by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Having just finished a post concerning the Al. G. Barnes circus winter headquarters at Baldwin Park, we’ll turn now to that city’s northern neighbor, Irwindale, which is among those greater Los Angeles communities that gets relatively little attention regarding its history. Here, however, we’ll try to provide at least some of the early background of the largely industrial city, which drivers may pass through or by on Interstates 210 and 605 or along Arrow Highway or Live Oak Avenue and not give much thought to what its history has been.
The featured artifact for this post is a 1 August 1929 photograph of the plant of the newly formed Consolidated Rock Products Company, which took over the Consumers Rock and Gravel Company, which, in turn, absorbed California Materials, Inc., the firm that opened the facility in March 1928, but which was, from 1912, Sycamore Canyon Gravel Company. Before we get to how the sand and gravel or rock and gravel industry became vital to Irwindale’s economy as well as the obvious visual symbol of the city, we’ll take a look at some of its earliest days.
The southern limits of Irwindale run along the north side of Ramona Boulevard from the just west of the San Gabriel River to just before Foster Avenue in Baldwin Park. In fact, on the south side of Ramona was the Barnes winter quarters for about a decade from the late 1920s to the late Thirties. The boundaries of the city, however, are highly irregular, including a good portion west of the 605 to about Myrtle Avenue and then narrowing as you go north into Duarte and reach Duarte Road.
Most of the 210/605 interchange is in city limits and then the line moves northeast to where Huntington Drive becomes Foothill Boulevard at the river crossing. The northern limits include a section north of Foothill and then heads south east of Irwindale Avenue with a western turn along 1st street and west of Irwindale. An eastern turn along Gladstone Street and then a twist to the south and again east to Vincent Avenue takes place with another jagged section leading down to Cypress Street.
There are more irregular borders in this southeastern section of Irwindale down to Los Angeles Street before the line veers back to the north up to Olive Street and then east to Azusa Canyon Road and to Arrow Highway. The boundary heads west so that the Santa Fe Dam and its Recreation Area are within city limits (the Renaissance Pleasure Faire has long been held there) and just after Arrow becomes Live Oak it heads south, then west, then south to Los Angeles Street. After a short eastern migration, the line goes south again back to Ramona and that southernmost limit.
The point (perhaps) of this three-paragraph description is to show how convoluted the boundaries are, largely because of the sand and gravel companies that proliferated in Irwindale and how they became part of the city during a time that can be called an era of “annexation wars.” This was in the 1950s when the postwar boom was on and surrounding towns like Azusa, Baldwin Park, Covina, Duarte and West Covina all eyed Irwindale territory for their expansions. In 1957, the year the City of Industry (which also has a remarkably serpentine shape) was incorporated, the same happened with Irwindale, making it Los Angeles County’s 56th municipality (today there are 88).
The population is around 1,500, substantially smaller than virtually any other city in the county, excepting Vernon, which has about 100; City of Industry, around 265; and Bradbury, which is near 1,000. Most of the residents are clustered in southeast of the intersection of Irwindale Avenue and Arrow Highway down to Cypress Street. More than 90% of the population is Latino with under 4% each being white or Asian and the roots of the community demographically go back to such families as the Aguayos and Fraijos in the 19th century.
Most of Irwindale is within the bounds of the Rancho Azusa, which was long owned by Henry Dalton, with a significant portion on the west in the San Francisquito, which he also possessed and then passed on to his son-in-law, Luis (Lewis) Wolfskill. Dalton clashed over a survey by Henry Hancock which greatly reduced his holdings and settlers (or, to Dalton, squatters) rushed in during a good portion of the 19th century to set up farms and ranches.
These were primarily Anglos and the last names of Aschenbrenner, Coffman, Mensing, Reichard, Seat and others featured prominently among those who established their homes in the community. One account cites a view that the name came from former California Governor William Irwin, who was in office from 1875-1880 and that a post office opened in 1895 in the community bearing his name. As we’ll see, however, the office was not established until four years after that and there was no mention of the former chief executive in the press accounts.
On the other hand, it was also stated that “the city was named after a man whose last name was Irwin, who introduced a gasoline powered pump to the area’s residents and then swindled them out of their rights to the San Gabriel River” and its water. Here, we get closer to what is most likely the origin of the naming of Irwindale.
Searching for this post found the earliest reference being an advertisement in the 20 June 1896 issue of the Los Angeles Times for the sale of “50 acres of vacant land 1/2 mile from (Irwindale) Azusa Valley.” Another early mention was a December ad for 40 acres also a half mile from Irwindale on the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Covina spur, which comes up from the main track paralleling Valley Boulevard between Baldwin Park Boulevard and Vineland Avenue (Vineland being an earlier town project before Baldwin Park) and heading northeast through Bassett and Baldwin Park and then heading east above San Bernardino Road to Covina. Those of us riding the Metrolink San Bernardino line know this route.
The 21 March 1897 edition of the Los Angeles Herald briefly recorded that “the Southern Pacific company has just completed a small depot at Irwindale, a new station on the Covina branch,” this being at today’s Azusa Canyon Road. In November, representatives from Azusa, Covina and Irwindale met in the first town to discuss the formation of a company to buy electricity from the San Gabriel Electric Company. That month also brought a gathering of deciduous (non-citrus) fruit growers from Azusa, Covina, Glendora, Irwindale and Vineland to discuss forming growers’ association and the possibility of organizing a cannery.
1899 was an important year for Irwindale. The Times of 2 April commented that an “application is filed with the Postoffice Department at Washington to establish a postoffice at Irwindale station on the Southern Pacific Covina spur, just north of Vineland.” The issue of 21 June remarked that “the Southern Pacific opened a ticket and baggage office at Irwindale last week.”
The Los Angeles Record edition of 24 July observed that “the Irwindale Citrus [A]ssociation filed articles of incorporation this morning with a capital stock of $4000 subscribed.” The paper’s 23 September issue included news that
The contract for the stone work for the Irwindale packing house has been let. The building is to be erected on a novel plan, so as to do with machinery much work that is commonly done by hand. Brushing [cleaning] and grading will be automatically effected.
The Times of the same day added that “the fruit will be received in the basement and carried from there by machinery” for those processes and then to the first floor where it was to go through a sizer and then for workers to pack the fruit. This meant that there was “but one lifting of the fruit by hand,” and avoiding any bruising or other damage, “from the time it is received at the door until it is run out into the bins for the packers.”
The Irwindale Citrus Association packing house was located next to the Southern Pacific track at Vincent Avenue and the organization was part of the A.C.G. Exchange, those letters standing for Azusa, Covina and Glendora and the pooling of resources by growers in this rapidly expanding citrus section that embraced a large portion of the eastern San Gabriel Valley. By the start of 1900, the Southern California Fruit Exchange advertised its expanding representation of associations including new districts at East Highland [east of San Bernardino], Redlands and Irwindale.
The 19 September edition of the Times recorded the incorporation of the Irwindale Land and Water Company, with stock of $5,000 about 40% subscribed. Under a month later, the company was reported by the paper as having “struck a good flow [of water] in their well at a depth of 126 feet, and will at once put in a pumping plant.”
Because of the location not far below the mouth of San Gabriel Canyon and the propensity of water coming out of the river and its west, north and east forks and then being pushed underground by the massive accumulation of rock and sand from untold millenia of movement, it was small wonder that several water companies actively sought to tap what was assumed to be an enormous underground lake or reservoir of crystal clear water. Unlike in Covina and other places, water wars seemed to have been avoided as no reports could be found of battles in Irwindale, despite the account mentioned above.
This leads us back to the naming of the community. The 1900 federal census for part of the Azusa Township (townships extended far beyond the name of the town or city that might have the same moniker) included enumerator Harrison Fuller counting 40-year old John F. Irwin, a native of Pennsylvania and a farmer, as well as his wife Nellie (neé, Bonser), age 34, and the mother of three surviving of five children, these being a son and two daughters, the elder two born in South Dakota in 1883 and 1885 and the youngest born in California in 1889.
The 21 July 1903 edition of the Times under the headline of “Ranchers Rejoice At Irwindale” and concerning the successful test of water brought in from a well drilled by the Cypress Avenue Water Company (Cypress Street today terminates at its western limit at Azusa Canyon Road in Irwindale) remarked that,
J.F. Irwin was the pioneer in the field of water development in this district. Four years ago he sank a well on his property near the Southern Pacific depot, installing a small gasoline plant, which he has since pumped to its full capacity. The following year the Irwindale Land and Water Company sank a well on the Coffman place, securing sixty-five inches of water. The success secured by these parties lent encouragement to further development.
Irwin’s place, being by the depot, was not particularly close to the San Gabriel River, nor did the Times, which certainly could have mentioned it here, say anything about any conflict between him and his neighbors and, in fact, highlighted his work and that of the land and water firm to encourage more water prospecting.
The account continued that the Cypress Avenue company, comprised of owners of some 200 acres in Irwindale, sank its well on the Hostettler ranch on that street and spent more than $10,000 on the effort. The prior day, the well, more than 175 feet down, yielded so much water that it “exceeded the expectations of the most enthusiastic stockholder.” It was added that the Orange Avenue company well was expected to be finished soon and the Times concluded that “there appears to be an immense strata of water-bearing gravel beneath all the territory known as Irwindale.”
As for the Irwin family, there is a somewhat frustrating lack of information about them. By 1910, John and Nellie divorced and nothing could be traced as to his whereabouts, while she and her children remained in the area. Notably, census rolls for the Rosebud Sioux (Sicangu of the Lakota Nation) Reservation at the southern edge of South Dakota bordering Nebraska at two different eras list Nellie and the children as tribal members.
In June 1909, perhaps not long after the divorce, Nellie, age 45, is listed with son Ellis, age 27, and daughters Leola, age 22, and Lelia, age 20. The 1910 federal census shows Nellie and her daughters residing on Italia Street, which today runs between Citrus and Barranca avenues, adjacent to downtown Covina. Three years later, Nellie died at age 48 or 49 and is interred in Oakdale Memorial Park in Glendora.
Ellis could not be located in 1910, but, when he registered for the draft in 1918 during World War I, he was in the Puente Township and ran a dairy and remained in that location for the 1920 census. On 1 April 1930, he was listed on the Rosebud Reservation roll with Leola and both were noted as being 1/4 Sioux, meaning that, with their father not being of any indigenous blood, their mother was half, presumably through her own mother.
The 1930 federal census enumeration of the following day recorded Ellis, working as a carpenter, and his wife Margaret, living in East Los Angeles next to what became the City of Commerce. A decade later, he was living in the Midnight Mission in downtown Los Angeles, with his occupation given as a fruit orchard ranch hand.
When he registered for the draft in 1942 during the Second World War (his place of birth was given as Todd County where the Rosebud Reservation is situated and his social security registration in 1936 stated his birthplace as Rosebud), he was living in Acton, near Palmdale, at a sanitarium, which was converted two years earlier from a California Conservation Corps camp to a facility treating those with tuberculosis. The last located reference to Ellis was in a 1945 Rosebud listing, but it is not known when and where he died.
In August 1909, Leola, living with her mother on Badillo Street in Covina, married streetcar conductor Bert Kleier, but he forged checks to pay for her ring and other wedding necessaries and was arrested. The bride returned home grief-stricken and a divorce was soon obtained—the 1910 census listing merely showed Leola, who later became a nurse, as single. In 1918, she wedded London native James Warren, a Mormon and resident of Clearfield, Utah, near Ogden, who wintered in Los Angeles. After her husband died in 1942, her whereabouts could not originally be determined, but . . .
Leila married a Southern Pacific Railroad ticket agent named William Douthett and the couple resided in San Diego for at least two decades until her death, which was also in 1942. Leola then married her brother-in-law and the couple were living in San Diego when the 1950 census was taken. Remarkably, the enumerator listed the two as Negro, perhaps seeing Leola’s complexion and features and assuming, presuming William was at work, that they were both light-skinned African-Americans. William lived until 1977, but it could not be determined when she died.
We will return with part two, taking in more of Irwindale’s early history and working our way towards the sand and gravel industry, so be sure to check back for that.
Where is said pix of the gravel, etc. Methinks an addendum is required!
Hi Daniel, the photo will appear soon! We wanted to get in some of the early history of Irwindale to set the scene for the sand and gravel industry. Thanks for your interest.
I am so constantly and continuously enthralled by your articles, that I can’t thank you often enough! Fascinating, informative, intriguing…and always a joy reading your content! Thanks for all of your efforts!
As noted in this post, both Leola and William Douthett were mistakenly recorded as “Negro” in the 1950 census. I wonder if the censuses from later years – specifically 1960 and 1970 are available and include their race information recorded accurately?
Hi Larry, the censuses are released to the public 72 years after they were conducted, so the 1960 will be available in seven years. William lived until 1977, so presumably would be located in these, but time will tell and probably told to someone else!