Fulsome
promotional text from the Burbank Times,
March 30, 1889. That opening
sentence was prophecy!
BURBANK
The Sightliest Location in Southern California.
Southern California seems to be designed for one vast Sanitarium. Conditions favorable to longevity are nowhere more numerous or more happily combined. Land and ocean, mountain and valley, sunshine and shade, offer here her choicest benefactions to prolong the lives of the feeble and enhance the enjoyment of the robust. In no place are these natural advantages more remarkably manifest than in the San Fernando Valley, in the very center of which spread the broad acres of PROVIDENCIA, and on its sightliest eminence stands the bright, new, prosperous town of BURBANK.
There are none of those sudden changes so trying to weak constitutions, but the sunshine is so continual, and the variations in temperature so small, that one must know the name of the month in order to distinguish winter from summer. “December’s as pleasant as May.”
Daily the salt breeze sweeps inland bearing healing on its wings, purifying and tempering the heated air of the valleys.
The attractions for invalids are:-
1st – Almost continual sunshine, making it possible to live out doors;
2nd – Equitable temperature, without sudden changes or extremes of heat or cold;
3rd – Bracing sea breeze every day, gentle, but exhilarating;
4th – Less than an hour’s ride to the ocean side.
5th – An elevated plateau, where there is a dry and rarified atmosphere;
6th – Natural scenery unsurpassed in grandeur and interest, and the varied allurements of forest and stream to lovers of sport.
Persons who are suffering from general disability and nervous prostration, whose constitutions are racked by the atrocious climatic changes of the Eastern States, will find the genial, even warmth, and get the stimulating, vital air they so much need. Such will find no enervating influence in the heat which enables them to gather figs, oranges, etc., in the day time, nor lurking chills in the bracing air that makes night’s slumber so refreshing.
Consumptives and those afflicted with diseases of the air passages, will surely benefit in this locality.
The invalid is tempted to exercise by the balmy air and beauties of sea and land. The appetite is stimulated by the luxuries of the table; citrus fruits, fresh from the trees,; all varieties of the other fruits in rotation, profusion and perfection; green peas, strawberries, etc., in every month of the year; so that the invalid is constantly induced to eat, exercise, digest and recuperate.
With all this the expense of living need not be large, and no one who is able and willing to work moderately, need fear to come to PROVIDENCIA to make his home upon its broad, productive acres.
Images from the Burbank
Times, March 30 1889:
Mention of our friend J.W. Fawkes (Fawkes Folly)