CHAPTER IX. 6l 



troduce sheep was during the drought of the sixties. The experiment 

 Wcis disastrous, resulting in the death of the sheep. The sheep men, 

 who go into the reserve, rely on the brush for feed. This they fire, on 

 retiring, for the new growth in the Spring. In the Spanish and Mexi- 

 can times, the back Sierra Madre ranges were used in a small way by 

 horse thieves. Some old Indians and half-breeds informed me about 

 twenty years ago that these distinguished gentry had a great deal of 

 trouble with bears eating their stock. Later along, other horse own- 

 ers going in from the Soledad pastured for years an average of fifty 

 head of horses in the forests. To improve the feed they burnt the 

 brush on the back ranges for a number of years quite extensively. 

 The water-sheds most affected were those of the Soledad, Tejunga and 

 San Gabriel. This went on until the heavy rainfall of 1884. The re- 

 sult of this was the destruction by torrential action of a widespread 

 character along these water courses. The damage in the lower reaches 

 of the San Gabriel was tremendous. The Tejunga floods swept away 

 roads and bridges and destroyed a great deal of land and washed away 

 a considerable number of houses in the city of Los Angeles, of which 

 latter event I was an eye witness. The Soledad canyon became over 

 and over again a raging torrent. Damage commenced by tearing out 

 bridges, which were repaired or replaced only to be swept away again 

 by the next rain. Finally the entire Southern Pacific road-bed and 

 bridges in this canyon were utterly destroyed. Railroad travel was 

 suspended for six weeks. The railroad was rebuilt at a higher level 

 as the only means of safety. When we consider that this railroad 

 had before these repeated and extensive mountain forest fires remained 

 uninjured, though heavy rainfall years had recurred from time to 

 time, we are justified in blaming the horse owners and their fires for 

 damages that ran into the millions. If the Southern Pacific had paid 

 ten thousand dollars a piece for the 50 head of scrub horses that oc- 

 casioned this devastation and had thereby kept the mountain covering 

 Intact, the $500,000 involved wuold have been a cheap escape from the 

 loss of property and business they suffered from. Since that time until 

 last year, there has been almost no pasturage attempted in the Sierra 

 Madre. 



A review of the Southern California reserves shows us that the 

 pasture interests in the mountain forests is so absolutely small as to 

 be a negligible quantity in any scheme of forest management. When 

 considered in comparison with the vast interests at stake in the pres- 

 ervation of our mountain water-sheds, the pasture interest sinks into 



