On this date in 1886, the Los Angeles Times ran a news item worth quoting verbatim:
Anaheim Landing is at present a lively camp. Mrs. Scott, of Anaheim, leased the old warehouse and has fitted it up as a camp life hotel, dividing it up into rooms and making quite a comfortable retreat. Persons so inclined can have all the pleasures of camp life without the trouble of concocting food supplies for the inner man. There are also about twenty tents there, occupied by Anaheim families. Editor Melrose wends his way down there Saturdays, and hopes the change will coax a little flesh onto his bony frame. The boating and fishing are excellent, as is the bathing.
This item is worth quoting because not only it is one of the earliest examples of public relations copy for our locale, but it also uses the lovely turn of phrase, “all the pleasures of camp life without the trouble of concocting food supplies for the inner man.”
Here are some photos taken two years later that show what Anaheim Landing was like after the shipping trade abandoned it for the railroads. I think Mrs. Scott of Anaheim might have been on to something.
– Michael Dobkins
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