morning or afternoon excursions hereabouts is made at an expense of
forty cents, without walking a block. Steam railway from hotel to ferry,
boat across the bay to San Diego, next a horse car to cable road, then
five miles by cable road through a country rich with gorgeous mountain,
valley and ocean views, to “The Pavilion.” The Pavilion, erected on the
summit of a mountain, is an amusement building surrounded by well-kept
paths and terraces from which a view is had of Mission Valley, a valley
and a view not unlike that which you get from the old Catskill Mountain
House and which many people prefer to that, because this view is not so
extensive and can all be taken in and enjoyed at a glance, with the
naked eye. You can see cattle and dogs in Mission Valley from your
elevated position, and you see men ploughing and engaged in other farm
labor. It is a spectacle that is worth going a hundred miles to see, and
if you can afford it you would not begrudge as many dollars as it costs
cents to make the trip. You are at a loss for words to describe your
feelings of pleasure when the grand Mission Valley view bursts upon you.
You remain silent in awe and admiration.
Are these walks and excursions not of your choice, or should the weather
be inclement, there are verandas about the hotel measuring a mile or
more.
Neither have interior amusement and exercise been forgotten. There is a
dancing hall (to which reference will be made further on), there are
bowling alleys and there are some billiard tables--as many as
thirty--some for men on the lower floor, some for the other sex on the
main floor, and some for both sexes on the floor above. Just think of
thirty billiard tables in one house.
The tables for women are well patronized. It is remarked that women
favor billiard playing in the evening and in evening dress, and it is
also noticed that the figure of a beautiful woman with her shapely arm
in short sleeves of lace is seen to excellent advantage when leaning
over the table, the white arm forming a pleasing contrast in color to
the dark green baize of the table.
CORONADO’S RAPID GROWTH.--The Coronado Beach Company was organized a few
years ago with a capital of three millions of dollars. The directors are
E. S. Babcock, Charles T. Hinde, John D. Spreckels, H. W. Mallett and
Giles Kellogg. The president is E. S. Babcock. The company some years
ago laid out that part of the peninsula known as Coronado Beach into
streets and avenues; but up to January 1, 1887, not a house was built.
Now the streets are lined with beautiful villa residences--some of them
substantial, imposing brick buildings--handsome cottages and many
business blocks. There are three or four hotels, several nurseries,
lumber yards, planing mills, foundries, factories, fruit packing
establishments and shipbuilding yards. There is a handsome Methodist
Episcopal church; the Presbyterian, Episcopal and Catholic denominations
also have places of worship. A commodious school-house has a large
number of pupils and Coronado has a weekly newspaper. With the growth of
young Coronado came the growth of old San Diego--in fact, the latter
reflects and shares the popularity of the former. San Diego’s
population, which in 1884 was twenty-four hundred, now numbers over
twenty thousand. Imagine the population of a town increasing eight fold
in seven years.
Neither crooked like those of London, nor narrow like those of Boston,
are the streets of Coronado. Like the streets in Philadelphia and San
Diego, they are named after trees: Orange avenue is one hundred and
forty feet wide, Palm and Olive avenues one hundred feet wide. A
boulevard one hundred and thirty feet wide extends around the entire
property. What about the sewer system? Unlike Key West, in Florida,
Coronado with its unequalled water facilities has taken advantage of its
excellent natural position. With the bay and ocean at its doors, the
sewer question was quickly and easily solved--every street is already
sewered. Investors were not taking any chances when they placed their
funds in Coronado’s keeping.
A GOOD PURCHASE.--The whole of what is now the flourishing city of San
Diego was bought twenty years ago by a Mr. Horton for twenty-six cents
an acre. He built the Horton House, and for him the Horton Block was
named. San Diego’s neighbor, Coronado Beach, was bought half a dozen
years ago for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars by a company which
has since parted with a parcel of the land for a million or two. They
kept some choice pieces for themselves. Among the parcels of land is
that upon which Hotel del Coronado stands, and upon which was expended a
million and a half dollars. San Diego and Coronado Beach both
experienced “booms” about three years ago, when many men became suddenly
rich, some of them since becoming poor. Not a few now are what is known
as “real estate poor,” their money is “locked up” in land for which
purchasers cannot be found at present--at least not at the price which
“raged” three years ago.
Choice pieces on the main street of Coronado Beach sold as high as $500
per front foot, which is about the price of lots in certain parts of New
York--say in Harlem--with this difference, that “lots” here are one
hundred and sixty feet deep. Had there not been real value in the land
when the bubble burst, the bottom would have dropped out entirely when
“hard pan” was reached. As it is, land and lots are again finding ready
purchasers, and houses are being built in goodly numbers. That there is
a steady growth, a healthy increase, and a great future for San Diego
and Coronado Beach is a matter of certainty.
WATER, ICE AND SANITATION.--In my travels about the world I advise my
daughters to be cautious of the water in new places and to drink as
little as possible; here, on the contrary, I urge them to drink freely.
The water is not only pure and most agreeable to the taste, but it
contains medical properties which are beneficial to the system. Of this
we are assured by testimonials from leading physicians in different
States; among them Dr. W. H. Mason, late professor of physiology in the
University of Buffalo, N. Y., who, referring to the analysis, says: “The
water may be regarded as a regular elixir of life.” Its ingredients are
almost identical with the famous Bethesda waters of Wisconsin.
At all events, a company with a capital of half a million dollars has
been formed that has secured possession of the springs, fourteen miles
distant. It has been “piped” to Coronado Heights and Coronado Beach and
the yield is now five million gallons per day, which can be easily
doubled by development. The water is used as drinking water at the hotel
and with carbonic gas it is bottled for shipment to all parts of the
country. If widely and liberally advertised, there is a fortune in
Coronado Springs. All the ice used on the premises is made from this
spring water, distilled, so that it is absolutely pure, which is more
than can be said of Rockland Lake or Maine ice. The machinery at the
hotel has a capacity of twelve tons per day.
THE HOTEL.--The structure, which with the furniture cost one and a half
millions of dollars, is built around a quadrangular court 250 × 150
feet, the court being another name for a beautiful and well-kept
tropical garden. This feature reminds you of the open garden about
which the United States Hotel at Saratoga is built (which house has
earned the name of “the model hotel of the world”), only the Coronado
garden is filled with tropical plants and trees, and beautiful flowers
bloom the year round. It never looks as do the gardens in Saratoga at
the end of September. There are orange trees, lemons, figs, loquats,
olives, limes, pomegranates, the banana, etc.
Mention of limes calls to mind that by invitation of the courteous and
intellectual gentleman in charge of the Coronado nurseries, I cut a
large cluster of limes and sent it to a friend in New York as a
souvenir. Such a profusion of flowers you never saw, unless you have
seen Coronado. For instance, a short time ago, in this nursery, thirty
thousand roses were cut in one day from less than a quarter acre of rose
bushes, and the flowers were merely cut to save the bushes. Everybody in
the neighborhood carried away great baskets of roses to fill bags and
pillow-cases.
We were loaded with flowers, cut from the trees and bushes, in the open,
as we walked through the paths of the nursery--actually “loaded,” for
the ladies of the party not only carried hands and arms flowing over
with flowers--but their necks and shoulders were thickly entwined with
smilax. The flowers included the delicate heliotrope, the sweet
honeysuckle and the sturdy camelia, and they also embraced many flowers
new and strange to us, for everything seems to grow here, side by
side--everything that grows in the temperate, semi-tropical and tropical
zones.
The hotel is situated on the southeastern portion of a beautiful mesa
(the name here for a slight elevation) which slopes gradually, in
terraces, from its centre toward the Pacific ocean on one side and the
bay of San Diego on the other. No one style of architecture has been
followed, as the reader will see from the accompanying illustration. It
partakes of the Queen Anne style, also of the classic Norman era,
bringing up recollections of a grand old Norman castle: but the
architect has availed himself of different schools, producing a complete
and uncommonly beautiful whole. It is a striking object and the series
of buildings form a noble picture against the sky line when viewed four
or five miles distant--from San Diego or from the ocean.
The projectors seem to have had a fancy for the biblical number seven.
The building covers seven acres; counting guest chambers, sixty parlors,
large and small, the private dining rooms and other public rooms, there
are in all seven hundred rooms, and there is accommodation for seven
hundred boarders.
Why one side of the house is enclosed in glass I cannot understand, when
you can sit out doors every day in the year and bask in the sun. This is
a good arrangement for Atlantic City, but not necessary, it seems to me,
for Coronado Beach.
THE DRAWING-ROOM.--This is not a cold, bare and barn-like apartment such
as you find the parlors in so many American hotels. It is cozy and
home-like, with an air of marked refinement. The dark walls are relieved
with some choice engravings, and here and there you’ll meet with a
living plant, and there is always a vase or two filled with fresh
flowers, such as greet the eye and please the sense of smell (in summer
time) in an English country hotel, say in the Lake district. The
Coronado parlor is cheerful, and with its low ceiling and pillars of
unpainted wood, calls to mind the beautiful parlor of the (Spanish)
Hotel Cordova in St. Augustine. In fact Mr. Babcock tells me that some
of the features of the house are reminiscent of the grand hotels in
Havana, where he lived for some time.
OTHER PUBLIC ROOMS.--But beside the drawing-room there are a number of
other large and beautiful apartments near by--the ladies’ billiard-room,
the reception-room, writing-room, chess-room, etc.,--something like the
elegant public rooms (which are not so very public) in the Hotel
Victoria, London. There are a dozen or more suites of rooms with private
parlor for each suite, opening on the garden.
THE DINING-ROOM.--This is unique. At first glance, especially if you are
in the middle of the room, which is oval, it strikes you as rather bare,
monotonous and inartistic; very practical, with room for six hundred
people, but not entirely pleasing. But the longer you stay the more you
admire, particularly if you are lucky enough to get a table near an end
of the room, either that end which overlooks the garden or the end from
which you can see the ocean, the bay and the mountains beyond. It
measures 176 × 66 feet, and the ceiling is distant from the floor 33
feet. The whole immense apartment, floor, walls and ceiling, is of light
colored wood--white Oregon pine and solid oak worked into panels of all
sizes and shapes conceivable. The materials and light colors, or color
rather, are suitable to this climate and in time you get to like them.
The breakfast room is no miniature apartment either, 47 × 56 feet, with
ceiling as high as the dining-room ceiling. It is far more attractive to
my eye, its floor being carpeted, and having a high dado of California
redwood, which serves to relieve the lighter woods. But Americans demand
size for their beauty, and they have it in the dining-room with its
floor area of 10,000 feet. To quote the writer of a pamphlet, “it fills
the beholder with an astounding admiration.” Better than that, to my
taste, they have a skilful _chef_, and he fills your platter with most
appetizing dishes--if you get a good waiter.
WHERE THEY DANCE.--In the extreme southwest corner of the building is
the ball-room, with an extended view of the beach and the ocean; indeed,
you cannot get away from the ocean unless you get away from Coronado.
The designer of this room has also “gone in” for size. It is a circular
room, no less than 60 feet high and 120 feet in diameter, giving a floor
area of 11,000 square feet. Too much room for a small “dance,” but
splendid for a ball or grand concert.
A feature of the ball-room is a stage for amateur theatricals, which,
for size and appointments in the matter of lights, would not discredit a
regular theatre.
A RICH AND ROYAL SUITE.--Taken as a whole, there are more prettily
furnished bedrooms in Long’s Hotel, London, than in any other hotel I
have ever seen. The tower rooms in the Oglethorpe, at Brunswick,
Georgia, are large and remarkably beautiful, and the bridal suite in the
Ponce de Leon is supposed to be very choice, but the Ponce de Leon
“show” apartments will not compare in beauty nor in completeness of
detail with the bridal suite in Hotel del Coronado. These rooms in the
Coronado are not so palatial in size nor in the matter of costly
frescoes as the rooms in the London Métropole, in which I found Mr. and
Mrs. Augustin Daly last October, but they certainly are among the most
tastefully furnished hotel bedrooms I have ever seen, and it is not
surprising that the photographic views of these apartments find many
purchasers.
The window has an eastern view that is extremely pleasing. To the right
are seen the ocean’s rough breakers, to the left is the smooth bay of
San Diego, while to the immediate front, as you lie in bed, if the
curtains are parted and you are awake at 6.20 A. M., you can see the sun
creeping up behind a range of great mountains, miles and miles away. The
soft cloud of black smoke curling from the tall, round, red brick
chimneys of the electric light engine house between you and the golden
sky beyond, does not mar the picture in the least.
Across the centre of the principal room of the suite are three arches,
supported by the side walls and by two wooden fluted columns, and under
the arches are heavy portières of double silk, salmon pink on one side,
old gold on the other. The windows are draped elaborately and
beautifully--light blue silk shades, lace curtains next to the windows,
with inner curtains of heavy pale blue silk, lined with silk of a rose
tint. The furniture is of mahogany, upholstered with blue silk plush,
the carpet is a rich moquette in delicate colors, and the toilet set is
in Haviland Limoges decorated in deep blue, white and gold. The ceiling
is daintily frescoed. From its centre depends a three-light electrolier;
from the wall, over the bureau mirror, juts out a bracket with two
electric lamps. The mantel is ornamented with two side pieces of Limoges
and a bronze cathedral clock--a miniature representation of the clock in
the Houses of Parliament, in Westminster. If you do not get from these
notes the idea of a luxurious and tasteful apartment, the fault is not
with those who furnished it, but with the pen which has failed to
describe it.
[Illustration]
[Illustration] SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA.
SANTA CRUZ, CAL., March 27, 1891.
In area, Santa Cruz county is one of the smallest in California, but in
resources, productiveness of soil and natural attractions it might be
called the largest in the State. In its equable climate is grown almost
everything indigenous to the north temperate zone.
The county is in central California, eighty miles south of San
Francisco; it has a coast line of forty miles, and includes, according
to the United States Government survey, 280,000 acres. So rich is it
that there are not more than five thousand acres of waste land in the
entire county. South of this is the Pajaro Valley, the most fertile spot
of California, called “the wonder of the Pacific.”
There is not much stock-raising in Santa Cruz county. The mountains,
being heavily timbered, are not adapted to grazing. Nor are citrus
fruits cultivated to any great extent; but the apples of Santa Cruz
county are superior to any grown in the State, the quality of the wine
is unsurpassed in the State, and the remarkable richness of the soil
renders the cultivation of potatoes, beans, hops, sugar beets, etc.,
profitable to a degree unknown in less fertile sections. The vegetable
products of the county form one of its most extensive industries. E. S.
Harrison, a trustworthy authority in California history, calls Santa
Cruz “a vegetable wonderland.”
Let me illustrate the natural advantages of this region by a comparison.
While riding on the Southern Pacific railway over the Texas plains, a
month ago, the travelling auditor of the company, who was on our train,
surprised me by stating that the company is glad to lease its lands at
four cents an acre annually. Land within a couple of miles of where this
is written is leased to Chinamen for farming at fifty dollars an acre
annually, and they realize from it a profit per acre of two or three
hundred dollars.
The City of Santa Cruz, the principal city and county seat of the
county, lies between the Pacific ocean and the northern side of Monterey
bay, about eighty miles south of San Francisco. It nestles among the
foot-hills of the Santa Cruz mountains, and its outskirts are bathed by
the sea. The city proper has a population of six thousand five hundred,
and if East Santa Cruz is included, the population is about nine
thousand. The city is growing rapidly. New business houses are
constantly going up, capital is coming from the East, and everywhere are
evidences of a steady, healthy increase.
Santa Cruz has good railroad facilities. Two branches of the Southern
Pacific run here direct. They are called the broad gauge and the narrow
gauge roads. The broad gauge is an important line running through Santa
Clara and Pajaro valleys, passing San José and the larger towns between
San Francisco and Monterey. The narrow gauge runs from San Francisco no
farther south than Santa Cruz. It is more of a local line and stops at
the smaller places--places, however, of such great interest to tourists
as Big Trees. The steamers of the Pacific Steamship Company plying
between San Pedro (near Los Angeles), and San Francisco stop here,
regularly, on their way north and south.
In writing from Hotel del Monte in Monterey, I mentioned some large oaks
and pines; there are as big and still bigger trees here, or very near
here, at a place appropriately named Big Trees. It is a ten minute ride
on the narrow gauge road of the Southern Pacific, or an hour’s drive by
carriage from Santa Cruz. You need not go to Yosemite, Calaveras or
Mariposa to see giants of the forest; here they are, a grove of 320
acres, some of the trees 300 feet high and 46 feet in circumference.
These figures are quoted, but I measured a few specimens myself. One
about four feet from the ground was 52 feet in circumference. The
interior of another, “General Fremont,” had been burned out. Four
persons beside myself stood inside of it, and thirty-five more, we
calculated, could have found room in comfort. This measured six feet in
diameter about five feet from the ground--inside measurement--the
“shell” of the tree being probably a foot thick. There are dozens and
scores and groups of trees in this wonderful grove, nearly as large.
The trees are of the famous California Redwood species, the wood hard as
flint and very heavy. The largest specimens are named and bear tablets,
“Daniel Webster,” “General Grant,” “General Sherman,” “Ingersoll’s
Cathedral,” etc. Under the shadow of the last named, the honorable
gentleman held forth one day to an admiring audience. “Big Trees” is
owned by a wealthy widow of San Francisco, Mrs. Walsh.
Powerful and proud as are these giants of the forest, some of them have
been uprooted by nature’s convulsions and lie humbly and horizontally on
the ground. I noticed that a few of these were charred. The keeper of
the grounds explained that year after year fire had been tried, but the
hardy giants would not yield to flame. They are so thick and hard they
won’t burn as they lie. “Then why not cut them up,” I suggested. “Oh!”
was the answer, “lumber is worth nothing here; it is so plentiful.”
They have done a little “cutting,” however. In exchange for a dime you
will get a piece of red wood quite heavy enough for your satchel, or a
piece of the bark much too clumsy for your coat pocket. The bark is
three or four inches thick.
This is a famous wine country. We visited the tunnels of the “Santa Cruz
Mountain Wine Company,” whose vineyards are visible nine miles away on
the hills. The tunnels are dug out of the soft, sand-stone rock and are
dark and rather cool. That is to say, the air seemed cool when compared
with the atmosphere outside, but as a matter of truth, which is often
stranger than fiction, the thermometer showed the temperature in the
tunnels to be 52 degrees, and it remains at about that figure all the
year round. There are three such tunnels, each 380 feet long, 24 feet
wide, and 18 feet high. The vineyards of the company include two hundred
acres.
In these deep, cool tunnels the company has stored in great vats no less
than two hundred thousand gallons of wine. Bottle after bottle was
opened for our party and so cheaply was it held that the glasses were
freely washed with the wine as the different kinds were tasted--port,
sherries, clarets and white wines.
The claret has good body, and if you add a little water to it, as the
French treat _vin ordinaire_, it makes a very good drink for a thirsty
soul at the dinner table.
California Angelica has been a popular wine for twenty odd years: the
Angelica produced in Santa Cruz is sweet, smooth, oily and delicious.
A brand of Sauterne so pleased my palate that I ordered twenty gallons
to be shipped to New York. But I’ll let you into the secret of this
seemingly extravagant order; the price is only one dollar per
gallon--and not Jones, but I, paid the freight. In ordering this wine I
was guided first, by my own taste--it has delicious flavor; secondly, I
felt assured that it was absolutely pure. The grapes are here, on the
spot, ship loads of them, in the season, and there’s no incentive for
adulteration.
The well-kept roads and fine drives about Santa Cruz are not its least
attractive feature. One of them you can take from the shore, driving
over a bridge of the San Lorenzo river, passing Phelan Park and the twin
lakes, on the borders of which are the summer home and settlement of the
Christian Church. You keep the mountains in view all the way, and a turn
here or there shows you the city, the bay, or the ocean.
The three-mile cliff drive takes you immediately above the rock-bound
shore of the Pacific, where you see giant crags upon which the
everlasting waves have had their effect. Some of the rocks stand off
from the shore twenty and fifty feet, and through these the powerful
waves have worked great holes, through which the waters rush with a
tumultuous roar, dashing their spray far above. These “natural bridges”
would be considered a rare sight if they were the only feature of this
scene, and would attract people from a distance, but where there is so
much to admire and astonish, they are only one among the many marvels
that here make an embarrassment of pictorial riches.
The city has two banks, good public schools and water-works; it is
sewered to the ocean, it has horse-cars, fine public buildings, and two
flourishing newspapers, the _Sentinal_ and the _Surf_. Good society is
not lacking, and beautiful homes abound. Duncan McPherson has a fine
Gothic villa; the residence of Mayor Bowman commands beautiful views of
the bay and the town; the home of William Kerr, two miles out of the
city, is a handsome structure in the Queen Anne style, having two wide
entrances and bay windows, affording extensive views of the valley and
bay. Colonel A. J. Hinds, a pioneer of Santa Cruz, has built himself a
charming home, and Mrs. P. B. Fagen’s house on Mission street, one of
the principal residential streets, attracts the attention of all
passers-by. Other pretty homes are those of D. K. Abeel, R. Bernheim,
Mr. Glover and Mrs. E. J. Green.