This first of its kind book tells how America’s global gateway came to be—a story of frontiers, slavery, Civil War, and Pacific imperialism. With colorful characters that bridge local and national, this is necessary reading for anyone who seeks to understand what the United States was, what it is now, and what it will be.
By the mid-nineteenth century, Americans had identified the West Coast as the republic’s destiny, a pathway to the riches of the Pacific. Using engineering and massive machinery, they remade a wild estuary into an engine of national power.
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Photo credit: Jorge Villalba. RF, Getty Images
In September 1854, Manuel Domínguez received a letter from Edward Ord of the United States Coast Survey. The two men had grown acquainted in the year since Ord arrived to triangulate the offshore channel. Their friendship symbolized the possibilities of post-conquest California. The Mexican rancher introduced Ord to the multiethnic world of Los Angeles. Ord connected him to the US government and to the unfamiliar mindset of Americans now populating the state.
Ord certainly thought so. “Many congratulations on the confirmation of your rancho,” he wrote in imperfect Spanish. Yet he warned Domínguez to beware. Among the new immigrants to California were hordes of squatters and swindlers looking to steal property from a rightful owner. To guard against them, he advised that the rancher sell a small parcel to a trustworthy “group of Americans.” “Regards to your wife and daughters,” he closed. “Con que, quedo su amigo, Eduardo Ord.”
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Despite Ord’s caveats to beware of others, his actions would remove thousands of acres, including most of the San Pedro estuary, from the rancher’s estate. Their shared world did not last.
The following chapters examine why. They tell how a transcontinental railroad—the ambitions to locate and build one—provided the thread connecting people, places, and conflict to come.
The officer’s words reveal the mixed character of Los Angeles in the 1850s. Here, former Mexican nationals and Anglo immigrants needed each other in order to prosper. That required trust and time spent in shared company. But friendship resulted from tensions as well. A greater common foe existed: others who could not be trusted. Domínguez and Ord’s bond was forged in this three-sided combination.
Bonds were not quite as they seemed, however. The rancher maneuvered to validate his property, and "Eduardo," his friend, professed to help. But Ord remained an agent of the US. He represented imperial expansion and its sharpening divide between North and South.