CHAPTER NINE: LIFE ON A FRONTIER
San Diego, crowded with gold seekers, Mexican and American gamblers, destitute settlers, the discontented soldiers of two nations, and burly teamsters of the government mule trains, was a frontier town. The Indian wars were about to begin, and the deserts and mountains were to be stained with blood. The executioners would return to the Spanish Plaza.
The artist Powell, in his terse and illuminating notes, tells us a little of the San Diego of the gold rush during two months of his stay:
The public square is boarded in for a bullfight. Miserable affair . . . Got the blues terribly . . . Bullfight again . . . miserable bullfights continue. Thin ice this morning. Snow in mountains all around back of foot hills . . . Very cold. Bullfights still. Pigs here are very good . . . Monte banks; drinking, etc., their manners here are detestable. Dreadful lumbago last night . . . bed of river dry when we came in; today the water came rolling down a foot deep. Strange sight . . . Very sick . . . Many immigrants in same condition. River falling. Beautiful weather. Changing silver for gold . . . Hard work to get it. Singular in this gold country. California sports in Plaza . . . Gamblers and gambling rife here Sunday or no Sunday . . . Everybody gets drunk here. The gambling and drinking of the officers here and their exceedingly supercilious manners to the immigrants is very reprehensible . . . A party came in from Mexico City today... they set up a Monte Bank in the evening; piles of doubloons . . . Large lumps of gold. In better spirits now . . . Owens (Dragoon) died a/c for cutting and maiming another Dragoon . . . a Mexican soldier . . . murdered another right here in town last night . . . so little notice taken of it that I did not hear it until evening.
Powell slept in wagons and sold sketches and maps of San Diego to keep himself alive, and tried to interest Miguel de Pedrorena and a "Mr. Fitch," presumably one of Capt. Fitch's sons, in starting a school, but nothing came of it. He sketched San Diego and the Mission for Lt. Couts for $8. The sketch of the Mission has survived, as has another Powell sketch of San Diego. The arrival of so many settlers set off a land boom, especially at La Playa, the site of the old hide houses and ship anchorage, and Powell was kept busy preparing maps and site sketches. By March 9 he had earned enough money to depart for the gold fields and left San Diego, "I hope for ever."
Provisions were scarce, flour from Valparaiso selling at a price of four to six dollars for a fifty-pound sack. Nearly all of the ranchos had been depopulated. Wages of common laborers rose to $150 a month, and of carpenters to $10 a day. By the spring of 1850 American settlers and immigrants were dominating the affairs of the little pueblo, though the Californios remained active, both in business and in ranching. The Dons clung to their old ways and their costumes, and the gold rush created a demand for meat which they were to supply from their ranchos. For a brief time, at least, the silver on their saddles would grow richer and heavier. Powell referred to several wedding processions in the Spanish tradition, including one for the daughter of Alcalde Marrón, with their rich and colorful costumes and bedecked horses. To Powell, being a stern Protestant, it was all a "miserable mummery."
The process of setting up a formal government continued through the winter. Peter H. Burnett had been installed as governor in December. Symbolic of the change with the years was San Diego's designation of E. Kirby Chamberlain to serve as senator, and Oliver S. Witherby, who had come to San Diego with the Boundary Commission, as assemblyman, to the first Legislature in California, which was described as the "legislature of a thousand drinks." It doesn't seem to have been any different from modern legislative assemblies, though it did successfully launch the great state of California, and under an act of February 18, 1850, created San Diego as the first county. It contained at first 37,400 square miles, an empire in itself, from the Pacific coastline 200 miles east to the Colorado River, and included the present counties of San Diego, Riverside, Imperial and San Bernardino, and the easterly portion of Inyo. It was to be governed by a Court of Sessions.
While the residents of Old Town were preparing to organize governments for the county and the city, and at last break away from the laws and customs of Spain and Mexico, the bark Hortensia was lying at anchor off La Playa, in ballast, with the owner, William Heath Davis, who had first seen San Diego as a boy in 1831, ready, as he wrote in his memoirs, "for any adventure that might offer a profitable voyage." Instead, he listened to a different proposition. Gray, the engineer with the Boundary Commission, suggested that he join a number of other San Diegans in building a new port and laying out an entirely new town, on the broad, flat land on the bay south of the old pueblo and directly on Punta de Los Muertos, or the Point of the Dead, where the Spanish Expedition of 1782 buried those who had died of scurvy. The old point lies under filled land at the intersection of Pacific Highway and Market Street.
Davis, known as "Kanaka Bill," perhaps because he used so many Hawaiians, or Sandwich Islanders, as crewmen, assented. The other partners were José Antonio Aguirre, Miguel de Pedrorena, and William C. Ferrell, who became San Diego's first district attorney. However, they soon acquired a new partner. A vessel arrived at La Playa with lumber for enlarging an Army depot at La Playa. The Army also planned to erect a barracks and other installations, as supplies for military posts were to be brought in by sea and transshipped by mule train to posts in Southern California and Arizona. The promoters quickly realized the advantages that would accrue to them if the Army could be induced to move its operations across the bay to New San Diego. Second Lt. Thomas D. Johns, of the 2nd Infantry, in charge of supplies, was given one of the eighteen shares in the project and he agreed to re-ship the lumber to the new site. On March 18, 1850, the town attorney, Thomas W. Sutherland, the first American attorney to arrive in San Diego, transferred 160 acres of land to the promoters for $2304 but it was stipulated that a wharf and warehouse should be built within eighteen months. The area included all the land lying between the bay and Front Street on the east and Broadway on the north. In return for his share of the realty, Davis agreed to build the wharf and warehouse, and the new town eventually became known as "Davis' Folly."
Davis and the other investors counted heavily on the Army's plans, but they hadn't counted on the Army running out of money. Davis laid out a subdivision of fifty-six blocks, thirty-one of which were on dry land and the rest of which were on tide flats. The mean high tide line ran parallel with the west side of Pacific Highway to Market Street, then angled southeast to Front and J Streets.
The Army had two full blocks, one for the depot and barracks and the other for stables and stock. The depot was on the block northwest of Kettner and Market Streets, the stables were on the block which in 1963 was the site of the Federal Building. A park block laid out between F and G, India and Columbia Streets, is still known by its original name, Plaza Pantoja.
The land was low, gently sloping back from the bay and covered with low, stunted brush, a little cactus, and the streets, other than those on Davis' subdivision maps, consisted of a wagon track from Old Town that came down Pacific Highway to Market Street, turned eastward and connected with the main wagon road that followed south along the bay to La Punta and Tijuana. The site for the wharf was a sandbar that extended from the corner of Market Street and Pacific Highway about 750 feet due south to the present Coronado Ferry landing. There, the bar dropped off sharply into the channel, where there were six fathoms of water, sufficient for even large ships.
From March to December 1850, there was a flurry of activity in New Town. The Army brought in its shipload of lumber and Davis purchased lumber, bricks and some prefabricated houses which had been brought from the East Coast by the brig Cybele, and work began on his warehouse and wharf. The latter was an L-shaped structure that probably was about six hundred feet long, though the original bid had specified 1100 feet. The new settlement experienced some embarrassment by the failure to locate a supply of fresh water, and a water train had to be sent each day to the San Diego River in the vicinity of Old Town. Eventually two successful wells were sunk, one near Front and B Streets and another near State and F Streets.
One of the partners, Pedrorena, died on March 29, of apoplexy. In a letter to Davis, who had returned to San Francisco, Lt. Johns wrote that "not only his family but the whole town has been thrown into deep gloom at this melancholy announcement." He was only forty-one years of age, and though he possessed large tracts of land, his widow, son and two daughters were left in strained financial circumstances.
The first county election was conducted on April 1, with votes cast at two precincts, Old Town and La Playa, for the election of judges and county officials. John Hays was elected county judge though Witherby had been designated by the Legislature as district judge. Juan Bandini and José Antonio Estudillo were the only Californios elected to office, Bandini as treasurer, though he never served and was replaced with Philip Crosthwaite, and Estudillo as assessor. Agoston Haraszthy, a native of Hungary, was elected sheriff.
For seven hundred years the family of Haraszthy had been prominent in Hungary. Haraszthy, often identified as a count, became involved in rebellions, encouraged Hungarians to migrate to America, and came himself in 1840, settling in Wisconsin and laying out what is now Sauk City. He visited Hungary to find his estates had been confiscated, and returned to the United States with his father, known as the "old general," and his wife and three children. In the spring of 1849, seeking relief from financial difficulties, he packed his wife, six children and his father in an ox-drawn wagon and came to San Diego. Father and son planted acres of grapes in Mission and San Luis Rey Valleys, as the padres had done before them. Politics and trouble came naturally to this son of Central Europe.
The Legislature also had incorporated San Diego as a city, and the first election was held on June 16. Joshua H. Bean, who had been serving as alcalde, was chosen as the first mayor. José Antonio Estudillo was elected as treasurer and Bandini as assessor, though he again failed to serve. Sheriff Haraszthy also was designated as city marshall, and his father, Charles Haraszthy, was elected as one of the five councilmen. Bean, who had fought with Gen. Zachary Taylor in Mexico, served as mayor less than a year, and removed to San Gabriel where he opened a grog shop and became a general in the State Militia.
The first official acts of the Council were to approve maps of San Diego and its tidelands as made by Lt. Couts and Mayor Bean, and to certify the legality of certain grants of land made while Bean was still serving as alcalde. They soon voted to provide themselves with salaries, despite pre-election assurances they were anxious to serve only for the honor of it; set up license fees for games of chance; provided that Indians jailed on one pretext or another could be let out for private labor, at the discretion of the mayor; organized a committee to determine the best possible means of diverting the flow of the San Diego River into False, or Mission Bay, and awarded a $5000 contract for building a new jail to Councilman Haraszthy's son, the sheriff. It was constructed so poorly that there has been some suspicion through the years that this was San Diego's first example of official graft.
The lands of the pueblo were being divided among eager buyers, mostly friends and relatives, for speculation. A syndicate which included Agoston Haraszthy, Couts and Emory obtained 687 acres to form still another town to be known as Middletown, a narrow strip of land running along the bay from Old Town to New Town. The promoters grandiosely offered to donate land around a projected central plaza for the grouping of all public buildings, which was the first mention of a civic ambition that was to go unfilled for more than a century. Emory invested heavily in San Diego, because he believed implicitly that the railroad to the West would follow the 32nd parallel and terminate at San Diego, which then would become the metropolis of the Pacific Coast.
Land prices set by the Council ranged from $25 for a lot to $80 for twenty acres, all to be paid for by installments expected to be extracted from a stream of immigrants. The prices of some lots at La Playa were to reach as high as $500. But already the stream was beginning to slow, though the indications were not clearly visible as yet in a town which in a few years would be cut off from the main stream of the Westward movement. The bright hopes of the early 1850's for a great metropolis would have to wait for a new generation.
The frontier conditions were disturbing to some of the Dons, and if they were not to be overwhelmed by the Protestant invasion, and if sin was to be held at bay, a church would have to be built. The Catholic chapel in the Estudillo home no longer was large enough for religious services and weddings and festivals. On August 24,1850, the Council granted land for church purposes to Fr. J. Chrisostom Holbein, who had come to San Diego as a successor to Fr. Oliva, and José Antonio Aguirre, Juan Bandini and Pedro J. de Pedrorena. This land was on the other side of the river near where the padres' road to Mission San Diego intersected with El Camino Real. The cornerstone of the new church, however, was not laid until October 9,1851.
The national census of 1850 gave San Diego County a population of 798 and the city, including La Playa, 650. Indians weren't counted. There were 157 registered voters, eighty-eight in Old Town and sixty-nine at La Playa, of whom 136 had arrived during or since the conquest.
In the mountains the wily Warner built a new trading store three miles farther down the immigrant trail coming up through the Carrizo Corridor and San Felipe Valley. Here the trail forked off, one branch leading directly west over a low hill to meet the regular trail from Agua Caliente to Santa Ysabel, and the other leading north in the direction of Los Angeles. Sections of the old trace were visible in 1963 on the hill above the old ranch house which is now an historical monument.
Out in the desert, along the Colorado River at the edge of San Diego County, the Yuma Indians became more apprehensive and more aggressive as thousands of immigrants invaded their territory. They exacted tribute for the crossing of the river, in return for assistance that sometimes was more costly than helpful, in the loss of horses, mules and goods. Early in 1850 a native of Illinois, Dr. A. L. Lincoln, returned from the gold fields and established a ferry at the junction of the Gila and the Colorado. It proved to be immensely profitable. He had six employees, and he kept them heavily armed.
Riding out of Chihuahua and Sonora with a band of desperadoes came John Glanton, a native of Tennessee. After service in the Mexican war, Glanton became a bounty hunter, collecting the scalps of ravaging Apaches and selling them to a grateful Mexican government. Soon, however, the Glanton gang turned to murdering Mexicans and selling their scalps as those of Apaches. When finally driven out of Mexico, they came to the Colorado and imposed themselves on Dr. Lincoln and his profitable ferry business.
The Yumas sought to divide the river business with Lincoln but Glanton became abusive and struck their chief. When Glanton went to San Diego to purchase provisions and more whiskey, the Indians sent spies into the ferry camp and at the same time gathered 500 warriors. On the night of April 23, when Glanton and his men had returned, and had gorged themselves on food and drink and fallen asleep, the Indians, upon signal from their spies, attacked. Glanton, Lincoln and four men were hammered or axed to death before a shot could be fired in resistance. Five men operating the ferry were surprised and killed. Three others who had gone to cut willow poles managed to escape, jumping into a skiff and floating down river, shooting and possibly killing ten of their pursuers. They drifted as far as fourteen miles below Algodones, a little Mexican town on the border below Yuma, and then worked their way back toward the camp on foot.
All of the structures had been burned, along with the bodies which had not been thrown into the river. There were reports that three bags of silver and a bag of gold, had disappeared. In a deposition taken in Los Angeles, Jeremiah Hill testified that he was one of fourteen immigrants arriving at the crossing just after the massacre and that the Indians had held another council of war and were determined to kill all Americans coming to the river. Hill's party, however, was allowed to cross, but were told they were to be the last, and Hill warned that there were between seventy-five and a hundred men, women and children approaching the Colorado.
One of the men who had escaped, William Carr, gave a deposition at San Diego as well as at Los Angeles, and said he had asked the commanding officer of United States troops to send a force to the river but that none had been sent, and "there are forty U.S. soldiers, infantry, at said town of San Diego." When the reports reached the state capital, Governor Burnett ordered the sheriff of Los Angeles to raise forty men and the sheriff of San Diego, twenty, and place them under the command of Joshua Bean, the former mayor and a general of the State Militia. Bean, however, remained at his grog shop and sent Joseph C. Morehead, the state's quartermaster general and a former member of Stevenson's Volunteers, marching against the Indians. By the time they reached the river his force of twenty men had grown to more than one hundred but the Indians proved illusive, fading into the tangled thickets of the broad Colorado River bed. So, the story goes, Morehead and his Indian fighters, after indecisive brushes with the enemy, vigorously attacked their rations, liquid and solid, harrassed the immigrants and robbed passing Sonorans of their gold, for three months, before being ordered to disband and return, with many guns and much ammunition missing and the new-born state in debt $120,000 for supplies and salaries.
Reading in a San Francisco newspaper of the massacre of the Glanton company, and of the huge sums which had been earned, George Alonzo Johnson, an unemployed seaman, decided to go into the ferry business himself. He arrived in San Diego with a number of partners, including Louis J. F. Jaeger, or Iaeger, as it was sometimes spelled, who was to become the best known of the Colorado River ferry men. They purchased mules from Couts and Bandini and reached the river in July. In October, three companies of soldiers under Maj. Heintzelman left San Diego Mission to establish a fort at the river for the protection of the immigrants. They went by way of San Pasqual, driving their loaded wagons up the hilly carreta road with great difficulty, and reached the river on December 1. They soon established a camp on the ridge opposite the mouth of the Gila, where the Yuma Indians had attacked and burned the mission settlement in 1781.
A large proportion of the immigrants now entering California were seeking land and opportunity more than gold, but conditions in California continued to be turbulent, with titles to land in dispute and with government largely ineffective. The question of the admission of California to the Union as a state, which had become embroiled in the controversy over the extension of slavery, finally was resolved, with California admitted under a compromise as a free state. The news of the signing of the law on September 9, 1850, by President Fillmore, did not reach California until six weeks later, but it set off a wild celebration, from San Diego to the gold fields.
The ranches of the Spanish and Mexican periods were slowly passing into new hands through death or marriage. Lt. Couts, the young West Point officer and nephew of a Secretary of the Treasury under President Polk, married Ysidora Bandini, a daughter of Don Juan, on April 5, 1851, and in October he resigned from the Army. He later made his home on Guajome Rancho which had been a wedding present to his wife from her brother-in-law, Abel Stearns, of Los Angeles. A brother, William Blounts Couts, also came to San Diego and married a daughter of Santiago E. Arguello. Henry Clayton, a surveyor with the Boundary Commission, who was elected county surveyor in 1850, in time married the widow of Capt. Snook and owner of Rancho San Bernardo. Among the many immigrant trains arriving in 1850 over the Gila Trail was the Robinson party, led by James W. Robinson, who had been lieutenant governor and governor of Texas during its days of independence, and had been seized and held captive by the Mexican general, Santa Anna. With him came Louis Rose, a native of Germany and former resident of New Orleans, who was to engrave his name on the geography of San Diego. Old San Diego was reaching its height.
The Explorers /
Time of the Bells /
The Silver Dons /
The Glory Years
Gold in the Sun /
The Rising Tide /
City of the Dream
SDHS
