Frank Kimball (1834-1913)
The prospects in France looked - magnifique. Tom Scott, head of the newly organized Texas & Pacific Railroad, had arranged a meeting with some Paris financiers during the week of September 8, 1873. They expressed interest in a $54 million bond issue for a proposed railroad line linking the San Diego area to the East. Scott had obtained federal grants worth nearly $70 million the previous year and begun roadbed construction.
But during the week, Scott scooted across the channel for a London sightseeing interlude. Meanwhile the Paris moneymen sought his whereabouts, ready to deal. They changed their minds on "Black Friday," the thirteenth, when the New York stock market nose dived.
This quirky timing epitomized the luck San Diego and National City experienced whenever they tried snagging a railroad connection. With fine harbor facilities close by, regular train service could mean profitable trade with China, Japan and other Pacific Rim countries. Otherwise, Los Angeles and San Francisco surely would capture most of the business. For Frank Kimball and his brothers Warren and Levi, a railroad promised more National City settlers and tourists, which in turn meant more real estate sales and a demand for their farm crops.
To exacerbate matters, railroad barons proved cunning at best and downright dishonest at the other extreme. Scott, for example, reneged earlier in the year on a deal with Frank Kimball to establish shops and a depot in National City, causing an exodus of about half the residents.
Frank, with help from his brothers, kept plugging. As the area's spokesman he visited railroad moguls back East. He finally ended up with an Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad agreement for a connecting line from San Diego to Colton, just outside San Bernardino. In exchange, the railroad got 17,000 acres of land, including some of the Kimball brothers' choice waterfront property, and $25,000 in cash. Frank Kimball also negotiated a deal with Santa Fe, persuading the company to build its shops and freight station office in National City. This tempered the joy San Diegans first felt about the news that at last a railroad was on the way.
In August, 1882 the one-hundred and twenty-seven mile section of line went into service under the aegis of the California Southern Railroad, on which Kimball served as a board member. The route's Temecula Canyon portion washed out in an 1884 flood. When train service was reestablished in 1885, business boomed. Speculators arrived on the heels of settlers in a real estate buying orgy that lasted until the spring of 1888.
As business slumped, the financially troubled Santa Fe transferred its shops and freight office to San Bernardino, causing Kimball to observe: "It has every appearance of an ingeniously planned scheme, which only experts could plan, to secure a vast waterfront adapted to railroad purposes, with no intention of using it, but rather prevent anyone else from using it."
Frank and his brothers came West in 1861 from their Contoocook, New Hampshire birthplace. With their carpentry skills they built a thriving building contracting business in the San Francisco area. Frank, the youngest, needed a change in climate for his health. He first considered the Los Angeles area, then found the Rancho de la Nacio for sale a few miles south of San Diego. The Kimball trio bought the 26,632-acre spread for $30,000 in 1868. Taking a leaf from Alonzo Horton's book, the brothers laid out a subdivision, Without a rail connection or an ample water supply, however, lot sales lagged, although in the following year Frank sold some choice sites for seventeen dollars per acre.
Amidst real estate deals he ordered seeds from San Francisco and Hawaii and planted lemons, figs, grapes, olives and vegetables. The Kimballs created a water company. They secured rights to Sweetwater River water and Frank spotted a funnel-spout section of the canyon ideally suited for a dam.
He sparked operations of the first San Diego County railway which served Nestor, Palm City and Otay from a San Diego terminal. In its heyday, one-hundred and twenty-six units, many of them one and two car trains, made the rounds.
In 1886 the Santa Fe's subsidiary, San Diego Land and Town Company, started work on the Sweetwater Dam and completed it in April two years later. Said Richard F. Pourade in The Glory Years, "For Frank Kimball it was the high moment of the long struggle which had taken so many years and absorbed much of his land and wealth."
Some of his money helped start an Otay watch works. It failed. He experimented with a shipment of 1,000 oysters, which he dumped into the bay fed by the Sweetwater. It, too, failed. He opened a United States Department of Agriculture experimental station in 1888. All of which suggests he willingly tried almost anything that might spur business and attract newcomers.
Like Alonzo Horton, Ephraim Morse and other area entrepreneurs, Frank Kimball ended up broke, dragged down by an economic depression rather than his venturesome spirit. His brother Warren, who also became wealthy with his planing mill and other enterprises, also ended up almost penniless. The financial tailspin broke up what had been a long and satisfying relationship. Frank Kimball died in 1913. Like the Russian proverb, "He went for wool and came home shorn," especially in dealings with the railroads.
[biographical sketch from San Diego Originals by Theodore W. Fuller, published by California Profiles Publications, 1987]
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