Walter Lindley, M.D. and J.P. Widney, A.M., M.D., Ll.D. California of the South, Third Edition, Rewritten and Printed from new Plates, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1896, 335 pp., La Ballona Township, Santa Monica, pp. 136—140.
La Ballona Township, Santa Monica. p. 136
South of San Fernando Township is La Ballona Township, which contains an area of 114,608 acres, and has forty miles of seacoast. There are many rich grain and fruit farms throughout this township. Some portions are mountainous, but even high on the mountain sides are vineyards and gardens. These mountain or rather footthill vegetable farms were first occupied by very poor people, who were unable to own land in the valley, but, finding that tomatoes could be raised all the year round, thier condition of poverty was exchanged for one of comparative wealth.
A grand, romantic place on the northeast boundary of the township is Cahuenga Pass. This pass is eight miles from Los Angeles, and is the spot where, in 1847, the Fremont—Pico treaty was made. Every tourist should take a carriage drive to this point.
All along the mountains, near this pass, are canons in which are the fruit and vegetable farms referred to. Here also are large fields of watermelons and muskmelons, and during six months in the year large farm-wagons loaded with melons can be seen wending their way to the [p. 137—Hotel Arcadia picture] Los Angeles markets, whence the melons are shipped by rail iin all directions.
This township aligns the city of Los Angeles on the west, and is traversed by two railroads—one, the Southern Pacific, from Los Angeles to Santa Monica, and the great iron wharf; the other, the California Southern, from Los Angeles to Santa Monica and Redondo.
The seacoat is of continuous interest to all. Year in and year out the swelling tide rolls in on the long, smooth beach, and each time, as it recedes, leaves behind many treasures of the great deep. Often, as parties of visitors start along the sand dunes, shell and moss gathering, one delightful surprise afer another leads them on, until they are astonished to find themselves miles from their starting point. Santa Monica, Santa Monica Canon, and
Ballona are among the most famous resorts on this coast,
Santa Monica is the most popular seaside resort, It is situated on a high bluff on Santa Monica Bay, distant about sixteen miles from Los Angeles.
The comparative mean temperature is as follows:
Santa Monica, Cal. January 54 July, 70 Diff. 16
Jacksonville, Fla. January 55 July 82 Diff. 27
Nice, France January 41 July 75 Diff. 33
(Source: E.C. Folsom, M.D., Southern California Practitioner)
The population of Santa Monica is avout eighteen hundred, exclusive of the thousands of visitors who resort thither every summer. Trains from Los Angeles arrive and depart about every hour of the day. There are excellent hotels, numerous boarding houses, and a great many cottages that can be rented for the season. Surf-bathing is the popular entertainment. There are several churches and a public school with a number of teachers. During the summer balls are given once or twice a week. The streets are well graded, there are miles of cement sidewalks, good business blocks and a street railway. On the beach is a fine pavilion and plunge-bath.
Old Santa Monica Canon is a charming spot, about two miles from Santa Monica, and is well worth a day’s picnicking. Around a luncheon spread under the protecting shadow of an immense sycamore, beside the clear waters of a mountain stream rushing heedlessly on to its own ingulfment, with great fern and moss-covered cliffs on each side, a merry pleasure party, whose notes of song and laughter are in harmony with the music of the surf, may be found in this canon almost every day in the year.
Here the Southern Pacific Railway Company has constructed a mammoth wharf nearly a mile long, where a large shipping business is done.
Three miles northeast of Santa Monica is the National Soldiers’ Home, with extensive grounds and buildings that give it the appearance of a village. It is an interesting place to visit, containing seventeen hundred veterans.
Inglewood is delightfully situated on the Los Angeles and Ballona branch of the California Central Railroad. It is eight miles from Los Angeles and six from the ocean. The soil in this vicinity is a deep garden loam and all kinds of fruit usually cultivated in southern California thrives here. An idea of the climate may be gained from the fact that for the past three years there has been no frost that has damaged growing fruit and vines. Land around Inglewood are successfully irrigated from the Los Angeles outfall sewer, thus carrying out the theory advanced by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables, that the sewage of cities should be utilized on the gardens and farms.
Between Los Angeles and Santa Monica, on the Southern Pacific line, is a beautiful and flourishing little settlement known as The Palms. [p. 140]