by Paul R. Spitzzeri
During the massive real estate boom of the early 1920s, the San Gabriel Valley experienced some of the biggest population growth and economic development in greater Los Angeles, though the largest gains tended to be in the western sections closest to the Angel City. As just one example, Alhambra, had more than three times the number of people in 1930 than it did a decade earlier, with the tally of residents leaping from under 10,000 to not far below 30,000.
The family of Walter P. Temple and Laura González moved to that city in the late Teens after realizing the staggering small fortune derived from oil wells providentially yielding their black gold and, in short order, Walter began acquiring property in the burgeoning Alhambra downtown and developed about a block-and-a-half there. He then took on projects into the nearby cities of San Gabriel and El Monte, both of which saw significant growth in population (from about 2,600 to more than 7,200 for the former and 1,300 to 3,500 in the latter) as well as founded, in 1923, the Town of Temple.
The peak of that boom was, in fact, in 1923 and there were notable declines in real estate development after that, although the population of Los Angeles County still experienced exponential growth from about 935,000 in 1920 to just north of 2.2 million a decade later. In the eastern San Gabriel Valley, conditions were such that most of the section was agricultural, especially with orchards of oranges and lemons and groves of walnuts.
Speaking of walnuts, it was in that year of 1923 that Walter, after the death of his wife at the end of 1922, decided to move full-time to the Homestead, the ranch they acquired at the same time they purchased their Alhambra house and which was partially planted to walnuts, for which the world’s largest packing plant was in adjacent [La] Puente. Initially, the family used the place as a weekend retreat, with the Workman House, dating back to the early 1840s with major remodeled portions by 1870, El Campo Santo Cemetery, a trio of 1860s winery buildings and other aspects given major renovations along with many additions.
The Temples, after an extended trip to México in summer 1922 to expose their four children to parts of their ancestry and heritage, began building their phenomenal La Casa Nueva and worked on it for some five years. By the time the residence was finally completed, in late 1927, the real estate downturn, as well as spotty results in Walter’s earnest efforts in independent oil prospecting, brought some serious financial issues.
This brings us to 1928, the year that the featured artifact, newly acquired, from the Museum’s collection was produced to promote the largest nearby town to where the Temples lived, this being Covina, established more than four decades prior. Although the city’s website and the Wikipedia page for it state that the town was founded in 1882, with the latter citing a 1912 Covina Argus article, that piece titled “Building a Citrus City,” actually states that Joseph S. Phillips purchased 2,000 acres in 1882.
J. Scott Shannon in his “Covina Past” blog parsed out the circumstances of the acquisition of the acreage in a portion of Rancho La Puente, long owned by Homestead founders (and Temple’s grandfather) William Workman and John Rowland, and found that Los Angeles banker and developer, John E. Hollenbeck, of whom some history can be found in a prior post on this blog, sold the tract to Phillips in September 1881 on a five-year payment plan. In January 1885, Shannon found, the two men sold not quite 200 acres of the property for $40,000 to a life insurance company as security for a loan to Phillips, who was embroiled in significant financial trouble by that point.
In the meantime, the earliest located reference located for this post of the name “Covina” is from an advertisement in the Pomona Times-Courier of 24 May 1884, which, unfortunately, is not a complete one. It does mention 2,000 acres offered for sale and contained typical language regarding the “finest sandy loam soil,” “climate unsurpassed” and that the property was five miles from the Puente station of the Southern Pacific Railroad (that laid through the southern end of the valley about a decade prior.)
Moreover, the partial ad noted that, “there has also been A Town Located on the Land, Named “Covina,” [with] a number of lots sold. The price for lots, 60 x 175, at present being $50.” As per usual, other attributes highlighted were a school, “broad avenues,” water stock sold with farm and orchard tracts of 10 acres, of which 20 were sold to date and the fact that the subdivision was located “in a lovely, healthy valley. It was reiterated that “in point of climate or soil it has no superior,” which virtually every developer in the region said about their projects.
It is worth noting that, after the collapse of the first boom in greater Los Angeles, which extended from the late 1860s through the mid-Seventies, conditions remained largely moribund for several years, so that there was modest growth during the first half of the 1880s. This early effort to promote the new tract and the town of Covina was followed by a renewed effort at the sunset of 1884 and the dawn of 1885.
The Los Angeles Times of 13 December 1884 cited a Santa Ana (that town still being in Los Angeles County until the creation of Orange County not quite a half-decade later) correspondent, who “visited the new town site surveyed out on J.S. Phillip’s [sic] ranch.” The unnamed scribe added that
The town site is a very beautiful spot on a very beautiful tract of land. The name of the town is to be Covina, a Spanish name for cove, and it is very appropriate as it is situated in the most sheltered tract of land in Los Angeles county. The water supply is abundant and the soil the best I have ever seen in the State.
Actually, the claim about the Spanish origin of the word “Covina” is false, as the word is ensenada, which is the name of the Baja California city where Walter Temple moved in spring 1930 as he faced the imminent loss of his Homestead. For more on the origin of the name of the nascent burg, Shannon has posted on that topic, as well.
Another interesting early reference to the new town is from the Times of 14 January, the same day as the Hollenbeck/Phillips transfer to the insurance company, which remarked that economic conditions in what it called the “Azusa Valley” were markedly improved during the past couple of years and that the area “is fast coming to the front as one of the choicest fruit growing sections in the county.” There were general vague references to legal issues over land, as well as irrigation work conducted so that the region “seems on the high road to prosperity.”
The account continued that,
But the greatest piece of good luck which has happened to the valley in many a day is the subdivision and placing on the market at a low price of what is known as the “Phillips Tract,” a body of fine sandy loam five miles from Puente station on the Southern Pacific railroad. A town site named Covina has been located in the center of the tract and a school and weekly newspaper are already there. Covina seems to start under far more favorable auspices than many preceding colony experiments and bids fair to become a thriving, prosperous business center, while the country about will soon be covered with flourishing orchards and vineyards. As Los Angeles owes its prosperity mainly to the new settlements which are springing up on every side, this latest enterprise at the Azusa will be watched with interest and with hopes for its success.
A week later, an advertisement in the paper from sole agents Dennis & Cook in Los Angeles, was headed “A Paradise for Homes!” The offering was promoted as “an opportunity not equaled in Southern California” while the main points of attraction and much of the text were fundamentally the same as in the aforementioned ad. Lot prices for the outlying farm tracts were set at from $65 to $80 an acre, while the town lots remained at $50.
What was added was that “the character of the soil is such that all kinds of deciduous fruits and vines grow luxuriantly without irrigation” and “this will undoubtedly become one of the most attractive places for homes to be found.” In fact, at the end of 1885, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway completed a direct transcontinental line to San Bernardino with track leased from the Southern Pacific to ferry passengers to Los Angeles.
This helped significantly in ushering in the Boom of the Eighties and the Santa Fe worked on building its own trackage through the San Gabriel Valley, including along the northern edge of Covina, which, of course, benefited in a major way from the direct rail access and the boom. As the 20th century began, on 14 August 1901, the town was incorporated and, within a decade, it had about 1,650 residents and reached 2,000 by 1920, while a nearly 40% boost took the population to not far under 2,800 by 1930.
The pamphlet highlighted here was issued by the Covina Chamber of Commerce, with orange the solo color for an obvious reason. The text began with the remark that visitors entering the area from the east or south by train or automobile were greeted by the Sierra Madre (San Gabriel) Mountains, said to be beloved by the Spanish missionaries, though why was left a mystery. It was remarked that the range provided “the mothering influences that make the valley incredibly rich in silt deposit” as well as direct rain and wind as part of “a semi-tropic climate the year around, not to be found quite so desirable elsewhere in the world.”
With regard to the local area, the publication proclaimed that,
Between the mountains and the sea, in the eastern portion of Los Angeles county, San Gabriel valley gives generous room to numerous cities and communities. And COVINA is one of these, in the heart of the orange-growing area, a modern, all-American community set in the center of thousands of acres of citrus fruits—oranges, lemons, grapefruit, tangerines; and with many more thousands of adjacent acres devoted to walnut culture, and the raising of that exotic newcomer, the avocado.
While that element focused on the economy, another was about atmosphere and environment, as it was breathlessly expressed that visitors “never forget the first picture . . . as they travel across the vast floor of the VALLEY OF THE SAN GABRIEL” and took in this scene:
From the upper boulevards of the land southward, gently sloping, is a checkerboard of orange groves—red gold of ripening fruit, dark-green, shimmering foliage—silver streams of irrigating water between the tree-rows—gray bands of paved highways making irregular panels for the groves. And rising in tufted groups, here and there, the graceful eucalyptus and pepper trees, with white-walled, red-tiled homes beneath them. Groups, too, of school and colleges in classic architecture, with landscaped grounds furnishing an occasional segment of floral beauty within the ranks of orchard trees.
Two Chamber officials, President Ben F. Thorpe, a citrus specialist, and Secretary Charles M. Wood, an educator, were offered as experts available to speak to those interested in knowing more about Covina and “your letter will be considered strictly confidential.” In another section, readers were informed that the pamphlet “is designed to reveal just a hint of what we are and how we feel” but with the caveat that “we do not wish to infer that we have crowded ALL the requisites of Paradise into Covina.” It was added, however, that “we, who live here, do believe that there are not twelve months in other lands so nearly perfect in the things that go to make up satisfactory living conditions.”
A panel contained the comment that the San Gabriel Dam, in the canyon of that name to the northwest was in progress and was “the world’s largest flood and conservation project,” while there were seven other dams in the San Gabriels above the valley. Covina’s proximity to Los Angeles, Pasadena, Hollywood, Pomona and Whittier was mentioned with access to excellent schools of all grade levels, the ones named all being private and including Cal Tech, Whittier and Pomona colleges, and the California Preparatory School for Boys at Covina (and where Walter Temple offered a student prize).
Three panels were devoted to information about Covina, including clubs; fraternal societies; two national banks; the Mountain Meadows golf course in Pomona; a dozen churches; the Covina High School; twelve packing houses sending out 2,500 carloads valued at $5 million yearly; a ten-acre city park and playground with a plunge, an auditorium and a public address system; good streets and utilities; more than 60 electric streetcars through down on the Pacific Electric system; and a “one hundred per cent white population,” this last similar language to that used in a Temple City pamphlet from the same time about the fact that “only white people live here, white people of a desirable class.”
Images by Covina photographer Clarence Tucker emphasized fine houses; the Masonic Home for children; the high school and grammar school; Citrus Junior College in nearby Azusa; an orange packing house and orchard spraying as well as several views of groves and trees; the city park; a county fair exhibit; and a pair of panoramic views of the area. A regional map also showed Covina’s placement between Los Angeles and Pomona with major roadways indicated.
The pamphlet generally provided a somewhat typical Chamber of Commerce promotion and boost of its community for the time, though no one could imagine just how dramatically conditions would change within a short period after the eruption of The Great Depression. The document is a window, albeit tinted with that Chamber filter, and this one was acquired with others from Azusa and Glendora from earlier periods, so we’ll look at sharing those in future posts.