided to spend millions of dollars in making immense railroad and other improvements in the seaside town, and that this would at once raise Redondo from 632 the humble status of a village to almost metropolitan dignity. In about as little time as is required to relate it, the astonished beach-dwellers found themselves overwhelmed by a surging mass of humanity struggling for the privilege of buying lots. The real estate offices were soon surrounded by hundreds of people, fighting, pushing and shoving, all possessed of but the one idea—to buy. And they bought. They bought corners and they bought in the middle of the blocks; they bought heaps of sand and holes in the ground; they bought in one breath and sold in the next; they bought blindly and sold blindly. Redondo had become a huge, unregulated stock exchange, lots instead of stocks for five days becoming the will-o'-the-wisps of the fated bidders, until the boom collapsed leaving hundreds with lots they had never seen and which, for the time being, they could not sell at any price. Huntington did not spend his millions—at least then and there. Redondo did not suddenly become a big center. Yet, in passing through the experience of many a town, Redondo has gradually grown in population and importance, even developing something of a suburb—Clifton-by-the-Sea. Such was the famous boom of 1905; and such will probably be the story of similar California booms to come. 633 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.