The Father of Modern San Diego Toted Gun in Early Panama Rebellion

Alonzo Erastus Horton is best known as the Father of Modern San Diego. He was a 54-year-old gold miner, ice merchant and hardware store owner from San Francisco when he waded ashore in San Diego on April 15, 1867.

He visited Old Town and found it had violated the First Rule of Real Estate: bad location. I imagine he also decried the lack of parking and the overpriced restaurants, but the history books are unclear on this point.

Instead, he bought 1,000 barren acres closer to the water for 26 cents an acre.

From that came downtown streets, churches, a civic plaza, a hotel, and a thriving port and business district. Alonzo was so pro-growth he would make the modern-day building industry look like Sierra Clubbers.

What is less known is that he was also a gun-toting gringo who got mixed up in an anti- Yanqui rebellion in Panama. It happened in 1856 when he was bound by steamer from San Francisco to the Atlantic Coast.

He wanted to stop over in Nicaragua but that country was trapped in a rebellion started by an American rogue named William Walker. So Horton and other passengers stayed in a fancy hotel in what is now Panama City, waiting on the isthmus for an Atlantic steamer.

Panama proved no safer than Nicaragua. A violent mob surrounded the hotel. Horton ordered all Americans to grab their guns and make a stand on the second floor.

Here’s the story as told in Volume VII of California historian Hubert Howe Bancroft’s “Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth,” published in 1892:

“Twice the attempt was made to carry the staircase, and twice the crowd were repelled with bloodshed, Horton’s revolver, as he stood at the head of the stairs, playing a significant part in the deadly fray.

“After he had fired all of his own balls, he took a revolver from one of the other men and continued the bloody work. The rabble below carried out their dead and wounded midst unearthly howls.”

Horton fought his way to the steamer Toboga and immediately assumed command. He saved the $5,000 hidden in his money belt but lost $10,000 in gold dust in the confusion.

In all, 21 Americans and 45 Panamanians were killed. Horton was summoned to Washington to brief an outraged President Pierce.

Horton was also deputized by other survivors to press their claims for restitution. He hired an attorney.

Most of the survivors got payments five years later from the U.S. government, which had extracted the money from the Panamanians.

There was grumbling that Washington, after making a public display of its righteous anger, was slow in compensating the victims. Some charged that the lawyer hired by Horton took an unreasonably high fee.

Some things were as true then as now.

Case of the Natural Surfer

Here and there.

- A 20-year-old Downey man will be arraigned in Vista court today on a charge of indecent exposure.

His alleged crime: surfing nude off the beach at Carlsbad on Thanksgiving weekend.

Beach rangers watched him shooting the curls au naturel for 20 minutes before making a pinch. Tourists in a nearby campground had complained.

- Newspaper Guild members at the Union-Tribune are desperately seeking to communicate with U-T publisher Helen Copley.

Letters have been written. An open letter was defiantly posted in the newsroom. A small plane will tow a banner over San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium before tonight’s Holiday Bowl.

Copley will not see it.

She and her son, David, and a few of their La Jolla friends left Wednesday by corporate jet for London and Berlin. The party is not expected back until Jan. 7 at the earliest.

- The Sheriff’s Department issued a news release announcing that “The Lord worked a miracle in Central Jail recently . . . “

It’s a three-page account by Chaplain John Robinson of how angry souls in the felony tank were transformed.

“The sweet Spirit of God could be felt all around. Before I left, I prayed for the tank, and everyone humbled himself in reverence to God in prayer.”

Robinson is uniquely qualified for jail work: He’s an ordained minister, a lawyer and a black belt in karate.