by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As automobiles and trucks gained tremendous popularity and use in the first couple of decades of the 20th century, one of the major areas of expansion for their operations was in public transit. As they became more common, the use of buses, also known as stages or jitneys, seriously intruded on the decades-long dominance of streetcars. While the latter went out of service by the early 1960s, buses have continued to operate, though there has been something of a comeback with newer iterations of the former.
This post highlights, from the Museum’s collection, a timetable, or time schedule, from the Crown Stage Lines System, based in the Orange County seat of Santa Ana, effective on 1 May 1922. This pioneering enterprise was founded by Ancle (sometimes, Ancil or Ancel) Boon Watson (1882-1962), a native of northeastern Alabama, whose life couldn’t be traced before his marriage to Ruth Shute at San Francisco in 1910.
An early reference to Crown Stages is from the Santa Ana Register of 18 September 1915, which reported that “announcement has been made by A.B. Watson, of Watson & Tice, proprietors of the Crown Stage Line, to the effect that the line of stages has made arrangement for a depot at 505 North Main street,” on the east side of that thoroughfare just north of 5th Street. Later, the paper remarked that Crown’s service began on the first of that month.
It was added that the structure was to be remodeled and an entrance cut through the front with loading and unloading at the back towards Bush Street. Moreover, continued the paper, “the depot will be fitted up with numerous conveniences for patrons of the line and the new station will be ready for use by the time the new city ordinance ruling the jitneys off the streets goes into effect.” Watson also stated that a pair of 6-cylinder, 7-passenger vehicles were soon to be added to the Crown fleet.
By the end of the year, however, there was already conflict with a competitor as Floyd Wright, a Crown driver rolled up to the Star line depot on Sycamore Street, a block west of Main, between 4th and 5th, and tried to entice waiting passengers to board his stage. Because he was parked for longer than five minutes, the driver was arrested for violating a city ordinance and handed a $3 fine and the Register added,
This occurrence seems only to have further fanned the flames of enmity between the two rival lines. Last night, it is stated, Wright again drove up to the Star depot.
Not only did Wright drive up to the Star headquarters, but he drove inside the depot. He drove inside the depot for the purpose of delivering a package [according to Watson] . . .
While Wright’s machine was standing in the Star depot, it is alleged that a former Crown employe . . . now driving for the Star people, inserted a knife into one of the tires on Wright’s car.
This led to Wright heading to the Crown establishment, recruiting other drivers and “threatening to ‘clean’ the Star drivers.” After the expected denials about the knifing of the tire and the Crown posse descending on the Star depot, it was stated that Watson was planning to seek the arrest of the knife-wielding competitor.
The paper remarked that the attempt of city fathers to allow both lines to use the same stand on Main failed miserably, as others tried to horn in on the business. This led to the city passing the ordinance ordering all jitneys off the streets and into depots, with the Crown and Star enterprises being the two who secured such accommodations. It concluded, “all seemed to be thoroughly harmonious” until the recent incident, though “several arrests have been made of drivers who violated sections of the new ordinance.”
The 12 May 1916 edition of the Register reported that there were prevailing views that “the jitney bus business, unless operated on a large scale and with sufficient capital, could never be made profitable.” Given the recent inauguration of such service in Santa Ana, there were also concerns about the lifespan of the vehicles and the relation of this to profitability when balancing fares with operational costs.
The paper then observed that “the wear and tear question seems to have been solved by the Crown Stage Company” as Watson and a new partner, Eugene L. Deacon, “proprietors of this line of stages, the largest in the county, put only new machines in service and when the machines have been operated for six months they are disposed of.” The experience of the two was that, after a half year, the maintenance costs accelerated to a point in which it was not financially feasible to continue using the vehicle.
Moreover, Deacon opined that “it is utterly impossible for a man operating only a few cars to make a profit in the jitney business” and it was the volume, not the profit ratio, that made a larger operation able to survive. Crown had a fleet of 26 vehicles requiring 32 drivers, who, incidentally, worked on commission, while there was an office staff of a half dozen persons and an Anaheim lawyer kept on retainer.
Crown also kept a garage “where disabled cars are repaired at much less cost than would be the case” if the work was done at public facilities and three men were employed in it. Oil was purchased in 55-gallon drums while 6,000 gallons of gasoline, filling a rail car, were used each month, and the tire bill was around $500 monthly. Because it had a garage, Crown was able to buy these items at wholesale and it was estimated that the firm controlled 80% of the stage business in and around the county seat.
Deacon continued by commenting, “it is only through maintaining absolute service, even at a loss in certain districts and at certain times, that we are able to hold this volume of trade.” To grow that trade, Crown recently inaugurated half-hour service to Los Angeles and charged a dollar for the 68-mile round trip, something that would have been unheard of just a few years prior.
Not quite three months later, the Register observed the rapid rise in auto stage service in town, noting that “Santa Ana’s first jitney was operated by A.B. Watson” and it asserted as certain that an unnamed gent in Orange may have been the first person to start a jitney business anywhere, though “some claim a chap in Texas was responsible.”
The feature was about the Crown enterprise and its pioneering role in widespread jitney service in the area, with the paper adding, “the Crown Stage, under the management of Watson & Deacon, has made quite a record for itself,” with only one person seriously injured since service was inaugurated. In nearly a year, it was stated that 200,000 people used Crown’s fleet, which traveled some 6,000 miles daily.
There were, however, occasional reports of accidents, including one in July 1917 between Santa Ana and Newport Beach in which smoke from a brush fire contributed to a crash between a Crown jitney and a car that caused serious injuries to a newly-wedded couple and five others. In November 1920, a Crown vehicle heading from Anaheim to Long Beach was approaching Seal Beach, when it went off the road and flipped over, leading to fears a woman passenger would die from her injuries while four other women were injured.
Moreover, Crown was sued from time-to-time by customers and those in other vehicles because of accidents. In September 1918, a woman sought more than $2,600 in damages for injuries she suffered when her vehicle collided with a Crown jitney near Compton nearly a year before and it took a year-and-a-half before a settlement was reached. In November 1922, a Fullerton woman sued Crown and the driver of a private auto for north of $16,000 because of injuries she sustained while riding a stage when an accident occurred.
Despite these incidents, a drivers’ strike in summer 1920, and more competition from the White stage line, which was a subsidiary of the Motor Transit Company, Crown’s business continued to grow as the Teens turned into the Twenties. The Register of 11 March 1920 stated that,
Watson’s business has developed into a big Santa Ana industry. Not only does he employ a large force of men, but he also through his stages has developed lines of transportation that are of great importance to the city in a commercial way.
This included the ordering of more than twenty vehicles from a local manufacturer, while Crown also employed several REO Speedwagon buses—and it was a far cry from just several years before when the claim was made that vehicles were disposed of after just six months of operation, as the oldest of the REOs put in some 250,000 miles and apparently justified the long-term use because of getting 20 miles per gallon of gas, 800 miles per gallon of oil, and 18,000 miles per tire. The Register queried, “is [the jitney] going after the trolley car now?”
Watson became sole owner in March 1917 after buying Deacon out, and, in June 1919, the Register reported that $10,000 was to be invested in a new depot and garage in a new structure, perhaps the one still standing, built by Robert McFadden, of the longtime Santa Ana clan. There were some continuing issues of controversy, including a denial for a fare increase by the state Railroad Commission, now the California Public Utilities Commission, which also investigated Crown’s business practices and profit determinations, though, apparently, with no serious consequences.
Additional lines were brought into the system, either through acquisition or transfer arrangements, over time, as well, including to San Capistrano, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Riverside—via Santa Ana Canyon, and Pomona—through Brea Canyon, and as far away as Bakersfield—via Los Angeles. Depots and ticket offices were in Balboa Beach, Buena Park, Norwalk, Orange, and Fullerton in addition to aforementioned locales.
Watson applied his entrepreneurship in terms of adding his name to advertising to tire brands, like Samson, Fisk and United States, as well as the REO Speedwagon vehicle model, while his vehicles made by H.H. Dale Company were photographed and published, along with others, and the Fageol Safety Car bus, touted as the “Palace Car of the Highway,” in reference to luxury rail cars, shown in the timetable, was also mentioned in 1922 newspaper articles.
There was also featuring of Crown’s additional services to ferry visitors to major events, such as the more than 6,600 persons taken to Independence Day 1921 events, the beaches and other areas with the amount of miles and gasoline consumed shared by more than 50 vehicles utilized by the firm and it was emphasized that the fares doubled even as just a half-dozen more buses and cars were used than during the prior year.
A month later, extra stages and times were established by Crown to take guests to Laguna Beach for the Indian Peace Pipe pageant, which was given over six evenings and purported to be a true representation of indigenous life in “a colorful, spectacular way,” according to a Riverside newspaper. The performances raised funds for an art gallery in the hamlet, which soon became widely known as a haven for artists of all kinds, though the pageant was a one-time event long forgotten in a city known far and wide for its Pageant of the Masters, which began in 1933, a year after the Festival of the Arts was launched.
In 1922, a good many notable events regarding Crown transpired, including a bizarre situation early in the year in which company driver Darwin Grimes, who was also an immigration service agent at San Juan Capistrano and who participated in the seizure of illicit alcohol was then arrested for keeping 30 gallons of the hooch. A week later, after Watson agreed to an idea to split residential stage service in Santa Ana with the Motor Transit company before changing his mind, the latter filed a complaint with the Railroad Commission alleging he was running passengers to Los Angeles without a Commission-issued certificate—Watson applied in late January for one that would involve no transfers.
In late March, while keeping the Crown name, Watson changed the name of the firm to the Royal Service Corporation. Two months later, four of the Fageol Safety Car buses, seating two dozen passengers and included a special smoking section and an observation space, were ordered at some $10,000 a piece for placement into service before the end of May. Lastly, in mid-November, Watson sold the Los Angeles line to Pickwick Northern Transportation, which rapidly became dominant in regional bus service, while also operating nationally, and which has been highlighted here in a prior post.
Watson continued operating Crown until the end of July 1926 after effecting a merger with former competitor and nemesis, Motor Transit, which was also aligned with Pickwick. After more than a decade in the business, he retired and eventually became, unsurprisingly, a citrus grower. Before the merger was consummated, the Register commented that Santa Ana was now one of the “principal operating centers” for what was deemed a “progressive transportation system, including an expansion of the depot site.
Residing for many years on Bush Street across from what is now the Margaret Webb Theatre, Watson died in April 1962 at age 79 and was briefly noted in the Register as the “pioneer Orange County bus line owner” whose enterprise included “one of the first transportation links between Orange County and Los Angeles,” though that really meant from the automotive aspect. In a way, the Orange County Transportation Authority’s bus system is something of a descendant of the Crown Stage Lines System, which deserves remembrance for its early jitney service in Orange and the adjacent Los Angeles and Riverside counties, as well.