THIS was a boom you could actually hear.
Steam trains rumbled in from the East, from the Midwest, from the mining camps of Arizona and from the grand metropolis of San Francisco. Sometimes four a day, they disgorged fresh legions of dreamers and schemers. Before it was over, circus elephants trumpeted in parades down the once tranquil streets. Brass bands, like so many pied pipers, led crowds into orange groves. Marchers carried banners. Preachers moonlighted as barkers, if they could shout loud enough to be heard.
Later, people would also remember the clattering wagons that jammed the streets with loads of green timbers, and the incessant din of hammers and saws that spread through the basin.
Los Angeles was roused out of slumber in the '80s to greet its future.
The real estate boom of late 1886-88 was like nothing ever seen here, never before and not since.
Whenever you find yourself shaking your head at today's giddy run-up of housing prices, when you start daydreaming about your paper profits, when you kick yourself for not getting in sooner and extending yourself further, and when you start feeling a little queasy about where it might end -- well, you're living out a raucous hometown tradition that began in the winter of 1886-87 when a perfect storm of hope, avarice and opportunity converged.
In the years just prior, visitors found Los Angeles a drowsy burg. An account in The Times described "a quiet, slow-moving, half-way frontier town" with a population of just over 11,000. Yes, there had been violent outbursts in Chinatown, but most accounts of the era recalled something closer to a pueblo ambience, beginning with the adobe Spanish quarter and extending to the modest, gaslight business district, where every improvement was a news event. Outlying lands were planted in oranges and barley, with vast herds of sheep and cattle grazing on hillsides.
Los Angeles was served by the Southern Pacific Railroad, but travel to the edge of the continent remained expensive.Then, the Santa Fe Railroad arrived. And it happened.
A second railroad touched off a fare war. Prices of tickets from the chilly Midwest and East plunged, and plunged still more. A promotional ticket reportedly went for $1 on March 6, 1887.
In turn, each visitor seemed to want to outdo the other in reporting back home about this landscape of sunshine, open space, mountains, ocean, orange blossoms and opportunity.
