L.A.: a bystander in California's first boom

With all due respect, James Marshall didn't start California's first gold rush. Francisco Lopez did, while looking for wild onions. And it wasn't at Coloma. It was at San Feliciano Canon, about eight miles from present-day Newhall in Southern California.

Of course, it wasn't much of a gold rush. And in the 1840s and 1850s, Southern California wasn't much of a place. While the northern half of the state sizzled with activity, the southern half slumbered. In 1854, for example, the population of the "city" of Los Angeles was about 4,000. The city of Downieville in the Sierra was home to 6,000.

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Or, as novelist/historian Irving Stone put it: "Northern California was a lean, hard-bitten mountain man ... male, rugged, disciplined, carrying the seed of a new generation. Southern California was a lush, red-lipped sensual female ... sunning herself in a patio surrounded by bougainvillea."

The biggest reason for the disparity, at the risk of overstating the obvious, was gold. Northern California had it, Southern California didn't -- at least not much of it.

It's true the first gold strike of note in the state came in March 1842. The aforementioned Lopez and a companion were digging for wild onions when Lopez noticed what appeared to be gold particles clinging to the roots. By May, more than a hundred miners had descended on the site, and by the end of 1843, more than $50,000 in gold had been taken from the area. But it was hard digging, and the area lacked water. By 1846, the site had been abandoned.

A lack of gold wasn't the only reason Southern California lagged behind. Lack of water was a widespread problem. Unlike San Francisco, which enjoyed a splendid harbor at its doorstep, Los Angeles' harbor was 16 miles away from the town. And a handful of powerful rancho owners controlled so much land that there was no place for settlers to settle.

The ranch owners made handsome livings selling their cattle to miners in the north. But the money did not trickle down. In 1850, wrote historian Kevin Starr, "the (L.A.) county had 8,329 inhabitants, half of which were Indians and most of whom were illiterate. There were no schools, or libraries -- and no newspapers."

The city had neither foundry nor forge and had to send to San Francisco for well-drilling equipment. It took longer for mail to get from San Francisco to Los Angeles than it did from San Francisco to New York.

And while businesses boomed and busted in the north, Los Angeles' biggest financial venture occurred when the local residents wagered a total of $50,000 on a local horse in a race -- and lost to an Australian entry.

It was, however, a lively place for those who liked it rough. In fact, Los Angeles was fully as mean and tough a cow town as Dodge City, Tombstone or the other mythic hell-for-leather towns of the West. In 1850, for example, the city averaged a murder a day.

One appalled Eastern visitor, observing a man being pulled from the jail and lynched, asked why the mayor didn't step in and stop it. Because, he was told, the mayor was leading the lynch mob.

Further south, San Diego enjoyed a splendid natural harbor, but was cut off by fierce deserts to the east, Mexico to the south and a lack of local initiative.

And so Southern California slept through the Gold Rush and waited its turn. By the 1870s, the mild climate, cheap land and the arrival of competing -- and therefore cheap -- intercontinental train routes combined to start the area's own version of a gold rush. The discovery of massive deposits of silver in the mountains bordering the Mojave Desert didn't hurt.

By 1888, the population of Los Angeles had topped 100,000. Downieville would never be its rival again.