Daily Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1876-1884, 1881-11-24
Los AsEe,ss ana Dro",h.

we hear speculations daily as to
the character of the year whose
rainy season has lately opened,
and these often take the shape,
"Shall we have drouth 2"
Waving all questions as to wheth.
or the present shall turn out to bel
q dry or wet year, We propose to
present certain considerations
which will show that drouth, In
the usual acceptation of that term,
is hereafter an impossibility In Los
Angeles county.
The fact is that Los Angeles
county, which is the finest region,
OF equal extent, known on the foot
stool, has been steadily in tram
sition period for the last thirty |
years. In no respect, perhaps, is
this truth more cogently enforced |
than In the ILLUSTRATED HER
ALp. That publication was SIM
ply the gem of all the pictorial eff
forts ever adventured upon on the
American continent as illustrate We
of the strong points OF section.
In every respect it was artistic and
Incompatible. In the details of
its illustrations it exceeded the
finest achievements of H0rper's
Weekly and Scribner's Monthly.
We confess that we took huge
pride In our venture, and that we
paid no regard to cost in getting it
up. In the ILLUSTRATED Her.
AID we gave a specially fine litho-
graphic view of Los Angeles in
1881; and, to complete the picture,
we gave q very faithful reprodue-
ton Of the Los Angeles of 1857.
No portion Of the American con.
tinent has registered such magi-
cal metamorphosis. 1t Is all very
fine to talk of Santa Fe, in New
Mexico, and San Augustine, in
Florida, as the oldest towns on the
American continent, but here is
town which, in twenty-t-ree
years, presents all the most start
ling contrasts of the age Of Her
nan0o Cortez and that of Fulton
and Morse.
Dropping our pictorial, in which
we take q great pride as being ar
tistically the finest thing of the
kind ever put forth anywhere, we
recur to the proposition that
drouth lie henceforth impossible in
Los Angeles county. This propo-
sition by no means contravenes
the fact that we have heretofore
had drear and grisly drouths in
this section, In which enormous
docks and herds were killed for
their hides and tallow, aud in
which millionaires shrunk almost
to paupsrs. But that was In the
old, improvident days, before al
intelligent system of irrigation
had developed our water resources,
and before our lush grasses had
been stored as hay to nourish cat
tie through dry season. To-day,
on thSbdpposition that the small
est minimum OF q rainfall ever
known on the Pacific Coast should
be dealt out to US in Los Angeles
county, there would be nothing
hereabouts in consonance with the
Idea embodied in the word drouth.
when Don Abel Stearns, and
a half a dozen other princely
rancheros, in the old, old dsys,
dominated Los Angeles county,
everything went as merrily as mar
riage bells as long as the plenteous
rains Of heaven came down. In
Vulnerable herds ana focks dwarf
ed In numbers those OF the Gram
plan Hills. As long as lush sea-
sons abounded these local lords re-
joiced in an old time bounteous-
ness which threw into the shade
that which characterized Abraham
after he had bought the field of
Macpelah with his abundant shek-
els. But, when these rains failed
to fall, the change was instant as
that which follows the motions of
the sword OF Harlequin in the Pan
tomime.
In those days everything wes
dependent on the rainfall, and
upon q very limited utilization of
the waters Of the Los Angeles
river. When the rainfall failed,
everything went by the board, with
the exception of the then very
modest orange groves ard vine
yards of the San Gabriel
and Los Angeles valleys, which
always asserted themselves, with
lucrative vIgor, both In wet and
dry years, and perhaps better in the
latter than In the former, strange
and paradoxical as 1t may seem.
Now dry year Los Angeles
county has not even 1.-THE of the
baIsful significance which attaches
to the same occasional malign dis
pensation either In the Eastern
States or In the Northern and Gen.
trail portions Of California. In the
old days, In this county, dry year
was really drouth. Now we are
better prepared to Withstand q sea-
son Of scant rainfall than any other
a.