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!
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.
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?
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).
Back in 2018, the late Glenn Reed told of finding new information about how Covina originally got its name: a previously unknown contemporary account that the elder historian believed credible enough to make the following statement:
I think that is a better story for the naming of Covina than any that I have heard, and besides, it is an account from someone alive at the time; I am accepting it.1
And now, it just so happens that I've found corroborative evidence for that alternate take on Covina history.
First, though, let me quote the traditional story that's been retold in virtually every recounting of the city's past: that it was Joseph Phillips' surveyor Fred Eaton who authored the name.
...Mr. Eaton observed that because of the embracing mountains and hills the subdivision seemed to lie in a cove. He noted, too, the productive vineyards that had been planted by the settlers. From cove and vine he formed the word "Covina," cove of vineyards, and it struck him that this would be a good name for the new town.2
It is factually true that the first time the word "Covina" ever saw print was on the original plat map of the Phillips Tract. But is there actual documentary proof that Eaton was the true author of the name? Or could this be a case of a tale that's been told so many times that people simply assume it's a historical fact?
It turns out, however, that there are other long-forgotten stories of how Covina was christened, and one of those is backed with documentary evidence: that the name originated with a group of German Baptist Brethren, and that their original spelling was "Covena"5...
I continue to discover new (or rather, forgotten) stories of old Covina in my searches of online newspaper archives. This one I found especially fascinating. It tells of how Covina's first historian, on the verge of completing a book on her decade of research, was subsequently written out of the history books herself...
Published in 1964, Covina: Sunflowers, Citrus, Subdivisions by Donald H. Pflueger1 is still regarded as the definitive scholarly treatment of the city's history. In the book's introduction, Pflueger cites long-time Covina resident Gladys Ratekin as a primary source; in so doing intimating that she was the early town's principal chronicler. I have only recently learned, however, that such was not the case. Another woman who preceded Ratekin–Harriett Russell Head–was in actuality the first to garner local recognition and praise for her years-long efforts to document Covina's past.
I became aware of Mrs. Head's work only incidentally while attempting to research Gladys Ratekin. I was curious if the latter had written any articles about early Covina for the town newspapers. I was dismayed to find none, and moreover, apparently only once during her lifetime was Miss Ratekin mentioned in the local press as having anything to do with Covina history. This is that single instance:
So, Gladys Ratekin had actually been someone else's understudy? And who was "Mrs. Pardon Head?" I could not recall seeing that name before. So I did another search. I was amazed to find a dozen detailed scholarly articles on Covina history, and an even greater number of news items which reported on Head's curation efforts. Perhaps understandably, this revelation came as quite a surprise.
One search result in particular attracted my attention. In this newspaper article, published in 1952 at the very beginning of his Covina project, Donald Pflueger revealed that he was indeed aware of Harriett Head...
...and yet nowhere in his completed book is there any mention of Mrs. Head or her extensive prior work.
How extensive? See for yourself below.
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 1885.1 It turns out that's not historically accurate, as you'll soon learn.
Just recently I found this conveyance involving Hollenbeck and Phillips, but it wasn't at all what I was expecting. In fact, when I saw it, it made my jaw drop, because if the accepted origin story of Covina is correct, it shouldn't exist.
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 outright. It appears he only entered into an agreement to sell, and retained ownership until the terms of the agreement were fulfilled. If true, that means Hollenbeck actually remained a "silent partner" in the Phillips Tract all along (or at least until Phillips putatively used that $40,000 to satisfy his indebtedness to Hollenbeck after he obtained the loan in January, 1885.)
It took me a while to find proof of the above claim, but here it is in black-and-white (and yellow!):
So Phillips not only didn't purchase the land outright, Pflueger and other historians got the year wrong, too. We now know for certain that Hollenbeck was still technically an owner of the "Phillips" Tract, even after he made his deal with Phillips in 1881.
I also recently discovered something else that never made it into the history books. Pflueger1 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.1
Well, as Paul Harvey used to say, you're about to find out "the rest of the story."
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 past 1882. (Both were certainly news to me!)
The full text of the newspaper article is transcribed below.
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.
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 1875,2 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,3 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.3
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, 1876,1,4 only two months before the Badillos first arrived there.5 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 expatriate, 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!"6 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.
Once they made their plans to come to California, the Badillas apparently wasted no time. The first newspaper articles I found mentioning them here was a ship manifest published in the May 18, 1876 edition of the Los Angeles Daily Star,5 and the registry of the Lafayette Hotel in the Los Angeles Evening Express on May 20, 1876.7 The two eldest brothers subsequently bought their land from John Rowland's widow Charlotte M. Rowland, her son Albert Rowland and daughter Victoria Rowland on September 2, 1876.8,9
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.
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.
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.
The venerable civic edifice was demolished after the gymnasium was destroyed by arson in June, 1962.
