San Diego County CA Archives History - Books .....The Long Sleep 1888
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Book Title: The City And County Of San Diego

CHAPTER V.
THE LONG SLEEP.

   AS the best target shot with the rifle finds the estimating of distance a
source of error that he can never wholly master when shooting at game, so the
keenest foresight fails to master that provoking variety of distance known as
time. The eye of faith is true, the atmosphere is clear, the outlines of the
game can be seen. Through the mirage of heated imagination it dances
entrancingly near, and the labor of the day is staked perhaps upon a single shot
which falls a long way short.

   What the Texas Pacific might have done for San Diego it is useless now to
inquire. The financial crash of 1873, beginning with the failure of Jay Cooke,
crippled the resources of Colonel Scott. He went abroad to borrow money and
failed. He has been blamed by many as a swindler, but there seems every reason
to believe that he was acting with the best of faith. In such a crisis the best
enterprises cannot borrow, for the simple reason that capital dare not lend to
any great extent no matter what the security.

   The population of both San Diego and National City rapidly declined to a few
dozen at National and about twenty-five hundred at San Diego. The real estate
offices were deserted; the hotels had more waiters than guests; empty stores and
vacant houses became numerous on all sides. Day after day and year after year
the bright sun shone upon quiet streets and store-keepers staring out of the
door at an almost unbroken vacancy. Many a man in San Diego during those long
years that followed sat and looked at nothing long enough to have made a fine
lawyer, doctor, engineer, or a fine literary scholar if he had only substituted
a book for the empty door-way.

   Still a large majority clung with undying faith to their investments. They
found in the soft and steady sunshine of San Diego a comfort they had never
before known, and most of them would have remained even had they known that
their dying eyes would close upon empty streets and vacant lots. The painful
duty ©f an impartial historian requires the writer to record the farther fact
that more than one representative of the great "progressive, enterprising
citizen whose undying faith in San Diego has made him rich" (as we occasionally
read in the papers of the day), has become so on the rise of town lots that he
tried for years in vain to sell for money enough to get out of town with.

   Many whose faith in the future of San Diego was unshaken had to leave for
better (temporary) fields, and most of these have returned. Many more shook the
dust of San Diego forever from their feet and spent most of their time
thereafter in pouring out all the bitterness that disappointed fancy could
conceive. The misfortunes of San Diego during all this time served as a
whetstone for the newspaper wit of the State, a sure resource when everything
else failed. Their jokes were quickly accepted as fact, and along the whole
coast the most absurd stories were told all travelers with all the solemnity
that the consciousness of duty to fellow-man imposes. One of the favorites of
that day along the coast was the following:—

   "What? you a-going down to Sa-a-a-ndy Ago?" (Questioner backing off and
surveying from head to foot and back again the rash mortal who had mentioned San
Diego as his possible destination.)

   "Do you know where  in------ you are going  to ? Why you pick up a handful of
dirt down there and in two seconds half of it is gone. That's fleas. In a minute
more the rest has slipped through your fingers. That's sand. Why, that's what it
gets its name from, Sa-a-a-a-a-ndy Ago."

   Another common and convincing derivation was "Sandyague," from sand and ague,
which were supposed to be the leading features, next to rattlesnakes and
tarantulas.

   It must be admitted that in favorable breeding seasons San Diego, like San
Francisco and Los Angeles, has a flea or two, but the disintegrated granite
soil, which in washes looks like sand, has proved to be, next to its climate,
the greatest treasure Southern California possesses. The ague talk, like all the
rest, was a perfect absurdity.

   In 1876 an attempt was made to get Congress to guarantee the bonds of the
Texas Pacific Railroad. Mr. Horton and Mr. Felsenheld spent most of the winter
in Washington lobbying with Colonel Scott. But the cry of "no more subsidies to
railroads" arose in the East, and was at once taken up by the Northwest, which
wanted no Southern line. The clamor of these two sections, aided by the power of
railroads, that already had all the subsidies they needed and never did need any
competing line, overcame the strong pressure brought to bear by the South, which
was wholly in favor of the measure.

   This movement awoke no life in San Diego, and it slept on until 1881,
unbroken, except, in 1879, by a slight excitement of a few days caused by an
unfounded railroad rumor. Out of this one real estate man made enough to justify
the ordering of a new buggy from San. Francisco, but no one else was damaged in
the upper story.

   In 1881 Frank A. Kimball, of National City, who had been about the most
tireless and liberal of all workers in behalf of the bay region, and has
received for it the least credit of anyone, proposed to go to Boston to see if
he could not induce the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Ft* Railway to come to San
Diego. He was answered with a general guffaw from all the wise ones, and many of
the leading citizens refused to contribute a cent toward his expenses. His reply
was that he was able to pay them himself. He went and bearded the great lion in
his den, amid the sneers of the public, who never can learn that it is very
unsafe to say what a man cannot do when he tries.

   He met nothing but rebuffs and cold shoulders. Nothing daunted he sat down
for a prolonged siege. Td his splendid offer of seventeen thousand acres of the
best land on the bay, belonging to himself and his brother, Warren Kimball, over
half of the National Ranch, capital at last bent a listening ear and sent out
two directors of the road—Messrs. Piatt and Wilbur—to investigate. The
investigation was satisfactory; the donations of land were increased by several
thousand acres from other parties. The California Southern was organized and
finished to Colton in San Bernardino County in 1882.

   During the building of this railroad the population of San Diego increased by
some fifteen hundred people. National City, the terminus of the road, grew to a
population of about one thousand. Bright hopes were held in both places, but in
both they were doomed to a blight as speedy and severe as ever before. The
railroad had no Eastern connection; almost every man in San Bernardino and Los
Angeles Counties and on the line of the Southern Pacific Railroad made a
specialty of abusing San Diego and warning travel away from it. For over a year
after the completion of the road the through travel from Colton scarcely
averaged five passengers a day, of which two or three were either "drummers" or
"dead heads." So slight was the amount of business that in running through the
huge flocks of geese and ducks which then used to rise beside the train in Santa
Margarita Valley, the train was stopped, as a matter of course, if any game were
shot from the car. On one occasion the engineer shot with a pistol at an acre or
two of geese some three hundred yards away, and accidentally hit one. He stopped
the train and walked leisurely over and bagged it.

   Meanwhile National City lost about one-half its newly acquired population and
San Diego more than all that had come in. To crown the trouble 1S82-83 was a
very dry winter on the coast, with a general failure of crops on all the
unirrigated low-lands. In the fall of 1883 the vacant buildings in both San
Diego and National City seemed to be fully one-half of the whole number, while
the streets of San Diego seemed more deserted than ever.

   On the 16th of February, 1884, the greater part of the railroad in Temecula
Canon and Santa Margarita was washed out by a flood. It had been built too low
by Boston engineers, who thought it never could rain in San Diego, who sneered
at all advice of old settlers, and were too wise even to examine the drainage
area of the stream or look at the rain records of the country. Such destruction
has rarely been seen, and nearly nine months were required to place the track on
better ground and get trains running. Then were dull times indeed.

   The rebuilding of the road had little or no immediate effect in helping
matters. There was little increase of travel for some time, until it became
known that the road would be extended to a junction with the Atlantic and
Pacific Railroad at Barstow, on the Mojave Desert.


Additional Comments:
From:

THE
CITY AND COUNTY
OF
SAN DIEGO.
ILLUSTRATED,
AND CONTAINING
BI0GRAPHICAL SKETCHES
OF
PROMINENT MEN AND PIONEERS.

SAN DIEGO, CAL.
LEBERTHON & TAYLOR
1888


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