Southern California
''The Land of Sunshine and Flowers"Southern California
“The Land of Sunshine and Flowers״״
Southern California comprises the eight southernmost counties of Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, area 45,187 square miles.
Southern California is a bower of beauty by reason of its intensive development, an endless series of garden spots, ribboned with boulevards and alive with villages and towns. The towns are modern and prosperous. The boulevards are lined with thrifty country estates. They wind as in a veritable elysium, between groves of orange and walnut, olive, lemon and grapefruit, orchards of figs and endless miles of vineyards. Along their borders are avenues of drooping palms and pepper trees, and flaming eucalyptus; the hillsides are yellow with poppies, red with poinsettias, and the distance forever purple with the royal robes of enchantment. There are mountain peaks that match their age with time itself ; canyons with running rivers beneath bending forests ; out-jutting precipices hung with filmy mist; the distant horizons enshrined in fancy like a Corot masterpiece; the outspread valleys, tropical in their rich luxuriance, encircled by round-topped hills, through winter, spring and summer a brilliant green, in autumn brown as Persian tapestry, age-old and equally priceless. And over all, the rose-pink dawns, the brilliant noons, the royal purple of the kingly sunsets.
Along the lakes and rivers of mountain ranges, are a hundred palatial hotels, reached by paved boulevards that mark the rim of the world. The national forests, through the kindly paternalism of our government, harbor many thousand delightful cottages. Public camp grounds, along all the rivers; automobile camps, artistically planned and equipped, reached by winding roads that, passing beneath the forest, creep up the sides of a hundred jagged peaks, where lively night camps twinkle through the dusk till one might hold in fancy the picture of the ancient cliff dwellers returning to rekindle their dead fires; or, on the shores of our perennial sea, at Venice, Long Beach, San Diego, Santa Monica—a hundred miles of glittering, wave-washed sands—a vision of ten thousand Polynesian mermaids, basking beneath a perpetual summer sun, while inland from this same sea stretch ten thousand miles of winding boulevards whispering with half-million wheels.
So are the opportunities for delight complete, and likewise inexhaustible. Hunting, fishing, yachting, canoeing, polo, tennis, golf—of all the sports which outdoor people love not one has been omitted from the plan, not one that lacks in pleasurable possibilities.
The soul and centre of this Southland, as well as the Pacific Coast metropolis, is Los Angeles, the busiest city on earth. Founded in 1781, as a Spanish pueblo, it was, in 1860, a village of 3,700 ; a town of 11,000 in 18S0, a city of 102,000 in 1900, and in 1913, a metropolis of half-million. It has today a population of 1,000,000, while in a score of adjacent
cities through a ninety mile diameter, live an additional 700,000 ; in other words, from Riverside to Redondo, a habitat of a million and a half people, of which Los Angeles is the centre.
The mountains and the sea control the climate of Southern California; the floating zephyrs from the snow peaks of the High. Sierras, and the steady, pleasant push of the Trades from the South Pacific. With the regularity of a well-timed clock these life-giving breezes play impartially across this favored area throughout the entire length of the four consecutive seasons, thus forming what an enthusiastic outside world has come to know as an all-the-year round climate. It is a delightful fact—neither appreciated nor understood except by those fortunate ones who live within its radius—that the country produces each year an average of 346 days of sunshine. There is also this paradox regarding the sunshine, that it causes not excessive heat, but a comfortable coolness (due to the lack of humidity) ; that this brilliantly clear sky, bending over a semitropical landscape, is invaded by gentle zephyrs, producing midsummer days that require wraps for boulevard excursions, August nights that invariably require blankets for sleeping; while throughout the hottest hours of the most brilliant days it is invariably cool in the shade. That is the reason why women wear furs comfortably here in August—because the air is always brisk and bracing, and because it is always cool in the shade. The seasons of Southern California run their perennial course, summer gliding into winter, and on into spring, without a perceptible effort ; roses blooming on a million stems along a hundred boulevards around the yearly calendar, free from the hazard of frost; children, barefooted, trundle hoops on sandy beaches through the Christmas holidays, and always that brilliant sunshine, those pleasant, seductive zephyrs, playing across a perennially beautiful landscape.
Citrus fruits are among the chief products, and millions of dollars worth are shipped to the East each year. Rare fruits, nuts and vegetables are produced in large quantities and move in solid trainloads to eastern markets during the spring months. In 1923 there were 191,034 acres of citrus producing lands in Southern California, producing a total of 20,310,000 boxes of oranges and lemons, valued at $46,400,000.
This mighty empire is also rich in oil and mineral resources having produced in 1922, a total of 75,640,-000 barrels of oil valued at $92,624,000. Great deposits of gold, silver, iron, lead and many other minerals in commercial quantities awaiting only the capital necessary for their commercial development.
Southern California is served by three great transcontinental railroads, while steamship lines reach out to every corner of the globe. Connecting practically all the communities in Southern California is the Pacific Electric, one of the largest interurban systems in the world.
Pub. by S, H. Kress & Co.Colorado Street Bridge, Pasadena.
Avalon, Catalina Island.On the Sand, between Ocean Park and Venice.A Winter Scene in Sunny California.
San Gabriel Mission, San Gabriel.The National Soldiers’ Home, Sawtelle.
California Orange Groves, Mt. San Antonio (Old Baldy) in the Distance.Old San Diego Mission.
Beach, La Jolla.Arrowhead Mountain, near San Bernardino.
Bathing Scene, Long Beach.San Fernando Mission. San Fernando.
Eucalyptus and Palms, Palisades Park, Santa Monica.Beach and Tent City, Coronado.
Picking Oranges in Southern California.Point Firmin, San Pedro.
Universal Studios, Universal City.	Copyright by Glen G. Stone, Los Angeles, Cal.Bird’s-eye View of Riverside from Mt. Rubidoux.
Bush Sunken Gardens, Pasadena.A Beautiful Home in the Hills of Sierra Madre.
Palm Walk, a Southern California Beauty Spot.Up the Alpine Grade, Ait. Lowe.
Great Incline, 3000 feet Long, Alt. Lowe.SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
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