doc241 - Schoenherr Home Page in Sunny Chula Vista

A long, low, one-storied tenement, near the base of the hill, once occupied by rollicking
Captain Magruder and the officers under his command, is now the place where Judge
Witherby, like Matthew, patiently 'sits at the receipt of customs.' But few customers appear,
for with the exception of the mail steamer once a fortnight, and the Goliah and
Ohio, two little coasting steamers that wheeze in and out once or twice a month, the
calm waters of San Diego Bay remain unruffled by keel or cut-water from one year's end
to another.
"Such a thing as a foreign bottom has never made its appearance to gladden the
Collector's heart; in this respect, the harbor has indeed proved bottomless. Two crazy
old hulks riding at anchor, and the barque Clarissa Andrew (filled with coal for the P. M.
S. S. Co.) wherein dwells Captain Bogart, like a second Robinson Crusoe, with a man
Friday who is mate, cook, steward and all hands, make up the amount of shipping at the
Playa.
"Then there is the Ocean House (that's Donohoe's), and a store marked Gardiner
and Bleecker, than the inside of which nothing could be bleaker, for there's 'nothing in it,'
and an odd-looking little building on stilts out in the water, where a savant named Sabot,
in the employ of the U. S. Engineers, makes mysterious observations on the tide; and
these, with three other small buildings, unoccupied, a fence and a graveyard, constitute
all the 'improvements' that have been made at the Playa. The ruins of two old hidehouses,
immortalized by Dana in his Two Years Before the Mast, are still standing, one
bearing the weather-beaten name of Tasso. We examined these and got well bitten by
fleas for our trouble. We also examined the other great curiosity of the Playa, a natural
one-being a cleft in the adjacent hills some hundred feet in depth, with a smooth, hard
floor of white sand and its walls of indurated clay, perforated with cavities wherein dwell
countless numbers of great white owls.... Through this cleft we marched into the bowels
of the land without impediment for nearly half a mile....
"From present appearances one would be little disposed to imagine that the
Playa in five or six years might become a city of the size of Louisville, with brick buildings,
paved streets, gas lights, theaters, gambling houses, and so forth. It is not at all
improbable, however, should the great Pacific Railroad terminate at San Diego . . . the
Playa must be the depot, and as such will become a point of great importance. The
land-holders about here are well aware of this fact, and consequently affix already incredible
prices to very unprepossessing pieces of land. Lots of 150 feet front, not situated
in particularly eligible places either, have been sold within the last few weeks for
$500 apiece.... While at the Playa I had the pleasure of forming an acquaintance with
the pilot, Captain Wm. G. Oliver, as noble a specimen of a sailor as you would wish to
see. He was a lieutenant in the Texas Navy,
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under the celebrated Moore, and told me many yarns concerning that gallant commander....
Leaving the Playa in a wagon drawn by two wild mules, driven at the top of
their speed by the intrepid Donohoe, Mac and I were whirled over a hard road, smooth
and even as a ballroom floor, on our way to Old Town. Five miles from La Playa we
passed the estate of the Hon. John Hays, County Judge of San Diego, an old Texan
and a most amiable gentleman. The Judge has a fine farm of 80 or 100 acres under
high cultivation, and . . . a private fish pond. He has enclosed some twenty acres of the