Founding Anaheim

I recently read a book called "Men to Match My Mountains," by Irving Stone, about the history of the Western United States. Fairly good, but one thing that struck me as particularly interesting was the description of how the city of Anaheim, in Southern California, was founded.

The idea for the city, the book says, occured in 1857 to a group of Germans living in San Francisco who found the weather there a bit moist for their liking. (Obviously they were not looking for weather that reminded them of home.) So, 50 families each chipped in $750 to buy 1,165 acres in Southern California. They didn't all immediately move south, however. Instead, while they continued to live in the San Francisco area, they hired people in Southern California to divide up the land into 20-acre lots, build an irrigation canal, lay out a 40-acre town site in the middle, and fence in the community with willow trees. Then, when the vines began to bear fruit, the whole colony moved south to their new home.

But, because the properties were not identical in value, a committee assigned a value to each one, then the families drew lots for the properties. If they got a good lot, they paid the colony company extra money; if they got a poor lot, the company reimbursed them.

Clever... and fair.

I know that founding cities still happens occasionally (developers sometimes create cities near existing population centers, for example), but the idea of getting a group of likeminded people together to invest in a town and then carrying it out so methodically is pretty cool. Also, I thought the system the Germans adopted was very wise; they stayed up north - presumably working at their regular jobs - while they created jobs for themselves down south, then, when things were up and running, they just moved in and started working. Worth thinking about if you're planning to start a city. ;-)