Lysle Writes Home

Once upon a time, a young man named Lysle C. Ummel¹ visited Covina, and while he was here, he bought four picture postcards of the place and sent them back to relatives in Fremont, Nebraska.

Lysle must have mailed them all together in an envelope, because they have no postmarks and thus are not readily datable. However, various clues in the photo of Citrus Avenue made it possible for me to determine that particular picture was taken in 1919.

The familiar view below looking north on Citrus from Badillo. Lysle went on to become an electrical engineer,² so that perhaps explains his pointing out the precise location of the Edison office at the time.

Click on the image to view an enlargement (and click here to view Lysle's message on the verso).

So how did I figure out the year? Let's start out with that blade sign on the Chapman-Workmen building at left. Turns out that "Winder & Jones" were in business at that location from 1919 to 1926,³ so that narrowed the range of possible dates right away. The Covina Theatre isn't there across the street yet, so that narrows things even further to 1919-1921.⁴ But the clincher was the license plates, as 1919 was the last year between 1919 and 1921 that California plates were white.⁵

Here are the other two postcards with white borders, which I feel safe in assuming are also from 1919.

Italia

You're about to make the acquaintance of a remarkable woman who, as you'll see, merits a far more prominent place in Covina history than the mere footnotes she's been relegated to in the past...

As has often been the case, my initial inspiration for an article was a postcard. This particular specimen first attracted my interest because of the handwritten inscription indicating the house owned by Mr. Clapp, the druggist, from whose store came this antique medicine bottle: the subject of one of my earliest posts here.

View looking southwest along the west side of the 200 block of North Second Street, Covina, c.1908. "Rose" mailed this hand-colored M. Rieder postcard from Lordsburg (La Verne) on January 2, 1908. Click image to view an enlargement.

The Clapps were an important family in early Covina, and I'll have more to say about them later, but the actual main character in my present story is Mrs. Clapp's mother—Mrs. Italia Cook—who lived in the big house at far right.

The published histories barely mention Italia, but she was easily the most propertied and most philanthropic woman in Covina at the turn of the last century, and now here, at long last, this pioneer-era force of nature is going to get the full recognition she's due.

Remembering Bob Ihsen

I was quite saddened to learn that Bob Ihsen passed away at his home this Christmas Day. He was 93. A beloved teacher of history at Covina High School for most of his career, Mr. Ihsen was also a founding member and long-time president of the Covina Valley Historical Society, and that's how he and I came to cross paths.

Mr. Ihsen in his native habitat. Photo by Marty Getz, used with permission.

Like Glenn Reed before him, Bob Ihsen was an invaluable source of knowledge about Covina history, and both men also enthusiastically encouraged my own research. Years ago, Mr. Ihsen gave me a stack of his own personal copies of the CVHS's newsletter—the Covina Citrus Peal—going all the way back to the turn of the century, and time and again these have proven to be useful references, indeed. For my efforts, Bob also awarded me a lifetime membership in the historical society, which was a great honor as you might imagine.

Unfortunately, because I live so far from Covina and am limited in my ability to travel, the only time I got to meet Mr. Ihsen in person was during my medical trip to the Southland in May, 2024. We met at Powell Camera where went through Mark Thiel's amazing collection of old Covina photographs, with each of us giving commentary on them when we saw someone or something worth noting. Afterwards, Bob and I went over to the Firehouse Museum, which I'd never had the opportunity to tour before. And when one visit to the museum proved to be not quite enough, he invited me back for another go-around a few days later! It was a real privilege to be able to spend all that quality time with Mr. Ihsen and the historical society's treasures from Covina's past.

Rest in peace, good sir. I'll do my best to keep the torch burning, and will always remember you fondly.

 

"The Man Who Built Covina"

He died the same day as the famous singer Lark Ellen, and his death announcement was set right next to hers headlining the front page of the town paper. In his time, he was lauded as "the man who built Covina,"¹ but his name—and most of his life's work—was subsequently lost to history.

Edward Aaron Hubbard was born in Fairfield, Illinois, on June 2, 1880. He initially plied his building trade in Lyons, Kansas, before coming to Covina in 1922.¹ Not long after setting up shop here, he was commissioned to construct his first and most enduring commercial edifice: the bank building on the northeast corner of Citrus and College that's been a downtown landmark for many generations of Covinans.

The new home of the First National Bank of Covina opened for business in March, 1924.²
Photo courtesy Covina Valley Historical Society.

Plaza Progress

Something more recent for a change!

The regional indoor shopping mall known today as Plaza West Covina is a half-century old this year. Originally called West Covina Fashion Plaza, its grand opening took place September 25, 1975.¹

A couple weeks ago, I discovered a newly-available series of aerial photos on the UCSB Geospatial Collection website which appears to have been taken to document the yearly progress of the BKK landfill in the San Jose Hills. Far up near the top edges of these photos, however, were glimpses of the main West Covina shopping center which is the subject of this article, and they visually document in detail how the Plaza under its various names has evolved over time.

All photos courtesy of UCSB Geospatial Collection; captions and credits below. Click on the image above to view an enlargement.

1973: The last year of the original West Covina Plaza shopping center, which first opened in October, 1956.²

1974: Construction of the new indoor mall.³

1975: The completed West Covina Fashion Plaza.⁴ The west wing of the old Plaza was demolished, temporarily sparing the building formerly occupied by J. C. Penney.

1977, 1992: The east wing of the old Plaza was kept open for business until its demolition commenced in Fall, 1991.^5,6

1995: This configuration has remained relatively unchanged to the present day,⁷ except that the building formerly occupied by Tower Records and Desmond's before that was demolished in 2009.

More dates, photos and factoids below!

The Squatter Era

In 1859, long before the Badilla brothers or J. S. Phillips arrived on the scene, that northern section of Covina that today lies between San Bernardino Road and Arrow Highway began being settled by enterprising American and immigrant pioneers. Featured in this article is a recently discovered telling of those settlers' story that was written in 1887, when all the events described were still in the living memory of those who witnessed them.

The land that is the subject of this newfound contemporary account was originally part of Henry ("Don Enrique") Dalton's Rancho Azusa, which the Englishman had purchased from Don Luis Arenas in 1844. At that time, Dalton's ranch encompassed most of the territory east of the San Gabriel River and south from the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains to the old San Bernardino stage road.

Rancho Azusa de Dalton originally extended south to the northern boundary of Rancho La Puente. Alignments of selected section and quarter-section roads of today are labeled for reference.
Source: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records. (Click on the image to view an enlargement.)

As the article below will recount, in 1858 the U. S. Government ordered a new survey of Dalton's holdings, the result of which was the invalidation of Rancho Azusa's southern and eastern boundaries. Surveyor Henry Hancock drew a new southern line for Dalton's rancho (today's Gladstone Street), thus creating 2,428.25^a acres of new public land that thereupon became available for preemption, and later, homesteading.

While Pflueger (1964) gave an admirably thorough account of Covina's squatter era, this article from the January 23, 1887, edition of the Los Angeles Times^b tells the story from a unique perspective I hadn't seen in print before. So, without further ado...