“Rapidly Going to the Front as the Most Attractive Country Resort in Southern California”: Some Early History of Sierra Madre Villa, 1875-1880, Part Three

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

Beginning in 1875 as a 500-acre residential estate for painter William Cogswell, well-known for his portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Hawaiian monarchs, among others, Sierra Madre Villa became, in some two years, a hotel which was widely admired for its because mesa location in the San Gabriel Valley at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in what is now northeast Pasadena.

Cogswell turned over management of the Villa to his son-in-law William P. Rhoades (1836-1913), who was born in Skaneateles, a town on the northern shore of a long lake (hence its indigenous name) in New York, not far from Syracuse, where his father owned a farm. Rhoades married Cogswell’s daughter Jennie in New York and, with their son William Lauren in late September 1874, took the transcontinental railroad to San Francisco where they joined her parents.

Just several days later, early in October, the Rhoades family took a steamer to Los Angeles and, with the dawn of 1875, the purchase of the Rancho Santa Anita land took place and the cottage built by Cogswell, but in which the Rhoades family resided. Once the Sierra Madre Villa hotel was constructed in 1877, Rhoades became its manager, remaining in that position for about eight years, while Cogswell resided in San Francisco and traveled in Hawaii and México during these early years of operation.

It is notable that, while the first greater Los Angeles boom only recently came to a stark, stunning end, including the failure of the Temple and Workman bank and the doldrums of America’s “Long Depression,” taking up most of the Seventies, this major expenditure took place as Sierra Madre Villa because the first tourist hotel of significance in the San Gabriel Valley.

The early January 1878 ad that ended the second part of this post noted that the Villa was suitable for residence during summers and winters and a short note in the Los Angeles Express of the 4th recorded that the hostelry “has a machine which supplies eighty lights to that extensive establishment, and which only cost $500” and, as for gas, it was known how much that involved, “but it is very light in more ways than one.”

A shock came a little more than two weeks later when that paper’s issue of the 21st reported on the murder of John Oltman, who was “employed for three years past to superintend the apiary,” or bee-keeping business, “connected with the Sierra Madre Villa.” He left the Villa to walk to Azusa, where he’d been looking to buy some property, and it was assumed he was killed in the course of a robbery and further believed that he had a large sum for the transaction, though it was revealed that Cosgwell had not yet paid him the money to be used to purchase the land. Notably, a prior post here highlighted a photo by Alexander C. Varela, who took several views in and around the Villa, and which was labeled “An Apiary on the Foothills of San Gabriel” and which certainly is the one managed by Oltman for Cogswell.

An early use of the Villa was described in the Los Angeles Star of 7 February when the Unitarian Church of Los Angeles held a picnic there, though a downpour took place that day, which was in keeping with the group’s presentation of a tableaux of Noah entering the ark he built for the Old Testament flood that covered the earth. The effort was undertaken with great enthusiasm, but “about the time the ark should have been stranded on Ararat the deluged picnic party returned to town.” Even in early May, when the Los Angeles Herald of the 7th reported of a visit of two men to the hotel, there was “three hours [of] gentle rain,” but the guests were of “the opinion that the Villa is one of the most delightfully located hotels on the coast.”

The next day one of the first mentions of distinguished guests came when the Herald observed that Darius O. Mills, a prominent capitalist from San Francisco who founded the Bank of California and resigned as president that year, and his party arrived in Los Angeles and, after having lunch at the St. Charles Hotel (formerly the Bella Union, the first hostelry in town, and the Clarendon) “went out to the Sierra Madre Villa,” presumably to stay at the facility. Other noted visitors this first full year of operation included tea merchant C. Adolphe Low, also a Bank of California director, and Richard Hammond, former manager of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company.

As the summer season ensued, there were several mentions of the Villa in the Los Angeles press. The Herald of 3 July made a recommendation that “those of our people who wish to spend” Independence Day “quietly and pleasantly, we recommend a drive to the Sierra Madre Villa, one of the most delightful retreats in Los Angeles county.” A correspondent to the Express on the 11th briefly remarked that “as a Winter resort Sierra Madre Villa has no equal on the Pacific Coast” and was “a mountain home overlooking one of the finest valleys in the world (San Gabriel.”

Several days later, the hostelry welcomed as a long-term guest, John Corning, the assistant superintendent of the Central Pacific Railroad, the western portion of the transcontinental route completed not quite a decade ago. As would be the case for so many persons in succeeding years, Corning went to the Villa to recover his health, but, gastritis took his life in November, after four months of residence there. The northern California town of Corning was named for him when it was established four years later.

A common threat in our mountains is the wildfire and an early reference came in the 12 September edition of the Herald to a conflagration that erupted on the Rancho San Pasqual, where a rancher cleared brush and then set it alight. While the blaze blew through several properties and canyons, “the flames fortunately were averted this side of the Sierra Madre Villa” and that the cultivation of orchards and vineyards there were considered a barrier to the fire.

Early in 1879, the Express reported that the Villa was visited by Clara Morris, a stage actor of note from the beginning of the decade with her peak period occurring during the Eighties, while also author of over ten books and outspoken as a feminist. A San Francisco visitor wrote to the Star of 18 March wrote about a visit to the institution, focusing on the agricultural element, including the report that there were 6,000 lemon, lime and orange trees.

In this fourth year, already had enough mature fruit (this post noted that Cogswell brought four and five-year old trees to plant there, rather than new ones) so 50,000 oranges were sent to market that year, as well as unstated quantities of the other citrus. The oranges were deemed to be “of the finest quality” and “brought the highest prices.” A couple of weeks prior, also in the Express, former Governor John G. Downey, amid a season of troubling frost, observed that, when visiting the Villa, “failed to find the least sign” of it, so that even the sensitive tobacco plants raised there were not affected.

During the spring, the papers commented on visits from the justices of the California Supreme Court, likely in Los Angeles for a term of hearing cases, while one of the earliest of the large-scale excursion trips emanating from Boston, probably led by Walter Raymond, who later built one of the major hotels in greater Los Angeles out at South Pasadena, spent time at the Villa as part of a trip that included stops at Santa Monica, the preeminent local coastal retreat of the time, and Yosemite.

It was small wonder that the Herald of 28 March opined that,

The Sierra Madre Villa is rapidly going to the front as the most attractive resort in Southern California.

Another notable reference in 1879 related to the Villa was a report in the 27 May edition of the Express that Dr. Luther Hall bought land at the mouth of Rubio Canyon and having a similar elevation and view as Cogswell’s place and with the paper concluding that “Dr. Hall proposes to improve the place and establish a sanitarium,” with congratulations offered for “his fortunate choice of location.” Though the facility apparently wasn’t built, the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains became replete with such establishments as health-seekers flocked to the region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

On 8 June 1880, William D. Martin arrived to enumerate the two dozen persons at Sierra Madre Villa for the federal census, with William (age 43) and Jennie (34) and their sons [William] Lauren (8) and Fred (3), eleven staff and nine boarders listed. Among those denoted as “servants” included a clerk, table servant, chambermaid, teamster, two cooks and kitchen servant, a “wash man” and three laborers (these last likely working in the orchards and vineyard.) Of these, the places of origin included one each from England, France and Ireland, two from the United States and the remaining half-dozen from China—the Chinese employees included the two cooks and kitchen helper, the launderer and two laborers.

The nine persons staying at the Villa included one native of German and the remainder being Americans. This included a father and son, mother and son and a married couple, while Joseph Patten was an apiarian and obviously a successor to Oltman. The other two boarders were “Abbott Kenney,” this being 35-year old Abbot Kinney, a “capitalist” who’d been a partner in a family-owned tobacco company that provided him a small fortune and James Thomas, a 25-year old, who was denoted as “servant to Kenney,” but may well have been a slave when born some eight years before the Emancipation Proclamation.

As noted elsewhere in the blog, Kinney soon purchased land adjacent to Sierra Madre Villa and built his Kinneloa estate and, toward the end of 1880, mining magnate Louis L. Bradbury purchased, from Alfred B. Chapman, nearly 700 acres “lying between Sierra Madre Villa and Baldwin’s [Rancho Santa Anita]” and later the upper-income enclave of Bradbury was established nearby, as well. These purchases, and others, were reflective of the influence Cogswell had in others buying property around him.

Often overlooked with census records are the agricultural sheets that were developed during this period and the 1880 versions was for Cogswell as owner of the Villa property. It showed him as possessing 125 acres of orchards and vineyards, as well as any pastures and meadows, along with 375 acres of undeveloped property. The “Farm Values” section included $85,000 including the land, structures and enclosures, $1,200 in equipment and machinery and $750 in livestock. For “Labor,” Cogswell reported $1,100 in wages paid for 156 weeks of labor, not including housework.

The estimated value of farm productions was all of $180, while a portion devoted to “Grass Lands” showed that there were 15 acres of mowed acreage and 30 tons of hay harvested during 1879. With respect to livestock, there were eight horses and a mule, along with a single milk cow and a calf born during the past season. Fifty barnyard poultry were recorded and 300 dozen eggs were produced. In the “Orchards” section, it was reported in a marginal note that Sierra Madre Villa had two acres of bearing orange trees, these numbering 200, with 75,000 pieces of fruit harvested. At the vineyard, two acres yielded 40,000 pounds of grapes sold during the prior year.

By mid-1880, there were regular listings, as with Los Angeles hotels, of guests registered at the hotel the prior day and the first located example, from the Express of the 25th included folks from San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda as well as a baker’s dozen of locals, such as John E. and Elizabeth Hollenbeck, prominent residents of the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles, with John, a banker and real estate developer of note, including in that community founded by William H. Workman, thousands of acres on the Rancho La Puente in modern Covina and West Covina and the Hollenbeck Block and Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

The 24 July edition of the paper in an article about persons coming to the region for health reasons advised that,

Should one simply desire to take in the peaceful and prosaic comforts of a country life, he will find most excellent provisions made for him at Pasadena, at the Sierra Madre Villa, in the San Gabriel Valley [and other locales in greater Los Angeles] . . . On every hand the facilities for enjoyment, for rejuvenation, for adventure, are perfect, and one needs only a little money and time at his disposal to reap the full benefit of them, one or all as he may select.

Towards the end of the year, as the State of California decided upon a location for a “consumptive hospital,” geared to the many persons who suffered from tuberculosis, it was noted that a committee of the Legislature picked a spot in Napa County as closest to the most people needing services.

The Express of 11 December, however, added that the committee members “admit that the vicinity of Sierra Madre Villa, in this county, would be the best in a curative point of view.” Adding that Napa was already the home of the “Branch Insane Asylum,” the paper concluded that “when it comes to final action upon the Hospital for Consumptives, the representatives [in the legislature] from Southern California ought to insist on its location in this section or kill the bill.” A decade later, a state facility for the insane was established near San Bernardino, but, as noted above, sanitariums became a common feature in the San Gabriel Valley foothill section.

Lastly, for the opening of the 1880-1881 winter season, the Herald of 27 November offered a short statement about “that famous resort” that is an interesting recap for this early history of the Villa’s agricultural component:

The climate there is perfection, but it is fully rivaled by the wonders of vegetation. Absurdly young trees are simply breaking down with the weight of oranges which encumber them, and the limbs have to be propped up., Mr. Rhodes [sic], for some time past, has been rejoicing in a corner [of the market] in limes; and during the past couple of months, he has disposed of 100,000 of them, in San Francisco, at $18 a thousand. He has another 100,000 on his trees, but looks for reduced prices.

The intent here was to end this post and hold off for some time for future posts on more of Sierra Madre Villa’s history, but, given that the Museum’s collection has a good deal more great photos, not to mention a pamphlet, of the hotel and grounds, let’s keep this momentum going, and launch a new post carrying the story beyond the 1870s. For more details on the Villa and history of the surrounding area, check out the East of Allen website.