Millionaires of a Day: An Inside History of the Great Southern California 'Boom'.

New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1890. First edition. Octavo. 2-8, 2. ads for author's other books], 7[8-publisher's ads. Publisher's bright blue cloth with gilt spine and cover lettering. Minor extremity wear. Bookplates of Jerome A. Hart and Millard M. Meir. A very good copy of this Southern California classic."He [Theodore S. Van Dyke] lived here in the spring of 1887, when “The streets were everywhere crowded, gold clinked on every hand, and imaginary millionaires by the score rode around the streets in shining new buggies with fast horses, or bustled about the banks and real-estate offices with checkbooks sticking from their outside breast pockets.” By that summer, he writes, “fully five sixths of the buyers were buying, not for use, but to sell at an advance to some one else in a few days or weeks. And…nearly all sales were upon contract, with only one fourth or one third paid in cash.”Even today, the memory of the boom haunts people. Overnight it made the town unrecognizable, and it made some individuals rich beyond their dreams. But when the speculative frenzy abated in the early months of 1888, real estate prices crashed. The subsequent loss of both wealth and dreams was so abrupt folks couldn’t believe it had happened. By 1889, more than half the 35,000 souls who had stampeded into town had fled, and the Santa Fe Railroad had announced that it was shifting its operational base to San Bernardino. In 1891, floods destroyed the track through Temecula Canyon again." (San Diego Reader).