Covina Hills Road

When I was little, growing up off old Covina Hills Road, I used to wonder about its past. So many things around it seemed ancient, like from cowboy days. Maybe it had been a stagecoach road, or a covered wagon trail, but no one could tell me anything that satisfied my imagination. A lifetime would pass before I was able to discover the road's forgotten story myself.

Corner of CHR and Via Verde, San Dimas, June 26, 2010. Photo © J Scott Shannon.

Although the precise year of its origin is undocumented, Covina Hills Road most likely came into being around the time Covina itself was founded in 1885. The gradual slope down from the corner of Rowland and Grand Avenues would have been a natural location for an access road to the 3,438-acre Hollenbeck Ranch¹ southeast of town, and to Walnut Creek and its tributaries beyond.

On this topographical map from 1894, the Hollenbeck Ranch road (red) already extended as far east as today's Via Verde.

In 1894, a committee of the Pomona Board of Trade together with officials and supervisors of Los Angeles County recommended creation of a road over the San Jose Hills to give Pomona a more direct route to the San Gabriel Valley and points west.² At the time, travelers from Pomona had to go around the north end of the San Jose Hills then west via Lordsburg (La Verne) and San Dimas to get to Covina. If they could cross over the hills instead, it would take five miles off the trip,³ which in the days before automobiles could mean an hour of time saved.

The route as proposed passed through the Phillips Ranch⁴ on the east over what we now call Kellogg Hill, then through Hollenbeck Ranch lands on the Covina side.³ After the rights-of-way were obtained and obstacles to construction overcome, work on the Pomona & Covina Road was completed in four months in early 1896 for a total cost of $1,100.⁵

The original as-built alignment of the Pomona & Covina Road (red). Since 1933, the road has ended at the point indicated by the black slash.

"West Covina."

On August 7, 1909, the name "West Covina" appeared for the first time in a newspaper. Covina Argus editor J. L. "Louie" Matthews had heard that the people of the farming lands to the south and west of town wanted a better name for their growing community than "Walnut Center," and in an editorial, he gave voice to their desire. Consensus was immediate, and thus was "West Covina" born.

Source: Newspapers.com

Reference:

Pflueger, D. H. 1964. Covina: Sunflowers, Citrus, Subdivisions. Castle Press, Pasadena, California, 372pp.

 

Covina 1907

This promotional booklet was put out by the Covina Valley Farmers' Club in April, 1907.¹ Some of these images (all by Tucker Studios) are quite rare; a few likely never published elsewhere before or since. Its 12 photos are presented here in the same order they appear in the booklet. (Click on any of the black-and-white pictures to view an enlargement.)

I believe the faded pencil inscription reads "Master Charles ... Martin / from Uncle Archie"

I've always liked this picture of Hollenbeck back when the palms were young. Donald Pflueger says this is Hamilton Temple driving his 1901 Oldsmobile;² one of the first automobiles in Covina. (No stone pillars on the street yet, apparently.)

Old Phillips Tract Ads

A lot of advertisements for the Phillips Tract were run in local papers during the first couple of years of land sales.

This was the first ad ever, printed only days after the official opening of the new development. Like almost all real estate ads of the time, it tells some untruths, especially when it says "A Town Located on the Land." In that first month, all that comprised Covina was J. S. Phillips' own house, a one-room schoolhouse, a small general store "downtown," and a simple shack across Badillo Street which housed a newspaper that basically had no readers yet.¹ Civilization, Ho!

Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, January 21, 1885.²

Untold Stories of Hollenbeck and Phillips

One of the "facts" you'll find in every history of Covina is that in 1882, J. E. Hollenbeck sold 2,000 acres of his land in Rancho La Puente to J. S. Phillips for $30,000 where the latter founded Covina in 1885. Problem is, I've never been able to find any legal documentation of that transaction.

However, just recently I did find this conveyance involving Hollenbeck and Phillips, but it isn't at all what I was expecting. In fact, when I saw it, it made my jaw drop, because if the origin story of Covina is true, it shouldn't exist.

Legal notice in the Los Angeles Times of January 14, 1885.¹

As you can see, in eighteen-eighty FIVE, Hollenbeck and Phillips jointly conveyed 195-3/4 acres in Rancho La Puente to James F. Houghton – trustee of the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co. of California – to secure a loan to J. S. Phillips in the amount of $40,000. (Put a pin in that for future reference.)

What's significant is that Hollenbeck couldn't convey title in real property he didn't own, so this a clear indication he didn't sell his land to Phillips in 1882, after all, or at least he didn't sell it outright. It appears he only sold a share of his ownership, and that Hollenbeck was actually a "silent partner" in the Phillips Tract all along, right up until his death in September, 1885.

I also recently discovered something else that never made it into the history books. Pflueger² chronicles the events in J. S. Phillips' life from 1882-1889 in often meticulous detail, but unless one attends carefully, a reader can easily skim past what ultimately happened to the founder of Covina, and even the single sentence devoted to the subject turns out to be a soft-pedaled vaguery of the actual turn of events that Phillips fell victim to in the end.

Quoting from page 204, this is all Pflueger has to say about the cessation of Joseph S. Phillips' association with the town he fathered:

He lost a large segment of his fortune in an investment in a northern California mine and was forced to sell his holdings in Covina and move elsewhere to regain his fortune.²

Well, as Paul Harvey used to say, you're about to find out "the rest of the story."

It was front page news in the June 3, 1889, edition of the Los Angeles Herald.³

First of all, notice there's Houghton and that life insurance company again: the same one that loaned Phillips $40,000 four years before. And apparently, judging by the remaining value of the mortgage, as mentioned in the newspaper article, Phillips had only managed to reduce his debt by $5,000 in all that time.

I suppose technically it was not inaccurate for Pflueger to say Phillips was "forced to sell his holdings," but the legal term "forced sale" is a synonym for foreclosure, which conveys a distinctly more negative connotation. With his equivocal phrasing, Pflueger almost made it sound like Phillips simply sold off his assets and moved on, but the hard fact of the matter was that Phillips had taken out a loan, he defaulted on repayment, and his remaining Covina properties were declared forfeit and seized.

Heretofore, I would wager that not a single student of Covina history alive today was aware of Phillips' actual financial fate, or that Hollenbeck had retained ownership in the Phillips Tract all along. (Both were certainly news to me!)

The full text of the newspaper article is transcribed below.

Hollenbeck and the Badillas

Everybody who grew up in Covina is familiar with the name Hollenbeck, but few know the historical figure's actual connection to the city. Turns out Covina as we know it wouldn't have existed without John Edward Hollenbeck and his business dealings and personal associations in Central America from 1849-1876.

J. Edward Hollenbeck (1829-1885). Source: An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California, 1889, at archive.org.

Hollenbeck engaged in several commercial enterprises during his 27 years spent mostly in Nicaragua, but the most salient with regard to Covina is the period after the American Civil War when he was an export agent for the Royal Mail.¹ Hollenbeck oversaw international transactions of a wide variety of trade goods, and it was likely then that he crossed paths with the wealthy coffee-growing family of José de Jesús Badilla of Heredia, Costa Rica. José Badilla died in 1875,^a but by way of inheritance, and Hollenbeck, it would be his sons who ended up becoming the first settlers on the land which would one day become Covina.

In his notable history of Covina,² Donald Pflueger wrote that it was Hollenbeck's suggestion that the Badillos emigrate to California to grow coffee. [N.b., for the purpose of this article, the two spellings (Badilla/Badillo) are considered to be interchangeable and of equally valid historicity.] Quoting:

The Costa Rica Ranch had been acquired by the Badillo brothers when they came into the valley at the instigation of John E. Hollenbeck, a prominent resident of Los Angeles who owned a magnificent home in Boyle Heights. Mr. Hollenbeck had spent many years in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and while in Costa Rica he became acquainted with Julián and Antonio Badillo, well-to-do owners of coffee plantations. Although Mr. Hollenbeck did not understand the cultivation of coffee, he conceived the idea of establishing a coffee plantation in the San Gabriel Valley and approached the Badillo brothers on the matter.²

This has always been the accepted story, however, the deeper I have delved into the lives of Hollenbeck and the Badillas – examining in particular the actual historical sequence of events – the less likely it seems this was the American's idea. It's problematic to Pflueger's account that Hollenbeck didn't come to live in Los Angeles until March, 1876,^1,3 only two months before the Badillos first arrived there.^b It seems improbable to me that a family that had been growing coffee successfully in Costa Rica for generations would completely uproot itself and move to a foreign country based solely upon the speculation of one man who had no experience growing their crop, and who up to that point had never himself lived in California.

What makes more logical sense is that the Badillas came up with the idea of moving to the United States themselves, and subsequently sought out the locally famous American expatriat, Hollenbeck, to help facilitate their plan. Apparently, he was known to be a ready ally to people who wanted to improve their lot in life. In an old biography, Hollenbeck was described as being noted for his "...large-hearted generosity, always assisting every worthy enterprise, and ever willing to help those who showed a disposition to help themselves."¹ For the Badillas, J. E. Hollenbeck would seem to have been the right man in the right place at the right time to help them relocate to America.

Although I admit the above scenario is speculation, I have found indirect support for it in a memoir written by Covina pioneer Clara Eckles (1874-1966), who knew the (Antonio) Badillo family personally when she was a girl. Miss Eckles wrote that Mr. Badillo himself explained why they came to this country: they wanted "...a coffee plantation, yielding enough coffee for the whole United States!"⁴ Even Hollenbeck couldn't credibly pitch an idea that grandly ambitious. A big dream like that would also help explain why the family bought such a huge area of land, and were willing to pay such a high price for it.

Detail of 1877 map of Los Angeles County showing boundaries of the 5,563-acre Badilla Tract (yellow), and the 2,000 acres later co-owned by Hollenbeck and J. S. Phillips (olive) which became Covina. Source: Library of Congress

Once they made their plans to come to California, the Badillas apparently wasted no time. The first newspaper article I found mentioning them here was a ship manifest published in the May 18, 1876 edition of the Los Angeles Daily Star,^b and they bought their land from widow Charlotte Rowland not too long after on September 2, 1876.^b,c

Before Glendora Avenue

When I was a kid starting to get curious about local history, the story I heard about West Covina's Glendora Avenue was that it was called that because in olden days it went to Glendora. It did seem to point in that general direction, so I always assumed the tale was true.

But where did Glendora Avenue actually go in historical times? I didn't think to figure that out until just the other day. Turns out if I take the original 1885 survey map of Covina and precisely extend the line of today's Glendora Avenue, it very conveniently connects three important historical sites: the Julián Badilla home (1876), Eugene Griswold's 1877 Citrus Post Office and general store, and the homestead of Robert J. Pollard, who I have recently come to believe may have been the Covina area's first settler of European descent.

Detail of Phillips Tract map (1885) showing a proposed historical northward extension of Glendora Avenue/Puente Depot Road (red arrow).
Yellow circles indicate the Badilla, Pollard and Griswold properties respectively. Map courtesy Covina Valley Historical Society.

No maps from the 1870s show that such a road existed through the future Covina area, but it would make sense that one did, because if you were Mr. Pollard or Mr. Griswold or the Sres. Badilla, you would need a wagon road in that exact location and orientation to get you to Puente, which was not only the headquarters town of Rancho La Puente, it was also the location of the then-new Southern Pacific Railroad depot, which at the time would have been your main transportation link to the greater world beyond.

But there are maps from turn of the 20th century that do show a "Puente Depot Road" roughly tracing the path of today's Glendora Avenue. To realize my scenario, we need only imagine that the depot road went further north before the grid of streets for Covina was laid out in 1883-1884.

Maps from c.1900 showing "Puente Depot Road." Courtesy HistoricMapWorks.com and Library of Congress.

I don't think the diagonal Glendora Avenue we know today necessarily followed that same alignment all the way north, though. All it had to do was go as far as Citrus Avenue – a main thoroughfare even in the 1870s – and from there, you could have taken it up to Azusa or the foothills, where it ended at Fairmount Cemetery. In any case, Glendora wasn't founded until 1886, so the road we now call Glendora Avenue never went to such a place to begin with. The story behind the name turns out to be only the stuff of legend, after all.

One more thing: let's say the depot road did extend north to Citrus Avenue, that would finally answer a nagging question I've had for a long time, which was, why did the Badillas choose to build their HQ exactly where they did? That particular spot always seemed less than ideal to me. However, if we assume that in 1876, it was the intersection of the most crucial local roads at the time – San Bernardino Road (the most direct route to Los Angeles), the Puente Depot Road, and from there, the road north to Azusa – then the Badillas' chosen location makes perfect logistical sense.

This makes me think that the depot road existed before the Badillas arrived. So who first blazed the old wagon track to Puente? No way of knowing for certain at this point, but my guess would be R. J. Pollard, who may have been there before anybody else, but that I have yet to establish.

Much speculation here, I acknowledge, but a lot of history is informed speculation based on previously-known facts. And it's fun stuff to think about, anyway! I mean a historian's gotta have fun once in a while, right? Right!

Grateful thanks to Michael Schoenholtz and Randall Smith for research and discussion.

 

Two Twin Schools

In 1894, two new almost-identical two-storey schoolhouses were built in Covina. One replaced the pioneer Phillips School (1883) at Citrus and San Bernardino Road, and the other replaced the even older Lower Azusa School (1876), which was the very first dedicated schoolhouse in what would later be known as Covina.

The 1894 Covina Grammar School soon after it opened. The building was expanded to include the high school in 1899. Photo courtesy Glenn Reed.

In 1910, both of Covina's grade schools were given new names. Lower Azusa was renamed Lark Ellen School after Covina's famous opera singer "Lark" Ellen Beach Yaw (1869-1947), and the one downtown was called Reed School, after local physician and philanthropist Dr. James Denny Reed.

Lark Ellen School, c.1910, located on the southwest corner of Cypress Street and Lark Ellen Avenue. Photo courtesy Glenn Reed.

The Reed School in the Nineteen-teens. Photo courtesy Glenn Reed.

Both of Covina's 1894 schoolhouses were demolished in 1918-1919 to make way for newer buildings.

Covina Grammar School, 1919-1953. The landmark was demolished in 1969 for a new Civic Center which was never built.

Rare photo of the 1919 Lark Ellen School in the 1930s. From "75 Years in Covina 1901 to 1976" on YouTube.

Covina's First High Schools

On July 14, 1891, the citizens of Azusa, Glendora and Covina voted to establish Citrus Union High School. This first institution of secondary education in what was then called the Azusa Valley opened for instruction on September 28, 1891, and produced its first graduates in 1894.

Citrus High's initial home was the abandoned Barnes Hotel in the land-boom town of Gladstone, two miles north of Covina, and was located on the southwest corner of Citrus Avenue and Broadway (today's Gladstone Street). On December 11, 1891, a storm destroyed that building, and the school moved across the intersection into this former general store on the northeast corner where it remained until December, 1903.

Citrus Union High School in 1901. Image courtesy Calisphere, University of California.

Students from Covina, however, stopped attending Citrus in 1899, when the rapidly growing town created its own high school district. Classes were held on the upper floor of the Grammar School until a separate dedicated high school building was opened nearby on San Bernardino Road opposite Park Avenue in 1903.

The first Covina High School, 1903-1909. In 1919, the building was moved to Second and School Street and became a Masonic Temple. It still stands today as a museum.

According to Pflueger's history of Covina, the curriculum of the first high school consisted of:

"English, Algebra, Latin, Ancient History, French, German, Free Hand Drawing, Writing, Spelling, Commercial Arithmetic, Stenography, Typewriting, Plane Geometry, Medieval and Modern History, Botany, Bookkeeping, Spanish, English History, Solid Geometry, Chemistry, Geometrical Drawing, Greek, Commercial Law, Physics, American History, Government, Trigonometry, and Higher Algebra."

The third and most recognized historical campus was Covina Union High School, located on the west side of Citrus Avenue between Puente and Dexter Streets. Built in 1908-1909, it graduated 47 classes of seniors until Covina High moved for the last time in 1956. From 1956-1959, the newly established West Covina and Edgewood High Schools also used the old campus.

Covina Union High School opened September 20, 1909. It would serve the local community for the next 50 years.

"Science Hall" (left) was added to the CUHS campus in 1925.

The venerable civic edifice was demolished in 1962 after the gymnasium was destroyed by arson.

 

Remembering Glenn Reed

Glenn Denny Reed was born in Covina, June 30, 1928. He was the third child of Judge Thomas Black Reed and Edith Hazel Waterhouse Reed. His grandfather was Covina's “horse and buggy doctor”, James Denny Reed, MD who came to Covina in 1890.

Glenn attended Covina Grammar School and graduated from Covina High School in 1945 when the campus was on the west side of Citrus St. south of Dexter St. In his youth, he played in and later worked in Covina's orange groves helping with spraying and smudging when workers were scarce during the war. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of California at Berkeley then studied at Hastings School of Law in San Francisco for two years. He completed his law degree in Los Angeles at Southwestern Law School in 1954.

While preparing for the Bar exam, he worked as a teller at Covina National Bank, co-founded by his grandfather and managed by his uncle, Jim Reed.

Glenn spent his summers at the family beach house in Balboa where he met Donna Irwin of Pasadena. Their relationship continued through four summers at the beach. In January 1955, after passing the Bar, and the death of his father, Glenn and Donna married. Upon returning from their honeymoon, Glenn, with his new bride, lived in his childhood home on San Bernardino Road. His mother, Edith, moved to a smaller house nearby.

Glenn started his law practice and his family in Covina. In the first 6 years of their marriage, Glenn and Donna had 3 children, Steve, Susie, and Sandy. During this time, Donna was playing fast-pitch softball with Glenn as team manager.

In 1967 Glenn bought a sailboat and began 25 years of very successful yacht racing with Donna and Steve as crew. He also took many coastal cruises with the whole family. He was an active member of Covina Host Lion's Club and Covina United Methodist Church. On Wednesdays at lunchtime he played indoor volleyball with a group comprised mainly of other Covina lawyers.

Glenn wrapped up his Covina-based law practice when he settled the estate of his cousin Lora Allison who live in Covina to the age of 100.

In retirement, Glenn began playing doubles tennis on week-day mornings a block away from home at Covina Park. He had a hip replaced at age 80 and continued playing tennis to age 90. He also found time to officiate girl's softball and volleyball at the high school level.

Also in retirement, and of greatest interest to the people of Covina, Glenn set up a model train layout in the basement of his home. He added a model of the old Covina train station, followed by models of adjacent orange packing houses, followed by...well, you know what happened.

The model train set turned into a Covina history project. Eventually the “Vintage Covina” model outgrew the basement and moved to the “train shed” in their backyard.

At the time of his passing in April 2021 Glenn was just completing the 100th building.

Glenn lived nearly 93 years in the home his father built in 1925 on West San Bernardino Rd. He was the last of the many J.D. Reed descendants living in Covina.

Glenn is survived by his son Steve, daughter Sandy Wulf, daughter Susie Reed, Grandchildren Brian Reed and Rebeka McCurnin and great grandchildren Luke, Miles and Clara Reed.

--Steve Reed

This article was originally published in the June, 2021 issue of "The Covina Citrus Peal," the official newsletter of the Covina Valley Historical Society, and is reproduced here with the permission of the Reed family.

 

Farewell, Glenn

I am shocked and saddened to learn that fellow historian Glenn Reed passed away suddenly earlier today. One of the last native Covinans born in the 1920s, he lived in the same house on San Bernardino Road for all his 92 years.

After corresponding with Glenn in email since I began this blog, I met him in person for the first time only 37 days ago. He gave me a personal tour of his labor-of-love scale model of historical Covina: an honor I'd looked forward to for years. I was due to return to Los Angeles this very week, and was looking forward to visiting him again to continue our conversation we'd barely begun on February 28, but fate determined that was not to be.

A few photos from my all-too-brief visit:

Glenn Reed's personal homage to his home town and its history.

Mr. Reed introducing me to his miniature world, February 28, 2021.

Model of the Grammar School and Covina's first High School from the San Bernardino Road side.

Just look at the detail here. Mr. Reed told me he wouldn't have been able to complete this model of Mountain View without my assistance.

Glenn Reed on his back stoop, just as I remember him. Photo courtesy Marty Getz.

I'm still trying to process this news. Glenn was a good friend and colleague- a primary inspiration for my work here- and I don't know at this point how I'm going to be able to continue this blog without him.