Badillo Mystery Solved?

There's been all kinds of speculation in recent years about the name of Badillo Street in Covina and why it differs from the pioneer family's traditional Spanish name, Badilla.

Covina's main east/west street has been called "Badillo" ever since it first appeared on the Phillips Tract survey map in 1884.
Courtesy Covina Valley Historical Society.

I briefly mentioned my own ideas about this controversy at the end of the article about Edward Hollenbeck and the Badilla brothers that I posted back in 2021. Just yesterday, though, I found this letter published in a newspaper in 1877¹ that was signed, "J. Julian Badillo," which is the first time I've ever seen proof in print that one of the famous coffee-growing brothers actually used the Badillo spelling himself (and the first I've seen the name of their coffee plantation was "San Isidro Ranch.")

Santa Barbara Daily Press, February 7, 1877.

So then I thought, since I'm already on the newspaper archive website, I decided to take pen in hand and manually tally the number of times each spelling was used, and in which contexts they appeared.

This is what I found:

Book Report

I just read a new novel called "Gone in Time" by F. K. Matthews. It's a story about a young man who mysteriously finds himself transported to Covina in 1960. Quite an enjoyable time travel story, especially if you grew up on the "west side" of town, and particularly so if you were a "gearhead" who loved working on vintage cars. :) The descriptions of places and life in Covina in the Sixties are pretty much spot-on, the characters are very relatable, and it has a unique twist-ending, too. I was really captivated by it, myself. Couldn't put it down! In fact, I can't recall finishing a book of that length in one day before. Definitely recommended! ^_^

Available on Amazon

 

The Issei Fathers of West Covina

Relatively few valley residents today are aware that people of Japanese ancestry played a significant role in the early history of West Covina. During the first two decades of the 20th century, dozens of farmers emigrated from Japan to settle here, owning and working the land, raising families and becoming productive members of the local community.

And what a community it was! Early West Covina was a remarkable assemblage of nationalities. No previous author has stated this specifically, but unlike the parent city,¹ there was no racial separation to speak of in pre-war West Covina. Americans, Europeans, and first-generation immigrants from Japan (termed "Issei") all lived, farmed and participated in society with full freedom of association. There's perhaps no better visual evidence of this societal integration than this photo of Grades 1-3 at West Covina School in 1938. Look at all those happy faces!

Teacher Frances Maxson Sanchez (1900-1999) was the daughter of West Covina's first mayor, Benjamin Franklin Maxson, Jr., and her husband, Juan C. Sanchez, was a great-grandson of founding pioneer John Rowland.²

Tags

Some readers may have noticed that I recently added subject tags to my postings. This is to help people directly access articles related to specific topics. Might be worth bookmarking this page for future reference. (I have!)

Particular attention is called to the New History tag. There you will find facts about Covina history that have appeared nowhere else before. Covina Past exclusives, you might say!

Below are all the tagged subjects, with clickable links for your convenience.

Post-War Postcard

Time for another episode of vintage Covina photo sleuthing! Got ahold of another uncommon postcard of Citrus Avenue recently for which I hoped to pinpoint a date.

Post-war view north on Citrus Avenue from its intersection with Center Street.
Click on image for a larger view.

It's unused, so there's no postmark to give us a ballpark estimate. Just eyeballing the cars, though, I could tell it was from the Forties, but when, exactly?

When Was Covina Founded?

For people born in centuries past, it was not uncommon to not know one's precise birthday, and the same applies to historical places, even Covina!

Covina's founder, Joseph Swift Phillips (1840-1905).

Various sources have claimed with authority that Covina's origin date was 1882, 1884, 1885 and 1886. So, which of these is correct? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer is... complicated.

The City Motto

In January, 1922,¹ the Covina Chamber of Commerce held a contest for a slogan to represent the city to the broader world. Two months and dozens of submissions later, it was announced that a Mrs. F. E. Wolfarth won the $20 prize with her entry, "One Mile Square And All There."² The official motto as subsequently adopted by the CCoC would change the "One" to an "A,"^3,4 however, thus becoming the saying that a lot of us young latter-day Covinans were taught in school: "A Mile Square And All There."

But let's pause a moment for a fact check. Was Covina actually "a mile square?" Turns out not quite.

Commenting

Blogger for some reason made a recent change in the way the site handles cookies, the result being that readers can now only post comments here using the Google Chrome web browser.

It also appears that replies to comments are no longer supported. So, from this point on, if you have a question about something in one of my posts, please use the Contact Form in the sidebar, then I can reply to you by email.

This thing at the bottom of each page.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but so many things we encounter online are simply beyond our control. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

"Dear Covina."

Received a surprise gift recently. "Words of Gold from Covina" is a little book of favorite quotations by a Who's Who of Covinans of the day. I've since learned that it was published in December, 1910, by the Covina Presbyterian Church,¹ and was printed by the Argus Press.

But inside I found an even bigger surprise: a "lost" poem penned specially for Words of Gold² by Covina's original diva: "Lark" Ellen Beach Yaw (1869-1947).

Coffee Ranch Days

When I first read Donald Pflueger's "Covina" at age 12, I thought the most interesting parts were the author's descriptions of the valley before and during its settlement. One statement in particular captivated me: how, in the early 1880s, when the Methodist Church in the foothills at the top of Citrus Avenue rang its bell on Sunday mornings, "its clear notes could be heard all over the valley."¹ That same valley when I first knew it was already home to a quarter-million people, so a stillness of that sort was almost incomprehensible to me. Like another world, it seemed... and indeed it was...

Perhaps the best-known settlers from those early times were the families of José Julián and Pedro Antonio Badilla (aka Badillo), who emigrated from Costa Rica to America in 1876. The brothers had high ambitions. They wanted a coffee plantation big enough to supply the whole United States!² So what was their new land like when they arrived here?

Wheat harvest on Baldwin land in Rancho La Puente. Although best known for their coffee venture, the Badillas were famously successful raising wheat in 1878.³
Photo courtesy Covina Valley Historical Society and Powell Camera Shop.

A Dedication

Occasionally someone asks how my interest in Covina history originated. I had an abiding fascination with "old things" in general as far back as I can remember, but the specific seeds of curiosity about my home town's past were actually planted by teachers at Barranca School: in particular, Mr. Miller in 3rd grade (1962-1963), and Mrs. Shipley in 6th (1965-1966).

Subscribing

I see I haven't posted anything here yet this year. Sorry to say, I am so far behind with everything in my life, I don't know how I'm ever going to catch up.

But for now, I might as well start with the question I've been asked the most recently, and that is, "How can I subscribe to this blog?"

The short answer is: you can't, at least not in the most logical way, which would be to get a notification email when I post a new article here. Unfortunately, Google/Blogger ended that functionality a couple of years ago. (Thanks a bunch, Google!)

So currently, the only way to subscribe is by "following," and that can only be done if you have a Blogger account. If you do, you can go to your Blogger Dashboard, select "Reading List" in the sidebar, click "Manage," then click "Add," then copy/paste the URL for this blog where it says, "Add Blogs to Follow."

Trouble is, you have to visit the Blogger Dashboard every time you want to check for new posts, so unless you follow several blogs, it's easier just to come check the Covina Past page directly, say, on the 1st of each month. (I've rarely posted here more than once monthly, anyway.)

I've also created an account on X/Twitter that you can follow for announcements of new posts. Here is the URL:

https://x.com/covinapast

Regarding Covina history, I've actually been working on several articles simultaneously for a while now, but in each case, I've run into a roadblock where I'm unable to find some critical piece of information that would allow me to tell the complete story properly, which is very frustrating as you might imagine. One article in particular is a "magnum opus" of sorts on an important subject that's never been chronicled in its entirety, but it now looks like I'm going to have to go to Covina in person to find the material I need to finish it, and I hope to do that next month.

In the meantime, I'll see what I can do about wrapping up some of the other drafts I've put on the back burner. Some will probably do with just a bit of touching up, and not require the usual perfectionism I impose on myself for considering a project to be ready for prime time as it were. Anyway, my apologies for my long silence, and thanks for everyone's patience. I will try my best to get back on my feet here as soon as I can.