There's no better investment than a realistically priced piece of real estate, but in the late 1880s realism was not one of the cornerstones of San Diego’s great land boom. Lots went from dirt to silver to gold and back to dirt, all in 18 wild, nutty months.

    It all started when the first transcontinental train steamed into San Diego station in November, 1885. Passengers alighted, gawked at the palm trees, threw away their overcoats and penned postcards to the old folks to sell the homestead and take the steam cars to sunny Callyforny.

    Land values rose; houses, then more houses, were built. Prospering realtors began to advertise in Eastern newspapers and were rewarded with more trainloads of starry-eyed customers. After straining their meager stores of superlatives to the exhaustion point, realtors wired East for the best word-stringers money could buy. In they came with carpetbags full of dirty shirts and heads crammed with unending supplies of select, purple, lot-selling prose.

    Wildly jealous, local newsmen tried to top the pros in booming San Diego with the result that one citizen commented, "The lying of the San Diego newspapers is something awful to think of and worse to experience!"

    The town had a population of 5,000 in 1885. Two years later a realty firm advertised this fact: "We might say that San Diego has a population of 150,000 people, only they are not all here yet." It was a boom all right. Business lots downtown went from $25 to $2,500 a front foot; small stores rented for $500 a month; poorly furnished rooms were hard to get at $50 a month; carpenters and bricklayers got from $6 to $8 a day (the going rate was $2 in the East).

    And in they poured: farm boys, bankers, gyp artists, light ladies and gamblers, most with hard cash and a willingness to double, triple, quadruple it.

    Subdivisions popped up all around the city. Attracted by free beer and lunch, brass bands and circus acts, people went out for a day of free entertainment, and returned with land titles in their pockets. And the purple prose poured out like hot lava flows:

    "This is no boom based on wheat deals, or pork corners, or other devices of man. It is based on the simple fact that hereabouts the good Lord has created conditions of climate and health and beauty such as can be found nowhere in this or any land."

    "Until every acre of this earthly paradise is occupied, the influx will continue," one modest blurb predicted. The boom spilled out into the back country, where gasping yokels were shown acres of land and sagebrush dotted with cactus plants. Fresh oranges were fraudulently jammed on the spines.

    "New type of orange; make millions; try one," buyers were told. The oranges came from Los Angeles and the buyers came from Suckerville.

    In the spring of 1888, the boom turned to bust. Lots went from thousands an acre, to hundreds, to nothing - no takers. The get-rich-quick boys left town except those who hadn't the fare. Owners of fine houses begged people to live in them for nothing just to keep them up.

    It was a long time before San Diego came back. But the boom had done some good. Water and sewage lines had been laid; streets had been paved; schools and churches built; and trolley car lines were in operation. And the thing that impressed regular residents most about the whole debacle was "them ad writers - wasn’t they somethin'?" Wasn’t they!

    Former employees of the San Diego Independent, of which Herb Lockwood is one, are being sought for a possible reunion. Those names are being gathered by Lil Wagner, 5160 Appleton St., San Diego, CA 92117, telephone 279-8722; fax 541-1447; or e-mail at 74241.1523@compuserve.com.

    Longtime newspaperman "Woody" Lockwood has forgotten more about San Diego history than most historians remember. Retired from daily newspaper work, he is researching a book on military food.