The railroads set the boom of the 1880s in motion. When the Santa Fe Railroad pushed tracks through the mountains at Cajon Pass in 1885, it began a lively competition with the Southern Pacific which, until that time, had maintained an exclusive right-of-way to the area.
When the two rail competitors began slashing fares it was a joy to those who considered traveling here.
Before the Santa Fe arrived fares from the east were $125. After Santa Fe’s arrival they dropped to $95. And in a fare war of 1887 Southern Pacific went to $4 between Kansas City and here, and Santa Fe $8.
Meanwhile, Eastern writers were celebrating the virtues of the Southland’s climate and growing cycle. Oranges, grapes, figs and olives all did well here.
The rush was on!
That venerable newspaper The San Francisco Call reported that in one time span, of the 78,437 travelers arriving by rail in Southern California, 32,392 stayed on and settled. By the end of the decade the population of Los Angeles had increased by 50 percent.
Naturally land values skyrocked. Developers made and lost fortunes. Meanwhile, the Los Nietos Valley (and Downey) were somewhat protected from the worst exploitation, as John Downey had already settled farmers on much of the Downey Tract.
Those arriving in the late 1880s could only look in awe at the fine crops produced around Downey at the time.
Agriculture alone was not the answer. But when growers found problems in marketing their English walnuts, they formed a cooperative Los Nietos and Ranchito Walnut Growers Association. Later, local citrus growers found the same answer in marketing their crops.
By 1912, growers sought an even bigger organization to direct their cause, and the California Walnut Growers Association was formed.
A notable woman of the time was Mrs. H.W.R. Strong who lived across the valley on the old Pio Pico Ranch. Pampas grass had become popular with Eastern dressmakers as decoration, and it grew nicely between rows of walnut trees locally.
In 1889 she boarded a train to Philadelphia along with carloads of pampas grass. On arrival she sold 134,000 plumes in that one city, and was largely responsible for getting both the Republican and Democratic parties to adopt pampas grass symbols. After Grover Cleveland’s election she named pampas "The Colombian Plume" and marketed it at the World’s Fair.
An advocate of women in business (as well she might be!), Strong supported a project known as Queen Isabella Colleges, business colleges for women. Hadn’t it been Isabella who used her jewels to finance Columbus’s discovery of the new world?
California in the 1880s and ’90s was sprinkled with the unconventional and innovatively successful.