The First Settler in West Covina, 1904

It may be difficult to believe, but a section of the East San Gabriel Valley that is now home to about a hundred thousand people was basically uninhabited until 1904. Before then, the land south of today's Interstate 10 between the San Gabriel River and Glendora Avenue in West Covina was not yet irrigable, so the area lagged behind Covina in terms of development by almost two decades. At the time, the land was still part of "Lucky" Baldwin's division of Rancho La Puente, and nothing much went on there except for a few cattle grazing on the wild wheat.

In 1904, though, Baldwin started subdividing this portion of his ranch, and the first tract was surveyed in March of that year.¹ H. T. Cotton bought the 810-acre subdivision six months later for $121,500² and named it "El Monte Walnut Place."³ Not because it was in El Monte (it wasn't—that was just the closest town then), and not because there were walnuts being grown there, either—there weren't any yet—but the soil and lay of the land seemed perfect for them, if only someone could find a way to water the trees.

Then, just three weeks after Coffin bought Walnut Place, he made his first sale to a gentleman from actual El Monte named Robert E. Dancer. The property was described in the newspaper as "thirty-three acres...about one-half mile north of Bassett Station."⁴ Mr. Dancer then drilled for water and found a gusher of it at a relatively shallow depth. Word got around, and before you knew it, a small land rush ensued, and the district known as "Walnut Center" was born.⁵ And since Walnut Center was the immediate forerunner of today's West Covina, local historians have long pointed to Robert Dancer as its first settler.

What nobody in later years really knew, though, was the precise location of Dancer's pioneering farmstead. (A "half mile north of Bassett Station" is a clue, but far from an exact one.) Over time, many plausible educated guesses have been put forth, but the actual location of Dancer's ranch has remained a mystery for decades.

Now because I've had really good luck lately finding old deeds with the legal descriptions of many pioneer lands in Covina, I thought I might try to find Robert Dancer's, too. Fortunately, copies of those deeds are relatively easy to obtain from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's Office in Norwalk. (Also fortunately, even someone who lives 700 miles away like me can place an order online and get them, too.)

Well, just today, I got the deed, and now we can tell exactly where Robert Dancer's ranch was! The legal description is as follows...^1,6

Covina Wikipedia Article

Spent the last 5 days working on improving the Wikipedia article on Covina. For years, the History section of that page has been the single worst source of misinformation about Covina's past on the whole internet. It was the exact opposite of what it should be, and an absolute disgrace to anyone who really knows or cares about the details of Covina history. The references cited were very weak, too; in almost every case they weren't authoritative sources at all, just websites that repeated the same distortions of events we've been told all our lives.

So I finally got fed up and decided to basically start from scratch and make the History section the absolute best quick source of information about Covina's bygone days that inquiring minds can find anywhere.

I didn't edit the whole History section, though. There's still stuff at the bottom that needs tidying up or moved to other sections. But paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 are all "New and Improved!" by Yours Truly. Have a look!

Click on the image go to the History section on Wikipedia.

And here are the new references I cited. You'll notice almost all of them consist of primary source material, like original deeds and newspaper reports written at the time the historical events actually occurred. So many definitive references here!

Click on the image go to the References section on Wikipedia.

I know I should have done this a long time ago, but editing Wikipedia is no simple task. It can be pretty intimidating, and exhausting, too. So 5 days of it is quite enough for me, at least for now. *whew!*

 

Compromise Line Road

I 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.

The subject is not far 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 lies within Adición's borders, so I'm not really straying too far afield here.

Anyway, even as a child, I had a keen interest in roads and maps which really took off after I 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.

Recently I was contacted by an old classmate who asked about Compromise Line, and desiring to know more than the basics I'd heard long ago, I decided to do a deep-dive into the subject. Obvious first stop reference-wise was Donald Pflueger's Glendora (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, and that was a similar dead-end.

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.)