by Paul R. Spitzzeri
It was a pleasure this morning to take part, with collector and enthusiast John Atwater, in a program at the Glendora Public Library marking the centennial of the creation of Route 66, the federal highway that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles (and then Santa Monica). While talking to librarian Nancy Annotti after concluding a talk there in late June to mark America250, the idea to develop this 100th birthday presentation came to mind and we had about 30 persons in attendance.
John shared a very small portion of his impressive Route 66 memorabilia collection as well as some of the history of the highway after I paved the way beforehand by going through some history of travel routes in the San Gabriel Valley in the 75 years preceding its establishment. This post summarized what was covered in that opening and started with mention of the fact the animal tracks and indigenous trails, though not usually documented, are often the basis for more formal routes of travel.
One of the earliest visual representations of public roads in the Valley is the early 1842 diseño, or map, of Rancho La Puente by Isaac Given, who used the Old Spanish Trail, an early route through this section of our region, to travel from New Mexico to Los Angeles. Given was a member of the Rowland and Workman Expedition, which reached the Mission San Gabriel in fall 1841—the Homestead will host a program about the group’s travels on Sunday, 8 November—and was hired to survey the ranch as part of John Rowland’s petition to Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado.
Because he used professional surveying techniques in his work, the La Puente diseño is one of the more precise of the examples in its time in California, but it also clearly shows two roads traversing the valley and terminating at the Mission San Gabriel at the west. The southern route was today’s Mission Road and Valley Boulevard, while the northern one follows the path of modern Ramona Boulevard and San Bernardino Road—this was the northern boundary of La Puente.
These public roads, rudimentary as they were 185 years ago, were vital corridors connecting greater Los Angeles with the east and, the northern one continued to Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino (and access to the Cajon Pass and points to the northeast) and beyond to San Gorgonio Pass near present Palm Springs. The southern route curved around Elephant Hill in the southwestern portion of Pomona and then followed today’s 71 Freeway to Corona, continuing to Temecula and then southeast along Highway 79 on the way to the Colorado River at Yuma, Arizona.
In spring 1850, months before California was admitted as the 31st state in the Union, the establishment of Los Angeles County was undertaken and, a year later, the region’s first newspaper, the Los Angeles Star, printed the finding of the Court of Sessions (later the County Court) on 19 May 1851 defining the “Public Highways of Los Angeles County.”
As presented by the court’s clerk Benjamin D. Wilson, another Rowland and Workman Expedition member and prominent resident of greater Los Angeles, and specifically through his deputy, Wilson Jones, there were seven of these, including the “San Barnadino [sic] and Sonora Road,” which was defined as,
From Los Angeles to San Gabriel and below Azusa, between San Antonio and San José, by the plain below the rancho of Cuca Monga, then to the hill of the Aquajita by the old Pueblo of the New Mexicans, known as the land of Apolitan, by Jumua and San Barnadino to Yucaypa and San Gorgoneo.
This is essentially that northern route mentioned above, with San Antonio almost certainly meaning the mountain (a.k.a., Baldy) and canyon of that name, with San José being the ranch including Pomona, Claremont, San Dimas and La Verne. The reference to “Aquajita” hill is to Agua Mansa and La Politana, where migrants from New Mexico, who came with Rowland and Workman, including the indispensable trail guide, Lorenzo Trujillo, settled just north of the later town of Riverside. November’s presentation will share some of the history of these under-recognized people.
“Jumua” is Jumuba, an indigenous ranchería near the east bank of the Santa Ana River about at the junction of interstates 10 and 215, where San Bernardino meets Colton. It is worth noting that, in 1851, a Mormon colony sent from Utah established the town of San Bernardino on the rancho of that name, while one its members, Robert Smith, had a large contingent of Black slaves on his place at Jumuba. In late October, Kevin Waite will speak at the Homestead regarding his new book on Biddy Mason, one of those slaves and who later fought to be freed from Smith and then went on to be a prominent figure in the African-American community of Los Angeles.
The road then headed eastward to Yucaipa (where the 1840s Sepúlveda Adobe still stands off Interstate 10) and through the aforementioned San Gorgonio Pass to points beyond on the way to the northern Mexican state of Sonora. There is also the “Road to New Mexico,” which is along this route “until arriving at CucaMonga, and then to the Cajon” Pass, where the route is that of the Old Spanish Trail, though, after 1848, it became known as the Mormon Trail because of the heavy use, including by overland migrants and gold seekers, from Salt Lake City. Interstate 15, of course, covers much of this general route.
The “Colorado Road” is the lower of the highways through the eastern San Gabriel Valley and is described in the Star as:
From Los Angeles to Mission of San Gabriel, thence to the rancho of Puente, thence to the rancho of Ybarras, thence to the rancho Chino, thence to the Rincon, and thence to the Sierra and Temascal [sic], and thence to the Laguna and Tamacola [sic].
As stated above, the path was along Valley Boulevard (the Ybarra family’s Rancho Rincon de la Brea was adjacent to La Puente on the south in modern Diamond Bar and Walnut) to today’s Pomona Boulevard in south Pomona, then southeast along the modern 71 Freeway to Rancho Santa Ana del Chino.
From there, the path moved to Rancho El Rincon, the area around today’s Prado Dam where the 71 and 91 freeways intersect, and the Rancho La Sierra or La Sierra de Santa Ana, granted to the Yorba family of Orange County renown, in modern Corona. The route headed along today’s Interstate 15 and through the Temescal Valley (where tin mines once operated), while the Laguna is modern Lake Elsinore and the last mentioned place in the City of Temecula.
It is notable that, as the new county was establishing important infrastructure elements, like its public highways, another major figure of the time, Henry Dalton, advertised in the Star, also in May 1851 after its debut, for “Farm Lots for Sale.” Dalton owned a few ranchos in the San Gabriel Valley, most notably Azusa and Santa Anita (the latter including Arcadia and its race track of the rancho’s name, as well as the county arboretum), but here he offers his San Francisquito, divided “into small farm-lots” and “will sell on the most favorable terms.”
Dalton was sure to inform prospective buyers that,
This land lies from ten to fifteen miles distant from Los Angeles, on the road from the Mission to the Puente, and the road to San Bernardino runs through it. The principal waters of the San Gabriel river are formed from the internal springs within and near said land.
Again, the aforementioned roads eastward through the valley are highlighted by the seller, along with invaluable supplies of ready water from the San Gabriel River, as well as the “Arroyo de Azusa.” When he mentioned “internal springs,” Dalton referred to the unusual condition in which waters coming from San Gabriel Canyon and the north, west and east forks of the river were forced below ground by massive deposits of granite boulders and sand—this is why much of our sand and gravel for the construction of buildings and roads have come from plants in the Azusa and Irwindale areas—and then burst forth from the ground quite a distance south where San Francisquito was located.
Notably, Dalton added that “there is on this land a beautiful site for a town, which the undersigned intends laying out as soon as the wants of trade among settlers require it; and he soon intends to build a merchant flouring mill near by.” He did, in fact, propose the new town of Benton City, though this did not get beyond the planning stage and his flour mill (which followed that of John Rowland’s 1847 operation at La Puente) was opened in 1854.
At San Francisquito, however, Dalton was overrun by recent immigrants, most from the Southern states, who established what became El Monte, though he battled for years and at great expense to stave off squatters. Much of the ranch, as well as Santa Anita, became the property of his daughter Luisa and her husband Luis (Lewis) Wolfskill, son of another prominent American settler of the Mexican period, William.
Luis then sold interests in the western two-thirds of the tract to William Workman and F.P.F. Temple, but, when the latter’s bank suspended business in late summer 1875 and cash was urgently required, the trio sold the land to “Lucky” Baldwin, recent purchaser of Santa Anita from Los Angeles merchant Harris Newmark—who bought it from Luis three years before. In one of the many ironical twists in the Workman and Temple family history, 285 acres of the western edge of San Francisquito was acquired in the early 1920s by Walter P. Temple (son and grandson of the bankers) and he established his Town of Temple, renamed Temple City in 1928, there.
The importance of the “Colorado Road” for migration and trade in and through greater Los Angeles cannot be overestimated, especially during the Gold Rush years. An interesting account in the Star in October 1852 came from an unidentified correspondent writing from “Villecitas,” which is Vallecito, an outpost along that route northeast of San Diego and southeast of the town of Julian on what is now designated the “Great Southern Overland Stage Route” on Sweeny Pass Road.
The scribe informed the editor of the paper that,
This road has now become important as the terminus of the Southern Route of California, and it bears on its rugged way the trails of weary and barefoot travelers . . . Though the history of their troubles is a long and painful one, and their wants have been hardly supplied, yet you hear of no disasters, nor famine, nor frost, and no tales of horror [say, the Donner Party of 1846] such as have made the Northern Route memorable. The emigrants, through toil and drought, have come in cheerful and high hopes . . . Indeed, I am induced to believe that many seeking the attainable comfort, ease and independence of the farmer’s life will remain Los Angeles and help to work out her great agricultural destiny.
This rather remarkable passage reminds us that the route into our region was largely along this road and the San Gabriel Valley was the last stretch of it before reaching the Angel City. Moreover, the valley had the fertile soil, water and climate that attracted many of these migrants, including those who inundated Dalton’s ranch, as well as those of Temple, Workman and many others as squatters.
It also reminds us that, when the good folks of the San Fernando Valley refer to their domain as “The Valley,” it is well to know that, before water was brought there by the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, its potential was very limited, compared to the San Gabriel. In the last half of the 19th century, there was far more settlement and agricultural development on the latter than the former and those two key roads were part of the transportation network that fostered that development.
Before concluding with the observation that, “a few wagons are still on the road, but with ordinary diligence in laying a supply of beans on the Colorado,” to provide enough food for that final push into greater Los Angeles,” the author added a very typical view of the time, often expressed as part of a broader “Manifest Destiny” attitude that pervaded the seizure of a majority of Mexican territory during the Mexican-American War, as well as the taking of indigenous land throughout the West:
The character of the emigration, indeed, is such as to satisfy me that whatever part of the country they drive their stakes, will find them an acquisition as laborious and energetic men, and they bring with them the best traits of the erratic American, independence, industry, and good hard sense.
A half-dozen years later, the Star of 25 September 1858 published information received from San Bernardino that a “Mr. Mitchell” conveyed regarding a new route to be developed through the forbidding deserts of southeastern California. Mitchell and others were busily engaged on an “exploring tour . . . in order to ascertain what the prospect was for water and the feasibility of finding another and better road” than the existing Colorado Road.
It was reported that seven springs were located “within good traveling distance of each other” with the furthest east being 40 miles from the Colorado River, though indigenous people told Mitchell there were intervening sources of water. The account continued that
The road is first rate—it is very hard, without any sand or rocks. Mr. Mitchell thinks it is about twenty-five miles further than the old Colorado road, but the many natural advantages that this route has over any other that has ever been traveled, between Fort Yuma and Los Angeles, make the distance no disadvantage to travelers.
Nothing further was found regarding this proposed alternative, but is interesting to note the effort, as well as its mention that “agents of the Overland Mail Company may yet find it to their advantage to travel over the road” because, as we’ll see it part two, the use of eastern routes from Los Angeles through the San Gabriel Valley obviously involved more than personal travel, but also the delivery of mail, while another important project taking place there and in the region broadly concerned railroads.
So, we’ll stop here, but return tomorrow for more on routes of travel through the San Gabriel Valley in the years before the establishment of Route 66. We hope you’ll stop by then!