The mountain air perks up the appetite, and our travelers are glad to see that the Tavern has a fully equipped dining room complete with gracious attendants. The summit of Mt. Lowe is assessable by a ride of two miles, partly by sleigh, since the top of the mountain is covered with snow.
 
But the Taylors forego this adventure. “I can see snow at home,” is Mr. Taylor’s remarks, only to realize later, from the excited descriptions of some of his fellow tourists, that he and his wife have missed what was probably the most dramatic aerial view of Southern California ever to be made available to them. Even so, the Taylors would tell anyone who cared to listen for the rest of their lives that the trip to Mt. Lowe was one of their most remarkable experiences and certainly the best two-dollar ticket they had ever purchased.
 
The Mt. Lowe Railway ceased operations in 1936. I wonder if anyone here ever rode it?

Well, the Taylors go from the sublime to the ridiculous – from the sublime, majestic peaks of Mt. Lowe on January 4 to the most ridiculous birds on the world at the Cawston Ostrich Farm on January 5. The Farm was established in 1886 in South Pasadena by Edwin Cawston, the original promoter of the ostrich feather industry in America. It was located about where York Blvd. intersects the Pasadena Freeway today.
 
By 1909 Cawston’s products not only adorn ladies’ hats, but are made into boas, muffs, and fans. Thousands of birds occupy a picturesque semi-tropical park. There is a factory on-site to process the plumage and a shop where ladies can purchase the feathers directly. The Farm also produces a catalog, making their products available nationwide.
 
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor spend a mirth-filled morning watching the birds strut around their pens and laughing as the trainers arrange some races among the inmates. Mr. Taylor even screws up his courage enough to get aboard one of the birds with the help of an assistant. He tucks his legs around the rotund girth of the fowl, keeping the wings free, and looks very brave as the cameraman takes his souvenir photograph. But as soon as the bird starts to move, his long-legged gait results in a roll that would rival a camel’s, Mr. Taylor shouts “Enough!” and asks to be relieved of his steed.

His relief of getting back to earth somewhat helps him recover somewhat from being thought a “sissy” by his tour group who, of course, have not tried it themselves. Later, in the shop, Mrs. Taylor decides to purchase a gorgeous heavy plume with no idea how she will ever find room for it in her luggage. In retaliation, Mr. Taylor buys a six-inch-in-diameter empty ostrich egg with scenes of the Farm hand-painted on it.

From the ridiculous back to the sublime, the Taylors return to Pasadena, and, after lunch, visit peaceful Busch Gardens. From 1905 to 1938 this 32-acre “botanical paradise” sloped from the Busch Mansion on South Orange Grove to the bottom of the Arroyo, between Bellefontaine Street and Madeline Drive. Although privately owned by the Busch Family, owners of the Anheuser-Busch brewery, the Gardens were open to the public and became one of Pasadena’s prime tourist sites.

The Taylors wander some of the fourteen miles of curving paths around rare and exotic trees and shrubs that have been imported from all over the world. They find the upper Gardens laid out in formal patterns of flowers with a picturesque replica of an old mill in one corner. The lower Gardens are left in a more natural state. Hidden away in corners are stone statuary, many depicting nursery-rhyme themes, an aviary, and miniature lakes with fountains and swans.
 
The sight of the fairy-tale figures has left Mrs. Taylor in a frustrated maternal mood, missing her little girl at home. Concerned about this return to cheerlessness, Mr. Taylor asks the hotel Concierge what is playing in Pasadena’s theaters that might cheer his wife up. The only diversion scheduled in town that night is a lecture by Emma Goldman, the noted Anarchist, who will be appearing at the Socialist Hall. Admission: 25 cents. Not a very jolly prospect.
 
The concierge goes on to say that some of the other hotel guests are attending the theater in Los Angeles and perhaps the Taylors would like to join them. But they decide on dinner at the nearby Manako Restaurant on North Fair Oaks where they are greeted warmly by its proprietor G.S. Watanabe. The exotic repast and a jolly puzzle party back at the hotel enliven Mrs. Taylor considerably, coupled with the realization that their trip to California is over half-done and she will soon be reunited with her daughter.

The next day, January 6, the Taylors join a group setting out on a charabanc excursion to Lucky Baldwin’s Ranch, also known as the Rancho Santa Anita. They pass through the little community of Lamanda Park east of Pasadena and what remains of the once-famed Sunnyslope Ranch, now being subdivided, which at one time had the largest vineyard in the area. One the way the Taylors are told that Leonard Rose, the owner of Sunnyslope, named the little settlement of Lamanda Park after his wife Amanda to which he added the first letter of his own name.
 
The Baldwin Ranch encompasses about 3,000 acres, 1,000 of which are in citrus. Mr. Taylor, especially, is interested in hearing about the horse-breeding activities on the Ranch and in seeing Mr. Baldwin’s fine collection of coaches; and both he and his wife delight in watching the peacocks that walk around as if they owned the place. “We have certainly seen our share of unusual birds lately,” is Mrs. Taylor’s observation. Mrs. Taylor is also able to take a Kodak picture of Lucky Baldwin himself near the lake that surrounds the Queen Ann cottage. Little do they know that Mr. Baldwin, who has owned the Ranch since 1875, will die in April of that year. The Taylors would have agreed with this assessment of the Ranch written in the Los Angeles Times a mere ten years before:

“I have seen a number of botanical gardens in different parts of the world, but there are few more beautiful than the grounds around this home of Lucky Baldwin. It is one of the prettiest places in the world, and every tree and shrub connected with it has been planted at his direction. He took this vast estate when it was practically a desert, and made it a land of flowers, trees and of fruit bearing orchards.”
  
Baldwin’s Ranch is what we know as the Arboretum in Arcadia. I’m sure many of you have visited it.

After a fine picnic lunch on the Ranch, the tour group heads on to view the Mission San Gabriel. The tour-guide points out to them the ancient (by California standards) historical and interesting details of its architecture and the role the missions played in the development of California. The romance of the California missions really tugs at the heartstrings of our Eastern visitors and they bless the brave Franciscan padres led by the sainted Father Sierra who, not that many years before, created this little island of civilization in the land of the savage Indian.

Although it is getting late by the time they return to the Hotel Green, Mr. Taylor has a sudden urge to play golf. He is able to find transportation south to the Raymond Hotel, which sits on top of a dramatic flowered hill at the border with South Pasadena and is the only hotel to actually have links on its own grounds. The Raymond has recently played host to President Taft and Andrew Carnegie and is said to be the most home-like of all Pasadena’s resort hotels. As he inquires about golf privileges, Mr. Taylor admires the panorama view of the San Gabriel Valley from the hotel’s broad verandah. Clock golf and a six-hole court golf game are also available, but Mr. Taylor prefers to use the regular nine-hole course. The guests at the hotel probably think it is a little strange to see this tourist hurriedly making his way around the course all by himself in the lengthening shadows of evening, but Mr. Taylor is happily oblivious.
 
Sports of all kinds are available to the tourist in Southern California – not only golf, but tennis, polo, archery, clay-pigeon shooting, pony and horse racing, auto racing, yachting, canoeing, swimming, and, of course, hunting and fishing. There are also more sedate activities like billiards, lawn bowling, croquet, and quoits. For the very athletically inclined there are marathon contests and gymkhana of all kinds. After his rigorous game, Mr. Taylor joins his wife for dinner at Grimes Grill and Chop House on South Fair Oaks.
 
Well the last day of the Taylors’ stay in Pasadena has dawned, but the weather has become chilly and damp. And what to the Taylors do on their last day in Pasadena?  They leave it and go to the beach!  It suddenly occurs to them that if they don’t get to the seaside now, they never will, and what would the folks back home say if they don’t at least visit it once and maybe even get their feet wet in the Pacific Ocean? Twelve splendid seaside resorts are available to visit by elegant electric cars. A special car takes them past the carnation and sweet-pea fields near Redondo to the bustling town itself with its picturesque seaport full of the luxurious steamers of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company sailing regularly to San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and other coastal cities. Next to them are moored lumber vessels from many lands and even a modern steel steamer from Hawaii or japan. Towering visible above it all is the Huntington Power Plant, the largest in the West, made from concrete that has been created of gravel from the nearby Moonstone Beach. The Taylors are taken to the Great Salt Plunge, described thusly by Mr. James: “The Plunge is said to be the largest in the United States, if not the world, and in point of finish and equipment is unequaled. The immense structure is 278 by 156 feet and contains 1,350 dressing rooms, besides a complete Turkish and tub bath department.

“The swimming pools are three in number, being a “baby pool” 30 by 70 feet, with a depth of water ranging from one to two feet; a high diving pool also 30 by 70 feet, with water nine feet deep; and a main pool 70 by 157 feet, with water from three to five feet in depth. All the pools are supplied by a continuous flow of pure warm sea water from the great power plant. At most bathhouses pumping and heating are expensive luxuries and the water is changed only at stated intervals. At the Redondo Beach Plunge the water changes constantly, entering the pools in enormous volume through ornamental fountains, and being withdrawn at numerous outlets, insuring adequate circulation and perfect sanitary conditions, so no one is obliged to bathe in water formerly used by other bathers.” After a soothing soak in the warm pool waters, and a stroll along Moonstone Beach where Mrs. Taylor gathers pebbles which Mr. Taylor reminds her will make terribly weighty souvenirs, the couple walks up to the magnificent Hotel Redondo, one of the showplaces of Southern California, for a mariner’s lunch.

Saturday, January 8 – the day when Mr. and Mrs. Taylor must depart Pasadena and Los Angeles for San Francisco aboard the Southern Pacific’s direct parlor-car and express service – a day’s journey to have a look at the city by the bay before heading home to Chicago. Mr. Taylor is exceedingly pleased when his spouse challenges him to a morning gallop over the countryside before they must leave that afternoon. What a miracle the Southern California air has performed on his formerly fading wife. Even riding-side saddle and in long dress and elaborate hat, under a lowering sky that threatens imminent rain, she just might win. He recalls the words of a travel brochure that proclaimed “longevity is due first to climate, second to well-ordered living. Pure atmosphere and pure surroundings can not but result in pure lives.”
  
Mr. Taylor was probably too responsible a husband and father ever to have written a letter like this one that a fictitious visitor to Southern California was supposed to have written back home to New York: “This is just to say goodbye. I mean it. Goodbye forever. Shut up the old shop for me. Pull down the ancient sign; put a special delivery stamp on the baby and start her coming this way. We have found the Garden of Eden. The grapevines have oozed at us; orange blossoms have shed their fragrance over us; California skies shine down upon us. We are lost to the East forever!”

No, we can hear Mr. and Mrs. Taylor agree, as they ride out of Pasadena on horseback, out of our lives, and soon out of our century altogether: “Well, we surely will have things to tell people at home when we get there, and we’ll wager that when they hear about [all this] they’ll call us liars and tell us the California air has gone to our heads. Well, we’re most willing to believe anything we ever hear about Southern California, after today, and it certainly will not be out last trip to this part of the world.”

© Tim Gregory, Pasadena 1999, 2014. Used with the permission of the author.