Category Archives: People

People, Things

The Collins and the Petrel

The Collins - Wallace monument at Mount Hope.
The Collins – Wallace monument at Mount Hope.

Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego contains the graves of many early residents of the city, some marked by notable monuments. One monument is particularly notable for its intimations of tragedy; a young mother, her two children and another young lady share the same death date. Carved in a side panel is an explanation; Frances J., Mary E., and John C. Collins, and Margaret G. Wallace ‘drowned by capsizing of yacht Petrel, near Roseville, Sept. 1, 1890’. The name of the husband and father, John W. Collins, with a death date a year and a half later, is also carved in the monument.

Epitaph on Collins - Wallace monument
Epitaph on Collins – Wallace monument

The Collins family had come to San Diego from Wyoming in 1887 where J. W. Collins and D. D. Dare had been in the banking business. In January 1888 they opened the California National Bank with prominent local citizen William Collier as president, Dare as vice-president and Collins as cashier. In early 1890 a subsidiary, the California Savings Bank, was also opened, with J. W. Collins as president. The Collins family lived, appropriately, on Bankers Hill, in the magnificent Victorian home at the corner of First and Kalmia streets now known as the Long – Waterman Residence. J. W. Collins had purchased the house from John Long in June 1890 and sold it to Jane Waterman in November (Jane Waterman’s husband, Robert Waterman, was then governor of California and owner of the most profitable gold mine in San Diego County; his term as governor expired two months later and three months after that he himself expired at his new home and was also buried in Mount Hope Cemetery).

The Long - Waterman Residence
The Long – Waterman (and Collins) Residence

The Petrel was built in Boston and had reportedly won five races there before being brought to San Diego on the bark Wildwood in July 1888. That fall she competed in a series of races on San Diego Bay which apparently captivated the public, receiving front-page coverage in the San Diego Union. The Petrel, a sloop, and the Volunteer, a catboat, winners of their respective classes in a San Diego Yacht Club race, then raced each other in what the Union called one of the most exciting races ever sailed on the bay. The Volunteer won, but the winning margin of 14 seconds over a fifteen mile course was considered so trifling that the honors were said to be even.

The Petrel then faced off against the catboat Teaser in what was to be a series of three races. The Petrel was a sloop, ‘built for speed’, and could carry, in addition to a mainsail and jib, a club gaff topsail and jib topsail and a spinnaker for running before the wind. To balance all this canvas the Petrel also carried five tons of lead ballast. She was 25 feet long overall with a beam of 9 feet. A catboat like the Teaser had only a single mainsail and a wider beam. To compensate for these differences in class the Teaser was granted a time allowance 5 ½ minutes for the first race; conditions for the second race would be based on the results of the first. There would be no other restrictions on sail or ballast.

In their first race the Petrel crossed the finish line nearly 7 minutes ahead of the Teaser, winning even after taking the 5 ½ minute allowance into account. In the second race, held a month later, the Petrel won easily but it was not considered a fair race owing in part to light winds. The third race was apparently never held; in August 1889 the Union complained ‘What is the matter with a race between the Teaser and the Petrel? These crack little yachts should make a gallant race and all San Diego would turn out and watch the struggle for supremacy’.

By 1890 the racing frenzy had apparently cooled, or at least was no longer front page news in the San Diego Union, but the Petrel remained at Hunt’s boatyard on the bay where her owner, John Young, took her out sailing most Saturdays. On the last Sunday in August Captain William P. Hay, a local shipping agent, approached Mrs. Collins at the United Presbyterian Church and remarked that he intended to take Mrs. Hay for a sail on the bay Monday if he could get a suitable yacht. He asked Mrs. Collins if she would like to join them and when she replied that she would Capt. Hay told her to meet him at Hunt’s boatyard at 10 o’clock in the morning and to bring her children Mary and Johnny and a picnic lunch. Capt. Hay also invited Miss Maggie Wallace, the pastor’s daughter, and she also accepted. Mr. Collins was away at the time, on a business trip to San Francisco.

At about 8 o’clock Monday morning, September 1, 1890, Capt. Hay telephoned Mrs. Collins to tell her that he had secured the Petrel, ‘a yacht well known in San Diego waters’, and that everything was in readiness for a delightful sail on the bay. Mr. Hunt brought the Petrel in from her mooring and the party sailed away about 10 o’clock. Conditions on the bay were not ideal; according to the Union there was a pretty stiff breeze blowing and ‘white caps flashed like puffs of steam from a million factories’. Hunt was concerned enough to suggest to Capt. Hay that he take in some of the sail but Capt. Hay replied ‘Oh, I guess not. I’m a pretty good hand at sailing anyway. I guess she’ll go all right’.

About noon a group of Portuguese fishermen at Roseville, on the west side of the bay near Ballast Point, saw a yacht sailing down the channel. Suddenly they saw that ‘a gale had struck the cloud of canvas’ and the yacht suddenly careened, tipped her nose and went straight down. The fishermen jumped into boats and pulled out to where the yacht had gone down but found no trace of the yacht or her occupants so they returned. A German fisherman returning to the bay later reported that he was startled to see a woman’s body floating in the water and he began to retrieve it when another body came to the surface nearby. This shocked him enough that he released the woman’s body and departed, ‘abandoning the drowned persons to the mercy of the sharks and fishes’ and ‘incurring much public censure’. Rumors of a disaster reached San Diego about 3 o’clock and search parties converged on the scene but found nothing that evening except for a coat which was identified as belonging to Capt. Hay and a fruit jar and other items which may have been part of a picnic lunch. The Union reported the following morning that all that was certain was that the party of six had drowned and no bodies had been recovered.

In the immediate aftermath and in the absence of any real evidence of what had occurred, the Union reported the speculation of other members of the waterfront community (all of whom were also apparently called ‘Captain’). A Captain Kehoe said he had seen the party depart from Hunt’s boatyard and that he would not have gone out in that yacht with such a sail in so strong a gale. She was not safe under so much canvas and only the most experienced sailor should have attempted it. ‘A boat built as she was will tip very easily, and she had so much lead in her that once full of water she was bound to go down like a stone’. The Petrel’s owner, Captain Young, said that he had only agreed to allow Capt. Hay to use the boat because he understood that another experienced Captain would also be aboard, and that it would not be safe for one man to take out a party of women and children.

The next day searchers hired the tugboat Santa Fe and returned to the site of the sinking. A weighted line was dragged along the bottom and soon snagged an obstacle which was raised far enough to identify as the sunken yacht. When it had emerged far enough for its mast to be lashed to the tug it was brought back to the docks where a crane would be used to raise it out of the water the following morning. Meanwhile, the body of Mrs. Collins had been found floating in the channel. A message was dispatched to friends of Mr. Collins in San Francisco conveying as many particulars of the calamity as necessary and requesting them to break the intelligence to Mr. Collins so that he might receive it as gently as possible. Apparently this was done and word was received that he would be in San Diego on Wednesday evening.

The Union also began a campaign to place some of the blame on what it perceived to be the inadequate efforts of the first responders, who were conspicuously identified as foreigners. The Portuguese, who had actually witnessed the accident and responded immediately but found no survivors or wreckage, were now said to have made no effort whatever to rescue the drowning and drowned, nor to locate the sunken yacht. ‘They are a churlish and unsentimental lot, to be sure, but even the most superlative boorishness is not accepted by the people as sufficient reason why they should have manifested such supreme and inhuman indifference to the fate of the party’. The German fisherman who had attempted to recover the body of a women but then released her upon the appearance of another corpse was ‘not a popular individual at present’. The Union inferred from his description that it was probably Mrs. Collins that he had begun to recover and that the second body was one of her children, based on the fact that ‘he intimates as clearly as his incomprehensible stupidity will permit that it was the body of a child’. ‘Who knows? Perhaps there might still have been a spark of life in that mother or her child; perhaps they had not been long in the water; perhaps had they been towed at once to shore resuscitation would not have been impossible’.

At the dock the Petrel was raised and although it had been expected that one or more of the bodies would be found on board the only vestiges of the picnic party were three parasols, those of the women on board, a small jar of jelly and a few other articles. The yacht itself had received comparatively little damage and could soon be repaired, although the Union speculated that her owners would probably ‘not be compelled to refuse many requests for her service hereafter’. Also, an accident like this would revive her past record; ‘before she came to this coast she carried a party of four to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean and at another time a party of eight and that in a race in Pacific waters a year or more ago she dipped enough to create consternation among her occupants and compel them to bail her out with hats’. The search for the other bodies continued; the bay in the vicinity of the sinking was dragged, and cannon were fired over the water and dynamite dropped into the bay in the belief that this would raise drowned bodies.

Although it was at first intended for Mrs. Collins’ funeral to be held at her late home, at the corner of First and Kalmia, it was deemed more appropriate to hold it at the Presbyterian Church, where friends and relatives gathered to pay their respects to the only recovered victim of ‘the most horrifying calamity that ever happened in the bay of San Diego’. After the service Mr. Collins and Rev. Wallace entered a closed carriage and the cortege moved away to Mount Hope Cemetery.

The bodies of the other victims turned up over the next few weeks. Mrs. Hay’s body was found floating in the surf about three miles south of the Hotel del Coronado on September 5. Her beautifully engraved gold watch had stopped at 11:39, presumably the very instant the capsizing had occurred. Also found nearby were two straw hats, one black, evidently the headgear of an elderly woman, and one white with a black-headed shawl pin thrust through it ‘in the fashion that ladies usually pin their hats to their hair’. The one was thought to have belonged to Mrs. Hay and the other to Miss Wallace. These findings were cited as evidence that the bodies would probably be found south of the bay, but on September 9 searchers dragging the channel found the body of William Hay almost on the spot where the yacht had disappeared.

On September 17 fishermen recovered a body of a child about two miles south of the head of Point Loma and returned it to San Diego. This turned out to be the body of Mary Collins, which was soon conveyed to Mount Hope. Miss Wallace’s body was found by a fisherman inside the bay on September 25 and a graveside funeral was held at Mount Hope. Finally, on October 6, the body of 9-year-old Johnnie Collins was found off Ensenada and after the necessary permits had been obtained from the Mexican consul and the Collector of Customs the body was returned and also interred at Mount Hope.

A few weeks later the news was that Dr. Bowditch Morton had bought the ‘famous yacht Petrel’ and proposed to have her put in first class order. He claimed to not have the least fear in using her when she is in proper repair. He would cut down her sails, put in airtight compartments and reduce the ballast.

Three years later, on October 26, 1893, a Captain Maitland of the British ship Valkyrie took two friends for a little cruise in the Petrel. In the stream, abreast the Santa Fe wharf, in a choppy sea caused by an ebbing tide and west wind, a sudden squall struck the sail and almost capsized the sloop. Capt. Maitland slacked the line and righted her but the boom swung around and struck the water and ‘in a twinkling the treacherous old craft was lying on her side, with Capt. Maitland and his friends in the bay’. The Union noted that there had been doubts expressed about Capt. Hay’s seamanship in the Collins tragedy but since Capt. Maitland’s seamanship could certainly not be called into question this accident demonstrated that the craft herself was unseaworthy and luckless. ‘The Petrel is regarded as a hoodoo along the waterfront. She has been remodeled and trimmed since the Collins tragedy, but she is built upon the wrong plan and won’t stand up if she has half a chance to lie down’.

John W. Collins had been out of town on September 1, 1890, and had not been directly involved in the Petrel disaster, but he was soon to be involved in a tragedy of his own making. In January 1891 he had become president of the California National Bank (and relinquished the presidency of the California Savings Bank). On November 12, 1891, customers were surprised to find the bank closed, with a note on the door explaining that ‘owing to continued shrinkage in deposits and our inability to promptly realize on our notes and accounts, the bank is temporarily closed’. The next day the subsidiary California Savings Bank also closed. A day later a national bank examiner assumed charge of the California National Bank and announced that the results of his examination would be forwarded to the comptroller of the currency and any further information would have to come from Washington. A few weeks later, based on his report, the comptroller of the currency appointed a receiver to oversee operations of the bank with a view to resumption of business within three months.

The resumption of business never occurred. On February 25, 1892, J. W. Collins was arrested at his rooms at the Brewster Hotel on a charge of embezzling and appropriating to his own use $200,000 of the funds of the bank. Bail was set at $50,000 and ‘in order to not create any excitement by Mr. Collins appearing on the street in charge of an officer’, he was confined to his rooms at the Brewster in custody of an officer while his friends attempted to secure the bond. On March 3, when the bond had still not been raised, a United States Marshal was sent to bring him to Los Angeles until his preliminary hearing. While the authorities waited outside Collins went into his bedroom as though to pack his valise. A shot rang out, officers burst into his bedroom, which was empty, then into the bathroom, where they found him stretched on the floor alongside the bathtub, blood pouring from his mouth and a smoking revolver in his hand. A doctor was summoned and pronounced him dead.

The Union accompanied the front-page news of Collins’ suicide with an editorial recalling the Petrel disaster; ‘The crash of the bullet that closed the chapter of the life of J. W. Collins yesterday afternoon was the last act in the tragedy that wiped the unhappy man’s wife and children out of existence two years ago on the bay. Even the most implacable enemy of Mr. Collins must admit that, embezzler of other people’s money though he may have been, the memory of his drowned babes and his wifeless home must have been strong upon him in that desperate extremity when he determined to escape further misery by the avenue of the suicide. The capsizing of the Petrel, the failure of the bank, the suicide of Mr. Collins – they make up the most tragic story ever chronicled in the history of San Diego county’.

On March 5 the body of John W. Collins was buried alongside his wife and children at Mount Hope. On April 4 the report of the receiver of the California Savings Bank revealed that it had been a front, operated as a ‘mere receiving depository’ of the California National Bank. Cash had been transferred from the California National Bank or simply entered in the books when necessary to make a good showing on reports. The July 1892 report of the receiver for the California National Bank was even more shocking, revealing that Mr. Collins had embezzled nearly $800,000 from the bank. ‘Although there have been published from time to time the most sensational statements regarding his methods of doing business and conducting the affairs of the bank, nothing has caused such undisguised astonishment as the facts brought to light yesterday’, the Union reported. ‘Just what methods Mr. Collins employed to bring about such a condition of affairs it is impossible to even conjecture. It will be apparent, however, to everybody in the least conversant with banking rules or business customs that they must have been decidedly irregular, if not actually criminal’. D. D. Dare had also looted about $400,000, making the total amount chargeable to them nearly $1,200,000, a staggering sum in the 1890s (Collins’ mansion at First and Kalmia had cost him $17,000). The Union concluded that ‘What has become of this vast sum of money is not known and probably never will be. Mr. Collins is dead and Mr. Dare is enjoying a secluded life in some obscure spot in Italy. Neither are in a position to explain, and probably would not if they could’.

The affairs of the defunct bank were unwound in dozens of legal actions over the next decade. A final auction of the bank’s assets was held in 1899; notes and other securities with a face value of over a million dollars were sold for $3350. San Diegans were occasionally reminded of the California National Bank fiasco when news of D. D. Dare filtered back from Europe; in 1894 he was said to be a portrait painter in Athens, Greece; in 1914 he applied to have his indictments withdrawn so that he could return to his beloved California, but his request was denied; in 1922 he was reported to be in Constantinople, Turkey, supporting himself selling prayer rugs. His indictments finally were dismissed in 1926, but by then he was thought to have died in Greece.

According to the San Diego Union, these reports called to mind a remarkable theory which was current in San Diego at that excited time and which received some credence; that President Collins, who was supposed to have killed himself after his arrest at the Brewster Hotel had actually escaped and joined Dare in Europe. A plaster cast was said to have been given to an undertaker who was ‘in on the deal’ and that this was buried as Collins’ body.  Whatever lies in his grave, John W. Collins’ memory is preserved along with the Petrel victims on their monument at Mount Hope.

People, Places

4275 Cass Street

4275 Cass Street, now the Earl & Birdie Taylor Library
4275 Cass Street, the Earl & Birdie Taylor Library

4275 Cass Street is now the address of the Earl and Birdie Taylor – Pacific Beach Branch Library. My wife remembers 4275 Cass as the address of her school, Martha Farnum Elementary. My Dad tells me that 4275 Cass was my first home address, when we lived at the De Luxe Trailer Park.

This address actually represents the entire block, surrounded by Thomas and Reed Avenues and Cass and Dawes Streets, and before its uses as library, school and trailer park the block had been known as the Collins place. Charles Collins had been a newspaperman in Sioux City, located on the Missouri River in western Iowa. In 1870 Sioux City was on the frontier, a center for trade with the Great Sioux Reservation further up the Missouri. Collins believed that Sioux City was the natural gateway to that region and would prosper if the Indians could be pushed out and the territory opened to whites, particularly the Black Hills, which were rumored to contain gold.

In 1872 Charles Collins began a campaign in his Sioux City Weekly Times to attract gold seekers to the Black Hills, and he organized parties of explorers to travel there from Sioux City. Initially the army prevented these parties from trespassing on the reservation, but ultimately it gave in to the continuous agitation promoted by Collins. In 1874 George Custer led a reconnaissance mission to the Black Hills and returned with confirmation of the presence of gold. The government attempted to negotiate with the Indians to purchase the hills, but the Indians were unwilling to sell. Tensions mounted, Indians left their reservations, the army set out to find them and force them back, and when they eventually met, at the Little Bighorn River in June 1876, the Indians annihilated a battalion of the Seventh Cavalry under Col. Custer. It is no exaggeration to say that Charles Collins set the stage for that epic battle.

The Indians were eventually returned to diminished reservations, the Black Hills were opened to mining, and Collins moved to Deadwood in the mining district where he continued to publish newspapers and, in 1878, a History and Directory of the Black Hills. After a few more years, his biography notes, he moved on again, to California, where he reportedly made a fortune in real estate ‘no doubt by using the same promotional and persuasive methods he had used in promoting the Black Hills’.

Since there were no rumors of gold on Mount Soledad it is unlikely that Charles Collins actually used the same methods as he did in the Black Hills when he joined J. R. and R. A. Thomas, D. C. Reed and others to form the Pacific Beach Company in 1887. This ‘syndicate of millionaires’ already owned considerable property in the area; Collins, for example, had acquired 20 acres in 1885 and later added another 40 acres. The Pacific Beach Company purchased most of the remaining property in the area, christened the community Pacific Beach, drew up a subdivision map and offered lots for sale in December 1887.

The Pacific Beach subdivision map divided the area into residential blocks separated by east-west avenues and north-south streets. Some of the avenues were named for principals of the Pacific Beach Company, including Thomas, Reed and Collins (Collins Avenue has disappeared but was about where Roosevelt Avenue in Crown Point is now). The blocks were numbered; the block between Thomas and Reed Avenues and the streets that became Cass and Dawes was Block 264. Block 264 was within the area of Collins’ original holdings and in 1888 he bought it back from the Pacific Beach Company and apparently built a cottage.

In 1891 the San Diego Union reported that Captain C. C. DeRudio, on leave from the Seventh Cavalry, had moved his family to Pacific Beach to test its many merits as a residence quarter. The DeRudios had leased the Collins cottage, which occupied a tract near both Mission Bay and the ocean (then-Lieutenant Charles Camilus DeRudio had survived the Little Bighorn battle, having spent two days concealed in bushes while surrounded by Indians). Capt. DeRudio spent his time in Pacific Beach experimenting with gardening to ascertain what will grow so near the ocean before returning to his regiment at Fort Sill. It may have been Capt. DeRudio’s agricultural experimentation that left Block 264 surrounded by eucalyptus trees, which made it stand out in early aerial photos and which were still prominent in the 1940s.

When Charles Collins died in 1893 the Union noted that he had been a leader in the pioneer movement that opened the Black Hills of Dakota to settlement, and that he owned considerable real estate in and around San Diego.  Ownership of Block 264 passed to his widow Annie and in 1900 it was acquired by Lida Clarkson who, a few months later, passed it on to her sister and brother-in-law M. J. and C. G. Akerman. Over the next few years Block 264 changed hands several more times until in 1904 the north half was sold to Mrs. Anna Byford Leonard and Miss Josephine Wells, and in 1905 the south half was sold to Miss Wells and her sister Ada.

Mrs. Anna Byford Leonard was an ardent Theosophist who lived at the international Theosophical headquarters at Lomaland on Point Loma. Before coming to San Diego she had been the first woman sanitary inspector in Chicago, in 1889, and is credited with improving the lives of children by initiating enforcement of the eight-hour work day for children under 14. The Wells sisters were pioneer San Diego business women who came to San Diego about 1894 and owned and operated a tourist home at Sixth Ave and Broadway. Josephine Wells died in 1913 but Ada continued to own the south half of Block 264 and a half-interest in the north half, and Mrs. Leonard the other half-interest in the north half, until the 1920s.

Earl Taylor and his wife Birdie came to Pacific Beach in 1923 with their son Vernon and daughter Erma and soon became involved with the local real estate community. An October 1923 article in the San Diego Union reported that Taylor was one of a group of former mid-westerners who had acquired 120 acres in the heart of Pacific Beach and planned a new high-class subdivision with ‘race and building restrictions which would make it highly desirable’ (this tract became the Congress Heights No. 2 and North Shore Highlands subdivisions, and also included the existing Congress Heights subdivision minus the six lots that had already been sold).

The Union article also reported that Taylor had bought more than 100 lots between Cass Street and the ocean, most fronting on Garnet Avenue, which Taylor planned to turn into the Pacific Beach business district. In 1923 the main Coast Highway between San Diego and Los Angeles passed along the east side of Mission Bay, then west on Garnet Avenue to Cass. An alternative route, also paved, ran around the other side of the bay to the bridge between Ocean Beach and South Mission Beach, then along Mission Boulevard to Pacific Avenue (now PB Drive), east to Cass, and north to Garnet (Mission Boulevard did not continue through Pacific Beach and was not paved north of Pacific). From the intersection of these two routes at Garnet and Cass, the Coast Highway continued north on Cass to Turquoise Street, then west on Turquoise, where it became La Jolla Boulevard and continued north through La Jolla, Torrey Pines, Del Mar and other coast cities to the north.

Earl Taylor estimated that 25,000 people passed through Pacific Beach daily in 6000 automobiles and 70 ‘auto stages’ and that these thousands would observe the developments of this beautiful locality, particularly the business district he was planning along Garnet from Cass to the ocean. He began developing the business center of what he called New Pacific Beach beginning with the two-story Dunaway Pharmacy building, still standing at the northwest corner of Garnet and Cass.

The 1923 Union article on Pacific Beach development had also mentioned other improvements planned for the area, including an auto camp to occupy a full bock near ocean and bay. Dewitt and Kizzie Martin, also recent arrivals from the mid-west, had apparently anticipated the potential value of property passed by thousands of automobiles daily. Block 264 was vacant, it fronted on the western branch of the coastal highway and was only a few blocks south of its intersection with the eastern branch at Garnet and Cass. In 1924 the Martins bought both halves from Miss Wells and Mrs. Leonard and began developing the Mission Bay Auto Camp at 4275 Cass.

Over the next few years the Martins, and his father James, developed their auto camp into more than just an overnight stop for passing automobiles but also a destination for what today would be called ‘snowbirds’. In the winter of 1928 the Union reported that Martin ‘rounded up’ the visitors stopping at his camp and took them to the Mission Beach bathhouse and beach where they enjoyed the warm mid-winter sun and sparkling water, in sharp contrast to the plight of the friends and relatives they had left behind in the grip of King Winter (Mr. and Mrs. Earl Taylor were mentioned as hosts on one such party from the Martin Auto Camp, where dancing was enjoyed and refreshments served).

In July 1928 an ad for ‘income property’ appeared in the San Diego Union:

AUTO CAMP FOR SALE, AS GOING CONCERN

A whole block, 40 lots; only 2 blocks from ocean, 1 ½ blocks from bay. Boating, fishing and bathing the year around. Located in the city limits of San Diego; 270-foot frontage on main highway between La Jolla and San Diego. 33 buildings, 29 rentals, 1, 2 and 3-room cabins; gas, electric lights, large lobby, store and lunch counter, gas station; cabins all newly furnished. One of the newest and finest sanitary systems in any camp in San Diego county. Many large trees; ½ of property vacant. Camp needs more cabins. Property all newly fenced. Doing better than $2000 per month. This property is one of the best camp locations between Los Angeles and San Diego. And anyone who can adapt themselves to this kind of business, can obtain increased returns. Buildings insured for $15,000; taxes, $660. Price $45,000, $7500 to $10000 cash, balance arranged to suit. Owner might consider partner, or leasing property. Owner, 4275 Cass blvd, Pacific Beach.

In subsequent years the auto camp at 4275 Cass went through a series of owners and names before being sold in 1938 to E. J. Ellis, who also owned the De Luxe Trailer Park in Cathedral City. The Union reported that the new De Luxe Trailer Park 2, 4275 Cass Blvd, Pacific Beach, proved the increasing interest and investment in trailers. The property consisted of an entire city block and was surrounded by eucalyptus trees.

The De Luxe Trailer Park was still in operation in 1947 when my parents moved from Iowa City to San Diego, where my Dad was to begin a career at the Naval Electronics Laboratory on Point Loma. They had lived in a trailer in Iowa and hired a neighbor to tow it to San Diego while they followed in their car. When they arrived in San Diego they found the De Luxe, where their trailer was assigned a space in the northeast corner.

On March 1, 1948, the Union reported that the calculations of Julius Caesar’s astonomers, made in 49 BC, had affected the lives of 15 babies born the previous day in seven San Diego area hospitals. According to the Union, these leap year arrivals, ten boys and five girls, would technically have to wait until 1952 to mark their first birthdays. Among the parents of these leap year babies were John C. and Mary Webster of 4275 Cass St., a son, in Mercy Hospital.

John C. Webster (and son) at the De Luxe Trailer Park, 4275 Cass Street, in 1948. The trailers and eucalyptus trees are long gone but the house across Dawes Street is still there.
John C. Webster (and me) at the De Luxe Trailer Park, 4275 Cass Street, in 1948.
The trailers and eucalyptus trees are long gone but the house across Dawes Street is still there.
The trailers, the wall and the eucalyptus trees at 4275 Cass are long gone but the house with the chimney across Dawes Street is still there.

Later in 1948 the Union reported that the sale of De Luxe Trailer Park at 4275 Cass St., Pacific Beach, for $100,000 plus, had been announced. Kenny Ellis, who operated the park for 11 years, had sold the park to R. J. Bragg. The Union noted that the park embraced an entire city block.

Martha Farnum attended Coronado High School, acted in school plays and was guard on the girls’ basketball team which lost to Anaheim in the Southern California championship game in 1923. She graduated from San Diego State College in 1928 and taught school in Oakland before returning to the San Diego school system, where she taught in a number of schools before becoming principal of the Ocean Beach and Logan elementary schools. In 1934 she was put in charge of a special project to make textbooks more relevant to students. She became curriculum coordinator, then director of elementary school education and finally assistant superintendent of city schools, in charge of elementary education. When she died in 1952, while still in her 40s, the Board of Education announced that she would be honored with a school named after her.

The opportunity to name a new school would not be long in coming. San Diego had experienced tremendous growth during World War II, particularly among defense workers and military personnel, many of whom had settled in Pacific Beach. The post-war ‘baby boom’ added even more to the numbers of school-aged children. My wife’s parents, for example, had worked at Consolidated Aircraft in San Diego during the war, building bombers, and after the war they moved to Reed Avenue in Pacific Beach where their two daughters were nearing school age in the 1950s.

The federal government had built Bayview Terrace Elementary school as part of a public housing project for defense workers in 1941 and Crown Point Elementary had been built in 1946, the first school built in San Diego after the war. Still, it was apparent that more schools would be needed to keep pace with the growth in the school-aged population. The Union wrote in 1950 that enrollment of city school children had increased 50% in the past decade and school officials predicted it would almost double the 1940 count by 1954.

In 1950 San Diego voters passed a $11 million bond issue to fund a building program which included plans for a new elementary school in the Crown Point-Pacific Beach area. In 1951 the Board of Education applied for federal funds for school projects in parts of the city most heavily impacted by the war effort, including a new elementary school in southwestern Pacific Beach. In 1952 the San Diego Union reported that residents in that trailer court on Cass St. near Garnet St. had been asked to find another spot to park their trailers. The entire block had been purchased by the Unified School District, which planned to build a school there.

On November 30, 1953, four hundred Pacific Beach children and their teachers moved into the new Martha Farnum Elementary School at 4275 Cass Street (my wife was one of the new kindergartners, after starting the school year at Crown Point). The Union reported that the school was federally financed under the defense impact area program and was built for $337,450. It would relieve crowded conditions in other PB elementary schools.

Martha Farnum Elementary represented the latest trends in school constructions; classrooms were built back-to-back with sheltered outdoor walkways, eliminating noisy interior corridors. It included 16 classrooms, an administrative and health unit and a cafeteria-auditorium. The new school was dedicated in April 1954 and presented with a portrait of Miss Farnum as part of its dedication ceremony. The Union noted that she was the first woman to hold a top administrative position in the local school district.

Martha Farnum Elementary had been built in the 1950s with federal impact money to address a serious overcrowding situation in Pacific Beach elementary schools. By the 1980s, even though the Pacific Beach area continued to grow by expanding up the slopes of Mount Soledad and the population density increased when single-family homes were replaced with apartments and condominiums, the population of school-aged children in PB had actually gone into decline. At the same time, new communities of San Diego like Mira Mesa and Scripps Ranch required schools, and California’s Proposition 13, passed in 1978, severely restricted property taxes necessary to fund school districts.

The San Diego school district proposed a plan to close schools with declining enrollments and then lease the properties, using the proceeds to fund new school construction elsewhere. Local committees in Pacific Beach, Point Loma and La Jolla were given the task of deciding which schools in their areas to close. In Pacific Beach, the choice was between Martha Farnum or Crown Point. The committee decided that Crown Point occupied a larger area and could be expanded if necessary in the future, so Martha Farnum was selected for closure (despite further population growth, the population of school-aged children in Pacific Beach has continued to decline and Bayview Terrace was also closed as a community elementary school in 2013).

Martha Farnum Elementary was closed after the 1983 school year and in the summer of 1983 the school district offered it for lease. The property apparently was leased, but the proposal to build apartments and condominiums on the property was unpopular with Pacific Beach residents and that development was blocked. In 1987 an alternative proposal to use the site for parkland and a library was negotiated by the school district and the city, but the city manager removed the funds necessary to purchase the site from the city budget in the interest of economy.

In 1988 the Union reported that city school trustees had approved an agreement to sell Farnum Elementary School to the city, which planned to convert it into a library and a park. The agreement involved cash, land improvement and property worth roughly $3.3 million. The Union explained that city and school officials had negotiated for years over the fate of Farnum until donors appeared, who turned out to be Erma O’Brien and her brother Vernon Taylor, who wanted the library and park to be a monument to their father Earl Taylor. After years of design and construction, the Earl and Birdie Taylor – Pacific Beach Branch Library opened to rave reviews in May 1997.

Earl & Birdie Taylor Library, 4275 Cass Street

 

People

The MacFarland Legacy

The MacFarlands Pacific Beach Home
The MacFarlands’ Pacific Beach home today

Andrew F. and Ella C. MacFarland only occupied it for two years but they left Pacific Beach with a grand edifice that has looked over the community for more than a century.  Behind the doors, however, their lives were a comedy of errors that eventually played out in courtrooms and newspapers across the state.

A. F. MacFarland had been an insurance agent in San Francisco and then vice-president and manager of an insurance company in Spokane. In September 1907 the MacFarlands paid a visit to Pacific Beach, staying at the Hotel Balboa, the building originally built for the San Diego College of Letters. They apparently liked what they saw; within weeks Ella had purchased 4 lots at the northeast corner of Lamont and Beryl Streets. In October the San Diego Union reported that they planned to build a $4000 house there and they moved into their new home in February 1908.

While living in their handsome house on the hill Mr. MacFarland became active in San Diego city affairs. He served on the executive board of a committee of 100 prominent citizens campaigning for amendments to the city charter. Closer to home, he filed petitions with the city clerk to have streets graded in Pacific Beach. In February 1909 he was one of the organizers of the Pacific Beach Country Club, which sub-leased space in the Hotel Balboa.

In August 1909 the Union reported that Mr. and Mrs. A. F. MacFarland had traveled to Los Angeles for Elks week. They had made the trip overland in their Maxwell runabout, making the distance between Los Angeles and Pacific Beach in only eight hours. A month later MacFarland was in the news again; this time burglars had ‘jimmied’ a window in his home with an axe and stolen a quantity of wearing apparel, seven suits of clothing worth $700 (although police did not expect to learn the exact amount of the ‘depredations’ until MacFarland returned from the north, the estimate of $700 would be a substantial proportion of the value of his home).

The MacFarlands’ residence in Pacific Beach turned out to be brief; by the end of 1909 they had moved out and returned to San Francisco, where he organized the San Francisco Life Insurance Company. It was also there where he became notorious as the ‘Bluebeard Mate’ and ‘Hymeneal Champ’, known for his ‘unparalleled demonstration of frenzied matrimony’ and ‘spectacular matrimonial tangles’.

According to the San Francisco Call, the history of his ‘hymeneal ventures’ began with his marriage to Leona Mayval more than 25 years before, at his old home in Genoa, Ohio. A year or two later he had moved to Kansas where, in 1896, he married Minnie Gerard, his previous wife forgotten although never divorced. After a few months he found that Minnie had another husband living so he left her and, in 1898, married Ella Clem in Oklahoma.

In early 1911 Ella found out about his marriage to Minnie and at his suggestion sought an annulment, ostensibly to leave him free to have the Kansas marriage annulled. Ella apparently understood that after this ‘tangle’ was straightened out they would then be remarried. Her annulment was granted on January 14, 1911 and the annulment of his previous marriage on January 28. However, Ella had her annulment vacated on March 17, alleging fraud and conspiracy. She claimed to be the victim of a plot by MacFarland and one ‘Jane Doe’ to deprive her of her share of community property worth $30,000.

On January 31, 1911, while temporarily free of his two most recent wives, Andrew MacFarland entered into a fourth marriage, this time with his former stenographer, Ethyl Groom, who herself had lately secured an annulment from her husband because he had another wife living in the east. When the annulment of his marriage to Ella was set aside, making MacFarland again a bigamist, Ethyl had her marriage to him annulled, on March 23, again with the understanding that he would divorce Ella and then remarry her. However, according to the Call, he then ‘seems suddenly to have recalled his first love in Ohio’ and returned there before dropping out of sight.

The San Francisco Call estimated Andrew MacFarland’s private fortune to be in the six figures, and all in cash. Miss Groom, although no longer married to MacFarland, claimed some of that cash as her own, saying that he had given her $10,000 in banknotes as a wedding gift and then stolen it. She had him charged with grand larceny and he was tracked down and arrested in Colorado Springs, where, according to the Call, he was on the point of leaving for Puerto Rico in the company of Ella.

At his trial in San Francisco, Ethyl made a ‘picturesque witness’ but the wealthy insurance promoter denied he ever gave her money and claimed she was merely seeking notoriety with a view to going on the stage. That jury could not reach a verdict, but he was acquitted in a second trial, on September 24, 1912.

By this time Andrew F. MacFarland was living in San Diego again, at the corner of B and Edgemont streets, and by 1914 the city directory indicated that Ella C. MacFarland also resided at that address. They later moved to 29th Street near Beech in South Park. Andrew was again involved in city politics and was mentioned as a candidate for appointment as City Manager. Ella was remembered as a popular South Park hostess.

However, their marital relationship apparently never recovered, and in August 1918 Andrew MacFarland again returned to the courts. His complaint for divorce from Ella stated that his employment made it necessary for him to be in Los Angeles during the week and when he returned to his wife and home in San Diego for weekends she acted in a cold and unaffectionate manner and visited upon him a continuous tirade of abuse, denouncing him as untrue to her and spending his money in riotous living during his absence from home. He begged her to cease but her actions remained the same; she pursued a studied and continuous course of nagging, vilifications, and denunciation. He added that all of her accusations were untrue.

Ella MacFarland’s cross-complaint denied these allegations and instead claimed that he had deserted and abandoned her and continued to live separate and apart from her against her will and without her consent. She prayed for judgment of the court that the bonds of matrimony between them be dissolved and that he take nothing under his complaint and be required to pay a reasonable sum for court costs and counsel fees. Judge Marsh ruled in September 1918 that all the allegations in the cross-complaint were true and granted Ella a divorce and $300 for court costs and attorney’s fees.

A week after his divorce from Ella, 51-year-old Andrew F. MacFarland married a 25-year-old stenographer and they apparently went on to lead an uncharacteristically quiet life in Los Angeles. Ella MacFarland also moved to Los Angeles, occasionally returning to visit friends in San Diego.

People

Madie Arnott Barr & Turner

Madie Arnott Barr

In the first years of the twentieth century Madie Arnott Barr held title to a substantial portion of the land in Pacific Beach as well as a good deal of other property around the San Diego area. In 1905, for example, the city Lot Book listed her as owner of 5 acre lots as well as portions of other blocks in Pacific Beach totaling over 60 acres. Mrs. Barr was also named in almost daily real estate transactions recorded by the San Diego county recorder, many of them in Pacific Beach.

Madie Arnott Atkinson had been born in New Jersey but moved to California in 1862 when she was five years old. Records show that she married a Mr. McFadden and had two sons about 1880. Then she married Edward Henry Byrons and was divorced from him in about 1897. She came to San Diego and apparently met Frank M. Barr, who had originally arrived in San Diego in irons to serve a sentence in the San Diego County Jail for sending improper letters in the U. S. Mail. In April 1898 they sailed two miles off the coast of California where they were married on the high seas by a Methodist minister with the boat’s captain and crew as witnesses. Back in San Diego, Barr entered into a real estate partnership, Turner & Barr, with Marcus C. Turner. Mr. Barr later explained that, for convenience, all the the firm’s purchases were recorded under his wife’s name.

By 1907, however, Frank Barr’s relationships with both his business partner and his wife had deteriorated. In February 1907 he embarked on a voyage to the Orient, supposedly for his health. Before leaving he executed a deed granting his wife all right, title and interest in any and all property, real or personal, which he owned or had any interest in. Turner & Barr, the partnership with M. C. Turner, had also apparently been terminated before his departure. Soon after he sailed, Turner, Madie Arnott Barr and her son Ward E. McFadden incorporated a new real estate business, the Turner-Barr Company.

When Barr returned a few months later he initiated an action in superior court demanding one-half interest in the properties held in the name of Madie Arnott Barr, contending that the property purchased by Turner & Barr was recorded in her name for convenience only and the February blanket deed to all of his property was made solely for the purpose of facilitating any transfers of property, without any consideration. In July, Barr upped the ante, commencing an action against Turner for having an undue and improper influence over his wife; wrongfuly, wilfully, wickedly, unlawfully and maliciously depriving him of her comfort, affection, fellowship, society and assistance. For all of this he asked for $50,000 in damages.

Both of these complaints were dismissed and the parties apparently agreed to a division of property, but in October Barr was back in court to complain that his wife and former partner had failed to convey the agreed-upon real property. Mr. Barr also initiated a separate action against Mrs. Barr claiming that she had ‘inveigled’ him to go through a bogus wedding ceremony on the boat two miles out to sea with the intent of evading California marriage laws, when she had not actually been divorced from her previous husband. In this action he asked that their ‘pretended’ marriage be annulled and that she be denied any interest in what she claimed to be community property.

The parties reached a settlement on the property issues in November 1907, but problems with the Barrs’ marriage continued. Frank Barr filed an amended complaint; he said that their marriage was not legal because no license had been issued and that it should be annulled. Madie Arnott Barr answered with a cross-complaint; she said that Barr represented to her that he had complied with the law in reference to marriages and if he failed to obtain a license, if such licenses were necessary, he was at fault. She also denied that she had induced or persuaded him to go to sea and be married off California. She added that the publication of the false and slanderous statements contained in his complaint caused her suffering in mind and body, her health had been impaired and her peace of mind destroyed, and her marital relations rendered intolerable. She also asked that their marriage be dissolved, but that he take nothing. This complaint was also dismissed, in January 1908.

Despite her alleged suffering, impaired health and destroyed peace of mind, Madie Arnott Barr still held title to a great deal of real estate, including substantial holdings in Pacific Beach, and she soon put it on the market. In March 1908, she was the seller in what the San Diego Union called the largest transfer of Pacific Beach property for several years, 366 lots, a portion of her holdings of Acre Lots 7, 8, 9 and 10. The deal was made by J. M. Asher of Asher & Littlefield and was understood to be for about $40,000. The buyer was the Folsom Bros. Co. These acre lots were between Agate, Gresham and Loring Streets and a line halfway between Everts and Dawes

Although Madie Arnott Barr and Frank Barr had apparently separated, their marital status remained unresolved. In 1908 she was advised that the state supreme court had ruled that even a marriage on the high seas required a license, or as the Los Angeles Herald put it, ‘made it absolutely necessary that a license should be secured before two persons can settle down to the enjoyment of matrimonial bliss or contend with the trials of wedded life’. Apparently feeling that her marriage had become more trial than bliss she left San Diego, moved in with her sons in Los Angeles to establish residence, and in September 1908 filed suit asking that her marriage be annulled, and also that her maiden name of Madie A. Atkinson be restored. The marriage was annulled in superior court on January 8, 1909, and on January 13, less than a week later, a marriage license was issued in Los Angeles for Marcus C. Turner, age 54, and Madie A. Atkinson, age 50, both residents of San Diego.

Back in San Diego Marcus C. and Madie Arnott Turner continued their real estate activities, with a particular emphasis on Pacific Beach. In July 1909 they filed a subdivision map for Turner’s Sea Shell Park, basically the block surrounded by Riviera and Moorland Drives, Haines Street and La Playa Avenue plus a couple of lots on the north side of La Playa, which they owned in the Crown Point area of Pacific Beach. In 1910 they filed a subdivision map for Hollywood Park, incorporating their property within Acre Lots 7, 8, 9 and 10, the same tract they had agreed to sell to Folsom Bros. Co. in 1908. Folsom Bros. Co. agreed to ‘release and forever quitclaim’ the property back to the Turners in 1910.

The Turners, and her sons Ward and Joseph McFadden, continued to be active in the San Diego, and Pacific Beach, real estate market for years but Mrs. Turner played a less visible role and Mr. Turner eventually shifted his interest to mining and minerals. He became known as a champion of local ‘industrial minerals’, especially Otaylite, used in refining the finest grade of oil.

Overtaken

Between her real estate activities and courtroom appearances Madie Arnott Barr also found time to write. When the USS Bennington blew up in San Diego Bay on July 21, 1905, with the loss of 65 lives, she commemorated the tragedy with a poem, Overtaken, ‘dedicated to the boys of the U.S.S. Bennington’, and distributed it in San Diego bookstores. A January 1907 Union ad for Turner & Barr, the ‘Sleepless and Tireless’ realty firm, was also written in verse and credited to Madie Arnott Barr. It featuring such thoughts as ‘We read of San Diego of its climate and its bay, Its sunshine and its flowers and its winter months like May. We hear the tourists speaking of its charming city homes, Where wealth and prosperity smile on banks and money loans’, and odd verses like ‘The city hall and court house where the politicians meet. Where the hands of enemies come in contact as they greet, Are records of our city as its pulse beats warm or cold. And its there that divorces separate the young and old.’

In 1908 she had offered a $10 reward, no questions asked, for the return of her white Pomeranian (Spitz) dog, ‘Rowdy’, lost or stolen. When Rowdy was run over and killed by an automobile in 1911 she wrote a tribute which was published in the Union (‘Dead Dog’s Virtues Extolled by Woman’): Rowdy was probably as near human in his intellect as any dog ever attained, he fully understood conversation, his vocabulary was unusually large, love and fidelity were synonymous with all his actions, he knew every mood of his mistress and in health or sickness showed his beautiful nature.

Madie Arnott Turner died in 1932. Marcus C. Turner died in 1934.

Postscript:
In May 1909 the San Franciso Call reported that a reputed wealthy San Diegan had settled in the French possession of Tahiti in order to acquire legal residence so that he could marry a Tahitian girl under French laws. Under the headline ‘Remains in Tahiti to Wed Dusky Maid’, the paper said that the man, who went under the name of A. J. Stephens, had arrived on the liner Mariposa and had scheduled a return on its next voyage, but shortly before it sailed he tried to charter it for a cruise beyond French jurisdiction and on the high seas have the captain perform the marriage ceremony. The captain refused and Stephens decided to remain, establish legal residence, and ‘have the swellest wedding that Tahiti ever saw’.

The Call followed up this story by contacting the only A. J. Stephens living in San Diego, who said he had never been in Tahiti, or even out of San Diego for years, and that he believed the man in Tahiti was Frank M. Barr, a formerly well known real estate man and at one time quite wealthy, but who had left San Diego about five months previously after becoming mixed up in a number of shady transactions. Stephens said that Barr had left a trail of worthless checks from Los Angeles to Seattle and was known to be in Tahiti.

Barr’s trail of worthless checks and shady transactions continued to grow. A June 1909 Call article reported:

Bride is Deserted on a Southern Isle

A. J. Stephens, or Frank M. Barr, Gets Money and Flees

The romance of A. J. Stephens, or Frank M. Barr, as it is thought he should be called, has terminated in a gorgeous wedding with the Tahitian belle he left California to wed, the acquisition by the groom of some $2000 on the strength of the marriage, the abandonment of the bride on one of the south sea islands, and the disappearance of the mysterious adventurer with his ill acquired wealth in the direction of Australia.

The Call explained that Stephens, or Barr, had obtained money from an aunt of his bride and various other wealthy persons, then took his bride on a little junketing trip to Raratonga, where he left her to make her way home as well as she could and shipped on a steamer for Auckland.

In September 1909, Frank Barr was finally ‘run to earth’. The San Diego Union reported that ‘with an alleged criminal record extending the length of the coast and to the South Sea islands,and involving clever manipulations with negotiable paper and bigamous marriages as its salient points, Frank M. Barr, the fugitive San Diego real estate man, has at last been run down. He is under arrest at Ashland, Oregon’.

The Union recreated his recent history: After engaging in the real estate business for years, Barr left San Diego on January 1, 1909, abandoning Mrs. Jennie Duffey-Barr, his bride of two months, whom he had married after his legal separation from the present Mrs. Turner. From San Diego, Barr went to Los Angeles and after his departure from there numerous bad checks turned up and his San Diego operations also came to light. In February he was in Seattle under the name of Joe Thomas. Then he went to Tahiti as A. J. Stephens, a San Diego capitalist on vacation, where his elegant manners gained him entrance to the best society on the islands and he entertained his new-found acquaintances with many tales of his experiences, which were for the most part the grossest fabrications. One of his new acquaintances was Edouard Droullet, a retired French planter, who possessed a considerable income and a beautiful young daughter, Mademoiselle Elina Droullet. The imposter ‘had no trouble appearing well in her eyes’ and secured her father’s consent in her marriage. They were married in Papeete and left for Auckland, New Zealand, on their wedding tour, but not before the groom had secured $1000 on two bogus drafts endorsed by members of his new family.

Barr abandoned the French girl in Raratonga, robbing her of her jewelry and leaving her penniless. He next appeared in Salinas, in July, where he passed bad checks and remarked to an acquaintance that he was headed for San Diego where he had some old scores to settle. In San Diego he was disguised; stooped and walking with a cane and with his head swathed in bandages, explaining that he had been burned in an automobile accident. He told friends he was in San Diego to kill M. C. Turner, who by then had married his former wife, and he asked his current wife, the former Mrs. Duffey, for money and threatened to kill her if she let his presence be known. He was finally identified by a local druggist who recognized his voice when he telephoned from his store.

The police were notified but he made his escape, taking the ‘Owl’ train toward Los Angeles. He got off at Oceanside, then got an automobile ride to his destination. San Diego police chief Keno Wilson eventually tracked him to a hotel there but he had ‘taken boat’ for the north. He was finally located in Ashland and arrested. Apparently the crimes he could have been tried for in San Diego involved forging Madie Arnott Barr’s name on negotiable notes and would have required her testimony in court, but since she had been his wife at the time she would not be allowed to testify if he objected. Instead he was tried on the more recent forgery in Los Angeles.

In December 1909 Frank Barr was convicted of forging Madie Arnott Barr’s signature on a check to a Los Angeles jeweller for a $525 diamond ring. In January 1910 he was sentenced to five years in San Quentin; ‘Ordered to the Rock Pile’, according to the Union. Mrs. Duffey-Barr filed for divorce.

People, Places

The Rockwood and the Palms

In November 1897 the ‘personal mention’ column of the San Diego Union mentioned that Misses M. J. and L. Clarkson of Melrose, Massachusetts had arrived in the city to remain for the winter. They must have liked it; barely a month later the paper reported that ‘The New Thought’, a monthly publication of sixteen pages whose home is at Melrose, Mass, had announced that their editor and publisher, M. J. Clarkson, and associate editor, Lida Clarkson, had crossed the continent to make their new home at San Diego.

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Actually, while The New Thought was the sisters’ most recent venture, both had already experienced remarkable careers in publishing. When Mary Josephine Clarkson married Carl Akerman in San Diego a year later the Union noted that the bride had been connected with her sister in editing a department of the Ladies’ Home Journal for three years and afterward edited an art magazine for eight more years before becoming interested in metaphysical study and launching her journal. Lida Clarkson was an accomplished artist and author of books on home decoration and art instruction, based on articles she had contributed to Ladies’ Home Journal. She also produced a number of color plate gift books featuring chromolithographs of botanical themes and poetry.

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In February 1900 Lida Clarkson purchased Thomas Fitzgerald’s home at the northwest corner of Bayard Street and Reed Avenue in Pacific Beach for $300. This home, on lots 22 and 23 of Block 262, was the eastern-most of the row of houses that had been built by railroad employees working out of the depot grounds at the end of the railway line. The paper reported that she was having the house remodeled. A week later she also bought the lots across the alley, lots 20 and 21, the southwest corner of Bayard and Thomas, consolidating her ownership of the east end of Block 262.

In July 1900 Lida Clarkson paid $700 for an entire block, Block 264, between Cass and Dawes Streets and Thomas and Reed Avenues, where the Pacific Beach branch library now stands, and only a block from her other properties. In November she sold this block to the Akermans and they moved in with Miss Clarkson while superintending the improvements on their property.

John Maynard Rockwood was a miner who operated in the San Diego County backcountry, particularly in the Mesa Grande mining district. He bought and sold mining claims and in 1899 made news for selling a Mesa Grande mine for $4000. While not in the mountains he lodged in the home of Elbert Higbee, one of the very first houses in Pacific Beach, located near the foot of Bayard Street just a few feet from Mission Bay. Mr. Higbee was a painter and Mr. Rockwood was reported to have joined him in painting the Pacific Beach schoolhouse in 1896.

When Miss Clarkson moved to the southwest corner of Pacific Beach in 1900 she and Mr. Rockwood became neighbors and shortly afterward, in July, the Evening Tribune reported that a marriage license had been issued for John M. Rockwood, aged 48, and Lida Clarkson, aged 45. A few days later the Tribune reported that Miss Clarkson and Mr. Rockwood had married and would make their home ‘on the Beach’. The paper added that Mrs. Rockwood was one of the most celebrated women in the country as Lida Clarkson, known far and wide as art editor of The Ladies’ Home Journal and with a world reputation as an artist.

The couple’s ‘home on the Beach’ was Mrs. Rockwood’s house at Bayard and Reed, and in 1901 they added a second story which the Tribune claimed would make it one of the finest residences on the Beach. Over the next few years the Rockwoods bought up most of the rest of the block, eventually owning all but 4 of the 32 lots in Block 262, surrounded by Bayard, Reed, Thomas and what was then the railroad spur to the depot grounds and later Mission Boulevard. Some of these lots were won in public auctions at the courthouse door, sold by the Tax Collector because the Pacific Beach Company had failed to pay the property tax of 11 cents in 1893 and the taxes had remained delinquent over the intervening years.

In August 1904 a San Diego Union article described the remarkable activity in building operations in Pacific Beach in the past week, the most noticeable being the commencement of a magnificent and spacious apartment house, the first structure of its kind in Pacific Beach, being constructed by John Rockwood on Bayard near Grand Avenue. It would contain sixteen apartments with all the modern conveniences and with bathroom accommodations. The Rockwood, as the apartment building was first called, was located on the west side of Bayard, just north of the alley separating it from the Rockwoods’ home at Bayard and Reed, and residents were moving in by 1905. Beginning in October 1907 the Union advertised The Rockwood, rooms and board, 3 blocks from beach bathing, no undertow. Teams to all points of interest. Braemar Sta., La Jolla R.R.

The dining facilities were apparently the highlight of the Rockwood’s design. A 1909 Union article mentioned that the Monday Night 500 club was royally entertained by the Braemar 500 club at the Rockwood flats on the Ocean Front. The large dining room was beautifully decorated for the occasion.

However, The Rockwood does not appear to have been much of a success commercially. The advertisements in the Union disappeared after a few months. By 1911 it had also disappeared from the city directory and J. M. Rockwood no longer described himself as proprietor.

In 1912 the apartments were reopened under new management and with a new business model; a Union article in July noted that M. A. Raines had opened the Rockwood Apartments at Pacific Beach and would make a specialty of entertaining week-end parties. Chicken dinner would be served on Sundays. Apartments for the week or month could be arranged for at reasonable rates. According to ads in the Union the Rockwood Apartments had housekeeping rooms with free gas for cooking, electric lights, telephone – all modern conveniences; ‘Take La Jolla car, get off at Ocean Front Station’. The dining room remained an important draw; another ‘elaborate luncheon’ was put on by the ‘charming hostess of the week’ Mrs. George Hannahs at the Rockwood Apartments at Pacific Beach.

J. M. Rockwood died in February 1915 and in 1916 Lida Rockwood sold her remaining holdings, which by then consisted of 10 lots at the east end of the block including the home at Bayard and Reed and the apartment building, to her nephew David Clarkson. In 1918 her brother-in-law Carl Akerman also died and shortly afterward she moved out of the Pacific Beach home, where she had continued to live, and joined her sister at the Akerman home on I (now Island) Street in the Grant Hill neighborhood of San Diego. Mrs. Rockwood died in 1924 and Mrs. Akerman in 1931; the home on Island Street is still standing.

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The Akerman home on Island Street, 2014

Captain J. M. Ray and his wife Estella had been the officers in charge of the Salvation Army’s Maud B. Booth Children’s Home in San Diego. In 1916 J. M. Ray bought the St. Lawrence Hotel on H (Market) Street downtown. The St. Lawrence had previously been a Helping Hand Home, a refuge for the ‘deserving poor’, and many indigent people still came to the St. Lawrence hoping to find assistance. If Ray had room he would sometimes put them up and eventually, with assistance from the Board of Supervisors, he found himself furnishing about 40 rooms for the ‘aged and decrepit’. When the numbers continued to grow Ray got more help from the board to establish a home for aged women in Pacific Beach: the Rockwood Apartments. The home in Pacific Beach, managed by Estella Ray, eventually became known as the Rockwood Home for the Aged (the St. Lawrence Hotel downtown also became the Rockwood Hotel, before it was torn down in 1923). A U. S. Census enumerator recorded a matron and six patients, ranging in age from 73 to 88, at the Rockwood Home in January 1920.

In about 1919, after Lida Rockwood had left to live with her sister in Grant Hill, the Rays moved into her former house at the corner of Reed and Bayard, across the alley from the Rockwood Home. While living in Pacific Beach the Rays experienced a family tragedy when their 16-year-old son Dwight was accidently shot on December 31, 1919. According to the Evening Tribune, he and two companions were returning home when they decided to fire a volley to salute the new year. One of the companions’ gun hung fire and when he tried to unload it it fired, striking Dwight Ray in the back of the head and killing him. The paper noted that the younger Ray had attended the Army and Navy Academy and that his father was superintendent of the Rockwood Home for the Aged in Pacific Beach. Tragedy also struck the home itself in 1921 when an 80-year-old woman burned to death after a lighted oil stove overturned, setting her clothing afire and scattering burning oil over her room.

The Rockwood Home for the Aged operated for about five years in Pacific Beach. A 1920 Union article summarizing the home’s treasurer’s annual report gives an idea of the scale of their operation. Expenses were said to be $5670 while income was $5844, about half of which was supplied by the county. More than 7000 free meals were served, out of a total of 44,500 meals. 2500 beds were furnished free. The article explained that old people whom relatives and friends could not care for personally were sent to the home and board and rent was paid. Other aged were kept by the home without any payment (which was presumably made up for by the county).

By 1923 the home had outgrown the former apartment building in Pacific Beach and the Rays moved the residents to the Palms Hotel building at the northeast corner of I Street (Island Avenue) and 12th Street (Park Boulevard) downtown. The Palms Hotel was formerly the Bay View Hotel, built in 1889 on the site of an earlier Bay View Hotel which had been in existence since the 1870s. The new Rockwood Home at the Palms Hotel was much larger than the Pacific Beach facility, more than a quarter of a city block, and within walking distance of most points of interest downtown. The Evening Tribune reported that it had all the conveniences of a first-class modern hotel with over 100 large airy rooms, each one located so that guests would have easy access to the dining rooms, reading rooms and the sun porch. Mrs. Ray, the kindly little lady who was giving so freely of her time and money for a cause that was dear to her heart, told the Tribune correspondent that ‘We are trying to do good work here, and we are meeting with wonderful success’.

After the aged residents were moved downtown, J. M. Ray used the Rockwood apartment building as headquarters for his short-lived real estate company in 1924 and after that it apparently reverted to being an apartment or rooming house again. The city directory showed two residents at the 4270 Bayard Street address in 1925, one in 1926 and one 1927. In 1928 4270 Bayard was vacant, but one resident was listed in 1929. From 1930 to 1932 the city directory showed 4270 Bayard as vacant and after 1932 the address was no longer listed. Today a large apartment or condominium building with underground parking covers the northeast corner of the block but a row of Canary Island date palms, now nearly 100 years older and considerably taller, still line Bayard Street just like they did when the old folks posed for a photo in front of their home about 1919.

Site of Rockwood Apartments, behind the Phoenix canariensis palms on Bayard
Site of Rockwood Apartments, behind the Canary Island palms on Bayard Street, Pacific Beach, 2014

Postscript:
After buying the Palms Hotel and assuming a large mortgage the Rays apparently planned to increase occupancy by offering ‘life memberships’; room, board and care for life, for an advance payment of between $1000 and $3000. They did recruit a number of ‘life members’ but over time they found that their expenses exceeded the income generated by these payments and began engaging in dubious practices to try to make ends meet.

In 1927 ‘inmates’ of the Palms Hotel for the Aged (as they were called) began complaining of financial irregularities. In April a 70-year-old woman who had paid $1050 for a life membership filed suit against the Rays contending that they had not lived up to the terms of their agreement. In September she was awarded a judgment of $1390.

In October 1927 the Rays apparently just walked away from the home and abandoned the inmates. The Union reported that 63 inmates of the Palm Hotel for the Aged, including 48 ‘life members’ who had paid in advance for care for the remainder of their lives, enjoyed a good dinner through the intervention of the county board of supervisors after it appeared that the aged unfortunates would have to go to bed ‘supperless’ . Mr. and Mrs. J.M. Ray, owners of the hotel, had been absent for several days. A grand jury was investigating the situation.

In November Mrs. Ray answered a subpoena to testify to the grand jury and while she was at the courthouse waiting to be called she was arrested for violating state wage laws by allegedly paying employees with post-dated checks. Mrs. Ray was later convicted of this misdemeanor and fined $25 for each check. Mr. Ray was still ‘absent from the city’ but he was finally brought into court a week later on a bench warrant charging him with failing to obey a subpoena. Meanwhile, the county welfare board heard from inmates that the Rays had collected $13,260 so far this year for life memberships. Nine men and women said they had paid from $1000 to $3000 each for a home and care for the remainder of their lives but were left stranded when the Rays left the place.

Although the county board of supervisors had stepped up to provide supper, and were able to find room for a few of the inmates at the county poor farm, there was little to be done for most of them. The Rays were unable to make their payments on the mortgage, the hotel was sold at auction in March 1928, and the remaining inmates were turned out on the street. The grand jury returned indictments against the Rays for grand larceny, embezzlement and obtaining money under false pretenses, but in three separate trials over the next few months none of the charges stuck; some were dismissed, others resulted in mistrials, they were acquitted on some charges, and Mrs. Ray’s appeal of her two convictions was upheld by an appellate court.

In 1929 the state supreme court overturned Mrs. Ray’s appeal and, faced with yet another trial, she pleaded guilty to the embezzlement of funds from an elderly man for whose estate she had been appointed guardian. She appealed to the court for a sentence of probation only but her probation report recommended that she serve jail time. Although the papers didn’t report the outcome, the fifteenth census of the United States, enumerated in April 1930, included a page for the San Diego County Jail which listed a Ray, Estella, age 53, prisoner. And, on the same day that Mrs. Ray received word that the supreme court had denied her appeal, Mr. Ray, the former Salvation Army officer, was arrested for drunken driving. Ray’s car had become ‘tangled’ with two others, one of which was driven by Policeman Mike Shea. Officer Shea said Ray appeared to be in a ‘stupor’.

The Palms Hotel is still standing at the northeast corner of Park Boulevard and Island, a magnificent example of a late nineteenth century hotel building.

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Palms Hotel, Park Boulevard and Island
People

A Professor and a Botanist

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Professor Edward Snyder

Edward Snyder was born in Sokal, Austrian Poland (now part of Ukraine) in 1835 and educated at Lemberg (now Lviv) and later at the University of Vienna. He became an officer in the Austrian army, taught languages and history at a cadet school and took part in Austria’s campaign in Italy in 1859. In 1862 he emigrated to the United States, enlisted in a New York regiment and served during the American Civil War. After the war he taught high school in the St. Louis area before becoming one of the first professors at the new University of Illinois in 1869, where he taught German and military science and was commissioned colonel in the Illinois national guard, commanding the University battalion.

Professor Snyder remained at the University of Illinois for 28 years, finally retiring as Dean of the College of Literature in 1896. In addition to his years of service, he donated $12,000 to the University to be used for student aid, loaned to students to enable them to complete their studies. Today Snyder Hall, a student residence at the University, is named in his honor.

In 1869 Edward Snyder had married Mary Stoddard Patchen, also a teacher in the St. Louis area. Mrs. Snyder was an amateur botanist and avid collector of botanical specimens, particularly marine algae, and it may have been her avocation that brought the Snyders to La Jolla, in 1895, where she spent the summer collecting on the beaches of La Jolla, Pacific Beach and False (Mission) Bay. They apparently liked the area and before returning to Illinois purchased a lot in La Jolla and property in Block 214 of Pacific Beach, the block now surrounded by Morrell, Hornblend and Lamont Streets and Garnet Avenue, about a block east of the former San Diego College of Letters buildings, which were west of Lamont and north of Garnet.

The Snyders originally purchased 12 lots in the eastern portion of Block 214 (from E. C. and Rose Hartwick Thorpe, for $500) but within a year the addition of four more lots gave them ownership of the entire east end of the block. The San Diego Union reported that Professor Snyder had arranged for improvements and expected ‘eventually to make his home in this charming locality’. A few weeks later, after their return home, he wrote that the weather in the east was so hot and sultry that he and his wife were ‘sighing for a breath of our cool ocean breezes’, according to the paper.

Professor Snyder did retire in 1896 and the Snyders wasted no time executing their retirement plan. ‘Hotel Arrivals’ in the June 18, 1896 Union listed Edward Snyder and wife from Champaign, Ill. at the Hotel Brewster; ‘Pacific Beach Notes’ for July 11 mentioned that Prof. Snyder and wife were in their cottage; on September 1 Messrs. Ash and Boughton had begun to build an eight-room cottage for Professor Snyder and on September 18 it was reported to soon be ready for occupancy. By 1897 the paper reported that he was adding another room to his home for a library. This home, at the northwest corner of Hornblend and Morrell, is still standing today.

Snyder home, Hornblend and Morrell
Snyder home, Hornblend and Morrell

The Snyders soon became active in the social life of their new community. Mary Snyder joined the Pacific Beach Reading Club and often hosted meetings at her home. When its founder, the world-famous poet Rose Hartwick Thorpe, requested to be relieved of the presidency Mrs. Snyder was elected to take her place. She also was a member and eventually president of the Shakespeare Club.

Of course, Mary Snyder also continued collecting botanical specimens, particularly the sea weed and other marine plants that she found on the shore at Pacific Beach and La Jolla. In 1899 the San Diego Union noted that Prof. and Mrs. Snyder spent several days in La Jolla gathering sea weeds ‘of which Mrs. Snyder, who is an expert botanist, has a large and valuable collection’. In 1900 they built a cottage on their La Jolla lot, on Prospect overlooking Seal Rock, where they could stay while Mrs. Snyder explored the shoreline during low tides.

Professor Snyder died in September 1903 and within a few months his widow moved to La Jolla, acquiring another house on Prospect Street and selling the property in Pacific Beach. The papers reported that she spent her time naming and classifying a collection of her specimens to be La Jolla’s representative exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904, for which she reportedly won a gold medal. The following year, 1905, her exhibit of mounted sea mosses won a gold medal at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon.

Mary Snyder lived the rest of her life in La Jolla, where she again became active in civic organizations, serving as president of the Woman’s Club from 1906 to 1908. In 1910 she moved to a home on Fay Avenue named Amphiroa Cottage (after a genus of thalloid alga, a sea weed), which was remodeled to include a herbarium for her collection of sea weeds and for arranging and mounting new specimens.

Through her knowledge and expertise in collecting, identifying and presenting these specimens Mary Snyder became recognized as the preeminent authority on marine algae in Southern California in the first decades of the twentieth century. When she died in 1926 at the age of 87 her collection was donated to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and is now in the Herbarium at the San Diego Museum of Natural History in Balboa Park. The museum notes that her beautifully preserved seaweeds resemble art prints that would be suitable for framing.

Snyders grave at Mt. Hope Cemetery
The Snyders’ grave at Mt. Hope Cemetery in San Diego
People, Places

PB Depot Neighborhood

Doyle house - one of the originals
Doyle house – one of the originals

The real estate promoters who formed the Pacific Beach Company in 1887 knew that their prospective community would require a railroad line to downtown San Diego. They formed the San Diego and Pacific Beach Railroad and built a line which extended the existing San Diego and Old Town Railroad north and then west around False (Mission) Bay to the beach. Trains were running by April 1888 and in July the two lines merged to become the San Diego, Old Town and Pacific Beach Railroad.

The railway line ran through Pacific Beach on what are now Balboa and Grand Avenues and terminated near the foot of Grand, where it turned south into the ‘depot grounds’. The SD, OT & PB RR built a large engine house (a ’round house’ except that it wasn’t round) at the end of the line in the depot grounds, about where today’s Mission Boulevard and Oliver Avenue would intersect. Between this final bend in the line and the beach the Pacific Beach Company built a hotel and a dance pavilion, the hotel just south of Grand and east of Mission and the pavilion west of Mission between Thomas and Reed Avenues.

The railroad not only provided transportation for Pacific Beach residents but it also employed a sizable proportion of these residents; six of the 37 residences listed for Pacific Beach in Montieth’s Directory of San Diego and Vicinity for 1889-90 were railroad employees. The railroad employees lived in Pacific Beach because the daily service began and ended there; the first train in the morning left Pacific Beach for San Diego at 6 A.M. and the last train left San Diego for Pacific Beach at 6:25 P.M.

Three of these railroad employees purchased lots in Block 262, adjacent to the depot grounds on the north side of Reed Avenue west of what is now Bayard Street. Lots 22 and 23, nearest to Bayard, were acquired by Thomas F. Fitzgerald in 1891 and a house assessed at $200 had been built there by 1893. He sold the property in 1900 but continued to work for the railroad. In 1908 he was the fireman on a locomotive that derailed and overturned near Winder Street in San Diego. The engineer was killed by the escaping steam, ‘literally cooked alive’ according to the papers, and Fitzgerald was ‘hurled head foremost into a clump of cactus’ and also severely burned. He was taken to a sanitarium and treated but died ten days later. This was the only fatal accident in the railroad’s history.

Frank H. Woodworth lived next door, on lots 24 and 25, although he also owned property across the alley fronting on Thomas Avenue. His home on Reed was assessed at $150 in 1893. Woodworth was described as the ‘popular’ conductor of the Pacific Beach railroad, and when he planned an eastern trip with his family in 1901 the Evening Tribune noted that he had been ‘navigating’ the train for thirteen years and deserved a vacation. His wife was an active member of the Pacific Beach Reading Club, the woman’s group founded by Rose Hartwick Thorpe, and often hosted meetings at their home. In 1898 the Woodworths moved their house across the alley to their lots on Thomas, which ‘greatly improved the appearance of the place’ in the words of the San Diego Union. In 1900, after the birth of their third daughter, they moved to a larger home in Pacific Beach, a former college dormitory at Lamont and Hornblend Streets.

Locomotive engineer E. C. Doyle owned lots 26 and 27, adjoining the Woodworth’s on the west, and also with a home assessed at $150. Doyle left the Pacific Beach line about 1895 and went to work for the San Diego, Cuyamaca and Eastern Railway where he again established a residence at the end of that line, in Foster, north of Lakeside. The SDC&E never continued on to Cuyamaca, much less the East, but the route is now used by the San Diego Trolley line to El Cajon and Santee. Then and now the line also runs through Mt. Hope Cemetery and when Doyle’s wife Ada died in 1899 her funeral services were scheduled for ‘the arrival of the afternoon train from Foster Station’.

Ada Doyle's grave at Mt. Hope Cemetery, with red San Diego Trolley, following route of SDC&E, passing in background.
Ada Doyle’s grave at Mt. Hope Cemetery, with red San Diego Trolley, following route of SDC&E, passing in background.

Homes on adjoining properties are universal in Pacific Beach today but were unusual in the 1890s and stood out on a 1891 map:

Employees
Pacific Beach, 1891, showing route of the railroad and the depot neighborhood, lower left. The row of employee homes is circled.

The hotel and pavilion were removed from their beachside locations in 1896, literally lifted up and pulled along Grand Avenue to new locations north of Grand and east of Lamont. In its new location at Hornblend and Morrell the pavilion served as a lemon curing and packing house, the largest in the county, during the height of the Pacific Beach lemon era. In 1907, with the lemon business in decline, it was remodeled and used as a Methodist church. It was finally torn down about 1922.

The hotel, at Lamont and Hornblend, became the offices of the Folsom Bros. Co., later the San Diego Beach Company, which owned much of Pacific Beach after acquiring O. J. Stough’s share of the unsold properties of the Pacific Beach Company in 1903. The hotel building burned down in 1931. The fire marshal believed the blaze was set, citing two other attempts to burn the structure earlier in the year. More than 35 cadets from the nearby San Diego Army and Navy Academy aided firemen fighting the blaze. The house on the north side of Hornblend, across from the hotel, the same house that the Woodworths had moved into in 1900, had also burned down a few months earlier under suspicious circumstances.

The railroad itself was scrapped in 1919, although much of the right-of-way along the coast became the route of the San Diego Electric Railway interurban line to La Jolla via Mission Beach and Pacific Beach in 1924. The electric line was discontinued in 1940 and also scrapped.

Reed Avenue west of Bayard is now lined with houses, duplexes and apartment buildings like the rest of Pacific Beach, but one of these houses, 854 Reed, Doyle’s home, is an actual survivor from those early days when railroad employees lived next to the depot grounds at the end of the line in Pacific Beach (2022 update: the Doyle house is no longer a survivor, it has been replaced by a pair of town homes).

Edward Crosier carved this inscription into the sidewalk in front of his home at 852 Reed, next to the Doyle house, built in 1912.
Edward Crosier carved this inscription into the sidewalk in front of the home at 852 Reed, next to the Doyle house, that he built in 1912.

People, Places

Loring Hill and the Ashers

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Loring Street Hill
Loring Street Hill

Loring Street in Pacific Beach is known for the steep hill which angles up sharply from the coastal plain to the Mount Soledad foothills in the length of a single city block. The panoramic view from the top of Loring Street Hill is one of the reasons that the area is now crowded with expensive new residences, but one home in particular stands out from the rest, and has for nearly ninety years now. Located on the north side of Loring at the very top of the hill, and distinguished by the long flight of steps leading up from the street, this home has been known to generations of PB residents as the ‘Loring Hill House’.

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The Loring Hill House was built in 1926 by Josephus Marion (J. M.) Asher, Jr., a local real estate operator. Asher was born in 1878 in San Diego, one of the first children of American settlers (his older sister Josephine believed she was the first settler child). His parents had been friends with Alonzo Horton in San Francisco and followed him to San Diego in 1869 where the senior J. M. Asher established San Diego’s first nursery and florist shop, later acquired by Kate Sessions to launch her noted horticultural career. J. M. Asher Jr.’s career was also noted, not only for his real estate ventures in Pacific Beach, Bay Park and Mission Beach, but also for pursuits as varied as singing and marksmanship.

In 1905 J. M. Asher, Jr., married Mabel Olive Littlefield in the first wedding to be held at the Hotel Balboa in Pacific Beach, the newly remodeled buildings of the former San Diego College of Letters, built in 1888 but closed in 1891. Both the bride and groom were musically inclined; Mr. Asher was renowned as one of the best bass soloists on the coast and Mrs. Asher was an accomplished pianist (especially ragtime; her composition Cinder-Ella Rag was published in 1910).

The couple had apparently moved to San Francisco where they and her brother Warren Littlefield ‘passed through the horror’ of the great earthquake of April 18, 1906, losing all their possessions and spending several nights in the open air after narrowly escaping death from falling buildings. They retreated to Pacific Beach, where her parents had a home, ‘overjoyed to reach a place where such calamities are unknown’ and planning to remain some time to recuperate from the ‘terrible nervous shock’.

The two brothers-in-law formed the real estate firm of Asher & Littlefield, specializing in Pacific Beach, where they acquired large holdings of property in the first decade of the twentieth century (their trademark was a clover leaf, their slogan ‘you will find the bargains at the sign of the 4-leaf clover’). When Warren Littlefield returned to his native Maine in 1910 Asher continued the business on his own, branching out to Bay Park and subdividing Asher’s Clover Leaf Terrace subdivision in 1913 (where Asher and Littlefield Streets join Morena Boulevard). Also in 1913, Asher acquired the northwest corner of Kendall Street and Reed Avenue in Pacific Beach and built the home with the cobblestone porch that still stands today.

The Ashers' house at Kendall and Reed
The Ashers’ house at Kendall and Reed

In 1914 a syndicate of investors purchased the sandy peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and Mission Bay and subdivided it as Mission Beach. A bridge was built across the opening of Mission Bay and a rail line laid from a connection with the Point Loma Railroad in Ocean Beach across the bridge and as far north as Redondo Court in the new Mission Beach subdivision. The Mission Beach Syndicate planned a beach resort at the far end of the line and to develop this new resort the syndicate turned to Asher, granting him a large slice of North Mission Beach, all of the property between Santa Clara Place and San Jose Place plus the property east of Mission Boulevard between San Jose Place and Tangier Court, all then empty sand dunes. The terms of Asher’s contract required him to set up a tent city, grade and surface the streets, install wooden curbs and sidewalks and construct a bath house, swimming pool and pier, all by October 1, 1916. Asher set up the Mission Beach Tent City Company and went about achieving all of these objectives. For his efforts he has come to be known as the ‘Father of Mission Beach’. He also built a home on Bayside Walk and in 1918 the Ashers moved from Kendall and Reed to their new home at Mission Beach.

The Father of Mission Beach did not entirely turn his back on Pacific Beach, however, and in the 1920s he acquired a portion of Acre Lot 11 adjoining the Pacific Beach reservoir site and Kate Sessions’ Soledad Terrace subdivision (where Kate Sessions was having her own house built at about the same time) and began building the Loring Hill House. A building permit was issued to J. M. Asher in February 1926 for a garage in Acre Lot 11 valued at $1000 (at about the same time a permit for a garage on Hornblend was valued at $150). In June, a permit followed for a stucco residence in Acre Lot 11 valued at $15,000 (while a permit for a board house on Noyes Street was valued at $800).

Construction was completed before the end of the year; a December Mission Beach Notes column reported that Mr. and Mrs. Asher had moved to their new home ‘on the hills adjoining Mission Beach’ and a promotional piece for the North Shore Highlands development included a photo of the Asher residence ‘which commands a typical North Shore Highlands panoramic view of ocean, bays, Point Loma, the city and mountains of old Mexico’ (there was also a photo of the ‘new’ Dunaway building in PB’s ‘business center’). In succeeding years society columns frequently reported luncheons and bridge parties at the Ashers’ residence.

In addition to his business career and his musical achievements J. M. Asher, Jr. was a noted sportsman; he had been a championship swimmer and in 1907 he reportedly caught 30 fish in the surf at Pacific Beach. However, the sport in which he achieved his greatest success was target shooting. In 1923, as a member of the San Diego Rifle and Revolver Club, he competed against a team from the U. S. Marine Corps for the ‘Asher Trophy’, which he had donated to promote greater interest in rifle shooting (this time the marines won). By 1925 he was the ‘high gun’ on the California civilian rifle team that won the national trophy at the National Matches at Camp Perry, the ‘world series’ of shooting sports. He was described as ‘among the nation’s crack shots’ and ‘one of the greatest rifle shots in the world’. He generally won his matches, often with perfect scores, at ranges of 600 or even 1000 yards, and often in competition with active-duty military marksmen. One of the factors contributing to Asher’s success may have been the rifle range that was built into the Loring Hill House; a later real estate listing noted that in addition to being one of the highest spots in Pacific Beach with a million-dollar view, the house included a ‘shooting gallery’ (in addition to riding stables and butler and maids quarters).

However, the Ashers’ residence in their new home above Loring Hill was a limited one, presumably due at least in part to the Great Depression of the 1930s and its effect on the San Diego real estate market. By 1932 they had moved back to their Bayside Walk home and the Loring Hill House sat vacant. In Mission Beach J. M. Asher Jr. took over a gas station on Mission Boulevard which he leased to his son, J. M. Asher II. He also apparently worked there himself; where City Directories had once listed him as ‘Capitalist’, by 1939 he was a ‘station attendant’ at Asher’s Service Station. In 1942, at a time of wartime rationing, Josephus M. Asher was the operator of a service station on Mission Boulevard fined $25 for selling gasoline illegally, in cans that were greater than one gallon and not painted red and labeled ‘gasoline’ in letters at least one inch high.

J. M. Asher, Jr. died in 1954. A brief notice in the San Diego Union described him as a member of a pioneer San Diego family and a developer of Mission Beach. J. M. Asher II enlisted in the Navy during World War II and was lost in 1943 aboard the submarine USS Corvina. When Mission Bay was dredged and reborn as Mission Bay Park in the 1950s one of the coves created by Santa Clara Point, near his parents’ home, was named Asher Cove in his honor (but renamed in the 1960s over the protests of his mother). Mabel Asher sold their Bayside Walk property in 1965 to a group who intended to build the 9-story ‘Asher Towers’, but with public sentiment running against high-rise developments in the beach areas they settled for the three-story condominium which is there now. When Mabel Asher died at 89 in 1969 she was living in a duplex on Diamond Street near Cass and still playing the piano, although failing eyesight prevented her from reading music.

After the Ashers’ departure in the early 1930s the Loring Hill House remained vacant for a few years but since then has been home to a succession of residents including, in 1938, San Diego’s primary Hupmobile dealer. More recently even more imposing homes have been built on neighboring properties, including further subdivisions of the Ashers’ original lot in Acre Lot 11. While these homes may share the view, they can’t claim the heritage of the house which has looked over Pacific Beach (and Mission Beach) from the top of Loring Hill since the 1920s.

Loring Hill House

People

Celebrity PB Pioneer

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Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight - Rose Hartwick Thorpe, 1883
Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight – Rose Hartwick Thorpe, 1883

Rose Hartwick Thorpe was famous long before she moved to Pacific Beach. In 1867 Rose Hartwick was a 16-year-old schoolgirl in Litchfield, Michigan who from an early age had shown an aptitude for writing poetry. One night, inspired by the story ‘Love and Loyalty’ in Peterson’s Magazine, she had written the narrative poem ‘Bessie and the Curfew’. In the poem, set in England during the English civil war of 1600s, Bessie risked everything by climbing the slimy ladder to the church tower and clinging to the tongue of the bell as it swung to and fro over the city far below to prevent it from sounding curfew, the time set for the execution of her lover Basil Underwood on suspicion of spying for the royalist Cavaliers:

She had listened while the judges read, without a tear or sigh,
‘At the ringing of the curfew, Basil Underwood must die.’
And her breath came fast and faster, and her eyes grew large and bright;
One low murmur, faintly spoken. “Curfew must not ring tonight!’.

When Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan leader, road into town, Bessie knelt at his feet and told her story, showing him her bruised and torn hands, and touched his heart with sudden pity, saving Basil’s life:

“Go! your lover lives,” said Cromwell. “Curfew shall not ring tonight!”.

Rose Hartwick’s poetry had appeared in local newspapers before but when this poem, renamed ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’, was printed in 1870 it became a sensation and was reprinted by newspapers all over the country and even in published collections. It became one of the most popular poems of the nineteenth century, familiar to almost everyone.

In 1871 Rose Hartwick married Edward Carson (E. C.) Thorpe, a carriage maker, and they soon had a daughter, Lulo. In the early 1880s the Thorpes moved from Michigan to San Antonio, Texas, where they hoped the warmer climate would improve Mr. Thorpe’s health.

Meanwhile, in San Diego, a transcontinental rail line had arrived in 1885 and the city experienced a huge influx of settlers known as the ‘great boom’. The boom also attracted visionaries who saw the potential for San Diego to become a great city and hoped to participate in shaping its future. Harr Wagner was publisher of the Golden Era, a literary journal based in San Francisco. In 1887 Wagner moved the paper to San Diego, where he began a campaign for civic improvements which included the establishment of an institution of higher learning. He founded a college and arranged with the Pacific Beach Company to integrate it into the community they were planning to develop.

Wagner also reached out to Mrs. Thorpe, an occasional contributor to the Golden Era: ‘He wrote me that they wanted me here, that they were starting the college of letters at Pacific Beach’. So the Thorpes moved to San Diego; in September San Diego Union reported that ‘E. C. Thorpe and Rose Hartwick Thorpe, the author of the “Curfew Must Not Ring”, arrived yesterday and will relocate in this city’. Mr. Thorpe joined Wagner as a director and shareholder of the Golden Era Company and Mrs. Thorpe edited a children’s section called ‘Our Homes’ and contributed poetry to the publication.

The Pacific Beach Company began selling lots in December 1887 with the college as one of the subdivision’s primary attractions. A four-block parcel in the center of the community was set aside and in January 1888 the cornerstone of the San Diego College of Letters was laid. When the college opened in September Mrs. Thorpe recalled that both she and her daughter Lulo attended classes. Both also appeared at other college activities; a reception for the college president in October featured a new poem, ‘Margaret’, by Rose Hartwick Thorpe, author of ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’, read by that gifted lady. At the college’s first commencement the following summer, Miss Lulo Thorpe, daughter of Rose Hartwick Thorpe, the gifted authoress of ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’, read an able and interesting history of the school year.

E. C. Thorpe joined the real estate boom by becoming a dealer in ‘portable houses’, small wooden structures held together by pins rather than nails or screws. Apparently the Thorpes lived in one themselves; reliving the ‘old days’ for PB’s fiftieth anniversary celebration in 1937 Mrs. Thorpe recalled that ‘We moved our portable cottage to Pacific Beach, and we thus became the very first settlers there’.

However, the great boom came to an end in early 1888. E. C. Thorpe later wrote that the depression that followed in the wake of the boom necessitated the closing of the college in 1890 and many moved away so that by the following year only three or four families remained in the college settlement. One of those that remained was the Barnes family, whose sons Edward and Theodore had also been students at the college. The Thorpes and the Barnes were soon to discover a new source of prosperity in Pacific Beach, lemon cultivation. They also became neighbors, their lemon ranches on opposite sides of Lamont Street, between Diamond and Emerald, the Barnes to the west and the Thorpes to the east. In 1895 Edward Barnes and Lulo Thorpe were married and the couple moved to their own lemon ranch next to his father’s, on Jewell Street.

Rose Hartwick Thorpe was a world-renowned celebrity and always in demand at cultural and artistic events but her husband also became popular as a performer, adopting the character of ‘Hans’ and performing recitations in the broken English of a Dutchman. A favorite was ‘Dot Bacific Peach Flea’ (‘Vot schumps und viggles und bites . . . Und keepen me avake effry nights’). The Thorpes frequently combined their talents for public recitations. In 1890 the ‘popular gifted litterateurs Edward Carson Thorpe and Rose Hartwick Thorpe charmed the hearts of their hearers from first to last. ‘Hans’, as usual, convulsed his audience with laughter. The famed authoress of ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’ won her audience, as she always does, by rendering her own compositions’.

Rose Hartwick Thorpe also did her part to improve the cultural environment of the community. In 1895 the ladies of Pacific Beach met at her home and formed a reading club, with Mrs. Thorpe as president. For years the club met at members homes (the members were all women) but in 1911 they built their own clubhouse, now the Pacific Beach Womans Club, at 1721 Hornblend Street.

Lemon ranching dominated Pacific Beach for more than a decade after the college collapsed but when residential growth resumed E. C. Thorpe also became a building contractor. Much of his business was in La Jolla and in 1901 the Thorpes moved into a cottage he had built there, selling the orchard and home in Pacific Beach to their daughter and son-in-law. In 1906 both families moved downtown, the Thorpes to 3rd Avenue in Hillcrest and then to locations in Mission Hills overlooking San Diego Bay and the Barnes to 4th Avenue, across Upas Street from his parents, who had also sold their Pacific Beach ranch and moved to the city. After E. C. Thorpe died in 1916 Mrs. Thorpe moved back to Hillcrest and later joined the Barnes colony at 4th and Upas. Rose Hartwick Thorpe died in 1939 at the age of 89.

After the Thorpes and the Barnes left Pacific Beach their former home at Lamont and Emerald became the parsonage for the Methodist Church and later the home of ‘Mother’ Davis, whose son, Capt. Thomas A. Davis, was the founder and long-time president of San Diego Army and Navy Academy. In 1957 the old house burned to the ground in a spectacular blaze witnessed by many in Pacific Beach (myself included).

Few people today have heard of Rose Hartwick Thorpe or ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’ but one of her poems may actually have changed the map of San Diego. The shallow lagoon south of Pacific Beach had originally been called False Bay to distinguish it from San Diego Bay, the ‘true’ natural harbor further to the south. Mrs. Thorpe is said to have suggested that ‘Mission Bay’ would be a more fitting name and her poem ‘Mission Bay’ (‘now blue, now gray’) in the August 1888 Golden Era initiated the campaign to rename it. Although the bay was known by both names for years her choice became increasingly popular and False Bay was officially renamed Mission Bay in 1915.

RHT - Autograph