Cressy’s
History
California
Copyright 1923
WILL M. CRESSY, Author
EDWARD H. HALL CO., Publishers SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA
Price Ten Cents
being that Los Angeles is the largest city in the world, in the point of farm acreage.
Although it is never referred to by the Natives, Los Angeles has a wonderful climate. You can melt, freeze and drown in the same spot on the same day. They have but two kinds of weather—perfect and unusual.
Los Angeles is the center of the fruit-raising industry. They claim to raise the finest fruit in the world. And then pass laws forbidding the entrance of fruit from anywhere else, thus proving their claim of having the best fruit in the State.
There are more beautiful women in Los Angeles than in any other city on earth. But they all come from somewhere else.
The inhabitants, of Los Angeles are of a thrifty, saving disposition—fifty-one weeks in the year. Then they go to San Francisco for a week.
Owing to the climate, there are several moving picture studios in Los Angeles. (They are IN Hollywood, but Los Angeles takes the credit for all the good coming from them, and blames Hollywood for all the bad.) The Artists employed in these places are called “Movie Actors.’’ This is because they move from one home to another so often.
Hollywood is called The City of Happy Homes, this being caused by the fact that husbands and wives seldom occupy the same homes.
Years ago I became attached to Los Angeles. I bought some lots there. And as the years have gone by, the Sheriff has added to those attachments.
At times I wished to detach myself from all the attachments. But of late years I have begun to think that my attachment is permanent. The man who sold them to me said I could dispose of them any time—at a profit. But he was a rotten Prophet.
But at that, I love California! I love it as only A Native Son—of New England—CAN love it. I love its lakes and rills, its mountains and hills, its deserts and seashore. But best of all I love its soil—those lots in Los Angeles.
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And for years it has been my dream to some time settle down in my own little bungalow, on my own little ranch, and there in the golden sunlight, and the silvery moonlight, dream the hours away, seeing visions of other times and other places.
And where can you find more to arouse such visions than you can on a California ranch?
You arise in the morning to the music of a Connecticut alarm clock.
You button your Boston garters onto your Paris socks, your Baltimore suspenders onto your Detroit overalls, put on your Lynn shoes and your Danbury hat, and you are up.
You sit down to your Grand Rapids table, have your Hawaiian pineapple, your Cape Cod fish, your Aunt Jemima flapjacks, swimming in New Orleans molasses.
You have a bit of Cincinnati ham, cooked in Chicago lard, on a Detroit stove, burning Wyoming coal.
Then you go out, put your Concord, N. H., harness onto your Missouri mule, hitch it onto a Moline, Ill., plow and plow up a couple of acres of land covered with Ohio mortgages.
You plant Indian corn, Bermuda potatoes, Bavarian malt, Hungarian barley and Italian hops. And then you sit up all night blending the Malt, Barley and Hops into a camouflaged concoction to reduce the high cost of the bootlegger.
And then when the twilight falls you fill up your pride of Detroit with Mexican gasoline, dash out to the beach, and while sitting in a Greek restaurant, smoking a Boston-made cigar, you watch a New York girl dance the Memphis Shimmie to the music of a New Orleans Jazz Band.
And then you go back to your little home under the orange trees and the mortgage; read a chapter out of a Bible written in London, England; say a prayer written in Jerusalem; wind up your Waterbury watch; put on your China silk pajamas; crawl in between your Fall River sheets, and fight all night with the fleas, the only native product on your whole damn ranch.
6CRESSY’S HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA
THE first discovery of California has always been in doubt; some local historians claiming that the Garden of Eden was located in the southwestern corner of Golden Gate Park, just back of the Monkey House. Others, more modest, give the date of its discovery at the time that Noah landed the ark on the top of Mount Shasta. But the best and most authentic accounts give the year 1603, when Sir Francis Drake sailed in through the Golden Gate and started the St. Francis Hotel.
Sir Francis brought with him a troup of Spanish Troubadours, who spent most of their time during the next hundred years in building Spanish Missions and Ramona’s homes, promoting bull fights and building the El Camino Real.
California at that time had a large population, but they were still living in Iowa and New England, saving up their money to buy real estate at Los Angeles.
But in 1847 California really began to grow, for in that year a couple of fellows by the names of Lewis and Clark began running cheap excursions out over the U. P. Railroad.
Two years later a man by the name of Marshall started a gold cure up near Sacramento, and within six months had two hundred thousand Gold Diggers, of both sexes, working there.
Thus we learn that California was discovered by the Spanish, settled by the Yankees, built by the Japanese, worked by the Chinese, fought for by the Irish, owned by the Jews, and run by the Native Sons.
A year later, in 1850, land was discovered over across the bay from Oakland. And a couple of real estate men started a town there. Because of the way the sand drifted about, it was called SAND-CAN-DRIFT-SO. This was later corrupted to San Francisco.
The first two public buildings were the Orpheum Theatre and the Jail. Both have since been enlarged, and are still doing capacity business.
This San Francisco became quite a sporting center for the citizens of Berkeley, Oakland and Alameda. The flea-shooting was great, as was the crap-shooting.
Then Mt. Tamalpais Railroad was built. This and the San Francisco City Hall are considered the two crooked-est things in the world.
Meanwhile a band of refugees from San Juan Hill, in Cuba, had come up from the South and established a settlement at Riverside. A fellow by the name of Roosefelt planted the first seedless orange tree, and a chap by the name of Burbank by sap-transfusion and grafting caused these orange trees to bear thornless cactus, tasteless grapefruit and jag-less grapes.
A year or so later one of the players on the Riverside Baseball team, a sort of a roughneck, by the name of William Sunday, got mad, left the team, went a hundred miles north and started a revival. After he had converted all of the red Indians, and some of the white ones, he decided to make his camp a permanent settlement, and, in honor of himself, he called it Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a Spanish word meaning “City of Angels.” But this was a long while ago.
There are twenty-six ways of pronouncing Los Angeles, all wrong.
The new State grew so fast that they had to divide it into two parts, called Northern California and Southern Cafeteria. And they had to put two deserts and a mountain range in between them to keep them from fighting.
The celestial named city was made the capital of the southern, and the saintly named town to the north the capital of the northern end of the State.
San Francisco, in the years that followed, had a most marvelous growth, until today, taking in Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, Sausalito, Mill Valley, Petaluma, Alcatraz Island and the Farallones, it is the largest city in the State. Los Angeles, taking in all the rest of the State, is still larger. In 1911, San Diego was made the 116th ward of the city.
In 1853, William Hearst was born and the Babarbara Coast was made an Open Port.
In ’55 a law was passed forbidding earthquakes inside the city limits.
In ’57 Mister Sutro introduced the first bathtub into the city.
In ’58 a barber shop was started and the first Californian had his hair cut and a shave.
California is bounded on the north by British Columbia, on the west by the Hawaiian Islands, the south by the Panama Canal, on the east by the Dixie Highway, on the top by Heaven. That is, by daylight. After dark it has no limits.
San Francisco has had a wonderful career. Like most of its inhabitants, it has been shaken down. It has burned, and, like the Phoenix, has risen from the ashes bigger and better than ever. Whatever other cities try to do, San Francisco tries to do better.
San Francisco has more restaurants named for dogs than any other city in the world.
Seal Rocks and the St. Francis Hotel are renowned for the number of sealskins to be seen there most any afternoon.
San Francisco is renowned for its Fisheries. Sharks, Suckers and Goldfish. They also have the most patriotic fish in the world. On most any sunny afternoon, from the rocks by the Cliff House, the Red Snapper, White Fish and Blue Fish can be seen parading by in undulating lines.
The city of Los Angeles is a Seaport—situated eighteen miles from the sea. The only wonder is that they have not run it through to the Atlantic.
Owing to the late Volstead disaster, they ran short of water. So they ran a subway up into Canada somewhere and tapped the Arctic Ocean.
Then they had so much water they did not know what to do with it. According to their constitution, they could not use it outside of the city limits. So they annexed another country to use up the water; the result
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