Los Angeles herald., 1909-06-06

its tariffs to suit the colony developer.
Soon town lots that before had gone
begging for small prices began to sell
for four and five times as much. Acre
| age once sowed to grain and farmed
| dry was, through the magic of irrigation
water, turned on lands that were cheap
at the price asked, $3.50 to $500. Old
settlers who had held on for twenty
years began to realize tremendous pro-
fits on their real estate holdings. Money,
the greatest power for development,
began like a golden shower to rain
upon the people who had for years
thought themselves apart from the
dawn of golden era.
Business Receives a Jolt
Merchants whose business had been
tempered to the moth-eaten conditions
of the past began to extend their estab-
lishments, and where three stores were
sufficient eighteen months ago some
forty merchants are now found neces-
sary to transact the volume of bust
ness. A lumber yard that was at the
beginning of the present growth but
the assembling place of a few hundred
dollars worth of material was able to-
do a business in eighteen months of
equal volume to six years past.
Restaurants, rooming houses and
every form of accommodation for the
traveller sprang up like magic until
Beaumont boasts three hotels with 100
rooms, as many restaurants and also
an apartment house with tWo-room
suites built by a man from Massachu-
setts, thus providing for urban accom-
modations.
Concurrent with these marvellous
changes the sales of real estate climbed
to enormous proportions and with sur
prising rapidity lots in the tOwnsite and
the acreage involving over $465. 900 have
changed hands. New houses began to
dot the scene until the total volume of
building business for eighteen months
has exceeded 175 new structures valued
at over $15O,000-a worlds record for
town of Beaumont's size From fifty
water connections this branch has
climbed until there are close to three
hundred, and from a town devoid of
banking facilities Beaumont now has
one of the best and most substantial
financial institutions in the county, the
Bank of Beaumont, with S25, 900 capital,
$4,000 in deposits and lis depositors
This brings up the point that every
dollar of money that came from Beau
mont crops in the past has been depos-
tied I'm banks outside, thus putting the
merchants and the farmers to greatest
inconvenience, for banks are as neces-
sary In these advanced times as is
money itself. They ease and facilitate
the onward march of business, and by
their system Of credit to reliable bor-
rowers give to money potentialities ten
times as great as when it is boarded in
tin cans, old stockings and inflamma-
BILE trunks.
Water System Exces
An inspection of Beaumont contains
no feature of such alluring interest as
the magnitude and extent of it's water
system. BY actual easurement the
present development exceeds $50 miners
| inches, which comes from sources of
undeniable permanency, namely, Ed
gar, Wallace and Noble creeks, that
| have a 12-mile water shed and rise in
the high mountains to the north of the
valley; a great artesian shaft 6xS feet
in size. Is feet deep, sunk in the debris
cones of Edgar canyon just above the
Nellen ranch, and three inexhaustible
wells near the mouth of Edgar canyon,
where the water stands within twenty
! five feet of the surface and goes down
to depth of nearly $50 feet The entire