Posts Tagged ‘Elisha S. Babcock’

When the Brooklyn bridge was built it was pronounced the “eighth wonder of the world,” and now California has another “wonder” to add to the list. This wonder is the biggest dam in America, and so far as I have been able to learn from mining and civil engineers, it is the largest in the world. –Harper’s Weekly, January 8, 1898.

The wonder dam that quickly became a dam fiasco: Building Morena Dam.

Setting rock in position at Morena, 1897.

There was a time in America when the standard for personal cleanliness was a weekly bath. The “great unwashed” often found that Saturday night soak in commercial bathhouses. During San Diego’s population boom of the eighties, nearly a dozen bathhouses dotted the city’s waterfront. A decade later the baths had become elaborate plunges and included an architectural wonder: Los Banos at Broadway and Kettner Blvd.

The story of the San Diego Baths.

Los Banos at Broadway and Kettner Blvd.