Santa Monica

“ But Santa Monica was a tougher enemy than the old captain. For one thing, the inhabitants neither knew nor cared that Mr. Boldwyn was the friend of a director or that he ran a parish like a regiment or that he had written a commentary on the Fourth Gospel. To them he was simply a member of that pathetically mad but opulent tribe of Inglese, who bulged with lire and who at any moment might burst like a cloud and scatter manna over them. They never lost hope. ”

“ Santa Monica is another small port at the end of a branch railroad from Los Angeles, sixteen miles directly west, and somewhat famed as a sea-side resort. It has a
hotel of considerable size, and a bold situation on a pretty horseshoe bay. The beach is of fine, hard sand; and the temperature admits of bathing, if one be inclined for it, all the year round. The hopes which were at one time entertained by capitalists, like Senator Jones, of Nevada, of making the place a great shipping point, have been for the present abandoned. ”

“ The guardia regia, who understood authority but no English, thereupon seized the one-eyed, open-mouthed painter of post-cards by the collar.
THE court of Santa Monica is just a fair-sized room which smells, like most official rooms all the world over, of stale tobacco, dusty deeds and fusty clothes. On that particular evening it smelled worse than usual, for the good reason that half Santa Monica was there. Those who had not been able to squeeze over the threshold hung outside the windows, peering through the bars like monkeys. ”

“ Once Santa Monica's boom had been launched, the town developed as had few other suburbs of Los Angeles. Within nine or ten months a thousand inhabitants pointed with satisfaction to one hundred and sixty houses and perhaps half as many tents. ”

“ Generally there is less sea on, and it is never too hot or too cold for bathing. Next morning we had another bath in a still rougher Pacific. The Duke and some of the party were driven about the country by Colonel and Mrs. Baker, and at 3 P.M., to our sorrow, we left the most lovable little spot of all we have seen on this continent. Good fortune be in store for Santa Monica! At Los Angeles, where carriages 18 were waiting, we drove through the streets and suburbs, which enabled us to appreciate the reasons which induced the Spanish founders to give the city its name. ”

“ Moreover, when the mercury in Los Angeles rises, as it occasionally does, to one hundred degrees, the inhabitants of that city have a choice of several places of refuge: in two or three hours they can reach the mountains; or in an hour they can enjoy themselves upon Redondo Beach; or they may take a trolley car and, sixty minutes later, stroll along the sands of Santa Monica, inhaling a refreshing breeze, blowing practically straight from Japan ”

“ The end of the Santa Monica Range came in sight and soon the road descended in long winding "grades" towards the sea-coast. For the first time by daylight I saw California in its true colours. Here I should mention that the height of summer is not the best time to explore California. It is in the winter and the spring that the country is arrayed in its greatest glory. The lack of rain, even near the sea-coast, is so marked that by the time summer is reaching its zenith, there is not a green blade of grass to be seen. ”

“ The country is older, the Spanish names are more musical; orange and lemon are not grown for ornament, but as a principal crop; and the climate is of that genial mildness which is most to the taste of seekers for health.
Famed Los Angeles, City of the Angels, is the terminus of the first day's journey which brings us into it. The watering-place of Santa Monica and the important points of San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara are not far distant to the west, while San Diego lies at a moderate remove to the southward, near the Mexican frontier. ”

“ A feature of Los Angeles is its beautiful sea beaches. Easily accessible by trolley and by rail, Santa Monica, Redondo, Long Beach, and San Pedro provide unsurpassed facilities to the citizens, and the island of Santa Catalina, twenty miles off the coast, is even more attractive—a seashore resort where bathing is a comfortable pastime every day in the year, and where fishermen find delights unending. ”

“ Pegg reverently. "There is some doubt as to if I was born in Santa Monica or Oroville. It has kep' me unprejudiced, what with owning orchards in both ends of the State. Let me tell you, Miss Freedom, that our golden land [Pg 129] is a bower and a horn of plenty from one end to the other. It is all good enough for this native son!" ”

“ In the neighborhood are petroleum wells and asphalt deposits, while the adjacent district has many irrigation canals. Down on the ocean shore is San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, where the harbor has been improved by a large outlay, and twenty miles away is the beautiful mountainous island of Santa Catalina, a popular resort, which is in reality an ocean mountain top. Santa Monica Bay, to the southwest, is the coast 445 bathing-place of Los Angeles, and near by is the popular Redondo Beach, with its spacious Chautauqua Assembly Building. ”

“ On Sundays Stephen Lorimer took them all, Jimsy, Honor, Billy and Ted Carmody, the Lorimer twins and the last little Lorimer, on motor picnics to the beach. They drove to Santa Monica, down the Palisades, up the narrow, winding, [Pg 26] wave-washed road to the Malibou Ranch and built a fire and broiled chops and made coffee and baked potatoes, after their swim, ate like refugees and slept like puppies on the sand. ”

“ Rose-Ann lived in Santa Monica.
412 2 When Rose-Ann reached her apartment in Santa Monica, after a leisurely lunch in Los Angeles, and turned her key in the lock, she heard some one inside spring up and come to the door. It was opened for her, and Felix stood there smiling.
“How did you get in?” she demanded in surprise.
“Never mind how I got in,” he said. “I’m here.”
“It’s a matter of some importance to me how you got in,” she retorted, edging around him into the room and putting her purse on the little table. “I am known here as Miss Prentiss. The people here suppose me to be unmarried....” ”

“ Since we live in an age of corruption, almost like the declining days of ancient Rome, with the “interests” digging in deeper all the time, I ought not have been surprised at a campaign to build another Las Vegas right in the heart of our community. The plan was to incorporate a separate little city made up of the Sunset Strip, with its night clubs like Dino’s and Jerry Lewis’ new place, and stretching from Santa Monica Boulevard up into the hills. ”

“ At an early period in the development of Santa Monica, as we have seen, Senator Jones built a wharf there; but the Los Angeles & Independence Railroad, expected to become the outlet on the Pacific Coast of a supposedly great mining district in Inyo County, never reached farther east than Los Angeles. The Southern Pacific Railroad Company, desiring to remove this competition, obtained possession of the new road, razed the warehouse and condemned and half dismantled the wharf; and by setting up its terminus at Wilmington, it transferred there the greater part of its shipping and trade. ”

“ The cable car isn’t a car at all, children, but is a hilly-cum-go, a species of rocking horse and a grown-up kiddie-kar. It is a native of and peculiar to San Francisco, and is a loyal member of the N. S. G. W. It has relatives in the South, and the electric dinkie that rolls up and down between Venice and Santa Monica is its first cousin. Some say that it is distantly related to the wheel chairs at Atlantic City. It is not at all common.
The men who run it are its Uncles. The parents live underground caring for the young kiddie-kars. ”

“ From the start the Road did a thriving freight business, although passenger traffic was often interfered with. Early in January, 1876, for instance, the train from Santa Monica failed to make its appearance, the engineer having spied a bit of ground suspiciously soft in the ciénaga—locally spelled 486 ciénega—refused, despite the protests of passengers, to proceed!
There were also inconveniences of travel by steamer such as arose from the uncertainty whether a vessel running between San Francisco and San Diego would put in at San Pedro or Santa Monica. ”

“ The southern coast is a vast summer resort. The soft, luxurious climate, the sea-bathing, the picturesque scenery, the fruits and flowers form attractions that draw countless thousands of people from all parts of the United States and from foreign countries as well. Santa Barbara, San Buenaventura, Venice, Newport, Long Beach, Naples, Ocean Park, Huntington Beach, San Diego, Oceanside, Coronado and Santa Monica are some of the best known towns.
The interior of California on the north consists of the Sacramento Valley, an empire of agricultural land. ”

“ Rancho Los Palos Verdes has been the scene of some of the earliest as well as the latest development in Los Angeles County. For more than thirty years before Willmore platted Willmore City, later called Long Beach, and before Jones and Baker laid out their harbor city of Santa Monica there had been a thriving settlement at the port of San Pedro in the Rancho Los Palos Verdes. ”

“ In the following thirty-three years many changes came over California. The rule of the United States supplanted the ruin of Mexico, California became a state and Los Angeles a city. The wool of the lazy sheep became more profitable than the hides of cattle.
In 1872 the heirs of Sepulveda, anxious to divide their inheritance and believing that Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica had reached the peak of its value, sold the same for less than $2.00 an acre to Colonel Robert S. Baker, prominent wool grower of Kern County. ”

“ About the same time, Colonel R. S. Baker, who had shortly before bought the San Vicente rancho, sold a two-thirds interest in the property to Jones; and one of their first operations was the laying out of the town of Santa Monica. After the hotel and bath-houses had been built, an auction sale of lots took place on July 16th, 1875, and was attended by a large number of people, including myself; prospective buyers coming from as far as San Francisco to compete with bidders from the Southland. ”

“ Of the twenty-one parks, one comprises more than three thousand acres, and another, Elysium Park, over eight hundred acres of hills and valleys already decoratively laid out with terraced drives and beautiful shrubs, flowers, and artificial lakes. The trend of the city is rapidly toward the ocean, some fifteen to twenty miles away, and it can hardly be five years before from Venice and Santa Monica, on the coast, to Pasadena, ten miles to the east of Los Angeles, there will be one solid city, one vast metropolis of the Southwest. ”

“ Some time later, Baker sold out to Beale and then came South and purchased the San Vicente Ranch. This rancho comprised the whole Santa Monica district and consisted of thirty thousand acres, which Baker stocked with sheep. On a part of this land, the Soldiers' Home now stands.
Hilliard P. Dorsey, another typical Western character, was Register of the Land Office and a leading Mason of early days. He lived in Los Angeles in 1853, and I met him on the Goliah in October of that year, on the way south, after a brief visit to San Francisco, and while I was bound for my new 144 home. ”

“ This argument is based upon the fact that they extend through the ranch alone, the main road terminating within its boundaries, and connect with no other public roads at their western and northern ends. These roads will, however, be open to the general public to such extent as it can and may use it. The people to the eastward in Santa Monica, Los Angeles and other cities will have access to them and to the people living on the ranch through the connecting road from Santa Monica. The people living on the ranch will have egress over them. ”

“ He even envied the slaves their happy faces, the new light that shone in their eyes and that gave them a strange new dignity.
Monica, watching the struggle, redoubled her prayers; her unselfish love surrounded her husband like an atmosphere of light and sweetness, drawing him with an invincible power to better things. She would speak to him of their children—above all, of Augustine, their eldest-born, the admiration of his masters at Madaura. He was astonishing everybody, they wrote, by his brilliant gifts. He had the soul of a poet and the eloquence of an orator; he would do great things. ”

“ Monica stood still and silent, the fragrant, spotless blossoms, his gift, clasped close in her hands.
“Randolph, Randolph!” she murmured, “if you only loved me I could bear anything; but they all see it—only I am blind—it is the golden cage with its captive, and [205] they know the ways of their world so well, so well! He bribes me with gifts, with kind words, but it is only the peaceful home and the handsome wife that he wants—not me myself, not my heart, my love. Well, he shall have what he craves. ”

“ Monica, no wonder you are just yourself—not one bit like any one else—brought up here with only the sea, and the clouds, and the sunshine for companions and playmates. I used to look at you in a sort of wonder, but I understand it all now. You ought always to live at Trevlyn—never anywhere else. What should I like to do? Why, anything. Suppose we ride. I should love to gallop along the cliffs with you. I want to see the queer little church Haddon described to me, where you were married, and the picturesque little town where—where Randolph and he put up on the eve of that day. ”