Pasadena City College - Pageant Yearbook (Pasadena, CA)

Page 9 text:

Typical of the western, but lavish buildings of the 1870 ' s is this limestone and brick hotel which was the overnight residence for many illustrious travelers of the late nineteenth century. Old registers still bear the signatures of Mark Twain, J. P. Morgan, Ulysses S. Grant and even the notorious robber Black Bart, although he was registered under his legal name. Today, some of these early hote past seventy or eighty years. are still in operation and have changed little in the

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COPYRIGHT, 1958 by the Associated Students of Pasadena City College, Pasadena, California from the Pasadena Cify College Press

Page 10 text:

Balconies and balustrades complemented the decor of Wells, Fargo and Company Express OfFices, the bankmg-transportation company of the Old West. No western town was without its express office, built of thick brick walls, with sand-covered roofs ond usu- ally two storied. This structure pictured above is typical of the western architecture wtiich flourished in frontier towns. Wells, Fargo and Company was originally founded to provide banking and shipping facilities for western settlers and a transportation route for miners. Their ofFices kept western communities in contact with the East through their delivery service, often earned across the plains by mule teams. The express was rega rded as o means of communication safer than the regular mails, and the express office was an essential port of every frontier town.