Citrus Industry Ephemera

Some of my first Covina collectibles were orange box labels that I purchased around 1978 at Dick's Antiques next to the Covina Theatre. They were so new-looking at the time, though, that I assumed they were reproductions, but I now know they are all genuine—they only looked new because they were never used. What I didn't have until just this past week was a citrus label that had actually done service and been carefully removed from its box and preserved.

This PREFERRED label is said to date to c.1918. The PREFERRED that I bought almost 50 years ago (which lacks the Sunkist trademark) is from the 1930s.¹

The Covina Orange Growers Association was organized in 1899,² and was disestablished in 1953.³

Another recent acquisition is this stock certificate from the Covina Citrus Association, which was in operation from 1895-1955.^4,5 These are actually fairly common, but this particular specimen is in exceptionally nice condition, and is also signed by one of the early pillars of the Covina citrus industry, Herbert Elmanson Chesebro (1864-1951).^6,7

H. E. Chesebro first came to Covina in 1889,⁶ and at one point or other, he headed most of the important commercial associations in town: the Covina Citrus Association, the Covina Fruit Exchange and the Covina Irrigating Company being the most notable.⁶ For me, though, his primary significance lies in his ties to the 3,238-acre⁸ Hollenbeck Ranch in the Covina Hills, of which he was lessee and manager from 1889 until 1895,⁶ when that vast holding was subdivided by the McCarthy Company of San Francisco.⁹ I'm still in the process of constructing a timeline for the Hollenbeck Ranch, and will tell its whole story when I feel like I have enough substantiated facts assembled to do the subject justice.

In other completely unrelated news, I've been generally disappointed with the "Covina Past" Facebook page I started back at the end of March. Although it now has over 1,800 followers, it has basically failed in its intended purpose of attracting greater readership for my blog. My history posts there consistently "bomb," and the only subjects that seem to drive engagement are nostalgic in nature, specifically for Covina in the post-war period. Not that there's anything wrong with nostalgia, per se, it's just not what I had in mind for the page at all. More than anything, though, it's proven to be a time and energy diversion away from my more important work here. So I'm feeling less and less inclined to continue with it. Ah, well. The best laid plans, etc. etc.

References:

¹ eBay seller cratelabels.
² Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, August 25, 1899, p.4.
³ Pomona Progress-Bulletin, July 17, 1953, p.6.
⁴ Los Angeles Times, October 5, 1895, p.8.
⁵ Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1955, p.166.
⁶ Guinn, J. M. 1901. Historical and Biographical Record of Los Angeles and Vicinity: Herbert E. Chesebro. Chapman Publishing Company, Chicago, 940pp.
⁷ Herbert Elmanson Chesebro at FamilySearch.org
⁸ Los Angeles Herald, October 8, 1889, p.7.
⁹ San Francisco Chronicle, March 15, 1895, p.9.

 

Edgewood Freshman High School

Most locals rightly associate Edgewood High School with West Covina, but few today remember that its original home was actually in Covina.

Edgewood High School was established in 1958 at old Covina High.

By 1957, the Covina Union High School District was bursting at the seams. Not one, not two, but three new high schools were needed to keep up with surging enrollments.¹ Covina High had moved to its new home on Hollenbeck Avenue in 1956,² but the district already needed two more secondary schools to serve Covina: one for Charter Oak, and another in the northern and western portions of the growing community.¹ Likewise, West Covina got its first high school campus in 1957,³ but it too opened at capacity, and a second one was needed ASAP.¹

Mr. Witham's Place

Home of Otis and Maria Witham on the south side of Puente Avenue in the Irwindale section of the Phillips Tract (north West Covina today), photographed Winter 1891-1892 by Edward Adams Richardson (1859-1919).¹

Photo courtesy of David Bull, used with permission.

Pictured on the front porch are Otis H. Witham (1832-1917),² his wife Maria Louisa Clough Witham (1831-1905),³ their granddaughter, Lulu Harris (1884-1972),⁴ and I presume one of the women standing behind Lulu is her mother, Mary Ella Witham Harris (1858-1950).⁵ The remaining two subjects are unknown.

A native of Maine, Mr. Witham first came to California in 1857, settling in Tuolumne county.² In February, 1887, he purchased Lot 1 of Block 20 in the Phillips Tract,⁶ located adjoining the southwest corner of Azusa and Puente Avenues.

A citrus grove and a house with the same footprint can be seen still standing on the property in an aerial photo from 1954,⁷ however a subsequent aerial view from 1960⁸ shows the entire orchard has been cleared for redevelopment. In 1962, a Zodys department store was constructed on the 10-acre site,⁹ and today, the driveway to the immediate west of Denny's marks the former location of the house itself.

Although there's no way to know for certain, I think it's possible that Mr. Witham's place was built by Clarence Allison: a prolific early builder of Covina who would have been 29 years of age in 1891.¹⁰

A known example of a Clarence Allison house still stands at 237 South Third Avenue in Covina—said by his great-great-great-nephew, Tom Armbruster, to've been built in 1899.¹¹

Google Maps

It shares certain design elements with the earlier Witham house, most notably the scalloped shingling on the gable, the attic window and the turning of the front porch posts. I can also imagine a similar iron cresting originally decorating the small roof ridge of the extant 1899 house.

References:

¹ Personal communication with David Hull.
² Pomona Progress, December 17, 1917, p.6.
³ Covina Argus, March 18, 1905, p.5.
⁴ Lulu B. Harris at FamilySearch.org.
⁵ Certificate of Death, Mary Ella Harris, filed August 11, 1950, Los Angeles County Recorder.
⁶ Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1887, p.7.
⁷ HistoricAerials.com
⁸ University of California, Santa Barbara Geospatial Collection.
⁹ Valley Times, September 25, 1962, p.5.
¹⁰ "Glenn Reed Remembers Vintage Covina circa 1900." Steve Reed, Sandy Reed Wulf, eds., 87pp.
¹¹ Posting by Tom Armbruster in the "I Grew Up in Covina" Facebook group, May 25, 2021.

 

Covina High History

If I were to give a one-sentence description of what I do here, it'd be "Fact-checking Covina history." Typically that involves the distant past, but recently I read a post on the Covina High Facebook page that said the school began "its 130th year" when classes opened this past week. I posted a comment suggesting the math didn't look right and someone replied with this graphic of the school's official logo. Sure enough, right there it says, "EST. 1897," and I know for certain that's incorrect. So a-fact-checking we must go!

To be precise, the stated date is two years too early. Pflueger (1964), the newspaper record, and even the school district itself agree: Covina High opened in 1899.^1,2,3,4 But why stop there? Might as well cover all the other important CHS dates while I'm at it. So the following is mostly a copy/paste of my Covina Past FB post of yesterday, though this time with footnote references and discussion.

The 39 Freeway

Among the material I collected at City Hall during my interview with Mayor Frank Haven in January, 1971, was a then-current Chamber of Commerce road map of Covina.¹ Of particular interest to me was the vicinity map on the reverse which showed a proposed freeway passing through the city limits of both Covina and West Covina.

This map detail shows only one of several possible routings that were under consideration at the time.

Covina Town Center, 1968-1972

Probably not many people now remember (or maybe never even knew) that in the late Sixties, the City of Covina proposed a major redevelopment project that would have essentially wiped out the old downtown as we know it.

It was called the Covina Town Center, and had it gone through as planned, almost everything lying in the area bounded by San Bernardino Road, Second, Fourth, and even areas south of Puente would have either been demolished and repurposed, or expanded in some way.

The Town Center plan also called for condemning whole neighborhoods of single-family homes to be replaced by high-density housing and offices, rerouting thru traffic away from Citrus Avenue over onto Second while turning the main street itself into a pedestrian-friendly shopping mall, and all of it crowned by a new administrative Civic Center complex with a concert hall-sized Civic Auditorium.¹

Source: Covina Chamber of Commerce.¹ Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Despite vocal opposition, the Town Center proposal actually passed a vote of the City Council and was set to break ground in February, 1971. The month previous to that, I wrote a 19-page report on the project for my high school civics class, the research for which included an in-person interview with Mayor Frank Haven (in office 1968-1972), who was basically the Town Center's principal proponent.²

I was away at college when the Town Center plan was finally scrapped, so I never heard why none of it ended up happening, but I'm sure glad now that it died on the vine. (If anyone can fill me in on the details of why the proposal ultimately failed, I would surely appreciate it.)

References:

¹ "Covina's New Town Center," Covina Chamber of Commerce, 1970, 2pp.
² "Should the City of Covina Have a New Civic Center?," A Civics Project by Scott Shannon & Terry Dunn, January 20, 1971, 19+2pp.