Featherstone Quarry

We neighborhood kids used to call it the "Chalk Mine." To us, the abandoned quarry looked like something out of the Old West. We thought for sure it had been there since cowboy days; maybe even a hundred years! There were a bunch of other tall tales about the place, but it would be another half century before I finally uncovered its factual history.

Featherstone Quarry was the entrepreneurial brainchild of one David Forbes Meiklejohn (1876-1937):¹ a Stanford-educated mining engineer² who, around 1920, stumbled somewhat serendipitously upon a large deposit of almost pure diatomaceous earth on Chaffee lands in the hills southeast of Covina, and subsequently invested a quarter-million dollars to exploit what he perceived as its "vast wealth."

Extraction of the resource began in late 1920-early 1921, when roads to the site were graded and a processing plant constructed.³ The diatomite was used primarily in the manufacture of insulation,³ tile, pipes and conduits.⁴ Exactly why and when quarrying ended, however, is uncertain. A geology field report based upon data compiled in 1932 stated that operation of the mine "ceased several years ago,"⁴ so it may be that Featherstone Quarry did not survive as a going concern past 1930.

Featherstone Quarry, Covina Hills, 1929. The complex extended from today's Rancho La Floresta Drive at left to the main diatomite mine at right. I-10 now passes from left to right through the low white hill at center. 'Dick' Whittington Studio, photographer. Courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Link to full-res image.

The processing plant over the hill on the Charter Oak side, mid-1920s. In this photo, we are standing on a spot a few yards down the hill from the end of today's Woodhurst Drive, facing southwest toward the intersection of Rancho Los Nogales Drive and Puente Street. Photo courtesy Covina Valley Historical Society.

A worker showing why the mine was named Featherstone! The diatomite formed in the Miocene epoch approximately 7 million years ago.⁴
Image courtesy Covina Valley Historical Society c/o Powell Camera Shop.

The main quarry (bottom) and its associated roads in 1934. The road at top approximately follows the alignment of today's Puente St.; the road over the hill from the quarry site, Jalapa Drive. Fair use courtesy U.C. Santa Barbara Digital Library, Special Research Collections.

The "Chalk Mine" as seen from our house on Rancho El Encino, June, 1962. What we called the "Quartz Mine" can also be seen to the left of center. Inside that cleft was a thick outcropping of crystalline gypsum.

In 1965, all of the ancient hills north of our neighborhood were bulldozed to create the Covina Heights housing development.

Casa Mirasol

Local history has changed a little! Likely unbeknown to almost everyone, it turns out one of the buildings of the old Baptist Seminary in the Covina Hills still stands today.

Now a private home, this lone survivor was originally the residence of the Headmaster of the California Preparatory School for Boys.

As this student-made drawing from 1936 indicates, the house in its Cal Prep days was known as "Casa Mirasol." According to Assessor's Office records, it was built in 1929.

In 1942, Dr. Gottfried de Purucker moved his branch of the Theosophical Society to the Covina Hills campus, and Casa Mirasol became his home. After the California Baptist Theological Seminary acquired the property in 1951, it was used as the Dean's residence.

Casa Mirasol in 1942

The old school campus was important in Covina's history, and part of my own history, as well. One can only speculate why this building alone was spared demolition, but I'm happy to know it's still with us.