Author: edcurmudgeon

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT Western Infrastructure Why mince words. Most of the West was literally owned and managed by federal bureaucracies, i.e. the federal government. Whatever

LOS ANGELES Los Angeles dates from the seventeenth century. Its 1900 population slightly exceeded 100,000, the 36th largest in the nation. Yet as late as

The Pacific Northwest The 1890 populations of Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland and Seattle ranged between 43,000 and 50,000 (San Francisco about 300,000). But over the

BABY BIG CITIES OF THE PACIFIC: SAN FRANCISCO Our history centers on why San Francisco competed not only with its southern California neighbor, Los Angeles,

City-Building, City-Builders and Business Elites “Nature does not make cities,” William Angel writes. “People make them.” The “taming” of the frontier can be viewed …

Land Speculation and Homesteading: Railroad-Style CD Privatist land speculation typified a city’s earliest years, and in western states private land speculation followed from how Congress