Post-War Postcard

Time for another episode of vintage Covina photo sleuthing! Got ahold of another uncommon postcard of Citrus Avenue recently for which I hoped to pinpoint a date.

Post-war view north on Citrus Avenue from its intersection with Center Street.
Click on image for a larger view.

It's unused, so there's no postmark to give us a ballpark estimate. Just eyeballing the cars, though, I could tell it was from the Forties, but when, exactly?

When Was Covina Founded?

For people born in centuries past, it was not uncommon to not know one's precise birthday, and the same applies to historical places, even Covina!

Covina's founder, Joseph Swift Phillips (1840-1905).

Various sources have claimed with authority that Covina's origin date was 1882, 1884, 1885 and 1886. So, which of these is correct? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer is... complicated.

The City Motto

In January, 1922,¹ the Covina Chamber of Commerce held a contest for a slogan to represent the city to the broader world. Two months and dozens of submissions later, it was announced that a Mrs. F. E. Wolfarth won the $20 prize with her entry, "One Mile Square And All There."² The official motto as subsequently adopted by the CCoC would change the "One" to an "A,"^3,4 however, thus becoming the saying that a lot of us young latter-day Covinans were taught in school: "A Mile Square And All There."

But let's pause a moment for a fact check. Was Covina actually "a mile square?" Turns out not quite.

In teal, the original "mile square" 1901 city limits of Covina: Hollenbeck on the west, Barranca on the east, on the south an E/W line halfway between Puente and Rowland, and on the north an E/W line halfway between the SP tracks and Cypress (with a little bite out of the NW corner).
Map source: Los Angeles County Dept. of Public Works.

By my reckoning, the area thus enclosed was 0.87 square miles, just a bit shy of a full section. It was claimed at the time of the slogan's adoption that Covina was the smallest incorporated city in the country by area,² but a subsequent more accurate statement described it as "the smallest sixth class city in the state."⁵

In 1926, the Chamber adopted a new motto on the suggestion of its Secretary, Julius Jorgenson: "Covina–The City of Flowers."⁶ That didn't quite capture the public imagination, though, and gradually everybody reverted to using the old "mile square" phrase, even after 1938 when the city finally started expanding beyond its original city limits.⁷

Then in 1955, the CCoC held yet another contest for yet another new motto, and Mr. Mel Haller won with "Covina–The Country City With Charm, Character and Contentment."⁸ However, that saying never really caught on, either, likely because Covina in the mid-Fifties was rapidly turning into very much the opposite of a "country city."

After that, to the best of my knowledge, Covina never adopted another official motto, and to this day, the only one people really remember is the catchy original "Mile Square And All There." So congratulations and thanks, Mrs. Wolfarth!

References:

¹ Covina Argus, January 20, 1922, p.8.
² Covina Argus, March 17, 1922, p.1.
³ Covina Argus, April 7, 1922, p.6.
⁴ Covina Citizen, March 17, 1932, p.6.
⁵ Covina Argus, May 2, 1930, p.1.
⁶ Covina Argus, May 7, 1926, p.1.
⁷ Pomona Progress-Bulletin, July 22, 1938, p.8.
⁸ Covina Argus-Citizen, May 5, 1955, p.1.

 

Commenting

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"Dear Covina."

Received a surprise gift recently. "Words of Gold from Covina" is a little book of favorite quotations by a Who's Who of Covinans of the day. I've since learned that it was published in December, 1910, by the Covina Presbyterian Church,¹ and was printed by the Argus Press.

But inside I found an even bigger surprise: a "lost" poem penned specially for Words of Gold² by Covina's original diva: "Lark" Ellen Beach Yaw (1869-1947).

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.