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. 205 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 206 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 207 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 208 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]

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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 210 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 211 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 212 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 213 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 214 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 215 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 216 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 217 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.

San Diego’s back country offers many interesting trips by auto-stage or private car, the roads being as a rule good but with the ups and downs of a hilly region. There are several good hotels in the mountains at a distance of 60 miles or so from San Diego, so that the night may be spent here if desired. Pine Hills, Mesa Grande, and Warner’s Hot Springs may be mentioned as desirable objectives. The trip by auto-stage or your own car via Campo to El Centro or Calexico (at the Mexican border) in the Imperial Valley will prove an unforgettable experience. The Imperial Valley is a depression below sea-level in the Colorado Desert of California, which after lying desolate for ages has of late been made exceedingly productive by diverting irrigation water to it from the Colorado River. This trip had 218 best be made between November and May, as the desert heat in summer and early autumn is intense. If you have your own car and desire the experience of more desert, return may be made around the Salton Sea through the Coachella Valley (where dates are now extensively grown), to Palm Springs and Riverside.

While we have rambled along the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego, our eyes will often have been caught by the sight of a long, low island well out to sea. It is Santa Catalina, whose reputation as a sea-angler’s paradise is world wide. It has also a most delightful climate—its and San Diego’s being perhaps the most equable of any on the Coast. The marine gardens that line the shores are also of wide fame, and are made visible by boats with glass bottoms, through which one looks down into the transparent waters of another world where waving kelps and sea mosses are the forests and bright colored fish, sea anemones, jelly fish, sea cucumbers and other queer creatures are the inhabitants. The trip thither and return may be accomplished from Los 219 Angeles, between breakfast and evening dinner, if you do not care to stay longer.

A hundred miles northwest of Los Angeles lies Santa Barbara (a little city of 15,000), rich in beautiful homes and flowery gardens. It is delightfully situated with the ocean at its feet and the Santa Inés Mountains at its back, and may be reached from Los Angeles either by train or by a picturesque motor drive through valleys, over mountains and beside the sea. Here is the best preserved of all the existing Franciscan Missions in California—never abandoned since its founding in 1786, though now for many a year there have been no Indians in its care. It is the residence of a Franciscan community, and the members in their long brown gowns and white cord girdles may be seen any day at their various tasks about the grounds—one of which is the piloting of visitors through the church.

Driving, horseback-riding, playing golf, or simply sitting still and enjoying being alive in the midst of fine scenery, are the principal occupations of Santa Barbara’s visitors. Among the longer drives should 220 be mentioned the 40 miles to the Ojai Valley by way of the lovely Casitas Passes, and the 45 miles across the Santa Inés Mountains to the Mission Santa Inés in the valley of the same name. The latter trip is made more enjoyable if two days are taken to it, the mountains being crossed by the San Marcos Pass[99] into the Valley of Santa Inés, famous for its majestic oaks, and the night passed at Los Olivos, 6 miles north of the Mission Mattei’s Tavern at Los Olivos, is one of the most comfortable country inns in California. The return should be made by the Gaviota Pass and the seaside road back to Santa Barbara. The Mission of Santa Inés (which is Spanish for Saint Agnes, whose eve gives title to Keat’s immortal poem), is sight enough to make the trip worth while—with white walls, red-tiled roofs and flowery, corridored front, in a valley rimmed about with mountains. The Mission was long abandoned and in ruins, but when the present hospitable rector took charge some 15 years ago, he began a careful restoration and with 221 his own hands did much of the necessary labor to put it as we see it today.[100]

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