Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182 pp., 1874
"By 1874, two canyon hotels kept by Wolf and Steadman, the Morongo House and the Seaside Hotel, were popular . . . A road ran from Los Angeles to the shore at the foot of . . . (Colorado) St. in Santa Monica, where facilities at Shoo Fly Landing were used for shipping asphalt from the La Brea pits to San Francisco, the first sea-borne commerce in Santa Monica Bay . . . Wagons and carriages [continued on] the beach to the mouth of Santa Monica Canyon.
"Colonel Rober Baker . . . envisioned a new wharf at Santa Monica and a connecting railroad into Los Angeles.
". . .
"[Baker] teamed up with the newly arrived senator from Nevada, John P. Jones . . . Jones had made his first fortune in the mines of the Comstock Lode. . . . he invested in mines all over the world. backed a variety of patents and inventions, [making and losing] several fortunes. Appointed to the United States Senate in 1873, he continued to serve for thirty years, maintaining his official residence in Virginia City . . . When he arrived in Los Angeles in 1874, he was given a royal welcome.
" . . . the two men . . . organize[d] the Los Angeles & Independence Railroad Company to provide a link to Los Angeles and the eastern seaboard, as well as an access to Jones' Panamint mines. They also began work on a new wharf at Shoo Fly Landing . . ."