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 17
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There are two other men, whose names are especially associated with Spadra and the grain lands near the Southern Hills, but whose range of activity and influence has been far more than local. The first is Hon. Fenton M. Slaughter, who came to California from Virginia with the "forty-niners," and made his "pile" in the gold mines. He lived for a time in San Gabriel, but moved in the later sixties to his ranch near Chino. He was one of Fremont's men for a time, so it is said; and it is reported that Fremont's band of picked men were all required to pass a certain test. Choosing a comrade for the test, he held a four-inch shingle in his hand while his comrade fired a bullet through it at a range of sixty yards, and then they exchanged places and he shot at the shingle in his comrade's hand. At any rate it was not a difficult feat for Slaughter, who was still a good shot when old and feeble. A gold watch and chain, the gift of Colonel Fremont, were worn by Mr. Slaughter with special pride. On his ranch east of the Chino he was engaged largely in raising grain and stock. A familiar figure at Spadra, at the Spanish settlement and even in Los Angeles, he was a friend of all the old settlers and Mexicans, known and liked by every one for his geniality and his happy way of spinning yarns. He married the Senorita Dolores, a daughter
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of Francisco Alvarado, as noted elsewhere, and a daughter of his is the wife of Lew Meredith, the foreman of William R. Rowland's ranch at Puente. His election as a representative to the state legislature from San Bernardino County was a recognition of his standing and influence in the region.
The other figure of more than local interest is Senator A. T. Currier. His large ranch of 2,400 acres is second only to the lands of Louis Phillips in its pro- duction of grain and citrus fruits, of cattle and other products. Born in Maine nearly eighty years ago, he has been for fifty years a prominent figure not only in Spadra but in the county. His ranch, located on the fertile lands bordering the San José Creek east of Spadra, has yielded abundant crops and has fed and bred the finest stock in return for his careful attention. His marriage to "Aunt Sue," the widow of James Rubottom, who came to El Monte as Susan Glenn in the pioneer days, has been mentioned before, as well as the universal affection in which she is held by all who have known her. In Pomona as well as in Spadra he has exerted a strong influence, assisting materially in many important enter- prises, and especially as a director in the First National Bank and a trustee in the Baptist Church. After holding various offices in town and county, his public service was crowned, though not completed, in his election to the state senate. Always well and vigorous, he has led a busy life directing the affairs of his ranch and looking after investments in Pomona and Los Angeles. That in which he takes the greatest satisfaction is probably the Los Angeles Farmers Mutual Insur- ance Company, which he helped to organize twenty years ago and has directed with signal success.
VINEYARD AND ORCHARD
Southern California is the natural abode of viticulture and horticulture. Soil and climate and water are all that could be desired. But man must contribute his share in labor and attention, for the highest development in these arts. In the early days nature alone, with a minimum of assistance from man, yielded her increase in flocks and herds and feed and grain. These staple products, as we have seen, are still a large factor in the country's wealth. But the whole Valley has been transformed as vineyard and orchard have covered a large part of its surface. Demanding less water and cultivation than some other fruits, and more resistant than some to extremes of weather, the grape was the first to receive large attention, and the Valley promised well to fulfill its part in making the Southwest the rival of the Mediterranean countries, whose mountain slopes and highland plateaus, clothed with leagues upon leagues of vineyard, furnish the wine and grapes of the world. Now viticulture in Southern California is fast becom- ing a lost art. Deciduous fruits were next to receive attention on a large scale. Hundreds of acres of deciduous fruits of all kinds have been set out in the Valley, and the growing of these fruits is firmly established as a permanent and profitable industry, notwithstanding many acres of trees have been grubbed out to make place for citrus fruits. Gradually for a time, rapidly of late, the citrus fruits liave crowded out the others, until now the orange and lemon dominate the field. And this supremacy of the citrus fruits is in spite of the fact that they require more than others the attention of the grower to supplement the gifts of nature, in timely irrigation and cultivation, in fertilizing, in protection from harmful disease and pest, as well as in successful marketing. The same intelligent pains which are required in the raising and marketing of citrus fruits, it may be re-
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marked, have also been well rewarded when they have been given to producing an extra choice article in any other kind of fruit, or of nut or berry.
In their home gardens the Mexican settlers had begun early to raise wine grapes and fruits of every kind, and though only in a very small way, they demonstrated the possibility of future development. Perhaps the first vineyard in the Valley was the "Huerta de San Antonio" mentioned in the will of Ygnacio Palomares, on what became the Loop place on Central Avenue west of Clare- mont, and to which water was led in an open ditch from San Antonio Canyon. When Messrs. Loop and Meserve bought their tract of 2,000 acres they set out thousands of grapevines of many kinds, including raisin and table grapes, as well as Mission and other wine grapes, importing choice varieties from abroad. Practically all the earlier settlers in the Valley planted vineyards, amounting alto- gether to hundreds of acres. In the early eighties the enterprise received fresh impetus by the large plantings of Fred J. Smith on his El Verde ranch, of J. A. Packard on his eighty acres further south, and a little later of Carlton Seaver and George W. McClary on their quarter section north of Claremont.
The largest part of the acreage in vineyards was planted to Mission grapes, a variety especially suitable for wine. To dispose of the product of this large acreage of vines, large wineries were needed, with their great vats and presses and storage cellars. The first winery was built in 1885 by Mr. Westphall and Mr. G. Mirande, a man of long experience in the making of wine in Southern France, who erected the large brick building opposite the Kerckhoff-Cuzner lumber yards on Park Avenue and made about 6,000 gallons of wine the first season. It the year 1885 more than 800 acres of vineyard were planted in the Pomona region, and in the season 1886-1887 500,000 vines were set out. A writer on "Fertility and Productiveness of the Soil," in 1885, stated that "next to the wine grape the raisin is the most important product of the Valley."
In September, 1886, the Pomona Wine Company was organized with George W. McClary as president and Fred J. Smith as secretary, and this company bought out Westphall and increased the capacity of the winery. Believing that the future of the industry was assured and unable to care for the increasing product of the vineyards, Mr. J. A. Packard and his son, J. E. Packard, who were the largest stockholders in the company, urged a still further expansion, and experts in viticulture endorsed their judgment. Hence a large addition was built and the cellars stored with wines maturing for future markets. Those were the golden days, as it seemed, for growing grapes in this country, when in vintage time the vineyards were full of workers gathering the clusters in loose boxes, when hundreds of wagons daily stood waiting at the winery to empty their loads of grapes into the press, when later in the season the iron wagons slowly and smokily made their way across the vineyards, leaving their trail of ash behind as they burned the trimmings from the vines.
But while the wine press was flowing and the vats and cellars were filled with California's choicest wines, gold was not flowing into the pockets of the stockholders nor were the coffers of the company filling with coin. The wine market was most effectually controlled by the great dealers and speculators of the northern and eastern capitals. Eventually the prices must fall to the basis of the European markets, where after all the great supplies of the world are handled, and where "all the world" drinks wine as we drink water. So the winery was closed, and in time the vineyards were replaced with orchards.
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In a few instances large quantities of grapes have been used in the manu- facture of grape juice, and the El Verde grape juice was recognized in New York, where it found a ready market, as the choicest in the world.
DECIDUOUS FRUITS AND WALNUTS
There was a time when it appeared as if the chief production of the Valley was to be deciduous fruits of various kinds. The five and ten-acre tracts sur- rounding Pomona were largely covered with apricots, peaches, pears and prunes. The country was green in summer with their foliage, but brown and bare in winter when the trees had shed their leaves. In the fall of the year acres of ground were covered with trays of drying fruit, both in private orchards and on land surrounding the canneries. Some of the fruit was canned, but more of it was dried. There was much difference in the quality of the product, fruit which was exposed to dust and insects as well as to all sorts of weather, and unbleached, being quite poor ; while that of those who took much pains in the time and char- acter of the exposure and in the bleaching was excellent. C. E. White and J. J. White, the Dole brothers and the Muirs, A. G. Whiting, Frank Evans and W. T. Martin were among the larger growers.
One year, about 1890, there was an unusually heavy crop of prunes, which sold at an average of fifty dollars a ton-a fancy price in those days. However, it proved to be a great misfortune, for there followed a large planting of prune trees, ten and twenty acres at a time in a good many instances ; but the market would not take the fruit and many acres of trees were grubbed out after years of loss.
But for the peculiar adaptability of the Valley for the higher-priced citrus fruits, and the advanced methods of cooperation in their marketing, the deciduous fruits might still be the leading horticultural product of the Valley. Even now the application of the same principles, learned in citrus fruit growing, has stimu- lated the growing of deciduous fruits so that it is likely to remain a most im- portant second industry.
The development of walnut growing to an important place, second only to that of citrus fruits in some parts of the Valley is of more recent date.
OLIVE CULTURE
Like the holy land of Palestine in its location beside a western sea, like the Italian and Algerian coasts in the dependence of its fertile soil upon the waters from lofty mountain ranges towering behind, like Andalusian or Catalonian Spain, or the Riviera, in its matchless climate, Southern California also resembles all these lands which face the Mediterranean, in its horticultural pursuits. Here, too, the vine, the orange, and especially the olive, find a natural home. While the citrus fruits here have found a larger market and the olive has not received the same fostering care, yet is this Valley just as truly the home of the olive as of the lemon and the orange, the grapefruit and the lime.
In writing of "Olive Culture"* over thirty years ago, Mr. C. F. Loop, than whom there has been no better authority probably in this Valley, says :
"From the earliest days the olive has been invested with a peculiar interest. Originating in the distant East where tradition locates that earthly paradise, the
* Article in Pomona Progress of March 5, 1887.
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Garden of Eden, it has remained there to sustain, satisfy and gladden successive generations, and also been carried by man as something essential to his comfort and pleasure, through all his wanderings and journeyings westward to even our own fair land upon the shores of the western sea."
He writes of the prominence of the olive, and especially of olive oil, in sacred writings, in the ceremonies of the Mosaic ritual, in the anointing of Hebrew priests and kings, also in the literature of mythology. "Sacred to Minerva, it was to the polished Greek of those early days an emblem of peace and chastity. In the Olympic games, this was the highest prize with which to crown a victor with glory and reverence." Some olive trees in the East have grown to a great size, with a diameter of fifteen feet, and must be very old. Writing of their great age, Mr. Loop refers to a tree in the garden of the Vatican said to be a thousand years old.
In Italy, France and Spain 8,000,000 acres are devoted to olives ; and the tree is highly prized by rich and poor alike. "The poor retain their trees if possible," says Mr. Loop, "when obliged to sell their homesteads."
The Mission fathers, as we know, planted the first olive trees in the Valley, *and the first Mexican settlers in this Valley also set out a few trees in their gar- dens. Here and there a little group or line of these trees still stands, spared from the greedy axe by a rare veneration for its age and associations. There was one such line of ancient trees on the Loop place where formerly was the "Huerta de San Antonio." Another group still grew till recently, east of the old Palomares house on the Meserve place. Next to these were the olive trees of the Burdick place planted in the early seventies. But olive culture on a considerable scale was introduced, as has been said before, by Rev. C. F. Loop. In 1876 he planted some well-rooted cuttings of the "Mission" variety, "giving them all necessary care and attention." In 1884 he gathered his first full crop. In the meantime he had made a special study of curing and marketing them, had begun a nursery of young trees, with new varieties which he brought from the Mediterranean, as well as with the old Mission stock. Led by his enthusiasm, as well as by the undoubted excellence of his olive products, many were induced to set out olive groves. John Calkins and James L. Howland were the leaders in the new industry. It was the center of the world for olive cuttings, in the growing of which Calkins' nursery took the lead. On his seventy acres, south of the Meserve place, in the Loop and Meserve Tract, "Larry" Howland set out twenty acres to olive trees and started thousands of trees from cuttings in his nursery which for a time was the largest in the San José Valley. In the second season, 1886-1887, he sold 5,000 olive trees. In all this he was aided by Mr. Loop, from whom he secured chiefly his stock and his knowledge as well as his inspiration. Up to this time there had been no manu- facture of oil in this region, the cured olive being the only product, and the curing was usually by the simple process of long soaking of the cut olives in water fre- quently changed till the bitterness was removed, after which they were kept in salt water. Mr. Howland also marketed large quantities, but cured by the lye process instead of with fresh water, and from fruit allowed to color, as the custom now is, instead of from fruit picked green as in Europe. His best product, how- ever, and that in which he took the greatest pains was olive oil. For its manufac- ture he built a small factory. Through Mr. Loop he imported experienced men from Italy, experts in the approved processes of oil production, and followed well- established modern methods of bottling and marketing his product. It is no exag- geration to say that there was no better olive oil in the country than the Howland
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oil, and perhaps it had no superior in the world. But it could not be sold in the world markets at the price of the Mediterranean oil, nor would people pay a price which would justify the manufacture of so fine a product here. The enterprise was finally abandoned, and again the manufacture of a choice product of the Valley, which, like the El Verde grape juice, had made a place for itself as the peer of any in the Eastern markets, was discontinued because too good to compete with other articles made where the cost of production was less. Many acres of olive trees have been removed to make room for orange and lemon trees, from which there is a larger and surer return, by reason of the assured market for the fruit. And yet a large acreage remains and the demand for the well-cured olives steadily grows stronger, while the price advances.
The first orange orchard in Southern California, set out by Mission fathers near the San Gabriel Mission nearly 150 years ago, and surrounded with an adobe wall, guarded by a padlocked gate, has been described in a previous chap- ter ; also the first orchard in the San José Valley, planted fifty years ago by Cyrus Burdick at the Spanish Settlement near the San José Hills. Five years later other orchards were set out by Frank Loney, R. F. House and P. C. Tonner, by others west of Pomona townsite, and by Loop and Meserve on their tract. Some of the groves in the townsite died for lack of water. But with the development of water by the Land and Water Company and others, in 1882 and the years immediately following, many ten and twenty-acre groves were set out, and some larger ones. Among the larger orchards were those of M. Baldridge, who set out 30,000 trees in 1887, of A. T. Currier, and the Alvarado and Palomares orchards, greatly increased by the Nicholses after their purchase of these groves. C. E. White and F. P. Firey were among the first, if not the first, to set out the navel orange, whose propagation, especially in Riverside, was an important factor in "bcoming" Southern California.
For many years the largest orange grove in the world was that of Seth Richards, a wealthy resident of Oakland who bought over 300 acres in 1883 and set it out, largely to navel oranges.
At this time a number of other varieties of oranges were shown in the market, at the exhibits and in the nurseries. Reputable firms sold quantities of Australian navels, which later had to be dug out or rebudded. But the Washing- ton navel soon took its leading place, and other varieties gradually disappeared from the market, except the Valencias, which became the favorite among the later ripening varieties.
In the years from 1882 to nearly 1890, vineyards and deciduous orchards were more than holding their own with the orange groves, and that with land at $150 an acre and grapes bringing twenty dollars a ton and prunes two cents a pound. The cost of clearing and setting out ten acres of orange trees, and of watering and caring for them for five years was then about $3,500, reckoning the land at $150 an acre. To a writer in Rural California that year, $250 an acre for orange land seemed "enormous," but the profits were shown to justify that price provided one was successful in marketing the fruit. In 1886 and 1887 more than 70,000 orange and lemon trees were set out, and people began to take out grape vines and apricot and peach trees to plant citrus fruits in their stead.
But the foundations of the great industry, now so well stabilized, had yet to be laid. It was not enough to raise quantities of the finest oranges ; there must be a certain and satisfactory market for the fruit. While the output was com- paratively small, buyers paid good prices for the fruit in the orchards, usually
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buying the fruit on the trees. As the orchards increased and thousands of trees came into bearing, the buyers organized, and a few large packing houses con- trolled the whole market. They would only buy on consignment, and the ranchers were at their mercy. Year after year the account at the end of the season would show a balance in favor of the packers. The growers realized that they must also organize and throw off the yoke of the packing house combination. In December, 1885, the Orange Growers Protective Union of Southern California was orga- nized, C. F. Loop of Pomona, J. de Barth Shorb of Los Angeles and George H. Fullerton of Riverside being among the directors. The name "Protective Union". well indicates its purpose.
But neither this nor various other organizations formed later succeeded in securing a sure and profitable sale for citrus fruits. Mr. P. J. Dreher in his "Early History of Cooperative Marketing of Citrus Fruits," explains why they failed. It was "because they employed the same local commission brokers to handle the crop; in fact saved themselves the trouble of dealing with the indi- vidual grower, the organization doing this, then turning over the product to the packer and shipper without solicitation from the individual." Not until 1893 was a way found to break away from this vicious system. In February of this year orange growers near Claremont organized a union to market their fruit through an executive committee of their own. Its officers were P. J. Dreher, president ; H. H. Wheeler, secretary ; and George F. Ferris, treasurer. Agents were secured in the East, who sold the fruit at auction, or directly to the trade ; and shipments were also made for export to England. Mr. Dreher says in his "History of Cooperative Marketing," "The history of the present system of mar- keting citrus fruits by cooperative growers' associations must therefore begin with the season 1892-1893 (one year before the Exchange was organized) at Claremont, Cal. Here the first cooperative organization for direct marketing, "The Claremont California Fruit Growers Association' was organized, and handled the crop of its eleven members, which consisted of twenty-one cars that season."
The example of the Claremont Association served as the stimulus and model for other such organizations, and, more important still, for a union of such asso- ciations in the Exchange, for cooperation in the direct marketing of fruit. In fact, cooperation has been the keynote of the wonderful success which has attended the whole movement,-cooperation first in each association, and then the cooperation of the associations in the Exchange. Preliminary meetings of grow- ers in various places resulted in two general meetings in the summer of 1893. At the first of these meetings, held in the Chamber of Commerce rooms in Los Angeles, a committee was appointed to formulate plans for the organization of all citrus fruit growers in Southern California, of which committee W. A. Spald- ing of Los Angeles was chairman and P. J. Dreher of Pomona, secretary. At the second meeting, held in June at Pomona, the report of this committee was pre- sented and adopted. This report is the magna charta of economic liberty for all who are related to this, which is the greatest and most representative industry of the Southwest. Moreover, it is a remarkable illustration of the application of the principle of cooperation intelligently to the advantage both of the producer popu- lation and of the consumer population. The importance of this movement to the prosperity of Southern California cannot be overestimated.
The relation of the Claremont organization to the general movement is thus stated by Mr. Dreher in his history already quoted: "This direct system of mar-
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keting, first adopted by the Claremont California Fruit Growers Association, was adopted by the committee that laid the foundation for the Exchange. It has since been adopted by all shippers; none have improved upon or changed the methods then laid down, except in the case of the Exchange, which employed salaried agents, and has added such other developments as the enlarged business demands and requires. It controls sixty-seven per cent. of the citrus crop of California, and is recognized as the leading successful cooperative organization of the United States."
The details of the plan of cooperation adopted by this meeting of orange growers in June, 1893, and executed in the organizations which followed, are too well known to require elaboration here; they are all given in the various reports of the Exchange.
The Pomona Fruit Exchange was incorporated in August, with A. W. Nesbit, C. F. Loop, D. C. Teague, E. C. Kimball, J. L. Means, Calvin Esterly, F. C. Meredith, J. D. Cason, W. H. Schureman, G. P. Robinson and Peter Fleming as directors. Judge Franklin Blades and W. A. Lewis attended to the details of incorporation. According to the plan other associations were formed-the A. C. G. Citrus Association for the Azusa-Covina-Glendora district, and the Ontario Fruit Exchange for the Ontario-Upland-Cucamonga district.
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