Health seekers', tourists' and sportsmen's guide to the sea-side, lake-side, foothill, mountain and mineral spring, health and pleasure resorts of the Pacific coast

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Preface To The First Edition

Santa Baebaea, Cal., April, 1881.

There is probably no portion of the world which possesses greater natural advantages for health and pleasure seekers than the United States.

Its vast territorial extent, embraces a combination of mountains and plains, rivers and valleys, forests, lakes and sea coast, on a scale of unpar" alleled grandeur and interest, affording unlimited range in the choice of situations as to climatic, scenic and social requirements.

The order of nature is opposed to monopoly, and distributes its gifts more evenly than appears at first view.

The characteristic features of the topography, climate and resources of the Atlantic and Pacific Slopes, and the great elevated region intervening, are so marked that each division of country becomes the sole possessor of certain great advantages, which cannot be destroyed, removed or counterfeited.

There is no place on either the Atlantic or Pacific Coasts which can match the scenery or climate of the interior mountains and plains; no spot in all that immense region which can satisfy a demand for sea air, sea food and ocean breezes ; no climate from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico comparable with that of the Southern Pacific Coast; and no place from Alaska to Mexico which equals in all respects the great popular watering places of the East . This great diversity, and wise distribution of natural advantages, removes all cause for unfair rivalry, and should lead to the utmost liberality between sections and individuals specially interested in attracting and providing for the health and pleasure seeking public. ^In proportion as we increase in population, wealth and general information, and possess the means for rapid and easy transit, the people will more and more bestow their patronage where most deserved and best adapted to their special wants. Hitherto Americans have gone much abroad for recreation and health, but it has been mainly due to the undeveloped condition of our own country. The most frequented watering places in America have been known to the general public but a few years. Six years ago the writer was accustomed to gallop up and down the beach of Coney Island without meeting an obstruction, save an occasional fisherman's cabin, where now miles of hotels and caravansaries, unsurpassed in magnitude and excellence of accommodation and management, entertain tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of people daily during the heated term. Last season, while camping at Ocean Grove, New Jersey — one of a succession of seaside resorts extending from Sandy Hook southward along the coast for over twenty miles, including Long Branch, Asbury Park and Ocean Beach — we were informed by one of the original owners of that portion of the shore that the whole of that almost unbroken line of magnificent hotels and summer residences, now thronged with multitudes of visitors and sojourners from June to September, was all the creation of less than ten years. Still more recently have the great natural pleasure resorts and sanitariums of the interior of the continent and the Pacific Slope become practically accessible. Now that the facilities for transcontinental travel are so complete, a considerable and constantly increasing number of people from the Atlantic States will seek, especially during the winter season, the mild and healthful resorts of the Pacific Coast.

Health and pleasure seeking constantly involves the question of adaptation. No two persons were ever created alike in their mental and physical natures, and their requirements in a state of health or disease. All experience is so personal, that what we find to be good for us, affords a most unreliable guide in determining the needs of others. It is, therefore, a responsibility which no one should assume, without the most thorough knowledge of the subject, to give specific advice respecting those situations which will best promote the health or happiness of any one. Our present purpose is simply to furnish such descriptions of the most favorably known watering places and health resorts of this coast as will enable the interested reader to form a correct estimate of the special advantages which they afford. N. H. C.

Preface To The Second Edition

San Francisco, Oal., November, 1883.

Since the publication of the First Edition, I have visited most of the health and pleasure resorts of the Pacific Coast from Mexico to Alaska.

In the meantime, the completion of two new transcontinental railways renders them accessible to both tourist and invalid.

Beginning at San Diego, I have followed the natural order of description, presenting the various places and objects of interest as reached in traveling northward.

I am under special obligations to Major Ben. C. Truman, the well-known brilliant author of "Semi-Tropical California," "Occidental Sketches," "The South after the War," "Campaigning in Tennessee," "Tourists' Guides, " etc., etc., for valuable information and cuts for this work.