Rearview Mirror

February 26, 2006

REARVIEW MIRROR

1849

This week in 1849, the Pacific Mail Steamship Co.'s California arrived in San Francisco from New York, the first steamer to make the voyage. All but one of her crew deserted for the gold fields, likely making them the first "forty-niners" from the East Coast. Hundreds of thousands followed them in a stampede from all parts of the globe, which sent the population of the territory soaring with men (and some women) who spoke as many languages as there were tall tales of riches. San Francisco went from hamlet to metropolis seemingly overnight and Sacramento from a settlement of 100 or so to one of thousands in just months. The admonitions from more than a few learned men who were appalled by the madness simply went unheeded. "The hog that roots his own living, and so makes manure, would be ashamed of such company," Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal of those who gave up everything for gold. He condemned not only them but the whole of the former Mexican territory, where he was sure they would find damnation.

February 19, 2006

REARVIEW MIRROR

1942

This week in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the rounding up of Japanese Americans to protect the country "against espionage and against sabotage." Ten War Relocation Camps were built; ultimately, more than 100,000 people were interned in them. One of the camps was at Manzanar, and when Ansel Adams arrived with his cameras, he saw "a little city, well-governed and alive" in the shadow of Mt. Williamson. His photographs were published in "Born Free and Equal" in 1944. The war was still raging, but Adams wrote that he was worried about the future of internees "when peace is established and the crisis of feeling is reduced."

February 12, 2006

REARVIEW MIRROR

1886

This week in 1886, the first train loaded exclusively with California oranges left L.A.'s River Station for the East in a central moment for an industry that would come to define the state as much as the movie business. Oranges, in fact, were characters in John Fante's "Ask the Dust," one of the great Los Angeles novels. The protagonist is a struggling writer, renting a room in a hotel on Bunker Hill, "past the soot-covered frame buildings," as Fante describes in the 1939 novel, with "sand and oil and grease choking the futile palm trees standing like dying prisoners, chained to a little plot of ground with black pavement hiding their feet." He buys what groceries he can afford in the flatland of downtown Los Angeles, counting the 140 steps of Angels Flight to Hill Street, and sometimes oranges make a meal. A new Ecco Press edition of the novel was just published.

February 5, 2006

REARVIEW MIRROR

1888

This week in 1888, the newly named city of Long Beach was incorporated for the first time. Built on tidelands and sloughs, it seemed destined to make the history books for nothing much more than the pleasantness of its climate and the 8.5-mile extent of its sandy seaside. Then came the discovery in 1921 of oil at Signal Hill, the third big strike in Southern California in less than a year. A gusher of riches, greed and corruption transformed the region and gave Upton Sinclair, who briefly lived in Long Beach (and later ran for governor of California), the canvas for his muckraking 1927 novel "Oil!":