Covina 1907

This promotional booklet was put out by the Covina Valley Farmers' Club in March, 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. (A denouement interestingly similar to the Badillas before him.)

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 a share of 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