In 1857, I again revisited San Francisco. During the four years since my first visit a complete metamorphosis had taken place. Tents and small frame structures were being largely replaced with fine buildings of brick and stone; many of the sand dunes had succumbed to the march of improvement; gardens were much more numerous, and the uneven character of streets and sidewalks had been wonderfully improved. In a word, the spirit of Western progress was asserting itself, and the city by the Golden Gate was taking on a decidedly metropolitan appearance.
Notwithstanding various attempts at citrus culture in Southern California, some time elapsed before there was much of an orange or lemon industry in this vicinity. In 1854, a Dr. Halsey started an orange and lime nursery, on the Rowland place, which he soon sold to William Wolfskill, for four thousand dollars; and in April, 1857, when there were not many more than a hundred orange trees bearing fruit in the whole county, Wolfskill planted several thousand and so established what was to be, for that time, the largest orange orchard in the United States. He had thrown away a good many of the lemon trees received from Halsey, because they were frost-bitten; but he still had some lemon, orange and olive trees left. Later, under the more scientific care of his son, Joseph Wolfskill, who extended the original Wolfskill grove, this orchard was made to yield very large crops.
In 1857, a group of Germans living in San Francisco bought twelve hundred acres of waste, sandy land, at two dollars an acre, from Don Pacífico Onteveras, and on it started the town of Anaheim—a name composed of the Spanish Ana, from Santa Ana, and the German Heim, for home; and this was the first settlement in the county founded after my arrival. This land formed a block about one and a quarter miles square, some three miles from the Santa Ana River, and five miles from the residence of Don Bernardo Yorba, from whom the company received special privileges. A. Langenberger, a German, who married Yorba's daughter, was probably one of the originators of the Anaheim plan; at any rate, his influence with his father-in-law was of value to his friends in completing the deal. There were fifty shareholders, who paid seven hundred and fifty dollars each, with an Executive Council composed of Otmar Caler, President; G. Charles Kohler, Vice-President; Cyrus Beythien, Treasurer; and John Fischer, Secretary; while John Fröhling, R. Emerson, Felix Bachman, who was a kind of Sub-treasurer, and Louis Jazyinsky, made up the Los Angeles Auditing Committee. George Hansen, afterward the colony's Superintendent, surveyed the tract and laid it out in fifty twenty-acre lots, with streets and a public park; around it a live fence of some forty to fifty thousand willow cuttings, placed at intervals of a couple of feet, was planted. A main canal, six to seven miles long, with a fall of fifteen to twenty feet, brought abundant water from the Santa Ana River, while some three hundred and fifty miles of lateral ditches distributed the water to the lots. On each lot, some eight or ten thousand grape vines were set out, the first as early as January, 1858. On December 15th, 1859, the stockholders came south to settle on their partially-cultivated land; and although but one among the entire number knew anything about wine-making, the dream of the projectors—to establish there the largest vineyard in the world—bade fair to come true. The colonists were quite a curious mixture—two or three carpenters, four blacksmiths, three watchmakers, a brewer, an engraver, a shoemaker, a poet, a miller, a bookbinder, two or three merchants, a hatter and a musician; but being mostly of sturdy, industrious German stock, they soon formed such a prosperous and important little community that, by 1876, the settlement had grown to nearly two thousand people. A peculiar plan was adopted for investment, sale and compensation: each stockholder paid the same price at the beginning, and later all drew for the lots, the apportionment being left to chance; but since the pieces of land were conceded to have dissimilar values, those securing the better lots equalized in cash with their less lucky associates. Soon after 1860, when Langenberger had erected the first hotel there, Anaheim took a leading place in the production of grapes and wine; and this position of honor it kept until, in 1888, a strange disease suddenly attacked and, within a single year, killed all the vines, after which the cultivation of oranges and walnuts was undertaken. Kohler and Fröhling had wineries in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, the latter being adjacent to the present corner of Central Avenue and Seventh Street; and this firm purchased most of Anaheim's grape crop, although some vineyard owners made their own wine. Morris L. Goodman, by the way, was here at an early period, and was one of the first settlers of Anaheim.
Hermann Heinsch, a native of Prussia, arrived in Los Angeles in 1857 and soon after engaged in the harness and saddlery business. On March 8th, 1863, he was married to Mary Haap. Having become proficient at German schools in both music and languages, Heinsch lent his time and efforts to the organization and drill of Germans here, and contributed much to the success of both the Teutonia and the Turnverein. In 1869, the Heinsch Building was erected at the corner of Commercial and Los Angeles streets; and as late as 1876 this was a shopping district, a Mrs. T. J. Baker having a dressmaking establishment there. After a prosperous career, Heinsch died on January 13th, 1883; his wife followed him on April 14th, 1906. R. C. Heinsch, a son, survives them.
Major Walter Harris Harvey, a native of Georgia once a cadet at West Point, but dismissed for his pranks (who about the middle of the fifties married Eleanor, eldest full sister of John G. Downey, and became the father of J. Downey Harvey, now living in San Francisco), settled in California shortly after the Mexican War. During the first week in May, 1857, or some four years before he died, Major Harvey arrived from Washington with an appointment as Register of the Land Office, in place of H. P. Dorsey. At the same time, Don Agustin Olvera was appointed Receiver, in lieu of General Andrés Pico. These and other rotations in office were due, of course, to national administration changes, President Buchanan having recently been inaugurated.
One of the interesting legal inquiries of the fifties was conducted in 1857 when, in the District Court here, António María Lugo, crowned with the white of seventy-six winters, testified, at a hearing to establish certain claims to land, as to what he knew of old ranchos hereabouts, recalling many details of the pueblo and incidents as far back as 1785. He had seen the San Rafael Ranch, for example, in 1790, and he had also roamed, as a young man, over the still older Dominguez and Nietos hills.
Charles Henry Forbes, who was born at the Mission San José, came to Los Angeles County in 1857 and, though but twenty-two years old, was engaged by Don Abel Stearns to superintend his various ranchos, becoming Stearns's business manager in 1866, with a small office on the ground-floor of the Arcadia Block. In 1864, Forbes married Doña Luisa Olvera, daughter of Judge Agustin Olvera, and a graduate of the Sisters' school. On the death of Don Abel, in 1871, Forbes settled up Stearns's large estate, retaining his professional association with Doña Arcadia, after her marriage to Colonel Baker, and even until he died in May, 1894.
As I have intimated, the principal industry throughout Los Angeles County, and indeed throughout Southern California, up to the sixties, was the raising of cattle and horses—an undertaking favored by a people particularly fond of leisure and knowing little of the latent possibilities in the land; so that this entire area of magnificent soil supported herds which provided the whole population in turn, directly or indirectly, with a livelihood. The live stock subsisted upon the grass growing wild all over the county, and the prosperity of Southern California therefore depended entirely upon the season's rainfall. This was true to a far greater extent than one might suppose, for water-development had received no attention outside of Los Angeles. If the rainfall was sufficient to produce feed, dealers came from the North and purchased our stock, and everybody thrived; if, on the other hand, the season was dry, cattle and horses died and the public's pocket-book shrank to very unpretentious dimensions. As an incident in even a much later period than that which I here have in mind, I can distinctly remember that I would rise three or four times during a single meal to see if the overhanging clouds had yet begun to give that rain which they had seemed to promise, and which was so vital to our prosperity.
As for rain, I am reminded that every newspaper in those days devoted much space to weather reports or, rather, to gossip about the weather at other points along the Coast, as well as to the consequent prospects here. The weather was the one determining factor in the problem of a successful or a disastrous season, and became a very important theme when ranchers and others congregated at our store.
And here I may mention, à propos of this matter of rainfall and its general effects, that there were millions of ground-squirrels all over this country that shared with other animals the ups and downs of the season. When there was plenty of rain, these squirrels fattened and multiplied; but when evil days came, they sickened, starved and perished. On the other hand, great overflows, due to heavy rainfalls, drowned many of these troublesome little rodents.