Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1876-04-01
OUR IAN FRANCISCO LETTER.
SAN FRANCISCO March 20 1870

clear, balrny, and beautiful. The hotels
are rapidly filling with merchants and
others from the interior. The sidewalk
are thron.el with people; the streets
are blockaded with teams; the entrances
to the wholesale houses on Front,
Battery, Sansome, and Market Streets
are piled up with goods and boxes, and
trunks arc beginning to wait their turn
in loading and unloading. The mer-
camille face again wears smile. The
show windows on Montgomery, kear-
ny, Market, and other retail streets, are
being trimmed with the new and beau
tiful styles of spring goods; the millin-
ers are getting ready for their formal
openings. The great dry goods pala-
ces are receiving heavy invoices, and
preparing for the rush that is sure to
come. The outlook was never better.
Outside of trade the evidences of pros
perity are equally apparent, exhibited
in the erection of family hotels, dramat
ic temples, mammoth storehouses, mar
bic and brick blocks, and long rows of
elegant dwelling houses. The stores
and offices in the Palace Hotel, and Safe
Deposit Block are leased, and rents
still have an upward tendency. Bald
wins New Hotel, the Nucleus Hotel,
and Latham's elegant block are nearly
completed, and hundred other bust
ness houses are more or less advanced.
On the wall and tables of the architects
are the drawings and plans of many
other enterprises of like character to
those now in progress. Four, five, six,
and even seven-story buildings are tax
ing the place of the two-story struc-
lures of former times, the earthquake
bugbear having lost its terrors.
In the suburbs, and suburban towns
and villages, enterprise and improv-
ments may he seen on all sides. Oak
land is becoming city of prominence,
the second in population in the State,
Almeda, Berkely, and other towns on
the opposite side of the bay, are the
favored residences of bankers, brokers,
merchants, and capitalists, and are i'm
proving rapidly. Westward and South
ward the city is pushing out, GROWING
the hillsides, the ravines and valleys
with beautiful, and in some instances
costly residences. The cemetaries, but
q few years ago far out of the city, are
now in the way. We shall soon have
to find more distant resting-place fol-
our dead. The living must have the
ground clear down to the oceans shore.
The winds arc defed, sand hills leveled
and the once barren wastes carpeted in
green grass and made to bloom with
myriads of flowers. Lone Mountain is
to be sold, graded down and cut up
into homesteads. The glorious emblem
of faith and futurity surmounting it, will
soon be leveled, and the weather-beaten
cross will give place to temples of earth
ly pride and homes of comfort. The
one hundred thousand dead will soon
be hedged in by quarter of a million
living; aye, before the century closes,
by half million. Who doubts that
ere San Francisco doubles it's age, il
it will be the second city in population
on the American continent? Where is
the citizen of the Pacific Coast States
or Territories that does not feel pride
in the fact that such is its glorious des.
tiny?
What of the interior From all
parts come words of cheer and hopeful
ness. The great valleys have been
blessed with copious showers of rain,
this ensuring bounteous yield. From
semi-trophical California far away to
Washington Territory the fields are
spreading their covering of green, ere
long to ripen into the cloth of gold.
The cattle and sheep are feeding and
Illustrating on % thousand hills. The
miners are uncovering the treasures Of
earth-richer by far than history re-
cords, OF imagination ere conceived of
-tumbling mountains, and sinking far
down into the bowels of the earth !;
and by wonderful and powerful me-
chanical appliances raising to the surface
the reward of enterprise and persever-
ence. Such is the outlook on the Paci-
fc Coast in the third month of the Cen
tenniai year.
There is but little local news of inter.
est to communicate. The produce mar
ct is without material change. The sill
yer question continues one of serious
annoyance; counterfeit trade dollars are
in circulation. Less than 10 per cent.
is required to effect the exchanges at
the clearing house. The Bank of Cali
fornia has levied another assessment Of
$40 per share. The demands for du-
ties the past week aggregated s151 900.
1t is proposed to close the public school
next month, the school fund being ex-
hausted. Sunday boating on the bay
costs on an average one life per week.
Thirty country newspapers are includ-
ed in the recently organized Associated
Country Press of the Pacific Coast, and