Changes

Although the sometime long gaps between posts might make it appear I'm only doing this part-time, the truth is that even if I'm not actively working on a new article, I'm involved with some aspect of this blog every day. I'm always trying to improve it and make it the best it can be. Whether it's browsing the newspaper archive looking for new material, fact-checking, correcting errors, or making an older post more informative or readable, this is basically my full-time job.

Consequently, an article you read 2 or 3 years ago (or even 2 or 3 weeks ago) might have been altered significantly since. The following is a list of those changes—from major ones to minor—and in reverse chronological order.

Important revisions: (i.e. re-reading highly recommended)
• Remembering Bob Ihsen, Mark Thiel and Dave Rogers—Added two more recent deaths and changed the title.
• Badillo Mystery Solved?—Lots of wording changes, style improvements, and a re-stated conclusion.
• When Was Covina Founded?—Some important date changes and clarified wording.
• Covina Hills Road—New intro, facts, conclusion, and map.
• The Ruddock Mansion—Many new historical details!
• Oak Canyon Road—Rewritten basically from scratch. (I'm really pleased with this one. Definite improvement!)

New post images:
• The Hollenbeck Palms—Added another 1906 postcard view, this one looking south from San Bernardino Road.
• Italia—Added a photo of E. R. Richmond, Italia Cook's father.
• Original Covina Landowners—Corrected a couple of errors in the parcel map.
• Citrus Avenue, 1938—Added a view of the 200 block of North Citrus.
• Covina's Old Neighbors—New map with adjusted labels for Walnut Center and the Hollenbeck Ranch.
• Hollenbeck and the Badillas—Corrected the southern boundary of the Badilla Tract on the 1877 map.

Minor updates:
• The Tract, Trials and Tribulations of Joseph Phillips—Some wording and style adjustments.
• Untold Stories of Hollenbeck and Phillips—Same as above.
• Mayors of Covina—One missing name added to the list.
• Old Covina High, 1961—Corrected the date that the campus was razed.
• Covina Valley Panorama, 1930—Changed the year the photo was taken, the year Lark Ellen bought her Cameron Avenue estate, and some photo label IDs.
• Driving Around the Groves—Made the description more readable.

Always being updated:
• Covina History Timeline—Now over 200 entries!

Due for a complete rewrite:
• The Baptist Seminary—I really must do better than this.

Might actually be a good idea if I made a list of changes every few months, just so everyone can stay right up to date with the greatest Covina history blog there ever was!

 

Covina in the Aughts

Citrus Avenue again, only this time about a half-century earlier. This photo was fairly easy to date, and very precisely, too.

Looking north on Citrus Avenue from Badillo Street, Covina, January, 1907. Clarence Tucker, photographer.
Click on the image to view an enlargement. Photo courtesy Covina Valley Historical Society and Powell Camera Shop (RIP).

Even before looking anything up, on the basis of a past search, I knew this picture had to be taken between 1903-1909 due to the presence of Franz Richter's bicycle repair shop in the far distance near Citrus's intersection with College. But, the obvious clincher was the banner hanging over the middle of the street. It reads:

Citrus Avenue in the Fifties

Here we have two nice, detailed mid-century views of Covina's busy Citrus Avenue. The photos are undated, but examining certain clues, I think I can come up with some pretty good educated guesses as to when they were taken.

In this first one, the newest car I see is that 1952 Ford Convertible just left of center. That model was introduced in Fall, 1951. However, the photo has to have been taken later than September, 1952, because that's when Faye's Maternity Shop to the left of the Ford opened at 111 North Citrus,¹ and that place does look essentially brand new here. So, 1952 seems like a safe bet for this view.

Looking north on Citrus Avenue from Badillo Street, Covina, 1952.
Click on the image to view an enlargement. Photo courtesy Covina Valley Historical Society and Powell Camera Shop (RIP).

(As an aside, I like how several kids evidently felt comfortable leaving their bikes parked on the street while they went to a show at the theater.)

Packing House Ladies, c.1900

Also found these pictures on the Huntington Digital Library site last night. Actually I've seen thumbnails of these pics many times before, but I never took a real close look at them until now. I was more than a little surprised by what I saw...

I knew it was common for women to work in these fruit packing houses, but I did not know they did so dressed in such fancy, fashionable finery!

Workers in the A.C.G. Packing House, Covina, c.1900. C. C. Pierce Photography Collection.
Courtesy of The Huntington Digital Library, San Marino, CA. Link to full-res image.

Compromise Line Road

I do hope my dozen or so regular readers will pardon me if I write about someplace other than Covina just once. ;-)

Although I was born and raised in Covina, I lived my first five years on East Foothill Boulevard in Glendora, so consequently, the history of our neighbor to the north is a natural area of interest to me.

And the subject is not out of bounds geographically, either, as both Covina and Glendora share partial origins in a historical Mexican land grant called Rancho San José Adición (aka Rancho Addition to San Jose) which just happens to be the broader topic of this article. Most of Covina's Charter Oak neighborhood is enclosed within Adición's borders, so I'm not really straying too far afield here at all.

Anyway, even as a child, I developed a keen interest in roads. (You've probably noticed this already.) This really took off when I first discovered my dad's Renie Atlas around age 12 (same time as my interest in Covina history, hmm!). Probably not long after that, the name of one street in particular from my Glendora years aroused my curiosity: "Compromise Line Road." Always wondered what that meant. Somewhere in my early readings of local history, I did learn that it involved a dispute over a northern boundary of Rancho Addition to San Jose, but I never could find out much more than that.

Compromise Line Road in Glendora. Source: Renie Atlas of Los Angeles City and County, 1965 edition.

Fast forward about 60 years, and last night, out of the blue, I decided to try and finally figure out what the compromise was. Obvious first stop reference-wise was Pflueger (1951), but unfortunately his mention of Compromise Line Road was so nonspecific as to be no help at all. Then I searched the newspaper archive, however that was a similar dead-end.

Two Home Towns

Here's something I never thought I'd see: a postcard sent from McKinleyville—my home town of the last quarter-century—to the home town of my birth, Covina, back when both burgs were basically backwoods backwaters that no one ever heard of.

"Ethel" mailed this postcard to "Elvin Gilmore Esq." in Covina in 1909. The somewhat cringe novelty side can be viewed by clicking here.

Let's see if we can figure out the connection between these two home towns of mine!