Daniel Freeman, a Canadian who came in 1873, was one of many to be attracted to California through Nordhoff's famous book. After looking at many ranches, Freeman inspected the Centinela with Sir Robert Burnett, the Scotch owner then living there. Burnett insisted that the ranch was too dry for farming and cited his own necessity of buying hay at thirty dollars a ton; but Freeman purchased the twenty-five thousand acres, stocked them with sheep and continued long in that business, facing many a difficulty attendant upon the dry seasons, notably in 1875-76, when he lost fully twenty-two thousand head.
L. H. Titus, who bought from J. D. Woodworth the land in his San Gabriel orchard and vineyard, early used iron water-pipes for irrigation. A bold venture of the same year was the laying of iron water-pipes throughout East Los Angeles, at great expense, by Dr. John S. Griffin and Governor John G. Downey. About the same time, the directors of the Orange Grove Association which as we shall later see founded Pasadena, used iron pipe for conducting water, first to a good reservoir and then to their lands, for irrigating. In 1873 also, the Alhambra Tract, then beginning to be settled as a fashionable suburb of Los Angeles, obtained its water supply through the efforts of B. D. Wilson and his son-in-law, J. De Barth Shorb, who constructed large reservoirs near the San Gabriel Mission, piped water to Alhambra and sold it to local consumers.
James R. Toberman, destined to be twice rechosen Mayor of Los Angeles, was first elected in 1873, defeating Cristóbal Aguilar, an honored citizen of early days, who had thrice been Mayor and was again a candidate. Toberman made a record for fiscal reform by reducing the City's indebtedness over thirty thousand dollars and leaving a balance of about twenty-five thousand in the Treasury; while, at the same time, he caused the tax-rate during his administration to dwindle, from one dollar and sixty cents per hundred to one dollar. Toberman Street bears this Mayor's name.
In 1873, President Grant appointed Henry Kirk White Bent, who had arrived in 1868, Postmaster of Los Angeles.
The several agitations for protection against fire had, for a long time no tangible results—due most probably to the lack of water facilities; but after the incorporation of the Los Angeles Water Company and the introduction of two or three hydrants, thirty-eight loyal citizens of the town in April organized themselves into the first volunteer fire company, popularly termed the 38's, imposing a fee of a dollar a month. Some of the yeomen who thus set the ball a-rolling were Major Ben C. Truman, Tom Rowan, W. J. Brodrick, Jake Kuhrts, Charley Miles, George Tiffany, Aaron Smith, Henry T. Hazard, Cameron E. Thom, Fred Eaton, Matthew Keller, Dr. J. S. Crawford, Sidney Lacey, John Cashin and George P. McLain; and such was their devotion to the duty of both allaying and producing excitement, that it was a treat to stand by the side of the dusty street and watch the boys, bowling along, answer the fire-bell—the fat as well as the lean hitched to their one hose-cart. This cart, pulled by men, was known as the jumper—a name widely used among early volunteer firemen and so applied because, when the puffing and blowing enthusiasts drew the cart after them, by means of ropes, the two-wheeled vehicle jumped from point to point along the uneven surface of the road. The first engine of the 38's, known as Fire Engine No. 1, was housed, I think, back of the Pico House, but was soon moved to a building on Spring Street near Franklin and close to the City Hall.
About 1873, or possibly 1874, shrimps first appeared in the local market.
In 1873, the Los Angeles Daily News suspended publication. A. J. King had retired on the first of January, 1870, to be succeeded by Charles E. Beane; on October 10th, 1872, Alonzo Waite had sold his interest and Beane alone was at the helm when the ship foundered.
To resume the narrative of the Daily Star. In July, Henry Hamilton sold both the paper and the job-printing office for six thousand dollars to Major Ben C. Truman, and the latter conducted the Star for three or four years, filling it brimful of good things just as his more fiery predecessor had done.
John Lang—"number two"—the cultivator of fruit on what was afterward Washington Gardens, who established Lang's Station and managed the sulphur springs and the hotel there, in July killed a bear said to have been one of the grizzliest grizzlies ever seen on the Coast. Lang started after Mr. Bruin and, during an encounter in the San Fernando range that nearly cost his life, finally shot him. The bear tipped the beam—forbid it that anyone should question the reading of the scales!—at two thousand, three hundred and fifty pounds; and later, as gossip had it, the pelt was sold to a museum in Liverpool, England. This adventure, which will doubtless bear investigation, recalls another hunt, by Colonel William Butts, later editor of the Southern Californian, in which the doughty Colonel, while rolling over and over with the infuriated beast, plunged a sharp blade into the animal's vitals; but only after Butts's face, arms and legs had been horribly lacerated. Butts's bear, a hundred hunters in San Luis Obispo County might have told you, weighed twenty-one hundred pounds—or more.
Dismissing these bear stories, some persons may yet be interested to learn of the presence here, in earlier days, of the ferocious wild boar. These were met with, for a long time, in the wooded districts of certain mountainous land-tracts owned by the Ábilas, and there wild swine were hunted as late as 1873.