302 HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



truth rather is that it grew spontaneously out of occasional spurts of specu- 

 lative adventure. Nevertheless, of course there were beginnings of these 

 things ; and I have gathered some instances to illustrate how it grew little 

 by little from small beginnings, until it became an epidemic mania of gamb- 

 ling in land values, by which a few made fortunes, and many lost their all. 



In 1875 P. G. Wooster bought ten acres at $55 per acre, less 12 per 

 cent for spot cash. On April 14, 1887, he sold i]/, acres of this same land 

 for $36,300 [exclusive of the buildings then on it], and g-oi the money. This 

 was the land now known as Hotel Green park. The next day he sold the 

 land where Hotel Green stands for $35,000 ; but before he got his pay the 

 boom bursted, and he had trouble and loss in the matter. 



In November, 1877, A. F. Mills bought 15 acres at the southwest corner 

 of Fair Oaks Avenue and Colorado street, out of the original Berry & 

 Elliott tract, and paid $100 per acre for it ; and he says this was the first time 

 that so high a price had been paid for any land in the colony. 



P. G. Wooster reports that in 1878 the taxes on his ten-acre home lot 

 were $7.68, and adds : "In 1893, on 3,060 square feet less than one acre of 

 the same ground I paid $154 county and state tax, and about the same 

 amount as cit}^ tax." 



February i, 1882, Wesley Bunnell bought five acres from E. P. Eittle 

 for $2,000. In 1884 he sold a ^-acre strip on the west side of Little Avenue 

 from Colorado to Union street to Frank Eowe for $1,500. In 1885 Lowe 

 sold this lot to H. J. WooUacott of Eos Angeles for $3,200; and Woollacott 

 built on it the row of one-story frame store rooms which stand there yet — 

 1895. In 1886 Woollacott sold the same land in separate lots for $12,800. 



During the winter of 1883-4 Charles Legge bought from a man named 

 Chapman ten acres of the land now known as "Grace Hill." His friends 

 marveled at his foolish purchase — wondered what in the world Charley 

 wanted of it, or could ever do with it, for he couldn't get water up onto it, 

 and they didn't believe fruit would grow well there ! But when in five 

 weeks he sold it for $r,ooo more than he had paid for it, he was not "foolish" 

 any more, but became the hero of the hour. The "boom" had fairly 

 struck Pasadena, and this was its biggest gun, up to that date. Then other 

 men all over the colony began to itch for a spell of the same sort of " fool- 

 ishness ' ' which less than two months before they had twitted Charley Eegge 

 of. [See article "Grace Hill."] 



In 1885 thtr boom began to swell in volume and force ; and a case in 

 point I here quote from the Valley Union of October 30, 1895 : 



" Real estate has boomed in Pasadena the past week. Among some of 

 the leading transactions are the following : E. C. Webster has bought of Col. 

 J. Banbury the two lots on Colorado street where Ridgway & Ripley's office 

 and the planing mill stands, 48 feet front by 150 feet deep, for $2,000. On 

 the same day Mr. Webster sold one of these lots to Gen. Edwin Ward for 

 $1,250, a clean profit of $250 in one day. 



