John Steven McGroarty - From the Mountains to the Sea - A History of Los Angeles

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From the Mountains to the Sea

A History of Los Angeles

JOHN STEVEN McGROARTY

JUERGEN BECK

From the Mountains to the Sea, J. McGroarty

Jazzybee Verlag Jrgen Beck

86450 Altenmnster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

Cover Design: Downtown Los Angeles from Zeppelin Eureka (4361871102) by Dave Proffer - Downtown Los Angeles from Zeppelin EurekaUploaded by russavia. Licenced under CC BY 2.0 at Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Downtown_Los_Angeles_from_Zeppelin_Eureka_(4361871102).jpg#/media/File:Downtown_Los_Angeles_from_Zeppelin_Eureka_(4361871102).jpg

ISBN:9783849648442

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

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CONTENTS:

Preface .

Chapter I. As It Was In The Beginning .

Chapter Ii. The Mother Of Los Angeles .

Chapter Iii. The Founding Of The Pueblo .

Preface

It seems that, as a general custom, centuries old, a book must have what is known as a "Preface." In former times, when a book was nothing if not ponderous, the Preface was a thing to daunt the reader at the very start; it was so big and so heavy, and it had such a serious countenance.

For my part, I could never quite see the use of a Preface at all. If a man is to tell a story and every book, especially a narrative of history, is a story why not begin at once with it, without any "hems" or "haws," as the saying is?

Still, there are times and instances when a Preface may well serve a good purpose; and it may be that this story of the "Wonder City of Los Angeles is a case in point. Anyway, the publishers, eager and anxious that nothing should be left undone, have a serious conviction that there should be a Preface to this book, no matter what argument there might be as to any other.

So, we must have a Preface to the Book of the Wonder City. But it will be a short Preface; it will be brief and with as little waste of words and time as possible, because no matter into whose hands whatever this book falls, he will be keen to get at it, and with as few by-paths as possible to travel.

And what I have to say, therefore, prefatory to the book, is that it is the true story of a great City that was founded "by order of the King," in the old days when the Western World was new. It is the story of a City that, for a century of time after its birth, showed few signs of promise, but which has now come to be the Greatest City of Western America and the metropolis of California the "Land o' Heart's Desire."

The history of any city that can be named almost, is a story of its fortune that came from location or other accident to make it great. But Los Angeles is a City that was made great by the people, who one day found it sleeping in the sun, oblivious to its destiny. They were, for the most part, people who came from far regions of America, seeking a more agreeable climate than that to which they had been accustomed. This is the truth of the matter.

They were a vigorous and an ambitious people, notwithstanding their desire for friendlier skies and more sunshine. And they took hold of Los Angeles, and they put life into it. All that they did constitutes one of the most thrilling chronicles in human history. And the record of it is set forth in the pages of this book.

This, I would think, is enough to say by way of a Preface. The rest that is to be told awaits you here, at the turn of you hand. It is a good book, because it tells a good story that Time composed. And Time is the best author of books.

John S. McGroarty. Los Angeles, California, Dec. 15, 1920.

CHAPTER I. AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING

It would seem that Los Angeles has been a habitation of man as long as any other place on the earth has been a dwelling place for human beings. After the envelope of water in which the earth was originally enclosed had evaporated and dry land appeared, and the animal kingdom came into existence, it seems as likely as not that man appeared in the place where Los Angeles is now quite as early as he appeared anywhere else.

This, of course, is mere theory, but as far as that is concerned, all the rest of it is nothing more than theory.

Remains of prehistoric beasts like the saber-toothed tiger have been found in the asphaltum beds of Los Angeles showing inclusively the existence of life here at a time that must have been contemporaneous with life in other parts of the world at the dawn of the world.

We have, however, no record of human existence here until the first white men came to California and that was a long time ago, too, as far as history is reckoned in America. It was only fifty years after the discovery of America by Columbus that California was discovered. This was in the year 1542, when Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese sailor, voyaging in Spanish ships and under the flag of Spain, sailed up from Natividad in Old Mexico and steered the prows of his daring little fleet of galleons into the harbor of San Diego.

And since now Los Angeles has come to be in many ways the first city of California being certainly the first city as far as population is concerned and since California, although one of the states of the Union only, is at the same time a distinct and separate country of itself, made so by the fact that it has a distinct entity geographically, climatically and in a thousand other ways, it is essential in telling the story of Los Angeles to begin by telling briefly the greater story of California itself. For it helps to make a story not only easier to understand, but vastly more interesting, if we shall begin at the beginning as every good story must do.

Now, when Cabrillo and the first white men found California, nearly 500 years ago and that's a long, long time they found the country inhabited by a native race of Indians who had villages of their own up and down the coast and far back in the mountains, and where they lived in separate clans and families. The Spaniards called these villages " rancherias. "

The whole race may be regarded as having been like one tribe because they were exactly alike everywhere in appearance and in their mode of living. But there was one very strange thing about them, and this was that when separated at distances of sometimes not more than twenty miles apart, they spoke an entirely different language, the one from the other. For instance, the natives at San Diego were not able to converse in words with the Indians at San Juan Capistrano, nor were the Indians at San Juan Capistrano able to converse with the Indians of San Gabriel. And so it went throughout all California from one end of it to the other. There were Indians on Santa Catalina and other islands off the coast, but when brought to the mainland they did not understand one word that other Indians spoke. It has been stated on authority that more than two-thirds of all the Indian languages spoken within the present borders of the United States were found in California.

The California Indian differed in many other ways from the other Indians of America. The admiration universally accorded the great Algonquin family on the Atlantic seaboard and to the great war-like tribes of the western plains, does not seem to have had serious application here. The California Indian was not much of a man to admire. He was lazy, stupid and exceedingly careless of his morals. He did not take trouble to build for himself any kind of shelter worthy of the name of a house, and, consequently, he was a man who had no conception of the meaning of home. He toiled not, neither did he spin. He was without modesty, he had no traditions; neither knowing nor caring from whence he had come nor whither he might drift.

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