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, Alvan Clark & 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 & McPhee issued a directory of Los Angeles. But two weeks afterward, George W. Maxwell published another book of addresses with more than five thousand additional names! The second directory listed over eighteen thousand adults, from which fact it was estimated that Los Angeles then had a population of quite sixty thousand.
In 1887, Mrs. Charlotte LeMoyne Wills, wife of the attorney, John A. Wills, and daughter of Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne (who in 1876 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. LeMoyne 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. Bird, a homeopathic physician. The experiment stirred up a storm of adverse, as well as of favorable criticism.
The brothers Beaudry 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 Beaudry, Victor Beaudry, Walter S. Maxwell, E. T. Wright, the surveyor, Octavius Morgan, Ralph Rogers, Thomas Stovell, John Milner and E. A. Hall.
About July, the trustees of James Lick sold Santa Catalina Island to George R. Shatto (who founded Avalon[40]—at first giving it his name—and after whom Shatto Street is called), the price fixed upon being one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Shatto 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 reëstablished the title of the Lick trustees, they disposed of that part of the estate (for about the same price offered Shatto), to William, J. B. and Hancock Banning—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. Simmie) 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 trip was four dollars.
The year 1887 witnessed the completion of the Arcadia Hotel at Santa Monica, named after Doña Arcadia, wife of Colonel R. S. Baker. It was built on a bluff, was four stories high and had a great veranda with side wings; and with its center tower and cupola was more imposing than any hotel there to-day. 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 eighties, 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 fifteen 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, heretofore sane 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 from many feeders, there was a marshalling, 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 and the Board of Trade), together with the extension of the Southern Pacific to the East and the building of the Santa Fé 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 store-room. 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 Fé—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, alas! to be but castles in the air. Wherever there was 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 landowner 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.