376 TRANSACTIONS OB^ THE 



OPENING ADDRESS 



OF HON. L. J. ROSE, AT THE PAVILION, TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 14, 1884. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: I have been amongst you many years 

 more than I care to remember; have seen the great changes that 

 have taken place in these southern counties forming this district; 

 helped to organize this association, and from small beginnings have 

 seen it grow to what it now is. When I first came to Los Angeles 

 County there was no general settlement about the Mission San Gabriel. 

 There was no Pasadena, no Alhambra, no Riverside, Pomona, Ontario. 

 These were waste places and unoccupied, where sleek cattle and fleet 

 wild horses roamed at will. The plow had not then broken the virgin 

 soil nor destroyed the natural beauty of the flowers which annually 

 reproduced themselves with renewed beauty and perfume. Our 

 mountain streams, now imparting the loveliness to these colonies, 

 then tumbled and foamed over bowlders and obstructions in solitary 

 canons, unused and almost unknown, until drank up in the sands of 

 the plains. Springs sent forth their meandering limpid rivulets 

 through the shade of trees, or flashed in the sunlight of the plains, 

 being visited now and then by coveys of quail to quench their thirst, 

 or flocks of birds, who in fluttering delight would take their evening 

 bath. Then all was quiet and hushed in the oak-grown slopes next 

 to the Sierra Madre Mountains, and only broken by the varied notes 

 of the mocking-bird as he sent forth his mimic medley from the tops 

 of a hundred trees, or by the loud beating on some decayed tree of 

 the woodpecker, which, in the weird stillness, required no very vivid 

 imagination to believe it the call of some genii of the woods. What 

 a great change has taken place. Instead of all this quiet, perchance 

 broken by some lone vaquero, now we have colonies of a thousand 

 happy homes, each one vying with the other in its beauty of sur- 

 roundings. Where there grew wild flowers now are reared by hand 

 of loved woman the violet, the mignonette, the rose, the lily, and all 

 the various flora of the world. Where formerly were uncultivated 

 plains, where Pomona was only represented by the prickly cactus, 

 man now grows in profusion and beauty the apple, the pear, the 

 grape, the orange, the olive, the fig — in short almost every variety of 

 fruit grown in the tropics or temperate zone. It is a transformation 

 scene, which cannot be realized or believed except it is seen, and even 

 then each year makes changes that fill even us with wonder. 



We, of Southern California, have much to be proud of, and we may 

 be excused if we are elated. There is no portion of this State — a State 

 which is the brightest jewel in the diadem of our Union — which 

 excels us in any of the beautiful productions about which all Cali- 

 fornians boast. We raise more corn than the balance of the State; 

 our wheat will fairly average, when compared with the whole State; 



