Los Angeles County, CA, Biographies

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GEORGE C. HOPKINS.
 
        Among the numerous classes of business which characterize Los Angeles as 
the commercial metropolis of Southern California, the storage and warehouse 
business is an important one. The largest and finest institution in this line in 
this city and one of the largest on the Pacific Coast is the California 
Warehouse, situated on East Seventh street. The California Warehouse Company was 
incorporated in June, 1888, with a capital stock of $50,000, and the building 
was erected and opened for business in October following. The warehouse is a 
very large brick structure 153 x 301 feet in dimensions, two stories in height, 
and contains 60,000 square feet of floor space. Being covered with iron roofing 
and floored with bituminous rock, it is both fire and rat proof, and is finished 
and furnished with the best improved machinery and appliances for handling 
freight, packing wool, etc., by the use of which thirty cars of freight can be 
handled or 50,000 pounds of wool can be bailed per day. The warehouse has a 
special railroad track connecting it with the Southern Pacific system; and 
freight can be unloaded and loaded from wagons
on either side or from the driveway through the center of the building. The 
company owns an entire block of ground, which is encompassed by a sixty-foot 
street. The California Warehouse Company is composed of a number of the leading 
business men and heaviest capitalists of the city, representing four to five 
millions of dollars. The officers are: T. J. Weldon, President and Treasurer, 
and George C. Hopkins, Vice-President and Secretary. The company handles and 
stores every class of goods except explosive and inflammable articles, such as 
oils and paints. They handle and bale 200,000 pounds of wool annually, and 
during the busy season have $100,000 in value of goods in store in the house at 
one time. The business gives employment to from fifteen to forty men. Mr. 
Hopkins, the gentleman whose name heads this sketch, and the active manager of 
the warehouse business, is a man of large experience in this branch, having been 
in the employ of the American Express Company in Chicago ten years, and in the 
freight department of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company about eight years, 
before organizing the California Warehouse Company, in which he was one of the 
prime movers. He came to California in 1872, and engaged in wool�growing in 
Oregon four years, at the end of which time he removed to Los Angeles. He was 
born near Aurora, Illinois, in 1846; went to Chicago in 1852, when it was a mere 
country town, saw it grow to a great commercial metropolis, and witnessed its 
destruction by the most terrible conflagration in the world's history, on 
October 9 and 10, 1871. He is greatly in love with Los Angeles and Southern 
California, and thinks this is the garden spot of the world. Mr. Hopkins's 
consort was Miss Spencer, daughter of Judge James A. Spencer, one of the 
original projectors of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa F� Railroad, and was one of 
the builders of the Kansas City & Topeka division. Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins have two 
children, a son and daughter.
 
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California �  Chicago, The Lewis 
Publishing Company, 1889   Page 747
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler