I IELPUEBLO•I I I i :====:::=====================.,\ I I I ( J:..gs rufngeles rlefore the 'l(q,ilroads l l WRITTEN BY THE PUBLICITY DEPARTMENT' EQlTIT ABLE BRANCH ~ECURITY ,.fRUST & SAVINGS B ..r\.NK_ \ PUBLISHED BY THE EQUITABLE BRAr.CH OF THE SECURITY TRUST & SA VlNGS BANK DEDICATED TO THE CONTINUING GROWTH OF LOS AXGELES, THE 1\IETROPOLIS COPYRIGHT 1928 _.; IGLESIA DE NUESTRA SENORA LA REINA DE LOS ANGELES HURCH of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels! Words of surpassing beauty and how intriguing! In those days-days of a preceding century when this historic place of worship was being built-time permitted the common use of long and musical names. But now-alas, what have we gained by our hurry? But the picture! You look twice and then again to make sure it might not have been taken a century ago. How cleverly the stealthy photographer has caught the tran­ quil scene; the restful Latins unconscious of the camera's click and unmindful of the pulsing roar of a great American city. Yet, more has been caught. The very atmosphere of Old Spain!-the leisurely, ron1antic Spirit of the Mother Country of the Americas! It pervades the scene and persists amid the sur­ rounding hustle and hustle of the Anglo-Saxon. May this Spirit live! May not we, a generation over-charge-­ with energy, cherish and foster it and pass it on unspoiled to the future City of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels? 0 ~ . - :......,,-:., .-,·· _______ ,-.. 2 cl Pueblo-Los cA.ngeles CJJefore the CJ{ailroads Los Angeles in 1853, from offecial report of railroad survey made to the then Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis. This is the first known sketch of the city. EL PUEBLO ~s ~ngeles G_Befare the ~ilroads .1. OT long ago a writer in the Century Magazine had this to say about Los Angeles: "Los Angeles is of course the new- ill,. est city in the world. It is vehemently up-to-date, like the '1r· latest extra issue of an evening newspaper. It may be t';/{: </ ., _ ,. described in a single phrase as a city without a past. It has •7/11" - · no memories, because it has nothing to remember.n · ·. "· · : ' Later in the same paragraph we read this statement: - ' lo. "There is something uncanny about a city without a past, just as, in the German legend, there is something uncanny about the man who had lost his shadow. Life divorced from any sense of permanence becomes unreal when it is lived only in the fleeting moment. Los Angeles lives merely in the here and now." The writer, of course, is mistaken, but his mistake is such a natural one that it arouses little resentment in a native of Los Angeles. To one born here, the city also seems very new. With every other person on the street an arrival within the last five years, it is not surprising that the place seems grown-up over night,-a "sort of glorified mining camp," as another author describes it. If the contributor to the Century had been fortunate enough to have stopped the other man on the street than the one who had just closed out his Eastern bank account, he might have been able to write differently of the city he was visiting. Perhaps his editor would have been just as interested in knowing that the "newest city in the world,'' like the city where his magazine is published, was in existence before England relinquished control over the Thirteen Colonies. In fact, four years before the Boston Tea Party, its site was spoken of by Padre Crespi, ... hronicler of the Portola expedition, as having "all the requisites for a large settlement." The siege of Yorktown was at its cl Pueblo-Los eA.ngeles C/Jefore the 'R,.ailroads 3 General John C. Fremont to whom California v.:as .surrendered in the .,.\1 exican War. He became California's fir.st V nited States Senator and <w'a.s the first nominee of tlze Republican Party for President. height when the good padre's recommendation was acted upon by Governor Felipe De Neve and El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula was founded. The date was September 4, 1781. The first born of the Pueblo, therefore, had grown to manhood by the time Robert Fulton had launched the "Clermont" or John Marshall had tried Aaron Burr for treason. A second generation had been born long before Daniel Boone had been gathered to his fathers or Commodore Perry had sent his immortal message, "We have met the enemy and they are ours!" Los Angeles was half a century old when the first locomotive was built in the United States. New York had just replaced gas with electric lights on Broad­ way when Los Angeles celebrated its centennial. el Pueblo-Los c4ngeles 'Before the <:.J{ailroads Cannon, sru:ord, madieta and lamp broug/1t to California by Junipero Serra. No:i:.: part of Coronel Collection. CALIFORNIA~ A BUFFER SPANISH PROVINCE HAT was the situation in the Western World when Portola and Crespi, W as the original Caucasians in Los Angeles, looked first upon its site? France, as the loser of the French and Indian War, had left the North American continent to England, Spain and Russia. England, by the Proclama­ tion of 1763, had forbidden the Thirteen Colonies to extend their jurisdiction over the former French Empire stretching from the Appalachians to the Mississippi. Spain had been ceded Louisiana but accepted the new territory with reluctance. She realized that France's surrender only brought the Atlantic seaboard colonists that much closer to New Orleans and she may have sensed that the shortsighted Proclamation of 1763 had transformed them from Eng­ lishmen into Americans. On the Northwest, the annual hunts of the Russian and English trappers brought those nationals nearer and nearer to the Spanish outposts. Texas, Louisiana and California had lain outside the scheme of Spain in America, but that country now saw that, to dispel the danger to Mexico from the Americans, the English and the Russians, she must build these three states into great buffer provinces. For more than a century California had been looked upon as an island, so little was known of it. But Jose de Galvez, the far-seeing statesman of New Spain, realized that it must be settled if the Spanish colonial policy of monopoly and isolation was to be maintained in the interior states. Governor Gaspar de Portola and Father J unipero Serra were commissioned by Galvez to build a ne,v Northwest frontier. They extended it to the mouth of the Sacramento River. Alta California as a Spanish province had its inception with the founding of '.Mission San Diego de Alcala on July 16th, 1769. Twenty-one missions in all were established, stretching from San Diego to Sonoma. l\1ission San Gabriel, destined to be the largest and richest of these Franciscan establishments, came into being on September 8, 1771. Ten years later to the week, a procession of soldiers, priests and laymen, headed by Governor De Neve, marched nin'.; miles across the valley from that Mission and founded the Pueblo of Los Angeles. cl Pueblo-Los c.4.ngeles c.Before the CJ{ailroads 5 ... : •• _'.ct ~~ "' -t....,o \.\..t. •r,. ,..... ~,... ., ,i. .. "?,,,..,, •.: \\~~ __ __ ,'-"; ,.~.~ •• • • t,.O t•"' ,., ... · ,.- ,,.., c::··)11\'-:;:;-~--- SKETCH OrTNC BATTLE 01' '/".('\~, •\•,'<:J'r-l•r,; •c.l,~ ,....!.J ...J..../ ~ • ~-!. J ~.J.:.l .:.~~!J ~ t·ppf.J{ L\l,JFOR ~ i .\ r-·ou •,ht b1•1wi•1•n 1111• .\m,•ri,·an:• .1111' \l1.•!\11·.t11s · • l,\.'-: ~)":'" HI 1-1. Tliis sdf-exp/anatory skctcll is rcproduad from the official go:vcrnment military reports of tlie :Uexican Jf1ar LOS ANGELES AS THE FIRST CAUCASIAN SAW IT EW American cities enjoy the distinction of having been founded. Los FAngeles is among them. But before telling that story, let us quote directly from Father Crespi's description of what he saw at the site of Los Angeles, when he was traveling north with Portola in the first and vain attempt to locate l\1onterey Bay. He was near the present location of :Mission San Gabriel when he wrote: "Tuesday, August 1.-This day was one of rest, for the purpose of explor­ ing, a~ especially to celebrate the jubilee of Our Lady of Los Angeles de Porciuncula. We said l\iass and the men took communion, performing the obligations to gain the great indulgence. • . The soldiers went out this afternoon to hunt, and brought an antelope, with which animals this country abounds; they are like wild goats, but have horns rather larger than goats. I tasted the roasted meat, and it was not bad. Today I observed the latitude and it came out for us thirty-four degrees and ten minutes north latitude. "Wednesday, August 2.-We set out from the valley in the morning and followed the same plain in a westerly direction. After traveling about a league and a half through a pass between low hills, we entered a very spacious valley~ well grown with cottonwoods and alders, among which ran a beautiful river from the north-northwest, and then, doubling the point of a steep hill, it went on afterwards to the south. Toward the north-northeast there is another river bed which forms a spacious water course, but we found it dry. This bed unites with that of the river, giving a clear indication of great floods in the rainy season, for we saw that it had many trunks of trees on the banks. We halted not very far from the river, which we named Porciuncula ( Los Angeles River.