Los Angeles herald., 1890-05-24
The Flourishing Old Colony
and Her Surroundings.
The Fat Lands of Southern
California Lie Here.
Progress Noted All Along the Line
in All Kinds of Business.
New Houses Going Up and Large Areas
Being Planted in Orange and
Walnut Trees.

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May mornings it is something of
vacation for newspaper man to get up
early instead of lying abed until nearly
high noon, and to HE him away to the
country, through orchard, meadow and
vineyard, to breathe the air made sweet
with the scent of the new hay or laden
with the perfume of orange flowers. AS
he bowls along over the fine tracks of
the Southern Pacific, he is often
tempted to hum the refrain of the
variety show song of the Bowery, in
New York, thirty years ago, which runs:
OH bless me, this is pleasant, riding on a rail.
The tracks of the company are kept in
the best possible condition, and run
to Pomona or Anaheim, about thirty
miles from the city, takes only about
an hour. The returning trains leave
these points about 3 O'Clock in the after
noon, and it is astonishing how much
diligent man, like reporter always is,
can get through with in five or six
hours.
Well, it was Anaheim yesterday. The
train pulled out of the Arcade depot on
time, the accommodating conductor,
Frank Curtis, in command, and shot
away through the orchards of the south
end of the city, and those of Vernon, all
rich with their new spring dress of young
leaves. The walnut trees have dOnned
their brand new suits of the tenderest
green from the ground up. The peach,
apricot, plum and other deciduous trees
are all quite as resplendent, all in new
liveries from top to toe. They may differ
a little in hue, but it is all of some shade
of Robin Hoods favorite color. The
orange trees are satisfied to take their
old dress of last year, which is rich
enough for woodland queen of trees,
and run an edge of new green trimming
all around it. The rich green of the
old part is still rich and fresh,
and the new edging of a livelier
hue pinks it out in charming contrast
that shines down all her fellows, al
though their dress is all spic and span
new.
Passing Florence, one gets into the
true farming belt of the section. On all
sides of the little station hay fields ap-
pear, where the new crop heaped up by
the rake lies in such closely crowded
heaps that the ground is hardly dis
cernable. Beyond here the big pasture
lands lie for miles, and they are full of
sleek cattle whose fat appearance shows
that their lines have fallen in pleasant
places. These pastures have been
grazed all winter and spring, but the an
imals still stand knee-deepin grasses the
most nutritious and the sweetest in the
world. These are the natural
fodder grasses of this section,
the best in all respects for
all sorts of domestic animals the sun
kisses into life. From Florence to the
Santa Ana river, and beyond there to
Newport and San Juan stretch of over
seventy-fve miles, the country is all of
this character. Some of it has been
plowed and seeded to grain. Patches
long and wide have been set in orchard.
Pretty villages and prosperous towns
dot the landscape; but still only small
percentage of the land has yet been
diverted from the primitive uses Of
man, pastures for hocks and herds.
How fat and fertile all this stretch of
country from Florence to Anaheim is !!
wherever this king of fodder plants has
been sown. Wide fields flash past the
windows of the cars where the young
corn is from to 10 inches high, and
springing up almost an inch day.
At Fair Anaheim.
Nadeau, Vinvale, Downey, Carmelita,
Norwalk, Buena Park and Brookhurst
were reached and passed, and soon the
familiar name of Anaheim was called.
Here was the Mecca for the day of the
reporter, and the street car waiting at
the depot soon landed the passengers for
the old colony in the center OF the town,
mile from the depot.
hof iet 70 oh Aro
helm? Who does not know all about
the old colony the first one founded in
California? Its founding dates away
back to 1856, few years after the dis
covery of gold and the landing of the
Argonauts. The people who colonized
Anaheim came to- do better work than
to dig gold. They came to demonstrate
the fact that all the territory of Califor-
MIA is mine of gold, and that in her
fertile agricultural soil lies wealth richer
than all her deposits of gold and silver,
and wealth that is inexhaustible,
leads that increase in value the
longer they are worked, veins
that have no termination, diggings
that never "peter" out. These
sagacious colonizers went all over the
state and after examining its resources
and analyzing its soils from north tc
south, selected Anaheim as the very
home of agriculture, the true abode Of
all the rural deities, Ceres, Bacchus and
Pomona. They made no mistake in
their selection. They laid out a town a
mile square and by the four points OF
the compass. At convenient intervals
they ran streets east and west, and
north and south. They laid them out
broad and straight, and at the center OF
the square they built the business part
of their town. This mile square lies in
the center of plain that stretches as
level as floor fifteen miles to the ocean
at the nearest point, nearly as far to the
river on the other side, twice as fal
to Los Angeles westward, and as
far again sloping to the tops
of the hills to the north. The sun in its
course does not shine on an equal area
of richer land on all the revolving globe.
What is there that will not grow on this
mesa or along these bottoms?
Anaheim's Products.
For the prosaic products of the ground
this land has no equal in the world. AL
the cereals, including corn, grow here
yielding crops so prodigious that the
facts are difficult of belief. Corn grows
here without irrigation, and wheat
barley and oats do as well as on the best