USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Pomona Valley, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the valley who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 13
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Then followed the laying out and "booming" of the new town. This was not in the eighties, but in 1875, long before the "big boom," but every feature which characterized the opening of a new townsite in those frenzied days was present. After the land was cleared and graded Mr. A. Higbie, the surveyor. laid out the town and set the stakes. The streets were graded and a number of buildings begun. Especially a hotel was erected at the corner of Fifth Street and Garey Avenue. About a hundred orange trees were set out north of the railroad and a reservoir was constructed. Then appeared everywhere posters announcing an auction sale of lots in the new town of Pomona, February 22, 1876. Those who joined the excursion or accepted an invitation to ride out from the city and attend the auction, found a band playing in the park (?), streams of water flowing in open ditches down the streets, and zanjeros directing their course, teams with attentive drivers waiting to show them about, and a dinner at the new hotel. Then, after dinner, came the auction sale. And a good many lots were sold. A Mr. Reed paid fifty dollars for the lot on which the First National Bank stands and Joe Bridger bought one north of this. The plot included lots of various sizes, from twenty-five-foot business lots to ten-acre tracts. The first sale, as was well advertised, was one of these ten-acre tracts to Judge J. M. Hamilton, Master of the State Grange of California. The next day the ditches were dry and the water which for a day had been diverted from the San José Creek was returned to its normal channel. And few knew that a dense fog which had covered the Valley all the morning, as with a wet blanket, had just lifted when the excursionists drove in, thus saving the day, also the reputation of the promoters, who had adver- tised boldly that the place was well above the fog belt. But the sale had been
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a success and the new town was launched. The first day's sale amounted to $18,000 to $19,000. Most of the lots sold at this time have changed hands many times, but there are today people in Los Angeles who are still paying taxes on lots which they purchased then at Pomona.
About this time appeared a little news sheet which has been called by some "Pomona's first newspaper." But it was evidently printed in Los Angeles rather than Pomona, and was chiefly an advertising circular. It was entitled "The New Italy," with a sub-heading, "The Immigrants True Guide to Homes in Southern California." In the Pomona Public Library is a copy of the issue of Vol. I, No. 8, dated Los Angeles, Cal., August, 1875. On one side of this single sheet is a map of the town of Pomona; on the other side, following the headings and date line, is an article headed "Pomona-The New Town on the Southern Pacific Railroad -Thirty-two Miles East of Los Angeles." Opening with the statement "The Los Angeles Immigration and Land Cooperative Association now have at Pomona a tract of nearly 6,000 acres, 2,500 of which is now being put on the market at private sale," the location is then explained and the advantages of the site as a commercial center ; its scenery and climate are also set forth in glowing colors. The years have demonstrated the truth of its claim that "As a fruit country Pomona cannot be excelled in Southern California ; * * * trees growing in the immediate vicinity prove the fact beyond a peradventure." The railroad and the water supply are acclaimed and the sale of water stock with the land is promised. Emphasis is placed (not too much) upon the company's "abundant supply of good, pure, soft spring water."
The stockholders of the new company manifested their faith in the enter- prise to the extent of larger or smaller purchases of lots in the town site, but only two or three of them built blocks or houses and became identified later with the town. T. A. Garey, a little man of German parentage, with unlimited energy and enthusiasm, was on the ground much at first, but he had many other interests elsewhere. In fact he was associated with others in the incorporation of at least two other towns-Artesia and Garey (in Santa Barbara County). As before stated, he was one of the early settlers of El Monte. From his nursery in Los Angeles he sold in one period of three years $175,000 worth of young orange and lemon trees. He was recognized as a leading horticulturist, holding numerous important positions, such as overseer of the State Grange and president of the county Pomological Society. His Mediterranean Sweet and St. Michael oranges and Eureka lemons are known everywhere. Through his zeal a considerable number of orchard plots were sold in the 4,000 acres of the "Pomona Tract" which was divided into forty-acre lots. But Garey was not really a Pomona man. C. E. White was. Born in Massachusetts near Boston in 1830, he had come to California in '49, in an eight months' voyage around the Horn, and for thirty years liad been engaged in the nursery business and sheep raising until, in 1880, he moved to Pomona, and established himself on Holt Avenue, planting the orchard which was long a model in the Valley. Though not one of the incor- porators, he was for some time vice-president of the Los Angeles Immigration and Cooperative Land Association. He became a well-known citizen in the town, holding important positions, and built the White Block, in which the Ameri- can Bank is housed, at the corner of Second and Thomas streets. Years after, in 1889, he superintended the first planting of the Richards orange grove of 300 acres at North Pomona. A brother of Mr. L. M. Holt, the secretary of the com-
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pany, was one of the first to build in the new town and lived for some years on the avenue which bears their name.
The other director of the company who demonstrated his "faith by works" was J. E. McComas, who bought a lot for home and orchard as well as several business lots. Fifth Street was regarded as the choice residential section. Here within a year were built the homes of J. E. McComas and P. C. Tonner. Here within a year they brought their brides, to begin their married life in the new Valley town. And here for some time they lived as neighbors, improving their home plots and working for the development of the town. Senator McComas was to be for many years one of Pomona's foremost citizens, and frequent reference is made to him in the subsequent account of the city's progress. An- other neighbor of McComas and Tonner in the first years was John Scott, the blacksmith, whose house was burned early in 1879.
The first buildings in the new town site are said to have been the hotel, a store and blacksmith shop. The hotel building erected by the land company at the cor- ner of Fifth and Garey, was a good, substantial wooden building, two stories high, and was called the Pomona Hotel. The old villagers of Spadra regarded the new town as a joke and spoke of it as "Monkeytown," but the Spadra merchant, George Egan, was enterprising enough to see its possibilities, and moved a part of his store building to Pomona, opening up a general merchandise store with his brother James, at first, in charge. George Egan had come to California in 1864 as a young cavalryman twenty years old, discharged from the Confederate army on account of his health. Two years later he had come to Spadra as a clerk in Charles Blake's store near the Phillips place, later sharing the business of "Egan and Blake," and then purchasing it himself as the health of his partner failed. In 1878 he sold out his business in Spadra and bought the Pomona Hotel; moving the building to a more central location at First and Main streets, he enlarged it and made numerous improvements, investing all his small capital in the enterprise. Within a year it was destroyed by fire and Egan was obliged to start all over again. He moved away from Pomona, and for eight years or more was engaged in various occupations and ventures to rebuild his fortune. After the boom, in which he had gained some profit in the building of the town of Beaumont, he returned, in 1887, to Pomona to live, doing an insurance business and improving his fine fruit orchard in the southeast part of town. Gradually other people came to the new town, and a rural village began to grow up around the store and shop, with unostentatious little houses and home plots of garden and fruit trees.
Probably the most important event in Pomona after the opening sale was the actual building of the Southern Pacific, whose probable coming had been fore- seen for several years, and had warranted the beginning of the town. While this event could not compare in its novelty with that of its coming to Spadra in 1874, and marked no such revolution as had the earlier event, at which time railway trains were unknown in the Valley, nevertheless it was the realization of the dreams and promises of the promoters, and it meant a great deal for the town. Building material and freight of all kinds could now be brought from Los Angeles by rail instead of by the long, slow haul over the adobe road, always deeply covered with dust or mud. It would no longer be necessary to ride or drive to Spadra, or perhaps all the way, when one wanted to go "to town." It is true that the passenger accommodations were none too good, trains were few and slow, and the fare was at first $3 for the trip, yet it was a long step ahead, and gave the town a new lease of life. The new depot and warehouse were the center
EARLY VIEW OF POMONA
POMONA HOTEL
FIRST TRAIN ARRIVING IN POMONA
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of much activity, tourists began to come out to see the town and some, attracted by its beautiful setting, came back to live.
Next in importance to the advent of the railway was its connection with Colton in 1881, and then, at Deming, with the East, thus giving the town the tremendous advantage of location on one of the main lines of transcontinental railway. The coming of the railroad through the Valley and the booming of a new town gave impetus to the sale and planting of other orchards adjoining the Pomona Tract and near by. South of Orange Grove Avenue and west of Ellen Street (now Park Avenue) the eighty or ninety acres between the ranches of Trinidad Yorba and Soledad Alvarado were subdivided into five-acre lots and placed on the market as Burdick's Addition, just after the opening up of the Pomona Tract in 1875. In this tract, between White and Park avenues, James Loney and R. F. House, with their wives, bought lots, the latter twenty acres and the former about fifteen. In the well-kept orchards which they planted may now be seen some of the oldest seedling orange trees in the Valley. These men were able after a time to turn from their occupations as conductors on the Southern Pacific Railway to business and ranching, later building attractive homes on Park Avenue. Thomas Flanagan and William O'Conner, Joe Bridger and Fred Lambourne were others who bought about this time in the same tract.
Between the Burdick and Alvarado places, north of Orange Grove Avenue, was an orchard lot which P. C. Tonner had bought of Thomas Burdick, brother of Cyrus, and on which he had lived until his house had burned down. This lot he now sold to a Mr. Weile, who had been for a good many years United States consul in Ecuador and Peru, and who, after living here for a time, married Fannie, a daughter of Rev. R. C. Fryer of Spadra.
To the north of the Pomona Tract, in what was known as Lot One of Fran- cisco Palomares, and north of that, Capt. A. J. Hutchinson, about the first of January, 1875, leased a hundred acres on which he began to experiment in raising tobacco and hogs. Both the hogs and the tobacco did well, but the tobacco did not find a ready market with the large dealers, because, they said, it was too strong. It was used, however, in large quantities in the making of sheep dip at shearing time. About fifty acres of this land he enclosed with a board fence, and bought the place two years later. The old house, still standing on a lot partly surrounded by large eucalyptus trees at a bend in the road on Garey Avenue, marks this spot. It was on this land and on that of Pancho Palomares adjoining that he later bored a number of artesian wells, the first artesian wells in the Valley.
Captain Hutchinson had a Chinese cook on the ranch, called Louie, whom everybody knew. Unlike other Chinese of his day, he had cut off his queue and discarded his Chinese dress ; also, he had learned a certain amount of English, as appears from a story told by C. A. Sumner in his "Early Days in California," which appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 1918. Mr. Sumner drove out one Sunday with Captain Hutchinson, who was then living in Los Angeles, to visit his ranch at Pomona. Louie was still in charge, but they did not find him nor did they find anything to eat, so they shot a rooster and cooked it for lunch. When they started for Los Angeles they left a note for Louie to explain their visit. His reply, as Mr. Sumner remembers it, was: "Honored Sir, why in h-11 didn't you stop longer? I've got no cash, got no grub, got no credit, and now you've killed my best rooster. Your obedient servant, Louie."
In the Palomares Tract north of the Mud Springs or Lordsburg Road and west of the Loop and Meserve Tract, J. W. Brim, G. Heath and J. H. Goodhue
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each bought over a hundred acres. Four miles east, James M. Armour bought 160 acres of government land and planted a few Tahiti orange trees, keeping also a good many stands of bees, until in 1882 he sold it all to the Land and Water Company and went into business, being for a time the proprietor of the Central Hotel. In the Loop and Meserve Tract, east of San Antonio Avenue, Robert Cathcart, in 1876, bought one hundred acres and set it out to citrus and deciduous fruits, but with the expectation of sinking artesian wells, which he did later, as will be seen.
At the southern end of the Loop and Meserve Tract and north of the Pomona Tract, another considerable acreage, about 150 acres, was bought in 1877 by H. K. W. Bent and W. G. Halstead, land from which the Packard and El Verde ranches were later sold. This was the first sale in this tract, the price being $25 per acre. Though not long associated with the town of Pomona, Mr. Bent's influ- ence was to be felt later on the Board of Trustees of Pomona College. He was a man of high purpose and ambition, whose education and later career were repeatedly arrested by ill health. Coming to California from Massachusetts in early manhood, he had regained his health while living an out-of-door life as a surveyor and mining engineer. Later he came into prominence in Los Angeles as a leader in public affairs, in politics, in horticulture, and in education. He was for a time chairman of the county Republican committee, was postmaster of Los Angeles from 1873 to 1877, and was a member of the committee which drew up the city charter. When the Los Angeles Public Library was established he was one of its organizers. He also served as president of the Board of Education. From this wide experience and from his enthusiasm for Christian education he brought to his position as trustee of Pomona College, when this institution was founded, great wisdom and force.
Returning to the story of the town itself, the first public building to be erected, after the hotel and railway station, was the school building. The begin- nings of educational work in the Valley have been related in the last chapter. After the division of the district, the little old peregrinating schoolhouse having been moved to Spadra, after conducting the school for a time in the house of Tomas Palomares, the school trustees had put up a new building near what is the corner of Orange Grove and Park avenues. Here, in 1874, Trustee Palomares, Don Francisco, had deeded to the trustees for the district two acres of land. The teachers here were Mr. Green and Mrs. Ellen Finley, the latter still remembered affectionately by a few who, as little children, were pupils then. It was a little country school, serving the families of the haciendas in this part of the Valley. But as people came to Pomona and the hamlet began to assume the proportions of a village, a larger building, more centrally located, became necessary. For this purpose the trustees, Burdick, Palomares and Garcia, raised $1,500, Pancho Palo- mares, Don Francisco, being the principal donor. In addition to this the I. O. O. F. contributed $1,000, providing that the upper story should be used as an assembly hall for the lodge, recently organized, until such time as the room might be needed for school purposes, when the amount should be returned from the school funds. Supplementing thus the amount provided by the county, a substantial building was erected in 1876, at the corner of Holt and Ellen ( Park Avenue). This building, long known as the Central School House, was moved back when the new building was erected, and later sold for an apartment house.
The first teachers in the new school house were Charles T. Coleman, Jr., and Emma M. Loughrey. Mr. Coleman was a young man who had just come with
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his bride from Massachusetts. Both were people of culture and full of ambition. Until they could build, they lived, as Mrs. Finley and other teachers had done, at the ranch home of Mr. and Mrs. Burdick. Under the able instruction of these teachers the school was well conducted. The attendance was small, of course, and mostly from the Spanish families of the surrounding region, there being about a dozen children of the more recent families of settlers .*
Miss Loughrey had come from the East, where she had lived and received her education, to join some relatives in Compton. Here she met Mr. J. E. Mc- Comas, who was interested in a ranch there. It was doubtless through his interest both in the town and in the teacher that she was engaged for the position. She was also engaged soon to Mr. McComas, the young officer and lawyer, who was so active in building up the town ; and at the end of her first year of teaching they were married. Her people being then at a distance, the wedding took place at the ' home of their mutual friends, the Burdicks, with whom she had been living. This was in September, 1876. Soon after this they moved, as we have said, to their new home on Fifth Street, where the young Tonners were already living.
But the dreams of the builders were rudely interrupted. In spite of two or three seasons of abundant rain, there had been a long series of dry years. With the exception of those three years the average rainfall for nearly twenty years was said to be only about ten inches. And now, following the birth of the town, there came two more years of drought, when for a scant month the hills and valleys were just tinged with green and then were soon dried out and brown. The only water the villagers had was from surface wells. When these ran dry they turned to the company, urging them to develop more water. But the directors had already invested all their available capital in the town and were unable to furnish more. For the tide of prosperity which had rolled in from 1872 to 1875, and on whose crest the Pomona boom had risen, was now ebbing fast, not only here but through- out the state. With loans from the Temple and Workman Bank in Los Angeles, the directors of the Los Angeles Immigration and Land Cooperative Association had indeed organized a subsidiary company called the Pomona Water Company (not to be confused with the Pomona Land and Water Company, organized later ) to buy and develop water and to pipe and deliver it through the town. But the failure of the California Bank in San Francisco was followed in 1876 by the collapse of the Temple and Workman Bank in Los Angeles, and the panic which ensued left the company stranded "high and dry." Unfulfilled contracts with Louis Phillips could not be met, and they were involved in much litigation with him, as he found it necessary to press his claims. In the meantime P. C. Tonner was playing his own game with consummate skill and cunning. The game was too intricate and the tangled tale woven at this time too long to be unraveled here. It would be a most fascinating story quite by itself. In the end Tonner gained control by sheriff sale of all the water rights and rights-of-way and some of the land interests held by the company, and sold them out to Louis Phillips, only keeping certain strings in his own hands. The result was the complete collapse of the old company.
The failure of the company and its inability to save the settlers was a bitter disappointment to both the directors and the people. A meeting was held to see what could be done. It was believed that artesian water could be had, if only the money could be found to pay for boring the wells. But all were poor, and Mr. Phillips seemed to be the only one to whom they could turn, with money enough
*The story of the Pomona Schools is resumed in Chapter VIII.
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for such an undertaking. As a director of the company, a home builder and a friend of Phillips (whom he had assisted in various business matters), Mr. Mc- Comas was delegated to interview the rich rancher and urge him to invest in the enterprise of developing artesian wells. Now Mr. Phillips liked the young lawyer, but had no interest in the town, and laughed at the idea of sinking money in deep wells. "I'm going to run my sheep over where your town is," he said. Then courage fled, though not their love of the place which they had come to think of as home. Already they could see the herds of sheep running over their gardens and orchards. A number of them decided to move away, the McComas family among them. Certainly with no water there could be no town. Selling the home place, which had cost them $3,000, for $1,000, and taking half of that in stock, the McComas family moved to Compton. They had lost, altogether, some $19,000. The story of the McComas family is typical of many at this time. The times were desperately hard. Unable to raise the mortgage on the Compton ranch, and Mrs. McComas' health not being good so near the ocean, they moved to Arizona, where the son was engaged in teaming and his father in the practice of law. It was from Benson, in Arizona, that Mr. McComas wrote to Tonner, urging him to sell his business lots in Pomona, and offering them all for sale at $500. This included the corners at Second and Main and at First and Thomas, on which he later built the McComas Blocks. But Tonner wrote back: "You old fool, I'll do nothing of the sort. Keep the lots. I won't sell them." They did sell the corner on which the Campbell & Pierce Drug Store has stood, for $100, paid in installments of $10 each. After two or three years in Compton and a year and a half in Arizona, they came back to Los Angeles, where Mr. McComas opened a real estate office. But the attachment to Pomona was strong, and when Phillips offered him twenty-five acres on Holt Avenue at $50 an acre if he would buy before the new syndicate took possession, they were glad enough to accept. When they returned, in 1883, the new company had brought water into town and a new era had begun. From this time on, for thirty years, his life was devoted to the best interests of the town and valley.
In all this time when Pomona lay dormant for lack of means to develop its water resources, there were not a few who understood well its possibilities. A disinterested editorial in the Santa Barbara Press, as early as March, 1875, says of Pomona: "During the six months of my lecturing on Southern California in the East, I was constantly beset with questions from people * * asking for reliable information concerning some inland region, on the line of a railroad, where the land was fertile, the climate warm and dry and yet tempered by the sea breeze, where there would be a quick growth with permanent pros- perity, and a country surrounding the town and tributary to it, large enough to build up a good local business and make the people prosperous who had settled there for the sake of making permanent homes,
and I was unable to find any one locality combining all these advantages.
* At last I believe I have found the place so much inquired after. * About thirty miles due east of Los Angeles, in a broad valley, * *
* on the line of the Southern Pacific Rail-
road,
*
*
*
is the most perfect site for a large and flourishing inland city ;
* and on this lovely plain, almost environed by mountain scenery, *
with a sagacity which seems like providence, certain gentlemen in Los Angeles have bought a rare tract of about 6,000 acres and founded the 'Village of the Plain,' called Pomona." How fully this faith was to be realized not even the writer could foresee.
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Fortunately there were others who had not only this vision of the prophet, but the means and the determination to make that vision come true. Rev. C. T. Mills of Oakland, who visited the Valley with his wife early in 1882, was so delighted with its natural beauty and its evident prospects that he associated with himself Mr. M. L. Wicks of Los Angeles, and they together entered into a con- tract with the owners and holders at that time of the Pomona Tract and of the Pomona Townsite, for the purchase of the greater part of the Phillips and Palo- mares holdings in what is now comprised in the city of Pomona. With this land they secured the water rights held by the former water company. They also con- tracted with Loop, Meserve, Sorby and others for a large part of the Loop and Meserve Tract, including their valuable water rights in the San Antonio Canyon. In October, 1882, Messrs. Mills and Wicks incorporated the Pomona Land and Water Company, associating with themselves certain other northern men. In December of the same year all the land and all the water rights which Mills and Wicks had secured were transferred to the new company. Thus the Pomona Land and Water Company came into possession of nearly all the land in the town of Pomona and in the Pomona Tract surrounding it, of the Loop and Meserve Tract, the Northeast Pomona Tract and the North Palomares Tract, and also of the San Antonio and Monte Vista Tracts in San Bernardino County. To these were added a considerable area of government land farther north and east, making altogether more than 12,000 acres, with all the waters and water development rights on this property. The Pomona Land and Water Company then commenced the first active and effective development of this territory, sinking a large number of wells, constructing many miles of pipe line, clearing the land and preparing it for development and sale. Hitherto there had been no substantial growth in the town for lack of water. To the supplying of this need the company directed its attention first of all. How this was accomplished, by conservation of the canyon waters, by development of the cienega supplies, and by the boring of many flowing wells in the artesian belt, is related at length in the chapter on W'ater. It was the plan of the company to sell land only as fast as it had actually developed a suffi- cient supply of water for its orchard and domestic use, and then to sell water rights with the land.
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