by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With two principal Los Angeles County public highways traversing the eastern San Gabriel Valley in the 1850s, these being the modern Mission Road/Valley Boulevard and Ramona Boulevard/San Bernardino Road thoroughfares, this period involved important uses of the roads, including the transport by stagecoaches of mail, express (such as bullion, cash, gold dust) and passengers and of cargo by teamsters.
An early reference of interest is from the 24 June 1854 edition of the Los Angeles Star, our region’s first newspaper, comprising an advertisement of “U.S. Mail Stages” from San Pedro, where the rudimentary but vital port is now the massive and bustling Port of Los Angeles, to San Bernardino, seat of the nation’s largest county in terms of size and which, the prior year, was carved out of Los Angeles County.
The route ran north from the harbor to Los Angeles, roughly along the route of today’s Interstate 110 and then eastward from the Angel City along one of the aforementioned routes through the San Gabriel Valley and the notice informed readers of the paper:
ALEXANDER AND BANNING’S Stages, carrying the U.S. Mails, Adams & Co.’s and Wells, Fargo & Co.’s Expresses, leave SAN PEDRO for SAN BERNARDINO semi-monthly, and at other times where there are passengers.
It was telling of how sparsely populated greater Los Angeles was at the time that these stages ran a couple of times per month on a standard schedule, even if there were occasional operations if needed. The operators were Phineas Banning, who settled in the port area a few years prior, but would become the “Port Admiral” because of his unflagging effort to expand the harbor at what became Wilmington, named after his Delaware hometown, and David W. Alexander, who migrated from New Mexico with John Rowland of Rancho La Puente and went on to a notable career in the region. Also of note is that the San Bernardino agents were its principal Mormon founders in 1851, Church elders Amasa M. Lyman and Charles C. Rich.
Nearly five years later, Gabriel Allen, another long-time resident of greater Los Angeles, and Alexander Brazelton advertised in the Star of 26 February 1859 for their “Los Angeles and San Bernardino STAGES,” with coaches leaving the Bella Union Hotel, the best-known of the Angel City’s hostelries, on the east side of Main Street just south of where U.S. 101 cuts through downtown today. The growth of the area and of the business was such, however, that eastbound stages left at 7 a.m. on Mondays and Thursdays each week and those heading west did so at the same time on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Specific mention was made of the handling of U.S. mail, while it was added that “all applications for passages must be made at the bars,” one wondering how informal these transactions were conducted among the beer and booze, of the Bella Union and, at the other end of the route, Jacobs’ Hotel, operated by early Jewish resident of San Bernardino, Lewis Jacobs. The stage drivers, though, also handled these transactions, of which it was warned that “no person will be allowed to enter the stages without his fare is PREPAID,” this being $8 one-way.
An important change during this period with respect to mail service was the introduction of the Overland Mail system. While there were deliveries to and from this area to Salt Lake City from the early Fifties and San Antonio, Texas later in the decade, Congress passed a bill to establish a route from the Mississippi River to San Francisco. The postmaster general, Aaron Brown of Tennessee, being a Southerner, Memphis was selected as an eastern terminus, as well as St. Louis, and the routes went through the southern portion of the country, though a few others were added in short order.
This included the well-established road from Yuma, Arizona to Los Angeles, known as the “Colorado Road” through Temecula and Chino. In fact, in the City of Chino Hills, there is a neighborhood and main thoroughfare bearing the name of Butterfield, because the contract for delivery on the overland route was made with John Butterfield, so his surname was that by which the road was generally known. It then followed the Valley Boulevard route, passing within a half-mile of the Workman family’s residence on the Rancho La Puente, to Los Angeles.
The first use of the Butterfield Stage/Overland Mail service was in September 1858, with the twice-weekly trip made in three weeks. The Star of 16 October hailed the first stage’s landfall in Los Angeles with the headline “BY THE OVERLAND MAIL / TROUGH IN 20 DAYS!! TEN DAYS LATER!!,” as it informed readers,
By the arrival here of the Overland Mail stage on Tuesday [the 12th], we were put in possession of New York and St. Louis papers of the above dates.
The mail came through to this point, from St. Louis in twenty days, including a stoppage of thirty-seven and a half hours at Fort Smith [Arkansas], waiting for the Memphis mail. This fact shows how thoroughly and completely the road has been stocked [with waystations for changes of horses, food, rest and additions of mail], and how well organized the whole system has been, from the very outset.
The passengers found everything ready at the stations, and no delay occurred, nor hurrying on to make up for lost time.
While the system was generally well-received, it proved to be very costly with postal receipts only about a sixth of the $2 million operating cost for 1859. After Brown died, his successor reduced service, though not on the Butterfield route because of contractual obligations, but Brown asserted that the value of the line, which operated through the 1860s until the completion of the transcontinental railroad at decade’s end, was “for the extension of our commerce, the spread of our population, and the development of the various resources of our country.”
In 1860, telegraph service was implemented from San Francisco to Los Angeles and a transcontinental system began operations in late October 1861 (which also ended the Pony Express, though this did not pass through our region), demonstrating rapid progress in technology with respect to the transmission of information, as telegrams, of course, became an alternative to letters and other communications sent by mail.
Meanwhile, there was long agitation for a transcontinental railroad line and, earlier in the Fifties, surveying parties were dispatched to greater Los Angeles as part of an effort to identify potential routes from the 32nd parallel at the south to San Diego to the 49th at the north to Washington Territory. One proposal was for a 35th parallel line that would reach San Pedro from Fort Smith, which is on the border of Arkansas and Oklahoma and west of Memphis, so crews were active in this area in 1853-1854, with one survey through the San Gabriel Valley represented on published maps among a multi-volume set of reports compiled and published under the authority of Jefferson Davis, the Secretary of War.
When, however, the Civil War erupted, Davis’ favoring of a southern route (not unlike the Overland Mail a few years prior) to the Pacific was, of course, an impossibility, so the line was built to the north from Council Bluffs, Iowa to Alameda, California, next to Oakland and service was inaugurated in late spring 1869. While it would be another seven years before a link was made by the Southern Pacific to Los Angeles from San Francisco and more than fifteen until a direct transcontinental line came to our area, this area joined the railroad age as the Sixties came to a close.
Modest as it was, the completion of the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad was an important transportation milestone for greater Los Angeles, connecting the port to the Angel City and doing so as the first significant and sustained regional boom was in its earliest stages. This followed terrible floods and droughts and the Civil War, with a general western migration, including from the devastated Southern states. Meanwhile, Spanish and Mexican-era ranch land, subject to the demands of a federal land claims process entailing great cost and time, was increasingly lost to foreclosure or sold and subdivided, largely to the detriment of the Spanish-speaking Californios who largely built their society on ranch life while depending on cattle for their economic sustainability.
The railroad, built by capitalists like Banning, ex-Governor John G. Downey, Benjamin D. Wilson and others, increasingly made archaic those stages that plied the route and, in many cases, headed into the San Gabriel Valley for eastern destinations. When the Southern Pacific, the all-powerful subsidiary of the transcontinental-building Central Pacific, decided to construct a line from the Bay Area to the Colorado River at Yuma as part of plans to push eastward into the southern United States, it planned to bypass Los Angeles.
Local lobbying with members of Congress, however, led to the SP being forced to build through Angel City, which meant taking that route through the Valley, as well as building a line from South Los Angeles to Anaheim, though the railroad company, with F.P.F. Temple a prime figure in negotiations, secured a subsidy by a November 1872 election by Los Angeles County voters, amounting to some $600,000 and handing control of the Los Angeles and San Pedro to the transportation giant. The following year, the aging John Rowland and William Workman, whose Rancho La Puente of nearly 50,000 acres was mostly intact, deeded rights-of-way to the SP for the rails to be laid through their ranch.
On 22 April 1874, rail service was inaugurated on the San Gabriel Valley portion of the SP’s mainline with trains going as far east as the hamlet of Spadra, just outside La Puente’s borders on the Rancho San José in what is now southwestern Pomona, with the depot along the former Colorado Road. One wonders when William Workman, at 74 years old, took his first local train ride to and from Los Angeles after that date, though the greater value was the shipment of wine from his wineries, just south of his house, and grains raised in the fields to the north, perhaps with other products.
In the meantime, stage service continued, including the summer 1866 inauguration of service of the “People’s Reliable Los Angeles and San Bernardino Stage Line,” while increasingly more attention was being given to the condition of local roads, as evidenced by the creation of county positions like a “road overseer” and petitions by citizens to the Board of Supervisors for better maintenance and improvements, including requests for bridges to cross rivers that, while either dry or at very low levels during much of the year, could become raging torrents during heavy rain years, forcing those navigating them to rely on fords that may have become treacherous.
The 18 March 1869 edition of the Los Angeles News, for example, editorialized,
During the coming summer the city authorities should build a bridge across the Los Angeles river . . . and the Board of Supervisors should build one across both the old and new San Gabriel rivers for the accommodation of the people . . . and another across the main stream of San Gabriel river on the Los Angeles and San Bernardino stage road at some point in the neighborhood of El Monte.
The span across the Los Angeles River did not happen for four years (and it was a covered bridge, at that) and, later, bridges did cross the old (today’s Río Hondo) and new San Gabriel watercourses, while the reference to the stage road to San Bernardino near El Monte almost certainly means today’s Ramona Boulevard/San Bernardino Road route.
Speaking of this, as Henry Dalton did two decades earlier, when William Workman sold the first major portion of his half of La Puente and advertised for his in December 1871, he did so by highlighting access to water and a transportation route, as his notice in the News of 21 December informed readers:
Over 5,000 acres of rich land, capable of producing grass, wheat, barley, tropical fruits and grapes, having eleven streams flowing through it, and situated on the Los Angeles and San Bernardino stage road, near the city, and forming part of the Puente rancho, are offered for sale by F.P.F. Temple, Esq.
Workman’s son-in-law, Temple, was given Workman’s power-of-attorney three years prior and essentially acted as a business agent, including the duo’s forays into business in boom-period Los Angeles, such as the bank of Hellman, Temple and Company, which was then dissolved and the two men just weeks before opened their Temple and Workman bank in F.P.F.’s multi-structure Temple Block, the site of today’s Los Angeles City Hall.
There were occasional references to the Los Angeles and San Bernardino Stage Road during this period, including one in the Star from 14 May 1872 describing La Puente as “to the right,” or south” of the San Bernardino Road. There was, however, an “Upper San Bernardino Road” that had persistent problems with its condition generating a complaint in the Star of 6 June 1874, which “requested to call the attention of the proper authorities to the miserable condition” of the thoroughfare “leading from the Azusa ranch though the Duarte to Los Angeles.” This route would have been closer to today’s Interstate 210, whereas the other roads were nearer to Interstate 10 and State Route 60.
The 9 January 1875 number of the Star reported that
A complaint, numerously signed by substantial citizens of El Monte, Azusa and Duarte Districts, has been made to W.M. Osburn, Commissioner of Highways, calling his attention to sundry nuisances that exist in the upper Los Angeles and San Bernardino road, and elsewhere. These obstructions seriously incommode the traveling public, and are caused principally by leakages of, and overflow from zanjas. This is a commendable movement, and indicates that our people are alive to the value of good public roads.
Zanjas were open earthen ditches, diverting water from creeks, rivers and washes, such as those mentioned by Dalton and Workman, to farms and ranches to assist in agriculture and it is notable that these were creating issues for public roads in the Valley.
A rare example of private road construction was also found during this era and involved the partnership of Temple and William W. Rubottom, the colorful promoter of Spadra (named for his hometown in Arkansas). The 24 September 1867 edition of the News called attention to the fact that the trip from Los Angeles “is shortened some five miles to Cocomongo [sic] . . . through a country well watered and with an abundance of feed.” Importantly, it was mentioned that “new bridges have been constructed,” suggesting that private endeavors like this preceded public projects of this nature and the paper concluded “no doubt the distance saved will make this route the most desirable one to San Bernardino.”
In an accompanying advertisement from Rubottom and Temple, readers were informed about the route:
Directions—New road from Los Angeles to Templito’s, at sign post on Los Angeles river; from Templito’s up by Workman’s mill and Wm. Rubottom’s to Cucamonga; also, leaving the Monte road, at San Gabriel river, to the left, and taking the Butterfield route . . . This road offers superior inducements for travelers and teamsters.
“Templito” was a nickname for F.P.F., often reportedly because of his stature, though it has also been said this was comparing him to his much older brother (by 26 years), the late Jonathan Temple. The Temple residence was on the Rancho La Merced, which was partially situated in the Whittier Narrows, including where the county regional park and dam are now.
Where the “New road from Los Angeles to Templito’s” was situated from the river and its sign is an interesting question, as F.P.F. had property on the east side of that watercourse just south of where Boyle Heights was later established. A reference to the two men having “straightened the road” suggests that the cut-off was likely to have gone along where route State Route 60 is now and then northeast through the gap between the Montebello and Repetto hill ranges before turning southeast to get to his place where San Gabriel Boulevard becomes Durfee Avenue just east of Rosemead Boulevard.
The section from “Templito’s up by Workman’s mill” would then follow what is now Siphon Road, essentially a trail at the southern of the Whittier Narrows Nature Center, to cross the New San Gabriel River (heavy rains and flood waters in the winter just following the opening of the cut-off, used a zanja of ex-Governor Pío Pico as part of his Ranchito in modern Whittier and Pico Rivera to create a new channel). From that area, just east of the modern Interstate 605, the cut-off almost certainly took today’s Workman Mill Road to get to the facility just opened by Workman at the base of the Puente Hills, a bit east of the junction of the 605 and 60 freeways.
It gets rather vague with “up by Workman’s mill and Wm. Rubottom’s to Cucamonga,” but the alternative of “leaving the Monte road, at San Gabriel river,” this meaning the Río Hondo, and taking the Butterfield route” is very intriguing, because this suggests neither of the existing old roads (the Ramona/San Bernadino or Mission/Valley corridors.). In fact, Rowland and Workman, who received the federal land grant patent in April 1867, embarked on a partition of La Puente with a survey started in November. The heavy rains of the winter and the creation of the new course of the San Gabriel River likely contributed, at least in part, to a half-year delay, so that County Surveyor George Hansen, assisted by William Moore and Lothar Seebold, did not complete the work until May 1868.
While there are some faint pencil tracings that may show roads near the Workman Mill, nothing is visible to the northeast toward today’s Valley Boulevard. There is, however, just east of the new river course, the dotted line of that road, but, rather than the course heading southeast and past the Workman House, that line heads east and northeast through towards today’s Baldwin Park and West Covina and then abruptly stops, with a branch heading sharply northeast. Otherwise, the map shows no clear indication of anything suggesting the Rubottom/Temple cut-off.
If, however, we follow modern Temple Avenue, which starts at Valley Boulevard just east of I-605, and move eastward to its becoming Amar Road just beyond Azusa Avenue and, confusingly, follow its reversion to Temple Avenue east of Grand Avenue where Mt. San Antonio College and California Polytechnic University, Pomona are today, that route ends at Spadra, where Rubottom’s home and tavern were situated on what is now Pomona Boulevard about where the 57 Freeway crosses over it. There is no modern equivalent, it appears, for the route’s northeastern path to the Rancho Cucamonga. It is also unknown how traveled the cut-off was and whether it existed long, but it is certainly an intriguing part of the road network of the eastern San Gabriel Valley more than 150 years ago.
We’ll return soon with part three taking this journey along San Gabriel Valley highways and byways (and train tracks) into the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so be sure to check back with us in a couple of days.