Memorial Glen

In the closing months of World War II, a grieving father resolved to create a place of peaceful repose dedicated to the memory of his son who had died defending freedom in Europe.

Covina Argus-Citizen, August 15, 1952.

 

Charles Jobe and his wife Betty were citrus growers in the hills east of Covina. They were the proud parents of two sons: Harold Glen (left, b.1922) and Claude (b.1929), and it was Harold who lost his life at Saint-Lô, France, during the last days of the Battle of Normandy ("Operation Overlord") in August, 1944.

 

A small, wooded creek ran through the Jobes's land on Holt Avenue, and it was in this mixed stand of live oaks and orange trees that Charles Jobe created "Memorial Glen." Near the center of the grove, in the shade of a magnificent 900-year-old live oak, Mr. Jobe set up a stone monument with a bronze plaque dedicating the park to his fallen son and to the other servicemen from Covina who had sacrificed their lives in World War II.

 

Over the next two decades, the Jobes hosted multitudes of visitors to Memorial Glen. Sadly, after Charles Jobe died in 1967, and his widow had to relocate elsewhere, the park became the haunt of youths who used the secluded spot for, well, let's just say less-than-reverential purposes. During this period of neglect, almost all of Mr. Jobe's labors were trashed by disrespectful vandals.

To make matters worse, when Interstate 10 was widened in the early 1970s, the adjacent service road was realigned to the east, and all of the trees in the western third of the former Jobe property were taken out. The removal of this protective canopy exposed the trunk and limbs of the ancient live oak to the sun's direct rays, and this resulted in the slow death of the veteran giant. Arborists tried their best to save it, but finally, in the early 1980s, what remained of the great tree had to be removed.

By this time, the City of Covina had acquired the land, and its Parks & Recreation Department created Jalapa Park, named after Covina's sister-city in Mexico.

 

In 1998, part of the park was turned into a formal Veterans Memorial. This interpretive monument was erected on the site...

  ...and a new commemorative plaque was installed to replace the long-vanished original.

IN MEMORY
OF
CORPORAL HAROLD G. JOBE
KILLED IN ACTION AUGUST 4, 1944
NEAR ST. LO FRANCE
"HAROLD GAVE HIS LIFE RATHER THAN RISK THE LIVES
OF HIS MEN. HIS BRAVERY MAY NEVER BE BROADCAST
TO THE WORLD, BUT HE WILL LIVE FOREVER IN THE
HEARTS OF THOSE WHO KNEW HIM."

 

More recently, the family of nephew Jere A. Jobe donated these new bronze plaques to the park.

 

As someone who grew up only a mile from Memorial Glen during the 1960s, and who personally witnessed its decline in the following decade, I am truly grateful to the City of Covina for restoring and preserving this unique historical site for future generations.

---

Color photos © J Scott Shannon. Special acknowledgment and thanks to fellow local historian J. David Rogers for the black-and-white photographs, the biographical details of the Jobe Family, and the history of Memorial Glen.

 

Covina Valley Panorama, 1930

Recently, I found this amazing panoramic photograph showing Covina and its environs prior to development.

'Dick' Whittington Studio, photographer. Courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Link to full-res image.

I realize it doesn't look very amazing at this size, but below are some labeled enlargements which point out what is what in the photo.

75 Years Ago Tonight

These photos were taken 75 years ago tonight along Garvey Boulevard (today's I-10) on the stretch that passed through the Covina area. They are from the archives of the Southern California Edison Company, and were evidently taken to document street lighting along the roadway.

The first one shows the signage at the eastern boundary of West Covina–the city limits of which, at that time, extended all the way east to Range Avenue (today's Grand Avenue). The slope of the pavement down the grade to the Walnut Creek arroyo is recognizable even today.

The neon sign fascinates me because I never knew it existed. The smaller sign illuminated by incandescent light warns motorists about the speed trap that West Covina had become notorious for since the opening of Garvey Boulevard. (My father used to tell tales about the WCPD cops and their famously predatory traffic law enforcement.) It's pretty obvious from this very prominent signage that they meant business. "You have been warned!"

G. Haven Bishop, photographer. From the Edison Archive. Courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Link to full-size image.

Here is another neon sign that I didn't know about before, either. It reads, "COVINA 1-MILE." Looking at the street signs in extreme closeup, I can see this is the intersection of "State Highway" and "Citrus Ave." The mileage sign points east to "Pomona 8" and "Redlands 42," and "El Monte 8" and "Los Angeles 23" to the west. The shaded mileage sign pointing north appears to say "Covina 1" and "Glendora [illegible]."

G. Haven Bishop, photographer. From the Edison Archive. Courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Link to full-size image.

One might wonder what these people were doing hanging out down on the main drag through town at what must have been close to 10PM. Turns out they were assembling for a dedication ceremony for the new overhead street light (the neon "Covina" sign had been put in place three years previously).

Driving Around the Groves

North Grand Avenue, late 1950s. Although this particular location is in Glendora, it is very much typical of the way Covina's streets looked during the transition from citrus to suburbs. After a block of new houses, the road narrows to its original two lanes as it passes an orange grove. To the left is a row of tall Washingtonia robusta fan palms and another housing development; this one with a separate feeder road running parallel to the arterial street. (Covina had a ton of those.) And, in the midst of all those modern homes stands an old two-story grove house: a lone survivor of rural times now past.

Even into the 1970s, there were still several roads in and around Covina that suddenly narrowed to two lanes like this. The last ones that I can remember were northbound Grand Avenue between Cypress and Covina Blvd., and Vincent Ave. just south of Arrow Highway. The former was widened to four lanes around 1971, and the latter as late as 1980.

This shows the postcard location in the present day. If you jump forward a little in the street view, you can see that the old grove house at left is still standing today.

 

Fall, 1954

Postcard view of Citrus Avenue north from Badillo Street in Covina, California, in Fall, 1954. which just happens to be when I was born here. I can peg the date because both films on the Covina Theater's marquee are from 1954, and the later of the two—"Down Three Dark Streets"—was released on Sep. 2. It might be as late as early November, though, because of the snow in the mountains and the ladies wearing winter coats. It can't be after Thanksgiving, however, otherwise Citrus would be decked out in its traditional Christmas decorations!

Correction: According to an ad in the Covina Argus-Citizen, the twin bill of "Lucky Me" and "Down Three Dark Streets" played at the Covina Theatre only on January 16 and 17 of 1955—a Sunday and Monday respectively—and since none of the retail businesses on Citrus would have been open on a Sunday, the photo of this busy street scene must have been taken precisely on Monday, January 17, 1955. Q.E.D. :-)

 

Oak Canyon Road

Probably not a lot people from Covina ever heard of Oak Canyon Road, but growing up in the hills east of town, I became aware of it at a very early age. Whenever we'd drive past Oak Canyon, its picturesque colonnade of old palm trees would catch my eye, and I'd wonder how they got there. Seven decades would pass before I finally found answers to all of the questions I had about this pioneer-era byway.

Detail of Joseph M. Bloom map showing Oak Canyon Road (green), Covina Hills Road (yellow) and surrounding streets in 1963.

First called Park Street, the now-secluded track southeast of Covina was laid out by the McCarthy Company in 1895: the same year as the westernmost mile of today's Covina Hills Road.¹

Tract map from 1895 showing Park Street (green) and the new County Road (yellow) in the McCarthy subdivision of Block 1 of the Hollenbeck Ranch.
Courtesy Los Angeles Dept. of Public Works.

In 1902, Col. Frank Marion Chapman acquired 1,470 acres south of the Pomona-Covina Road,² and Park Street became the palm-lined carriageway entrance to his Chapman Heights Ranch.

Following the Colonel's death in 1909, pioneer scion Harvey M. Houser bought the northernmost 100-acre portion of the former Chapman ranch.³ In March, 1925, Houser then sold the property to Mr. and Mrs. John H. Henry,⁴ and the following year, a renamed Palm Drive became the picturesque gateway to the Henrys' new California Preparatory School for Boys located atop the mesa overlooking Walnut Creek.

Aerial view of the new Cal Prep campus and what is now Oak Canyon Road at left, 1927. Courtesy U.C. Santa Barbara Geospatial Collection.

The palms lining the school's entrance road were evidently a kind of mascot to Cal Prep's academic community. Their emblem prominently featured the tropical tree, and they even named their yearbook "The Palm."

Frontispiece of the 1928 Cal Prep annual.⁵

Looking south on Cal Prep's Palm Drive, 1928.⁵

After the California Preparatory School moved to Ojai in 1942, the campus was taken over by the Theosopical Society Point Loma,⁶ and it was in 1945 that the first mentions of Oak Canyon Road began appearing in the local newspaper.

The campus changed hands yet again in 1951, then becoming the new home of the California Baptist Theological Seminary.⁷ This was how I knew the place when our family moved to the Covina Hills in 1959, and I first saw the palms.

As curious as I was back then about Oak Canyon Road, I strictly avoided that area when I was younger, as it had a rather notorious local reputation. Invading swarms of "bad" teenagers took advantage of the secluded road to party and make out. The L. A. County Sheriffs patrolled that road constantly, and in my day it was mostly known as a really good place to go to get busted. The delinquency problem was solved once and for all, though, when Oak Canyon Road was finally closed to all vehicle traffic in the late 1970s when the seminary property was acquired by redevelopers.

The cars and juvies went away, but the palms endured as always—or at least some of them did. The trees used to extend in a uniform line all the way from the base of the bluff to the intersection with Covina Hills Road. I wish I had taken a picture of the palm drive as it looked before a suburban housing development destroyed the trees north of Walnut Creek in 1977 and obscured the view of those that remained. That vista that so inspired me in my childhood only survives in memory now, alas.

Fortunately, though, the southern half of the palms live on, and the old road itself today serves as the gateway to the 82.8-mile-long Schabarum-Skyline Equestrian Trail. I'm very pleased that at least one section of this pioneer-era relic will now be preserved for future generations.

This is my favorite picture from my visit last year to this quiet refugium. It was so amazing to finally walk among these palms and contemplate just how ancient they are. Planted 110 years ago, they are older than almost every man-made structure in the eastern San Gabriel Valley. Living history, hidden in plain sight, yet now no longer the mystery lost to the passage of time that they once were.

Photo ©2011 by J Scott Shannon.

(N.b., The foregoing is a complete rewrite of the original article which, over time, I discovered contained multiple factual errors. This revised version also includes a lot of new information and illustrations that were not available to me 14 years ago. I think you'll agree, this is a much more satisfactory and worthwhile read! —JSS, May 1, 2026.)

References:

¹ Map of the McCarthy subdivision of Block 1 of the Hollenbeck Tract, surveyed August, 1895.
² Covina Argus, May 31, 1902, p.1.
³ Covina Argus, May 14, 1910, p.2.
⁴ Covina Argus, March 6, 1925, p.1.
⁵ The Palm, 1928, Annual of the California Preparatory School for Boys, Covina, California, 84pp.
⁶ Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1942, p.30.
⁷ Covina Argus-Citizen, January 26, 1951, p.1.