A railroad trip from Santa Ana to San Diego offers many points of
interest. It carries us through both the most highly cultivated and
through the absolutely vacant, not to say barren, lands. We leave the
orange grove and walnut plantations of Santa Ana, and are carried almost
immediately past the lovely and shaded Tustin, where pepper groves and
lime hedges, gardens and splendid villas, combine nature with art, taste
and enterprise to create a veritable oasis for those favored ones who
can remain there. We rush for a few minutes through these highly
cultivated lands, and suddenly find ourselves out on a wide, open plain,
comprising about eighty thousand acres, without a house to be seen
anywhere, with no orchards, no vineyards, no signs of civilized life.
And still the soil is the richest, the native vegetation of grasses the
most luxuriant. The soil is apparently subirrigated, and could grow
almost anything the farmer might plant there. Along the horizon,
stretching from the mountains way down on the plains like an immense
plumed serpent in its wavy and coiling track, is seen a continuous band
of sycamore trees, outlining the bed of a stream. It is like stepping
out of one room into another. What can be the reason of the sudden
change? This vast body of land, containing over 126,000 acres, is an old
Mexican grant, the remnant of one of those Mexican cancers, which to
such an extent has retarded the development of California. Sure enough,
we see wire fences everywhere, and cattle with spreading horns and
sheep without number. But we see no sign of the cultivator, no horses,
no signs of progress. The owner held onto the land, probably expecting
it to bring a price many times the sum it was worth. He died, and so
died the boom, and now the land is under administration. When the time
comes that this large San Joaquin grant can be sold to farmers in small
tracts, it will very greatly increase the cultivable area of Orange
county.
But we pass on, leaving the open country; we are soon in among the
rolling lands, among foothills not unlike those of the Sierra Nevada in
the San Joaquin valley. To the left are the San Bernardino Mountains,
here and there a peak of boldest outline, and streams and cañons winding
their way to the sea. At El Toro a number of passengers got off to take
the stage to Laguna, a seaside hotel, where the farmers and business men
of every color, from the heated interior valleys, delight to spend a day
in fishing, hunting for abalones, or in watching the breakers roll
against the sandy beach. A little farther on we stop at El Capistrano,
or rather at San Juan Capistrano, the old ruined mission, situated in
the most beautiful little valley, with its winding and sycamore shaded
creek. The mission must have been one of the very largest in the State.
The ruins are yet very extensive, consisting of long and regular adobe
walls, and one-half of a yet magnificent looking church, in the regular
Spanish style of architecture. A rather large size town of Mexican
houses, with a Mexican population, and venerable fig trees, tall and
wavy palm trees, and large but unkempt gardens, give the place a rather
more important look than it perhaps deserves. There is but little sign
that the boom was ever here. Still the valley is so beautiful and
evidently so fertile, that it needs only work and taste to make it equal
to the very best. We see yet the old mission pear trees, large and
untrimmed, not unlike our drooping oaks, loaded with pears to such an
extent that there appears hardly room for a blackbird to get through.
The mission grapevines are all dead. Gigantic vines, which covered
trellises and arbors, and which perhaps bore tons of grapes, with trunks
as heavy as the body of a boy, are there yet, but without leaves and
young shoots; they are dead, having surrendered to the vine pest of the
country.
After leaving Capistrano we follow the little creek to the sea. The
valley is from one-half to one mile wide. Here and there are flourishing
little vineyards, but mostly pastures and cornfields or patches of
beans. At last we reach the sea, the Pacific, calm and blue, with
breakers lashing the shore. To the right we leave the rocky promontory
of the Capistrano Mountains, and for an hour or more run on the very
beach. In stormy weather the spray of the breakers must wet the cars,
which run only a stone’s throw from the water’s edge. This part of the
route is the most interesting and the most refreshing to one coming from
the interior plains. We are now in San Diego county. The shore is abrupt
and bluffy, the hills bordering on the sea.
At Oceanside we meet the first of the boom towns, one of those that
sprang up for pleasure and profit, towns of magnificent villas, broad
streets and avenues, lined with infant blue gums, with rows and hedges
of the ever-bright geraniums, and with large and splendid-looking
hotels, with airy balconies, verandas and lookout towers, swept by the
fresh breezes of the sea. The vicinity of every such station is heralded
by the characteristic white stakes that mark the town lots, and by rows
of small, intensely blue, gums; by a sprinkling of cottages, small and
large, perhaps a mile or two before the whistle of the steam-engine
brings us to a standstill. The first things that meet our eye at every
station are large and splendid lawns, young plantations of palm trees
and other plants characteristic of the Southern coast climate, flowers
of brightest hue, all started by the enterprising immigrants who came
here to buy climate, sun and air, and to enjoy the breakers and the
ocean every day in the year. After Oceanside, we touch at Carlsbad and
Del Mar, both seaside resorts with magnificent villas costing from
twenty to forty thousand dollars each, and with fine but young
plantations and gardens. I was especially charmed with Del Mar, with its
large, tasteful hotel on the bluff, and quite a large colony of villas
and mansions in various sizes and styles close around,--a bright and
charming picture, a place where a traveler feels at home at once, where
he would like to pass the balance of all the days he can spare from
business and toil.
The scene changes again as the cars carry us through the foothills,
along the bed of creeks, or across lagoons connected with the sea, or
over gaping chasms. We look down deep into the valleys below, where
shady sycamores and white cottages mark the farmers’ homes, and where
vine-clad hills offset the native brown of the country. I am surprised
to see how the grapevines thrive so luxuriantly so very close to the
shore. In some places there are fine and thrifty vines within a stone’s
throw of the breakers, only protected by a slight undulation in the
ground from the most direct wind. Of course, grapes on those vines
cannot be expected to be very sweet; it is wonderful enough that they
are there at all.
The water supply of this part of San Diego county has been very much
underrated. The railroad crosses perhaps a dozen different creeks, all
showing living water, and which are far from being entirely dried up.
With a Supreme Court more enlightened, and with proper legislation as to
the needs of the country, San Diego county may yet be able to store
water enough to irrigate very large areas of land, where colonies of
thrifty farmers may create and maintain prosperous orchards and
vineyards as a support and backbone to the many pleasure resorts.
But we are out of the hills. Smiling and glistening in the evening sun
lies San Diego Bay, with the elevated Point Loma, the ever-present
breakers on the bar, and away out on the low peninsula the gigantic and
turreted pile of the Hotel del Coronado, to say nothing of San Diego
itself, with its miles of marked town lots and villas. But I shall not
endeavor to describe this town and its bay and climate. The latter may
possibly not be excelled anywhere; the former lacks a most essential
thing,--an abundance of trees and vegetation. Still, with the water that
has lately been brought here the trees and flowers will come soon enough
we hope, when green lawns, bananas and palms will be ready to tell the
tale, and young plantations will be seen on the hills and around
roadway homes. But I forget I am bound for El Cajon and its raisin
vineyards, and must catch the train.