USA > California > Riverside County > History of Riverside County, California > Part 20
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editor and owner of the Record, began printing locally the weekly, which is still published here.
The lodges organized in the town have been few in number. About 1897 a chapter of the Foresters' lodge was established, but was not active for many years, although during its flourishing period it owned a building. A branch of the Knights of Maccabees was established in 1905, but is not now in active existence. In 1907 the Odd Fellows installed a lodge, which is at present the only active lodge for men in Banning. The auxiliary lodge of the Rebekahs was brought into the town in 1908. Among the business men there are now two organizations, and an Almond Growers' Association affiliated with the state organization was formed in 1910. The first women's club in Banning was the Saturday Afternoon Club, which was founded in 1904, affiliated with the C. F. W. C. in 1905, and in 1909, in order to better control property consisting of real estate, was incorporated under the laws of the state.
For a good many years there was no telephone system to con- nect the town with the outside world, but in 1905 the Southwestern Telephone Company of Redlands extended its lines from that city. Since that date Banning has had the central office for the whole pass. Before the installation of the present system a locally owned telephone was in use for several years, but did not extend its lines beyond Banning. In 1890 a number of people living in the town had a private telegraph line with instruments in their homes, but this was not a money making project. In 1909 a company of local capitalists installed a gas plant, and are still supplying the town with this fuel.
The people of Banning have always taken advantage of the fact that they live within traveling distance of the beauty spots in the mountains, but until the Banning-Idyllwild road was con- structed in. the San Jacinto mountains and opened up travel in 1910, no very easy means of access into those mountains was avail- able, and the journey by trail or by the almost perpendicular Hall grade was difficult. This road opens up the mountains to the people of the pass, and is now a favorite automobile trip. In the moun- tains are several ranches, some of them dating back in occupancy to the very early days of the valley, but the sawmills which were in operation as late as the early '90s, are now not in use. In the mountain places cattle, hogs and fruit are raised. Mines have been
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located in the foothills to either side of the town, but no valuable ledges were ever found.
It is said that in the early '80s the mountains were more pop- ulous than the valley towns, and the lumbermen, together with the cowboys from places near Banning, and the miners going to and from the gold mines on the Colorado desert, made Banning their headquarters for both wet and dry goods. In 1884 the one store and the lone saloon did a rushing business, satisfying the needs of these rough customers. Sunday, far from being the day of peace and quiet, was the chief day for rowdyism and unrest, and hardly a week ended without a shooting scrap. Dr. J. C. King, who did not begin practice regularly in the town until 1885, was nevertheless called upon very frequently in surgical cases, as he was the only physician within a radius of a great many miles for years. He is still practicing in Banning. The gradual discontinuance of the lumber industry lessened the number of mountain residents as the years went by, and the dwindling of the cattle ranges cut down the number of happy-go-lucky followers of the herds. Banning contin- ued as the shopping center for the desert miners, however, until a comparatively recent date, when towns nearer the desert sprang up. To this day, however, the merchants of the town do a consid- erable business with the miners, who convey the supplies obtained here to their mines by means of wagon freight. These freight teams in the '90s were numerous and very picturesque. A wagon and a trail wagon attached would be loaded with merchandise and start desertward, drawn by twelve or more mules and horses. The driver often rode one of the beasts, and instead of managing his team with reins, used one long "jerk line" which was fastened to the bridle of one of the clever lead animals, and a long whip. Bells were attached to the collars of a few of the animals, so that the team could be heard long before anything but the cloud of dust which usually surrounded it could be seen. The freight wagons today are of a less picturesque type.
The citizens of Banning make up today a peaceful community, but as late as 1895 or thereabouts there were shooting scraps on the main street, and in 1890 the place earned the right to be called a typical "wild West" town when a horse thief was taken from the custody of the law and hanged to a telegraph pole east of town. It must be borne in mind that, as in the case of any other community,
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it was not the highest-minded men of the place who disgraced the town by such actions, and that there were always good and law- abiding citizens who deplored such affairs. The jail from which the half-breed horse thief was taken to be hung was simply a make- shift, prisoners at that time being chained in an empty stall of the livery stable. A good many years later a tiny wooden "calaboose" was built, and when this was destroyed by fire about 1908 the town again lacked a place of detention for the offenders against law and order. A small jail, built in 1911, of concrete blocks, now serves as temporary place of incarceration for those falling into the hands of the constable, this being located near the gas plant east of the town.
The history of the San Gorgonio Pass or of any part of it is not one of startlingly sudden growth, but of the steady and gradual development of the resources with which Nature has endowed it. And very often years passed before residents realized the value of certain resources. One concrete instance of this concerns a point of hills south of Banning, which was called Rocky Point because it was a mass of huge boulders, and was considered valueless. Within the past four years experts in search of granite for paving blocks discovered this point within easy hauling distance of the railroad, and since then a quarry has been established there. When lumber cutting or cattle herding was being exploited, the soil and water which since then have combined to produce such valuable crops, were thought worthless except as they could be utilized in the in- dustries which were then considered profitable. Historical facts concerning people are always more interesting than those relating to mere things, and are correspondingly difficult to obtain. A full account of the multitude of incidents, tragic, humorous or ordinary, which made up the lives of the pioneers would possess a great deal more fascination than can possibly be obtained in the enumeration of the stages of development of the country where they lived, and which their efforts made more and more habitable as the years went by.
Nothing has been said of the work of the pioneer women, but they, although few in number, did their part in the upbuilding of Banning as surely as did the men who developed the soil and water of the place and brought it to its present sound basis. In 1884 there were just four white women in the town and about five more living in the nearby canyons and ranches. The women of Banning
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have always been interested in the growth of the place and have aided materially its institutions, especially its schools and churches. Mrs. James F. Bird was the first and only woman on the school board of trustees in the town, serving in all twelve years; and it was a small group of women who last year organized the Parent- Teacher Association with the idea of bringing the school and home closer together. The women of the churches through their aid societies have always been particularly helpful to those institutions. Banning housekeepers who today think they have few advantages would not complain if they had lived here in the early days and kept house under such conditions as those with which the pioneers had to contend. One of the most annoying features to which the first housekeepers in Banning had to become accustomed was the extreme interest with which the Indians, both men and women, viewed their simple housekeeping arrangements. Although the Indians were friendly, it was rather disconcerting for a woman, engaged in cook- ing or washing, to suddenly find herself the observed of several dusky observers whose faces were pressed against the windows of her little home, and this was by no means an uncommon occurrence. Although the early housekeepers of Banning did not have to con- tend with bears and wildcats, the coyotes were much more numerous and bolder in the days when the settlement was small, and the thrifty housewife who had a flock of chickens knew the annoyance the beasts could cause. Pioneer women who are still residents of Banning include Mrs. J. M. Gilman, Mrs. C. F. Jost, Mrs. J. M. Forquer, Mrs. J. C. King, Mrs. Charles Ingelow, Mrs. H. M. Rod- way, and Mrs. O. Hamilton.
Banning at present is a well laid out community, and a bird's- eye view from the nearby foothills today shows streets bordened with magnificent pepper trees, planted by the water company many years ago, the main business section of the town clustered in a neat and orderly fashion near the railroad track in the center of the resi- dence portions and the orchards, which reach from mountain to mountain and give the town the appearance of a huge checker board, with the orchards as the squares. The homes of the Banning people today, while they are none of them palatial, are for the most part attractive and comfortable with flowers and lawns surrounding them, and are in marked contrast to the shacks with which the first residents of the place had to content themselves. The business sec-
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tion now contains three general merchandise stores, a meat market, ice plant, garage, jewelry store, drug store, furniture store, two pool rooms, a bakery, two barber shops, two confectioneries, two hardware stores, a livery stable, a hay and grain establishment, a mill where grain is crushed, a lumber yard, a dry goods store, and various other places of business and amusement. New business buildings of a modern type are even now in the course of construc- tion and in 1911 five business blocks were erected. The same year thirty-one residences were built. The place has a First National bank, which occupies a building in the center of town, and which was first organized in 1904 as a state bank, and was nationalized in 1909. Property both in town lots and acreage has greatly in- creased in value and the property owners of Banning are prosper- ous and contented in the assurance that their holdings are of sound value. It might also be noted that the matter of incorporating Banning into a city of the sixth class is to come before the citizens of that place in January, 1913, a special election having been ordered by the county supervisors for that purpose.
THE TOWN OF BEAUMONT
The town of Beaumont is located at the summit of the San Gorgonio Pass at a point where the valley widens considerably so that the distance is five to six miles between the foothills of the San Bernardino range on the north and the San Jacinto mountains to the south. The elevation of the town is estimated at 2,600 feet, Beaumont being the highest point on the Southern Pacific line be- tween Los Angeles and Yuma. A most magnificent view of the mountains is afforded the residents of the place.
It has been seen that the very earliest known settlements of Spanish and later of whites in the pass were located in the northern part of what is now Beaumont, although there was no town at all at that place until about 1884, and then it was known as San Gor- gonio. Its present name was received about 1887, when a company of capitalists purchased the lands in the townsite. Notwithstanding the fact that there was no town, a railroad depot and telegraph office were established there in 1875, and for many years this marked the summit of the pass.
In June of 1884 George C. Egan built his first store at San Gorgonio, near what is now the center of the town, on California avenue. Previous to that date Egan, who then had a store at Ban-
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ning, had bought land from the railroad company and he sold his Banning property in order to make the last payment on this land, which comprised the odd sections in and about the present town of Beaumont. Egan also procured the other lands there, so that he owned practically the whole townsite. As soon as he had made his last payment and owned the property clear, he borrowed money on it and built the store, thus starting the town.
In 1884 also a man named Parrish built a tiny place south of the railroad track near the present location of the roundhouse, and kept a little store there. Egan had a postoffice in his store and was the first postmaster, although a man called "Old Man" Lamb handled the mail that was thrown off the trains for the residents for a short time, unofficially. Both stores, in common with many of the frontier stores of those days, kept liquor, though at that date there was no regular saloon in the town. The railroad station, a small red building, which housed the telegraph office as well, a turn-table and water tank, which was then supplied from a well sunk by the railroad company, and a very few other buildings made up the town . The Summit house, the first hotel in Beaumont, which in a remodeled and enlarged form is in use today, was erected in 1884, also. There were no trees anywhere about the town, which pre- sented a cheerless appearance. The water supply in early days was all obtained from Noble canyon, from which flowed a small stream, which was piped to the town. A few years later Egan built another store building, moving his business to a corner opposite the Summit house and across from the depot, on Egan avenue, which was named for the pioneer. Grace street in Beaumont was named for his daughter.
People began coming into the town in 1884, and that year R. P. Stewart and Dan Scott commenced raising grain. Both these ranches are still known, and Stewart is still a resident of Beaumont, having his home on a grain and hay ranch. Dr. McCoy came to San Gorgonio in 1884, and located on a ranch near the northern foothills. Horace Roberts was living in what was later known as Cherry valley that year, and in 1884 J. J. McCoy built a house for his uncle, Judge McCoy, near the other MeCoy ranch. The Arm- strong, McMillan, and R. T. Jenkins families were pioneers of 1884 in the town. Thomas E. Mellen was at the old Edgar ranch for some time, later moving to his place in the hills overlooking the pass.
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Mrs. Barrett, who had formerly lived near Banning and whose son's tragic death has already received mention, moved with her family to San Gorgonio about that time.
In the fall of 1886 a company called the Southern California Investment Company purchased from Egan all his holdings at San Gorgonio, and somewhat to the chagrin of the old settlers, changed the name to Beaumont, though there was some talk of naming it Summit. This was necessarily given up when it was found that another postoffice of the same name existed already in California, and Beaumont was adopted as the new name in 1887. The com- pany proceeded to "boom" the town. They planted eucalyptus, pepper and other shade trees along about twenty miles of streets which they laid out. They purchased with the other lands the Cherry Valley tract and the Noble canyon land where a reservoir had previously been built, and the old Edgar ranch and the canyon with the water. They did not develop the water, however, and the town was still supplied from Noble canyon.
At this time the chief industry of the town was the raising of grain and hay, and very little fruit had been planted. Beaumont had grown somewhat, and the place was prospering, while new activities had sprung up. But in 1888, the year when so many rising towns of Southern California fell victims to the too great and too sudden inflation of property values which had taken place, the boom in Beaumont burst, and the ambitious plans of the company went flat. H. C. Sigler, one of the directors of the investment com- pany, who had great faith in the possibilities of the place in which his company had already sunk thousands of dollars, made des- perate attempts to procure additional capital with which to con- tinue the work, but was unsuccessful. The German Savings and Loan Society of San Francisco had already loaned money to the company and held a mortgage on the townsite. For a good many years after the misfortune of 1888 the investment company clung desperately to their property, the bank pursuing a liberal policy with them, but finally being forced to take over the land and water at Beaumont. When the townsite passed into the hands of the bank the new owners never attempted anything in the way of develop- ment work, and the condition of the town was not improved. The bank refused to sell the lands except as a whole, and no ready buyer was at hand.
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In 1888 some trouble arose over the Edgar canyon water, where the Little San Gorgonio creek flows down from its origin higher in the hills, and the investment company brought suit against George Wilshire, James W. England et al. to quiet title to the creek and prevent them from diverting the water to the Redlands watershed, as had been done for several years prior to that date. Wilshire was a rancher who owned a place in the hills north of Beaumont, and England was one of a company which made arrangements to obtain water for the valley the other side of the hills. They claimed rights to the water under dispute and fought the case, which dragged for years and years. When the bank took over the property from the first company they also assumed position as plaintiff in the suit, and it was finally carried to the supreme court, where the court gave a decision for the bank, and issued a per- petual injunction which effectually restrains anyone from diverting water to the Redlands watershed. The stream, which is used both on the hills and farther down for irrigating purposes, now empties into the Edgar canyon, where water for the town of Beaumont is at present developed.
In 1890 Beaumont, though crushed under the weight of the failure of two years before, had grown somewhat. The railroad had quite materially enlarged its interests at the summit town, having built a large depot about 1887, and added a small engine stall to the turntable and water tank which it already had in use there. This little roundhouse was later removed to Banning, when the local train which has already been spoken of in connection with that town was added to the schedule, and a second and larger round- house built at Beaumont. In the year of which we are speaking the business portion of Beaumont included two stores, one saloon, post- office, livery stable, three hotels, a grain warehouse, built in 1885 and enlarged later, a schoolhouse, and two churches, besides other buildings. The residences were of much better class and a good deal more numerous than they had been six years before. There was not a very sufficient water supply, however, and as the suit over the Edgar canyon water dragged on, and no water other than that in Noble canyon was developed or used, the place was very much at a disadvantage. No orchards or crops requiring irrigation were planted, and for years the dry farming, which resulted in fine crops of grain and hay, and the fact that the railroad company
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steadily increased its activities at Beaumont kept the place alive. Ranchers raising the mill staples about Beaumont for the most part leased the lands from the company, and later from the bank, and the fact that year after year the same acreage produced heavy crops of barley, oats or wheat, proved the excellent quality of the soil.
One of the most expensive improvements which the first com- pany installed was a large hotel, which was erected in 1887 at a cost of about $40,000. This was always a financial failure, espe- cially after the end of the boom, and although several attempts were made to keep it open it was found unprofitable, and the house was finally closed and placed under the care of a watch- man. This hotel, first called the Beaumont hotel, was one of a chain of expensive buildings of the sort which were erected about the same time in many Southern California towns which were in the booming process. In some places these buildings were never even occupied, but stood unused until destroyed in one way or another. In 1907 the Beaumont hotel was renovated and reopened, under the name of the Edinburgh hotel, but its history came to an abrupt close in August of 1909, when it was destroyed by fire. The Summit house has already been mentioned as the first hotel in the town, and in 1886 the second hotel, called the Del Paso, and owned by Mrs. M. M. Fisher, one of the old residents of the place, was built. It still occupies its original site south of the railroad track, and is in operation. In 1884 the Smith ranch, mentioned heretofore, was bought by a company of capitalists. They built a large three-story house and improved the grounds about it. One of the owners, a man named Veile, opened it as the Highland Home hotel. It was used for this purpose for sev- eral years. In 1887 or 1888 Palmer & Halliday of Santa Ana bought the place and proceeded to set out quite an acreage of fruit trees, including olives, cherries, peaches and grapes, which have since proven very profitable. For a good many years olives from the trees then planted have been pressed at the ranch and made into oil, and the cherries particularly have been known for their excellence. The company nearly completed a huge reservoir on the lower end of their territory, which stands unfinished today. The water for the irrigation of the ranch then, as now, was obtained from a canyon in the hills close by, called at present Black's canyon, from the fact that Sam Black once made his home there.
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The Palmer-Halliday Company held the ranch to within a year ago, when it was bought by Riverside capitalists.
After the first postoffice was established in San Gorgonio, and later when the old Spanish name was changed, the various post- masters who succeeded Egan maintained the office in some corner of different store buildings. In 1908 Postmaster James Kelly, who is one of the old residents of the place, moved the office to a separate building on Egan avenue, where it is now conducted. A rural delivery route was established in April of the present year, to accommodate the many residents living on the outskirts of the town. This is an eighteen-mile route, and serves over 100 families.
In 1887 a weekly newspaper called the Sentinel was published by a man named MeDill, who edited the paper for a time and then sold it. It subsequently passed into one or two other hands and soon went out of existence. For many years Beaumont, like its neighbor Banning, had no newspaper, but in 1907 The Independent was started there. It had a very brief existence, and it was not until 1908 that the Gateway Gazette, with Arthur J. Burdick as editor, was established. In 1909 another paper, the Beaumont Leader, was first published, and the two latter weeklies are at present being issued, both of them being printed in Beaumont.
In the fall of 1884 the people of San Gorgonio saw the neces- sity of establishing a school, and when the first church building was erected that year, school was begun there. In 1885 a school build- ing was erected, only one room being completed at that date, and Miss Foy, the first teacher, commenced her work there. This building, somewhat enlarged, is still in use and is now called the Olivewood school, serving as the grammar school for the town. In 1909 a school was constructed in Cherry Valley and is used as a primary school to accommodate the residents of that part of Beaumont. The same year a high school was commenced, the sessions during the terms. of 1909 and 1910 being held in store buildings, and later in a big tent. These makeshifts were in use while a fine high school building was in the course of erection, and in 1911 the school began its occupancy of the new structure. A private kindergarten was opened in 1910, and continued for part of a year, but no such institution has ever been run in connection with the public schools. In the days of the first school a mere handful of children made up the attendance, but during the last
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