Some Cities San Fran. Resurgam | Page 7

Chicago was not
made by or for her things of beauty. Beginning with low wooden
houses along dirty streets, transformations were continued until
systems of parks and boulevards with elegant edifices came into
view,-which shows that, however material the beginning of American
towns may be, if prosperity comes the aesthetical is sure to come with
it. A contrast to Chicago may be found in St. Louis, for a long time
trading-post town and city, which would be of more importance now
were her people of a different quality. Even her chronic calamities,
tornadoes, floods, and epidemics, fail to rouse her energies, so that
Chicago, starting later and under more adverse circumstances,
outstripped her in every particular. Cleveland was laid out for a fine
city, so that as she grew little alteration was found necessary. The
streets are wide, 80 to 120 feet-Superior Street 132 feet-and so
abundant is the foliage, largely maple, that it is called the Forest city.
As an instance of modern aesthetic town construction one might cite
Denver, a western Yankee metropolis of ultrarefined men and women
from down Boston way, breathing a nomenclature never so freely used
before among mid-continent mountains, streets, schoolhouses, parks,
and gardens-all alive with the names of New England poets,
philosophers, and statesmen. Scarcely yet turned the half century in age,
few such charming cities as Denver have been made with fewer
mistakes.
San Francisco at her birth and christening had for godfather neither
prince nor priest, nor any cultured coterie. The sandy peninsula, on
whose inner edge, at the cove called Yerba Buena, stood some hide and
tallow stores and fur depots which drew to them the stragglers that
passed that way, was about as ill-omened a spot as the one designated
by the snake-devouring eagle perched upon an island cactus as the
place where the wandering Aztecs should rest and build their city of
Mexico. San Francisco's godparents were but common humanity,
traders and adventurers, later gold-seekers and pot politicians,

intelligent, bold, and for the most part honest; few intending long to
remain, few dreaming of the great city to arise here; few caring how the
town should be made, if one were made at all. When was improvised an
alcalde after the Mexican fashion, and two boards of aldermen were
established after the New York fashion, and the high officials saw that
they could now and then pick up a twenty-five-dollar fee for deeding a
fifty vara lot, if so be they had on hand some fifty varas, they forthwith
went to work to make them by drawing lines in front of the cove and
intersecting them at right angles by lines running up over the hills,
giving their own names, with a sprinkling of the names of bear-flag
heroes, not forgetting the usual Washington and Jackson, leaving in the
centre a plaza, the cove in front to be filled in later. The streets were
narrow, dusty in summer and miry in winter. Spanish-American streets
are usually thirty-six feet wide. Winding trails led from the Presidio to
the Mission, and from Mission and Presidio to the cove. This was the
beginning of San Francisco, which a merciful providence has five times
burned, the original shacks and their successors, the last time
thoroughly, giving the inhabitants the opportunity to build something
better.
All this time the matchless bay and inviting shores awaited the coming
of those who should aid in the accomplishment of their high destiny.
Situated on the Pacific relatively as is New York on the Atlantic, the
natural gateway with its unique portal between the old East and the new
West, the only outlet for the drainage of thousands of square miles of
garden lands and grain fields, a harbor in the world's center of highest
development, with no other to speak of within five hundred miles on
either side; dominator of the greatest of oceans, waters more spacious
than those of Rio, airs of purple haze sweeter than those of Italy, hills
islands and shore lines more sublime than any of Greece-all this time
these benefactions of nature have awaited the appreciation and action
of those who for their own benefit and the benefit of the nation would
utilize them. Are they here now, these new city-builders, or must San
Francisco wait for another generation?
They must be men of broad minds, for this is no ordinary problem to be
worked out. It is certain that in the near or distant future there will be
here a very large and very wealthy city, probably the largest and
wealthiest in the world. The whole of the peninsula will be covered,

and as much more space beyond it, and around the bay shores to and
beyond Carquinez strait. Viewed in the light of history and
progressional phenomena, this is the only