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Things

Historic Pacific Beach Trees

Screen grab of Google Street View, Ingraham Street south of Fortuna Drive, before January 30, 2016.
Screen grab, Google Street View, looking north on Ingraham Street south of Fortuna Drive, sometime before January 30, 2016.

A massive pine tree growing along the west side of Ingraham Street south of Fortuna Drive in Pacific Beach recently blew over in a fierce windstorm, killing a passing motorist. The story in the San Diego Union-Tribune mourned the victim, a popular musician on her way to a performance, but also noted that many residents expressed a fondness for the tree, which one likened to an old friend; ‘I’ve known that tree for a long time. It was an icon, it really was’. Some residents estimated the tree was about 100 years old. Although this particular tree probably wasn’t that old, there are trees in Pacific Beach that are that old or older and many others which may be considered icons or old friends.

The most iconic tree in Pacific Beach would be the Kate Sessions Tipuana tree which stands on the site of her former nursery at the corner of Garnet Avenue and Pico Street. It has been a local icon for at least 75 years; an item in the San Diego Union’s Public Forum in June 1941 written by Max Matousek, a former foreman at her nursery, encouraged all tree-lovers to visit it the next week-end when it would be in flower, a mass of golden yellow and a living monument to Kate Sessions. He described the tree, probably about 15 years old at the time, as 35 feet tall and spreading its branches 65 feet in one direction and 55 feet in the other, one of the finest and largest specimens in Southern California.

Kate Sessions Tipuana Tree
Kate Sessions Tipuana Tree

Kate Sessions had come to San Diego in 1884 to replace the principal of the Russ School, predecessor of San Diego High School, who had abruptly resigned. However, she soon resigned herself, entered the nursery business and became active in civic organizations dedicated to improving and beautifying San Diego by planting trees (civic leader Julius Wangenheim later recalled that she apparently decided it was easier to get something out of the good earth than into the heads of young San Diegans). She was allowed to use a portion of the City Park, now Balboa Park, in exchange for planting and caring for 100 trees and donating an additional 300 trees in boxes to the city each year. She moved her nursery from the park to Mission Hills in 1905 and in 1912 acquired property in the foothills above Pacific Beach for her nursery operations. In 1924 she purchased property on both sides of Rose Creek north of what was then Grand and is now Garnet Avenue, and moved her sales office from Mission Hills to that location. Apparently she planted the Tipuana tree shortly after this move; in 1946 it was said to have been planted over 20 years before. She became a Pacific Beach resident in 1927 and died at the age of 83 in 1940.

In 1941 the Federal Public Housing Authority expropriated most of eastern Pacific Beach to build the Bayview Terrace housing project for defense workers and their families. An announcement of the project noted that the nursery formerly owned by the late Kate Sessions, prominent San Diego horticulturist, was included in the site, and the blooming acacia trees, long a landmark in San Diego, would be preserved in a proper setting. The preservation effort apparently extended to the Tipuana tree as well, which survived this project and others which threatened its future.

In July 1960, for example, the Union reported that a tree planted 40 years ago by a woman who brought greenness to San Diego was scheduled for alteration as the march of progress cut under its friendly boughs. The street under its friendly boughs, now Garnet but by then called Balboa Avenue, was being widened and traffic lanes would pass from 7 to 10 feet from the base of the tree, which might have made it necessary to trim branches to allow vertical clearance and remove some minor roots. However, city officials backed down after the Pacific Beach Garden Club and the Pacific Beach Women’s Club organized a campaign to protect the tree and modified the plan to add a 15-foot buffer between the street and the tree. ‘I know of no one in city government who wants to harm a twig on this fine old tree’, said the city park and recreation director. ‘We’re going to do nothing to damage it’. A senior design engineer in the city engineer’s office agreed, saying ‘our instructions are to avoid damaging the tree in any way’.

Emboldened by their success, the campaign to protect Kate Sessions’ Tipuana tree then petitioned the state park board to make the tree a state historical monument, and in May 1961 their proposal was accepted. A story in the Union reported that the tree, said to have been planted in 1905 (years before Kate Sessions first acquired property in PB and nearly 20 years before she owned the property where it stands), would become a state historical monument. A plaque recognizing Kate Olivia Sessions’ Nursery Site and commemorating the life and influence of a woman who envisioned San Diego beautiful was dedicated on July 7, 1961. The plaque was actually mounted on a stone monument under the tree and didn’t refer to the tree at all, but news reports emphasized that the Tipuana tree, said to be 50 years old, was the actual landmark.

The San Diego Union’s report on the campaign to save the Kate Sessions Tipuana tree also mentioned that construction crews were trying to preserve another, even larger tree believed planted by Miss Sessions on the construction site for the Capehart housing project (successor to the Bayview Terrace project and now the Admiral Hartman Community). This tree, thought to be a Ficus, was located on a promontory overlooking Mission Bay about 1 quarter mile south of Kate Sessions school. This description matches a huge Moreton Bay Fig tree (Ficus macrophylla) still growing today behind houses near the intersection of Chalcedony and Donaldson Drive, south of Kate Sessions school and overlooking Mission Bay. It is unlikely, however, that this tree was planted by Kate Sessions; it actually appears to be one of the last remaining signs of the area’s lemon ranching past.

Moreton Bay Fig tree, Chalcedony Street and Donaldson Drive.
Moreton Bay Fig tree, Chalcedony Street and Donaldson Drive.

For over a decade beginning in 1892 life in Pacific Beach revolved around growing, packing and shipping lemons. Most of the lemons were grown on ‘acre lots’, parcels of approximately ten acres corresponding to pairs of today’s residential blocks. Most acre lots were located on what were then the fringes of the community, south of Reed Avenue and north of Diamond Street, and there are still traces of the former lemon ranches to be seen in these areas. The large two-story frame home at 1860 Law Street was originally the ranch house for the Wilson and Bowers lemon ranch on Acre Lot 34, now the two blocks surrounded by Lamont, Chalcedony, Kendall and Beryl streets (although the house, built in 1892, was moved from other side of Law about 1912). Two other ranch houses, at 1932 Diamond, built for the Coffeens in 1895, and at 4775 Lamont, built for the Roxburghs in 1904, remain on Acre Lot 50, the two blocks east of Lamont between Diamond and Chalcedony.

On other former acre lots the ranch houses have disappeared but the sites are still marked by the trees which once stood next to them. The two blocks east of Olney Street between Chalcedony and Beryl where the large Moreton Bay Fig tree stands was once Acre Lot 30, where Frank Marshall established a lemon ranch in 1894. A panoramic photo of Pacific Beach from the east taken in 1906 shows lemon groves and a ranch house surrounded by large trees on this site.

Lemons ranches on Acre Lots 53 and 30 from Bunker Hill, 1906.
Pacific Beach lemon ranches from Bunker Hill, 1906, showing ranch house and trees on Acre Lot 30 (San Diego History Center #283).

The lemon groves eventually died out and after the area was reconfigured for the Bayview Terrace housing project in 1941 the ranch house had also disappeared, but the tree was spared and can be seen in an aerial photo of the area from 1946. The builders of the Capehart housing project also succeeded in their efforts to preserve this iconic tree, saving the last visible reminder of the Marshall’s lemon ranch.

1946 aerial view of Bayview Terrace housing project showing Moreton Bay Fig (San Diego History Center #10356-2)
1946 aerial view of Bayview Terrace housing project showing Moreton Bay Fig (San Diego History Center #10356-2)

Trees are also the only survivors of other former lemon ranches in Pacific Beach. On the former Acre Lot 33, east of Lamont between Chalcedony and Beryl streets, a ranch house built for Wilson and Bowers in 1893 was torn down in the 1940s and the entire area was cleared for one of the first planned developments in Pacific Beach, Lamont Terrace (the homes with the brick chimneys and shingle siding). The only thing left standing was another Moreton Bay Fig tree which once stood beside the ranch house and is now in front of the house at 1922 Law.

Moreton Bay Fig tree, 1922 Law Street.
Moreton Bay Fig tree, 1922 Law Street.

On Acre Lot 49, west of Lamont between Diamond and Chalcedony, the house on Mary Rowe’s lemon ranch was demolished in the 1950s but a large palm tree which once marked her ranch house still stands in front of the apartment buildings at 1828-1840 1/2 Missouri.

Palm from Mary Rowe lemon ranch, now in front of 1828-1840 1/2 Missouri
Palm from Mary Rowe lemon ranch, now in front of 1828-1840 1/2 Missouri

In other parts of Pacific Beach, it is not individual trees but rows of trees, many of them over a century old, which have become iconic. In 1907 Folsom Bros. Co., which owned most of Pacific Beach and was trying to attract buyers by grading streets and laying sidewalks and water mains, also advertised that avenues of fine palms were being planted. These rows of palms still line parts of Lamont and Hornblend streets. The rows of palms along Bayard Street south of Grand Avenue and Pacific Beach Drive west of Bayard were also planted in the early years of the twentieth century. These trees lined the approach to Braemar Manor, the bayside mansion of the F. T. Scripps family and now the site of the Catamaran Hotel.

Palm trees along Pacific Beach Drive and Bayard Street
Palm trees along Pacific Beach Drive and Bayard Street

The group of Canary Island palms on the west side of Bayard between Reed and Thomas Avenues once stood in front of the Rockwood Apartments, later the Rockwood Home for the Aged, built in 1904 (2022 note; these palm trees have been cut down).

Site of Rockwood Apartments, behind the Phoenix canariensis palms on Bayard
Site of Rockwood Apartments, behind the Phoenix canariensis palms on Bayard.

Another century-old Canary Island palm tree is growing in the patio of the Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church at Garnet Avenue and Jewell Street. The church’s web site actually presents its history through the character of this tree; ‘My name is Phoenix Canariensis . . . I live and grow in the patio of the Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church. I really don’t know where I came from but that’s not important because new life began for me in 1915 when the Ladies Aid Society transplanted me to beautify the barren sandy soil around their church’. After recounting a century of history, the tree describes its present environment; ‘I now live on the busiest street in all of San Diego. I am completely surrounded by businesses and apartments. Parking is a problem. People from the streets sometimes sleep in this patio, giving testimony to the gravity of the times’. It even considers its future; ‘Some say that the life of a Canary Date Palm is about 80 years. I know that I shall soon complete my cycle of life. The men seem to know it too. They are giving me extra attention . . . I even see a new family of palm trees in the refurbished patio’.

Phoenix canariensis in the patio of Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church
Phoenix canariensis in the patio of Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church

Other trees in Pacific Beach may not qualify as iconic but could still be considered old friends. When I was growing up on Diamond Street across from Brown Military Academy in the 1950s we had a decent view to the southwest, including the bay, Point Loma and the ocean. Before that view was obscured by the glaring Newberry’s sign in 1961 and completely blotted out by the Plaza Apartments in 1970, one of the most prominent landmarks visible from our front window was a tall Norfolk Island Pine tree, perfectly symmetrical, growing a few blocks south.

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Norfolk Island Pine tree in front of Baldwin Academy, Hornblend Street.

We traced it to Hornblend Street, just west of Kendall Street, where it is still growing in front of the historic house which is now the Baldwin Academy. It must be about 90 years old; it was already tall in an aerial photo of Brown Military Academy taken in 1938. I seem to recall that it had a lighted star on top during the holiday season, although I can’t imagine how anyone could have placed it there.

83:14603-1 Pacific Beach - Aerial - 1938
1938 aerial photo of Pacific Beach showing Norfolk Island Pine (foreground), also palm trees at the ranch house on Missouri (left) and Moreton Bay Fig on Law (right), beyond Brown Military Academy (center). (San Diego History Center #83:14603-1)

After last week’s fatal accident in Pacific Beach city crews went to Ocean Beach to cut down a pair of Torrey Pines that the city had deemed unstable and a threat to public safety. According to the Union-Tribune, a local resident stopped to see what was going on and became infuriated when he was told that two historic trees planted in the 1930s were going to have to come down. He placed himself in front of one of the trees, defending it from the city workers, presumably brandishing chainsaws, until they were able to convince him that the trees had been condemned. He then walked away, unable to watch the destruction. Other residents also joined in the complaints, saying that the trees were some of the most historic in that coastal community. The Torrey Pines were eventually cut down, but this incident again showed the fondness that a community can express for their historic trees.

Places

Pacific Beach, 1916

A century ago, in 1916, Pacific Beach was a sparsely populated suburb of San Diego; the 1916 San Diego City Directory listed about 150 residences in the community, including those in outlying areas like Mission Bay Park, American Park, Venice Park, Soledad Terrace and the Fortuna Park subdivisions. The community’s center, the location of offices, stores, churches, the post office, schoolhouse, etc., was the area around Lamont Street, between Grand and Garnet Avenues. It was noted as the home of San Diego Army and Navy Academy, founded in 1910 on the former campus of San Diego College of Letters and now the site of Pacific Plaza.

Pacific Beach was connected to the city by a railroad line that ran along the entire length of Grand Avenue with stations at Lamont Street and at the ocean front, where it turned north toward La Jolla. Although officially named the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway, the railroad actually terminated in La Jolla and was generally known as the La Jolla line. A time card from January 1916 showed ten trains a day in each direction, four in the morning and six in the afternoon, with an extra round-trip on Saturday evenings. Pacific Beach was also connected to the city by a water main and natural gas pipeline and electric power and telephone lines.

La Jolla Railway train on right-of-way along today’s Grand Avenue near Mission Bay High School, 1914 (San Diego History Center, #91:18564-1666)

According to the January 1, 1916, San Diego Union, in its annual New Year’s Day overview of suburban communities, the situation and surrounding conditions of Pacific Beach were perfect for those who wished for a home within easy reach of the city, near the ocean and on the bay, who can have all the comforts and conveniences of the city together with the freedom of country life. Ironically, the situation and surrounding conditions changed dramatically in the first few weeks of 1916, and while residents could still enjoy the freedom of country life, the comforts and conveniences of the city, eight miles away, were temporarily out of reach.

Charles Hatfield was a self-styled rainmaker who had approached the Common Council with an offer to fill the recently completed but still mostly empty Morena Reservoir in San Diego’s backcountry for a payment of $10,000. The city accepted his offer and in early January he began releasing his secret concoction of vapors into the air above the reservoir. On January 14 it began to rain and by January 17 the rain had become a deluge, not just around Morena Dam but all over Southern California. Although Hatfield’s chemicals could never actually have influenced the weather patterns which occurred over a wide area in the following weeks, the epic floods that resulted were inevitably attributed to Hatfield’s activities (although the rains did fill Morena Reservoir, Hatfield was never paid, in part to distance the city from responsibility for damage caused by the flooding).

Among the creeks and rivers that flooded during the first week of the Hatfield storm was the San Diego River, which drained a large section of the county through Mission Valley and at that time emptied into Mission Bay. The La Jolla railroad line crossed the river on a bridge near Old Town, which also carried the water main to Pacific Beach and La Jolla. A three-year-old concrete bridge a few hundred yards upstream carried the highway from San Diego to the north via Pacific Beach and La Jolla, as well as the gas and electric lines to these suburbs. The Santa Fe railroad line to Los Angeles also crossed the river on a bridge next to the La Jolla line.

As the river rose and threatened these bridges, City Manager of Operation Lockwood had local reservoirs in Pacific Beach and La Jolla filled to their limits and then shut down the water pipeline. Although the La Jolla railway bridge was still standing on January 19, eight of its bents or pilings were reported down and the water main had broken. However, skies were clearing, the river was receding and the Santa Fe and highway bridges across the San Diego River at Old Town were believed saved. Manager Lockwood began replacing the lost pipeline to restore water service to the beach communities.

In Pacific Beach, both the railroad line and the road to the north also crossed Rose Creek and both of these bridges over this normally placid stream had also washed out. Wagon and automobile traffic to Pacific Beach was diverted to the recently completed bridge across the mouth of Mission Bay, between Ocean Beach and Mission Beach. The Evening Tribune also reported a bad washout near Fred Scripps’ place at the foot of Bayard Street. By January 22 this pond of water, which practically surrounded the Scripps home, had been drained and Manager Lockwood declared that highway traffic between San Diego and Del Mar was normal.

On January 24 another storm system arrived (Morena Reservoir had not yet filled and Hatfield was still at work) and with the rivers still high and the ground still saturated from the rains of the previous week the damage was even more severe. The highway bridge across the San Diego River at Old Town was washed away on January 27, breaking the four-inch high pressure gas supply line to Pacific Beach and La Jolla. Gangs of repair men were put to work laying pipe through Mission Beach for a temporary connection and limited gas service was available on January 28. Electric power and telephone service was also cut off and not restored for several days.

The Santa Fe railway bridge across the San Diego River had also washed away within a couple of hours of the highway bridge on January 27. The Santa Fe and La Jolla lines were essentially parallel to each other from downtown San Diego to Morena, at which point the local line turned west into Pacific Beach. With both of their bridges over the San Diego River gone, the two railroads reached a deal in which the La Jolla line lent the Santa Fe a pair of pile drivers to help rebuild the Santa Fe’s bridge and the Santa Fe agreed to allow the La Jolla line to use its tracks from San Diego to Morena over the rebuilt bridge until the La Jolla line was able to rebuild its own bridge.

A replacement for the Santa Fe bridge was ready and limited rail service to Pacific Beach and La Jolla was resumed on February 11 using the Santa Fe tracks from the downtown station to Morena. In the meantime, the Tribune reported that several young women attending high school in San Diego had been forced to take up residence in San Diego and San Diego boys attending the Army and Navy Academy in Pacific Beach could not attend school. The Santa Fe had suffered damage in several other locations along its line and it did not complete those repairs and resume operations into San Diego until a week later. The La Jolla line resumed operation over its own tracks and under its normal schedule on March 1 (the pilings which supported its rebuilt bridge over the San Diego River are still visible today). A wooden trestle replacement for the concrete highway bridge swept away in the floods opened in April. Also in April, a new 10-inch water main to Pacific Beach and La Jolla was laid across the river on the Santa Fe bridge.

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The San Diego River today, with pilings from the 1916 La Jolla Railway bridge in the foreground and bridges for the main rail line to Los Angeles, formerly the Santa Fe, and the San Diego trolley in the background.

While attention had been focused on restoring connections to the city, much was still going on in Pacific Beach and its environs in early 1916. A road had been built from the north end of Lamont Street to the summit of Mount Soledad and in April the Evening Tribune announced that it would be ‘dedicated, or christened, or something of that sort’ by the San Diego Floral Association, in a ceremony led by Kate Sessions. Five Torrey pines and three Mt. Diablo big cone pines, grown from seed and donated by Miss Sessions, were planted at the summit. The view from the top was said to be well worth the trip. Later, in June, the Common Council determined that the city owned the summit of Mount Soledad and voted to set it aside as a city park, but did not decide on a name. A Union columnist quipped that the city fathers were puzzled whether to call it after a former mayor or a well-known movie picture star; ‘What possible ground is there for indecision in the matter’. The council also did not provide any funds for improvements at that time. The name and status of the summit of Mount Soledad and its subsequent ‘improvement’ with a memorial cross has still not been resolved a century later.

The San Diego Army and Navy Academy, founded in 1910 with Captain Thomas A. Davis as the only instructor and an initial class of just 13 students, held its 1916 graduation exercises in June at which six students received diplomas. Opening exercises for the fall term were held on September 18 and an ad in the Evening Tribune cordially invited the public to attend; ‘The La Jolla Line car, leaving the Fourth street office at 2:15 will arrive at the Academy in time for exercises’. The ad introduced the faculty, which in addition to Davis included heads of the departments of Sciences, Mathematics and Ancient Languages, English, and Modern Languages, and a Professor of Military Science and Tactics who doubled as the Commandant of Cadets. There was also an Assistant Commandant, a Substitute in English Department, Instructor of Primary Department and a Housemother. The entire enrollment ‘up to Saturday’, totaling 62 boys, was listed by name along with their home towns.

Another important event on the academy calendar was Founder’s Day, November 23, the date the academy had been founded in 1910. The celebration in 1916 included an afternoon athletic meet and an evening banquet for students, faculty and outside friends, with Capt. Davis as toastmaster. The banquet menu (iced celery, ripe olives, pineapple salad, roast turkey with cranberries and oyster dressing, asparagus tips, drawn butter, snowed potatoes, mince and pumpkin pies) was detailed in the Tribune. Opening and graduation exercises and Founder’s Day celebrations at the academy continued to be annual events and grew in size and importance as the academy expanded over the coming decades. San Diego Army and Navy Academy failed during the depression and in 1937 became Brown Military Academy, which Davis returned to lead until his retirement in 1954. Brown Military Academy remained on the site until 1958 and many of the former academy buildings stood until 1965.

Another event which affected Pacific Beach in 1916 was the opening of an electric rail line to Mission Beach and the establishment of the Mission Beach Tent City. The Bay Shore Railroad had been incorporated in 1914 with plans to build a bridge across the inlet of Mission Bay to connect the new subdivision of Mission Beach with San Diego’s trolley system via Point Loma and Ocean Beach. The bridge had been built in 1915, and in fact had been the only route by which automobile traffic could reach Pacific Beach from the city when the highway bridge at Old Town had washed out in January. Work on the rail line began in March 1916 and by June it had been completed between Ocean Beach and Redondo Court in north Mission Beach. In north Mission Beach, work began on a Tent City, ‘a brand new, spick and span, thoroughly modern city of tents and fine bungalows; a veritable Dream City by the sea’, complete with a bath house, dressing rooms, and a shallow pool for the little folks. The developer was Josephus M. Asher, Jr., a Pacific Beach resident and local real estate operator, who agreed to develop a tent city, including streets, wooden curbs and sidewalks, a bath house, pools and a pier in exchange for title to the site. An informal opening of the Tent City and inauguration of the trolley service occurred on July 15 (final completion and a formal opening of the Tent City occurred in the summer of 1917).

In October the Union reported that United States Army ‘birdmen’ attached to the signal corps aviation school at North Island had made 5815 flights for a total time aloft of 2760 hours and a distance of about 165,000 miles so far during 1916, with only one minor mishap. Cross-country flights had been made to Pacific Beach and La Jolla, and as far away as Encinitas, and landings were made at each place. Two new 135 horsepower steel battleplanes capable of a speed of 80 miles an hour carrying a pilot and a bomb thrower were currently being assembled. The landings at Pacific Beach had been on 75 acres of land adjoining Mission Bay where the Wright-Martin Aircraft Corporation proposed establishing a testing plant and training station to facilitate delivery of aeroplanes ordered for the signal corps school. The bay would also have offered an admirable place for the teaching of seaplane students, but the proposed testing and training station was never built.

Also in October, the La Jolla railway applied to the state railway commission for permission to reduce service and increase fares. According to president E. S. Babcock the railroad had been operating at a loss for years because of the general depression and the growing number of private automobiles. This application was eventually dismissed, but it foreshadowed an application to discontinue rail service which was granted in 1919, after which the line was shut down and the rails torn up. Portions of the right-of-way between Grand Avenue and La Jolla, and the Bayshore Railroad in Mission Beach, were later incorporated into an electric rail line that ran from San Diego through Mission Beach and Pacific Beach to La Jolla between 1924 and 1940.

In 2016, meteorologists are suggesting that history may repeat itself; that ‘el niño’ conditions in the Pacific Ocean may produce storms to compare with Hatfield’s a century ago. If so, the rain will fall in a far different situation and surrounding conditions in Pacific Beach, where the comforts and conveniences of the city remain but the country life is gone forever.

Things

Army and Navy Academy

Army Navy Academy

Army and Navy Academy, a private military school for seventh to twelfth grade boys in Carlsbad, traces its history back over 100 years. According to a historical timeline provided on the academy’s website, that history began when Captain Thomas A. Davis founded the San Diego Army and Navy Academy with thirteen students in 1910. The timeline also notes that Capt. Davis founded his school not in Carlsbad but in Pacific Beach, at the old Balboa Hotel. So, what historical threads tie a modern school in Carlsbad to an old hotel in Pacific Beach?

In 1910 the Hotel Balboa (not Balboa Hotel) was the latest occupant of the former campus of the San Diego College of Letters, built to be the primary attraction of the new Pacific Beach subdivision established in 1887. The cornerstone of the college had been laid with great ceremony in January 1888, just weeks after lots in Pacific Beach were first put on sale, and the college opened with 37 students in September 1888. The college building was a large wooden structure designed and built by James W. Reid, architect of the recently completed Hotel del Coronado. However, the college was unable to repay construction costs and when Reid sued, and won, it was closed and the property, including the college building, was sold at auction at the courthouse door in 1891.

Over the next decade the college campus in Pacific Beach changed hands several more times and was used for such purposes as a Y. M. C. A. camp and summer school and, in 1901, as a hotel, the College Inn. In 1904, Folsom Bros. Co. first leased then bought the college campus intending to convert it into a first-class resort. Folsom Bros. renovated the buildings, improved the landscaping and sponsored a contest to name their new property. The winner received a $100 lot in PB or $100 in gold for suggesting Hotel Balboa. However, the Hotel Balboa also did not live up to expectations and Folsom Bros. sought other uses for the property. In 1909 a portion was subleased to the Pacific Beach Country Club.

Captain Thomas Alderson Davis had served in Puerto Rico as an officer in the 6th Volunteer Infantry during the Spanish-American War of 1898. In 1907 he had established a military school in El Paso but in 1910 he visited San Diego, liked what he saw, and decided to stay. He leased the Hotel Balboa and on November 23, 1910, the San Diego Army and Navy Academy began classes there with a group of 13 cadets and with Capt. Davis as the only instructor. The academy grew rapidly; by the end of its second year it had added courses and faculty and claimed to have 73 students. Growth in attendance was accompanied by increased status; in 1914 the academy was recognized by the war department as a Class A school, which entitled it to the detail of a retired army officer to serve on the faculty at the army’s expense.

In 1921, after ten years in its rented quarters in Pacific Beach, the San Diego Army and Navy Academy announced that it was purchasing the Point Loma Golf and Country Club next to the new Navy and Marine Corps training centers on San Diego Bay. Capt. Davis explained that he expected proximity to these military training facilities would be of benefit to his cadets, particularly those interested in naval training. However, the move to Point Loma never happened; Capt. Davis was unable to obtain the terms he wanted for the Point Loma property and instead purchased the property the academy had been leasing in Pacific Beach. In 1923 Capt. Davis also purchased two blocks on the north side of the campus and in 1925 two more blocks on the west side.

Most of the cadets attending the San Diego Army and Navy Academy were residential students who lived on campus during the academic year. They had been accommodated in the original college buildings and then, as enrollment increased, in wooden cottages built elsewhere on the grounds. When enrollment continued to increase during the 1920s, passing 200 in 1924, these accommodations also became insufficient and the academy initiated a more ambitious building program. A mess hall capable of seating 300 was built in 1924, an auditorium and infirmary in 1927, and a three-story reinforced concrete dormitory in 1928. A swimming pool and four-story concrete dormitory were added in early 1930 as attendance grew to more than 400. In anticipation of continued growth, another pair of four-story dormitories were completed by the end of 1930. These rows of large concrete dormitories and the other new structures on the college campus site dwarfed the original college buildings and dominated the skyline of Pacific Beach for decades.

However, the San Diego Army and Navy Academy suffered along with the rest of the country as the Great Depression took hold in the early 1930s. Enrollment of cadets declined to under 200 and the academy found itself unable to repay the costs of its building program. In 1930 the academy received the first of a series of loans from the Security Trust & Savings Bank of San Diego, secured by a deed of trust to the college campus property, and in 1932 all the ‘furniture, furnishings and equipment of every kind and character’ belonging to the academy were mortgaged to the bank (including the knives, forks and spoons in the dining room and the band drum major’s baton). When the academy fell behind in repayment of these obligations, and was even unable to pay taxes on the property, the bank declared it in default and in 1936 announced its intention to sell the property.

In August 1936, the San Diego Union carried a special announcement from Col. Davis (he had received an honorary ‘Kentucky Colonel’ commission from the governor of Kentucky in the 1920s), founder and for 25 years president of the San Diego Army and Navy Academy, that he and his brother, Maj. John L. Davis, Jr., vice president and commandant, had resigned their positions and would no longer be associated with the academy in any way. He could be contacted care of Davis Military Academy in Carlsbad. An article in the same paper added that the Davis Military Academy had leased the Red Apple Inn in Carlsbad and that school would open in September, 1936.

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The Davises were joined in Carlsbad by several other members of the administration and faculty from the Pacific Beach academy, including Charles Bain, Raymond Ede, Samuel Peterson and Maj. William Atkinson and his wife Virginia. Many of these original staff members later rose to high positions at the new school, including two future presidents, and several buildings on the campus are named in their honor.

At the San Diego Army and Navy Academy in Pacific Beach, an active-duty army officer who had been professor of military science and tactics took over as commandant. The academy retained its high rating and recognition by the war and navy departments, meaning that graduates were entitled to admission to the military academies at West Point and Annapolis. 150 students had enrolled for the academic year beginning in September 1936 and 20 of the original 30 faculty members would return.

The academy did begin classes in September 1936 but in March 1937 the property in Pacific Beach was sold to the John E. Brown College Company, which announced that it would be renamed Brown Military Academy. The change in name and ownership was apparently popular on the Pacific Beach campus; the 1937 graduating class voted unanimously to be graduated from Brown Military Academy and to have its insignia on their rings. Col. and Maj. Davis consented to the sale with the stipulation that they would be allowed to transfer the name, San Diego Army and Navy Academy, to their new school in Carlsbad.

In December 1938, a little over two years after founding the Davis Military Academy in Carlsbad and a year after it had reacquired the San Diego Army and Navy Academy brand, Col. Davis resigned and returned to his former school in Pacific Beach as assistant to the president of John Brown Schools. He was named president of Brown Military Academy in February 1940, resuming his role, after a brief interruption, as head of the first military academy he had established in San Diego. Maj. Davis took his place as president of the San Diego Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad.

Col. Davis retired from Brown Military Academy in 1954 and in February 1958 John Brown Schools announced that the academy would relocate to Glendora to make way for commercial development of its Pacific Beach campus. Most of the 475 cadets and 90 faculty were expected to make the move, although some faculty joined former headmaster Louis Bitterlin in opening San Diego Military Academy in Solana Beach (San Diego Military Academy closed in 1977 and the site, on Academy Drive, is now Santa Fe Christian Schools).

In June 1958 Col. Davis, then 84 years old, was honorary reviewing officer at the final commencement exercise at Brown Military Academy in Pacific Beach, where he had founded San Diego Army and Navy Academy 48 years earlier. Shortly thereafter, many of the academy buildings, including the former Hotel Balboa, were demolished and replaced with a shopping center, Pacific Plaza, which opened in 1960. A plaque outside the Great Buffet restaurant in Pacific Plaza commemorates the ‘West Point of the West’ which formerly occupied the site.

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The large concrete dormitories remained standing until 1965 when they too were demolished and replaced with an apartment complex, now the Plaza condominiums, in 1970. The Brown Military Academy campus in Glendora was itself was closed in 1968.

End of Browns

Today the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad is still located on the site where Col. Thomas A. Davis established Davis Military Academy in 1936 in the former Red Apple Inn. In 1937 it assumed the name of the academy Col. Davis had first founded in 1910 in Pacific Beach but dropped the ‘San Diego’ from its name in 1943, the same year that Maj. Atkinson, the former bandleader at the Pacific Beach academy, began a 30-year tenure as president. In 1948 Army and Navy Academy also began a building program which has never really stopped. The latest addition to the campus is a new sports center, opened in 2013, where a sign reminds passers-by that it all began over a century ago.

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Places

Encinitas Copper Mines

Encinitas Copper

Rancho las Encinitas was granted by the Mexican governor of California to Andres Ybarra in 1842. In 1860 Ybarra sold the rancho to Joseph Mannasse and Marcus Schiller. On January 1, 1864, Mannasse and Schiller were among a group of eight San Diego notables, also including Louis Rose, who recorded claims for mining purposes located around the northeast corner of the rancho. These claims, to be called the Saint David Copper and Silver Lode, were said to be about a mile from the Mannasse home (the ruins of which are now preserved in Carlsbad’s Stagecoach Park) and was further described as about 200 feet north of the Encinitas Silver and Copper Lode, 500 feet N.E. from the ‘place worked’, following the ‘croppings’ (outcroppings?), and 1500 feet from the place worked southwesterly following the croppings.

The Encinitas lode itself was claimed a few days later by Mannasse, Schiller and Rose, along with George Haycock and Joshua Sloane, their notice indicating that the lode was near the ranch of Jos. Mannasse and had been worked a few years earlier; ‘said claim commencing at the old shaft worked in 1857 and running 1200 feet in a South Westerly direction with the croppings’. In March 1866 these individuals filed another claim for the Encinitas Mine, this time commencing at a rock in the center of the ravine and extending in a southerly direction, or in such a direction as to include the lode, for 3000 feet.

Twenty years later, in 1884, Jacob Hoke and William Dougherty filed notice of the location of two mines near the Encinitas ranch, to be known as the Iron Mountain Ledge and the Sulphuret Copper Mine. The Iron Mountain claim was said to be about half a mile from the east corner of the Encinitas ranch and running southerly 1500 feet. The Sulpheret mine ran 750 feet southeasterly and northwesterly from the mouth of a tunnel, which was located 5 chains north of the corner to Sections 32 and 33, Township 12 South, Range 3 West. These coordinates place the mouth of the tunnel a few feet south of the stream known today as Copper Creek, which runs from San Elijo Hills past the mine site and continues along Lone Jack Road to Escondido Creek in Olivenhain. The ravine at the center of Mannasse et al.’s claim for the Encinitas Mine in 1866 was also presumably Copper Creek. The tunnel noted in 1884 may well have been the same as the ‘old shaft’ near the Mannasse ranch which was worked in 1857.

Despite these indications of copper, and possibly silver and even gold, there was apparently little further interest among miners in the area around the northeast corner of the Rancho las Encinitas until the mid-1890s. In April 1896 C. A. Stockton, H. MacKinnon and C. F. Holland filed a location notice in which they claimed 1500 linear feet along the course of a lead, lode or vein of mineral-bearing quartz, and 300 feet in width along each side of the vein, together with all mineral deposits, timber and water thereon. Their claim, the Encinitas Copper Mine No. 1, extended from the center of a creek or gulch in an easterly direction and was marked with monuments at each corner. Although the location notice identified the site as situated in Township 13, Range 4 West, the actual location is in Range 3 West and extends across the line between Townships 12 and 13 South. The creek or gulch again was Copper Creek and the location appears to be the same site as the previous claims which apparently had been worked since 1857. Encinitas Copper Mines No. 2 and No. 3 were later claimed on the west side of the creek.

Location monument in former Encinitas Mining District.
Location monument in former Encinitas Mining District.

Within a year of the Stockton-MacKinnon-Holland claim other would-be miners had filed claims in what they called the Encinitas Mining District. In November 1896 William Likens claimed the Encinitas No. 2 West Mine and in December L. F. Hodge claimed the Encinitas No. 2 S. W. Ext. Mine, both west of the Encinitas mine group on the west side of Copper Creek. Likens also claimed the Sentinel Mine, which followed the gulch or canyon in a southerly direction south of the Encinitas mines, and in March 1897 the Veteran Mine, north of the Encinitas mines. Andrew J. Burnett, a San Diego mining engineer, located and claimed the President, Encinitas No. 2 East and Pickett Copper mines in 1896. In December 1896 the San Diego Union reported that MacKinnon and Holland had agreed to sell to Burnett an undivided two-thirds interest in Encinitas Copper Mines No. 1, 2, and 3 for $13,330, or an entire interest for $20,000 on the condition that Burnett would sink a 50-foot shaft and 200 feet of levels (Burnett apparently did not exercise this option).

Prospecting in the vicinity continued and in August 1897 W. W. Rynearson recorded a 1500 by 600 foot quartz claim to be known as the Copper Queen. According to this location notice the Copper Queen adjoined the north line of the Encinitas Grant near the old Grant mine. Rynearson certified that $50 worth of labor had been performed developing the claim by cross cutting and sinking upon the lode or vein at the place of discovery, and in September he also located the Pacific Copper Mine, adjoining the Copper Queen along its west side.

A few days after recording these claims Rynearson sold the Copper Queen and Pacific properties to C. W. Witham and F. J. Kelly for $15,000, and the new owners apparently wasted no time developing the claims. According to the San Diego Union C. W. Witham & Co. had some twenty teams at work hauling building material from San Diego to build a dam some 60 feet high across a gulch to form a reservoir. Quite a number of loads of cement, lumber and other material for the dam were already on the grounds. The Union reported a rich strike of copper ore at the mine, said to be one of the richest discoveries of copper in the west, the assays going high and the walls of the ledge being still out of sight. A depth of twelve feet had been attained and at the bottom the ore gave indications of being very rich. ‘In the opinion of copper miners a find of this character invariably leads to a deposit of pure copper’.

However Witham, and presumably the reports of the mine’s riches, turned out to be a fraud. S. Proctor, a San Diego contractor, later said that Witham had represented himself as a wealthy capitalist and Proctor had introduced him to local businessmen as a man of unlimited credit, but when Witham and Kelly hired Proctor to build the dam at the mine site he soon found that Witham’s checks were not honored. Witham left town, skipping out on his hotel bill, and Proctor tracked him to Pasadena and had him arrested and returned to San Diego where he was jailed on the charge of evading board. He was also sued by several creditors, including Proctor and Frank H. Brooks.

Proctor had placed a lien on the Copper Queen mine to secure payment of his claims against Witham and in February 1898 the Copper Queen was ordered to be sold to satisfy the judgement (a month later, when Witham was again arrested in Pasadena on a charge of horse stealing, the Union noted that he had once been in trouble in San Diego). The Copper Queen claim was sold at public auction at the courthouse door in March 1898 and the property was ‘struck off’ to the plaintiff in the case, Frank Brooks, who submitted the highest bid at $357.77. After a year had passed and no redemption had been made the sheriff conveyed the Copper Queen to Brooks in April 1899.

Another round of locations or re-location in the Encinitas Mining District occurred at the end of 1898. R. O. Butterfield located the Gold Hill Gold and Copper Mine in November 1898 and George W. Magwood located the Copper Gulch Copper Mine in November and the San Diego Copper Mine in December 1898. Also in December 1898, Holland and MacKinnon occupied and claimed a 5 acre site among their Encinitas group of mines for a mill site. In February 1899 they located another claim, Encinitas Copper Mine No. 4, running 750 feet east and 750 feet west along the vein from near the channel of the creek about half a mile downstream from Nos. 1, 2 and 3.

In addition to making a discovery and filing a location notice, miners were required to perform annual assessment work in order to maintain their rights to a claim. Most of the claims in the Encinitas district were apparently not worth the effort but Holland and MacKinnon’s Encinitas group of mines was an exception, at least at first. C. F. Holland’s 1897 ‘affidavit of work on mining claim’ reported that a tunnel 50 feet long, 7 feet high and 4 feet wide had been run and a winze sunk in that tunnel 6 feet square by 6 feet in depth in Encinitas Copper Mine No. 1 (a winze is a vertical or inclined shaft driven downward inside a mine). A frame dwelling house had been erected, the ground graded and ditches dug for draining surface water from Encinitas Copper Mine No. 2 and for Encinitas Copper Mine No. 3 a shaft had been sunk about 4 feet, cuts run to trace the vein and a wagon road graded for transportation to and from the mine. In 1898 Holland reported that the tunnel at mine No. 1 was continued for 15 feet, at mine No. 2 pumps and pipes were replaced in the shaft, water was drained from the shaft and the drift to the north from the bottom of the shaft extended 10 feet, and at mine No. 3 a shaft was sunk 5 feet square to a depth of 7 feet.

The Encinitas copper mines attracted media attention again in September 1899 when the San Diego Union reported a rich discovery of copper, gold and silver ore in an old mine five miles inland from Encinitas. Mining men who had seen it reported that the mine was among the most valuable in the county. The mine was very old, having been opened by some of the earliest white settlers, but the ore giving these returns was entirely new in the mine and did not resemble what had heretofore been taken out nearer the surface. C. F. Holland and H. MacKinnon were the owners, and they now had about 350 feet of tunnel and shaft exposing quite a large body of ore. A new road was being graded to connect with the La Costa railroad station so ore could be sent to Denver.

Holland and MacKinnon incorporated the Encinitas Copper Mining and Smelting Company in November 1899, transferring the Encinitas No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 claims, four full mining claims of 1500 in length by 600 feet in width, and also the Encinitas Mill site of 5 acres to the new company. In its 1899 assessment report, the Encinitas Mining and Smelting Co., reported that the tunnel was continued another 15 feet and the shaft sunk 50 feet in the No. 1 mine and that the drift was continued at least 10 feet and the shaft timbered and hoisting works erected at the No. 2 mine. All the work was performed for the development of the same lode and for the benefit of all their mines.

The San Diego Union traditionally printed a survey of outlying areas of the county in their New Year’s Day editions. The January 1, 1900 report on Encinitas stated that the pretty little village had a neat railway depot, one general store and post office, two hotels and a school house. The population was about 50 and it was one of the most delightful summer seaside resorts on the coast. Another good thing was the opening up in the various copper claims. The Encinitas Copper Mining and Smelting Co. was working the old Encinitas mine but the Copper Queen mine was shut down and in litigation.

Later in January 1900 the Union reported that arrangements had been completed for sinking a shaft 100 feet on the prospect so that the owners would really know what they had in their hole in the ground. In February, MacKinnon and Holland located Encinitas Copper Mine No. 5, north of and adjacent to mine No. 1 and re-located Encinitas Copper Mine No. 3, north of and adjacent to mine No. 2. In March the report was that the hole was down 94 feet and the way that the quality of the ore had been increasing led the projectors to believe that they had a bonanza. The ledge had widened from a trace at the surface to 6 feet at the present depth and there was every indication that it would grow wider. The last assay was nearly 14% copper. At the end of 1900, Frank P. Frary, secretary of the Encinitas Mining and Smelting Co. certified that at least $2000 worth of labor and improvements had been performed on the Encinitas group of mines, known as Encinitas claims Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, consisting of sinking shafts, furnishing materials, powder and fuse, repairing road, deepening a spring on No. 4 and building houses.

In 1900 a new mining company, the Danes Lea Mining Co., appeared on the scene in the Encinitas Mining District. In March 1900, Wilfred C. Harland, the president, filed notices locating the Danes Lea copper mines No. 1 and 2 in the Encinitas district. Later in the year the Danes Lea company also acquired the Copper Queen, Copper Chief, Red Coat, Blue Boy, Red Star and Copper Prince claims. During 1901 the Danes Lea company also bought about 40 acres at the NE corner of the Rancho las Encinitas subdivision, adjacent to the mining district (the former rancho had been subdivided in 1894) and in December 1901 acquired two additional claims from the Encinitas mining company.

News from the Encinitas Mining District had described the location and trading of claims, the development of mines and speculation about the value of the ore, but little or no news about actual production from the mines. In February 1902 the San Diego Union did report that the Danes Lea mine had 2000 tons of copper ore ready for the local smelter as soon as it began to operate and in May the Union reported that Clarence Cole was hauling a carload of ore from the Danes Lea copper mine to Encinitas for shipment to the smelter.

Huntington centrifugal mill reduced crushed rock to fine particles for further processing.
Huntington centrifugal mill reduced crushed rock to fine particles for further processing.

In August 1903 the Evening Tribune reported that the Encinitas Copper Co. had ordered an 80-ton Huntington concentrator. The concentrates would be shipped to San Diego where they would be smelted. There were several hundred tons of ore on the dump but no attempt had yet been made at reduction. Pending arrival of the machinery, roads were being built and other preparations made for doing business on a wholesale plan. The January 1, 1904, Union reported that development work on the ledges of copper-bearing ore at Encinitas had been started a few days earlier by the Encinitas Copper Mining and Smelting Co. which had just erected a mill for concentrating the ore. The mill had a capacity of about 60 tons a day and consisted of a crusher, Huntington mill, concentrating tables, engines and necessary fixings. There were about 1000 tons of ore on the dump running from 1% to 15% copper and an almost unlimited supply in the ground.

Mount for Huntington mill, foundation for concentrator and tailings at Encinitas copper mine site.
Mount for Huntington mill, foundation for concentrating tables and tailings at Encinitas copper mine site.

The smelter in San Diego was never completed, however, and the cost of transporting the copper concentrate to more distant smelters made continued operations at the Encinitas mines unsustainable. Still, there was occasional news from the Encinitas Mining District over the next few years. In May 1905, the Tribune noted encouraging reports of renewed activity from the Encinitas camp. Sinking would be commenced in the main shaft within a short time and other development work pushed. The company had been developing the project for several years and has spent considerable money. One road which wound through the hills to the railroad cost $3500. One shaft had been sunk to 200 feet where the vein was about 14 feet wide. In October 1907 the Union reported that the Encinitas copper mines were to be taken over and worked by R. J. Coleman, formerly associated with great mining properties in Utah and Mexico with the intention of extensively developing the properties at Encinitas. The mill would be enlarged and all necessary facilities would be provided for economical working.

The New Year’s Day 1908 edition of the San Diego Union included a survey of mining in San Diego County. A section on copper claimed that some unusually extensive copper deposits had been found in the county. The ore was of a high grade and had been discovered in sufficient commercial quantities to justify working. Several years ago a large amount of development was done on the Encinitas copper mines but for some reason work was abandoned and no attempt was made to mine the ore. Recently experienced mining men secured control of the property and work was being done with the view of opening up the mines. Mining men were enthusiastic over the prospects in the Encinitas district, the camp was taking on a new life, and some extensive development could be expected. Both gold and copper could be mined at a profit.

In 1916 D. C. Collier led two automobile loads of mining and money men on a tour of a number of sections between Encinitas and Escondido (Collier was a lawyer and real estate promoter sometimes credited as the creative genius behind San Diego’s Panama-California Exposition of 1915). The mining men brought fine samples of copper ore taken from the neighborhood of the Encinitas mine where the shaft was down to 425 feet and the ore was said to promise good returns. The Ernsting Company’s jewelry store had an interesting display of copper ore taken from a mine operated by the Encinitas Copper Mine Co. The samples showed rich ore and the company expected to be operating a mill in 60 days.

Despite these occasional upbeat reports in the local papers, copper mining in the Encinitas district was ultimately unsuccessful and the Encinitas mines are now almost entirely forgotten (except for a street in a nearby residential neighborhood named Copper Crest Drive). In 1981 Richard Bumann included a photo and a brief mention of the mines in his history of Colony Olivenhain. According to Bumann, the mines consisted of three vertical shafts, two horizontal shafts and a small processing mill. About 5,000 pounds of copper was produced in 1905 but the mines then closed (at about 12 cents a pound in 1905, that amount of copper would have been worth about $600). When World War I caused the price of copper to rise to 27 cents a pound the mines were reopened and about 7,000 pounds were produced between 1915 and 1917 (worth about $1900). An attempt to reactivate the mines in 1925 failed and they have since been blasted shut.

Copper tailings on Denk Mountain.
Copper tailings on Denk Mountain.

Today most of the area once considered the Encinitas Mining District is still undeveloped and some is preserved within the Rancho La Costa Habitat Conservation Area, open space set aside by developers as mitigation for impacts to natural habitat in their developments. Evidence of mining activity including tailings and location monuments can still be seen on the southwestern slopes of Denk Mountain. At the site of the main mine and mill on Copper Creek there are more tailings and other ruins, including the foundations of the Huntington mill and concentrator. The 1500 by 600-foot claims of the former Encinitas Copper Mines Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 5 at this site are still designated as mining lots on county parcel maps.

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Places

Pacific Beach Hotel

The Pacific Beach Hotel was built in 1888 at the foot of Grand Avenue, a location near the beach and the terminus of the railroad from San Diego. Along with a nearby dance pavilion it was expected to be one of the main attractions of the new suburb. In 1897 it was moved from its original location to what had since become the center of the community, Lamont and Hornblend streets, and for another quarter century served first as a hotel then as the offices of the succession of real estate companies that hoped to benefit from the community’s growth. When it burned down in 1931 it had been vacant for years and was considered a haunted house by local residents.

The heart of Pacific Beach from Wheeler's map. The 'Avenues' south of Grand Avenue are named for early PB land speculators including Thomas, Reed, Gassen and Hubbell (Thomas and Reed Streets survive to this day). This map also shows Missouri Avenue (Street), the only surviving 'state' street name in the PB grid.

In 1887 a ‘syndicate of millionaires’ acquired most of the property in the undeveloped area north of Mission Bay (then called False Bay), christened their new tract Pacific Beach, and incorporated themselves as the Pacific Beach Company. These developers also built a railroad line that ran from downtown to the ocean front in Pacific Beach over what are now Garnet, Balboa and Grand avenues. At about where Second (now Bayard) Street intersects Grand the railroad line curved south to a passenger depot and maintenance facility at the end of the line. In 1888 the Pacific Beach Company built a hotel, the Hotel del Pacific, on Block A along this curve, the site of the present-day Starbucks on the southeast corner of Grand and Mission (2022 note; Starbucks has been replaced by Presotea).

News from Pacific Beach during the late 1880s and early 1890s suggested that the hotel was not initially a success. In November 1889 a Special Notice in the San Diego Union, ‘Removed to 872 Sixth St. The remnant of furniture from Pacific Beach Hotel, cheap’, implied a clearance sale. By September 1890 the hotel had apparently dropped the Hotel del Pacific name and was under new management; the Union ran an ad for ‘Pacific Beach Hotel, new management–reasonable rates. Choice rooms, with lovely ocean view; excellent meals. Special rates made to parties and families. Picnics supplied on short notice. Magnificent beach; fine surf bathing; bath house in connection; free use of pavilion. Round trip by motor from San Diego, 25 cents. For rates and further information address Pacific Beach Hotel, San Diego, Cal. Telephone 198’.

There may also have been difficulties with vendors or contractors; the Union’s Local Intelligence column in March 1891 reported that the argument to set aside the order for sheriff’s sale in the case of the Southern California Lumber Company vs. the Pacific Beach Hotel was continued before Judge Torrance (a sheriff’s sale was a public auction of real property at the courthouse door to satisfy a judgement against the property owner). Not all of the news was discouraging, though; the Union reported in February 1892 that the Pacific Beach Hotel was full. In February 1893 the Pacific Beach railway advertised Sunday excursions to Pacific Beach for 25 cents, round trip. Luncheon could be had at the Pacific Beach Hotel for 25 cents.

In 1894 the Pacific Beach railway was extended to La Jolla, which had its own hotel among other attractions, and the added competition may have diminished the appeal of the Pacific Beach Hotel. In October 1894 the Pacific Beach Notes column in the Union noted that the Robertsons had moved into the hotel building, wording which suggested an extended stay and a possible change in the hotel’s purpose (Thomas Robertson was an engineer for the Pacific Beach Railway; he was killed, ‘literally cooked alive’, in a 1908 train wreck). A state committee considering sites for a normal school in February 1895 was offered the former San Diego College of Letters buildings and its 16 acres of land in Pacific Beach and also the Pacific Beach Hotel and pavilion.

By December 1896 the hotel had apparently become such a liability that the Pacific Beach Company reached an agreement with Sterling Honeycutt to take it off their hands. The company granted Honeycutt the north half of Block 239 of Pacific Beach and required him to move the hotel building situated in Block A and the building known as the pavilion located on Block 261 to this new location within six months. The new property, the south side of Hornblend between Lamont and Morrell streets, was over a mile inland and near the College railway stop at Lamont and Grand Avenue. The price was $2000.

hotel

The move was completed within the allotted time with the hotel building placed upon the northwest corner of the block, the southeast corner of Lamont and Hornblend, and the pavilion on the northeast corner of the block, the southwest corner of Hornblend and Morrell. The San Diego Union reported in February 1897 that three carpenters and several masons and plasterers were working on the Hotel del Pacific, and it would soon be ready for the painters (the old name was still faintly visible on the porch roof in photos taken at the new site). It was apparently ready for business by the end of the year and ads appeared in the Union in October 1897 for ‘Business Chances; the Pacific Beach Hotel, 20 rooms, with all heavy furniture, to rent on reasonable terms. Address S. Honeycutt, Pacific Beach, Cal’. In November the Union reported that Mr. Honeycutt had rented the hotel to a Mr. Hurd. Another series of ads then announced that the Pacific Beach Hotel was open for guests; ‘large sunny rooms, most pleasant dining room in the county. Everything new, and best of attention shown to our guests’.

However, even in its new location the Pacific Beach Hotel was apparently not a very good ‘business chance’. It was listed in the Union again in May 1898: ‘For rent—The Pacific Beach Hotel, modern building containing fifteen rooms completely furnished; one of the nicest seaside hotels near San Diego; motor railroad stops in front of the hotel. A good chance for a nice family. References required’. In July 1899 Pacific Beach Notes in the Union noted that the hotel had been opened by Messr. Gregg and their mother, Mrs. Greenwood, arrangements with Mr. Rowen not being consummated. For his part, Mr. Honeycutt granted an undivided half of his interests in Block 239, ‘including the building known as the Pacific Beach Hotel and furniture’, to Mrs. Honeycutt in 1899.

Business did improve when a Y.M.C.A Summer Camp was held at the college in August 1899 and the hotel and college buildings were filled with summer school students. Business also apparently picked up in the winter; in February 1900 Pacific Beach Notes noted that the hotel was full of visitors from the East and in September 1900 many eastern people were said to have engaged rooms for the coming winter.

In November 1903 the San Diego Union reported that a big Pacific Beach hotel building formerly owned by Sterling Honeycutt has been sold to purchasers represented by Folsom Bros., the well-known real estate men, who would not say who the purchasers were but promised big improvements. The purchasers turned out to be the Folsom brothers themselves and the improvements may not have been that extensive; a month later the news was that the new hotel owned by Folsom Bros. was expected to be opened to the public before the expiration of the present week. Mrs. M. I. King, well known in San Diego as a first class hotel manager, would be in charge. The Pacific Beach Hotel did open and was listed in the 1904 and 1905 San Diego City Directory, with Mrs. M. I. King as manager.

However, Folsom Bros. Co. still felt the need for a modern, attractive and at the same time reasonably priced resort hotel to accommodate their clients from the north and east. In 1904 they leased and a year later completed the purchase of the campus and buildings of the former San Diego College of Letters, a block northwest of the Pacific Beach Hotel on the north side of Garnet. Folsom Bros. Secretary O. W. Cotton explained to the Union in 1906 that the company then remodeled and rebuilt these buildings from top to bottom, named the place Hotel Balboa, and had one of the most delightful year around hotels on the coast, which was rapidly becoming one of the most popular.

With a modern, attractive, delightful and popular hotel only a block away Folsom Bros. Co. had no need for a second hotel in the vicinity and instead took over the former hotel building for their offices. When Lamont Street was graded in 1907, the Union reported that work on curbs and sidewalks would commence in a few weeks, starting at the railway depot at Lamont and Grand and continuing up Lamont past the general offices of the Folsom Bros. Co. and to Hotel Balboa.

The Folsom brothers retired from active management of Folsom Bros. Co. in 1910 and in 1911 the company was renamed the San Diego Beach Company, which San Diego City Directories listed at ‘Lamont cor Hornblend’ and later at 4437 Lamont, Pacific Beach. San Diego Beach Company notices for stockholders meetings and assessment (and delinquent) notices for stockholders posted in the Evening Tribune listed the company’s address as 4437 Lamont as late as 1921. After the San Diego Beach Company moved its office downtown later in 1921 the building was apparently abandoned, although in 1928 the Evening Tribune carried a story about an Easter outing given by the Dixie Riding Academy of Pacific Beach, 4437 Lamont Street.

Magner White, then a reporter for the San Diego Sun, had received the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for a story about an eclipse of the sun. In 1930, writing for the Evening Tribune, White wrote about a ‘foray’ into an old deserted dwelling at Pacific Beach: ‘A house vacant more than two years immediately becomes a “haunted” house—and in Pacific Beach, on Lamont avenue, there’s one, a 20-room, high-windowed, high-ceilinged frame structure, that has been vacant more than five times two years.’ It had once been a hotel but ‘aloof and deserted and weed-bordered’ it had since been gathering the traditions of a “haunted” house; children wouldn’t go into it, mysterious lights were seen in upper rooms, doors slammed mysteriously and broken panes rattled and sometimes fell out. Nevertheless, accompanied by two squealing, giggling little girls, his party decided to investigate.

There was a health department notice on the front door warning that the place was unfit for human habitation until brought up to date with plumbing (although there wasn’t any sign of plumbing, even in the kitchen). There were long half-inch pipes hanging from the ceiling which curled up to end in spigot-like fixtures, plainly gas pipes indicating that the place had once been lighted with gas. Old letters and other papers dating back more than 20 years were scattered over one of the floors, including O. W. Cotton’s June 1907 pay stub from Folsom Bros. Co. (for $150). They paused at the top landing and an old door chose that moment to fall off its hinges. White admitted that he jumped, and the little girls squealed. In the attic they found the source of the mysterious lights; candles discarded by hoboes who had been sleeping there. There were also old cans and more than two dozen empty whiskey bottles. When they opened the door to one room that probably had been closed for months if not years a jar of canned fruit in the room exploded, possibly due to the sudden admission of fresh air. The little girls ran back downstairs and the rest of them decided it was time to get out.

White had noted that a story such as this always brought out the facts and that within a few days someone was bound to write in, and indeed a few days later he reported that M. W. Folsom had written him with some interesting facts. The huge “haunted house” frame building in Pacific Beach was the building known at first as the Pacific Beach Hotel and that was later used as the general offices of his company, Folsom Bros. Co. Except for the Hotel Coronado, it was San Diego’s first beach-front hotel, built at the end of Grand Avenue, and later moved to its present site.

A little over a year after Magner White’s story, on December 3, 1931, the San Diego Union reported that fire of unknown origin had destroyed the Old Pacific Beach Hotel building, corner of Lamont and Hornblend streets, Pacific Beach. The fire was discovered at 10:30 the previous night and firemen were still fighting the blaze in the morning. The hotel, a historic landmark in Pacific Beach, was built more than 40 years ago. It was three stories high, had been vacant for several years, and was last occupied by the local telephone company. More than 35 cadets from the San Diego Army and Navy Academy had arrived at the scene of the blaze first and had prevented the flames from spreading to nearby buildings. They used a fire hose from the academy and made connection to the street hydrant (the Academy had been founded in 1910 in the former Hotel Balboa buildings). The next day the Union reported that the fire marshal believed that the fire was incendiary, based on two previous attempts set fire to the structure on June 21, but that this belief had not been substantiated by evidence. The building was admittedly a fire trap.

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The site of the former hotel, real estate office and haunted house is now occupied by the Patio on Lamont Street restaurant. Ornate bike racks have replaced the paved walkways which once led from the curb to the entrance doors facing Lamont. The towering palm trees along Lamont Street that were planted nearly a century ago in front of the Folsom Bros. Co. office are all that remain today of this historic Pacific Beach landmark.

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People

The Honeycutts in PB

Sterling Honeycutt was born in Tennessee in 1832. His family later moved to Indiana and in 1856 he married Nancy Huntington, an Indiana native. The couple moved to Rock Island County, Illinois, where in 1869 they reportedly erected the first residence in the village of Reynolds. They were also involved in building the first Methodist church in that area. In the 1880 census, Sterling Honeycutt, not yet 50 years old, described himself as a ‘retired farmer’, presumably having profited by selling his farm.

In the early 1890s the Honeycutts moved to San Diego and in 1893 they purchased Blocks 215, 216, 237 and 238 of Pacific Beach, four adjacent blocks between Grand and Garnet avenues and Jewell and Lamont streets (then Grand and College avenues and 9th and 11th streets, and just across College from the campus where the San Diego College of Letters had operated from 1888 to 1891). Although shown on the map as city blocks divided into lots and separated by public streets, there were no actual improvements or graded streets in 1893 and the Honeycutts developed this property as a lemon ranch. In 1894 they also acquired the northwestern portion of Block 214, on the other side of Lamont, and although they were still living downtown at the time they occasionally spent a few days at their cottage there, at the southeast corner of Lamont and Garnet, ‘looking after the interests of their fine lemon ranch’.

At the end of 1896, Honeycutt also purchased the north half of block 239, the south side of Hornblend Street (then California Avenue) between Lamont and Morrell (12th) streets, in a deal that required him to move the hotel and the dance pavilion that the Pacific Beach Company had built near the beach at the foot of Grand Avenue to this new location within six months. The hotel ended up at the western end of the block, the southeast corner of Hornblend and Lamont. The dance pavilion was moved to the east end of the block, the southwest corner of Hornblend and Morrell. In this new location the pavilion was also adjacent to the railway to San Diego, which ran along the north side of Balboa Avenue at the time, and it was converted into a facility for curing, packing and shipping lemons.

In 1900 a nephew of Mrs. Honeycutt became the first member of the Honeycutts’ extended family to join them in Pacific Beach when the west 5 acres of Acre Lot 51, between Diamond and Chalcedony streets east of an extension of Morrell Street, was granted to Mrs. Lizzie Huntington. The Huntingtons soon left, however, granting the property to Sterling Honeycutt. In 1904 Honeycutt also acquired the east 3.3 acres of Acre Lot 51, between Diamond and Chalcedony and west of Noyes Street.

In November 1903 the Braymer Comet of Caldwell County, Missouri, reported that W. P. Parmenter and wife, Frank McCrary, Jr., and wife and Moses Town and wife and daughter were expected to leave for California and that all except Mr. Town and family expected to make their future homes there. The paper explained that Parmenter, a local Justice of the Peace, had sold his fine farm for $65 an acre and was moving with his wife to San Diego, where he had bought a home, on account of Mrs. Parmenter’s health, which had been bad for many years.

Mrs. Parmenter was the former Sallie Honeycutt, Sterling Honeycutt’s younger sister. The Parmenters had purchased Blocks 249 and 272, two adjacent blocks between Grand and Reed avenues and Lamont and Kendall streets, just across Grand Avenue from Sterling Honeycutt’s lemon ranch. Once established in Pacific Beach, Parmenter also bought the north half of Block 213, the property on the south side of Garnet between Morrell and Noyes, and the southwest quarter of Block 214, the northeast corner of Lamont and Hornblend.

Frank McCrary’s wife Wilda was the Parmenters’ daughter and Honeycutt’s niece. The McCrarys also bought property in Pacific Beach, acquiring E. Y. Barnes’ former lemon ranch on the west half of Acre Lot 64, which was located between Emerald, Jewell, Diamond and Lamont streets. This property came with the home that the Barnes had built at the northeast corner of Jewell and Emerald. The Parmenters and McCrarys also jointly purchased Acre Lot 20, the 9.7 acre tract east of Lamont between Beryl Street and the city land that became Kate Sessions Park, and a few months later sold it to John W. Warren, yet another resident of Caldwell County (Warren later sold it to Sterling Honeycutt). And even though the Comet had suggested that the Town family didn’t expect to make their future home in California, Moses Town also purchased property in Pacific Beach, the south half of block 217, the lots on the north side of Hornblend between Ingraham and Jewell, which included a house at the northwest corner of Hornblend and Jewell. Their daughter, Ella, worked as the ‘janitress’ at the Pacific Beach schoolhouse, on Garnet Avenue across the alley from their home.

Frank McCrary’s brother Charles had also married one of the Parmenters’ daughters, and Honeycutt’s niece, Winnie. The Charles McCrarys moved to Pacific Beach from Missouri in 1903 and purchased the south half of block 213, the property on the north side of Hornblend between Morrell and Noyes streets. In 1904 they also bought the northeast corner of block 214, which included a house at the southwest corner of Garnet and Morrell. Another Honeycutt nephew, the Parmenters’ son Frank, his wife Ida and their son Guy also moved from Missouri to Pacific Beach in 1904. Guy Parmenter went on to become one of the original thirteen cadets in the inaugural class of the San Diego Army and Navy Academy in 1910.

Two of Sterling Honeycutt’s own brothers and their families also joined the migration from Missouri to Pacific Beach. Daniel Honeycutt, his daughter Orpha and her husband, Mark McLain, came from Caldwell County while John Honeycutt, his wife Edwina and their son Harry came from Jasper County.

Sterling Honeycutt’s siblings and nieces and nephews had joined a growing concentration of residents in what had become the heart of the Pacific Beach community at the beginning of the twentieth century. This central core, a few blocks on either side of Lamont Street north of Grand Avenue, also included the former college buildings, which became the Hotel Balboa in 1904 and the Army and Navy Academy in 1910. The community’s two churches and the school house were located within a block of the college campus. The railroad between La Jolla and San Diego ran along Grand Avenue and stopped at the Pacific Beach station just west of Lamont Street. Also at Grand and Lamont, on the northwest corner, was the E. Y. Barnes store and post office.

The area south of Grand, however, remained undeveloped until 1904 when the McCrary brothers and Frank Parmenter began building a second store on the southwest corner of Lamont and Grand, the northeast corner of Block 249. A building permit was issued in November 1904 and in January 1905 the new store ‘threw open its doors’. The San Diego Union described the new emporium as the largest in the suburb, and noted that the proprietors were recent arrivals from Missouri. In 1906 the Pacific Beach post office was moved across Grand Avenue to the McCrary & Parmenter store and W. P. Parmenter became postmaster.

While his relatives and their neighbors had been migrating from Missouri and buying property in Pacific Beach, Honeycutt himself had been selling off portions of his lemon ranch as he transitioned from lemon ranching into the real estate business. In 1901 he sold block 216 to Thomas McConnell, William Pike bought block 238 in 1903 and block 237 in 1904, and most of block 215 had been sold by 1905. By 1907 Honeycutt no longer owned any of the property of his former lemon ranch. In exchange, he had purchased property on the east side of Block 206 and the west side of Block 207, both sides of Noyes Street between Garnet and Felspar, and in 1904 he built a house on the southeast corner of Block 206, the northwest corner of Garnet and Noyes. In 1906 the Honeycutts and Charles McCrarys bought the east half of Acre Lot 48, except for the southeastern corner quarter where the ranch house originally built for the Gridleys stood. They later divided this property, the Honeycutts keeping the north half and the McCrarys the south half.

The Honeycutts were founding members of a Methodist congregation in Pacific Beach in 1901. Initially the Methodists had met in the Presbyterian church at the corner of Garnet and Jewell, and later at the school house next door, but the arrival of the Parmenters and McCrarys apparently increased the size of the congregation enough to justify acquiring a church of their own. In February 1904 the Honeycutts purchased the northwest quarter of Block 180, the southeast corner of Lamont and Emerald, and transferred it to the church. An existing structure on this property was converted to a church building. Honeycutt later acquired the remainder of Block 180, between Lamont, Emerald, Morrell and Felspar streets.

Growth of the Methodist congregation continued, however, and in 1906, faced with expanding the existing church building, the Honeycutts donated the former dance pavilion and lemon packing house at Hornblend and Morrell to the church. When Nancy Honeycutt died in May 1909, her obituary in the San Diego Union noted that the Honeycutts had been prominent in the religious, social and commercial development of the community, Methodism at Pacific Beach largely owed its existence to them, and the present edifice, dedicated as a Methodist church two years earlier, was a monument to the family. Nearly the entire population of Pacific Beach turned out to her funeral services there, ‘filling the place as never before’.

Sterling Honeycutt had been a successful lemon rancher but was also one of the first to recognize that property in Pacific Beach held even greater value for residential development. His former lemon ranch was one of the first areas to be developed, with graded streets, concrete curbs and sidewalks, and a number of new homes. He became a real estate operator and continued to invest in Pacific Beach real estate. In 1909 he acquired a five-acre tract in the northeast corner of Pueblo lot 1800 and subdivided it as Sterling Park, between Lamont, Chico and Kendall streets and Pacific Beach Drive.

Property owned by the Honeycutts, their relatives and former neighbors from Caldwell County, Missouri during the first decade of the twentieth century.
Property owned by the Honeycutts, their relatives and other former residents of Caldwell County, Missouri during the first decade of the twentieth century.

By the end of the decade the extended Honeycutt family and their fellow migrants were a sizable presence in Pacific Beach, with seven households counted in the 1910 census. Sterling Honeycutt himself, by then a widower, lived in a house full of relatives, including his niece Pearl and three children of Nancy’s niece Agnes Rogers. His sister Sallie Parmenter, with husband William shared a household with their daughter Wilda McCrary, her husband Frank and their children (Charles McCrary and his family had moved back to Missouri in 1908, but returned and settled in San Diego in 1911). The Parmenters’ son Frank, with wife Ida and their son Guy lived on Lamont Street. Honeycutt’s brothers Daniel, with daughter Orpha McLain and her husband Mark, and John, with wife Edwina and their son Harry, his wife and child were also Pacific Beach residents. Moses and Ella Town, not relatives but neighbors of the Parmenters and McCrarys in Missouri, also still lived on Hornblend.

Sterling Honeycutt died in 1911, followed within a few years by the elder Parmenters and the Towns. Other family members moved away, some to downtown San Diego and some back to Missouri. By 1920 only the families of Daniel Honeycutt and Frank Parmenter remained in Pacific Beach, and Frank and Ida Parmenter still lived at the corner of Lamont and Thomas streets into the 1950s.

When Venice Park was created from Acre Lots 72 and 73 of Pacific Beach in 1906, a new street in the subdivision was named Honeycutt Street, presumably in honor of the then-prominent Pacific Beach residents (although Honeycutt was not a participant in the subdivision). The name of this street, between Morrell and Lamont streets from Pacific Beach Drive to Crown Point Drive, is the only sign of the Honeycutt family remaining in Pacific Beach.

Honeycutt and Fortuna

People

Barney Oldfield in PB?

Barney Oldfield was the ‘King of Speed’, the most famous driver from the very first days of automobile racing. He began by racing bicycles but in 1902 he was invited to drive Henry Ford’s race car, ‘999’. Although he had never driven a car before, he won his first race against what was supposed to be the fastest car in the world. His success in this and many subsequent races sparked his own career and also contributed to Ford’s rise as America’s foremost auto maker. Oldfield not only beat other drivers in these races but also routinely set new speed records. He was the first to break the mile-a-minute mark, completing a mile course in one minute, an average speed of 60 MPH, on June 30, 1903.

On November 25, 1903, Oldfield came to San Diego to participate in the city’s first ‘automobile meeting’ on Thanksgiving Day at a track in Coronado. The Evening Tribune announced that the great Barney Oldfield, the ‘mile-a-minute-man’, had arrived with his string of ‘buzz wagons’ (although the paper noted that the name no longer did him justice since he had been ‘steadily chopping down the mile automobile record until it stands at 55 seconds flat’). Advertisements for the event promised that the famous mile-a-minute man would attempt to lower his mile record, but in the aftermath the Tribune reported ‘No Records Smashed’, although Oldfield did complete one mile lap in 58 seconds. The paper blamed the poor condition of the track on the back stretch, where the sand in one of his circuits of the mile ring came near being the chauffeur’s undoing. Nevertheless, the exhibition was a complete success, with the first automobile races in the city calling out an attendance of 1500 people. ‘Oldfield, of course, was the center of attraction, and no one was disappointed’.

The Tribune interviewed George Nolan, manager of San Diego Cycle and Arms Co., who reported that so far as he had learned everyone was pleased with the event. Asked about the possibility of a second appearance here of Oldfield, Nolan said that it wouldn’t surprise him if Oldfield would come back with one of his racing machines to beat the world’s record for a mile straightaway. Asked where the straightaway race course was he replied ‘On Pacific Beach, the finest place in the country. Four miles of wide beach there as hard as this table, convenient to get at and in all other respects desirable’. Nolan added that the mile straightaway record was 46 seconds, but was not held by Oldfield, whose record was for a circular course.

Actually, automobile racing on beaches had been introduced earlier in 1903 at Ormond Beach, the ‘birthplace of speed’, just north of Daytona Beach on Florida’s Atlantic coast, where the hard-packed sand provided the long, hard, flat and straight surface ideal for speed trials. Over the next few years speed records were repeatedly set and then broken there until in 1906 the Stanley Rocket, a steam-powered and aerodynamically designed vehicle, set a record of 127 MPH over a mile course which stood for years.

Automobiles had actually ‘raced’ on Pacific Beach in 1903 too, but at a much more leisurely pace. The San Diego Union’s Pacific Beach Notes column reported in September 1903 that F. W. Barnes and E. C. Thorpe, two of the community’s leading citizens, had raced their automobiles on the beach and made the entire length of the beach in eight minutes, which would represent a speed of about 30 MPH.

Meanwhile, Barney Oldfield continued winning and setting records on race tracks around the country. In April 1907 he was again in the San Diego area where he was the featured attraction in the opening of the Lakeside Inn Speedway, and where he again set a record for one mile on a circular track at 51 4/5 seconds, nearly 70 MPH, breaking his own record by 1 1/5 seconds. However, the San Diego Union reported that the great auto driver also had another goal in mind while he was in town and that following the race in Lakeside he would begin preparations for a try at the one mile straightaway record. In an arrangement with Folsom Bros. Co., he would attempt to lower the record on the magnificent stretch at Pacific Beach. San Diego would be given the opportunity to see the great ‘racing king’ speed his ‘flyer’ at a far faster gait than was possible on a circular track where turns had to be made.

According to the paper, he had been taken to Pacific Beach two weeks before by M. W. Folsom. He had expressed great surprise when he drove his car on the beach and immediately gave it as his opinion that he could smash some records if given the opportunity. A trip over the beach strengthened this opinion and he stated that he had not the slightest doubt that he would be able to do the mile in 40 seconds, or even less. The following Thursday was selected as the date and since afternoon would be the most propitious time of the day, as tide conditions would then be more perfect, the runs would be made between 1:30 and 3 o’clock. Accompanied by his wife he would leave for the Hotel Balboa at Pacific Beach immediately after the races in Lakeside concluded on Sunday, and his cars would follow on Monday morning so that he could become thoroughly acquainted with the beach and the conditions prevailing.

The beach at Pacific Beach was four miles in length and at low tide 600 feet wide and Oldfield was said to be enthusiastic over its possibilities as a race course. He stated that in his opinion it was far superior to Ormond Beach, where the great winter races of the Atlantic coast were held. The sand at Pacific Beach was harder and the wind far more favorable for record smashing than at the Florida resort. Ample train service would be provided by the Pacific Beach & La Jolla line, and special excursion rates would be made for the big crowd that would undoubtedly witness the great speed trials.

As it happened, the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway, formerly the PB & LJ line, was in the midst of a major upgrade, realigning its right of way to enter Pacific Beach directly along the route of today’s Grand Avenue, rather than the circuitous route on today’s Mission Bay Drive and Garnet and Balboa Avenues around the defunct race track. The railroad company had a large force of men at work and was anxious to finish the construction of the cut-off at the earliest possible time. The large crowds anticipated for the proposed speed trials at Pacific Beach would have necessitated many extra trains, which would mean the loss of practically a full day’s work. Since the railroad was unwilling to give up even one day’s work, the speed trials were temporarily postponed.

Barney Oldfield never did race on Pacific Beach, but in 1910 he did put in an appearance at Daytona Beach where he finally broke the Stanley Rocket’s longstanding record by driving his Blitzen Benz at 131 MPH (although the Rocket’s record for a steam car, 127 MPH, was not broken until 2009). Oldfield was also a no-show at the first San Diego County road race held on New Year’s Day 1913, a two-lap 91.7-mile circuit which began and ended at Garnet and Cass Street in Pacific Beach and included check stations at Escondido and South Oceanside. ‘Barney Not In’ was the headline on the Union’s article announcing the official entry list and starting positions.

Postscript:

Barney Oldfield had set a new speed record of 131 miles per hour over a mile course at Daytona Beach in 1910. A year later ‘Wild Bob’ Burman drove the same Blitzen Benz over the same course to set a new record of 141 MPH, covering a mile in 25.5 seconds. Burman also broke Oldfield’s records for the flying mile, half-mile, quarter-mile and kilometer in exhibitions on the day before the first Indianapolis 500 race in May 1911, again using the same Benz (and finished 19th in the actual race on May 30, in a different, smaller Benz, that complied with race rules).

In 1912 Burman acquired a new 200 horsepower Benz and on Christmas Day brought it to Pacific Beach for what apparently was its first speed trial. The San Diego Union headline stated that the stage was set for ‘fast driving by Bob Burman in Big Benz’ and that his ‘whirl over beach’ was likely to make history in auto racing; ‘Today is the time, Pacific Beach the place, while Bob Burman and other noted drivers are the lure that will cause the greatest gathering of motor fans that have ever witnessed a speed contest in San Diego’.

In 1912 San Diego was a city of about 45,000 people and about 3000 cars, and according to the local papers anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 people and 1500 cars descended on Pacific Beach to watch. The railway line ran special trains every 20 minutes from 12:30 to 4 p.m. and added flat cars with board seats to handle passengers that overflowed the regular coaches. Low tide was at 5:14 p.m., sunset at 4:43  and the events began at about 3:00 with a race between a little blue Hupmobile and a Buick. A few minutes later Burman and two of the ‘noted drivers’ raced their Benz cars over a two-mile course with Burman winning handily. Then came the big event, Burman’s attempt to shatter his world mark.

Burman’s first run over the mile course on the beach was clocked at 28 seconds, almost 130 MPH, and a record for a course on the west coast. After winning a second two-mile race against the other two Benz drivers he returned for one more speed trial saying ‘If I don’t have ill luck I’ll make it better than 26 seconds’. However, he did have ill luck; at the half-mile mark the big Benz caught fire and, with flames licking at his hands and face, Burman retreated from his seat to the pointed back of the car which he straddled, steering with his left hand and operating the emergency brake with his right foot. When the blazing car finally came to a stop he got off and was helped to push it into the ocean and put out the fire. ‘If any person wishes me a merry Christmas, I may shoot him’, he said while he fastened a rope to the damaged car so it could be towed away.

A week later Burman was the favorite to win the New Year’s Day road race that started and ended in Pacific Beach, but his replacement Benz broke down on the rough county roads and, after patching the damaged part with wire, he finished the race in last place.  ‘Wild Bob’ Burman was killed in a race at Corona in April 1916.

Places

PB Methodist Churches

The first church in Pacific Beach was organized in September 1888, the year after the community’s creation and opening sale of lots. The founder was Rev. C. S. Sprecher, who was also one of the founders of the San Diego College of Letters which opened the same month on the College Campus, now the site of Pacific Plaza. In 1889 the church acquired property across the street from the college and a year later a building was moved onto the site for church services. The Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church is still there, at the southwest corner of Garnet Avenue and Jewell Street, although the original wooden church gave way to the current mission-style building in 1941.

The college failed in 1891 but Pacific Beach found a new purpose as a center of lemon cultivation. Many of the lemon ranchers, however, were not Presbyterians and in 1901 a Methodist congregation was also established in Pacific Beach. At first the Methodists met at the Presbyterian church but in 1904 they purchased ten lots at the southeast corner of Lamont and Emerald streets and modified the existing building on the site for their own church building (in 1906, the Methodist minister, Henry Roissy, also purchased the former home of E. C. and Rose Hartwick Thorpe on the other side of Emerald Street, the northeast corner of Lamont and Emerald).

In the first years of the twentieth century the lemon industry also declined but real estate speculation, led by Folsom Bros. Co., generated new growth in the population, and in church congregations. The San Diego Union reported in April 1906 that Easter services in both Pacific Beach churches were well attended, especially the Methodist chapel; ‘Mr. Roissy being very much liked and an able speaker, the chapel will soon have to be enlarged’.

Fundraising for a new Methodist church included what the Union called a good, old-fashioned, healthy (for body, soul and pocket-book) box social held in the church parlor. ‘To the uninitiated-and there were many-the excitement of buying at auction, suppers, in dainty boxes; hunting the fair partners who had prepared them; then examining and partaking of the delicious feasts, was wholly enjoyable’ (attendance was good, in spite of inclement weather, and the treasurer was able to add $10 to the steadily growing church fund). If box socials were already old-fashioned in 1906, the custom may require explanation today. Young ladies would bring a dinner for two in an elaborately decorated box to the box social, where the boxes were auctioned off to the young men in attendance. When all the boxes had been claimed, the young men would discover which of the young ladies had prepared their box, then sit down to enjoy the contents with her. The proceeds of the auction would go to the church. The boxes were supposed to be anonymous, but it wasn’t unheard of for the girl who donated one to provide a favored boy with a hint.

Instead of enlarging their existing church building, the Methodists acquired one of the largest buildings in town and remodeled it. This building had originally been built in 1888 as a dance pavilion overlooking the beach near the foot of Grand Avenue and close to the terminus of the railway between San Diego and Pacific Beach. In 1896 lemon rancher Sterling Honeycutt had purchased the north half of Block 239, the south side of Hornblend Street between Lamont and Morrell streets, and moved the dance pavilion (and the hotel which had adjoined it) to this property, which was across Lamont from his lemon ranch. At its new location on the southwest corner of Hornblend and Morrell the former dance pavilion was also on the railway line to San Diego and Honeycutt had converted it into a lemon curing and packing plant. By 1906, however, the lemon business in Pacific Beach had also run its course, and Honeycutt, a founder and trustee of the Methodist Church in Pacific Beach, donated the packing house to the church. $2,500 in repairs was required to transform the building into the ‘beautiful church edifice’ that was dedicated in February 1907.

(SDHC #395-A)
The Pacific Beach Methodist Church (former dance pavilion, left) and Folsom Bros. Co. office, (former hotel, right), on Hornblend Street between Lamont and Morrell, dominate the PB skyline in 1908. Lamont Street is in foreground. (San Diego History Center #395-A)

In 1912 the old church property at Lamont and Emerald was sold to Bessie Davis, wife of San Diego Army and Navy Academy founder Capt. Thomas A. Davis. The Davises built a home on the property, which was just across Lamont Street from the academy, and spent the rest of their lives there. The Roissys sold the former Thorpe home to John L. Davis, Jr., Capt. Davis’ brother, in 1924 and ‘Mother’ Davis, their mother, lived there into the 1950s. That house burned down in 1957.

The Methodists continued to worship in the church at Hornblend and Morrell until 1922 when it was sold and apparently torn down. It had disappeared from the tax rolls by 1924 and for the next 25 years Methodists in Pacific Beach had to attend services elsewhere. As the population surged in the 1940s a new Pacific Beach Methodist Church was established in 1947, led by Rev. Alfred Hughes. This congregation met in a church building built for the Wee Kirk by-the-Sea in 1943 at the southeast corner of Emerald and Haines streets.

Wee Kirk by the Sea

A few months after re-establishment of the Methodist church at Emerald and Haines, the San Diego school district announced an ‘exchange of functions’ between the Pacific Beach Elementary School, then located on the north side of Emerald Street, across from the church, and the Pacific Beach Junior High School, then located where PB Elementary is now, at Fanuel and Tourmaline streets. The junior high school would occupy the site of the elementary school, which would be expanded to accommodate its expected growth. The school superintendent was authorized to acquire the two blocks of property south of the school, which included the Methodist church.

In May 1948 the school board offered the Methodist church $36,000 for the property and Rev. Hughes accepted (he also paid $5050 for a house and garage that the school auctioned off after acquiring another parcel in the expansion area, in what is now right field of the recreation center softball diamond). Rev. Hughes’ and most of the other buildings on the new school property were moved or cleared away before the school reopened in time for the 1950 school year. However, many former students of the junior high school (now PB Middle School) remember the church building still standing in the middle of their school playing fields into the 1960s.

A month after selling the former Wee Kirk by-the-Sea building to the school district, the Methodists dedicated a site at the southwest corner of Ingraham and Thomas streets for a new church. Former barracks buildings from Camp Callan in Torrey Pines were moved to the site and served as church buildings until a new sanctuary was built in 1959. This sanctuary and the former barracks (now known as Hughes Hall) remain the home of the second oldest church congregation in Pacific Beach.

Places

San Diego Beach

Pacific Beach. What could be a more fitting name for a district of San Diego with a wide sandy beach along the Pacific Ocean? That is apparently what the original promoters of Pacific Beach thought in 1887 when they christened their new subdivision and incorporated themselves as the Pacific Beach Company. And that is what this community of San Diego is still called today. But in the 1920s a new developer, declaring that the past had not done justice to San Diego’s finest residential area, decided that it needed a fresh start, beginning with a new name: San Diego Beach.

It was true that Pacific Beach had been a disappointment to the succession of real estate operators who had come before. The Pacific Beach Company had donated a four-block campus near the center of their tract (where Pacific Plaza is today) and had expected a college built on the site, the San Diego College of Letters, to attract purchasers for their town lots. However, the college failed within a few years and the hoped-for college town reverted to a semi-rural community dependent on lemon ranching. In 1903 Folsom Bros. Co. acquired much of this property as well as property in the Crown Point area that became the Fortuna Park additions. Folsom Bros.’ plan was to stimulate growth through a program of improvements, which included grading streets, laying curbs and sidewalks, and renovating and reopening the former college buildings as the Hotel Balboa. However, these improvements also failed to attract a sufficient number of new residents and in 1910 the Folsom brothers withdrew from their company, which was then taken over by A. H. Frost and renamed the San Diego Beach Company.

By the early 1920s there were about 150 residences and 500 residents in Pacific Beach. Most community activity was still centered within a few blocks of the former college campus, which had been reborn once again in 1910 as the San Diego Army and Navy Academy (later Brown Military Academy). One of the two churches was across the street from the academy, at the corner of Jewell and Garnet. The Pacific Beach schoolhouse was next door to the church on Garnet, although it was replaced in 1923 by a new school a block further west at Emerald and Ingraham, now the site of the PB middle school (the old wooden schoolhouse was moved onto the academy grounds to serve as its junior school). The Women’s Club building was a block south of the academy, on Hornblend between Jewell and Kendall streets. The office of the San Diego Beach Company and the other church (before it was sold in 1922) were also on Hornblend, between Lamont and Morrell streets (these buildings had originally been a hotel and a dance pavilion on the beach at the foot of Grand Avenue and were moved to this more central location in 1897). The post office and a store were at the corner of Lamont and Grand, another block south.

However, the steam railroad between San Diego and La Jolla, which had run along Grand Avenue in Pacific Beach and stopped at a station at Lamont and Grand, had been abandoned in 1919. The electric rapid transit line from San Diego to La Jolla which replaced it in 1924 followed a different route, over a bridge at the entrance to Mission Bay and along Mission Boulevard through Mission Beach and Pacific Beach. The more developed central portion of Pacific Beach had become more isolated and the undeveloped beach-front areas more accessible.

The main coast highway connecting San Diego to Los Angeles and the north, paved in 1919, then ran through Pacific Beach along Garnet to Cass, north on Cass to Turquoise Street and west on Turquoise to Bird Rock and La Jolla. An alternative route between San Diego and Pacific Beach via Mission Beach also joined the coast highway at Garnet and Cass. In 1923 Earl Taylor, a real estate operator recently relocated from Long Beach, noted that over 6000 autos daily, including about 70 auto stages, representing over 25,000 people, passed this intersection of the main artery to the beach and the coast highway each day. In October 1923 Taylor acquired more than 100 lots west of Cass Street, most of them facing Garnet Avenue, and in March 1924 he announced construction of the new business center of Pacific Beach, or New Pacific Beach, which he styled ‘the coming Long Beach of San Diego’ (apparently a positive image in that era). Improvements in New Pacific Beach included the Dunaway Pharmacy building, completed in 1926, which is still standing at the corner of Garnet and Cass.

Taylor also invited successful developers from beach-front communities around Los Angeles to invest in New Pacific Beach, and in 1925 Ernest Pickering, who had developed the pleasure piers in Santa Monica and Venice, announced plans for a million-dollar pleasure pier in Pacific Beach (a pleasure pier was basically an amusement park built out over the beach; although definite amusements were not announced, the Evening Tribune speculated that they would likely include Ginger Snaps, Great Slides, Over-the-Tops, Treat-em-Roughs, and other devices dear to the pleasure-loving world at Southern California beaches). Taylor expected the pier to increase prosperity for Pacific Beach, noting that lots in Venice were valued at up to $1000 a front foot following construction of their pier. In fact, the Union reported, Venice had been built and sustained by the amusement pier industry.

Although Pickering was the ‘Pleasure Pier King’ and the project was initially referred to as the Pickering Pier, he soon backed out and turned over development of the pier to Neil Nettleship, a prominent Santa Monica realtor. Nettleship was also put in charge of the development of over 500 acres of Pacific Beach property that the pier syndicate had acquired from the San Diego Beach Company. It was Nettleship, said to be moving with his family to Pacific Beach for permanent residence, who decided that Pacific Beach needed an entirely new identity.

Declaring that the good people of the section formerly known as Pacific Beach had expressed themselves overwhelmingly in favor of a change of name to San Diego Beach, and a charter had been secured from the Secretary of State for the San Diego Beach Chamber of Commerce, Nettleship ‘took the liberty’ of dedicating a full-page ad in the October 4, 1925, San Diego Union to ‘enumeration of the reasons for the aforesaid change of names’. First, he said, Pacific Beach might describe anywhere on the Pacific coast, and he claimed there was, in fact, a Pacific Beach near Los Angeles (there actually is another Pacific Beach in Washington). San Diego Beach could only be in one place. Second, San Diego Beach definitely identified San Diego as being on the sea, a fact which he claimed most Americans were not aware of, and naming a beach after it would advertise this fact to the world. Third, ‘new occasions teach new duties’, so the new Pacific Beach would benefit immeasurably by a fresh name and a fresh start in life. The past had not done justice to its purple, panoramic hills, its inimitable mountain-marine views, its graceful, unobstructable slopes, its tall, commanding palisades and its gentle, sea-level sites. ‘A new name, O Pacific Beach! A new fame, O San Diego Beach!’

An accompanying article in the Union declared that the future of newly named San Diego Beach, formerly Pacific, was assured. The greatest factor in the rapid rise of San Diego Beach was said to be the new fast San Diego Electric car service; San Diego Beach realty experts declared that without this service former Pacific Beach languished, with it San Diego Beach should increase at least 1000 per cent in population within the next 12 months or two years at the outside. Nettleship was quoted as saying that the new name had superior advertising value, both to San Diego and to the former Pacific Beach and that ‘All in all, the change should be highly beneficial to all concerned, the small loss in sentiment being many times compensated for in the greater clarity, vigor and import of the new name’.

To capitalize on the superior advertising value of the new name, the first official act of the new San Diego Beach Chamber of Commerce was the creation of an 80-foot streamer to be stretched across the intersection of Garnet Avenue and Cass Street, the new ‘business center’ of the ‘new beach’. The Union initially reported that the streamer would read ‘San Diego Beach combines the features of all beaches – beauty, climate, bathing, soil, accessibility’. However, the Nettleship Company (‘acting in the general good of the new San Diego Beach, nee Pacific Beach’) changed course and announced that the slogan would be selected in a word-‘less’ contest (‘in which you would be rewarded for the number of words you leave out – the shorter the slogan, the more paid’). In creating a slogan it would help to bear in mind that San Diego Beach combined the features of all beaches – ‘five-point’ perfection; the climate of Long Beach, the beauty of Santa Monica, the soil of Santa Barbara, the swimming of Palm Beach and the accessibility of Venice; ‘It has what other beaches want’. Presumably bearing this in mind, Mr. S. A. Smith of La Jolla received $20, $2.50 a word, for the winning slogan: ‘San Diego Beach has what other beaches want’.

Despite the greater clarity, vigor and import, and the superior advertising value of San Diego Beach, the community had been called Pacific Beach for nearly 40 years and transitioning to a new name was bound to be awkward. Some followed the Nettleship Company in treating Pacific Beach like a maiden name; a December 1925 ad for Beach Property contained a listing for a good, substantial 5-room plastered house on Grand Avenue in New San Diego Beach (Nee Pacific Beach). Other writers inserted ‘Pacific’ parenthetically into the new name, as in a June 1926 full-page ad in the Union by the Greater San Diego Beach Association inviting potential investors to ‘Live – Play and Profit at San Diego (Pacific) Beach’. A May 1926 story in the Evening Tribune about an upcoming grunion run on San Diego beaches included an invitation to ‘smelters’ from Neil Nettleship, prominent developer of San Diego (Pacific) Beach, to make use of the free and public beach oven (fire ring?), fire-wood pile, picnic tables and other conveniences provided on the beach adjoining the site of the new pier.

On other occasions, the two names, or even combinations of the two names, were mixed. Nettleship himself announced in April 1926 that an estimated 10,000 people attended the formal christening of the new pier in Pacific Beach as ‘Crystal Pier’ (despite threatening weather and actual showers). He then went on to say that the future of San Diego’s Pacific Beach was assured, and that he regarded San Diego Beach, in fact, as the perfect beach, possessing all five of the requirements which make it so (this time he went on to note which requirements the competition lacked; Long Beach lacked panoramic beauty, Santa Barbara lacked accessibility to a large population, Santa Monica lacked perfect swimming, Venice lacked fertile soil and Palm Beach lacked the perfect climate). Newspaper reports also mixed the two names, sometimes in the same article. In May 1926 the Union reported that a plan by ‘resort boosters’ to put the road up Mt. Soledad in shape for automobiles and eventually pave the ‘short-cut from Pacific Beach to La Jolla’ was put forward by the chambers of commerce of Mission Beach, San Diego Beach and La Jolla

In at least one instance, local governments implicitly endorsed the name change. In December 1925 the Common Council of the City of San Diego and the Board of Supervisors of the County of San Diego signed off on Kendrick’s Addition to San Diego Beach, a subdivision of Acre Lot 47 Pacific Beach. This term remains part of the legal description of property on Chalcedony and Missouri streets between Ingraham and Jewell to this day.

The annual roundup of regional attraction on New Year’s Day, 1929, included a story about long stretches of clean white sand that were playgrounds for thousands annually. Pacific Beach was said to be on high, sloping land overlooking the ocean and affording a marvelous panorama to the south. ‘Marking a new era of development Pacific Beach has recently been rechristened San Diego Beach, and much activity has centered during the past year there, and in its immediate vicinity’ (despite PB’s rechristening, the article then moved on to La Jolla, ‘just north of Pacific Beach’).

Despite the promotional campaign by local realtors and occasional mention in the papers, the name San Diego Beach did not catch on and was rarely used outside of real estate ads. In city directories of the late 1920s, for example, even the entry for the Nettleship-Tye Company, ‘Developers of San Diego Beach’, listed its branch office at the Crystal Pier Bldg, Pacific Beach. The new name also failed to produce the population growth that Nettleship had predicted and the real estate market in Pacific Beach, or San Diego Beach, continued to languish. The branch office in Pacific Beach was closed by 1930, the Nettleship-Tye Company itself had disappeared by 1931 and in 1932 Neil Nettleship was managing a life insurance office downtown. Neil Nettleship’s idea that the real estate market would somehow benefit from a fresh name and a fresh start was no more successful than those of his predecessors and as he withdrew from Pacific Beach and eventually from the real estate business San Diego Beach went with him.

People, Places

Haskins Hospitality

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James H. Haskins was a master machinist and inventor who was awarded his first patent, a screw-cutting tool for metal lathes, while still in his early 20s. He later worked for the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in Chicago. According to the San Diego Union, he was for many years superintendent of the McCormick reaper factory there. While at McCormick he received several more patents for machines that improved the manufacture of components for the company’s harvesters. In 1902 McCormick merged with four smaller rivals to become the International Harvester Company. At about that same time Haskins, then in his early 50s, retired, and with his wife Frances, relocated to San Diego.

In June 1904 he purchased the southeast corner of Acre Lot 78 in Pacific Beach from O. J. Stough. Acre Lot 78 was between today’s Diamond, Haines, Chalcedony and Ingraham streets, and Haskins’ property extended 125 north and 250 feet west from the corner of Diamond and Ingraham. Stough owned the balance of Acre Lot 78 as well as the adjacent Acre Lot 79 ½, between Diamond, Gresham, Chalcedony and Haines, and in 1905 Stough and Haskins recorded a subdivision map which divided these acre lots back into the four residential blocks originally platted in the 1887 map of Pacific Beach. Haskins’ property became lots 21 – 30 of Block 146 according to Map 948, Subdivision of Acre Lots 78 and 79 ½ at Pacific Beach. Map 948 also restored Missouri Street and the alleys that had appeared on the original 1887 map.

In September 1905 the Evening Tribune reported that a building permit had been issued to J. H. Haskins for a residence at Pacific Beach to cost $5000. In November, the Union reported that Mr. and Mrs. Jas. H. Haskins had spent part of the week superintending the erection of their new home, and a week later announced that the magnificent home at Diamond and Broadway was fast nearing completion (actually, Broadway had been renamed Izard Street in 1900; it became Broadway once again in 1907 and was finally renamed Ingraham in 1913). Workmen were putting the finishing touches on the garage in the rear. The residence was a credit not only to Pacific Beach but to all San Diego and was constructed partly of the concrete blocks manufactured by Folsom Bros. Co. and the rest entirely of redwood.

Once in their new home the Haskins quickly established a reputation for hospitality that was often featured in the local papers. In March 1906 the San Diego Union reported that Mr. and Mrs. Haskins of Diamond Street had entertained a small company with whist and fireside tales. Bright lights streaming from the many windows assured the guests, long before reaching the home, the cheery welcome waiting there. The games seemed hardly begun when the charming hostess led all in to a delicious luncheon. Later they were shown through the cottage – a thoroughly modern and typically American suburban home – and it was with regret that they dispersed at a late hour. On another occasion, Mr. Haskins’ birthday in January 1907, his wife gave him a surprise, ‘a party with a cake and candles and all the goodies and pleasures that go to make up such an event’. The Union reported that at first a few friends ‘happened’ in to play cards, but before long quite a merry company had assembled to enjoy their host’s surprise, and Mrs. Haskin’s hospitality.

However, the most popular gatherings were when Mrs. Haskins opened her beautiful home for her annual reception to the members of the Pacific Beach Reading Club. These events apparently began at a regular meeting of the Reading Club in January 1908 at the Haskins’ home. According to the San Diego Union, after the study session and musical numbers, including a piano solo by Mrs. Cotton, Mrs. Haskins transformed the social hour into a reception for the members and their many guests, ‘ushering in the new year with good company and a good welcome’. The color scheme was green and red, an abundance of smilax, carnations and roses supplied from her own beautiful grounds and arranged with the assistance of Mr. Haskins. ‘The dining room table was radiant with its snowy napery, red ribbons and carnations and a variety of the cakes for which the hostess is famous’. Other members (members of the Reading Club were all women) assisted in receiving and presided at the tea table, the chocolate table and the punch bowl, assisted by a coterie of young ladies. After another round of musical entertainment featuring local women and girls in songs, solos, duets and chorus, ‘the appreciative audience demanded many recalls and Mrs. O. W. Cotton continued to give rare pleasure to the departing guests to the very last’.

Mrs. Haskins hosted the Reading Club again in December 1908 and, according to the Union, members and their friends responded in the number of a hundred and over, having learned in the past that no greater treat was in store for them in the season of good cheer. The hostess was assisted in receiving by Mesdames Howard, Norris, Robinson and Pease, all handsomely gowned and showing the Christmas spirit of good will to all. Mrs. Haskins opened the musical part of the program with a classical selection on the gramophone, followed by piano solos and vocal duets by some of the guests. ‘The house is finely contrived for an assembly, and seems a silent partner in the wholesouled, far-reaching hospitality of its owners . . . The viands, in unlimited quantity, were the best in variety and toothsomeness that this notable housekeeper could produce.’

The wholesouled hospitality and toothsome viands continued to be offered for many more years. In April 1915, for example, the Evening Tribune reported that the ladies’ aid society auxiliary of the Methodist Church had been invited to the Haskins’ delightful home to be entertained with instrumental and vocal music. About 50 guests were present, and after the program a delicious luncheon was served with Mr. and Mrs. Haskins’ usual well-known hospitality. Several gentlemen with carriages and autos kindly carried the ladies to and from the entertainment. The Haskins home had a garage (which workmen had been putting the finishing touches on in 1905) and Mr. Haskins owned an automobile (in 1912 a party of San Diego friends was taken in Mr. Haskins’ automobile to his beach home) so one of the gentlemen kindly carrying the ladies in an auto may have been Mr. Haskins himself.

In 1908 James Haskins was elected by the San Diego Common Council to fill a vacancy left by the resignation of the incumbent from the first ward. The San Diego Union noted that he had been a resident of Pacific Beach for the past two years and was looked upon as one of the most prominent citizens and the one best fitted to represent that section of the city. Haskins ran for a full term as city councilman in the general election of March 1909 but was defeated. He was also one of the organizers of the Pacific Beach Country Club, which held a Washington’s Birthday dance at the Hotel Balboa for its initial meeting in 1909 (the other organizers were A. F. MacFarland, G. H. Robinson and A. R. Pease).

A 1915 Union article about Pacific Beach noted that several of the county’s showplaces were within its environs, notably the homes of Fred T. Scripps, James H. Haskins and Charles C. Norris (the Scripps home was on Mission Bay, where the Catamaran Hotel is now; the Norris home is still standing on Collingwood Drive). In 1908 the Haskins had also built another house, valued at $3600, on the portion of their property to the west of their home. They also owned property in Block 145, on the other side of Ingraham Street, and in Block 162, across Diamond Street, about where the locker rooms at the PB middle school are today. They sold the property with the house next door in 1920 and both of the unimproved properties in 1925.

Mr. Haskins died in April 1930 and Mrs. Haskins died a month later. In their will they left the ‘Home Place’, together with all furniture, fixtures and fittings, to their neighbor S. A. Le Fevre (the ‘residue’ of the estate, about $10,000, went to Haskins’ brother, Robert G. Haskins, of Pontiac, MI). Le Fevre lived a block away, at the northwest corner of Diamond and Jewell (originally the home of the Cogswell family) but at the time there were no other houses between them on Diamond Street. He apparently left the Haskins home vacant until December 1937 when it was sold to Florabel and Ralph Skinner, and it has been owned by the Skinner family ever since.

Mr. Skinner was a teacher at La Jolla High School who also became a prominent citizen in Pacific Beach, at one time serving as president of the PB Chamber of Commerce. The Skinners also became prominent in the sports world; Florabel and Ralph’s son Bob went on to become a major-league baseball player and manager and Bob’s son Joel also played baseball in the major leagues. S. A. Le Fevre received notoriety of a different sort; he had lived alone as a pauper in his Diamond Street home but when he died in 1940 he was found to have $8000 in two bank accounts, and a search of his house turned up a roll of bills worth $2000 under a pile of clothing in a closet.