Coffee Ranch Days

When I first read Donald Pflueger's "Covina" at age 12, I thought the most interesting parts were the author's descriptions of the valley before and during its settlement. One statement in particular captivated me: how, in the early 1880s, when the Methodist Church in the foothills at the top of Citrus Avenue rang its bell on Sunday mornings, "its clear notes could be heard all over the valley."¹ That same valley when I first knew it was already home to a quarter-million people, so a stillness of that sort was almost incomprehensible to me. Like another world, it seemed...

Perhaps the best-known settlers from those early times were the families of José Julián and Pedro Antonio Badilla (aka Badillo), who emigrated from Costa Rica to America in 1876. The brothers had high ambitions. They wanted a coffee plantation big enough to supply the whole United States!² So what was their new land like when they arrived here?

Wheat harvest on Baldwin land in Rancho La Puente. Although best known for their coffee venture, the Badillas were famously successful raising wheat in 1878.³
Photo courtesy Covina Valley Historical Society and Powell Camera Shop.

A Dedication

Occasionally someone asks how my interest in Covina history originated. I had an abiding fascination with "old things" in general as far back as I can remember, but the specific seeds of curiosity about my home town's past were actually planted by teachers at Barranca School: in particular, Mr. Miller in 3rd grade (1962-1963), and Mrs. Shipley in 6th (1965-1966).

Subscribing

I see I haven't posted anything here yet this year. Sorry to say, I am so far behind with everything in my life, I don't know how I'm ever going to catch up.

But for now, I might as well start with the question I've been asked the most recently, and that is, "How can I subscribe to this blog?"

The short answer is: you can't, at least not in the most logical way, which would be to get a notification email when I post a new article here. Unfortunately, Google/Blogger ended that functionality a couple of years ago. (Thanks a bunch, Google!)

So currently, the only way to subscribe is by "following," and that can only be done if you have a Blogger account. If you do, you can go to your Blogger Dashboard, select "Reading List" in the sidebar, click "Manage," then click "Add," then copy/paste the URL for this blog where it says, "Add Blogs to Follow."

Trouble is, you have to visit the Blogger Dashboard every time you want to check for new posts, so unless you follow several blogs, it's easier just to come check the Covina Past page directly, say, on the 1st of each month. (I've rarely posted here more than once monthly, anyway.)

I've also created an account on X/Twitter that you can follow for announcements of new posts. Here is the URL:

https://x.com/covinapast

Regarding Covina history, I've actually been working on several articles simultaneously for a while now, but in each case, I've run into a roadblock where I'm unable to find some critical piece of information that would allow me to tell the complete story properly, which is very frustrating as you might imagine. One article in particular is a "magnum opus" of sorts on an important subject that's never been chronicled in its entirety, but it now looks like I'm going to have to go to Covina in person to find the material I need to finish it, and I hope to do that next month.

In the meantime, I'll see what I can do about wrapping up some of the other drafts I've put on the back burner. Some will probably do with just a bit of touching up, and not require the usual perfectionism I impose on myself for considering a project to be ready for prime time as it were. Anyway, my apologies for my long silence, and thanks for everyone's patience. I will try my best to get back on my feet here as soon as I can.

 

Birth Plate

This commemorative plate was gifted to me when I was born. It is one of my most treasured possessions, and also my most personal Covina collectible. Except for my years away at college, it has been on display in a place of honor everywhere I've dwelt my whole life, and as such, it's an everyday reminder of my ultimate roots in the town of my birth.

2024 was a year of difficult losses for me, but in the end, I decided I should not add to those losses by killing off the one thing I love that I have the power to keep alive. So I will resume posting here, even though doing so carries with it neither reward nor recognition. It's a thankless job, but someone has to do it!

 

Is It Worth It?

I'm losing hope this blog is ever going to attract a decent-sized audience. My latest post has only 16 page views in a month. Other articles show a similarly abysmal level of traffic in the last 30-day period.

Lowering my spirits even further is the fact that I've been writing this blog for over 18 years now, and Covina Past still has only 1 follower. On the whole internet, just one person is interested enough in my content here to subscribe to it?

I feel ignored by the Historical Society, as well. When Glenn Reed was their historian, he actively supported and promoted my work, but that came to an end with his death. I'm the only person left now who is doing scholarly research and writing on Covina history, but those who profess to care most about the subject give me little tangible help with source material or gaining readership here.

All this is disheartening to say the least.

And then there's the matter of time. I just turned 70 a couple of months ago, so this could very well be my last decade of life, and I really have to ask myself: is this blog a productive use of my remaining days on this earth? Would someone of any age think it's worthwhile to write for such a tiny and apparently indifferent audience? I think the objectively obvious answer is no, it is not.

Consequently, as much as I love Covina and its history, I've decided it's probably for the best that I wrap things up here. I'll continue to do research on my own, and there are a couple more topics in my queue that I've been working on that I feel I owe it to myself to publish on this blog, but after that, I think the time has come for me to move on.

 

Founder Finds

I have a peculiar trait that I call "detritophilia." Whenever I find myself in a place with a long history of human habitation, I will visually scan disturbed pieces of ground looking for discarded bits of everyday life from times past. It's a kind of urban archeology except I don't do any digging. I simply look for objects that are lying on the surface, waiting in plain sight for my trained eye to spot.

Anyway, in 1988, I made multiple trips to Covina to clean out our family home and prepare it for sale. One day while returning from Azusa with packing materials, I decided to kill some time and explore the vacant lot at San Bernardino Road and Hollenbeck where the Phillips House once stood (and the Julián Badilla house before that). Here are the four pieces of historical detritus that I collected that day.

Photo by J Scott Shannon. Scale in inches.

This was pretty easy to identify as the broken off end of an iron prying bar. Upon closer inspection, though, I noticed its shape was distinctly asymmetrical, which suggested to me that it was forged by hand.

Photo by J Scott Shannon. Scale in inches.

This object baffled me for the longest time. My best guess was some sort of wall or ceiling fixture. It wasn't until recently that Michael Schoenholtz suggested that it might be the reflective portion of a candle sconce, and I now think he's exactly right. This, too, appears to be quite old, and hand-hammered. Note in particular how crudely the edges on the reverse side are formed.

Photo by J Scott Shannon. Scale in inches.

Two pottery fragments: the one on the left apparently of glazed porcelain, and the other, glazed red clay pottery. Not much to say about them, except that they're almost certainly pieces of some sort of tableware, and that one's fancy in design and the other is plain.

So, how old are these objects? Obviously they can't be dated precisely, but because the plot of land where they were found was not built upon until 1876, that gives us their earliest likely origin date.

Additionally, the apparent hand-made quality of the metal items makes it reasonable to assume that they are from a time when tools and other hardware were made by and purchased from local blacksmiths rather than being mass-manufactured and sold in stores. Store-bought goods probably became more common after 1890, so that's my best guess for the upper end of the age range.

So, if these items date from the period 1876-1890, they could have belonged to either Julián Badilla or Joseph Phillips. However, I tend to think the cruder-made metal objects are from the Badilla era. That candle sconce, in particular, looks more like a fixture on the wall of a simple farmhouse than the imported mahogany paneling of a mansion.

These finds are all to be donated to the Covina Valley Historical Society.