Speaking of sprouting willows recalls the story that the first settlers in El Monte made rough bedsteads in their dirt floored houses from the native wood and that shortly the posts put forth branches and made of each bed a bower.
The people of Anaheim were able almost at once to ship grapes to the San Francisco market, and also were soon making a very good wine for similar export. They made use of a neighboring small harbor which soon came to be known as Anaheim Landing. Recently my Aunt Margaret told me that the first wool that they sent to San Francisco from the Cerritos went from this place instead of from San Pedro as it did later.
The success of Anaheim led to the founding in following years of other colonies and towns. Westminster, Santa Ana, Tustin were small centers to which I occasionally had the privilege of driving with my elders on business bent.
Downey, named for the popular governor, was nearer by and even in those days attracted visitors by an agricultural fair. I recall a dusty trip over there to observe my only namesake, a Holstein bossy, winning a blue ribbon,—Sally, and her twin brother, who bore the name of my beloved cousin, Harry.
Compton to me was an established fact but to the ranch dwellers it was a new Methodist place offering them the conveniences of a nearby post office, church and physician. How well I remember Dr. Whaley, whose practices had not been tempered by a breath of homœpathy. When I had so bad a cold I couldn’t celebrate getting to be seven years old by the promised picnic at the beach nor wear my bulky new bathing suit made of heavy navy blue flannel and trimmed with three rows of white tape, he was called to cure me, which he proceeded to do by swabbing my throat with thick yellow stuff with iron in it, by giving a black dose that necessitated the immediate cleaning of my teeth lest it rot them, and by ordering the application of a strong, large mustard plaster, first to my front, then to my back, then to each side, thus making a complete red jacket of burns about my body. Apparently it cured me. It is strange how popular mustard was in those days, not only the terrible plasters but the torturing foot baths for colds—boiling water reinforced by that awful stinging powder that came out of yellow covered cans bearing the lion and unicorn of old England. I wonder if doctors and parents applied the cure to themselves as well as to children.
Compton was the second stop beyond Cerritos on the wonderful railroad from Wilmington to Los Angeles; the first was Dominguez and the third was Florence and that was all until one reached Alameda Street, and the “depot” which was on a corner by a flour mill. What fun it was to go to the city. We got into the carriage in the court yard, and drove out through the gates and down the hill to the river, where sometimes the fording was very exciting,—water might come into the buggy if it was winter and had been raining a long time; then there were two separate “willows” to go through, only a half mile ride in all. Either we were always very prompt or the train was not, for there was time and permission to put our ears down on the rail to listen for the coming train, and there was a low trestle over the “slew” where we might walk the ties.
I was amused to read recently in an old book the boast that Los Angeles was a railroad center, the focus for four roads! This one that I knew was the first, twenty-three miles in length; next was the one to Spadra, longest of all, thirty miles; then one to San Fernando, reaching out through the grain fields of the valley twenty-two miles toward San Francisco, and the Anaheim road, twenty-eight miles. Progress had arrived.
From the beginnings of Los Angeles and San Gabriel, San Pedro was the port, but for very many years it remained the desolate spot that is described in “Two Years Before the Mast.” There was one hide house to which, when a boat came into port, the accumulated stores of hides and tallow were hauled. These products which the inhabitants exchanged with Yankee traders for everything they needed or wanted in the way of manufactured goods, did not require very elaborate facilities, and it was the custom to roll the bundles over the cliffs to the rocks below where the sailors must gather them up and carry on their heads out to their boats. The sailors also must carry over the rough trail to the top of the bluff the boxes and bales containing their merchandise. San Pedro was not a popular port. But conditions must have improved very soon after the visits of Dana, for there is extant a letter from the Angeleno of Boston origin, Abel Stearns, in which he tells of his notion to improve the situation. He took up a collection among his friends, to the amount of one hundred and fifty dollars, secured the services of some mission Indians and in a few weeks had made the first road down to water level.
After the admission of California as a state, travel to and from Los Angeles increased and before long stages between San Pedro and the city became necessary. Don David Alexander and General Phineas Banning were the prime movers who developed this. Gen. Banning is one of the most picturesque figures of the early American period and was very active in every field of the development of transportation. At one time he was doing a large business freighting supplies over the Mormon trail to Salt Lake City and the territory beyond. And he was largely responsible for the building of that first railway, the San Pedro-Los Angeles, an improvement which put an end to the exciting stage races that introduced to their future home both those chroniclers of early days, Harris Newmark and Horace Bell, wild rides to a wilder community. People today sometimes deplore a “crime wave,” but to live up to the proportions set in 1853 Los Angeles should stage about four hundred murders a day every day in the year, for that year there was an average of more than one killing a day in a population of about twenty-five hundred.
It was in 1858, I believe, that Gen. Banning promoted the town New San Pedro, later naming it for his birthplace in Delaware, Wilmington. Here he built his home and planted the garden that remains today. I remember calling there once with my mother and seeing a most lovely little girl out among the flowers.