Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182 pp., 1860s
"Meanwhile, Ysidro Reyes died at home in the pueblo during the smallpox epidemic of 1861 . . . A fifty-inch rainfall in 1861 was followed by the great drought of 1862-64 . . ."
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2. Santa Monica Canyon As A Resort
"Los Angeles in the 1860s was still an adobe pueblo-raucous, filthy, and lawless. . . prosperous migrants from the east began flocking to Southern California to get their share . . . and brought with them a taste for more civilized pleasures.
"In spite of the resulting land boom, the Santa Monica coastline and plateau remained a grass-covered range where sheep and a few cattle still grazed. . . . perhaps the first true resort in Southern California. According to an article in the Los Angeles Express in 1872: "Seventeen years ago [1855] Santa Monica was selected as a summer resort by Dr. Hayward and until the last five years [1867] he and his family were the only ones who availed themselves of its delights and benefits. Santa Monica proper is a farm house located on the ridge one and a half miles from where the camp is located. At this log house the road descends into a deep ravine or cañon, at the foot of which near the confluence with the ocean, is a thick growth of old sycamores. Here is the camp."
"By the mid-sixties, picnicking and camping under the sycamores in the canyon drew many Angelenos . . . One intriguing item in the San Bernardino Guardian reported that almost the entire Jewish population of Los Angeles rode to Santa Monica Canyon in four six-horse coaches on September 22, 1867, shortly before the Jewish New Year, to enjoy the pleasures of "ocean swimming and surfside festivities."