The Hollenbeck Ranch Houses

For a while now I've been intending to write a comprehensive history of the pioneer-era Hollenbeck Ranch in the Covina Hills. I grew up on that land, and looking back, my childhood curiosity about its imagined past was the seed of my interest in Covina history which grew and blossomed in my later years.

The barn and outbuildings of the Hollenbeck Ranch in 1896.¹ The new Pomona County Road (today's Covina Hills Road) past the barbed-wire fence was only months old at this time.² The original ranch house described in this post was located out of frame to the right. Source: Covina Valley Historical Society and Powell Camera Shop.

I'm now very close to being able to tell the ranch's whole story, but the more I've thought about it, releasing all the information I've gathered in one huge flood would probably just make people's eyes glaze over and I'd end up writing something no one would read all the way through. So, maybe it might be better if I serve up the ranch's history in smaller, more digestible bites instead. :-)

In my last article, you met one of the ranch's major figures—Mr. H. E. Chesebro—and now, I'll revisit this photo that you might have seen here before to tell another introductory story of the Hollenbeck Ranch.

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

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.