DIVISION SIX — BUSINKSS. 44I 



or health-restoring objects — never for the glorious outlook or the exhilarat- 

 ing ozone. And even their hunting seems to have been limited to the 

 mesas and canyons — never pushed to the mountain summits, for they were 

 a race of horse-riders, "born in the saddle" as it were, and not sturdy, 

 rugged climbers afoot, like the Yankees who supplanted them. The first 

 attempt ever made to construct any sort of a roadway to the mountain top 

 was by Hon. B. D. Wilson, early in 1864. [See page 395.] This was for 

 business, not sentiment ; and the first recorded trip of " sentiment" up there 

 was made by Wm. McKee (private tutor of Mr. Wilson's children) in April 

 in that year. He says — " I was anxious to go to the top of the ■mountain-.'''' 

 The trail was only finished to the half-way house ; but by clambering along 

 and leading their horses they managed to reach the top, and here he ex- 

 claims, "Oh, how beautiful!" And thus the era of mountain-climbing 

 sentiment dawned in Pasadenaland. Theirs were the first horses ever known 

 to have made the ascent. They stayed there over night at the Mount Wil- 

 son spring, of which he wrote 23 years afterward: " I thought then and 

 do still that that water was the best I ever tasted in my life." More senti- 

 ment, again. That same spring is still there, at the place known as 

 " Strain's camp." This trail was the only means of reaching the mountain 

 summit by horse or mule-back until the Toll Road was built, in 1887-88. 



The mountain-climbing sentiment did not develop to any great extent 

 until after the settlement of Pasadena, and after the tourist business began 

 to show inklings of the phenomenal growth and extent to which it has since 

 attained. The old " Wilson trail," the foot or starting point of which was 

 eight or nine miles from Pasadena, was the only route available for gratify- 

 ing this sentiment ; and in the Valley Union of October 16, 1885, Dr. Reid 

 strongly advocated a new route of ascent by way of L,as Flores canyon, and 

 said, "This would be the shortest and most direct route to the top of the 

 mountains that can be made from L,os Angeles, ' ' etc. ; and the route he then 

 suggested was within a few hundred yards, or in fact partly the same, 

 where the Mount Lowe railroad was ultimately built. In the same article 

 Dr. Reid said : 



' ' Within the next six months there will be a thousand people in I,os 

 Angeles who would willingly pay five dollars for a trip to the top of the 

 mountains. Nine out of ten of the winter visitors to this coast have just as 

 strong a desire to go to the top of the mountains as they have to go to the 

 sea-shore. " 



From this time onward the air was full of projects for some more di- 

 rect and easy way to ascend the mountains ; and in his descriptive pam- 

 phlet, with eighteen beautiful full-page lithographic illustrations for Pasa- 

 dena, published in 1886, T. P. Lukens said : 



" Several of our enterprising citizens, among whom is Mr. R. Williams, 

 have secured 320 acres of land at Wilson's Peak, embracing some of the 

 finest timber tracts in the mountains, and have made arrangements for build- 



