Ellen G. White: The Lonely Years: 1876-1891 (vol. 3)

The First Camp Meeting in Los Angeles, California

The time had come when through successful evangelistic efforts there were a sufficient number of Seventh-day Adventists south of the Tehachapi Mountains to appoint a truly “southern California” camp meeting. May 8 to 18 was the time selected, and the meeting was to be held in Los Angeles. Most of southern California then was ranch and farming country. To help swell the numbers and bring courage to the new believers in the south, arrangements were made for a specifically engaged “third-class sleeping car” accommodating thirty-six persons to be attached to the express train operated by the Central and Southern Pacific railroads. It would originate at San Francisco, and Adventists could board it at the principal Central Valley points en route. 3BIO 246.1

Ellen White was urged to attend this, the first camp meeting to be held in the Los Angeles area. Although much worn from her incessant writing, she consented to go. In his report in the Review and Herald J. N. Loughborough identified Los Angeles as “near five hundred miles southeast of Oakland, California” (The Review and Herald, May 27, 1884). He reported a rather sparse attendance of Seventh-day Adventists because the late rains had kept the farmers at home getting in their crops, but the community attendance was gratifying. The sixty- by ninety-six-foot preaching tent and twenty-four family tents were pitched on the grounds, with about sixty people camping. In her letter to her son in Oakland, Ellen White described it in these words: “The attendance of brethren is small; outside attendance is the very best.”—Letter 47, 1884. 3BIO 246.2

On Sunday evening, not only was every seat filled but a hundred of the townspeople stood outside to listen. Ellen White attended one meeting each day, and on some days, two. She was accompanied to the south by Mrs. McOmber, described by Ellen White as “faithful as the day is long, tender, attentive, and at times, as she sees my feebleness, appears in agony because she cannot do more.” She was glad to report: 3BIO 246.3

This meeting is doing the church great good. They are learning more than they ever knew before.—Ibid. 3BIO 247.1