Old Los Angeles1948

[first lines]

[opening narration]

Bill Stockton:
My brother Larry had written from Los Angeles - which was just a dusty pueblo in those days. He said that California was a land of vivid contrasts; great snow-capped mountains and broad fertile valleys, where Mexican and newly arrived American settlers lived in peace and friendship. This seemed mighty good to me - I wanted to see it all from those mountains clear down to the broad blue waters of the Pacific. Then Larry's next letter arrived. It wasn't a very pleasant letter. It told of outlaws who were sweeping Southern California; burning, looting, murdering without rhyme or reason. A holocaust created by some madmen bent on obliterating that paradise. Gold was discovered. Men sought it and sweated and toiled for long weeks and months, only to have their ore trains ambushed and ruthlessly attacked. A towering cliff in Tahoma was blasted, engulfing the smelter below with a tragic loss of life. The dam that supplied the water for the placer mines in Los Flores Canyon was blown up, diverting the waters into Soledad Canyon rendering the sluice boxes useless. At first I thought that maybe Larry had exaggerated things a mite. But I learned different later when I discovered something I hadn't figured on. Something that stabbed deep inside like the thrust of a Navajo lance.