Betty Lou Young Our First Century: The Los Angeles Athletic Club 1880-1980, LAAC Press: Los Angeles, California 1979, 176 pp., 1887
"Interest in amateur sports and physical fitness continued to grow as the boom reached its height (1887). Trainloads of tourists and new residents arrived daily on the competing Southern Pacific and Santa Fe lines, paying as little as a dollar for a ticket from the Midwest. Excursion parties of tired travelers who had been recruited en masse in their home towns were often met at stops along the way with offerings of flowers and fruit, band concerts, and the blandishments of land promoters.
"The new Angelenos were a remarkable lot: they were cultured, conservative, affluent, and most of them were health-seekers. Afflicted with a variety of real and imaginary ailments, droves of these self-proclaimed invalids had heard the promises of the railroad publicity agents and came to California seeking the benefits of the climate and miraculous cures . . .
"The influence of the Club and the recently introduced science of "physical culture" balanced "the salves, tonics and nostrums." . . .