REDLANDS.
We have reached the object of our journey in the upper end of the San Bernardino valley. One of the features of South California, not Southern California, as we in the center all used to say, is the motor roads, not electric motors, but regular little steam engines, that will pull you anywhere, and which will not shock you with anything except perhaps with their smoke. Such motor roads lead almost everywhere, connecting the outlying colonies way up in the mesa with the headquarters on the regular railroad. And these motor roads are neither neglected, nor do they go begging for customers and freight. They are as much or more patronized even than the regular railroads, and they pay well. The cause of this is evident. They are more accommodating; they can without inconvenience stop wherever required, and passengers get on or off at almost every corner. The little train stops with equal readiness at the call in front of the rich man’s villa, to enable him and his family to embark, as at the poor man’s garden, to allow him to get on with a load of greens or with a basket of eggs. Thus managed, it rushes along with short and frequent stops, always full of passengers and freight.
Going up the San Bernardino valley from Riverside is a trip that no one should neglect. It takes us through one of the best improved parts of South California, through a veritable garden spot, with a radius of six or seven miles. From Riverside we pass for several miles over the level mesa land, just brought into cultivation through the new Gage canal system. Over two thousand acres have been planted here within the last two years to oranges, lemons and vines, and the fine and regularly planted trees with the large distances between show us how much the new settlers have been able to profit from the experience of the older ones. For several miles there are young plantations, each with its neat and substantial residence and outhouses, indicating that the settlers mostly are people of some means and of much refinement and taste,—just the class of people that we all would choose for our nearest neighbors. Everywhere are school-houses of artistic designs, most magnificent ones in the older settlements, smaller but tasty ones in those of almost yesterday. As we pass along the mesa, the upper San Bernardino valley, closed in by steep and lofty mountains, lies on our right, and in front the Santa Ana river courses through the center of the valley, with its vast broad river bottom covered with wild vegetation, pastures or cultivated fields. We cross several ditches, one laid in cement, with the water running in them as clear as that in the washbowl.
Once across the river bottom we are almost directly at Colton on the Southern Pacific Railroad. The first thing that attracts our attention is the beautiful plantation on the railroad reservation. Fine green lawns, fountains, beds of evergreens and flowers, the whole inclosed in pepper trees, gives the traveler immediately the impression that something beautiful in the way of gardening can be accomplished, where there is only a will and a taste. Such beautiful places everywhere in the South show that the people who came here, came not alone to make money, but also to enjoy life and to cultivate those pleasures and occupations which help to prolong and beautify the same.
From Colton up to San Bernardino the whole country is settled up and resembles the outskirts of a large city, where the business men have their suburban residences. The level and gradually sloping mesa is dotted over with little hills and knolls, just the place for a residence. Every such place has been taken advantage of, and fine residences with towers, balconies and airy awnings crown every little eminence, each one through its peculiar situation seemingly dominating the valley.
San Bernardino has been greatly benefited by the boom. The old and the new are there in strong contrast, the new decidedly predominating. Magnificent brick blocks grace the principal business streets, and the nearest streets crossing them, blocks that must have cost large sums of money, and which for design and substantial structure can nowhere be surpassed in any city of this size. The fine large hotels erected lately are kept up with style and even splendor. The large Stewart House is not inferior to the best town hotel that can be seen anywhere, and its interior arrangements, with a large covered court, are most admirable. My stay in San Bernardino was only too short; a long stroll around town and a little longer shake hands with the veteran journalist and horticulturist, L. M. Holt, took all the time I had to spare.
From San Bernardino to Redlands is but half an hour’s ride through the bottom lands of the Santa Ana river. We approach rapidly the upper end of the valley, where the elevated mesa spreads out all around like a perfect ampitheater, backed by the loftiest mountains in Southern California. The mesa is now in close view, and Redlands, Lugonia, Terracina, Crafton, all different points of the same settlement, lie in front of us at an elevation of about fifteen hundred feet above the sea, like a map or extensive panorama, where roads, orchards and houses are so clearly and distinctly seen that they can be observed at a glance. The mesa land here slopes about four hundred feet to the mile, and the different orchards or settlements lie apparently one above the other, all in full view. If I am asked for the place in this part of the country with the finest view, with the freshest air, with the purest water, and with the coolest breezes, and where business and the comforts of life can be combined, I will say, and say it again, Redlands. In all these points there is nothing here that surpasses it, and few are the places indeed that even can pretend to equal it. From whatever point we stand, be it at the lower end of the railroad depot, at any orchard or home in the center of the settlement, or at the upper end close to the rolling hills, from every point we see every other point, some below, some above us, all equally distinct. And this extensive and magnificent view, that requires no tedious and tiresome climbing to see, extends away down the valley for sixty miles, over slightly rolling hills, over level mesas with their dark-green orchards and vineyards, over the steeper hills, over the lofty Sierra Madre range in the northwest. If we turn to the right we are immediately met by the snowy peaks and the bare walls of the San Bernardino range, here and there cut by the cañons and gorges of the tributaries of the Santa Ana river.
The business part of Redlands is as neat and tasty as any,—brick blocks and cement sidewalks, horse cars, and water under pressure.
No explanation is required to be made of the quality of the Redlands climate and soil. A trip over the settlement will reveal all to any one with open eyes. Orange orchards, young of course, but thrifty, on every side, alternating with Muscat vineyards, according to the taste of the owner; beautiful homes of the horticulturists, the stately mansions of the bank presidents and those that became wealthy quickly, and the grand view common to all,—these are some of the good things this settlement enjoys. The water for irrigation is all under pressure, either coming to the surface in open flues or in iron pipes. The orange orchards are being irrigated everywhere, in a way which should make a San Joaquin valley man stare. Iron pipes are laid all over the orchard, and at the beginning of every row of trees there is a faucet. These faucets are all opened at the same time, and a tiny stream of water issues forth and runs on each side of the young orange trees down to the other end of the check. It is left to run for several days at a time. At the other end of the check the water is not wasted, but runs into a little wooden spout at every row of trees and through the same into a cement ditch which carries the water to another place. The system of irrigation is simply perfect; if it were not so, the land could not be irrigated. With this system there is no waste, no weeds, no malaria, no hoeing nor other work of any kind. Irrigation is here as easy as the washing of your hands in a patent washstand: you open the faucet and let the water run. The general opinion by people not acquainted with the colony is that water here is very scarce; this is a mistake. There is water enough to irrigate all the land; most of it is now only running to waste to the sea; to be utilized it must only be stored. The Bear valley reservoir, when perfected, as it soon will be, will hold water enough to irrigate over twenty-six thousand acres of ground, which is about all the irrigable land tributary to Redlands. There are other reservoir sites in the mountains, and the possibilities of future irrigation can hardly be comprehended. Although young, only four years old, the upper San Bernardino colonies produce already considerable quantities of fruit. Six thousand acres are now under cultivation, eight hundred of which are in Muscat grapes, the balance mostly in oranges and other fruits. Last year they produced fifty carloads of grapes and forty carloads of raisins, and altogether about 149 carloads of fruit, dried or fresh. No better showing could be expected of any place, and there is no better advertisement of the resources of the country.
I have yet a thing to add, a thing to praise. Everywhere in the South magnificent drives are laid out, avenues are planted with shade trees, evergreens and palms, street cars take you everywhere, and the comforts of pedestrians and riders are always assured. The roads are all sprinkled, and the dust is an unknown quantity except in by-lanes and corners, where the sprinkler cannot reach. Riverside sprinkles the whole of her business streets, and her Magnolia avenue effectively and continually for about ten miles down the valley. Other places do the same, perhaps only not to as liberal an extent. In many places the tired pedestrian finds little wooden benches to rest on under a shady tree, close to a fountain of drinking water, all placed there by the kind society, W. C. T. U. Comparisons are not in place; but how many times I have wished such a thing had been met with in some other places I know of where the sun is just as hot, and where the dust is just as deep.