 38 Not as impulsively perhaps as on previous occasions, I left Los Angeles for Europe on April 30, 1887, accompanied by my wife and our two children, Marco and Rose. Mrs. Eugene Meyer, my wife's youngest sister, and her daughter joined us at San Francisco and traveled with us as far as Paris. We took passage on the French ship Normandy, departing from the Morton Street Pier in New York on May 14, and nine days later we landed at Havre, from which port we proceeded to the French capital. On this trip we visited France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Austria, including Bohemia, and Italy. We also touched at points in Sweden, although we did not do that country thoroughly until a later voyage. While in Germany, where I met my nephew Leo, son of JP Newmark, then a student in Strasbourg, I was impressed with the splendid hotels and state highways and the advantage taken of natural resources. And from Ems on July 22, I wrote a letter on the subject to Caspar Cohn, which I later found had been published by one of the Los Angeles dailies. During this journey we traveled with MJ Newmark and his family. It was also on this tour, on June 10, that I returned to my native town of Lebeau, both to visit the graves of my parents, and once more to see some relatives and a few old friends. In Paris we had an exciting experience as observers of a conflagration that might have terminated seriously for us. We had been thinking of going to the Opera Comique in the evening, but instead had accepted an invitation to dinner at the residence of Alexandre Ville, the well-known international banker formerly of San Francisco, and only on our return to the Hotel d'Elder, a comfortable family hostelry in the Rue des Eldères, within a couple of blocks of the theatre. And we learned of a disastrous fire in the Opera House which caused the loss of many lives. For blocks around the streets and sidewalks were roped in, and great was the confusion everywhere. The following day a number of solicitous inquiries arrived from friends in America. In connection with our departure for this tour of Europe I am reminded of a unique gift to my wife of a diary in eight volumes, tastefully bound in Russian leather, the whole neatly encased for traveling. With almost painful regularity my wife entered there her impressions and recollections of all she saw, refusing to retire at night as a rule until she had posted up her book for the day, glancing over these pages written in her distinct, characteristically feminine hand. I note once more the intellectual vigor and perspicuity displayed by my companion in this, her first contact with European life and customs. It was during my absence on May 2 that Erskine Mayo Ross was appointed by President Cleveland Judge of the new United States District Court just established. He was then in partnership with Stephen M. White, a native of Belpray, Virginia, he had come to Los Angeles in 1868 to study law with his uncle Cameron E. Tom. Soon admitted to the bar he was elected in 1879, at the age of 34, to the Supreme Bench of the State. The judge, with whom I have been on friendly terms since his arrival, is still living in Los Angeles, a familiar and welcome figure in club circles. Speaking of this esteemed judge, I am reminded of a visit here, in 1887, of Justice Stephen J. Field when he sat with Judge Ross in the United States Circuit Court, the sessions of which were then held over the Farmers and Merchants National Bank at the corner of Main and Commercial Streets. On that occasion, the members of the bar, irrespective of party, united to do him honor, in Justice Field, in turn, paid a warm tribute to Los Angeles and her hospitality. D. W. Hanna, a Michigan pedagogue who I come to Los Angeles in 1884 to open Ellis College on Fort Street near Temple, burned in 1888, established on September 2, 1885, the Los Angeles College, a boarding school for girls, and a couple of buildings at the corner of Fifth and Olive Streets. In 1887, Hanna, having formed a stock company, erected a new school structure at the southwest corner of Eighth and Hope Streets where eighteen teachers soon instructed some 250 students. But the institution failed, and the building, still standing, was finally bought by Abbott Kinney and named the Abbotsford Inn. In a note regarding the life and accomplishment of Madame Severance, I have referred to this distinguished role played by this Angelenia in the early advocacy of the kindergarten for America. It took three years, however, for the educational authorities here to awake to the significance of the departure, for it was not until 1887 that Frobel's plan was admitted for experiment into the Los Angeles schools. A group of Presbyterian clergymen from Los Angeles and vicinity, in 1887, joined in establishing Occidental College, now, as developed under John Willis Bayer, one of the promising institutions of the southwest, locating its site east of the city between First and Second Streets, both Lottes and Acreage having been donated with the usual Southern California liberality. There, the following year, the main college building was erected, but in 1896, that structure and most of its contents were destroyed by fire. Early in June, as ex-mayor E. F. Spence was about to leave for Europe, some enthusiasm was created in educational circles by the announcement that he would deed certain property, including the lot at the corner of Pearl and Sixth Streets, on which the Gates Hotel now stands, to the University of Southern California for the establishing of a telescope on Mount Wilson. The matter had been communicated to President M. M. Bovard, who ordered a glass from the celebrated Cambridge grinders Alvin, Clark, and Sons. When President Bovard died, Spence was too ill to arrange the details necessary to the further carrying out of his plans, the property that he had promised to give remained part of his estate, and the great glass when ground had to be resold, the University of Chicago becoming the lucky purchaser. As all the scientific world knows, the Carnegie Foundation at Washington some years later established, to the extension of California's fame, the celebrated Wilson telescopes on the mountain Spence once had in view. Early in June also, Smith and McPhee issued a directory of Los Angeles, but two weeks afterward, George W. Maxwell published another book of addresses with more than 5,000 additional names. The second directory listed over 18,000 adults, from which fact it was estimated that Los Angeles then had a population of quite 60,000. In 1887, Mrs. Charlotte Lemoine Wills, wife of the attorney John A. Wills, and daughter of Dr. Francis Julius Lemoine, who in 1867 erected at Washington, Pennsylvania the first modern crematory in the world, notwithstanding that he was denied permission by the cemetery authorities there and was compelled to construct the furnace on his property outside of the town, inspired the establishing here of what is said to have been the second crematory in the United States, and certainly the first built west of the Rocky Mountains. It was opened at Rosedale Cemetery by the Los Angeles Crematory Society, which brought to the coast an incinerating expert. Dr. W. Lemoine Wills, a son, was one of the leading spirits in the enterprise and among the first directors of the local organization. The first cremation occurred in June, and the first body so disposed of was that of the wife of Dr. O. B. Byrd, a homeopathic physician. The experiment stirred up a storm of adverse, as well as a favorable, criticism. The brothers Bodrie were interested doubtless through their undeveloped hill property in organizing the Temple Street Cable Railway, running from the foot of Temple Street at Spring, out Temple as far west as Union Avenue, with cars operated every ten minutes. The company had an office at No. 10 Court Street, and the directors were Prudent Bodrie, Victor Bodrie, Walter S. Maxwell, E. T. Wright, the surveyor, Octavius Morgan, Ralph Rogers, Thomas Stovell, John Milner, and E. A. Hall. Around July, the trustees of James Lick sold Santa Catalina Island to George R. Shadow, who founded Avalon, footnote, largely destroyed by fire, November 29, 1915, and footnote, at first giving it his name, and after whom Chateau Street is called, the price fixed upon being $150,000, Chateau making a partial payment, whereupon the latter agreed to resell the island to an English syndicate. Failure to find there the store of minerals they expected, however, led the English bankers to refuse the property, and in 1892, after a friendly suit had re-established the title of the Lick trustees, they disposed of that part of the estate, for about the same price offered Chateau, to William J. B. and Hancock Bannings, sons of my old friend Phineas Banning, the three forming the Santa Catalina Island Company. Several years later George S. Patton was admitted as a partner. Little by little, Catalina became a favorite resort, although it was years before there was patronage enough to warrant a daily steamer service. In the summer of 1887, for example, at the height of the boom, William Banning, manager of the Wilmington Transportation Company, ran the steamer Falcon, whose captain was J. W. Simmy, only once every seven or eight days. Then the vessel used to leave San Pedro Wharf at one o'clock in the afternoon, and return the next day in time to connect with the three o'clock train for Los Angeles. The fare for the round's trip was $4. The year 1887 witnessed the completion of the Arcadia Hotel at Santa Monica, named after Dona Arcadia, wife of Colonel R. S. Baker. It was built upon a bluff, was four stories high, and had a great veranda with side wings, and with its center tower and cubilla was more imposing than any hotel there today. Under the proprietorship of J. W. Scott, the Arcadia became one of the first fine suburban hotels in Southern California. As late as 1887, there was no passenger service between the city and Santa Monica from six to seven o'clock in the evening, though I cannot say just how many trains ran during the day. I am sure, however, that there were not many. Merchants spending their summers at the beach were more inconvenienced through this lack of evening service than at any other time, and after repeated complaints, a coach was hooked onto a freight train. Later, the Board of Trade objected to this slow method and arrangements were made for another passenger train. Speaking of Santa Monica in the late 80s, I am reminded of a gravity railroad, somewhat on the principle of the present-day roller coaster, which was opened near the Arcadia Hotel and as a novelty was a great success. The track was not more than 15 feet above the ground at its highest point of elevation, just sufficient to give the momentum necessary for an undulating movement. As the final sequence to the events of three or four preceding years, Los Angeles, at the time when I left for Europe, had already advanced beyond the threshold of her first really violent boom, and now symptoms of feverish excitement were everywhere noticeable in Southern California. The basis of real estate operations here to foresane enough was quickly becoming unbalanced, a movement that was growing more and more intensified as well as general. And as in the case of a mighty stream which accumulates overwhelming power for many feeders, there was a marshaling, as it were, in Los Angeles of these forces. The charms of climate and scenery widely advertised, as I have said, at the Philadelphia Centennial and later through the continuous efforts of the first and second chambers of commerce in the Board of Trade, together with the extension of the Southern Pacific to the east and the building of the Santa Fe Railroad, had brought here a class of tourists who not only enjoyed the winter but ventured to stay through the summer season, and who, having remained, were not long in seeking land and homesteads. The rapidly increasing demand for lots and houses caused hundreds of men and women to enter the local real estate field, most of whom were inexperienced and without much responsibility. When therefore the news of their phenomenal activity got abroad, as was sure to be the case, hordes of would-be speculators, some with, but more without, knowledge of land manipulation and many none too scrupulous rushed to the Southland to invest, wager, or swindle. Thousands upon thousands of Easterners swelled the number already here. Dealers in realty sprang up like mushrooms. It was then that the demand for offices north of First Street exceeding the supply compelled many an agent unwillingly to take accommodations farther south and brought about much building even to Second Street. It also happened that a dozen or more competitors occupied a single storeroom. Selling and bartering were carried on at all hours of the day or night and in every conceivable place. Agents, eager to keep every appointment possible, enlisted the services of hackmen, hotel employees, and waiters to put them in touch with prospective buyers, and the same properties would often change hands several times in a day, sales being made on the curbstone, at bars or restaurant tables, each succeeding transfer representing an enhanced value. Although I was abroad during the height of this period, psychologically so interesting, newspapers, letters, and photographs from home, supplemented on my return by the personal narratives of friends, supplied me with considerable information of the craze. As I have already remarked, the coming of the Santa Fe, as well as the ensuing railroad war, was a very potent factor in this temporary growth and advance in values, and soon after the railroad's advent a dozen towns had been laid out on the line between Los Angeles and San Bernardino, the number doubling within a few months. Indeed, had the plan of the boomers succeeded, the whole stretch between the two cities would have been solidly built up with what, in the end, proved a lass to be but castles in the air. Wherever there was an acreage there was room for new towns, and with their inauguration, thousands of buyers were on hand to absorb lots that were generally sold on the installment plan. More frequently than otherwise, payments became delinquent and companies went broke, and then the property reverted to acreage again. This sometimes led to serious complications, especially when the contract between the land owner and the so-called syndicate allowed the latter to issue clear title to those who paid for their lots. In such cases, the acreage when recovered by the original owner would be dotted here and there with small possessions, and to reinstate his property was, as a rule, no easy task. This, of course, refers to the failures of which there were more than enough. On the other hand, many of the towns inaugurated during the boom period not only have survived and prospered, but have become some of our most attractive and successful neighbors. If every conceivable trick in advertising was not resorted to, it was probably due to oversight. Bans announcing new locations were seen here and there in streetcars, hay and other wagons and carriages, sometimes followed by fantastic parades a block long, and for every new location there was promised the early construction of magnificent hotels, theaters, or other attractive buildings that seldom materialized. When processions filled the streets, bad music filled the air. Elephants and other animals of jungle and forest, as well as human freaks, the remnants of a stranded circus or two, were gathered into shows and used as magnets, while other ingenious methods were often invoked to draw crowds and gather in the shuckles. The statements as to climate were always verified, but in most other respects poor Martin Chuzzlewitz experience in the Mississippi town of Eden affords a rather graphic story of what was frequently in progress here during the never-to-be-forgotten days of the boom. As competition waxed keener, dishonest methods were more and more resorted to. Thus schemers worked on the public's credulity and so attracted many a wagonload of people to mass meetings, called ostensibly for the purpose of advancing some worthy clause, but really arranged to make possible an ordinary sale of real estate. An endless chain of free lunches, sources of delight to the hobo element in particular, drew not only these chronic idlers, but made a victim of many a worthier man. Despite all of this excitement, the village aspect in some particulars had not yet disappeared. In vacant lots not far from the center of town, it was still not unusual to see cows contentedly chewing their cud and chickens scratching for a living. In 1889, however, the council governed this feature of domestic life by ordinance, and thenceforth there was less of the cocks shrill clarion. Extraordinary situations arose out of the speculative mania, as when overambitious folks, fearful perhaps lest they might be unable to obtain corner and other desirably situated lots, stationed themselves in line two or three days before the date of anticipated land sales. And even though quite twenty selections were frequently the limit to one purchase, the more optimistic of our boomers would often have two or three substitutes waiting in a line extending irregularly far down the sidewalk, and assuming at night the appearance of a bivouac. I have heard it said that as much as a hundred dollars would be paid to each of these messengers, and that the purchaser of such service, apprehensive lest he might be sold out, would visit his representatives many times before the eventful day. Later, this system was improved and official place numbers were given, thus permitting people to conduct their negotiations without much loss of time. So little scientific consideration was given to actual values that they were regulated according to calendar and clocks. Lots in the new subdivisions remaining unsold were advertised to advance certain new prices at such and such an hour on such and such a day. After these artificial changes, investors would gleefully rub their hands and explain to the downcast outsider that they had just gotten in on time. And the downcast outsider of whom there were many, yielding after repeated assaults of this kind, would himself become inoculated with the fever and finally prove the least restrained boomer of them all. From what I read at the time and heard after my return, I may safely declare that during the height of the infection two-thirds of our population were, in a sense, more insane than sane. Syndicates, subdivisions, and tracks, these were the most popular terms of the day and nearly everybody had a finger in one or the other pie. There were enough subdivisions to accommodate 10 million people and enough syndicates to handle the affairs of a nation. In talking about syndicates, the disagreement of members themselves as to values frequently prevented the consummation of important sales and resulted in the loss of large profits to the objectors as well as to their associates. In many a well-authenticated case, the property remained on the owner's hands until it became almost worthless. Wide awake syndicates evolved new methods, one of which the lottery plan became popular. A piece of land would be prepared for the market, and after the opening of streets, as many chances would be sold as there were lots in the tract. On the eventful day, the distribution took place in the presence of the interested and eager participants, each of whom made a selection as his number was drawn. To increase the attractiveness of some of these offers, cottages, and even more elaborate houses were occasionally promised for subsequent erection on a few lots. The excitement at many of these events, I was informed, beggard description. Among others sold in this manner at the beginning, or possibly even just before the boom, were the Williamson tract, beginning at the corner of Pico and Figueroa streets, and once the homeplace of the Foremans, and the O.W. Childs orchard on the east side of Main Street, and running south from what is now about 11th. Both of these drawings took place in Turnverine Hall, and chances sold at about $350 each. Tricksters, of whom at such times there are always enough, could exercise their mischievous proclivities, and the unwary one, who came to be known as the Tenderfoot, was, as usual, easily hoodwinked. Land advertised as having water privileges proved to be land under water, or in dry creeks, land described as possessing scenic attractions, consisted of mountains and chasms. So situated were many of these lots that no use whatever could be made of them, and I presume that they are without value even now. One of the effects of subdividing a good part of the 10,000 or more acres of agricultural land in the city then irrigated from Zanjos, was both to reduce the calls for the service of the city Zanjero, and to lessen considerably the importance and emoluments of his office. Advertisers tried to outdo themselves and each other in original and captivating announcements, with the result that, while many displayed wit and good humor, others were ridiculously extravagant. The artesian water company came onto the market with 300 acres of land near Compton, and the assurance that, while the water in this section will be stocked, the stock will not be watered. Alvin D. Brock, another purveyor of ranches declared, I mean business and do not allow any alfalfa to grow under my feet. AF Kirchival, the poet to whom I have already referred, relieved himself of this exuberance regarding the Kirchival track, on Santa Fe Avenue between Lemon and Alamo Street. He or she that hesitates is lost, an axiom that holds good in real estate as well as in affairs of the heart, Salem. Another advertisement read as follows, Halt, Halt, Halt, speculators and home-seekers' attention, $80,000, $80,000, $80,000, sold in a day at the beautiful McGarry Tract, bounded by 9th and 10th and Alameda streets. Come early, before they are all gone. Still another was displayed, boom, boom, Arcadia, boom, boom. And now and then from a quarter to a full page would be taken to advertise a new town or subdivision with a single word, the name of the place, such as Ramirez. Vernon and Vernon Dale were names given to subdivisions on Central Avenue near Jefferson Street. Advertising the former, the real estate poet was called into requisition with these lines. Go wing thy flight from star to star, from world to luminous world as far, as the universe spreads its flaming wall, take all the pleasures of all the spheres and multiply each through endless years, one winter at Vernon is worth them all. While, in setting forth the attractions of the Lily Langtree Tract, the promoter drew as follows from the store of English verse, Sweet Vernon, loveliest village of the plain, where health and plenty cheers the laboring swan, where smiling spring is earliest visit paid and parting summer's lingering blooms delayed. Concluding the announcement with the following lines characteristic of the times. Catch on before the whole country rushes to Vernon Dale. Every man who wishes a home in Paradise should locate in this, the loveliest district of the whole of Southern California. This is where the orange groves are loveliest. This is where the grapes are most luxuriant. This is where the vegetation is grandest. This is where the flowers are prettiest. With the boom affecting not only Los Angeles, but also each acre of her immediate vicinity, Pasadena, and the district lying between the two towns took on new life. Five thousand inhabitants boasted a million dollars in deposits, and a couple of millions invested in new buildings, while guilt-edged Raymond, a colony surrounding the Raymond Hotel, became a bustling center. In March George Whitcomb laid out Glendora, naming it with the use of a couple of additional letters, after his wife Ladora. And at the first day's sale he auctioned off three hundred lots. In December the old established town of Pomona was incorporated. Whittier, started by Quakers from Indiana, Iowa, and Illinois, and christened in honor of the New England poet, began at this time with a boom, two hundred thousand dollars worth of property, having been sold there in four months. This prosperity led one newspaper to say with extreme modesty, Whittier is the coming place. It will dwarf Monrovia and eclipse Pasadena, nothing can stop it. The Quakers are coming in from all over the United States. And another journal contained in advertisement commencing as follows, Whittier, Whittier, Whittier, Queen of the Foothills and Crown of the San Gabriel Valley. IW Lorde established Lordesburg, or at least an elaborate hotel there, for in those days a good hotel was half of a town, and when Lordesburg slumped he sold the building to a colony of dunkers for a college. Nadeau Park was projected as a town at the junction of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe's Balona Road, and the Southern Pacific. Santa Ana, too, after its sale in June of over eighty thousand dollars worth of land, came forward in the summer with this confident salutation. This is Pure Gold, Santa Ana, the metropolis of Southern California's Ferris Valley, chief among ten thousand, or the one altogether lovely. Beautiful, busy, bustling, booming, it can't be beat. The town now has the biggest kind of a big, big boom, a great big boom, and you can accumulate due cuts by investing. Fullerton was started in July when ninety two thousand dollars changed hands within half a day, and conditions favoring the young community, it survived. Rivera and the Upper Los Nieto's Valley also then came into being. The glories of Tustin, founded in 1867 by Columbus Tustin, but evidencing little prosperity until twenty years later, were proclaimed through such unassuming advertisements as this. Tustin, the beautiful, unexcelled in charm and loveliness, and earthly Eden unsurpassed in the wealth of flower and foliage. However, imagination cannot conceive it, it must be realized. Supplemented by the following versification. When the angel of peace to earth first descended, to bless with his presence the children of men, mid the fairest of scenes his pathway airtended, and unto his smile the glad earth smiled again. He joined in the fragrance of oranges and roses, and loved, mid their glances, to linger or roam. And he said, here in Tustin, where beauty reposes, I also will linger or build me a home. In April, Jonathan S. S. Lawson, and a company of Los Angeles capitalists, laid out and started the town of Azusa, on a slope eight hundred feet high in a rich and promising country. Not so far away was Palomare's, announced through the following reassuring poster. Grand railroad excursion and genuine auction sale. No shenanigan. Thursday, June 7th, 1887. Beautiful Palomare's. Pomona Valley. Lunch, coffee, lemonade, and ice water free. Full band of music. And here it may not be without interest to note the stations then passed in making such an excursion from Los Angeles to the new town. Commercial Street, Garvanza, Raymond, Pasadena, LaManda Park, named Henry W. O. Mulvaney tells me after Amanda, wife of L.J. Rose, Santa Anita, Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Glendora, San Dimas, and Lord'sburg. Providencia Rancho, consisting of seventeen thousand acres of mountain and valley, was opened up in 1887 and the new town of Burbank was laid out. J. Downey Harvey, J. G. Downey's heir, and David Burbank, the Good Nature dentist and old-timer, then living on the site of the Burbank Theater, once the orchard of J. J. Warner, being among the directors. About the same time, twelve thousand acres of the Lankership Rancho, adjoining the Providencia, were disposed of. Sixty-five dollars was asked for a certificate of stock, which was exchangeable later for an acre of land. Glendale was another child of the boom, for the development of which much dependence was placed on a new motor railroad. Rose Crantz and its addition were two other tracks relying on improved facilities for communicating with Los Angeles. Under the caption, Veni, Vidi, Vici, a motor road was promised for service within ninety days, and lots from one hundred dollars up were then to be advanced five hundred percent. Excursions accompanied by Colonel Bartlett's Seventh Infantry Band to Magnificent Monte Vista, the gem of the mountains, the queen of the valley, near San Fernando, fifteen miles from Los Angeles, were among the trips arranged. Speaking of the boom, I recall an amusing situation, such as now and then relieve the dark gloom of the aftermath, when a well-known suburb of Los Angeles was laid out, someone proposed that a road be named Euclid Avenue, whereupon a prominent citizen protested vigorously and asked what Mr. Euclid had ever done for Southern California. During 1887 and at the suggestion of George E. Guard, many neighboring towns, a number of which have long since become mere memories, donated each a lot through whose sale a Los Angeles County exhibit at the reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic was made possible. And among these places were Alosta, Gladstone, Glendora, Asusa, Beaumont, Arcadia, Raymond, San Gabriel, Glendale, Burbank, Lamar's addition to Alosta, Rosecrance, St. James, Bethune, Modenville, Olivewood, Oleander, Lord'sburg, McCoy's, footnote, bearing the name of Frank McCoy, who died on March 4th, 1915, and footnote, addition to broad acres, Ivanhoe, New Vernon, Altavista, Nado Park, Bonita Tract, San Dimas, Port Bayona, Southside, Ontario, Walieria, and Ocean Spray. When the lots were sold at Armory Hall some ten thousand dollars was realized, twelve hundred and seventy five dollars paid by Colonel Banbury for a piece of land at Pasadena being the highest price brought. Not even the celebrity given the place through the gift of a lot to the grand old man of England saved Gladstone, and St. James soon passed into the realms of the forgotten, notwithstanding that one hundred and fifty vehicles and five hundred people were engaged in June in caring for the visitors who made their way to the proposed town site five miles from Anaheim and bought, when there, forty thousand dollars worth of property in a few hours. Ben E. Ward, a good citizen whose office was in the renovated municipal Adobe, operated with Santa Monica Realty during the boom, somewhat as did Colonel Tom Fitch in the cradle days of the base city. He ran private trains and sold acre and villa lots in five and ten acre farms for ten percent of the price at the fall of the hammer. The balance of the first quarter payable on receipt of the agreement and the other payments in six, twelve, and eighteen months. On one occasion in June Ward was advertising as follows, hoe for the beach, tomorrow, tomorrow, grand auction sale at Santa Monica, 350 acres, 350. One of the greatest panoramic views the human eye ever rested upon, including Bayona, Lake, and Harbor, with its outgoing and incoming vessels, the Grand Old Pacific, the handsome new Hotel Arcadia, while in the distance may be seen Los Angeles, the pride of all, and the coming city of two hundred thousand people. Long Beach came in for its share of the boom. In July, H.G. Wilshire, after whom I believe Wilshire Boulevard was named, as general manager of the new Hotel at that place, offered lots at $150 and upward, advertising under the caption, Peerless Long Beach, and declaring that the place was no new settlement, but a prosperous town of two thousand people, to be reached without change of cars. The Hotel was to be doubled in size, streets were to be sprinkled, and bathhouses, with hot and cold water, were to be built. One of the special attractions promised was even a billiard room for ladies, but the Hotel was afterward destroyed by fire, and Long Beach dwindled away until, in 1890, it had scarcely a population of 500. Besides the improving of Santa Monica and the expanding of San Pedro, several harbor projects were proposed in the days of the boom. About the first of June 1887, Port Bayona, formerly Will Tells, began to be advertised as the future harbor of Southern California, and the ocean terminus of the California Central Railroad, which was a part of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe system. In August, thousands of people assembled at the beach to celebrate the opening of La Bayona Harbor. The enterprise had been backed by Lewis Messmer, Bernard Mills, Frank Sabici, and others. And Messmer, General Nelson A. Miles, ex-governor, Stoneman, Eugene Germain, and J.D. Lynch were among the speakers. A syndicate, headed by J. R. Tuffery, which purchased the Palos Verdes Rancho, announced its intention of creating the harbor of Catalina at Portuguese Bay Bend. The syndicate was to build there a large hotel named Borromea, while a Mr. Kirkhoff, encouraged by the prospect of a railroad around Point-Fermine, was to erect another huge hotel and lay out a watering place. As the boom progressed, and railroads continued to advertise Los Angeles, the authorities began to look with consternation on the problem of housing the crowds still booked to come from the East, and it was soon recognized that many prospective settlers would need to roost for a while, as best they could, in the surrounding territory. The hotel splendid, an enterprise fostered by Hamel and Denker, proprietors of the United States Hotel, was then commenced on Main Street, between 9th and 10th, though it was never completed. Numerous capitalists and business houses encouraged the proposition that the site was sold but a single generation ago to O.T. Johnson, a local philanthropist, for about $25,000, a conservative estimate placing its present value at not much less than $2.5 million. But there are other indications of the strength or perhaps the weakness of the boom. In 1887, the total assessment of the young city and county was $3 million, or about one-third that recorded for the longer developed city and county of San Francisco. In one day in July, real estate valued at $664,000 was transferred, on another day in the same month $730,000 worth, and soon after in one day property to the value of $930,000 changed hands. From $40 million in March 1886, the wealth of the county jumped in just two years to $103 million. So many indeed were the purchasers of real estate in Los Angeles at that time who soon left the town and were seldom or never heard of again, and so many were the sales affected by proxy that even in August of 1887, one of the newspapers contained over three pages of taxes listed on property whose possessors were unknown. During this wild excitement few men of position or reputation who came to town escaped interrogation as to what they thought of the boom. Phil D. Armour, head of the Armour Packing Company, was one who arrived late in July and whose opinion was immediately sought, and his answer indicated the unbounded confidence inspired in the minds of even outsiders by the unheard of development of land values. Boom, will it break soon, repeated Armour and proceeded to enter his own query. There is no boom to break. This is merely the preliminary to a boom which will so outclass the present activities that its sound will be as thunder to the cracking of a hickory nut. Nor was Armour the only one who was so carried away by the phenomena of the times. San Francisco watched Los Angeles with wonder and interest. Marvelling at all she heard of the magic changes south of the Tahachipe and asking herself if Los Angeles might not be able to point the way to better methods of city building. I thus endeavored to give a slight idea of the lack of mental poise displayed by our good people in the year 1887 when the crop of millionaires was so great that to be one was no distinction at all. But alas, the inevitable collapse came and values tumbled fully as rapidly as they had advanced. Finding many, who but a short period before had based their worth on investments figured at several times their value, loaded with overwhelming debts and mortgages quite impossible of liquidation. Indeed, readjustments took years and years to accomplish, and so it happened that many an imaginary croceus then became the bitter, often unsuccessful, for humble employment. Just as is always the case too, in periods such as I have described, the depression when it came was correspondingly severe and sudden. Many of our greatest boomers and speculators lost all hope and more than one poor suicide so paved the price of his inordinate craving for wealth. To be sure, some level-headed people, acting more conservatively than the majority, in time derived large profits from the steady increase in values. Those who bought judiciously during that period are now the men of wealth in Los Angeles, and this is more particularly true as to ownership in business sections of the city. Even at the height of the boom, but little property on any of the streets south of Fifth was worth more than $200 a foot. Following the boom, there was an increase of building, much of a doubtless due to contracts already entered into. Incidental to the opening of the Southern Pacific Railroad's route between the North and South by way of the coast, on August 20th, a great railway FET was held at Santa Barbara, the first through trains from San Francisco and Los Angeles meeting at that point. A procession, illustrating the progress and transportation methods from the borough pack and stagecoach to the modern train of cars, filed about the streets of the old Spanish town. On the return of the Los Angeles excursion train, however, a defective culvert near the Camulos Ranch caused the cars with 150 passengers to plunge down an embankment, luckily with but few casualties. Ellie Mosher who had much literary ability and is still remembered as the author of the poem The Stranded Bugle joined the Times staff in August and became prominently identified with the conduct of that newspaper. Later he left journalism and entered on a business career in New York, but experiencing reverses he returned to Los Angeles. Failing here he at length committed suicide to the deep regret of a large circle of friends. Late in August the paving of Main Street, the first thoroughfare of Los Angeles to be so improved was begun, much to the relief of our townspeople who had too long borne the inconvenience of dusty and muddy roadways and who, after heavy rains the winter before, had in no uncertain fashion given utterance to their disgust at the backward conditions. This expression was the result of a carefully and generally organized movement. For one morning it was discovered that all of the principal streets were covered with mounds of earth resembling little graves into each of which had been thrust imitation tombstones bearing such inscriptions as the following. Beware of quicksand fair for fairing across 25 cents no duck hunting allowed in this pond boats leave this landing every half hour. Requiescott in Paz. This year the Suez de Californiche Post which had been established in 1874 began to appear as a daily with a weekly addition. The Germans in Los Angeles in the 80s representing no mean portion of the burger's strength. In 1887 the Turnvereen Germania sold to L.J. Rose and J.B. Lancashim for removal and renovation the frame structure on Spring Street which for so many years had served as its home and erected in its place a substantial brick building costing about $40,000. Six or seven years afterward the society resold that property to be used later as the Elks Hall for $100,000. Then it bought the lot at 319 and 321 South Main Street and erected there its new stone-fronted Turner Hall. On the occasion of the cornerstone laying on August 14, 1887 when the Turnvereen Germania the Austrian Vereen and the Schwabenvereen joined hands and voices the Germans celebrated their advancement by festivities long to be remembered ex-mayor Henry T. Hazard making the chief address. But I dare say that the assembly particularly enjoyed the reminiscences of the pioneer president Jake Kurtz who took his hearers back to the olden days of the Round House that favorite rendezvous which stood on the very spot where the new building was to rise and pointed out how time had tenderly and appropriately joined the associations of the past with those of the present. Turner Hall with its restaurant brought our German citizens into daily and friendly intercourse and long served the rapidly developing community. How true it is that a manager can find himself to that which he best understands is shown in the case of L.J. Rose who later went into politics and in 1887 was elected state senator. Neglecting his business for that of the public he borrowed money and was finally compelled to dispose of his interest in the New York House. Indeed financially speaking he went from bad to worse and in the same year he sold his magnificent estate to an English syndicate for $1,250,000 receiving $750,000 in cash in the balance in stock. The purchasers made a failure of the enterprise and Rose lost $500,000. He was almost penniless when on May 17, 1899 he died a suicide. Rose was an indefatigable worker for the good of the community and was thoroughly interested in every public movement. For years he was one of my intimate friends and as I write these lines I am moved with sentiments of sadness and deep regret. Let us hope that in the life beyond he is enjoying that peace denied him here. The Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad begun the previous year by JF Crank and destined to be absorbed by the Santa Fe was open for traffic to Pasadena on September 17 by a popular excursion in which thousands participated. With the increase in the number and activity of the Chinese here came a more frequent display of their native customs and ceremonies the Joss House and the theater being early instituted. On October 21st a street parade feast and theatrical performance with more or less barbarous music marked a celebration that brought Mongolians from near and far. On October 24th Cardinal Gibbons made his first visit to Los Angeles the most notable call I believe of so eminent a prelate since my settling here. One of the numerous fires of the 80s that gave great alarm was the blaze of October 28th which destroyed the Santa Fe Railroad depot and with it a train load of oil. The conflagration proved obstinate to fight although the good work of the department prevented its spread. A host of people for hours watched the spectacular scene. The Raymond Hotel commonly spoken of as belonging to Pasadena although standing just inside the city to the south was completed in November and catering exclusively to tourists its situation on an eminent knoll overlooking the towns and orange groves contributed to make it widely famous. In April 1895 it was swept by fire to be rebuilt on larger and finer lines. The Hotel La Pintoreska on Fair Oaks Avenue burned four or five years ago was another Pasadena hostelry where I often stopped when wishing to escape the hurly-burly of city life. Now its site and gardens have been converted into a public park. In November following the efforts made by the Board of Trade to secure one of the veterans homes projected by Congress the managers of the National Home for the Disabled Volunteer Soldiers visited Los Angeles. A committee representing businessmen and the Grand Army showed the visitors around and as a result of the cooperation of General Nelson A. Miles, Judge Brunson, representing Senator Jones and others 300 acres of the old San Vincente Rancho were donated by the Jones and Baker Estates in the Santa Monica land and water company as were also 300 acres of the Woolskill Tract. Orchards were laid out and barracks, chapel, hospital and extra buildings for a thousand men erected. Near this worthy institution housing as it now does more than 2000 veterans has developed and prospered thanks to the patronage of these soldiers and their families. The Little Town of Saltel In November local Democratic and Republican leaders wishing to draft a new charter for Los Angeles agreed on a nonpartisan board consisting of William H. Workman, Cameron E. Tom, I. R. Dunkelberger, Dr. Joseph Kurtz, Walter S. Moore, Jeremiah Baldwin, General John Mansfield, P. M. Scott, J. H. Book, Jose G. Estudillo, Charles E. Day, Thomas B. Brown, W. W. Robinson, A. F. Mackey and George H. Bonebrake. And the following 31st of May the board was duly elected. Workman was chosen chairman and Moore secretary and on October 20th the result of their deliberations was adopted by the city. In January 1889 the legislature confirmed the action of the Common Council. The new charter increased the number of wards from five to nine and provided for the election of a councilman from each ward. As a result of an agitation in favor of Los Angeles the Southwest headquarters of the United States Army were transferred from Whipple Barracks, Arizona about the beginning of 1887 the event being celebrated by a dinner to Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles at the Nado Hotel. Within less than a year however General Miles was transferred to San Francisco General B. H. Greerson succeeding him at this post. End of chapter 38 Chapter 39 of 60 years in Southern California 1853 to 1913 by Harris Newmark This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand Chapter 39 proposed state division 1888 to 1891 By agreement among property owners the widening of Fort Street from 2nd to 9th began in February 1888 This was not accomplished without serious opposition many persons objecting to the change on the ground that it would ruin the appearance of their bordering lots. I was one of those, I am frank to say, who looked with disfavor on the innovation but time has shown that it was an improvement. The widened street, now known as Broadway perhaps being the only fine business avenue of which Los Angeles can boast. Booth and Barrett, the famous Tradigions visited Los Angeles together this winter giving a notable performance in the child's opera house. They're combined genius showing to greatest advantage in the presentation of Julius Caesar and Othello. Toward the end of the 70s I dipped into an amusing volume The Rise and Fall of the Mustache by Robert J. Burdette then associated with the Burlington Hawkeye little thinking that a decade later would find the author famous and a permanent resident of Southern California. Footnote Dr. Burdette died on November 19, 1914 and footnote. His wife Clara Bradley Burdette whom he married in 1899 and who is well known as a club woman has been associated with him in many local activities. George Wharton James and Englishman also took up his residence in Southern California in 1888 finally settling in Pasadena although seven years previously he had been an interested visitor in Los Angeles. James has traveled much in the southwest and besides lecturing he has written 10 or 12 volumes dealing in a popular manner with the Spanish missions and kindred subjects. Through the publication by D. Appleton and Company of one of the early books of value dealing with our section of the state progress was made in the late 80s in durably advertising the coast. This volume was entitled California of the South and as a scientifically prepared guide was written by two fellow townsmen Doctors Walter Lindley and J. P. Whitney. Very shortly after their coming to Los Angeles in April 1888 I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. and Mrs. Tomas Lorenzo Duque with whom I have since been on terms of intimacy. Mr. Duque, a Cuban by birth is a broad-minded educated gentleman of the old school. Frederick William Braun established on May 1st at 127 New High Street the first exclusively wholesale drug house in Southern California later removing to 287 North Main Street once the site of the adobe in which I was married. The same season my brother whose health had become precarious was again compelled to take a European trip and it was upon his return in September 1890 that he settled in Los Angeles building his home at 1043 South Grand Avenue but a few doors from mine. The coastline branch of the Santa Fe Railroad was opened in August between Los Angeles and San Diego. W. E. Hughes has been credited with suggesting the second and present Chamber of Commerce and J. F. Humphreys is said to have christened it when it was organized on October 15. E. W. Jones was the first president and Thomas A. Lewis the first secretary. In addition to these, S. B. Lewis, Colonel H. G. Otis, J. V. Wachel, a son-in-law of L. J. Rose, Colonel I. R. Dunkelberger and William H. Workman are entitled to a great deal of credit for the movement. So well known is this institution, even internationally, and so much has been written about it, that I need hardly speak of its remarkable and honorable part in developing Southern California and all of the Southland's most valuable resources. Late in the fall, the Los Angeles Theater, a neat brick edifice, was opened on Spring Street between 2nd and 3rd. At that time, other places of amusement were the Child's or Grand Opera House, Mott Hall over Mott Market, an unassuming room without stage facilities, where Adelina Patti once sang, and where Charles Dickens Jr. gave a reading from his father's books, and Hazard's Pavilion at Fifth and Olive, built on the present site of the Temple Auditorium by Mayor H. T. Hazard and his associate, George H. Pike. During the boom, especially and for a few years thereafter, as when, in 1889, Evangelist Moody held forth, this latter place was very popular, and among celebrities who lectured there was Thomas Nast, Harper's great cartoonist, who had so much to do with bringing Boss Tweed to justice. As Nast lectured, he gave interesting exhibitions of his genius to illustrate what he had to say, and many of his sketches were very effective. Doubtless alluding to the large audience gathered to do him honor, the artist said, Ladies and gentlemen, I will now show you how to draw a big house, whereupon he rapidly sketched one. On the morning of October 21st, the Los Angeles Times created one of the most noted surprises in the history of American politics, making public the so-called Merchison Letters, through which the British diplomat Lord Sackville West caught strangely napping, was recalled in disgrace from his eminent post as a British minister to Washington. In 1882, George Ascudby located at Pomona. Though of English grandparents, Ascudby possessed a strong Republican bias, and wishing to test the attitude of the administration toward Great Britain, he formed the scheme of fathoming Cleveland's purpose even at the British minister's expense. Accordingly, on September 4th, 1888, in the midst of the presidential campaign, he addressed Lord West, signing himself Charles F. Merchison, and pretending that he was still a loyal, though naturalized Englishman needing advice as how to vote. Merchison reminded his lordship that, just as a small state had defeated Tilden, so a mere handful of naturalized countrymen might easily carry California. The British minister was betrayed by the plausible words, and on September 13th he answered the Pomona farmer, at the same time indicating his high regard for Cleveland as a friend of England. Ascudby gave the correspondence publicity through the Times, and instantly the letters were telegraphed throughout America and to England, where they made as painful an impression as they had caused jubilation or anger in this country. How, as a consequence, diplomatic relations between America and England were for a while broken off is familiar history. During the winter of 1888-89, Alfred H. and Albert K. Smiley, twin brothers who had amassed a fortune through successful hotel management at summer resorts in the mountains of New York, came to California and purchased about 200 acres near Redlands, situated on a ridge commanding a fine view of San Timoteo Canyon, and there they laid out the celebrated Canyon Crest Park, more popularly known as Smiley Heights. They also gave the community a public library. On account of their connections, they were able to attract well-to-do settlers and tourists to their neighborhood, and so contribute, in an important way, to the development and fame of the Redlands. The city hall was erected during the years 1888-89 on the east side of Broadway, between 2nd and 3rd streets, on property once belonging to L. H. Titus. As a detail indicating the industrial conditions of that period, I may note that John Hanlon, the contractor, looked with pride upon the fact that he employed as many as 30-40 workmen, and all at one time. Another effort in the direction of separating this part of California from the northern section, was made in December 1888, and here received enthusiastic support. General William Vandiver, then a representative in Congress from the 6th District, introduced into that body a resolution providing for a state to be called South California. Soon after, a mass meeting was held in Hazard's Pavilion, and a campaign was opened with an executive committee to further the movement. But, California is still, and I hope will long continue to be, a splendid, undivided territory. On January 1st, 1889, Pasadena held her first Rose Tournament. There were chariot races and other sports, but the principal event was a parade of vehicles of every description, which moving along under the graceful burden of their beautiful floral decorations presented a magnificent, and typically Southern California winter site. This tournament was so successful that it has become an annual event participated in by many and attracting visitors from near and far. It is managed by a permanent organization, the Tournament of Roses Association, whose members in 1904 presented Tournament Park, one of the city's pleasure grounds, to Pasadena. Once outdistanced by both main and spring streets, and yet more and more rising to importance as the Sisi grew, Fort Street, a name with an historical significance, in 1889 was officially called Broadway. Fred L. Baker, who reached Los Angeles with his father Milo Baker in 1874, designed in 1889, and when he was but 24 years of age, the first locomotive built in Los Angeles. It was constructed at the Baker Ironworks for the Los Angeles County Railroad, and was dubbed the Providencia, and when completed it weighed 15 tons. On February 16th, Jean-Louis Saint-Savain, everywhere pleasantly known as Don-Louis, died here, aged 73 years. I've spoken of L.J. Rose's love for thoroughbred horses. His most noted possession was Stambol, the celebrated stallion, which he sold for $50,000. At Rosemead, toward the end of the 80s, there were about 120 pedigreed horses, and at a sale in 1889, 50 of these brought $190,000. This reminds me that early April, the same year, Nicolás Covavrubias, in whose stable on Los Angeles Street, but a short time before, nearly 100 horses had perished by fire, sold Gladstone to L.H. Titus for $2,500. General Volney E. Howard died in May, aged 80 years, just 10 years after he had concluded his last notable public service as a member of the State Constitutional Convention. One of those who well illustrate the constant search for the ideal is Dr. Joseph Kurtz. In the spring of 1889, he toured Europe to inspect clinics and hospitals, and, inspired by what he had seen, he helped on his return to more firmly establish the Medical College of Los Angeles, later, and now, a branch of the University of California. In 1889, I built another residence at 1051 South Grand Avenue, and there we lived for several years. As in the case of our Fort Street home, in which four of our children died. So, here again, joy changed to sorrow, when on November 18, 1890, our youngest daughter, Josephine Rose, was taken from us at the age of eight years. The Los Angeles Public Library was once more moved in July from the Downey Block to the City Hall, where, with some 6,000 books and about 130 members, it remained until April 1906, when it was transferred by librarian Charles F. Loomis to the Annex of the Laughlin Building. It had then over 100,000 volumes. In the fall of 1908, it was removed to the New Hamburger Building. Colonel James G. Eastman, who arrived in Los Angeles during the late 60s, associated himself with Anson Brunson in the Practice of Law, and, as a cultured an aristocratic member of the Bar, became well-known. For the Centennial Celebration here, he was chosen to deliver the oration, yet, 13 years later, he died in the county poor house, having, in the meantime, sunk to the lowest depths of degradation. Drinking himself literally into the gutter, he lost his self-respect, and finally married a common squall. The early attempts to create another county, of which Anaheim was to have been the seat, are known. In 1889, the struggle for division was renewed, but under changed conditions. Santa Ana, now become an important town, and nearer the heart of the proposed new county, was the more logical center. But, although Anaheim had formally, strongly advocated the separation, she now opposed it. The legislature, however, authorized divorce, and the citizens chose Santa Ana as their county seat, and thus, on August 1st, Orange County began its independence. Although the cable lines on Second and Temple Streets were not unqualified successes, J. F. Crank and Herman Silver, in 1887, obtained a franchise for the construction of a double-track cable railway in Los Angeles. In 1889, both the Boyle Heights and the Downey Avenue lines were in operation. On August 3rd, 1889, the Boyle Heights section of the Los Angeles cable railway was inaugurated with a luncheon at the power house, invitations to which had been sent out by the Boyle Heights Board of Trade, William H. Workman President, preceded by a parade of cars. And on November 2nd, the official opening with its procession of trains on the Downey Avenue line culminated at noon, with speechmaking at the Downey Avenue bridge, and in the evening with a sham battle and fireworks. Some old timers took part in the literary exercises, and among others I may mention, Mayor Henry T. Hazard, Dr. J. S. Griffin, General R. H. Chapman, and the Vice President and Superintendent of the System, J. C. Robinson. The East Los Angeles line started at Jefferson Street, ran north on Grand Avenue to 7th, east on 7th to Broadway, north on Broadway to 1st, east on 1st to Spring, north on Spring to the Plaza, down San Fernando Street, then on the Viaduct built over the Southern Pacific tracks and then out Downey Avenue. The Boyle Heights line started on 7th Street at Alvarado, ran along 7th to Broadway, up Broadway to 1st, and east on that street to the junction of 1st and Chicago streets. Quite a million dollars, it is said, was invested in the machinery and tracks, so soon to give away to the more practicable electric trolley trams, to say nothing of the expenditures for rolling stock, and for the time being, the local transportation problems seemed solved, although the cars first used were open without glass windows and the passengers in bad weather were protected only by curtains sliding up and down. To further celebrate the accomplishment, a banquet was given Colonel J. C. Robinson on December 18th, 1889. Herman Silver, to whom I have just referred, had not only an interesting association as a friend of Lincoln, but was a splendid type of citizen. He achieved distinction in many activities, but especially as president of the City Council. On November 4th, Bernard Cohn, one of the originators of Hellman Haas & Company, now Haas Baruch & Company, the well-known Grocers, and a pioneer of 1856 died. During the late 70s and early 80s, he was a man of much importance, both as a merchant and a city father, sitting in the Council of 1888, and becoming remarkably well-read in the ordinances and decrees of the Los Angeles of his day. Like Abbott Kinney, Dr. Norman Bridge, an authority on tuberculosis, came to Sierra Madre in search of health in 1890, lived for a while after that at Pasadena, and finally settled in Los Angeles. Five or six years after he arrived here, Dr. Bridge began to invest in California and Mexican oil and gas properties. Despite his busy life, he has found time to further hire culture, having served as trustee of the Throop Institute and as president of the Southwest Museum. To both of which institutions he has made valuable contributions, while he has published two scholarly volumes of essays and addresses. Thomas Edward Gibbon, who, since his arrival in 1888, has influenced some of the most important movements for the benefit of Los Angeles and whose activities have been so diversified in 1890 bought the Daily Herald, becoming for several years the president of its organization and its managing editor. During his incumbency, Gibbon filled the columns with mighty interesting reading. After living in Los Angeles thirty years and having already achieved much, I.W. Hellman moved to San Francisco on March 2, 1890, and there reorganized the Nevada Bank. Still a resident of the Northern City, he has become a vital part of its life and preeminent in its financial affairs. Judge Walter Van Dyke was here in the early 50s, although it was some years before I knew him, and I am told that at that time he almost concluded a partnership with Judge Hayes for the practice of law. He was judge of the Superior Court when the City of Los Angeles claimed title, while I was president of the Temple Block Company, to about nine feet of the north end of Temple Block. The instigator of this suit was Lewis Messmer, who saw the advantage that would accrue to his property at the corner of Main and Rakina streets if the square should be enlarged, but we won the case. A principal witness for us was Jose Mascarell, and our attorneys were Stephen M. White and Houghton Silent and Campbell. My second experience with Judge Van Dyke was in 1899 when I bought a lot from him at Santa Monica. This attempt to enlarge the area at the junction reminds me of the days when the young folks of the neighborhood used to play tag and other games there. Baseball, here called Town Ball, was another game indulged in at that place. The Temple Block came to be known as Lawyer's Block because the upper floors were largely given over to members of that profession, and many of the attorneys I have had occasion to speak of as being here after our acquisition of the building had their headquarters there. Thus I became acquainted with Judge Charles Silent, who, like his partner Sherman Otis Houghton, hailed from San Jose in 1886, or possibly 1885, the two doubtless coming together. Judge Houghton brought with him a reputation for great physical and moral courage, and the two friends formed with Alexander Campbell, the law firm of Houghton, Silent, and Campbell. Judge Charles Silent, a native of Baden, Germany, born Stumm, a name Englished on naturalization. Father of Edward D. Silent, and father-in-law of Frank J. Thomas, once served as Supreme Court Judge in Arizona, to which office he was appointed by President Hayes. And since his arrival here, he has occupied a position of prime importance, not only on account of his qualifications as an attorney, but also through the invaluable service he has always rendered this community. The judge now possesses a splendid orange orchard near the foothills, where he is passing his declining years. In the same way I had pleasant relations with the barrister, C. White Mortimer, for a long time, the popular English Vice Consul, who came from Toronto. Among other attorneys whom it was a pleasure to know were Aurelius W. Hutton, John D. Bicknell, once a partner of Stephen M. White, J. H. Blanchard, Albert M. Stevens, General John Mansfield, who, by the way, was the first Lieutenant Governor under the Constitution of 1879, Thomas B. Brown, District Attorney from 1880 until 1882, Will D. Gould, Julius Brasau, J. R. Deputy, Twice District Attorney, and General J. R. McConnell. Most of these gentlemen were here before 1880. On the 20th of January 1889, M. L. Graff, a practicing attorney, reached Los Angeles, and until my family broke up housekeeping, he was a regular and welcome visitor in my home. Fernand K. Rool came to Southern California in 1890, and soon after associated himself with the old Los Angeles Terminal Railroad. He was a whole-sold, generous man, and was henceforth identified with nearly every movement for the welfare of his adopted city. Charles Dudley Warner, the distinguished American author, revisited Los Angeles in May 1890, having first come here on horseback three years before, while roughing it on a tour through California, described in his book On Horseback, published in 1888. On his second trip, Warner, who was editor of Harper's Magazine, came ostensibly in the service of the Harper's, that firm later issuing his appreciative and well-illustrated volume Our Italy, in which he suggested certain comparisons between Southern California and Southern Europe. But the Santa Fe Railroad Company, then particularly desirous of attracting Easterners to the coast, really sent out the author, footing most, if not all, of the bills. Mrs. Custer, widow of the general, was another guest of the Santa Fe, and she also wrote about Southern California for periodicals in the East. News of the death in New York City, of General John C. Freymont, was received here the day after on July 14th, and caused profound regret. In the fall, Henry H. Markham stood for the governorship of California, and was elected, defeating ex-mayor, Pond of San Francisco, by a majority of about 8,000 votes, thereby enabling the Southland to boast of having again supplied the foremost dignity of the state. After several years of postgraduate study in higher institutions of learning in Germany, Leo Newmark, son of J. P. Newmark, in 1887 received his degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Strasburg. He then served in leading European hospitals, returning in 1890 to his native city, San Francisco, where he has attained much more than local eminence in his specialty, the diseases of the nerves. The public pleasure grounds, later known as Hollenbeck Park, were given to the city in 1890 to 1991 by William H. Workman and Mrs. J. E. Hollenbeck, Workman donating two-thirds and Mrs. Hollenbeck one-third of the land. Workman also laid out the walks and built the dam before the transfer to the city authorities. Mrs. Hollenbeck suggested the title Workman Hollenbeck Park, but Billy's proverbial modesty led him to omit his own name. About the same time, Mrs. Hollenbeck, recognizing the need of a refuge for worthy old people, and wishing to create a fitting memorial to her husband, who had died in 1885, endowed the Hollenbeck home with thirteen and a half acres in the Boyle Heights District, to maintain which she deeded in trust to John D. Bicknell, John M. Elliott, Frank A. Gibson, Charles L. Bachelor, and J. S. Chapman, several valuable properties, the most notable being the Hollenbeck Hotel and a block on Broadway near Seventh. More than once I have referred to the Chino Ranch along the home of pioneer Isaac Williams. In his most extravagant dreams, he could not have foreseen that in the years 1890-91, there would grow on many of his broad acres the much needed sugar beet. Nor could he have known that the first factory in the Southland to extract sugar from that source would be erected in a town bearing the name of Chino. The inauguration of this important activity in Southern California was due to Henry T. and Robert Oxnard, the last named then being engaged in sugar cane refining in San Francisco. Henry T. who had previously ventured in the beet sugar field in Nebraska while on the coast was impressed with the possibilities in our soil and climate, and after a survey of the state he reached a conclusion that of all California, the South offered the conditions most favorable to his plans. Accordingly he entered into negotiations with Richard Gerd, then the owner of the Chino Ranch who made some preliminary experiments. And the outcome was the factory started there in the season of 1890 to 91 under the superintendency of Dr. Porcius, a German agricultural chemist. In this initial enterprise the Oxnards met with such success that they extended their operations in 1898 establishing a second and larger factory in Ventura County in what soon came to be called Oxnard, Dr. Porcius again taking charge. Five or six years after the Oxnards opened their Chino factory Jay Ross Clark and his brother Senator William A. Clark commenced the erection of a plant at Alamitos and in the summer of 1897 the first beets there were sliced under the superintendency of G.S. Dyer now in Honolulu. Since then under a protective policy several more refineries have started up in the neighborhood of Los Angeles. In January 1891 the home of Peace Society was organized by the Hebrew ladies of Los Angeles largely through the exertions of Mrs. M. Kramer who was the first to conceive the idea of uniting Jewish women for the purpose of properly caring for and beautifying the last resting place of their dead. Amos G. Throop of Chicago more familiarly known among his friends and fellow citizens as Father Throop founded at Pasadena in 1891 the institution at first called Throop University and now known as the Throop College of Technology giving it $200,000 and becoming its first president. The next year when it was decided to specialize in manual training and polytechnic subjects the name was again changed remaining until 1913 Throop Polytechnic Institute. The Southern California Science Association later called the Southern California Academy of Science was organized in 1891 with Dr. A. Davidson as its first president and Mrs. Mary E. Hart as secretary. For five years it struggled for existence but having been reorganized and incorporated in 1896 it has steadily become a factor for intellectual progress. The Friday morning club began its existence in April 1891 as one of the social forces in the city many of the leading lecturers of the country finding a place on its platform and in 1899 the club built its present attractive home on Figueroa Street. As far as I was familiar with the facts I have endeavored in these recollections to emphasize the careers of those who from little have built it much and quite naturally think of William Denison Stevens whom I came to know through his association as a salesman from 1891 until 1902 with MA Newmark and Company after which he engaged with J. E. Carr on Broadway between 6th and 7th streets in the retail grocery business. Much of his success I attribute to honest steady purpose and a winning geniality. By leaps and bounds Stevens has advanced in 1907 to the presidency of the Chamber of Commerce in 1908 to the Grand Commandership of Knights Templars in California in 1909 to the Mayorality of Los Angeles in 1910 to one of the advisory committee for the building of the aqueduct. At present he is the congressman from the 10th congressional district. Three years before congressman Stevens entered the employee of the Newmarks Robert L. Craig had just severed his relations with them to form with R. H. Howell of Louisiana the third wholesale grocery house to come to Los Angeles. In the course of a few years Howell and Craig sold out but Craig being young and ambitious was not long in organizing another wholesale grocery known as Craig and Stewart which was succeeded by R. L. Craig and Company. At Craig's untimely death Mrs. Craig a woman of unusual mental talent took the reins and as one of the few women wholesale grocers in the country has since guided the destinies of the concern still finding time in her arduous life to serve the public as a very wide awake member of the Board of Education. Four other names of those once associated with my successors and who have been instrumental in establishing important commercial houses here are P.A. a brother of M.A. Newmark E.J. Levy Frank Humphreys now deceased and D. Veebers The first named for some years connected with Brownstein Newmark and Lewis now Brownstein and Lewis inaugurated and is at the head of P.A. Newmark and Company while Levy, Humphreys and Veebers incorporated the standard wooden wear company. In 1891 the terminal railroad was completed from Los Angeles to East San Pedro and rapid connection was thus established between Pasadena and the ocean the accomplishment being celebrated on November 14th by an excursion. The road ran via Long Beach and Rattlesnake later known as Terminal Island a place that might become it was hoped the terminus of one of the great transcontinental railroads and since the island is now at the end of the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad that hope has been realized. It was in connection with this railway enterprise that Long Beach made the great mistake of giving away the right of thoroughfare along her ocean front. End of Chapter 39 Chapter 40 of 60 years in Southern California 1853 to 1913 by Harris Newmark this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Kay Hand Chapter 40 The First Fiestas 1892 to 1897 Accompanied by my family I traveled to Alaska in 1892 going as far as Muir Glacier and visiting among other places Metla Kotla where we met Father William Duncan the famous Missionary and Ark Tander Sitka Juno and the Treadwell Mines near which the town of Treadwell has since developed Today the tourist starts from Seattle but we left Tacoma sailing north about the 7th of July I found much to inspire me in that rather extreme portion of the globe where I was profoundly impressed with the vast forests and colossal rivers of ice so emblematic of nature's law of eternal change Our party was especially fortunate in witnessing the rare sight of huge masses of ice as with the sound of thunder they broke from the glacier and floated away brilliantly tinted birds to an independent if passing existence Having arrived in the Bay of Sitka our ship the Queen of the Pacific struck a submerged rock Instantly excitement and even frenzy prevailed Levi Z. Leiter a member of the firm of Field, Leiter and Company of Chicago was so beside himself with fear that he all but caused a panic whereupon the captain ordered the first mate to put the Chicagoan and his family ashore Leiter however was shamed by his daughter Miss Mary Victoria afterward Lady Quarzone and wife of the viceroy of India who admonished him not to make a scene and having no desire to be left for a protracted stay in Sitka he came to his senses and the commotion somewhat abated Meantime not knowing how much damage had been done to the vessel I hastily proceeded to gather our party together when I missed Marco and only after considerable trouble found the boy in the cabin such as the optimism of youth with a huge sandwich in his hand not in the least excited over the possible danger nor in any mood to allow a little incident of that kind to dissipate his appetite when it became evident that the ship had sustained no vital damage the captain announced that as soon as a higher tide would permit we should proceed on our way in 1892 Abbott Kenny and F.G. Ryan disregarding the craze for property along the bluffs of old Santa Monica gave practical evidence of their faith in the future of the sand dunes hereabouts by buying an extensive strip of land on the ocean front some of it being within the town of Santa Monica but most of it stretching farther south they induced the Santa Fe to lay out a route to Ocean Park as the new town was to be called and having erected piers a bath house and an auditorium they built numerous cottages hardly was this enterprise well underway however when Ryan died and T.H. Dudley acquired his share in the undertaking in 1901 A.R. Frazier G.M. Jones and H.R. Gage purchased Dudley's half interest and the owners began to put the lots on the market one improvement after another was made involving heavy expenditures and in 1904 Ocean Park was incorporated as a city E.L. Dony and a partner had the good luck to strike some of the first oil found in quantities within the city limits they began operations in February on West State Street in the very residents section of the town and at about 160 feet below the surface they found oil enough to cause general excitement Mrs. Emma A. Summers who had been dealing in real estate since she came in 1881 quickly sank a well on Court Street near Temple which in a short time produced so lavishly that Mrs. Summers became one of the largest individual operators in crude oil she is now known as the Oil Queen at the suggestion of Mrs. M. Burton Williamson an interesting open air meeting of the Los Angeles Historical Society was held on the evening of March 28th at the residence of Don Antonio and Donya Mariana Coranel near the corner of Central Avenue and 7th Street 300 guests assembled to enjoy the proverbial Spanish hospitality of this distinguished couple and to hear reports of the activities of various Los Angeles societies Don Antonio possessed as is well known valuable historical and ethnological collections and some of his choicest curios were that evening placed at the service of his guests Professor Ira Moore participated presiding at a table once used by the first constitutional governor at Chianita and I still recall the manner in which Antonio chuckled when he told us how he had swapped four gentle cows for the piece of furniture while instead of a gavel Senora Coranel had provided a bell long used to summon the Indians to mission service as early as the height of the great boom Professor T. S. C. Low to whom I have referred in the story of an experiment in making gas advocated the construction of a railroad up the mountain later officially designated Mount Low almost immediately financed Sears acted on the proposal and ordered the route surveyed the collapse of the boom however then made the financing of the project impossible and the actual work of building the road was only begun in 1892 on the 4th of July the following year the first car carrying a small party of invited guests successfully ascended the incline and on August 23rd the railway was formally opened to the public the occasion being made a holiday in 1894 the Mount Low astronomical observatory was built at one time the railway was owned by Valentine Payton my agreeable neighbor and friend then and now residing on Westlake Avenue in June 1893 the Los Angeles post office was moved from its location at Broadway near 6th street to the national government building at the southeast corner of main and Winston streets which had just been completed at a cost of $150,000 seized with the same desire that animated many thousands who journeyed to Chicago I visited the world's fair in the fall of 1893 everywhere I was impressed with the extraordinary progress made especially by Americans since the display in Philadelphia and I was naturally proud of the exhibits from California in charge of my fellow townsmen Ben Truman Russell Judson Waters a well-known banker and member of Congress from the 6th district between 1899 and 1903 came from Redlands in 1894 and another Southern Californian who has turned his attention to literary endeavor his novel El Estronjero dealing with past local life Joseph Scott who has risen to distinction in the California legal world alighted in Los Angeles in June having tried without success to obtain newspaper work in Boston in 1887 although equipped with a letter of introduction from John Boyle O'Reilly in New York with only $2 in his pocket he was compelled to shoulder a hod but relief came as Scott himself jovially tells the tale he was carrying mortar and brick on a Tuesday in February 1890 and but two days later he faced the body of students at St. Bonaventura's College in Allegheny, New York as instructor in rhetoric within 10 months after Scott came to Southern California he was admitted to practice at the Los Angeles bar and since then he has been president of the Chamber of Commerce he is now a member of the Board of Education and all in all his services to the Commonwealth have been many and important the existence of the Merchants Association which was organized in 1893 with W. C. Furry as president and William Bean succeeded the following year by Jacob E. Wildeck son-in-law of Samuel Helman as secretary was somewhat precarious until 1894 in that year Los Angeles was suffering a period of depression and a meeting was called to devise ways and means for alleviating the economic ills of the city and also for attracting to Los Angeles some of the visitors to the mid-winter fair then being held in San Francisco at that meeting Max Mayberg a member of the association's executive committee suggested a carnival and the plan being enthusiastically endorsed the coming occasion was dubbed La Fiesta de Los Angeles Mayberg was appointed director general and the following persons among others were associated with him in the undertaking Mayor T. E. Rowan F. W. Wood R. W. Pridham H. Jevney J. O. Keppfle Leon Loeb H. T. Hazard Charles S. Walton and M. H. Newmark the fiesta lasted from the 10th to the 13th of April and proved a delightful affair the participants marched in costume to the city hall during a meeting of the council you served the government elected a queen Mrs. O. W. Child Jr to preside over the destinies of the city during the fiesta and communicated to everybody a spirit of uncontrollable enthusiasm based on a feeling of the most genuine patriotic sentiment the result was thoroughly successful the carnival bringing out the real Californian fellowship whole sold and ringing true indeed it is conceded by all who have seen Los Angeles grow that this first fiesta and the resulting strengthening of the association have been among the earliest and in some respects the most important elements contributed to the wonderful growth and development of our city a few evenings after the conclusion of the celebration and while the streets were brilliantly illuminated with Bengal fire the leaders again marched in a body this time to the hall over Mott Market where they not only laid plans for the second fiesta but installed J. O. Kepfle as president of the Merchants Association so enthusiastic had the citizens of Los Angeles really become that in the years 1895 and 1896 the fiesta was repeated and many prominent people supported the original committee assisting to make the second festival almost equal to the first among these patrons were John Alton Hancock Banning W. A. Barker A. C. Billick L. W. Blinn W. C. Blewett R. W. Burnham John M. Crawley James Cousner J. H. Dockweiler T. A. Eisen J. A. Fochay John F. Francis A. W. Francisco H. W. Frank Dan Freeman Mrs. Jesse Benton-Fremont W. M. Garland T. E. Gibbon J. T. Griffith Harley Hamilton R. H. Howell Sumner P. Hunt A. Jacoby General E. P. Johnson John Kahn F. W. King Abbott Kinney E. F. C. Clark J. Kurtz Dr. Carl Kurtz J. B. Lancashim General C. F. A. Last S. B. Lewis H. Lichtenberger Charles F. Loomis Samuel Mayer D. C. McGarvin John R. Matthews James J. Mellis L. E. Mosher Walter S. Newhall J. W. A. Off Colonel H. Z. Osborne Colonel H. G. Otis Madison T. Owens W. C. Patterson Niles Peace A. Pech John E. Plater R. W. Pridham Judge E. M. Ross F. K. Rule Frank Sabici J. T. Schubert Colonel W. G. Schreiber John Schumacher Professor P. W. Search Edward D. Silent Alfredo Solano George H. Stewart Frank J. Thomas D. K. Trask Ben C. Truman I. N. Van Wise K. H. Wade Stefan M. White Frank Wiggins C. D. Willard Dr. W. LeMoyne-Wills W. B. Wilshire H. J. Woolicott and W. D. Woolwine This second fiesta brought into the local field two men then unknown but each destined to play an important part in the affairs of Los Angeles. J. O. Kepfle President of the Merchants Association and M. H. Newmark Chairman of the Finance Committee selected by Felix J. Z. Handelar a reporter for the Los Angeles Herald during the short ownership of John Bradbury as financial and publicity agent with the result that more than $30,000 was collected and valuable advertising was secured. At that time the Finance Committee also discovered the undeveloped talent of Lyndon Ellsworth-Bamer since so well known as the Impressario who in managing with wonderful success the sale of tickets for the various events laid the foundation for his subsequent career. Commencing with Adelina Patti there have been few celebrities in the musical world that Baymern's enterprise has not succeeded in bringing to Los Angeles. His greatest accomplishment in recent seasons being the booking of the Chicago Grand Opera Company in February 1913 under a guarantee of $88,000. Second in chronological order among the larger societies of women and doubtless equal to any in the importance of its varied activities the Ebell Club was organized in 1894 due time providing itself with a serviceable and ornate home within which for years broad courses of departmental study have been prosecuted with vigor. After worshiping for more than 15 years in the old synagogue on Fort Street and five years more after that name was changed to Broadway during which period from 1881 until I started in 1887 on my second European trip it was my privilege to serve as president of the congregation. The Reformed Jews of Los Angeles built in 1894 the Temple Benai Barith on the corner of Hope and Ninth Streets. In the meantime following the resignation of Dr. A. W. Edelman in 1886 Dr. Emmanuel Scriber for two years occupied the pulpit and then Reverend A. Bloom came from Galveston to succeed him. From the early part of 1895 Rabbi M. G. Solomon held the office until 1899. It was during his administration it may be interesting to observe and while Herman W. Hellman was president that the present temple was consecrated. In 1894 Homer Laughlin of Ohio during a visit purchased from Mrs. Mary A. Briggs the property on Broadway between 3rd and 4th Streets where she had lived. Three years later he moved to Los Angeles and began the erection of the Homer Laughlin fireproof building adding to the same in 1905 a reinforced concrete annex. At midnight on April 17th Don Antonio Franco Coronel died at his home in Los Angeles aged 77 years. In less than four months his lifelong friend Don Pio Pico died here on September 11th aged 93 years. The Belgian hair aberration was a spasmodic craze of the 90s and when I remember what the little rabbit did to our judgment then it brings to mind the black tulip bubble of Holland though in point of genuine foolishness I should award the prize to the former. A widely copied newspaper article claiming for the flesh of the timid Belgian rodent extraordinary qualities and merit led first hundreds then thousands to rig up hair coops for the breeding of the animal expecting to supply the world with its much lauded meat. Before long people abandoned profitable work in order to venture into the new field and many were those who invested thousands of dollars in Belgian hair companies. During the wild excitement attention was also given to the raising of hairs for exhibition and fancy prices were paid for the choicest specimens. At last the bubble burst the supply far exceeded the now diminishing demand and the whole enterprise collapsed. A lively election in 1895 was that which decided the immediate future of a suburb of Los Angeles where on April 27th of the same year Don Juan Warner who had lived there with his daughter Mrs. Rubio went to his rest. This was the university place in 1880 a mere hamlet though three years later it had a post office of its own. In 1895 an effort was made to annex it to the community with Vernon, Rosedale, and Pico Heights but the measure was defeated and only on June 12th 1899 was the college district annexed to Los Angeles. For some years the boundary line of the town at that point followed such a course through house lots that residents there still at home often ate in the county and slept within the city. The early 90s were full of the spirit of accomplishment and notwithstanding the failure of the electric homestead tract association and its streetcar line already described a successful electric railway system for Los Angeles was at length installed. In 1892 a route was laid out to Westlake Park the company having been encouraged by a subsidy of $50,000 pledged by owners of property most likely to be affected by the service. And by 1895 the electric traction system was so general that even the bobtailed cars on main street gave way to the new order of things. At this early stage in the application of electricity to street cars some of the equipment was rather primitive. Wooden poles for example were a part of the trolley and as they were easily broken conductors were fined a dollar for any accident to the rod with which they might have to do. Electricity when it was forthcoming at all was only harnessed to impel the vehicle but there were no devices for using the current to warm the car and instead of an electric light an oil lamp hung onto the dashboard faintly illuminated the soft road bed of the irregular tracks. The most active promoters of the improvements of 1895 were the two brothers William Spencer and Thomas J. Hook who operated mainly in the southwestern part of the city developing that rather sparsely settled district and introducing what was the best and most handsome rolling stock seen here up to that time. B.F. Coulter who from 1881 to 1884 had preached here as a clergyman of the Christian Church in 1895 built a place of worship at his own expense on Broadway near Temple Street costing 20,000 dollars no inconsiderable sum for that time. Sometime in March appeared the first issue of the Los Angeles record a one cent evening paper started by E.W. Scripps as the poor man's advocate. It was really another one of the many enterprising Scripps newspapers scattered throughout the country and championing more or less socialistic principles in accordance with which Scripps from the outset distributed some of the stock among his working associates. At the present time W.H. Porterfield is the editor in chief and W.T. Murdoch the editor. Thomas J. Scully a pioneer school teacher who came to Los Angeles the same year that I did died here in 1895. For some time Scully was the only teacher in the county outside of the city but owing to the condition of the public treasury he actually divided his time between three or four schools giving lessons in each a part of the year. After a while the school master gazed longingly upon a lovely vineyard and it's no less lovely owner and at last by marrying the proprietress he appropriated both. This sudden capture of wife and independence however was too much for our unsophisticated pedagogue. Scully entered upon a campaign of intemperance and dissipation. His spouse soon expelled him from his comfortable surroundings and he was again forced to earn his own living with birch and book. Inoffensive in the extreme yet with an aberration of mind more and more evident during 20 years Frederick Merrill Shaw a well-informed vermonter born in 1827 shipped for California as cook on the brig sea eagle and arrived in San Francisco in September 1849 where he helped to build as he always claimed the first three-story structure put up there. Well proportioned and standing over six feet in height Shaw presented a dignified appearance that is if one closed an eye to his dress. Long ago he established his own pension bureau conferring upon me the honor of a weekly contributor and when he calls he keeps me well posted on what he's been doing. His weary brain is ever filled with the phantoms of great inventions and billion dollar corporations as his pocket full of maps and diagrams shows. One day launching an aerial navigation company to explore the moon and the next day covering California with railroad lines as thick as our automobiles in the streets of Los Angeles. On September 21st my brother J.P. Newmark to whom I am so indebted and who was the cause of my coming to California died at his home in the 69th year of his age his demise being rather sudden. During the extended period of his illness he was tenderly nursed by his wife Augusta and I cannot pay my sister-in-law to high a tribute for her devoted companionship and aid and her real sacrifice. Mrs. Newmark long survived her husband dying on January 3rd 1908 at the age of 74. The reader will permit me I am certain the privilege of a fraternal eulogy in his acceptance and fulfillment of the responsibilities of this life in the depth and sincerity of his feeling toward family and friend my brother was the peer of any in his patient silent endurance of long years of intense physical suffering and in his cheerfulness which a manly courage and philosophical spirit inspired him to diffuse he was the superior of most and it was the possession of these qualities which has preserved his personality to those who knew him well far beyond the span of natural existence. In May 1896 the Merchants Association consolidated with the Manufacturers Association of which R.W. Pritam was then president and after the change of name to the Merchants and Manufacturers Association anon curated the first local exhibit of home products using the main street store of Mayberg Brothers for the display. On August 1st 1897 Felix J. Z. Handelar later also Consul of the Netherlands became the stalwart enthusiastic and now indispensable secretary succeeding I believe William H. Knight. This same year Major Ben C. Truman formerly editor of the Star together with George D. Rice and Sons established the graphic which is still being published under the popular editorship of Samuel T. Clover. In 1900 Truman was one of the California commissioners to the Paris Exposition. After his foreign sojourn he returned to Los Angeles and with Harry Patton started a weekly society paper called the Capital. Rather recently by the advantageous sale of certain property early acquired Ben and his good wife have come to enjoy a comfortable and well-merited degree of prosperity. Clover came to Los Angeles in 1901 was editor and publisher of the Express for four years and in 1905 started the evening news continuing the same three years despite the panic of 1907. A year previously he purchased the graphic more than one feature of which and especially his browsing in an old book shop have found such favor. W. A. Spalding whose editorial work on Los Angeles newspapers dating from his association with the Herald in 1874 and including service with both the Express and the Times in 1896 assumed the business management of his first love the Herald. After again toiling with the Quill for four years he was succeeded by Lieutenant Randolph H. Miner. The magnificent interurban electric system of Los Angeles is indebted not a little to the brothers-in-law General M. H. Sherman and E. P. Clark the former a Yankee from Vermont and the latter a Middle Westerner from Iowa both of whom had settled in Arizona in the early 70s while in the territory Sherman taught school and under appointment by Governor Fremont as superintendent of instruction laid the foundation of the public school system there. Both came to Los Angeles in 1889 soon after which Sherman organized the Consolidated Electric Railway Company. In 1896 the old steam railroad which about the late 80s had run for a year or so between Los Angeles and the North Beach by way of Cole Grove and South Hollywood was equipped with electrical motor power and again operated through the enterprise of Eli P. Clark president of the Los Angeles Pacific Railroad Company. Together Sherman and Clark built an electrical road to Pasadena thus connecting the mountains with the sea. In 1896 I dissolved partnership with Kaspar Kohn taking over the Hyde business and having fitted up a modest office under the St. Elma Hotel revived with a degree of satisfaction the name of H. Newmark and Company. A notable career in Los Angeles is that of Arthur Letts who in 1896 arrived here with barely $500 in his pocket and as it would appear in answer to a benign providence. J. A. Williams and Company after a brief experience have found the corner of Broadway and 4th street too far south and their means too limited to weather the storm so that their badly situated little department store was soon in the hands of creditors. This was Letts opportunity obtaining some financial assistance he purchased the bankrupt stock. His instantaneous success was reflected in the improvement of the neighborhood and thereafter both locality and business made rapid progress together. Meredith P. Snyder who became a resident in 1880 and started business by clerking in a furniture store in 1896 was elected to the office of mayor on a municipal waterworks platform. During the presidential campaign of 1896 when the west went wild over 16 to 1 and it looked as if W. J. Brian would sweep aside all opposition here an organization known as the sound money league undertook it to turn the tide. George H. Stewart was elected president and other members of the executive committee being John F. Francis, Frank A. Gibson, R. W. Burnham and M. H. Newmark. So strenuous was the campaign and so effective was the support by the public that when the sun set on that memorable Tuesday in November Los Angeles was found to be still strong for sound principles. Perhaps the most remarkable outpouring in the political history of the city took place during this period when businessmen regardless of previous party affiliations turned out to hear Tom Reed the czar of the house of representatives. It was in the Christmas season of 1896 that Colonel Griffith J. Griffith so generously filled the stocking of Los Angeles with his immensely important gift of Griffith Park. Said to be with its 3000 and more diversified acres magnificent heights and picturesque roadways some of which with their dense willow growth reminded me of the shaded lanes described in earlier chapters the second largest pleasure ground in the world. On July 1st 1897 the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad was absorbed by the Santa Fe Charles W. Smith the receiver having brought order out of chaos after the former road in 1895 had met with disaster. Dr. Henry S. Orm H. W. O. Malvaney J. M. Griffith J. W. Gillette A. L. Bath J. M. Gwynn M. Tede J. M. Elliott and W. A. Spalding on August 2nd met in the office of the Daily Herald in the Bradbury block on 3rd street to consider the organization of an old settlers society. At that meeting a committee consistent of Dr. J. S. Griffin Henry W. O. Malvaney Benjamin S. Eaton H. G. Barrows J. M. Gwynn Dr. H. S. Orm J. W. Gillette and myself was appointed to direct the movement. On August 10th we selected the Los Angeles County pioneers of Southern California as the name of the society and decided that eligibility should be limited to those who had resided in the county 25 years. A public meeting was held at the Chamber of Commerce on September 4th, 1897 and the 25 persons present signed the role. The first president chosen was Benjamin S. Eaton and the first secretary J. M. Gwynn. Dr. William F. Edgar who had resided here continuously for over 30 years died on August 23rd at the age of 73. A sword given to him by General Phil Kearney resting among the floral tributes. The 10th of the following November witnessed the death of George Hanson the surveyor whose body in accordance with his expressed wish was cremated. On the same day J. J. Ayers died. This year when the town was full of unemployed hundreds of men were set at work to improve Elysian Park a move suggested by Judge Charles Silent. Frank Walker who had been here for a while in the middle of the 80s and had gone away again returned to Los Angeles about 1897 and set himself up as a master builder. While contracting for certain unique bungalows his attention was directed to the possibility of utilizing the power of the sun with the results that he soon patented a solar heater similar to those now extensively built into Southern California residences and organized a company for exploiting the invention.