Flappers & Fiction

King Kalakaua dreamed of a European court in the middle of the Pacific, complete with copied Prussian uniforms and a million-dollar palace that stood mostly empty. But beyond the royal gardens, 1880s Honolulu was a powder keg of sugar barons, political intrigue, and a native population tragically fading away. This vivid 1887 account captures the “Merry Monarch” at the height of his extravagance, just as the sugar magnate Claus Spreckels—and a looming revolution—threatened to bring the curtain down on his South Sea opera.

From the silver-veined depths of the Comstock Lode to the vast irrigation canals of the San Joaquin, this second installment traces the dramatic ascent of the Pacific Coast’s most formidable kings. We meet Senator Jones, who once cut air pipes in a burning mine to save his men, and Adolph Sutro, who exchanged tunnel royalties for Egyptian mummies. These are not merely financial records but romances of sudden wealth, where men like “Lucky” Baldwin survived Apache arrows to eventually drive four-in-hands through San Francisco, proving that fortune favors the boldest gamblers.

Long before Hollywood, Southern California beckoned a different sort of dreamer. This 1877 account chronicles the arrival of the “one-lung tourists” seeking health in the dry air of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. It captures a landscape in transition, where sleepy adobe villages were rapidly giving way to the geometric precision of orange groves and ambitious irrigation canals. While the author praises the climate that could cure the consumptive, he offers a sharp warning about the cost of paradise. You see, even in the nineteenth century, the golden dream required a heavy purse.