February, 1908 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



59 



Sunken Gardens of California 



Charles Frederick Holder 



T IS not difficult to explain the charm of 

 Southern California and the consequent rush 

 of thousands to the southwest coast as winter 

 approaches. Many years ago some one dis- 

 covered the San Gabriel Valley as Dana, in 

 his "Two Years Before the Mast," in a cli- 

 matic sense discovered the coast line region, 

 and gradually the country and its charms became known. 

 There is very little to it — a strip alongshore, several hundred 

 miles of valleys and mountains, mostly mountains or tilted 

 mesas, good farming land up on end and literally between 

 the desert and the deep sea ; really the most out-of-the-way 

 region imaginable ; like some fairy land hedged about by 

 threatening genii, as without the railroad Southern California 

 would still have been in the hands of the few pioneers who 

 had the nerve and pluck to cross fiery deserts or make the 

 interminable trip around the Horn or across the Isthmus. 



But the railroad has opened up this lotus land where every- 

 thing is reversed — as winter comes in the East summer may 

 be said to arrive in California. True, the indigenous people 



call it winter, and there is snow on the mountains, cold nights, 

 and fires and overcoats in the evening, but the strangest win- 

 ter possible. As an illustration, in the fall of 1907, the coun- 

 try had three inches of rain which in a week or two converted 

 the gray dry plains into a coat of green, so that people leav- 

 ing the East in the fall found the California winter a season 

 of verdure, warm days, and the country running riot with 

 grass, wild oats and flowers. 



It is these conditions which have attracted people to Cali- 

 fornia, and in the vicinity of the San Gabriel Valley and Los 

 Angeles a principality has been built up consisting mainly of 

 the homes of wealthy men from the East who came originally 

 as tourists, but who, delighted with the climatic conditions 

 and possibility of outdoor life all the year round, decided 

 to remain. 



So the country has been built up literally, not by pioneers 

 — though there have been many and good men and true who 

 have blazed the way — but by men of wealth who did not 

 have the patience or inclination to wait, but have insisted 

 upon results at once. This, then, is the reason why men 



In the Garden of J. D. Hooker at Los Angeles 



