by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with our look at some of the history of Patrick C. Tonner, namesake of the canyon and road in and adjacent to the Tres Hermanos Ranch, at which a hike drawing more than 600 people took place last Wednesday, we pick up the story with the period following a financial panic that included the failure of the Temple and Workman bank. The institution loaned money to the Los Angeles Immigration and Land Co-operative Association, which established the townsite of Pomona in 1875 shortly before the economic crash.
While auctions of land and lots in the new project were conducted in February 1876, just a few weeks after the bank closed, matters soon became highly problematic for Pomona as with the rest of the region. In late April, the Immigration and Land company completed the transfer of five blocks of the new town to Tonner, who spent well more than $4,000 on them.
Work also went on with the continued work of the Pomona Water Company and a late August election of a board of directors, including Tonner and such town founders as Thomas A. Garey, Luther M. Holt and Joseph E. McComas. The firm had a quartet of completed artesian wells with efforts soon undertaken on 10 more, with water sent by flumes two-and-a-half to the town reservoir.
Meanwhile, the first Independence Day celebration, in this centennial year of the Declaration in 1776, in Pomona was held with a picnic at the grove of Cyrus Burdick, another important figure in the community and who was said to have hired Tonner as teacher for the Palomares School, situated on what is now Park Avenue (then called Ellen Street), earlier in the decade.
Tonner joined his water company compatriots and other luminaries including Louis Phillips, who sold quite a bit of land to the developers of the town, and Francisco Palomares, of the family which, with the Vejars, settled the Rancho San José, on which Pomona was established, nearly four decades prior. Notably, the Los Angeles newspaper, La Crónica, observed that Latinos were invited to attend, as well.
At the end of 1876, Tonner’s residence, built when he settled in the area several years before, was consumed in a fire and he rebuilt in the new town. Growth in Pomona, however, remained stunted for another several years during most of which time the Long Depression, which began in 1873, continued to stifle the national economy. The situation was such that Tonner, who had a controlling interest in the water company’s stock and was a practicing attorney from late 1875, successfully sued the firm in 1878 for rights to the water derived from the aforementioned sources.
Another enterprise founded in tandem with the townsite project was the Pomona Orchard Company, but, in this case, at least by 1878, directors were also culled from Los Angeles, including Victor Ponet, Eugene Germain (who had a fruit company), and H.K.W. Bent, as well as Holt, while the Pomona contingent included Tonner, Phillips and a third man. Tonner had a Pomona-area ranch on which he raised citrus and other crops.
With respect to the Los Angeles Immigration and Land Co-operative Company, matters worsened as the end of the Seventies approached and the Los Angeles Express of 16 January 1879 related some of the problematic history of the firm, including the fact that,
About the time that Pomona was put on the market the Bank of California [in San Francisco] suspended, Temple & Workman failed and genuine hard times came upon us. Property depreciated, and as the Company was carrying a heavy indebtedness it was with difficulty that the managers could stem the ebb of the financial tide.
The account added that a schism emerged at the end of that fateful year of 1876, with a split meaning that some officers took control of Artesia, the first development of the company earlier in 1875, and the rest maintained the Pomona project. Disagreements continued, however, so that, in July 1878, a quorum could not be established for company meetings “as a majority of the Board was opposed to the way the affairs of the company was being managed and had too little interest at stake to change the management.
The paper continued that,
About this time P.C. Tonner became the owner of a controlling interest in the company’s stock but could not get his rights recognized by the managers of the company acting under legal advice.
A few days since still further dissensions arose in the company and Mr. Tonner’s rights were recognized by company officials. A meeting of the Board of Directors was called for yesterday afternoon, and the meeting was made the occasion of a lively scrimmage on the part of the old management to prevent the control of the company from slipping through their fingers.
In fact, a police officer was stationed outside the office where the confab was held to prevent unwanted others from attending, including Garey’s lawyer and about a dozen more persons, who overpowered the officer and entered, so that “the Garey crowd would not allow a meeting to be held.” This forced the quartet of directors to go to Holt’s nearby office and he was elected president.
Resolutions noted that on 16 August 1878 Tonner became owner of 1,267 shares of Association stock but the secretary refused to transfer them, on advice of an attorney, even as this followed a judge’s order to do so and the fact that Tonner was not permitted to vote for a new board of directors. It was in January 1879 that the secretary, with “new and more reliable legal advice,” transferred the stock and that the August meeting at which Tonner’s majority of shares were blocked was to be declared null and void.
Another notable aspect was that “P.C. Tonner was also employed as attorney of the company” and assisted by three other lawyers and, until February 1879, “everything had been comparatively quiet” until Garey and another man locked the company office’s door and refused admittance to officers. When one broke through the door, it was said that Garey and his compatriot were armed with revolvers, though they soon departed with Garey swearing out a complaint against Tonner and three others for their forced entry. In turn, arrest warrants were sought for Garey and his allies and it was concluded that,
The Tonner interest, which is in absolute control of the company, has possession, which is considered nine points in law, and intend to hold it. The Garey crowd (which is now reduced to Mr. Garey and his hired men and attorneys) are trying to get possession. Thus far Tonner has held the fort.
While it appears that Tonner and his allies, including Holt, McComas, and Caleb E. White were able to maintain control, the economic environment was such that the situation with the town did not improve. The 28 January 1882 edition of the Los Angeles Commercial informed its readers that “At Pomona, Mr. P.C. Tonner, a lawyer and ranchero is always engaged in urging improvements and progress,” in collaboration with White, the Rev. Charles F. Loop and Alvin R. Meserve (Loop and Meserve’s father, Edwin, had a tract of some 2,000 acres they purchased from the Palomares family.
The account added that,
These gentlemen have worked hard to build up this settlement and deserve success. Pomona is a delightful place and is destined to become one of great importance. It is well supplied with water and produces excellent fruit and crops of all kinds.
Tonner continued his work as a lawyer with his solo practice at the corner of Fifth Avenue (Mission Boulevard) and Ellen Street (Park Avenue), remained active in the Republican Party and maintained his farming activity. The Pomona Times, established in 1882 as the town was revived (see below), briefly remarked that, “Mr. Tonner possesses that energy and tact which coupled with his excellent knowledge of the law entitles him to a place among the good lawyers.” He had partnerships with Len Claibourne and W.L. Foley before returning to a sole proprietorship by 1886.
Occasionally, Tonner got into some legal trouble, dating back to 1873 when he was accused of the rape of a young woman, leading to an indictment and trial, though a judge ruled that there was no evidence of criminal activity. A decade later, Tonner and the publishers of the Pomona newspaper were charged with libel by R.F. House, though they were acquitted.
The Pomona Times of 6 September 1884 reported on the formation of the Pomona Rural Improvement Association at a meeting at the town’s Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) space and Tonner, along with McComas and several others, was named to the executive committee, while there was a group of 16. The paper recorded that,
The object of this Association shall be to cultivate public spirit, promote good fellowship, quicken the intellectual life of the people, secure public health by better sanitary condition[s] in our homes and surroundings, improve our streets, roads, road-sides, sidewalks, [and] public grounds, protect natural scenery, remove nuisances, provide drinking troughs, and in general, to build up and beautify the town and vicinity and so enhance the value of the property and render it a still more inviting place of residence.
There was an effort early in 1884 to incorporate the revived town and, at a public meeting to discuss the idea, the Pomona Times of 19 January recorded that “P.C. Tonner, Esq., gave an oral statement in regard to the law in the case.” The assemblage voted to pursue the status within “the boundaries of the Pomona tract,” though it would be another four years before the town was officially incorporated.
An assessment in the Los Angeles Times of 4 October 1885 observed that, as was often the case, “the hotel [built there as one of the first projects] was Pomona and Pomona was the hotel.” The Southern Pacific Railroad line through the town and the promise of abundant water from the Palomares Cienega and other sources to its north were touted as important to the future.
The article noted that some persons built houses and businesses and the 100-acre orchard by the firm mentioned above was also planted. Then came the financial downturn and the account remarked,
But Pomona languished. The water had not been piped down from the cienegas and irrigation was slow and difficult. Without water, without life. Then the hard time came on. There was absolutely no movement of real estate. People began to lose faith in even the older settlements, and a new place that banked so large on hope as did Pomona was nowhere. The Los Angeles Immigration and Land Co-operative Association was caught between the upper and nether mill-stones and was ground fine. The land went back to the original owner, Louis “Chino” Phillips. A few settlers in the place made their peace with Mr. Phillips to secure title, and kept their places, working hard and hoping against hope.
In 1882, with the Association gone, the Pomona Land and Water Company was formed and its main figures were Moses L. Wicks and the Rev. Cyrus T. Mills, the former an attorney with a great deal of real estate development experience and the latter a founder, with his wife, Susan, of Mills College in Oakland. Mills died in 1884, but his wife moved to the area and we’ll refer to her later in this post—Mills Avenue in Claremont and Pomona are named for them.
Pomona Land and Water completed a viable water system with sources from wells and San Antonio Creek and Canyon supplying a 4-million gallon reservoir and this spurred settlement as the regional economy recovered, so that, when the article was published, the paper commented that, “the result is that to-day Pomona is one of the most thriving and successful colonies in Southern California.” It added that “with its splendid resources to back it, Pomona will continue to grow in arithmetical ratio” and “it is bound to be one of the best inland towns” in the greater Los Angeles area. The population was 1,500 with about double that in the area around it.
On 3 December 1885, Tonner and the Rev. Joaquin Bot transacted a sale to Bishop Francis Mora of the Diocese of Monterey and Los Angeles of the Roman Catholic Church for two lots in Pomona. Shortly afterward, St. Joseph’s Church (reflecting the historic name of Rancho San José and for which there was previously a station of the Mission San Gabriel, the priest at which was Father Bot) was built at the corner of Ellen Street (Park Avenue) and Libbie Street (Monterey Avenue), though it is now about a mile to the west on Holt Avenue.
A little more than two months following that sale, in late February 1886, a public meeting was held at Kessler Hall in Pomona, with the Pomona Times of the 27th observing that the gathering was convened “to devise some means of ridding the community of the Chinese incubus.” There had long been anti-Chinese sentiment in greater Los Angeles as well as elsewhere, with an 1882 exclusion act passed by Congress. While a committee prepared resolutions on the matter, it was remarked that,
P.C. Tonner spoke against the Chinese, but he was fearful of an accumulation of dirty linen and of a dearth of vegetables [the Chinese were frequently doing commercial laundry as well as truck farmers of fruits and vegetables].
In June, following the announcement that William R. Rowland, scion of the family that owned much of the adjoining Rancho La Puente and a former Los Angeles County sheriff, and his partner, Los Angeles pipe manufacturer William Lacy, brought in an oil well on Rowland’s property at the peak of the Puente Hills where Rowland Heights meets La Habra Heights, the Pomona Times of the 19th remarked that “P.C. Tonner, of our town, owns over 400 acres in the heart of the belt,” while he acquired another 250 acres, this apparently being in the Rancho Rincon de la Brea, along modern Brea Canyon.
As the paper reported that “capitalists . . . have already got out their money-bags and offered a million dollars for the privilege of boring” wells in that section, it noted “Tonner is a millionaire now,” evidently by virtue of owning perceived oil-bearing lands that were assumed to be of great value,” so it suggested, “let us strike him for something handsome for the Pomona Park.”
It seems like “Pomona Park” is today’s Ganesha Park and this is a good place to pause and return for a part three of this post because we’ll return to that city treasure as we continue our look at some of the history of Tonner with the coming of the Boom of the 1880s. Be sure to join us then!