Elsewhere I have referred to the attempt, shortly after I arrived here, or during the session of the Legislature of 1854-55, to divide California into two states--the proposition, be it added of a San Bernardino County representative. A committee of thirteen, from different sections of the commonwealth, later substituted a bill providing for three states: Shasta, in the North; California, at the middle; Colorado, in the South; but nothing evolving as a result of the effort, our Assemblyman, Andrés Pico, in 1859 fathered a measure for the segregation of the Southern counties under the name of Colorado, when this bill passed both houses and was signed by the Governor. It had to be submitted to the people, however, at the election in September, 1859; and although nearly twenty-five hundred ballots were cast in favor of the division, as against eight hundred in the negative, the movement was afterward stifled in Washington.
Damien Marchessault and Victor Beaudry having enthusiastically organized the Santa Anita Mining Company in 1858, H. N. Alexander, agent at Los Angeles for Wells Fargo & Company, in 1859 announced that the latter had provided scales for weighing gold-dust and were prepared to transact a general exchange business. This was the same firm that had come through the crisis with unimpaired credit when Adams & Company and many others went to the wall in the great financial crash of 1855.
I have mentioned the Mormon Colony at San Bernardino and its connection, as an offshoot, with the great Mormon city, Salt Lake; now I may add that each winter, for fifteen or twenty years, or until railroad connection was established, a lively and growing trade was carried on between Los Angeles and Utah. This was because the Mormons had no open road toward the outside world, except in the direction of Southern California; for snow covered both the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas, and closed every other highway and trail. A number of Mormon wagon-trains, therefore, went back and forth every winter over the seven hundred miles or more of fairly level, open roadways, between Salt Lake and Los Angeles, taking back not only goods bought here but much that was shipped from San Francisco to Salt Lake via San Pedro. I remember that in February, 1859, these Mormon wagons arrived by the Overland Route almost daily.