by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As a group of posts here have covered, most thanks to a donation from Barbara and John Clonts of Hacienda Heights of papers related to the early development of that community when it was established in the early 1910s as North Whittier Heights, the subdivision was promoted for agricultural lots for the growing of avocados, citrus, grains and other crops.
The natural environment of the area, formerly part of the Workman’s family half of Rancho La Puente and then lost to Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin in a foreclosure of a loan to the failed Temple and Workman Bank, included steep portions of the north facing portion of the Puente Hills, softer grades at the foothills and then a gentle sloping plain northward into the San Gabriel Valley. Precipitation hitting the upper elevations led to the formation of small streams, particularly those coming out of canyons and which drained into San José Creek, which flowed west and then southwest and emptied into the San Gabriel River.
When the Whittier Extension Company, developers of North Whittier Heights, laid out the tract, acquired from the Baldwin estate a couple of years after his 1909 death, and sales began in the spring of 1913, one of the promotional elements highlighted in advertisements were the roads being built throughout, as well as the development of Turnbull Canyon Road to connect the subdivision to Whittier, of which, as the name clearly indicated, the new community was intended to be a north and northeast extension.
The winter of 1913-1914, however, posed problems for the recently launched project as for the rest of greater Los Angeles because heavy rains, particularly in a four-day stretch in February that produced some 15 inches a rain (what was generally a full season locally and that season the total was 23) and in a single hour an-inch-and-a-half, led to significant flooding. No deaths were reported, but property losses were in the millions of dollars.
There’d, of course, been plenty of bad floods before, but this one spurred the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to take action and create a flood control district to plan measures to control water flow as well as impound the precious fluid for use. Headed by James W. Reagan, the district issued a fold-out broadside about the 1914 floods, followed by reports with suggestions and, over the next dozen or years or so, he oversaw a variety of projects, some of which have been highlighted in prior posts here.
The earliest of these was issued in July 1915 as the five members (each appointed by a supervisor) of the flood control board including Reagan provided their individual views on the situation, including the history of flooding in the county, discussing conditions in districts, and then making recommendations and suggestions for dealing with the issue of flood control and water impoundment. A multi-part post here went delved rather deeply into that report.
The featured object from the Homestead’s holdings for this post is an interesting and instructive, if very technical, article in the 7 January 1915 edition of the trade publication, Engineering News, about “A Combination Concrete Road and Flood Channel, Los Angeles County, Calif.” and which was mentioned in a late September issue of the journal. This concerned an attempt to deal with drainage of water pouring down from the north slope of the Puente Hills as a road was being built on an east to west arrangement through a portion of North Whittier Heights.
The author was Ralph Bennett (1875-1951), a consulting engineer of some prominence in greater Los Angeles during that period. A native of Illinois and raised for much of his youth in neighboring Indiana, Bennett was trained as an electrical engineer and appears to have migrated to the Angel City around 1908. When he married local resident, Mary Belle Burns, in summer 1910, Bennett was working in the northern part of the state, having been enumerated in that year’s federal census in Butte County where he was involved in a large power-producing project, likely hydroelectric.
He rose to some prominence in this region when he was hired to be the consulting engineer for the Dominguez Land Corporation, developer of the new city of Torrance, founded in October 1912, and he was one of the incorporators that month for the Torrance Water, Light and Power Company. The new burg offered many innovations for local town planning with respect to the incorporation of residential, commercial and industrial and agricultural components, not to mention the hiring of such prominent figures as Irving Gill as architect and Frederick Law Olmsted as landscape architect.
The president of the Dominguez firm was Jared S. Torrance, who ran a prominent real estate development firm with Edwin J. Marshall, a Texas oilman who largely owned the Chino ranch in western San Bernardino County. Torrance, Marshall and Company, very quickly after launching the Torrance project, became investors with Edwin G. Hart in others with the Whittier Extension Company and its North Whittier Heights development. So, it was small wonder that Bennett became involved with the latter and, therefore, wrote the article.
He began the piece with the observation that “in the various semi-arid countries much of the rainfall is in the form of torrential storms” and as “streams carry much eroded material and are constantly raising the lower portions of their channels or are eroding new gorges,” the main issue was that “in bringing valuable land into cultivation for citrus or similar intensive crops, the property must be protected from all possibility of storm-water damage due to such streams.” Prior to 1912, the land was basically untouched in terms of how water runoff was handled, meaning those existing gullies and washes emptied into the creek, as noted above, with no effect on land use.
With respect to North Whittier Heights, Bennett remarked,
Near Whittier, Calif., the Whittier Extension Co. recently completed part of the development work on a property of which the relatively level portions were crossed by a series of shallow barrancas [typically, deep gullies with steep sides] running out from the edge of the hills. These were scattered over the entire piece and did not join in any definite channel in their course across the property.
What was undertaken, however, “in order to control the storm flow down these otherwise dry channels,” is that a ditch was unearthed along “a road on a gently falling grade” to capture the water.” The channel was constituted, however, so that it did not have to be lined with concrete or some other material, “although the entrance of every watercourse was protected by a concrete sill and apron.”
What this roadside drainage did was to send “the flow of the minor streams into the channel of the largest one,” though this latter “was almost lost in its lower reaches,” apparently meaning its most northern section at or near San José Creek. But, with the redirected water from the other barrancas, it was “certain that the main channel would not only continue to increase in extent, but that the erosion would be serious.”
Consequently, a pair of options were available as a remedy. First was a typical concrete lining, but this was considered “a constant inconvenience in the working of adjacent lands,” dedicated, as noted above, to agriculture, “and in the maintenance of roads.” This was because “they require frequent bridges,” something with which Bennett had direct experience in Torrance and other work, “and are liable to be clogged by débris catching against the bridges” when the ditch should run clean.
The other was to construct “a channel extremely wide and very shallow, and with a nearly flat bottom, to be used also as a paved road.” The engineer commented that, while this was “almost the standard practice among the Latin races,” these “center gutter roads” were not to be found much in the English-speaking world. He added that “during severe storms but little travel moves on an ordinary road, and the flooding of even well laid out modern streets during severe storms is to be expected.”
The first pair of illustrations showed a cross-section of the concrete road and storm drain built at North Whittier Heights, with Bennett explaining that “the first section of the road,” shown in a photograph showing construction work on it, “has been in use for over a year without damage, although it went through one of the severest winters southern California has ever experienced.” The writer was a relative new resident, of around a half-dozen years, and there were certainly seasons of much higher rainfall, though the intensity of those four days the prior February was certainly unusual.
Bennett continued that
During the storms of the season over 1200 tons of rock, gravel and sand entered the paved road at its upper end, from an unpaved stretch, and passed along the entire length of the pavement without damaging it. The 4-in. base has developed only the usual shrinkage cracks. In a few places the surface oil was rather poorly applied and a little wear has occurred at these places.
Moreover, the bottom as shown in the cross-section was considered “a disadvantage as small streams of water flow in an irregular course and leave the entire width of road in a dirty and unsightly condition.” So, as “during the present season the road is to be extended on a steeper grade and with a considerable amount of curvature,” a new approach was to be taken, as shown in a third illustration, so that “the roadway is sloped to a center gutter and the curbs are of a neater and stronger shape than those of the old road.”
Turning to “Hydraulic Features,” the engineer noted that “the drainage area is about 400 acres, mostly broken hill land with very steep slopes” and the drainage went as far as 6,000 feet, or about 1.13 miles from the southernmost line of the paved roadway. Bennett then got very technical with respect to water flow, but noted that with a certain level of “water velocity in the road . . . it will be necessary to bank the curves” of the thoroughfare, “to keep the main stream in the channel.”
Moreover, “the height of wall required on some sharp curves will be considerable” with concrete covering lower sections and the upper levels “protected by hand laid dry rubble.” Given this and “to prevent heavy material being again brought on the road, the upper end will take water over a low weir [a short dam-like structure] from a small settling basin.”
In concluding his analysis, Bennett remarked that
While this class of construction offers many striking economies in cost, it has one very serious disadvantage: the road so used must not be the only possible means of access to any important locality, for there will be times, of course, when the road cannot be traveled at all.
Again, North Whittier Heights was then an agricultural subdivision with few houses, no shopping centers, parks, schools or other built environments aside from outbuildings and other smaller elements. Automobile and truck traffic would be light and very localized for the most part. The idea of this “combination concrete road and flood channel” as an experiment seemed desirable and feasible for the tract at the time, but there is no evidence the practice was extended beyond this one thoroughfare or that it was long maintained for the road.
As to the road, it is impossible to know if was one that was maintained later and exists today. Dramatic changes in land use after World War II, with a great population boom and the rapid spread in suburbanization in the eastern San Gabriel Valley led to a remaking of North Whittier Heights from an agricultural to a residential community, including a name change, by 1960, to Hacienda Heights.
Additionally, great strides were made in road construction, much less with near-universal paving, and drainage, including, by the time large-scale house construction came to the Heights, sewers and concrete-paved storm drains that run into San José Creek—which, in 1969, was fully paved as a flood control channel.
It does appear, from the structure of the hills in the background and the wide area shown in the photograph, that the road shown here was in what was then called Happy Valley, the wide section in which Hacienda Boulevard (formerly Hudson Road) and Turnbull Canyon Road were the main north-south thoroughfares. Whether the road was on or near the current routes of Newton or Tetley streets or La Subida or Los Altos drives would certainly be interesting to know—and maybe someone out there can venture an educated guess?
In any case, this is a notable source of early information about North Whittier/Hacienda Heights, not long after its establishment, as well as attempts to improve drainage in places like it, including concrete roads and storm drain systems. We’ll continue to offer more posts about this area and its early development, so keep an eye out for those.