Chapter XI
More About Los Angeles
I am still a person somewhat young and lively who has had the strange experience of seeing barley fields sprout houses like the magic soldiers from the sowing of dragon’s teeth; of finding cactus and gravel and sage turned over night into leagues of orange trees; of watching my little city multiply itself a hundred fold. What wonder that I cannot forbear to talk about it! to tell of how once upon a time the street of sky-scrapers was a shaded way before a few rose-covered cottages, or how the hills of Hollywood were bare brown velvet beyond the vacant fields that lay west of Los Angeles’ Figueroa Street, itself unfinished. When we looked over the town from our home on the Court Street hill we saw a place of trees and cottages, of open spaces and encircling groves. Only to our left were business houses, and they neither high nor imposing. On Poundcake Hill, where now the County Court House rises, was the square, two-storied high school building, which a few years later crossed Temple Street on stilts, and went over to its new abiding place on California Street.
Just below us was the old jail, enclosed by its high white fence which may have shut in prisoners and shut out the curious who approached on Franklin
