Sierra Nevada foothills, 150 miles across the Central Valley, San Francisco became the principal destination of the fortune seekers of the world. The names of the camps suggested the potency of the lure: New York-of-the-Pacific, Bunker Hill, Chinese Camp, German Bar, Georgia Slide, Nigger Hill, Dutch Corral, Irish Creek, Malay Camp, French Bar, Italian Bar. Those who found their fortunes were inclined to part with them in the nearest haven of pleasure, which was San Francisco. Those who did not discovered that they could do just as well providing the opportunities. With oranges going for $2 apiece at the mines, and a plate of fresh oysters for $20 or more, it was a bonanza for all concerned.
In 1848, the population of San Francisco was eight hundred; three years later, thirty-five thousand people lived there. In 1853 the population went past fifty thousand and San Francisco became one of the twenty largest cities in the United States. By 1869, San Francisco possessed one of the busiest ports in the world, a huge fishing fleet, and the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad. It teemed with mansions, restaurants, hotels, theaters, and whorehouses. In finance it was the rival of New York, in culture the rival of Boston; in spirit it had no competitor.
Los Angeles, meanwhile, remained a torpid, suppurating, stunted little slum. It was too far from the gold fields to receive many fortune seekers on their way in or to detach them from their fortunes on the way out. It sat forlornly in the middle of an arid coastal basin, lacking both a port and a railroad. During most of the year, its water source, the Los Angeles River, was a smallish creek in a large bed; during the few winter weeks when it was not—when supersaturated tropical weather fronts crashed into the mountains ringing the basin—the bed could not begin to contain it, and the river floated neighborhoods out to sea. (For many years, Santa Anita Canyon, near Pasadena, held the United States record for the greatest rainfall in a twenty-four-hour period, but it may be more significant to state that the twenty-six inches that fell in a day were nearly twice the amount of precipitation that Los Angeles normally receives in a year.) Had humans never settled in Los Angeles, evolution, left to its own devices, might have created in a million more years the ideal creature for the habitat: a camel with gills.
The Spanish had actually settled Los Angeles long before they ever saw the Golden Gate. It was more convenient to Mexico and, from an irrigation farmer’s point of view, it was a more promising place to live. By 1848, the town had a population of sixteen hundred, half Spanish and half Indian, with a small sprinkling of Yankees, and was twice the size of San Francisco. A decade later, however, San Francisco had grown ten times as large as Los Angeles. By the end of the Civil War, when San Francisco was the Babylon of the American frontier, Los Angeles was a filthy pueblo of thirteen thousand, a beach for human flotsam washed across the continent on the blood tide of the war. One of the town’s early pioneers, a farm boy whose family had emigrated from Iowa, described it as a “vile little dump ... debauched ... degenerate ... vicious.”
If anything could be said to have saved Los Angeles it was its reputation as a haven from persecution, a place where one could lose oneself. Since the ranks of the persecuted include those who are too virtuous for their fellow citizens, as well as those who are not virtuous enough, sooner or later the city was bound to attract the victims of mobocracy. And the most persecuted among the virtuous in nineteenth-century America were, besides peaceful Indians and runaway slaves and Mennonites and Quakers, the members of the Mormon faith.
After fleeing Illinois for Utah, the Mormons had always been obsessed with finding escape routes to the sea. The first irrigation canals were still being dug beside the Wasatch
In 1848, the population of San Francisco was eight hundred; three years later, thirty-five thousand people lived there. In 1853 the population went past fifty thousand and San Francisco became one of the twenty largest cities in the United States. By 1869, San Francisco possessed one of the busiest ports in the world, a huge fishing fleet, and the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad. It teemed with mansions, restaurants, hotels, theaters, and whorehouses. In finance it was the rival of New York, in culture the rival of Boston; in spirit it had no competitor.
Los Angeles, meanwhile, remained a torpid, suppurating, stunted little slum. It was too far from the gold fields to receive many fortune seekers on their way in or to detach them from their fortunes on the way out. It sat forlornly in the middle of an arid coastal basin, lacking both a port and a railroad. During most of the year, its water source, the Los Angeles River, was a smallish creek in a large bed; during the few winter weeks when it was not—when supersaturated tropical weather fronts crashed into the mountains ringing the basin—the bed could not begin to contain it, and the river floated neighborhoods out to sea. (For many years, Santa Anita Canyon, near Pasadena, held the United States record for the greatest rainfall in a twenty-four-hour period, but it may be more significant to state that the twenty-six inches that fell in a day were nearly twice the amount of precipitation that Los Angeles normally receives in a year.) Had humans never settled in Los Angeles, evolution, left to its own devices, might have created in a million more years the ideal creature for the habitat: a camel with gills.
The Spanish had actually settled Los Angeles long before they ever saw the Golden Gate. It was more convenient to Mexico and, from an irrigation farmer’s point of view, it was a more promising place to live. By 1848, the town had a population of sixteen hundred, half Spanish and half Indian, with a small sprinkling of Yankees, and was twice the size of San Francisco. A decade later, however, San Francisco had grown ten times as large as Los Angeles. By the end of the Civil War, when San Francisco was the Babylon of the American frontier, Los Angeles was a filthy pueblo of thirteen thousand, a beach for human flotsam washed across the continent on the blood tide of the war. One of the town’s early pioneers, a farm boy whose family had emigrated from Iowa, described it as a “vile little dump ... debauched ... degenerate ... vicious.”
If anything could be said to have saved Los Angeles it was its reputation as a haven from persecution, a place where one could lose oneself. Since the ranks of the persecuted include those who are too virtuous for their fellow citizens, as well as those who are not virtuous enough, sooner or later the city was bound to attract the victims of mobocracy. And the most persecuted among the virtuous in nineteenth-century America were, besides peaceful Indians and runaway slaves and Mennonites and Quakers, the members of the Mormon faith.
After fleeing Illinois for Utah, the Mormons had always been obsessed with finding escape routes to the sea. The first irrigation canals were still being dug beside the Wasatch
Similar Books
