Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1879 — Baldwin’s Bonanza. [ARTICLE]

Baldwin’s Bonanza.

E. J. Baldwin, everywhere known as Lucky Baldwin, worked on his father’s farm when young, in Indiana. After twenty-five years’ trial at various pursuits he drifted into the bonanza district, Navada, and in a few years, by well-judged ventures in mining stocks, realized some millions. He became known by building “the Baldwin,” now so favorably known as a popular house on Market street, San Francisco, 275 by 210 feet. Included in the structure is Baldwin’s theatre. The whole, including furniture, cost $3,000,000. Traveling through Los Angelos county he fancied and bought a Spanish grant of 60,000 acres of bountifully watered land, and laid out in princely style.! Of this 13,000 acres are moist bottom land, needing no irrigation. Outside of this he has artificially irrigated most of the {iroperty by means of six miles of eight non pipe, and beautiful lakes are formed here and there, with rustic bridges and other adornments. Some fifty rustic cottages are the homes of his army of working people. All sorts of farm buildings are tastefully arranged, and flowing artesian springs abound, of purest water. The orchard has 1,200 acres, with 48,000 orange and lemon trees, 2,000 almonds, 500 Italian chestnuts, eighty acres of English walnuts. 500 acres of choice grapes,innumerable apples, pears, plums,peaches and figs. He has 60,000 eucalyptus trees of twenty-seven varieties and 3,000 of the graceful pepper trees, our most ornate evergreen and drooping variety, bearing profusion of pepperlooking spice berries. A broad avenue is laid out, three miles long by 120 feet wide, lined on each side with eucalyptus trees. In the center is a row of pepper trees, making a grateful shade in that sunny climate, and the air is cooled by innumerable fountains. Soon a mansion in keeping with the surroundings will be erected on a rising knoll overlooking this fairyland, and some hundred tenantry, with gardens and cultivating fields, will enrich the landscape and make this charmed spot a paradise, where the proprietor can pass his declining years in peaceful contemplation of the romance of his creation.—[San Francisco letter to Baltimore Sun.