Los Angeles herald., 1892-02-14
FROM THE NORTH.
An Interesting Letter From
San Francisco.
Why That City Has So Rapidly
Progressed.
Southern California Will Win in the
Home Stretch.
The Different Development of the Two
Ends of the Stste-The Advantage
Los Angeles Now Enjoys.
Her Future.
lstaff Correspondence of the HERALD.

Staff Correspondence of the HERALD
SAN Francisco, Feb. 10, 1892.
Nearly eleven years have elapsed
since my last visit to the metropolis of
the northern citrus belt. Old Padre
TEMPO has been getting in his work here
as we'll as elsewhere. Ancient land
marks are gone, business centers have
moved, street names have been changed,
and even the ladies do not look so fair
as compared with the beautiful daugh-
ters of the south.
At first glance, two things appear in
which San Francisco has progressed: in
her cable car systems and great business
blocks. Many of the latter are eight
and ten stories high, and all see to be
substantially built of iron, brick and
stone. They are both beautiful and
grand. Los Angeles may never have
such sky-lifters, for the reason that her
head OF sandy peninsula, now COM
pressed between salt marshes and salt
waters. No ''pent-up Utica" is ours,
but from the ancient Rio Porciuncula to
the Boca de Santa Monica is plenty of
room for mighty municipality, first
rivaling and then outrivaling this city
of stiff winds and cold fogs.
1t is natural that San Francisco and
Los Angeles should be rivals. They are
respectively the business centers of two
distinctively different physical, sections.
This rivalry grows year by year, and
each annual cycle witnesses increased
strength of the south.
Why San Francisco is now ahead in
the race is question easily answered
by history. The second discovery of
gold in California, this time by j. w.
Marshall, on January "a, 1S48, at Colo
ma, in what is now Ell Dorado county,
affected the world far more than the
first discovery by Francisco Lopez, in
March, 1912, near San Fernando mis-
sion. Probably the reason of this was
that in 1S48 California was United
States property. Whatever was the
cause, the effect was one of the largest
immigrations OF the world. In 1850 the
state of California was admitted to the
union with population of nearly 100,-
000-over three times as much as her
territory had had two years before.
The grand harbor of San Francisco,
discovered by Lieutenant Ortega, of the
Spanish army, in November, 1859, at
once, after Marshall's discovery, estab-
lished the supremacy Of the pueblo
of Yerba Buena, which, almost
like Jonah's gourd, became the
full grown city of San Fran
cisco in a night. The great mining
boom lasted no longer than did our real
estate boom of 1857. But the "Argo-
nauts'' were charmed with climate as
much different from that of their east
ern homes as that south of Tehachepi is
from the climate of the n.c.b. Picks
and shovels and long-tom rockers were
laid aside for plows, and anvils, ham
mers and planes, sticks and rules and
trade and traffic begun. The entire ter
ritory of Northern California was sud-
denly and wholly changed in character
of population.
Not so, that of Southern California.
Its pastoral character was preserved for
more than two decades later, and even
vet the traces of its former rude civiliz-
alton have not yet wholly disappeared.
In the north it was different. Before
the close of it's first decade San Fran
cisco was not as large as Los Angeles is
now. 1t is encouraging to note that be-
fore Los Angeles had passed its first
decade as a purely American town, it
had comparatively outstripped San
Francisco both in wealth and popula-
tion. And it will continue SO to do.
San Francisco was mushroom town
at first, but it managed to get trans
continental railroad, but 20, ye gods y it
never got anything more in that line.
Again Los Angeles leads! And it will
continue to lead.
The conditions were peculiar under
which San Francisco got her cross-con-
tinent iron highway. In the '6Os the
great bulk of the wealth and population
of the state was in the northern citrus
belt, and to the credit of the N. c. belters
be it said that by their enterprise and
money the road was built, and railway
communication opened with the east in
1868.
The scheme of building railroad be-
tween the Atlantic and the Pacific
oceans, was first broached to the world
by our pioneer townsman, Don Juan j .
Warner. When "a years old he crossed
the continent, in 1881, and arrived in
Los Angeles on December 9Th of that
year. He was impressed on his way
here by the easy grades for railroads be-
tween Santa Fe and the tributary re-
gions of the Colorado river. On his re-
turn to the east, few years later, he
delivered a lecture at Rochester, N T.,
on the subject of transcontinental
railroad. The idea found many advo-
Gates, and became 80 popular that the
federal government had surveys made
for thu same.
The southern route, that is, via Texas,
Southern New Mexico and Arizona, was
found to have easier and better grades
than those of any route further north.
Before the government could do any
thing for this fine southern route, the
civil war of 1S61-65 came on, and all the
chances of the southern tier of states
and territories on said proposed route
for federal assistance were ruined. Thus
the war set back the development of
Southern California fully thirty years.
The Central Pacific was at first ridi-
-culed as the Dutch Flat swindle,n be-
cause it's first completed section was
from Sacramento to the municipality Of
Germanic equality. But its promoters
first spent their own money, then OBJ