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