Coronado’s Rapid Growth.—The Coronado Beach Company was organized a few years ago with a capital of three millions of dollars. The directors are E. S. Babcock, Charles T. Hinde, John D. Spreckels, H. W. Mallett and Giles Kellogg. The president is E. S. Babcock. The company some years ago laid out that part of the peninsula known as Coronado Beach into streets and avenues; but up to January 1, 1887, not a house was built. Now the streets are lined with beautiful villa residences—some of them substantial, imposing brick buildings—handsome cottages and many business blocks. There are three or four hotels, several nurseries, lumber yards, planing mills, foundries, factories, fruit packing establishments and shipbuilding yards. There is a handsome Methodist Episcopal church; the Presbyterian, Episcopal and Catholic denominations also have places of worship. A commodious school-house has a large number of pupils and Coronado has a weekly newspaper. With the growth of young Coronado came the growth of old San Diego—in fact, the latter reflects and shares the popularity of the former. San Diego’s population, which in 1884 was twenty-four hundred, now numbers over twenty thousand. Imagine the population of a town increasing eight fold in seven years.
Neither crooked like those of London, nor narrow like those of Boston, are the streets of Coronado. Like the streets in Philadelphia and San Diego, they are named after trees: Orange avenue is one hundred and forty feet wide, Palm and Olive avenues one hundred feet wide. A boulevard one hundred and thirty feet wide extends around the entire property. What about the sewer system? Unlike Key West, in Florida, Coronado with its unequalled water facilities has taken advantage of its excellent natural position. With the bay and ocean at its doors, the sewer question was quickly and easily solved—every street is already sewered. Investors were not taking any chances when they placed their funds in Coronado’s keeping.
A Good Purchase.—The whole of what is now the flourishing city of San Diego was bought twenty years ago by a Mr. Horton for twenty-six cents an acre. He built the Horton House, and for him the Horton Block was named. San Diego’s neighbor, Coronado Beach, was bought half a dozen years ago for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars by a company which has since parted with a parcel of the land for a million or two. They kept some choice pieces for themselves. Among the parcels of land is that upon which Hotel del Coronado stands, and upon which was expended a million and a half dollars. San Diego and Coronado Beach both experienced “booms” about three years ago, when many men became suddenly rich, some of them since becoming poor. Not a few now are what is known as “real estate poor,” their money is “locked up” in land for which purchasers cannot be found at present—at least not at the price which “raged” three years ago.
Choice pieces on the main street of Coronado Beach sold as high as $500 per front foot, which is about the price of lots in certain parts of New York—say in Harlem—with this difference, that “lots” here are one hundred and sixty feet deep. Had there not been real value in the land when the bubble burst, the bottom would have dropped out entirely when “hard pan” was reached. As it is, land and lots are again finding ready purchasers, and houses are being built in goodly numbers. That there is a steady growth, a healthy increase, and a great future for San Diego and Coronado Beach is a matter of certainty.
Water, Ice and Sanitation.—In my travels about the world I advise my daughters to be cautious of the water in new places and to drink as little as possible; here, on the contrary, I urge them to drink freely. The water is not only pure and most agreeable to the taste, but it contains medical properties which are beneficial to the system. Of this we are assured by testimonials from leading physicians in different States; among them Dr. W. H. Mason, late professor of physiology in the University of Buffalo, N. Y., who, referring to the analysis, says: “The water may be regarded as a regular elixir of life.” Its ingredients are almost identical with the famous Bethesda waters of Wisconsin.
At all events, a company with a capital of half a million dollars has been formed that has secured possession of the springs, fourteen miles distant. It has been “piped” to Coronado Heights and Coronado Beach and the yield is now five million gallons per day, which can be easily doubled by development. The water is used as drinking water at the hotel and with carbonic gas it is bottled for shipment to all parts of the country. If widely and liberally advertised, there is a fortune in Coronado Springs. All the ice used on the premises is made from this spring water, distilled, so that it is absolutely pure, which is more than can be said of Rockland Lake or Maine ice. The machinery at the hotel has a capacity of twelve tons per day.
The Hotel.—The structure, which with the furniture cost one and a half millions of dollars, is built around a quadrangular court 250 × 150 feet, the court being another name for a beautiful and well-kept tropical garden. This feature reminds you of the open garden about which the United States Hotel at Saratoga is built (which house has earned the name of “the model hotel of the world”), only the Coronado garden is filled with tropical plants and trees, and beautiful flowers bloom the year round. It never looks as do the gardens in Saratoga at the end of September. There are orange trees, lemons, figs, loquats, olives, limes, pomegranates, the banana, etc.
Mention of limes calls to mind that by invitation of the courteous and intellectual gentleman in charge of the Coronado nurseries, I cut a large cluster of limes and sent it to a friend in New York as a souvenir. Such a profusion of flowers you never saw, unless you have seen Coronado. For instance, a short time ago, in this nursery, thirty thousand roses were cut in one day from less than a quarter acre of rose bushes, and the flowers were merely cut to save the bushes. Everybody in the neighborhood carried away great baskets of roses to fill bags and pillow-cases.
We were loaded with flowers, cut from the trees and bushes, in the open, as we walked through the paths of the nursery—actually “loaded,” for the ladies of the party not only carried hands and arms flowing over with flowers—but their necks and shoulders were thickly entwined with smilax. The flowers included the delicate heliotrope, the sweet honeysuckle and the sturdy camelia, and they also embraced many flowers new and strange to us, for everything seems to grow here, side by side—everything that grows in the temperate, semi-tropical and tropical zones.
The hotel is situated on the southeastern portion of a beautiful mesa (the name here for a slight elevation) which slopes gradually, in terraces, from its centre toward the Pacific ocean on one side and the bay of San Diego on the other. No one style of architecture has been followed, as the reader will see from the accompanying illustration. It partakes of the Queen Anne style, also of the classic Norman era, bringing up recollections of a grand old Norman castle: but the architect has availed himself of different schools, producing a complete and uncommonly beautiful whole. It is a striking object and the series of buildings form a noble picture against the sky line when viewed four or five miles distant—from San Diego or from the ocean.