During the time of the Civil War the Government established Drum Barracks in Wilmington, thus adding to its importance, and it was one of the government warehouses, later abandoned, which was purchased by the Alamitos Co., taken down, moved the ten miles over to the ranch and rebuilt, where it can still be seen by motorists passing over the Anaheim Road, a great red barn with white trimmings.
A forgotten fact about Wilmington is that it was the home of Wilson College, the gift of Don Benito to the Southern Methodists, and though short-lived, was the fore-runner of such institutions as the University of Southern California, Occidental, and Pomona. This college was housed in two of the buildings of the deserted Drum Barracks.
I have numerous memories of Wilmington, for it was there that my Uncle John and Aunt Susan set up housekeeping, and lived until they moved over to the Alamitos. From this port I once took steamer with my parents for San Francisco, and received one of the most unexpected experiences of my life, the sudden onset of sea-sickness as the steamer rounded Point Firmin. I was at dinner with father, enjoying an ear of corn.
I also remember a Christmas tree at the church from which Santa Claus handed me a little covered sewing box. This must have been the church which in its beginnings had so few attendants that there was only one member who could sing at all, (Aunt Margaret told me), “Prophet” Potts, and as he knew but one hymn every Sunday the service contained “Coronation.”
Aunt Margaret used to tell another church story also. Soon after she first came to Cerritos there was an attempt to organize a Congregational church in Los Angeles. The community approved, and although there were but six actual members, the minister and his wife, the deacon and his wife, Mrs. Mary Scott and Mrs. Jotham Bixby, many other citizens contributed towards it and a lot was secured on the west side of New High Street near Temple and a building was put up. Everything now was complete and the day of dedication approached. The visiting minister from San Francisco came down by boat to Wilmington and was met by the Bixbys and taken over to the Cerritos for the night. The next day they all drove the sixteen miles to the city to go to church. Aunt Margaret noticed a certain constraint in the air and a black eye on the minister. After service she discovered that the afternoon before the minister and the deacon had gotten into a fist fight in the furniture store over a red carpet for the church that the deacon had purchased without authority. Poor minister, he was red-headed. He was so mortified that he resigned and the little church went into a period of inanition. Sometime later the present First Congregational Church was organized and the firster one gave it the church property plus the debt for the red carpet. And I think the debt still existed when I began attending that Sunday School several years later. It was during the interval of non-activity that the Wilmington church was organized and the Cerritos people wended their way thither on Sundays until the Methodist church in Compton, much nearer home, was organized.
The road to Wilmington from the Cerritos Ranch went southwest over the mesa and down across bottom lands where corn grew amazingly, so tall that a man could stand on the seat of the spring wagon and not be able to see over the tops of the waving stalks.
And Long Beach? There was none. Where it now stands was a grain field and its only buildings were a shed for the horses during threshing times, and the small house occupied during the grain season by Archibald Borden and his four sons from Downey who raised wheat and barley on shares. After the harvest the Bixby sheep were turned in upon the stubble fields.
People were coming into Southern California more and more, especially after rail connection with San Francisco came in 1877. The chorus of rapturous praise singers was swelling, and enterprising people began plotting new settlements. The time for the subdividing of the large holdings came on apace.
I tramped over the level lands on the north end of the ranch, trailing the surveyors who were marking off the acres that were going to the making of Clearwater, and saw it severed from the ranch without a pang, but when Harry and I learned about Mr. Willmore and the American Colony, who wanted Cerritos (Signal) Hill and the bluff and our beach we resented it greatly. There was a seaside town at Santa Monica,—what need of disturbing things as they were for the sake of another? Why should conditions that we had always known, that were as much a part of living as day and night be rudely changed? But the grief of a little boy and little girl could not stay the march of the world and soon we were insulted by fences and gates where before we had ridden unchecked. It wasn’t so very long, however, before we became resigned to the town that had first called itself Willmore City and then Long Beach, though we did think it might have kept its own old name, Cerritos Beach. We liked the new hotel bath house which made dressing for a swim much easier than when we had had to run far down the beach to find a projection of bluff large enough to provide modest shelter. And we didn’t mind the Methodist Tabernacle with its summer Chautauqua, or the little shop where we could buy fruit, for we seemed to be getting over being children almost as fast as the new town was growing.
But whatever changes have come there has always been the sky, sunny or starry, or hidden by fog or passing cloud; the same mountains with their wonder of changing color guarded the valley. The old carpet of gorgeous wild flowers is gone; cities creep over the plain and a network of roads covers the earth; there is scarcely a place where one cannot see against the sky the fretted tower that means oil. One beauty goes and perhaps another comes for those who have eyes to see,—especially if they have a fair sized blind spot, which I find sometimes is a most satisfying possession.