Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 17

Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 17

Casa Grande may also be reached by conveyance from Florence on the

Arizona Eastern Railway, from which point it is distant a dozen miles or

so. Owing to the extreme summer heat of this desert country, the trip to

the ruin is most comfortably made in the late autumn, winter or early

spring. There is a resident care-taker who acts as guide.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XVI

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

 

 

“Shall they say of you, you have been to Rome and not seen the Pope?”

Yet that is what will be said if you turn back at the Colorado River and

leave Southern California out of your Southwestern travels. However, few

people do that. The fear is that in their haste to reach that tourist

playground, they may neglect too much of what the preceding chapters

have dwelt upon. Intent upon seeing the Pope, they may do scant justice

to Rome.

 

By Southern California is meant California south of the Teháchapi

Mountains and their western prolongation ending in Santa Barbara County

at the sea. It is not a political division, but Nature’s—in its physical

aspect differing quite markedly from Central and Northern California.

Long regarded with a sort of mild contempt by the Americans who settled

Central California and who habitually spoke of the South as “the cow

counties,” Southern California has in the last quarter century attained

a reputation not short of gilt-edged. Lonely, treeless plains and

valleys and brush-clad mesas that a comparatively few years ago were

counted desert and good for nothing except for cattle ranges and sheep

runs, have become, with the development of water, pleasant lands of

fruitfulness supporting a numerous and progressive population. The

extensive cultivation of the orange, the lemon, the fig, the grape, the

English walnut, the apricot, the olive; the planting of the eucalyptus,

the palm and a hundred kinds of exotic shade and ornamental trees; the

dotting of the landscape with villas of a distinguished sort of

architecture patterned on Italian and Spanish models—all this has

wrought a transformation that makes even more appropriate today than 25

years ago the sobriquet of “Our Italy” given the region by Charles

Dudley Warner.

 

Here wealthy Easterners maintain winter homes as they keep summer

estates on the Atlantic Coast, and less well-to-do folk—retired farmers,

tradesmen or professional people—buy a bungalow and settle down to the

enjoyment of a good climate and the luxury of having roses and green

peas in their winter gardens. Not only Americans but those of other

nationalities have discovered that Southern California totals a

remarkable number of points in the problem of comfortable living—a

healthful and delightful climate (notably in winter), a fruitful soil

capable of raising everything natural to the temperate zone besides a

large number of things sub-tropical, a beautiful and varied terrain

embracing seaside, valley and mountain, and an admirable system of

capital roads. For the tourist there is not only the attraction of this

beauty and comfort, but there is the drawing of historic interest,

touched with that indefinable sense of romance that attaches wherever

Spain has had a foothold. In Southern California as elsewhere in the

Southwest, that Spanish flavor is very evident, manifested in the

presence of a considerable Spanish-speaking population, in the remains

of Spanish-built Missions and ranch houses, and in the persistence of

Spanish geographic nomenclature.

 

The hub of Southern California is Los Angeles, which in a generation has

expanded from a sleepy little half-Spanish pueblo of a few thousand to a

metropolis of half a million, with a taste for the latest in everything

and the money to indulge it. It is the natural center from which to do

one’s sightseeing, though Pasadena, adjoining it on the north, is almost

as convenient and, indeed, preferred by many who are not in a hurry and

prefer surroundings more rural. Pasadena is a little city of 40,000,

beautifully situated on a shelving mesa at the base of the Sierra Madre

and overlooking the fertile San Gabriel Valley. It is nationally famous

for its numerous fine estates and the winter residences of wealthy

Easterners; but outside of that it possesses mile upon mile of

tree-lined streets where modest homes of the bungalow type look out from

a setting of vine and shrub and flower. Each New Year’s Day the city

becomes the objective of tens of thousands of visitors to view the

Tournament of Roses, an outdoor fiesta whose distinctive feature is a

street floral pageant.

 

From Los Angeles lines of transportation radiate to all points of

interest. You have your pick of steam railways, electric lines,

auto-stages and ocean steamers. Hundreds of miles of first class,

hard-surfaced roads make Southern California a motorist’s paradise, and

automobiling is here so notable a feature of tourist life that, if

possible, the traveler should make provision for it when packing his

pocket book. Public automobiles are abundant and the prices reasonable

enough, from $1.50 per hour upward, with special rates for trips. If you

are able to club with others for a car, you may find this the cheapest

form of travel. Maps and specific information as to drives may be had at

offices of the Automobile Club of Southern California.[97]

 

For those who do not care for motoring or find it too expensive, most of

the desirable points are reached by electric and steam lines, or by

auto-stages. There are several daily excursions scheduled by the Pacific

Electric Railway, which afford at a minimum of expense a satisfactory

means of getting a comprehensive idea of Southern California. One of

these, to Mount Lowe (a prominent peak of the Sierra Madre), may be

substituted for the automobile drive up Mount Wilson. The visit to San

Juan Capistrano Mission may be made by train, the railway station being

close by. There is a resident priest and religious services are

regularly held in one of the restored rooms. The Mission was founded in

1775, and the church part—now a ruin, the result of an earthquake in

1812—marked in its prime the high-tide of Mission architecture in

California.

 

The Franciscan Mission establishments in California are among the most

interesting historical monuments of our country; and those of the

southern end of the State remain to-day especially noteworthy. Ten miles

from Los Angeles is Mission San Gabriel (founded in 1771 on the bank of

the Rio Hondo a few miles east of the present site, to which it was

removed in 1775). It was for many years a principal center of

civilization in the province, the settlement antedating the founding of

Los Angeles by several years. Of the original establishment little

remains but the church part, which is in a state of good preservation

and serves as a place of worship for a considerable congregation,

largely of Spanish descent. Mission San Fernando (about 25 miles west of

the heart of Los Angeles) is deserted, save by a caretaker. The fine

corridored _convento_, flush with the highway, is its most conspicuous

feature today, but the Mission was once of notable extent. A cloistered

walk formerly connected the _convento_ with the ruined church in the

rear. If you stroll on past the church to the ancient olive orchard

beyond and look back, having the two date palms there in your

foreground, you will get a charming picture of the noble old temple

where Padre “Napoleon” strove, during a third of the Mission’s

existence, to steer his dusky children heavenward. Apropos of these

California Missions (whose plan was quite different from those of New

Mexico and Arizona) it should be borne in mind that originally each

consisted of a huge hollow square of buildings, facing within on an open

courtyard. The church occupied part or all of one side, the other sides

consisting of living rooms for the one or two padres (the _convento_

part), kitchens, store rooms, shops where the neophytes were taught and

labored, and the _monjerio_ or sleeping apartment of the Indian widows

and unmarried girls of the Mission. Outside this compound were the huts

of the Indian converts, arranged in streets and forming an orderly

village of sometimes a couple of thousand souls.[98]

 

South of Los Angeles, 125 miles, is San Diego, reached either by rail,

steamer, or automobile. If the last way is chosen, going and returning

may be done over different highways, one following the coast, the other

running further inland via Riverside. Both roads are excellent. Forty

miles before reaching San Diego, you pass within calling distance of

Mission San Luis Rey (St. Louis, the King)—4 miles east of Oceanside, a

railroad stop where conveyance may be had for the Mission. San Luis Rey

was founded in 1798 and in its proportions rivaled San Juan Capistrano.

It is still an imposing establishment, though restored with rather too

heavy a hand to suit the artistic sense. The situation is charming, on a

knoll in the midst of a noble valley, emerald green in winter and

spring, the San Luis Rey River flowing close by the Mission. A community

of hospitable Franciscan brothers occupies the premises, and religious

services are regularly held in the church. Twenty miles further up the

river (eastward), a pleasant drive, is San Luis Rey’s sub-mission or

_asistencia_, San Antonio de Pala, which no lover of the picturesque

should miss visiting. White-walled and red-tiled, the quaint little

church with a remarkable, white bell-tower set not on it but beside it,

is one’s beau ideal of an old mission. The setting, too, is satisfying.

On every hand are the mountains; a stone’s throw away ripples the little

river; and clustered close by is a picturesque village of about 300

Indians, to whom a resident priest, with rooms in the Mission, is

_cura_. Both Mission San Luis Rey and this outpost of Pala were

constructed by Indians under the supervision of the famous Padre Peyri,

one of the most forceful and devoted of the early Franciscans in

California. He gave the best of his life to his wilderness flock, and

years after his departure, the Indians, in reverence of his memory,

would still offer up their prayers before his picture as before a

saint’s.

 

San Diego, a city claiming a population of 100,000, is spread over

seaward-looking hills affording a delightful view of the land-locked Bay

of San Diego and the Pacific Ocean going down to China. The mountains of

Old Mexico, too, only 20 miles away, make a feature in the prospect. If

you are in any doubt what to do in San Diego, you need only stroll

around to the neighborhood of the Plaza, and you will be shown. Street

cars, automobiles, “rubberneck” busses and tourist agency windows are

hung with notices of places to see and trips to take, and the streets

are sprinkled with uniformed officials emblazoned with gold lace, to

give you details. You may have a good time on any of these jaunts, if

you are good-natured and like a bit of roughing it (for San Diego’s

vicinity has not as yet reached Los Angeles County’s excellence in

roads); but to give you a start I would itemize the following as not to

be overlooked:

 

The exquisite gardens at Balboa Park (where the Panama-California

Exposition of 1915-16 was held), affording in epitome a charming object

lesson in what California gardens offer both in exotic and native

plants; the drive to and along the headland of Point Loma for the fine

views; by ferry across the bay to Coronado’s famous hotel and beach; the

ride by railway or automobile to La Jolla (pronounced _lah ho´ yah_), a

pleasant little seaside resort with interesting cliffs and surf-drenched

rocks; by street car to Old Town (where San Diego had its beginning), to

visit the Estudillo house—a former Spanish home intelligently restored

and interesting as a bit of old-time architecture with its tiled inner

corridors about a flowery patio. It is locally known as “Ramona’s

Marriage Place,” because it was here, according to the novel, that the

priest lived who married Ramona and Alessandro. On the hill back of Old

Town once stood Padre Junípero Serra’s first Mission in California,

founded in 1769; but it is all gone now, the site being marked by a

large cross made of the original red tiles that once littered the

ground. It is but a short walk worth taking both for the view and for

the sentiment of standing on the spot where white civilization in

California had its beginning. Five miles up the valley that stretches

eastward at your feet is what is left of the second Mission (established

in 1774). This historic building has been sadly neglected and is but a

ruined shell, which only reverence for its past makes interesting.

Across the road from it is the old olive orchard, believed to be the original planting of the olive in the State.