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Birds-Eye View of National City. San Diego County. California.
National City, Calif.: Published by Frank B. Burgess & Co., [ca. 1885]. W. W. Elliott, Lith., San Francisco. Lithograph, 17.375” x 25.5” plus margins. CONDITION: Good, Japanese tissue reinforcement and repair to folds on verso of view, including fill to a couple of small losses, a few bits of loss to margins reinstated, light toning along horizontal fold across center of view. A fine bird’s eye view of National City, California in the 1880s, issued as one side of a folding brochure promoting real estate offered by the San Diego Land & Town Company. Depicting National City as seen from an elevated vantage point in the east looking toward San Diego Bay, this view shows the partially developed land in the region, much of which has been divided into plots ready for purchase and construction. In the foreground on the left is a surveyor with his transit overlooking the nascent city, as two companions stand nearby—a trope meant to signify the active parceling of lands for sale. A flourishing agricultural scene on the land below is manifest in multiple farms with orchards, groves, and windmills. Stretching diagonally across these lands is Paradise Valley, with several groves laid out in it. A large building on the right in the foreground is identified in the key above the title as a sanitarium. To the left of National City is the more sparsely developed Chula Vista, and appearing in the upper left corner, at the sea’s edge, is the monument marking the border with Mexico, on the opposite side of the Tijuana River. Arranged above and below the view are vignettes of various notable buildings in town, both public and private. On the bottom are the homes of two of the founders of National City, W. C. Kimball and Frank A. Kimball, as well as those of other prominent citizens, including the residence and real estate office of George W. Roberts. Across the top are the Kimball Block, the G. W. Chase Block, the office building of the San Diego Land Company, the olive works of F. A. Kimball, the real estate office of the publisher of the view, William Burgess, and others. Text below the title summarizes the appeal of the locale: NATIONAL CITY is the terminus of the Atchison, Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe transcontinental system, located on San Diego Bay, about the center of the harbor. The site is a beautiful one for a large city, the residence portion being sufficiently elevated to command a fine view of the harbor and ocean beyond. Here are located the shops of the California Southern railroad, branch of the Atchison system, which continually employ a large force of men; the railroad company's wharf, a substantial structure of creosoted piles, where a number of vessels are always discharging cargoes—at present, principally supplies for the railroad company, consisting of coal, lumber, ties, etc.; the headquarter offices of the California Southern Railroad Company, commodious depot building, coupon-ticket office, Wells, Fargo & Company's express office, etc.; the headquarter office of the San Diego Land and Town Company, who have 40,000 acres, consisting of city lots and suburban 5-acre tracts, choice fruit ranches, etc. for disposal. Here is located the headquarter office of the National City & Otay railway, running north to San Diego. and five miles south to the Otay valley, crossing the beautiful Chula Vista tract. This city gives great promise of becoming an important business center, from the nature of its immediate surroundings. The new motor road, waterworks and other improvements, also greatly enhance the value of property and its desirability for homes and business. The breeze from the ocean is regular, soft and balmy—the temperature, both winter and summer, averaging from 65° to 75°. Extensive text on the verso describes the San Diego Bay region’s climate and agricultural possibilities; the San Diego Land and Town Company (the Kimballs); the advantages of National City vis-à-vis the city of San Diego and the improvements being made; the appeal of Chula Vista, five thousand acres of which the company was selling at the time, and so on. Founded in the late 1860s on the broad sweep of San Diego Bay, National City owed its origin to the enterprise of the Kimball brothers—Frank, Levi, Warren, and George—New England–bred men of capital and ambition who, seeking health and opportunity in a gentler climate, purchased the vast Rancho de la Nación (some 26,000 acres) and laid out a town beside the sea. Their plan was both agricultural and speculative: a settlement with a harbor tied by rail to the interior. To secure that connection, much of the ranch and a substantial portion of the townsite were ceded as subsidies for a railroad terminus, a calculated sacrifice meant to fix the place on the map. Within a few years the Kimballs stood among the leading financiers of the county, their holdings shaping the earliest pattern of streets, wharves, and farms. Under Frank Kimball’s direction the enterprise broadened beyond real estate into cultivation and manufacture. Orchards of olive and citrus were planted where chaparral had stood; groves of eucalyptus furnished fuel for brickmaking; packing houses, mills, and presses turned fruit and oil into marketable goods. His experiments with the Mission olive helped establish a domestic olive industry, and his nurseries introduced lemons, limes, grapefruit, and the tangerine to local fields. The town grew around these works—brick rows, dwellings, and workshops rising in orderly fashion—so that National City became less a speculation than a working colony sustained by agriculture, transport, and trade. Yet the founder’s fortunes did not endure. Frank’s habit of backing neighbors and ventures left him exposed to sharper men, ill-advised guarantees, declining stock, and onerous assessments stripped away the very properties he had assembled. Trust deeds followed; income lands were sold off; taxes mounted; at last even his longtime home was lost to foreclosure. Reduced to modest quarters, he labored on, reclaiming only his old olive mill and resuming small production in his later years. By the time of his death in 1913, much of the estate had passed from his hands. Not in Reps. REFERENCES: “Frank Kimball and the History of National City” in Viewing Victorian Vistas in National City (Save Our Heritage Organisation Tour Committee, 1975).
Item #9966
Price: $3,500.00
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