The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-09-26
DAYS OF THE GREAT HERDS.
IT WAS THE GOLDEN AGE IN THE
HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA.
Life of the Cattle Kings-NOw the
Animals Are suppIanted by the
Fruit Orchards and Beet Sugar
Farms.

Farms.
From the Boston Transcript.
The days for the great herds of cattle
for which California has been famous,
along with her wonderfully big trees,
enormous ranches and fields of grain, are
fast passing away, says Pasadena cor
respondent. In fact they have practically
passed away already The census of 1870
showed that there were a dozen herds in
California of 10000 and 5000 cattle each
ana scores of herds of 1000 and 1900 cat
tie each. The census of 1890 revealed but
three herds comprising over q, 900 and less
than dozen herds of more than 5000 cat
tie. To-day there is but one herd of more
than 10000 cattle in the state and a few
scattering herds of 5000 and 1900 head.
| The last five years have seen the fastest
! passing of the era of the great holdings
of ranch lands and of the herds upon
them. The constant growth of the fruit in
| dustries, the development of beet-sugar
enterprises, and the rapid expansion of
the small farmers and the enlargement
Of towns and cities are all inimical to the
cattle industry on a large scale. Two weeks
ago Mrs. Lugarda Alvalardo de Palo-
mares of Pomona valley died, and her large
landed estate is nov in process of. legal
division. The hocks and herds will be sold.
| Last January the De Costa estate in Tu-
| lare county was similarly divided and the
herds shipped to New York and Chicago.
In the last year the Chino ranch of
some 5000 acres, over which herd of II, :
| COO cattle used to roam, has been sold for
groWing sugar beets corn and fruits and
the remnants of the former herd have been
| slaughtered and shipped to eastern mar
kets. The cattle firm of Miller & Lux, at
| one time probably the most important in
Its line Of business in the world, is at
present in course of liquidation and its
| herd of cattle, once numbering between To-
600 and $4,000, has been sold and divided
| into smaller herds In the early months of
| last year the Alvord estate, which owned
something like Al, 600 acres of land in Kern
county and over 10000 cattle, was parti-
| toned and the cattle were disposed of to
cattlemen or sent to market
The passing of the herds in California
marks an epoch in the Industrial history
OF the commonwealth, as it does in all
the larger states of the west. The first
stage of civilization has been occupation
| or the country by the cattlemen, who put
to the easiest uses the miles of broad
acres, free from railroads and fences or
| Directing persons. Then followed the
the ranges into vast fields of grain. Next
came the army of settlers, and the great
| fields were subdivided into holdings of
$50 or 300 acres each. In the older states,
as in Illinois and Iowa, as time goes on
| these holdings grow smaller and farms of
| 100 acres are more common to-day than
farms of 300 acres.
In California the true days of the cattle
barony were forty years ago, when the
Spanish owned two-thirds of the monster
state and the American population was
confined to few hundred persons in the
| pueblos of San Diego and Los Angeles
and several thousand in and about the
! gold-crazy city of San Francisco. Those
| were days when eleven Spanish families
| and Uncle Sam owned all the arabic farm
| ing land in Los Angeles county consist
ing of over 100000 acres, and four Span
| ish families in the San Joaquin valley
owned what they believed to be about $780,
| 900 acres. The exact area was never as
| certained. There was no railroad west
| of the Missouri then and hardly a mile
of fencing in all California.
The days of the great herds were pic
turesque. In them the rollicking steer
was a mighty; factor in affairs for he was
about the only visible means of support
| of his ease-loving, generous and dreamy
| Spanish owner; several generations of the
| Spaniards and their descendants failed to
| take advantage of the agricultural re-
u
very limited and listless way. The his
tory of the California beef critter' is an
| interesting one. He came in with the
| Franciscan missionaries in the latter part
| Of the eighteenth century, and with the
| waxing of his numbers grew wild and of
long horn. He it was that made possible
| that idyllic life so charmingly described
in the stories of pre-American times in
| California, when few worked, because it
was really unnecessary, and people put
| in most of their time taking life easily
smoking cigarettes, snoozing in ham,
mocks and unconsciously making a histor-
| ical background for future effects in tic-
| ton. He ii was that laid the foundation
| of colossal fortunes. Now the herds have
gone, and so, too, have most of the Span
ish fortunes builded out of beef, bone, hide
and hoof.
From the days that the Franciscan
monks brought to California few cattle
away round Cape Horn from their old
homes in Spain and taught the native In
| dian tribes how to become Christian hus-
bandmen to 1866, the increase in the herds
| was marvellous, Notwithstanding the tens
! of thousands that were slaughtered every
| year. 1t was estimated in 1855 that there
| were over 900 head of cattle in the
| state, valued at from 100000 to $1,000
COO. In the Spanish days, when mans
| herd increased so that it was too much
| bother to keep il together and to provide
| grazing land, the owner allowed his stock
| to run wild, with the result that the ami
mails lost all domesticity and were ex-
tremely hard to round up; so much so.
in fact, that many heavy owners took
| slight pains to keep their heads intact
| merely rounding up those cattle that could
| be found and driven in with the least
| trouble. AS a result of this lax system
! before many years in isolated portions of
| the country there were enormous herds
| with no one TO claim them
The manner of life and of doing business
of the Spanish cattle kings in their hal
| cyon days was unlike anything that other
cattlemen ever knew. Book accounts were
rarely kept and, except when the annual
rodeo took place, not the least attention
was paid to the increase in the herds. No
ranchero ever made any study of the
market conditions before disposing of his
cattle. When the family purse was emp
ty, when a daughter was TO receive a
dowry, or a son must have money to nav
his gambling debts at San Francisco or