Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990, 1909, 1907, 1905, 1900, 1892, 1890, 1889, 1888, 1887, 1886, 1885, 1882, 1880, 1880s, 1879, 1878, 1875,
Chapter 1: Santa Monica's North Beach (1875-1907)
"By 1880, Santa Monica wss experiencing a deep business depression. The population had bottomed out at 350 citizens, the hotel was closed and only a saloon, restaurant, and several grocery and dry goods stores remained . . . Santa Monica Hotel reopened in 1882, when J. W. Scott bought the hotel. He remodeled it and added a twenty room addition the following year.
" . . . In 1885 the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad managed to break Southern Pacific's monopolistic grip on Southern California when it completed a line to San Diego. The company laid rails north and secured a right-of-way to Ballona Creek, just three miles south of Santa Monica. The railroad in partnership with Ballona Harbor and Improvement Company, planned a massive seaport there. They built two piers and began digging a channel from the sea into the inland lagoon. Track was laid toward Palms and Los Angeles.
" . . . J.W. Scott purchased a tract of land between Railroad and Front St. from the Southern Pacific for $3000. He subdivided this property in south Santa Monica into forty lots and sold thirty lots for $30,000. he then used the money in 1886 to begin construction of a first class hotel called the Arcadia." p. 10
[Photograph p. 8: 1888 view north from the Arcadia Hotel, showing the tourist facilities of North Beach. In the immediate foreground is a woodburning locomotive, and two people looking away from the locomotive across a ravine to a dune road leading to a sign on the side of a fragile looking shed, Vawter's Choice Groceries, No. 10 Third. In the mid-ground is Eckert & Hopf's Pavilion Restaurant, and on the beach beyond the Santa Monica Bathhouse and set well back on the bluffs above, the two-story Santa Monica Hotel. Tents for beach businesses were manufactured by William I. Hull there and one can see an advertisment for tent rentals at the foot of the stairs leading down from Eckert & Hopf's. It is remarkable how forested Santa Monica appears, trees already taller than the four chimmnies of the Santa Monica Hotel, thirteen years after its founding.]
[The Arcadia Hotel photo on page 11: The 125 room Arcadia Hotel opened January 24, 1887. It spills down to the Arcadia Bath House, the Royal Cafe to the boardwalk on a narrow beach above the high tide line. There are houses immediately to the south on the bluffs with wooden walk ways to the beach on what might now be Bay St. A high picket fence seems to shut the houses off from the hotel. Just at the southern edge there is a wooden water tower.]
[The useful synthetic diagram on page 9 indicates the placement of structures and south of Railroad St.: (7) Los Angeles and Independence Wharf (1875-1879), described above; (9) Eckert & Hopf Pavilion Restaurant (1879-1900); (10) Thompson Scenic Railroad (1887-1889), which connected the Arcadia Hotel across the railroad gorge to Ocean Av.; (11) Arcadia Bathhouse (1887-1905); (12) Arcadia Hotel (1887-1909); (13) Jackson Hotel (1889- ) across Ocean Av., from the Arcadia Hotel; (14) Southern Pacific Railroad Depot (1878- ); (15) Southern Pacific Railroad Tunnel (1892- )]
[Page 12 1887 photo of the Thompson Switchback Gravity Railroad, forerunner of the roller coaster which connected the Arcadia Hotel to Santa Monica across the railroad gorge.]
[Page 13 Undated photo: Cable-driven steam-powered Ferris Wheel.]
"His [J.W. Scott] elegant 125 room hotel which was named for Colonel Baker's beautiful wife Arcadia, became the finest seaside hotel in California when it opened on January 24, 1887. It was a huge, long rectangular, wooden structure located on the edge of the bluffs, just south of the railroad tracks that led to the old wharf. Its five stories rose from the beach on the ocean side, but it was only three stories high at its inland entrance that was topped by an observation tower. It had a dining room for two hundred guests, a sitting room, parlor, ladies' billiard and reading rooms on the first floor. There was a ballroom and conservatory on a lower floor. The beach was accessbile through the bottom floor where one could sit at the cafe or lounge on the sand. There were also therapeutic salt water baths available.
"The Arcadia had a unique Thompson Switchback Gravity Railroad which carried passengers from the top of the bluff across the arroyo and back, on a short 500 foot undulating track that used natural gravity. La Marcus Thompson came to Santa Monica during the winter to supervise the ride's construction. One end of the gravity railroad terminated at the Arcadia Hotel and the other end at the Pavilion on the north side of the Southern Pacific track. This early style roller coaster, whose gentle dips thrilled passengers of the day, had a reverse track so visitors could ride both directions.
"Legend had it that the town's early-day prostitutes and their pimps took it over one night for a joy-ride and frustrated the hotel patrons efforts to ride for an hour. Another account mentions a drunk who one night became trapped when the car he released began travelling back and forth between two of the larger dips." p.16
"In February [1887] Southern Pacific officials visited the Arcadia Hotel. They soon announced that they would build a new deep water wharf to compete with Santa Fe's nearby Port Ballona project . . .
"The Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads . . . became locked in a deadly rate war. Fares from Kansas City to Los Angeles, normally about $100 began plunging. On the morning of March 6, 1887, the fare was down to $8. At noon, Southern Pacific lowered it to one dollar, a fare the Santa Fe . . . didn't match . . . The fares rose steadily, but remained about $25 for the next few months.
"Easterners and midwesterners . . . came to California by the thousands. Real estate agents eagerly awaited the newcomers, and offered them free transportation and meals in exchange for attending land auctions. Long Beach and Glendale were a few of the new towns that were instantly created and subdivided out of the remaining rancheros. . . .
". . . New businesses, many built of brick, filled in much of Santa Monica's unpaved downtown area along Second, Third and Fourth Streets. The Santa Monica Evening Outlook newspaper began publishing again, and W.D. Vawter, who opened the town's first general store in 1875, applied for a franchise to operate horse drawn trolleys on narrow-gauge tracks. His line, when it opened in June 1887, began at Ocean Avenue and Railroad Street, weaved through the business district, and ran to 7th St. and Nevada (Wilshire).
". . . The Port Ballona developers suddenly discovered that a hard layer of clay lay under the marshes at the mouth of the creek. When their dredging machines couldn't dent it, they were forced to abandon the project. Once the threat of a competing port evaporated, the Southern Pacific, too, scrapped plans for its new wharf in Santa Monica.
". . . The First National Bank that Vawter and others planned in 1887 finally opened in 1888. The trolley route was extended south along Ocean Avenue to Pico and along Nevada to 17th Street, then out to the Old Soldier's Home in 1890.
". . . Southern Pacific brought 200,000 tourists to Santa Monica in 1889, and thousands more arrived by their own conveyance. On one warm Sunday 12,000 visitors arrived to watch a balloon ascension. Although the Santa Monica Hotel was destroyed by fire on January 15, 1889 . . . The owners promptly rebuilt directly across the street from the Arcadia Hotel.
"The influx of newcomer's and the growth of trade during the late 1880s led to the need for an improved deep-water harbor in Southern California. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Pacific preferred the San Pedro location. Senator Jones and Santa Monica civic leaders campaigned for a harbor nearby.
" . . .
". . . Southern Pacific . . . changed their mind. . . . the real reason [being]the success of Santa Fe's Redondo Beach wharf which opened in 1889. Except for coal and lumber, 60% of all seaborne shipping in and out of Los Angeles area was handled by that wharf. . . . "