"The interior of a Chicago and Alton Railroad Pullman car," photographer unknown, c. 1900. Larger.
California's extraordinary landscapes have drawn tourists from around the world, men and women whose taste for travel is exceeded only by their indifference to beauty.
In 1890, T. S. Van Dyke published Millionaires of a Day, a satire built around the southern California land boom of the 1880's. Van Dyke didn't stop with withering portraits of the boomers, however; he also took aim at American tourists.
This tourist is a rare creature, especially in California. Most of the time he sits in the cars with his eyes lost in a novel or pack of cards or in the depths of some fair companion's eyes. While the train is running almost in the shadow of such mountains as he never saw before—mountains that tower above the country at their feet higher any other mountains in the United States, running, too, through a land where almost every herb and shrub and flower and tree and bird and animal is new to him, he rarely takes the trouble to glance out the window. But let the train whistle for a station, and quickly he drops the novel or cards, and out goes his head from the window to stare at a house or hotel or something else that he could see just as well in ten thousand other cities in the United States.
Van Dyke wrote other California works, including the novel The Rifle, Rod and Gun in California, a work that enhanced his reputation as "that prince of sportsmen."
"Burbank Looking Southeast from the Head of Olive," photographer unknown, c. 1887. Larger.
In a state of almost 36 million land-hungry inhabitants, it's no wonder useable real estate is a good investment. But even when California had fewer people, every empty acre still looked like a gold mine.
In his 1890 book Millionaires of a Day, T. S. Van Dyke pilloried the California real estate speculators who sought to make millions by subdividing useless lots and creating a boom psychology.
"Los Angeles Before 1890," photographer, date unknown. Larger.
It was now no trouble to sell anything that was chopped into twenty-five-foot lots. . . .
Of what use is a twenty-five-foot lot to any one? was a question that few asked. But after all, who is the wiser?—the man who says, "This is all nonsense, and can't last," or the man who says, "My dear sir, I know all that as well as you do. But when the world takes a notion to be an ass, it is for a while the biggest ass in the universe. The man who caters the soonest to its morbid appetite is the smartest fellow. In a boom you can sell two twenty-five-foot lots for considerably more than you can sell one fifty-foot lot. Smart folks who think they know all about human nature, think they know better than this. But you will please remember that neither Soloman nor Shakespeare ever saw a first-class boom.
T. S. Van Dyke came to California in 1875 for his health. Besides books on southern California, he also wrote for Los Angeles and San Diego newspapers.
below to hear radio segment.
