A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (11 page)

A look at any map of the United States reveals the
easiest path from the East to the West. That would be the Southern
route, essentially down to Texas, on towards Arizona and Nevada,
then the Southern California desert, with a final destination
either in San Diego or Los Angeles. A line could then be
constructed northward, connecting these cities with San Francisco,
Sacramento, and on to the Pacific Northwest.

There was one problem with this: Lincoln knew it
would be built by slave labor. He was the leading anti-slave
politician in the North and adamantly insisted that if the railroad
were to have his vital support, they would have to be built in the
North. This caused a real problem. Building the line to Nebraska
was doable. That was the destination/sendoff of many a pioneer, who
gathered at the aptly named Council Bluffs, Iowa, just across the
river from Omaha, before setting forth on the perilous journey
west.

It was one thing to traverse the Rocky and Sierra
Mountain ranges by covered wagon, horseback and foot. The Southern
route was perilous because of heat, lack of water and Indians, but
train transportation would solve many of those problems by
providing a steady flow of re-supply. But building train tracks
over the mountains was crazy.

The Russians were in the process of building the
Siberian Railroad. That was flat land, and the task took years
longer than the Trans-continental railroad. It still was completed
at a terrible cost of time, treasure and human suffering.

Lincoln was insistent. When he became President in
1861, and the War Between the States began (lasting until 1865),
the railroad project continued. It was completed in 1869. War-weary
Americans desired to find new lives in the West. The Army was sent
out to fight a series of Indian wars, making it possible for the
settlers to live in peace. The railroad meant that suddenly
thousands of people could migrate to the new frontier in relative
comfort.

Slaves did not build the railroad line. It was built,
in large measure, by Chinese "coolies" who were treated little
better than slaves. It ended up in San Francisco, with a stop on
the way to Sacramento. San Francisco was immediately the important
Western city. It featured a marvelous bay that allowed ships to
travel 90 miles inland to Stockton, connecting with the Sacramento
Delta. The bay stretched between San Jose in the south and
Petaluma/Vallejo in the north. Ports were established in San
Francisco and across the waterway in Oakland. Numerous lakes,
streams and rivers provided ample freshwater supplies to a
burgeoning population. The weather was hospitable all year round.
The environment was beautiful, pristine and filled with natural
abundance; food, rich farmland, ranches. Fabulous mountains and
hills overlooked majestic ocean views. There were more than enough
trees to supply wood. It was Manifest Destiny, almost too good to
be true.

Every form of commerce thrived in San Francisco, a
true boomtown. It was the Las Vegas of the Old West, a wild, bawdy
Barbary Coast city of saloons, gamblers, prostitutes, con men and
dreamers of all stripe. It was wild, unlike anything previously
seen. Manners, mores and morals of the East were discarded in this
new world.

The population of the West had another unique aspect
to it. Throughout the travails of man, countries had invaded and
occupied other countries. With few exceptions – the Israelites
perhaps – the method of operation was similar: the army was sent in
to pacify the local population. Only when this occurred, and a
certain amount of infrastructure established, were civilian
populations brought in to live in the new territories.

The West was different in that the Army was not sent
there to “win the West” in order to make it safe for a new
populace. In this case,
the populace
did that on their own!
The Army was certainly busy dealing with the Civil War. The War
with Mexico had created the initial opportunities to traverse the
West, but had not resulted in a wholesale military presence in the
new territories.

Spain had originally claimed much of the Western
lands. When Mexico declared their independence, they inherited the
claim. The problem for them was it was just that; a claim. They had
little presence in the form of large populations, armies,
government, infrastructure, or much of anything. They had no
accomplishments. They had not made their mark, or stamped their
presence on the lands in the form of endeavors, of creation, or
inventions.

The Mexicans immediately faced trouble from local
Indians wherever they went. Various small wars and skirmishes
occurred, with the Mexicans too often on the losing end. The
Mexicans tried to establish themselves in Texas, but the Indians
stole everything they had. The Mexicans would harvest the fields.
The Indians would then raid the farmland and steal food for the
winter. The Indians, however, did not destroy the crops. They
always left enough so that the Mexicans could live to grow another
harvest the next year, in which case they would repeat the raids in
an annual stolen-food campaign. The Mexicans, unable to defend
themselves, looked to the Americans.

A clarion call was put out to the American colonies,
particularly the rural Southern areas, for “men with guns . . .
rugged mountaineers . . . Indian fighters” and the like. Mexico
invited these Jeremiah Johnson's to Texas. The promise was this:
help us fight the Indians, allowing us to protect the lands. In
return, whatever you grow, catch or create is yours, free of taxes
and government extortion. Thousands of Americans packed their
rifles and set off for Texas.

When the Indians came to steal the harvests, the
Americans sent them packing. That problem was quickly solved. The
Americans thrived in Texas; as hunters, gatherers, trappers,
farmers, ranchers and in other endeavors. It was a situation not
unlike the Jews who came to Israel after World War I. Just as the
Russian Jews quickly became more successful, and more dominant than
the local Palestinians, the Americans quickly established
themselves at the top of the Texas pecking order. They married
Mexican girls, started families and business, built homes, and made
Texas great.

The Mexican government saw the great American
performance and re-thought their offer, the one that said the
Americans could have what they made absent heavy taxation or
government interference. The Americans out-performed the Mexicans
by such heavy margins that Mexico had little of value in Texas. The
Mexican overseers quickly found themselves working for the
Americans. The Mexican government decided enough was enough. They
declared that the Americans were Mexican citizens, and therefore
all they had made belonged to Mexico.

The Texas-Americans had never thought of themselves
as Mexicans. They always maintained American pride, and saw
themselves as frontier ambassadors of a sort, demonstrating
excellence to backward peoples. A battle was fought. The Americans
made their stand at the Alamo. Eventually the American Army came
in, defeated the Mexicans, and then marched to Mexico City,
occupying it. Instead of turning Mexico into a large American
state, the U.S. gave it back to Mexico, apparently out of
benevolence or because they did not believe the Mexican population
would hold up its weight in comparison with the high performance of
Americans to the north.

The connection between Northern and Southern
California had heretofore been the Spanish missions built by Father
Junipero Serra and the Spanish Catholics who inhabited the region,
along with mostly-passive Indian tribes, prior to the arrival of
America. The Army had not established a dominant presence in the
West beyond Texas after the Mexican War. Between the Gold Rush and
the Civil War (1849-1861) the population of the West was civilian.
It was a purely entrepreneurial experience, uniquely American and
perhaps the most indicative aspect of this nation’s free spirit. By
the 1870s, the West was American. Spanish settlements were overrun
not by government force or military conquest, but by the sheer
large numbers of American citizens who came in, lived there, and
became the majority peoples.

It was not until well into the 1870s that the Army
came to the West in order to make the prairies safe from Indians,
but California had been Americanized by settlers long before that.
At least, Northern California had. Southern California remained
largely unpopulated. San Francisco had everything; political power,
style, sophistication, culture and the imprimatur of a new,
important American city; a gateway to the Pacific and therefore the
Orient. Los Angeles was a desert pueblo lacking enough fresh water
to sustain a large populace.

But a railroad line was quickly built connecting
Sacramento and San Francisco to Los Angeles and San Diego. Los
Angeles was enticing. It was significantly warmer, with incredible
natural features; a magnificent coast of gold sand beaches,
towering mountain ranges, exotic flora and fauna. It had a paradise
quality to it that was different from foggy San Francisco.
90-degree weather on New Year’s Day, with mists rising from its
canyons, gave the place an aura of mythical, Shangri-La
quality.

The essential social difference between L.A. and San
Francisco started to form after the Civil War. San Francisco was
the preferred destination of people from Northern states like New
York and Massachusetts. They supported Abraham Lincoln and the
Union. Because San Francisco was closer to the “gold country,” the
foothills east of Sacramento, that element found its way to San
Francisco. They were mostly single men, hard livers, bawdy folks
who took to Barbary Coast excesses.

Southerners were even more likely to come out west
because their land was devastated, and under occupation by Union
troops. Their lives were upended, so many chose to pursue new ones
in the West. With the building of the railroads, they could choose
between San Francisco and Los Angeles while transporting families
with relative ease. San Francisco was filled with “damn Yankees”
and heathens, so they tended to find their way to Los Angeles. That
city therefore became more conservative, Christian and
family-oriented than San Francisco.

Major universities were built to accommodate the
growing populations. The University of California was a land grant
college built in Berkeley. It was followed by a private school,
Stanford University. Football became popularized and the two
established a rivalry. This rivalry helped both Cal and Stanford
establish themselves as national powerhouses, with Stanford
capturing the 1905 and 1926 National Championships. California won
three in a row from 1920-22.

The University of Southern California was
established, ostensibly by a Catholic, a Methodist and a Jew in
1880. Its predominant religious instruction quickly became
Methodist, but by 1912 the school adopted a more secular outlook.
They in turn changed their nickname from the Methodists to the
Trojans. Because USC lacked a great rivalry like the one between
California and Stanford, they did not attain great football status
until after World War I.

By the early 1900s, Los Angeles was growing but
still remained far behind San Francisco in prestige and political
influence. A group of “City Fathers” understood that the population
could not grow unless fresh water was made available to the masses.
City engineer William Mulholland oversaw construction of an
aqueduct between the Owens Valley and L.A., which provided the
needed water. Later the Hoover Dam diverted Colorado River water to
the Southland. Eventually more canals were built to bring water
from Northern California to Southern California, a cause of much
angst.

Los Angeles grew during and after World War I, when
many servicemen came through the area on their way to and from
training. With so much open land and fair weather, Southern
California established numerous Army, Marine and Naval bases.

In the 1920s, collegiate football dominance shifted
firmly to the state of California. It had been in the West for a
decade prior to that. The original powerhouse was the University of
Washington, unbeaten over a 63-game stretch between 1907 and 1916
in which the Huskies captured two National Championships.
Washington State and Oregon also won National titles on the
strength of Rose Bowl victories. The Rose Bowl became the second
“gold rush.”

With the building of the Rose Bowl stadium in 1922,
it immediately drew fans from all over the country who fell in love
with the lush California winters, choosing to stay. The third “gold
rush” was the movie industry, which at the same time drew thousands
of healthy, attractive men and women to Hollywood. When California,
Stanford and Southern California all dominated the national
football landscape in the “Roaring ‘20s,” writers posed a number of
theories to explain it.

Some said the sunshine caused vitamin enzymes within
people, which created greater growth and vitality. Others felt the
natural fruits and vegetables produced in great abundance in
California explained a healthier population. Others saw a more
Darwinian aspect in which the survivors of wagon trains were
bigger, stronger and hardier, thus producing bigger, stronger and
hardier offspring. This accentuated further speculation that these
“supermen” met the beautiful, athletic girls who came out to
Hollywood, thus giving birth to physically impressive children. The
warm weather seemed a plausible reason, too, with kids able to play
outdoor sports all year instead of being cooped up inside half the
year or more.

But amid these theories were darker concepts. In the
late 1920s, the rising German political figure Adolf Hitler made
note of the fact that many American College football and Major
League baseball stars were of German ancestry. When World War I
started, many feared that America’s German citizens would not
remain loyal to the U.S. Patriotism at home and valor on the
battlefields dispelled this notion.