Ocean Beach
In San Diego he became editor for the San Diego Sun. Then, with San Francisco associate Frank Higgins, he opened a real estate firm, Carlson & Higgins, just when the real estate boom of 1886–1888 took off. The firm developed Ocean Beach in 1887. They bought 600 acres (2.4 km2) of pueblo land and gave it the name Ocean Beach. They laid out and named the streets, sold lots, and constructed a fancy Victorian-style hotel called the Cliff House. They sold 2200 lots in the first few weeks. To lure buyers they promised to build a rail line to downtown, since the development was 2½ hours from downtown by carriage.
Carlson and Higgins actually did develop a short rail line from Roseville (Point Loma) to Ocean Beach in 1888. They also attempted to build a rail line from Old Town to Roseville, but the project foundered in legal troubles after less than a mile of construction. Meanwhile San Diego's real estate boom had ended and the development was in financial trouble. His partner Higgins committed suicide in 1889. Carlson sold the Ocean Beach development to an Eastern financier, and its development would wait another 20 years when permanent rail service arrived.
Read more about this topic: William H. Carlson
Famous quotes containing the words ocean and/or beach:
“What doubts, what hypotheses, what labyrinths of amusement, what fields of disputation, what an ocean of false learning, may be avoided by that single notion of immaterialism!”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the “big canoe” of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breasts is soon converted into the bitterest hate.”
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