1869 (1870)(1871)(1872)(1860-1870) (1870-1880)Table of Contents
Samuel Bowles Our New West: Records of Travel Between The Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, Hartford Publishing Co.: Hartford, CT., J.D. Dennison, New York. J.A. Stoddard, Chicago, Il, 1869. Published by Subscription Only. See Text
Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt* Thinking Big: The Story of the Los Angeles Times, Its Publishers and Their Influence on Southern California, G.P. Putnam's Sons: NY, 1977. 603 pp., 1909, 1876, 1869, 1781 See Text
Gordon Newell and Joe Williamson Pacific Coastal Liners, Superior Publishing Co.: Seattle, WA, (Bonanza Books, Crown Publishing: NY), 1959, 192 pp., 1969, 1860s 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. 305pp., 1869, 1860s See Text
Jack Smith The Big Orange Ward Ritchie Press: Pasadena, CA, 1976, 1869, See Text
Notes:
The first velocipedes, unstable contraptions with a tall front wheel and a small one behind, were seen briefly in Los Angeles in 1869. BLY
Documents
Samuel Bowles Our New West: Records of Travel Between The Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, Hartford Publishing Co.: Hartford, CT., J.D. Dennison, New York. J.A. Stoddard, Chicago, Il, 1869. Published by Subscription Only.
Over the Plains-Over the Mountains-Through the Great Interior Basin-Over the Sierra Nevadas-To and Up and Down the Pacific Coast with Details of the Wonderful Natural Scenery, Agriculture, Mines , Business, Social Life, Progress, and Prospects of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia; including A Full Description of the Pacific Railroad; and Of the Life of the Mormans, Indians, and Chinese. With Map, Portraits, and Twelve Full Page Illustrations
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by Samuel Bowles, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Connectticut.
Samuel Bowles and Company, Printers, Electrotypers and Binders, Springfield, Mass.
"To Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of Congress, and Vice President of the United States; Trusted and Beloved Above All Other Public Men By the American People; Whose Past and Present are Both the Pledge and Promise of His Future; With Whom These Journey's Through "Our New West," Whose Experiences and Results Are Here Recorded, Were Made;
"This Volume is Dedicated, by His Grateful Friend and Fellow-Traveler, Samuel Bowles."
[This work appears to be a reissue of Samuel Bowles' Book which recorded his two trips to the new American West, in 1865 by stagecoach and again in 1868 by the newly completed railroad.]
Chapter III The Pacific Railroad
" . . . Only America could have demanded, conceived and organized for popular use such accomodations at the Pullman Palace and Sleeping Cars of the West. To some, as to ours, are added the special luxury of a house organ; and the passengers while away the tedious hours of long rides over unvarying prairies with music and song." p. 46
" . . .
"As the Railroad marched thus rapidly across the broad Continent of plain and mountain, there was improvised a rough and temporary town at its public stopping-place. As this was changed every thirty or forty days, these settlements were of the most perishable materials-canvas tents, plain board shanties, and turf-hovels,-pulled down and sent forward for a new career, or deserted as worthless, at every grand movement of the Railroad company. Only a small proportion of their population had aught to do with the road, or any legitimate occupation. Most were hangers-on around the disbursement of such a giantic work, catching the drippings from the feast in any and every form that it was possible to reach them. Restaurant and saloon keepers, gamblers, desperadoes of every grade, the vilest of men and of women made up this "Hell on Wheels," as it was most aptly termed.
"When we were on the line, this congregation of scum and wickedness was within the Desert section, and was called Benton. One to two thousand men, and a dozen or two women were encamped on the alkali plain in tents and board shanties; not a tree, not a shrub, not a blade of grass was visible; the dust ankle deep as we walked through it, and so fine and volatile that the slightest breeze loaded the air with it, irritating every sense and poisoning half of them; a village of a few variety stores and shops, and many restaurants and grog-shops; by day disgusting, by night dangerous; almost everybody dirty, many filthy, and with the marks of the lowest vice; averaging a murder a day; gambling and drinking, hurdy-gurdy dancing and the vilest of sexual commerce, the chief business and pastime of the hours,-this was Benton. Like its predecessors, it fairly festered in corruption, disorder and death, and would have rotted, even in this dry air, had it outlasted a brief sixty-day life. But in a few weeks its tents were struck, its shanties razed, and with their dwellers moved on fifty or a hundred miles farther to repeat their life of another brief day. Where these people came from originally; whre they went to when the road was finished, and their occcupation was over, were both puzzles too intricate for me. Hell would appear to have been raked to furnish them; and to it they must have naturally returned after graduating here, fitted for its highest seats and most diabolical service." pp. 56 and 57
Chapter XXI The Chinese [San Francisco]
" . . .
"The managers of the six Chinese companies and the leading Chinese merchants of San Francisco all hold friendly relations with the leading citizens and public men of California. Occasionally, when distinguished people are visiting here, they extend to them the courtesy of a grand Chinese dinner. Such honor was proffered to Mr. Colfax and his companions. The preliminary formalities were stately and extensive,-they would have sufficed for a banquet of the royal sovereigns of Europe, or the pacification of the ambitions and jealousies of the first families of Virginia; but when these were finally adjusted, questions of precedence among the Chinese settled, and a proper choice made among the many Americans who were eager to be bidden to the feast, all went as smooth as a town school examination that the teacher has been drilling for a month previous." pp. 407, 408
"The party numbered from fifty to sixty, half Chinese, half white citizens. The dinner was given in the second story of a Chinese restaurant, in a leading street of the city. Our hosts were fine-looking men, with impressive manners. While their race generally seem not more than two-thirds the size of our American men, these were nearly if not quite as tall and stout as their guests. Their eyes and their faces beamed with intelligence; they were quick to perceive everything, and au fait in all courtesies and politeness. An interpreter was present for the heavy talking; but most of our Chinese entertainers spoke a little English, and we got on well enough so far as that was concerned; though hand-shaking and bowing and scraping and a general flexibility of countenance, bodies and limbs had a very large share of the conversation to perform. Neither here nor in China is it common for the English and Americans to learn the Chinese language. The Chinese can and do more readily acquire ours, sufficiently at least for all business intercourse. Their broken or "pigeon" English, as it is called, is often very grotesque, and always very simple. . . " p. 408
"We were seated for the dinner about little round tables, six to nine at each table, and hosts and guest evenly distributed. There was a profusion of elegant China ware on each table; every guest had two or three plates and saucers, all delicate and small. Choice sauces, pickles, sweetmeats and nuts were also plentifully scattered about. Each guest had a saucer of flowers, a China spoon or bowl with a handle, and a pair of chop-sticks, little round and smooth ivory sticks about six inches long. Chi Sing-Tong, President of the San Yup Company, presided at Mr. Colfax's table." p. 409
"Now the meal began. It consisted of three different courses, or dinners rather, between which was a recess of half an hour, when we retired to an anteroom, smoked and talked, and listened to the simple rough, barbaric music of a coarse guitar, viol drum and violin, and meanwhile the tables were reset and new food provided.
"Each course or dinner comprised a dozen to twenty different dishes, served generally one at a time, though sometimes two were brought on at once. There were no joints, nothing to be carved. Every article of food was brought on in quart bowls, in a sort of hash form. We dove into it with our chop-sticks again to get it or parts of it to our mouths. No one seemed to take more than a single taste or mouthful of each dish; so that, even if one relished the food, it would need something like a hundred different dishes to satisfy an ordinary appetite. Some of us took very readily to the chop-sticks; others did not,-perhaps were glad they could not; and for these a Yankee fork was provided, and our Chinese neighbors at the table were also prompt to offer their own chop-sticks to place a bit of each did upon our plates. but as these same chop-sticks were also used to convey food into the mouths of the Chinese, the service did not always add to the relish of the food." p. 410
"These were the principal dishes served for the first course, and in the order named: Fried shark's fins and grated ham, stewed pigeon with bamboo soup, fish sinews with ham, stewed chicken with water-cress, sea-weed, stewed ducks and bamboo soup, sponge cake, omelet cake, flower cake and banana fritters, bird-nest soup, tea. The meats seemed all alike; they had been dried or preserved in some way; were cut up into mouthfuls, and depended for all savoriness upon their accompaniments. The sea-weed, shark's fins and the like had a glutinous sort of taste; not repulsive, nor very seductive. The sweets were very delicate, but like everything else had a positively artificial flavor; every article, indeed, seemed to have had its original and real taste and strength dried or cooked out of it, and a common Chinese flavor put into it. The bird-nest soup looked and tasted somewhat as a very delicate vermicelli soup does. The tea was delicious,-it was served without milk or sugar, did not need any such amelioration, and was very refreshing. Evidently it was made from the most delicate leaves or flowers of the tea plant, and had escaped all vulgar steeping or boiling.
"During the first recess, the presidents of the companies,-the chief entertainers,-took their leave, and the prominent Chinese merchants assumed the post of leading hosts; such being the fashion of the people. The second dinner opened with cold tea, and a white, rose-scented liquor, very strong, and served in tiny cups, and went on with lichens and a fungus-like moss, more shark's fins, stewed chestnuts and chickens, Chinese oysters, yellow and resurrected from the dried stage, more fungus stewed, a stew of flour and white nuts, stewed mutton, roast ducks, rice soup, rice and ducks' eggs and pickled cucumbers, ham and chicken soup. Between the second and third parts, there was an exchange of complimentary speeches by the head Chinaman and Mr. Colfax, at which the interpreter had to officiate. The third and last course consisted of a great variety of fresh fruits; and the unique entertainment ended about eleven o'clock, after a sitting of full five hours. The American resident guest furnished champagne and claret . . ." pp. 411, 412
Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt* Thinking Big: The Story of the Los Angeles Times, Its Publishers and Their Influence on Southern California, G.P. Putnam's Sons: NY, 1977, 603 pp., 1909, 1876, 1869, 1781
"Since the founding of the city of Los Angeles in 1781, fur traders, travelers, and immigrants had been making use of the natural habor afforded by San Pedro Bay, twenty miles south of the city. Until the gold rush, San Pedro had been one of the most important shipping points on the West Coast. "It was the only port for a distance of eighty miles," Richard Dana wrote of San Pedro in Two Years Before the Mast, "and about thirty miles in the interior was a fine plain country, filled with herds of cattle, in the center of which was the pueblo of Los Angeles-the largest town in California-and several of the largest missions; to all of which San Pedro was the seaport."
"By 1869 . . . Los Angeles voters passed a bond to finance a . . . public-owned railroad . . . The line was subsequently given to the Southern Pacific in 1876 as part of the deal to get the SP to make Los Angeles its southern terminal . . ."
Gordon Newell and Joe Williamson Pacific Coastal Liners, Superior Publishing Co.: Seattle, WA, (Bonanza Books, Crown Publishing: NY), 1959, 192 pp., 1969, 1860s
p. 22 "California Steam, noted for its blithe disregard of human life where profits were involved, was doing a handsome business between San Francisco, Victoria and Puget Sound in 1865 . . . Footnote 3: A total of 31 Pacific Mail steamships were wrecked between 1853 and 1915, all but two in the Pacific. Nearly two thousand lives were lost in these disasters . . .
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. 305pp., 1869, 1860s
[p. 122] Chapter XIV 1869 A Discouraging Year-The Yellow Jacket Fire-Sharon Builds the V. and T. Railroad
[p. 122] "The year 1869 . . . many of the lesser mines had closed down, and the leaders, with the exception of the few that had ore, were operating with reduced forces. Only the Savage, Chollar-Potosi, Yellow Jacket, Crown Point, and the Kentuck were paying dividends, and the limits of their ore bodies were known. The Sierra Nevada also was paying a trifling sum from very low grade ore. It was a memorable year for Sutro, for he was enabled after four years of disappointments to start work on his tunnel. The great hope of the year was the construction of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad from Gold Hill to the Carson River mills and to Carson City, which would reduce the cost of hauling ore and lumber and firewood by wagons and encourage the extraction of low-grade ores.
[p. 122] ". . . April . . . the Yellow Jacket fire, in which thirty-seven men were trapped underground and lost their lives. [Another fire in the Yellow Jacket on September 30, 1873, on the 1,200-foot level, took the lives of six men.] Three adjoining mines (the Crown Point, the Kentuck, and the Yellow Jacket) were working on the same east ore bodies from the 600- to the 900-foot level and their extensive stopes were, a maze of large resinous pine timbers. The fire, of unknown origin, started on the 800-foot level of the Yellow Jacket and had been burning for several hours without knowledge owing to heavy doors in the drifts . . . when the men on the morning shift were lowered down the shafts a mass of charred timbers in the stopes broke under the weight of the roof, sending a blast of deadly gas and smoke through the workings of the three mines. A few were hoisted back, many were suffocated, and others burned . . . three days . . . heroic efforts were made to reach the remaining men. When it became clear that all below were dead and that not even their bodies could be recovered at that time, the shafts were sealed . . .
[p. 123] "The last descent into the Crown Point prior to the second sealing of the shaft was made on April 12 (the fire occurred on the 7th) by Superintendent Jones and a young man who tried to connect a pipe with the blower tube. Foul air drove them out after fifteen minutes without making the connection. After the shafts were sealed large volumes of steam were forced into the workings to check the fire. Those mines, which had been among the most productive on the Lode, were practically ruined. The caved stopes smouldered for months and yielded but little good ore afterward. Instead of paying dividends all three mines began to levy assessments.
" . . .
Jack Smith The Big Orange Ward Ritchie Press: Pasadena, CA, 1976.
Santa Monica
"It seemed incredible that only a hundred years ago there was nothing here but land, sea and sky. An Easterner, writing years later of a visit he made to this shore in 1869, recalled that it was 'an unpeopled waste-no light (dressed) brigade of sportive bathers charged the angry surf; neither keel nor oar vexed the breakers that broke on the desolate shore.'"