Grand Railroad Excursion and Genuine
AUCTION SALE!
No Chenanekin!!
Thursday, June 7, 1887.
Beautiful Palomares, 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'Melveny tells me, after Amanda, wife of L. J. Rose), Santa Anita, Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Glendora, San Dimas and Lordsburg. 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-natured 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 Lankershim 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. Rosecrans and its Addition were two other tracts 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 per cent! 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 relieved 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. Gard, 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, Azusa, Beaumont, Arcadia, Raymond, San Gabriel, Glendale, Burbank, Lamar's Addition to Alosta, Rosecrans, St. James, Bethune, Mondonville, Olivewood, Oleander, Lordsburg, McCoy's[41] Addition to Broad Acres, Ivanhoe, New Vernon, Alta Vista, Nadeau Park, Bonita Tract, San Dimas, Port Ballona, Southside, Ontario, Walleria 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 bay city. He ran private trains and sold acre and villa lots, and five-and ten-acre farms, for ten per cent. 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:
HO, FOR THE BEACH!
To-morrow, To-morrow!
Grand Auction Sale at
Santa Monica.
350—Acres—350
One of the Grandest Panoramic Views the Human Eye ever rested upon, including Ballona, Lake and Harbor, with its outgoing and in-coming 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 one hundred and fifty dollars 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 five hundred.
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 Ballona—formerly Will Tell's—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 & Santa Fé system. In August, thousands of people assembled at the beach to celebrate the opening of La Ballona Harbor. The enterprise had been backed by Louis Mesmer, Bernard Mills, Frank Sabichi and others; and Mesmer, General Nelson A. Miles, ex-Governor Stoneman, Eugène Germain and J. D. Lynch were among the speakers. A syndicate, headed by J. R. Tuffree, which purchased the Palos Verdes rancho, announced its intention of creating the harbor of Catalina at Portuguese Bend. The syndicate was to build there a large hotel named Borromea, while a Mr. Kerckhoff, encouraged by the prospect of a railroad around Point Firmin, 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 Hammel & Denker, proprietors of the United States Hotel, was then commenced on Main Street, between Ninth and Tenth, though it was never completed. Numerous capitalists and business houses encouraged the proposition; yet the site was sold, but a single generation ago, to O. T. Johnson, a local philanthropist, for about twenty-five thousand dollars—a conservative estimate placing its present value at not much less than two and a half millions.