(1860-1870) (1869) (1850-1860) (1870-1880) Table of Contents
Reyner Banham Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Pelican: NY, 1971(1976), 256 pp., 1976, 1971, 1949, 1885, 1870s, 1860s, 1848, See Text
Fred E. Basten Santa Monica Bay: The First 100 Years, A pictorial history of Santa Monica, Venice, Ocean Park, Pacific Palisades, Topanga and Malibu, Douglas-West Publishers: Los Angeles, CA, 1974, 227 pp., 1871, 1870, 1860s, 1850, See Text
Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg Virginia & Truckee: A Story of Virginia City and Comstock Times, Howell-North: Berkeley, California, 1949 (1963), Fifth Edition, 67pp. 1949, 1963, 1860's, 1850 See Text
Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp., 1935, 1876, 1860s See Text
Ingersoll's Century History Santa Monica Bay Cities (Being Book Number Two of Ingersoll's Century Series of California Local History Annals), 1908a, 1860s See Text
Gordon Newell and Joe Williamson Pacific Coastal Liners, Superior Publishing Co.: Seattle, WA, (Bonanza Books, Crown Publishing: NY), 1959, 192 pp., 1860s, 1850s See Text
Alexander Saxton The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the anti-Chinese movement in California, University of California Press: Los Angeles, CA, 1971 (1975), 293 pp., 1880s, 1870s, 1860s, 1850s, See Text
Grant H. Smith The History of the Comstock Lode 1850-1920, Geology and Mining Series No. 37, University of Nevada Bulletin: Reno, Nevada, vol. XXXVII. 1 July 1943, no. 3, (revised 1966), Ninth printing, 1980. 305 pp., 1860s See Text
Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990. 1875, 1872, 1864, 1862, 1850s, 1828, See Text
Betty Lou Young Our First Century: The Los Angeles Athletic Club 1880-1980, LAAC Press: Los Angeles, California 1979, 176pp., 1860s See Text
Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182pp., 1860s, See Text
Documents
Reyner Banham Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Pelican: NY, 1971(1976), 256 pp., 1976, 1971, 1949, 1885, 1870s, 1860s, 1848,
" . . . because the Southern Californians came . . . overland to Los Angeles . . .They brought with them-and still bring-the prejudices, motivations, and ambitions of the central heartland of the USA. The first major wave of immigration came from Kansas City on excursion tickets after 1885; later they came in second-hand cars out of the dustbowl -not for nothing is Mayor Yorty known (behind his back) as the Last of the Okies, and Long Beach as the Main Seaport of Iowa! In one unnervingly true sense, Los Angeles is the Middle West raised to flash-point, the authoritarian dogmas of the Bible Belt and the perennial revolts against them colliding at critical mass under the palm trees. . .
" . . . Miraculously the city's extremes include an excessive tolerance. Partly this is that indifference which is Los Angeles's most publicized vice, but it is also a heritage from the extraordinary cultural mixture with which the city began. If Los Angeles is not a monolithic Protestant moral tyranny-and it notoriously is not-it is because the Mid-western agrarian culture underwent a profound transformation as it hit the coast, a sun-change that pervades moral postures, political attitudes, ethnic groups, and individual psychologies. . . ." p. 25
". . . Where water was available, Mediterranean crops made better sense and profit, olives, vines and -above all-citrus fruits, the first great source of wealth in Southern California after land itself. . .
"The basic plants and crops for this transformed rural culture were already established on the land before the Mid-westerners and North Europeans arrived, for the great wave of westward migration broke across the backwash of a receding wave from the south-the collapsing Mexican regime that was in itself the successor to the original Spanish colonization of California. The two currents swirled together around some very substantial Hispanic relics: the Missions, where the fathers had introduced the grape, olive, and orange as well as Christianity, the military communication line of the Camino Real and the Presidio forts, the very Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Angeles de Porcinuncula.
"And about all, a system of ranching whose large scale, open-handedness and al fresco style were infectious, and whose pattern of land-holding still gives the ultimate title to practically every piece of land in Greater Los Angeles. Most of the original titles granted by the kings of Spain and by the Mexican governors were confirmed by patents granted by the US after 1848 (often a long while after; land-grant litigation became almost a national sport in California) and thus bequeathed to the area a pattern of property lines, administrative boundaries, and place-names that guarantee a kind of cultural immortality to the Hispanic tradition.*
"So the predominantly Anglo-Saxon culture of Los Angeles ('Built by the British, financed by the Canadians') is deeply entangled with remnants of Spain, . . . the periodical outbursts of pantiled roofs, adobe construction, arcaded courtyards . . .the elusive but ever-present Spanish Colonial Revival style . . ." p. 27
*[Page 28 and 29's Map of Spanish and Mexican Ranchos show the boundaries of Boca de Santa Monica, San Vicente y Santa Monica and La Ballona.]
" . . . the importance of Santa Monica Canyon is that it is the point where Los Angeles first came to the Beaches. From the garden of Charles [and Rae] Eames's house in Pacific Palisades, one can look down on a collection of roofs and roads that cover the old camp-site to which Angelenos started to come for long weekend picnics under canvas from the beginning of the 1870s. The journey from downtown could take two days, so it was not an excursion to lightly undertaken, but there was soon enough traffic to justify a regular stage-run, and a semi-permanent big tent that served as a dance -hall and could sleep thirty people overnight. . ." p.44 and 45.
". . . Within a few years of the discovery of the canyon mouth as a picnic beach, the railway had hit the shore at Santa Monica, but on the southern side of the flat-topped mesa on which most of the present Santa Monica stands. Along the top of the bluff where the mesa meets the sea is the splendid cliff-top park of Santa Monica Palisades, and behind it there have always been high-class hotels as long as there has been a Santa Monica. pp. 45 and 46.
[pp. 44 and 45 have photos of c. 1870 SM Canyon and the View from the Eames House.]
Fred E. Basten Santa Monica Bay: The First 100 Years, A pictorial history of Santa Monica, Venice, Ocean Park, Pacific Palisades, Topanga and Malibu, Douglas-West Publishers: Los Angeles, CA, 1974, 227 pp., 1871, 1870, 1860s,
"By the late 1860's, Santa Monica Canyon was being used as a summer resort by travelers from Los Angeles to escape the heat and dust of the city. The visitors pitched canvas tents, enjoyed the sun and surf, lit scattered bonfires, and held Saturday night dances. . . . In 1870, a saloon opened. A year later, a modest hotel. . . . Over the next 20 years . . . After a short drive along Ocean Avenue, the Canyon is reached . . ." p. 4
Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg Virginia & Truckee: A Story of Virginia City and Comstock Times, Howell-North: Berkeley, California, 1949 (1963), Fifth Edition, 67pp. 1949, 1963, 1860's, 1850
Sing, therefore, O Muse of Tractive Force and Valve Gear, of the Virginia and Truckee, a railroad of such superlatives that, like the Comstock it served and the San Francisco it enriched, its name will be forever currency in the language of the trans-Mississippi."Tidings of precious metals in Nevada were nothing new to the Mother Lode. As early as 1850 a William H. Moore of Indiana, who had driven the first wagon ever to cross the plains from St. Joseph to California, reported a number of prospectors digging for gold in Carson Valley but that the biggest single piece of ore he had heard reported was worth no more than $15. But when it was reported on the strength of reliable assays that the samples of "blue stuff," long discarded by miners on the east side of Mount Davidson as worthless, ran to several thousand dollars a ton in silver the rush which, a decade before, had carried the tide of fortune seekers westward over the Sierra was reversed and the greatest wave of adventurers the world has ever known suddenly deserted the diggings of the Mother Lode and rolled eastward to the Washoe.
"Caught up in this mighty landfaring were such millionaires to be as John Mackay, Senator George Hearst, Adolph Sutro, James Graham Fair, Senator John P. Jones, Sandy Bowers, Jim Flood, Jack O'Brien, and mighty, bearded Senator William M. Stewart, perhaps the most persistent of all Nevada seekers and finders, who was to see the rushes to Virginia City and to the Reese, to the White Pine, to Panamint, to Tonopah and Goldfield and, at long last, to the ultimate bonanza of them all, Bullfrog, above the incredible wastes of the Amargosa, well after the turn of the twentieth century." p. 8
". . .
"The passing of the V & T will leave Nevada, in all truth, a graveyard of railroads whose only peer as a necropolis of short lines is Colorado. Forgotten by all but professional railroad historians is the Pioche and Bullionville which was to link tht fabulous mining community with Senator John P. Jones' ambitious San Pedro and Salt Lake line. Gone, save in its vestigial remnant, is the Southern Pacific's Owens Valley branch across the state line in California, the once wistful and momentarily opulent Carson and Colorado. With the snows of yesteryear are the Nevada-California-Oregon narrow gauge, the Eureka and Palisade of fragrant memory and the once riotous Nevada Central. Only grade rights of way in the southern Nevada deserts serve to remind of the life that once flowed along the Tonopah and Tidewater, the Bullfrog-Goldfield, the Tonopah and Goldfield and the Las Vegas and Tonaopah. Dead in the surveyor's reports is the proposed Nevada and Utah Railroad that was to run from Tonopah to the southern littoral of the the Great Salt Lake. Closely associated, in California, was the unsinkable Senator Jones' short line, unsurveyed but actually financed, that was to run from San Bernadino over the Cajon to the foot of Surprise Canyon at the height of the fantastic Panamint boom." p. 67
Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp., 1935, 1876, 1860s, 1850s
Chapter XI Trails of Destiny
"p. 118 . . .
"We have an accurate picture written by a woman of [p. 119] gentle birth who tells what the pueblo was like in these formative days. Mrs. Benjamin Hayes was the wife of a young lawyer, son of a Missouri slave-holder who came in 1852 . . . [p. 120] Mrs. Hayes did not live to see the pueblo grow up; she died of consumption. Judge Hayes . . . his diary is one of the standard books of California history.
" . . .
"1861: Year of the Civil War. Southern feeling ran so high that Charles Jenkins who wanted to enlist in the Union Army had to sneak out of town and ride to San Francisco to enlist. General Albert Sidney Johnston, with a hundred followers, rode East on horseback to join the Confederacy. He was killed at Shiloh. Captain Hancock, afterwards a famous Union general, put the town under martial law, closing the United States Hotel, notorious for sedition. The dragoons marched from Tejon to the war. A military post was built at Santa Catalina Island-another in the Arroyo near Pasadena. The foreigners-French, German and Mexican were loyal. A union regiment of native California cavalry was raised.
"1861: First Baptist church started. Chung Chick opened the first Chinese store. Telegraph line opened to San Pedro. Pobladores began shingling roofs. Heavy floods. Smallpox and measles raged. Times were so hard that two lots 120 x 165 on Spring and Fourth Street and Broadway and Fourth were offererd for $1.26 taxes. No takers.
"[p. 122] 1864: The great drought. Cattle died by thousands. Rancheros ruined.,
"1865: Dragoons arrived from Fort Tejon to squelch a demonstration of joy on the part of Southerners when Lincoln was assassinated. Joseph Mesmer took over the disloyal United States Hotel, His heirs still own the old hotel which stands across the street from the present City Hall on Main Street. Gringos began buying and cutting up the ruined ranchos. One of the first was Santa Gertrudis subdivided by John G. Downey, afterward governor. Downey Avenue is named for him.
"1865: Oil discovered. St. Vincent's College moved to a new building on the present site of Bullock's Deparment Store. Two banks started, one by John G. Downey and J.A. Howard with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars, the other by I.W. Hellman and William Workman. F.P.F. Temple and Joseph Toberman also started one which was ruined by their soft-hearted policy. Temple killed himself. J.J. Reynolds, a stage-driver, imported the first hack. Pico House was opened, the famous hostelry of the South. The first steam fire engine came in. Pasadena started as "The Indiana Colony." R.M. Widney built the first street-car line, running from Temple Block to First, down Fort (Broadway) to Fifth, to Olive to Sixth to Figueroa.
Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp., 1860s
Chapter XXVI Our Literati
"Major [Horace] Bell had served in the Civil War and came to California in the sixties. His uncle was Alexander Bell, a respected pioneer of parts and influence. The major came to San Pedro by boat and tells of his first mad ride to the pueblo in one of Phineas Banning's stages.
"The pueblo then had about five thousand people-with mud holes in the street, adobes and saloons enough to liquidate a center of population. The major seems to have made [p. 341]a bee-line for the Bella Union bar with the unerring instinct of a carrier-pigeon. Thereafter he attended all the fandangos; saw most of the gun-fights and knew all the scandals; joined an illegal filibustering expedition to Nicaragua; but helped organize the volunteers-the Rangers-who ran down the last of the great Calfornia bandits-Joaquín Murietta. I never saw Major Bell on horseback but I am willing to wager that his tapaderos were so long that they swept the ground; that his saddle had more silver geegaws and that the wheel in his horse's bit more noise than any of the other silver bits.
"[p. 341] The major kicked out the box from under one of the last murderers lynched in the pueblo, and carried on several feuds with gusto and high drama . . . "
Ingersoll's Century History Santa Monica Bay Cities (Being Book Number Two of Ingersoll's Century Series of California Local History Annals), 1908, 1908a, 1882, 1880, 1860s, 1839, 1828, 1824, 1797, 1785
In the early sixties, the Malibu grant passed through the tax sale into the hands of Mathew Keller, better known in those days as "Don Mateo." Mr. Keller was born in Ireland and came to America at an early date. After living in Mexico for a time he came to California and was located in Los Angeles about 1850, becoming one of its best known and most prominent citizens. He was one of the first to engage in wine-making and to plant out an extensive vineyard, for which he imported stock from France. He devoted a great deal of attention to the cultivation of the grape and was also interested in th early experiments in raising cotton. At one time he had a complete ginning outfit set up in Los Angeles and offered its use to any one who would raise cotton. He made a thorough study of the process of making wines of different varieties and manufactured it in large quantities. He established houses in Los Angeles and San Francisco and was instrumental in introducing California wines in the east on a large scale, having extensive connections in New York for the handling of his own manufacture.
He put up a large ranch house on the Malibu and made improvements there and when he died in 1881 he left that grant to his son, Henry W. Keller, formerly of Santa Monica, who sold it in 1891 to the late Frederick H. Rindge.
" . . .
"[p. 136] Still the question of the boundary [of Boca de Santa Monica] was disputed and was not finally disposed of until about 1880, when the United [p. 137] States courts fixed the limits of the Boca de Santa Monica and July 21st, 1882, a patent for 6,656 acres of land was confirmed to Marquez and Reyes.
Ygnacio Reyes [ -1863] built a ranch house in Rustic Canyon and the family have continuously occupied the land since 1824, part of the grant still being owned by the descendants of the original grantees. This is an unusual case for generally the great land grants of the state have passed entirely out of the hand of the Californians, and the families of the original claimants have profited nothing by the marvelous increase in values.
Ygnacio Reyes also owned a home in Los Angeles, on Main street, near Fourth and is frequently mentioned in the annals of the town. He died there during an epidemic of smallpox in 1863. Three sons still survive him, Guadalupe of Sawtelle; Ysidro and Antonio of Los Angeles.
Francisco Marquez built his ranch house on the edge of the bluff, about at the end of Seventh street. Here it was a landmark for many years, having been destroyed within the past few years.
" . . .
[p. 139] " . . . In early days it [La Ballona} was chiefly occupied as a stock range, although some grain was raised and orchards of various fruits were planted about the haciendas. The district was occupied by a number of families in the fifties and sixties and was one of th first townships set aside, originally including San Vicente, Boca de Santa Monica, Malibu and a large territory. It was organized into a school district during the sixties and was a factor in the election of early days.
" . . .
"[p. 139] In 1861 a military camp was located on La Ballona, near the creek about three-quarters of a mile from the present town of Palms. This was made the headquarters of the First California Volunteer Infantry, Gen. J.H. Carleton, commanding officer. The camp was established in September, being occupied by Company A, under Col. Latham, for whom the station was named Camp Latham. Several companies were encamped here and at one time there were probably 150 men present. They were sent from here to Arizona to protect the mail service and the camp was not occupied after 1862. A couple of soldiers were buried here and in 1895 their neglected graves were remembered by the veterans of Santa Monica, who made a special trip to decorate them.
" . . .
[p. 157] Chapter II Laying the Foundations. 1870-1880, 1863
" . . . From 1863 to 1868 he [Hon. John Perceval Jones] was a member of the state legislature of California. In the meantime, he had gained much experience in mines and mining propositions. When the great developments of the Comstock lode began to attract attention, he was one of the first on the ground. Later he waa made the superintendent of the Crown Point mine.
Gordon Newell and Joe Williamson Pacific Coastal Liners, Superior Publishing Co.: Seattle, WA, (Bonanza Books, Crown Publishing: NY), 1959, 192 pp., 1860s
Alexander Saxton The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the anti-Chinese movement in California, University of California Press: Los Angeles, CA, 1971 (1975), 293 pp., 1880s, 1870s, 1860s, 1850s
[p. 3] 1. The Labor Force In California
The Chinese
The census of 1870 showed just under fifty thousand Chinese in California. Their number had increased at an accelerating pace since before the Civil War and would continue to rise till after 1880; but the rate of increase was less rapid than that for the population as a whole. In 1860 Chinese had represented slightly more than 9 percent of all Californians; ten years later the proportion had dropped to 8.6 percent and in 1880 to 7.5 percent;.
Distribution throughout the state was uneven and shifted with changing occupational patterns. Most Chinese immigrants were laborers. The majority reaching California in the early fifties had joined the rush to the foothills. There thay had found themselves in competition with white miners, who frequently resolved their own differences sufficiently to join in evicting Chinese from the camps. Already, however, the golden days were passing; by the end of the decade, as surface deposits were stripped away, most white miners went hunting richer territory elsewhere or drifted into other pursuits. The Chinese then returned to work out low-yield diggings and comb over abandoned tailings. Thus, the census of 1860 for California found more than two-thirds of all Chinese in the mining regions of the Sierra Nevada and Trinity Alps.
[p. 4] But even under Chinese methods of extraction, the placers were finally giving out, and through the sixties a large number of Chinese moved into heavy construction. The Central Pacific Railroad provided the transition for this shift. From 1866 through 1869, the railroad kept some 10,000 Chinese at work boring the Sierra tunnel and driving the line east across the deserts of Nevada and Utah. One result-aside from the golden spike at Promontory-was the assembly of an army of experienced Chinese construction workers. Afterward some stayed with the railroad, which, upon completion of the transcontinental link, began pushing its lines out to the northern and southern extremities of the state. Others moved into agriculture. California ranchers, having come through their pastoral stage, were now demanding enormous supplies of labor for clearing, diking, ditching, draining, irrigating, and harvesting the new crops.
As most of this activity centered in the great valleys, a corresponding shift of Chinese population occurred. By 1870 the mining districts had lost half their Chinese residents of ten years earlier, while the valley counties were showing a rapid increase. In Sacramento, for example, the number of Chinese tripled in the twenty-year period from 1860 to 1880; in San Joaquin their number rose from 139 to almost 2,000; in Santa Clara from 22 to 2,695; in Yolo from 6 to over 600.
While these movements in the interior were under way, a second and more important concentration of Chinese population was developing at San Francisco. Here, until 1860, the resident community had comprised little more than 8 percent of Chinese in the state. By 1870, this percentage had risen to 26 and climbedf through the seventies to just under 30 percent . . .
Grant H. Smith The History of the Comstock Lode 1850-1920, Geology and Mining Series No. 37, University of Nevada Bulletin: Reno, Nevada, vol. XXXVII. 1 July 1943, no. 3, (revised 1966), Ninth printing, 1980. 305 pp., 1860s
[p. 64] Chapter VIII The Law Governing Mines-Litigation
" . . .
[p. 65] "The Comstock mines were located under district mining rules similar to those of California . . . When an ore body pitched through an end line into an adjoining claim (as when the Gould & Curry bonanza passed into the Savage, and the Crown Point bonanza into the Belcher) that portion of it became the property of the mine into which it extended . . .
" . . .
[p. 66] "It was largely upon the basis of the regularity of the strike and dip of the Comstock Lode that Senator Stewart was enabled-with the support of other western Senators and Congressmen-to pass the congressional mining laws of 1866 and 1872, which perpetuated the extralateral right and provided for the patenting of mining claims. Until 1866 the miners were without any legal rights upon the public domain throughout the West.
" . . .
[p. 80] Chapter X The Early Bonanzas-The Ophir, The Gould & Curry, The Savage, The Chollar-Potosi, The Yellow Jacket, and The Original Gold Hill Bonanzas
" . . .
[p. 82] "The Ophir bonanza was rich but comparatively small . . .
[p. 82] "The control of the Ophir passed into the hands of successive groups of speculators and the stock was one of the most active on the market for many years. In all its history the mine did not create a single millionaire.
" . . .
[p. 84] The Gould & Curry Bonanza
[p. 84] "The mine was a consolidation of the Gould claims , , , and the Curry claim . . . Both claims . . . passed into the hands of twelve men, chiefly San Franciscans, who organized the Gould & Curry Silver Mining Company on June 25, 1860, with 4,800 shares, four to each of the 1,200 feet of the Lode which they claimed at the time. Among the incorporators and trustees were George Hearst, Lloyd Tevis, John O. Earl, Alpheus Bull, Thomas Bell, A.E. Heard, B.F, Sherwood and William Blanding, all of whom became California millionaires after making a good beginning in the Gould & Curry . . .
" . . . It was not until the end of 1861, when the "D" Street tunnel penetrated 40 feet of rich solid ore that the mine began to overshadow the Ophir and arouse hopes of future greatness that turned to ashes in the course of a few years. Instead of continuing downward the ore body pitched southward into the Savage where it was equally productive. Neither the Gould & Curry nor the Savage found another ore body in all its history, the exception of those which the Savage shared with the Hale and Norcross from 1866 to 1869.
[p. 85] " . . .
[p. 85] " . . .The ore body was mined over a length of 500 feet and a width of 100 feet, at its best, including parallel sheet and stringers, and at the depth of 500 feet passed entirely into [p. 86] the Savage.
[p. 86] The Savage
[p. 86] "The Savage was a child of fortune. Its first great ore body was found for it by the Gould & Curry, and the next, four years later by the Hale & Norcross, its neighbor on the other side.
" . . .
[p. 86] "The Savage . . . did not commence to produce until April 1863. For the next two years it was in bonanza . . . [p. 87] At the height of the "Boom of 1863" the leading stockholders sold out and wisely invested in San Francisco real estate . . . At the end of 1865 the mine was in decline . . . Further development work, however, soon disclosed the extension of the ore body and the discovery of the rich little "Potosi strike," . . . Another stroke of fortune was the discovery by the Hale & Norcross of a fine ore body on the 600-foot level in December 1865, one half of which proved to be in Savage ground.
[p. 87] "Then followed three years of large production, during which the Savage was the great mine of the Comstock . . . the last [dividends] in 1869 . . .
" . . .
[p. 48] Chapter V. The Depression of 1864-Arrival of William Sharon-Civil War Spirit-Nevada Becomes a State-Stewart Elected United States Senator.
". . .
[p. 48] " . . .The [mining stock] market needed but a push to bring it down and that was furnished by reckless, bloody extravagant Aurora, early in 1864, when its stocks crashed following the failures of . . . its ore . . . bodies . . .
" . . .
[p. 52] Stewart Elected United States Senator
[p. 52] "The year 1865 opened with a new State of Nevada fully organized, including the selection of two United States Senators. The dominating personality of William M. Stewart overshadowing all other candidates. He was not only the foremost lawyer, but an all-round dictator, including the leadership of the Republican party. When the first State Legislature met on December 13, 1864, he was promptly elected. Former Governor James W. Nye was chosen as his associate. Thereafter, during bonanza days, those honors were sought by men of great wealth and became bargain-counter affairs.
[p. 52] "Stewart was as able and diligent a United States Senator as he had been as an attorney and was reelected in 1869. One of his early accomplishments was to secure the passage of the first Federal Mining Act, known as "The Law of 1866." . . . He ceased to be the ruler of the Comstock after his first election to the Senate. His mining and milling enterprises had not been profitable, there was no longer any mining litigation of importance, and his interests lay in Washington.
" . . .
[p. 49] " . . . the panic of 1865 blasted their hopes . . .
[p. 50] "Alvinza Hayward, who joined Sharon and Mills in the Comstock venture in 1867, had already made a fortune through the ownership of the famous Eureka gold mine at Sutter Creek, California. He was a fine-looking, agreeable man, who remained faithful to his associates and shared in their good fortune until he and Superintendent J.P. Jones conspired to take control of the Crown Point away from them soon after its bonanza was discovered.
" . . .
" . . . In June of [1867] Sharon, Ralston, Mills, and Hayward took over the mills and formed the Union Mill and Mining Company. Two years later they controlled all the leading mines and had seventeen mills.
". . . "the Bank Crowd," in that . . . depressing year of 1870 . . . ruin threatened them and the bank. They had loaned three-fifths of the bank's capital on the Comstock and attendant industries, in obtaining complete personal control-and the luck discovery of the Crown Point bonanza toward the end of the year was all that saved them.
[p. 137] Chapter XVI The Crown Point-Belcher Bonanza-The Gold to Silver Ratio-The Silver Question.
[p. 142] The Silver Question
[p. 142] "The great flow of gold from California in 1849 and 1850 alarmed the bankers of Europe. Holland and Belgium, in 1850, began to sell their gold and stock up with silver. Other nations followed, especially after the great gold discoveries in Australia, beginning in 1851, and silver rose in price throughout the world. The countries of Europe, with the exception of Great Britain and France, were practically on a silver basis until 1871 when [p. 143] Germany adopted the gold standard after receiving a large amount of gold from France in payment of the war indemnity. Japan and the United States demonetized silver in 1873, and Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France and Holland soon followed. All of those countries threw quantities of silver upon the market, with a resultant decline in price.
" . . .
µ [p. 143] "Silver sold at a premium from 1859 until demonetization in 1873, when it would no longer be coined free at $1.29 an ounce, 1/16 the value of gold. The market price was $1.36 an ounce in 1859, from which it declined slowly to $1.32 early in 1873, although the coinage value was $1,2929 an ounce. During 1873, when silver was demonitized, the average market price continued to decline until it reached $1 in 1886. After that the decline was rapid.
" . . .
[p. 241] Chapter XXIV Miners' Wages and Hours-Heat and Ventilation-Giant Powder, Burleigh and Diamond Drills-Lumber and Firewood-The V Flume.
[p. 241] "Comstock miners were the lords of labor and gloried in it. They were the pick of the world; their wages were the highest, their hours the shortest; they were men among men. Independent-minded, like the rest of the community, they resisted all attempts to reduce wages below $4 a day, and first organized for that purpose as early as 1863. During the hard times of 1865 and 1866 they submitted to a reduction by some of the mines, but were quick to unite again in 1867 with only partial success until 1872.
"While in 1864 and again in 1867 the miners organized and marched in bodies to assert their demands, there was no violence nor any destruction of property. John Trembath, the Cornish foreman at the Uncle Sam mine, who was bound to the hoisting cable and jerked up and down, might question the statement that there was no violence. [Lord's Comstock Mining and Miners, pp. 183-190, 266-268]
[p. 241] "Shinn says [The History of the Mine, p. 250 (1896).] that "On one occasion a superintendent (Charles Bonner of the Gould & Curry) who had attempted to cut wages, was concealed int the house of a priest (Father Manogue) or he would have been torn limb from limb by the indignant miners." An overstatement, no doubt.
"Ten hours was a shift during all of the early years, but, as conditions underground became more intolerable, the hours of men working in such places were reduced to eight. In 1867 the constitution of the newly formed Miners' Union provided that all men working underground should receive $4 for an eight-hour shift. That rule was not enforced, it appears, until 1872 . . .
" . . .
[p. 249] Chapter XXV Fire in the Stopes-Low-Grade Operations in the Bonanza Mines-The Comstock Milling Monopoly-The Last Washoe Process Mill-Losses in Tailings-Tailings Reworked
[p. 253] The Comstock Milling Monopoly
[p. 253] "The costly and unprofitable mills of the Ophir, the Gould & Curry, the Savage, and the Mexican during the early '60s caused these mines to send much of their lower-grade ore to custom mills. But those mills ran into debt during the lean years, chiefly to the Bank of California. When the time was ripe Sharon's Union Milling Company took them over and a new system was created whereby the productive mines ceased to own their own mills, except in small part, and had their ores reduced in mills belonging to the men in control of the mines.
". . .
[p. 291] Appendix Table of Production of Comstock Mines from 1859 to January 1, 1882. Notes on Table. Comstock Production and Profits from 1859 to 1882. Table of Production of the Comstock Mines from 1882 to 1919, Inclusive.
[p. 293] Crown Point (1864-1878) 842,552 tons; $29,814,507 yield; $35.39 yield per ton; $11,588,000 dividends; $2,623,370 assessments; last dividend, 1875
[p. 294] Notes on Comstock Production from 1859 to 1920
[p. 294] "The foregoing statement of the production of the Comstock mines is as close an estimate as can be made. The production during the '60s and '70s is fairly dependable . . .
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[p. 295] "The production up to 1871 was approximately 60 percent silver and 40 percent gold. . . .
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Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990. 1875, 1872, 1864, 1862, 1850s, 1828,
"One of the visitors to the Santa Monica area in 1872 was a wealthy San Francisco merchant named Colonel Robert S. Baker*. He made his fortune in the sheep ranching business in Kern County's Tehachapi Mountains and had come south to investigate Southern California's booming wool industry. He arrived by steamer at the Shoo Fly Landing, a small pier several hundred yards south of the present pier, near what is now the foot of Pico Blvd. The pier was used for loading shipments of "asphaltum" that was brought overland by wagon from Henry Hancock's Rancho La Brea tar pits. The tar was bound for San Francisco and its roofing and ship building trades.
"Col. Baker found the nearby grassy mesa of the San Vincente Ranchero perfect for sheep raising. The 30,000 acre tract had been granted to Francisco Sepulveda by the Mexican governor in 1828. It was a large ranch that extended south from Marquez and Reyes property to the La Ballona Rancho marked by the stream bed at Pico Blvd., from the Ocean east to Westwood Village, and into the mountains. Like most ranches at the time, it was virtually unused since the drought of 1862-1864 killed off most of the cattle."
Betty Lou Young Our First Century: The Los Angeles Athletic Club 1880-1980, LAAC Press: Los Angeles, California 1979, 176pp., 1860s
"The old Spanish sports-such as bullfighting, bearbaiting, and cockfighting-were outlawed in 1860 . . .
"The most visibly athletic and gregarious of the new arrivals were the Germans, who encouraged A.F. Tilden to establish the city's first gymnasium in 1860 (after) the Teutonia Verein in 1859, a singing and social club based at the Round House [an amusement center called the "Garden of Paradise."]
"By 1869, . . . 5,600 residents . . . a Dr. Kurtz and eleven others organized the Los Angeles Turnverein . . .
"It took a series of disasters in the 1860s to tilt the social and economic balance in favor of the Americans. A major flood in 1861 was followed by two years of drought and an epidemic of smallpox. These events, combined with aa sharp decline in business and problems of establishing title to their lands, forced many rancheros into bankruptcy. By 1870 the Americans had taken over large tracts of land, and most of the old town houses around the Plaza either stood empty or had been converted to other uses."
Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182pp., 1860s
"Meanwhile, Ysidro Reyes died at home in the pueblo during the smallpox epidemic of 1861. . . . A fifty-inch rainfall in 1861 was followed by the great drought of 1862-64. . . ."
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2. Santa Monica Canyon As A Resort
"Los Angeles in the 1860s was still an adobe pueblo-raucous, filthy, and lawless. . . prosperous migrants from the east began flocking to Southern California to get their share . . . and brought with them a taste for more civilized pleasures.
"In spite of the resulting land boom, the Santa Monica coastline and plateau remained a grass-covered range where sheep and a few cattle still grazed. . . . perhaps the first true resort in Southern California. According to an article in the Los Angeles Express in 1872: "Seventeen years ago [1855] Santa Monica was selected as a summer resort by Dr. Hayward and until the last five years [1867] he and his family were the only ones who availed themselves of its delights and benefits. Santa Monica proper is a farm house located on the ridge one and a half miles from where the camp is located. At this log house the road descends into a deep ravine or cañon, at the foot of which near the confluence with the ocean, is a thick growth of old sycamores. Here is the camp."
"By the mid-sixties, picnicking and camping under the sycamores in the canyon drew many Angelenos. . . . One intriguing item in the San Bernardino Guardian reported that almost the entire Jewish population of Los Angeles rode to Santa Monica Canyon in four six-horse coaches on September 22, 1867, shortly before the Jewish New Year, to enjoy the pleasures of "ocean swimming and surfside festivities."