The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1910-03-17
BOOM THE STATE liz SEES THINGS
J. A. Caughren's Eyes Wide Open
While in The West
TELLS ALL ABOUT IT
Writes The Herald Another Interest
ing Letter Concerning His
Travels Out There

OCEAN PARK, CAL, March 5th.-
1t will probably interest you some to
hear about the balance of my trip to
California, the sights and places that
l have visited since my last letter.
We stayed about 10 days at Ocean
Park, it being too cold to remain long
er. l tried Long Beach; that was
too cold for me. While Long Beach
is beautiful place and they have a
Grand Hotel there it was also too
cold, all of those beach resorts are
much better for summer than winter.
Long Beach is about 20 miles from
Los Angeles, further south than Ocean
Park The electric lines out of Los
Angeles make all the important points
The street car business is one of the
greatest money makers in the state.
The country where all it's lines run
is under cultivation with fine homes,
and orchards.
Our trip to San Diego was very en-
joyable. We left in the morning, con-
sequently had daylight run over the
Santa Fee, which is the only railroad
in that part of the country. 1t is
money maker l should Judge and they
keep it, l guess, as they have put
nothing back in keeping up their road
bed. A portion of their road runs
through the mountains near
San Diego; their grades are very
steep and lots of curvature. The road
has been built about 80 years; very
little has been done to it since 1t
has been built excepting through the
prosperous part of the country There
is a party building a railroad by the
name of Spreckles from San Diego
to Ell Paso, Texas. Up till this time,
the Santa Fe had no competition.
Since Spreckles has started to
build his line, the Santa Fe has COM:
menced to cut down some of it's grade
and straighten it's road bed line out.
Their line runs through beautiful
country after leaving Los Angeles,
mostly through orange groves and
olives and walnut groves. We rode
through miles of walnut trees; they
were a beautiful sight to me, the
first / had ever seen. The returns
from such large tracts and thrifty
trees must be great. At Maeto, 20
miles from Los Angeles, it is all
olive groves. There IS quite an olive
plant there where they make olive
oil.
The next town Of Importance we
stopped at was Orange, and it was
well named; everywhere was. oranges.
There was an army OF men loading
cars with oranges, there were teams
coming in from all directions. it
looked like marketing wheat in NortA
Dakota, in her balmy days when the
land was new The towns are about
five miles apart. We stopped at
one little town called Capistrano,
which looks as though it had been
built a great many years ago, mostlS
with sod houses. The walls OF mann
Of them stand there yet, while the
re offs and the interiors have disap-
peared.
After leaving this place, we came
out onto the Ocean place called Oc-
eanside, and we follow it more or
less all the way into San Diego. At
Maeto, we crossed the biggest farm
in this part of the country, which is
composed Of $4,000 acres. 1t fronts
on the ocean for about 10 miles and
is used for stock and grain raising.
There were cattle on thousand hills;
the flats and table lands were used
for grain, while the cattle ranged
on the hills. There seemed to be
much hay raised as there were large
racks of baled hay which looked as
though they had stood there years.
The man who owns this place, named
O'Neil, is very ordinary looking old
man, but he can't be any ordinary
man to have accumulated all this
wealth, and is able to keep it, for no
one pretends to say how rich he is.
He has one son; he made him a, pre-
sent last christmas of one-half of
the entire layout. The natives look
upon this farm as kind of an eye
opener to the eastern man, as there
is party goes through the train and
calls off the name of the farm and
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