Version
2012 Jan 15
River Walks
By Loren P Meissner
This group of essays begins with my personal reminisces from Riverdale Acres – just north of the Santa Ana River between Wineville and Etiwanda Aves, where I lived form 1928 (when I was born) till 1949 (when I was married). I attended Eastvale Elementary School on Sumner Ave from 1934 till 1941.
These essays are followed by a discussion of available
historical material about Eastvale including diversified farming, land and road
development, Eastvale School District history, and the Fuller Ranch; and a
theory about “How Eastvale Got Its Name.”
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River Walks – Contents Compiled
2010-2011 For a
printable (Word or PDF) version email LPMeissner – see address at www.meiszen.net. |
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1. 1947 ESSAYS “My River” and
“Dog Street”: |
Santa Ana River: Peaceful stream or
raging torrent? A “slide show” running backward: Eastvale 1880 to 1940s: East Vale
School District; Fuller Ranch. Butterfield Stage 1860, John C Fremont
1849, Don Juan Bandini, Shoshoni Indians, prehistoric
artifacts from bluffs above Prado Dam |
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Views of Santa Ana River Valley from
Riverdale Acres. |
6. How Did Eastvale Get
Its Name? |
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Our
family of four in six hundred square feet. A
house built from surplus concrete blocks. |
7.
Boundaries East Vale School District. Eastvale City Boundaries. |
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4.
Blowing in the Wind |
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Links to Eastvale History |
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1947 ESSAYS
I wrote these two essays for an English Composition class at Chaffey Community College, Ontario, California in Spring semester 1947. The first one describes my impressions of the March 1938 flood, recalled nine years later. The first essay received an A grade, and the second a B+.
The other stories in this collection were composed in 2010, in honor of Eastvale incorporation.
MY RIVER
Across the “Land of Sunshine” which is Southern California, there flows a river. It rises in the mountains near Lake Arrowhead, flows across the fertile valley, and finally empties into the Pacific just above Newport Beach. Although it travels less than a hundred miles, it gives life to men and animals and provides irrigation water for the fields and orchards along its banks. And about half-way between the mountains and the ocean the Santa Ana River flows beside a high bluff and separates the village of Norco from the little group of houses where I have spent my entire life.
The river has become a sort of symbol to me. When I was a child, it was a place to play. I loved to go to the river in the early spring, to splash in the water, to hunt cat-tails along the bank, to catch minnows in the little shady pools. In the summer, the woods along the river bank became a place for all sorts of picnics, wiener bakes, and swimming parties. But in the winter, most of all, the river meant a great deal to me. Let me explain.
In the cloudy night that often follows a day of rain, I lie awake and listen. A distant roar is stirring the cool air. The River is up! The next morning word comes: – “Bridge out – no school today – Dad can’t go to work – Let’s go down and see the river!”
A mile’s walk, and we stand on the bank that only last week was a hundred feet from the river. There used to be a tree where we got most of our mistletoe. Now the bank has washed away and there is nothing but water. The once-peaceful valley is a raging, roaring mass of waves and foam and branches. The brown, muddy water tumbles and pitches the great pieces of driftwood that yesterday were tree trunks, or bridge timbers, or perhaps even the rafters of a house.
But as we watch, the sun dimly peeps through an opening in the clouds and reflects on the water, turning gray to silver. The foamy water has been transformed into a sea of moving waves more beautiful than any on the ocean. The sun has made the ugly mass of water into a beautiful expanse of waves.
In the evening, I go back to the flooding river – this time alone. And the roaring water, as it races by, seems symbolic of my life. The mistletoe tree as it floated away took with it a part of me. The clean, new sweep of river bank symbolizes a new beginning. And as the sun shone on the river, bringing beauty out of chaos, a radiance began to sparkle through my life, to make me a better and stronger man.
DOG STREET
The sign on the corner says “Lorena Street,” but I think it is very poorly named. Take a walk with me and you’ll see why.
Looking down the street we see a group of five houses. As we approach, a dog begins to bark. His clamor is echoed by another and another till the whole street is ringing with a tumultuous barking. Curs of all shapes, sizes, and colors pour forth into the roadway as we slowly struggle through.
The first one we meet is a large shaggy black dog who dashes ferociously to the attack. We fight him off with a club and are just beginning to feel at ease again when two more appear from the house on the other side of the street: an old, half-blind bulldog who is really friendly; and a stinking mongrel who runs away at the mere shake of a stick. We are safe now, for the next house is surrounded by a high board fence. But inside there is a great clamor as Mrs. Terrier urges her pup to bark. He does his best, but the sound he makes is about as gruff as a flute and half as loud. There is a low-pitched, friendly growl as Dolly, the old German Shepherd, comes lamely from the next house to greet us. Just as we are patting her head we see a flash, and around a corner of the house whizzes a tan spaniel, close on the heels of a cat. Pussy goes up a tree, as all cats do, and the poor dog stands below and barks for several minutes before a lady appears at the door to call him away.
“These dogs!” she exclaims. “The
street is full of them! I do wish the neighbors would get rid of theirs so my
poor pup could have some peace!”
SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE
While I was growing up, till I went away to college, I always had a view of the Santa Ana River valley from where I lived. Down across Marcher Ave was the Holbrook Ranch. There are a few changes now: the road is called 66th St and the ranch land has been become part of Goose Creek Golf Club, but the vista is nearly the same. The tree-lined road still separates Riverdale Acres from the broad river plain, and majestic cottonwoods grow along the river bank. I remember how they gave shade to bushes and blackberry vines, thick in places but interrupted with plenty of sandy trails for local kids to follow, on down to the river’s edge.
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“Wishbone Mountain” over Goose Creek
Golf Club (2010) |
Next to the river in the 1930s, there was a wide concrete platform in a park-like setting just east of Etiwanda Ave, where square dances and other public events were occasionally held. My dad especially enjoyed the political rallies. I have a vague memory from age 5 when Upton Sinclair, Democrat candidate for governor in 1934, came here and explained his plan to “end poverty in California.” At a later rally, a speaker poked fun at Roosevelt’s ill-fated “National Recovery Administration.” A joke about unemployment resonated with the Depression era audience: Two men are looking at an NRA poster and one asks, “What’s with the blue eagle?” The answer comes back, “Were gonna have jobs!” The first man is still confused and he asks, “Then, what’s NRA?” The reply: “It means, Not Right Away.”
The dances and rallies ended abruptly when the March 1938 flood swept away the river-side platform, but the river bank soon recovered, and dams were built along the river to decrease the flood hazard.
Wishbone Mountain
My view across the valley led upward to the La Sierra Hills. Only once, I threaded my way through the dense vegetation along the north bank of the river and up to the bluff on the south side. When three older teen cousins came from Iowa for a week-long visit, they were fascinated by the prominent hill in the foreground, which they denominated “Wishbone Mountain” on account of the pair of ravines that meet just behind the present location of Crestlawn Memorial Park (on Arlington Ave just east of Norco). They planned an all-day excursion, and returned very tired but proud that they had “conquered” the Wishbone.
The Swimmin’ Hole
Much of the Holbrook ranch was planted to alfalfa, irrigated by flooding with river water. A tiny irrigation canal had been constructed, to divert a small portion of the river from about a mile upstream into a simple unlined reservoir next to the ranch. When the alfalfa needed water, a gasoline-powered pump fed pipes from the reservoir to ditches along the upper sides of the fields.
But my buddies and I did not see a reservoir – for us it was “the swimmin’ hole.” A big cottonwood tree shaded the pool, and some daredevil had climbed up and hung a rope that we could hold onto while we swung out for a feet-first plunge into the water. A large log floated out in the middle, tethered by a cable to the far shore.
At first, my swimming skills were
rudimentary. I never used the diving rope, and I only paddled near the bank
where the water was not too deep, where I knew I could stand on the bottom with
my head out of the water if I should need to stop swimming for some reason. One
day when my city cousin Dan came to visit, we took a walk down to the river and
ended up at the swimmin’ hole. I splashed around a bit. Dan swam gracefully out
to the log, all of ten feet from the shore, and dared me to come. I couldn’t
resist Dan’s dare, and soon I had surprised myself by swimming across deep
water to the log. Dan proceeded to give me a couple of easy swimming lessons,
and before long I was as agile a swimmer and as bold a rope diver as any of the
neighborhood boys.
A TALE OF TWO HOUSES
House One: Our family of four in six hundred square feet
In 1928, when my dad moved his family to Riverdale Acres just before I was born, he bought a lot at the top of a hill on Charles Ave in the new Riverdale Acres tract, and soon afterward he built a small frame house on the lot. Somehow I remember, from later years, that the size of the living room was 10 by 14 feet. There were two other rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen, with a combined floor area not much larger: the total must have been less than 400 square feet. A little corner had been stolen from the bedroom and kitchen, which was supposed to provide a bathroom, but the plumbing was not installed at first. There was also a small garage and storage room underneath, opening toward the downhill side of the lot.
I guess 400 square feet was not considered an unusually small amount of space in 1928 for a young family with two babies: my sister is only two years older than me. But we soon outgrew the single bedroom, and Dad proceeded to enlarge the floor space with a second bedroom, a bathroom, and a back porch with room for a washing machine and a laundry sink – increasing the total area to a generous (?) 600 square feet.
I have only vague recollections of this second construction process, but I can clearly visualize the new bedroom, which my parents occupied from the time of my earliest distinct memories. My father had lived in Panama for several years, and he wanted to keep his nostalgia for the tropics alive, so he splash-stuccoed the ceiling with bright colors in a random design he called “Panama Jungle.” Red, orange, and yellow color splashes represented glimpses of parrots and other birds, as well as bananas, mangoes, and other brightly colored jungle fruits. Green for tree leaves and blue for sky showed through.
We had running water and electricity but no phone or natural gas service till many years later.
My sister and I shared the original bedroom for a few years, after which I slept on a folding sofa bed in the living room. There was no water heater; for baths, buckets of water were heated on the big wood-burning range (or later on a kerosene stove also used to heat laundry water). In winter, we children bathed in a galvanized wash tub in the living room near the pot-bellied wood stove.
House Two: A house built from surplus concrete blocks
Fast forward, to the late 1930s. The Metropolitan Water District was constructing the Colorado Aqueduct which terminated at Lake Matthews (south of Riverside). Huge concrete pipelines, fabricated along the distribution routes, would lead on from there to supply customers in Los Angeles and elsewhere. For a time, a major concrete pipe fabrication facility was located near Etiwanda Ave a few miles north of Mission Blvd. [Does anyone know where?]
The plot thickens: In Riverdale Acres there lived a man who survived by continually discovering new and unusual ways to make a living. He found out that the pipe fabricators mixed many tons of raw concrete each day, to be poured into very large molds for the pipe sections. But the plant shut down each night, always leaving partial batches of concrete that would of course be useless by the next morning. Our Mr. Genius got permission to use some of this leftover concrete, which the plant was happy to dispose of. He hired my dad and some others to construct wooden forms and pour the excess concrete into them each night to make building blocks. These concrete blocks were unconventional, in that they were complete rectangular solids without the usual openings inside that decrease the dead weight. Especially ingenious, but typical, was this man’s idea of paying his helpers (at least in part) with concrete blocks!
Meanwhile my dad had purchased another
Riverdale Acres lot on Marcher Ave (later 66th), on which he piled these heavy
blocks till he had enough to build a house larger than the one on Charles St.
My sister was overjoyed when she heard she was finally going to have “a room of
her own,” with closets and everything, that she
wouldn’t have to share with her little brother. After a year or two, our
parents decided the concrete block house was livable, so they sold the Charles
Ave house and we moved to Marcher Ave in January 1941.
BLOWING IN THE WIND
My father used to tell me, while I was growing up at Riverdale Acres, that he preferred this climate to any other he had experienced during his life – in Oregon and Washington, Texas, Mexico (Oaxaca), Panama (Canal Zone and Chiriquí highlands), or Peru. But there was one caveat: in this valley we had to expect windstorms every year, between about November and February.
Now that I have found an abundance of information online, I understand that “certain meteorological conditions in the high desert produce cool dry air that is heavier than in the coastal valleys. This heavier inland air finds an outlet through the mountain passes and canyons, flowing rapidly downward, usually becoming warmer and even drier as it descends.”
Nobody seems to know for sure whether these “Santa Ana winds” were named for one of their favorite channels, more or less along the Santa Ana River and down the Santa Ana Canyon; or whether they were considered “Devil winds” in early Spanish California and came to be called “Satana” or some similar variation of the name Satan.
I was still very young when I learned to recognize signs of an approaching windstorm. When I went outdoors to do my early morning chores, the weather would seem unusually calm, and often a bit warmer than normal for the season. The surrounding mountains appeared as clear as I ever saw them, because of the nearly complete lack of moisture in the air. When I came back inside, I’d announce to my parents and my sister that a Santa Ana was going to start before the end of the day. And, sure enough – when I got off the school bus that afternoon, I’d have to button my jacket tightly around me as I walked home, to try and protect myself from the wind that was already gusting at full force.
The pattern was very predictable. Gusting close to 100 miles an hour, the wind would blow continuously for three days, and then end as abruptly as it had begun. Lying in my bed at night, I heard gusts rattling the window panes. When I rode in a car, the driver had to use all his skill to compensate for the wind and avoid swerving.
Sand
The winds were uncomfortable for their steady gusts of pressure, but another feature of the Santa Anas had effects that lasted long after the wind died down.
The Galleano Winery’s family patriarch Domenico was attracted to western Riverside County by the
sandy soil texture. Galleano still “practices traditional farming methods,
which means dry farming. … This makes for good photosynthesis and gives the
grapes intense flavor characteristics… ,” according to the
winery web site,
http://www.galleanowinery.com/
Dry farming means that crops with a low moisture requirement (such as grapes) must depend on natural rainfall with hardly any irrigation. Care must be taken to reduce surface evaporation after rain has fallen. However, as a Wiki article notes, “Some techniques for conserving soil moisture (such as frequent tillage … ) are at odds with techniques for conserving topsoil.”
Furthermore, not everyone realized that the meteorological factors favoring a Santa Ana wind often occur a few days after rainfall; and in the interval, dry farmers had often stirred up the soil surface with discs or harrows. The topsoil loosened by this “technique for conserving moisture” was in ideal position to be blown away by a subsequent Santa Ana wind.
The many Blue Gum Eucalyptus trees that were planted throughout the valley were intended as windbreaks, to decrease the velocity and force of Santa Ana winds. They were obviously effective, but as a side effect, a row of the trees was often accompanied by a low ridge of sand that piled up at their base. Houses and other buildings exposed to the blowing sand often collected a mound of sand against their windward side.
Effects of Urbanization
The conversion from thousands of acres of dry-farmed agriculture to thousands of urban buildings has practically eliminated airborne sand, due to the lack of exposed soil. The wind velocity near the surface of the ground has been greatly reduced, since each individual building tends to deflect the wind into small opposing gusts. However, airplane pilots are still keenly aware of strong wind currents at higher altitudes as they pass through the channels of a Santa Ana wind.
Two Vivid Memories
1. WHEN I was about twelve, my family sold the tiny house on Charles Ave in Riverdale Acres where I had lived since I was a few months old, and moved to a larger house just around the corner on 66th Street. They had decided the new house was inhabitable, although a lot of finishing remained. For example, the exterior stucco still lacked its final coat. Windows and doors had been installed, although the windows were temporarily fixed in a closed position, and hardware for each exterior door was temporarily provided by a strap of fabric looped around a couple of nails – so the doors were rather loosely closed.
We carried all our possessions except for the largest furniture items in wheelbarrows and carts from one house to the other, finishing at the end of the day and going to bed soon after that.
Previous to that night, I hardly ever had trouble falling asleep, but this time I did. Everything was different: this was not the place where I had slept almost every night for the past twelve years. And it wasn’t just a temporary bed – I was not visiting my cousins, as I always had been when I was not at home. This was supposed to be home, but I couldn’t make it feel like home. It probably even smelled different. Feeling homesick, I cried myself to sleep.
Previous to that night, I hardly ever awakened in the middle of the night, but this time I did. A Santa Ana wind had come up, and the exterior doors on the house were banging against their temporary restraints. For the rest of the night I tossed and turned, feeling sorry for myself and wishing I were back in my familiar home.
Ever since, hearing the sounds of a Santa Ana wind while I am in bed at night brings back uncomfortable memories of my first night in the house on 66th Street.
2. FAST forward to age 28. By this time, I had grown up, gone to college at Chaffey and at UC Berkeley, and married Peggy. We had a 3 year old son, and a second child on the way. We lived in Corona and I was employed at the Naval Ordnance Lab (now the Naval Surface Warfare Center) in Norco, with health benefits at Kaiser Hospital adjacent to the Steel Mill in Fontana, a 25 mile one-way drive from Corona.
One early afternoon in February, Peggy had a prenatal appointment at Fontana. We took our son along and drove across the valley from Corona to Fontana, through a Santa Ana windstorm that had arisen. The doctor told Peggy she was closer to giving birth than they had expected; he recommended that she should not go back home that afternoon because, on account of the windstorm, some of the roads might be closed when we tried to return.
But I didn’t want to keep our young son there indefinitely, so I drove back across the vineyards through the windstorm (by now, pretty violent) to Riverdale Acres where Peggy’s parents still lived, deposited him there, and drove a third time through strong Santa Ana winds back to Fontana.
When I got to the Kaiser Hospital, Peggy
was in excellent condition, having given birth to our daughter while I was out
driving through the blowing sand. It was more than 50 years ago, but I will
never forget that day when our daughter was born.
EASTVALE IMAGES
The Santa Ana River is a peaceful stream nowadays. Dense vegetation grows along the banks at some points, but without blocking the main channel. I grew up within a mile of the river, and I often took walks down the valley and made my way through bushes to the water, after which I could easily wade up or down the shallow river as far as I liked.
But long ago, the river sometimes became a raging torrent and spread far beyond its normal banks out onto the plain. In March 1938 I saw huge trees that had been uprooted by the strong flow and slammed against the supports of a bridge down stream. The big 1938 flood disabled almost all the highway and railroad crossings on the whole length of the river for at least a week, collapsing bridges or washing out their causeways. There was no way for Eastvale teens to get to school in Corona. As soon as possible after the flood subsided, temporary bridge detours were created and loads of rock were brought to fill in the causeways . A few years later, flood control dams were constructed, and major flooding is no longer considered a threat.
How should I remember the river? In its present-day peaceful guise, or as a dramatic image from the past?
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I grew up in western Riverside County, but I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1959. Whenever I visit relatives at Eastvale, I see radical changes in the character of the region. Let’s flip through some more verbal images, like running a slide show backward from the present into the past. Is the newest image your favorite, or do you prefer an older one?
As of October 2010, Eastvale is an
incorporated city with more than 50,000 residents. It has several shopping
centers, schools, and even a Starbucks coffee house. A branch of the Riverside
County public library is housed at Eleanor Roosevelt High School. Several
on-line blogs are devoted to local news, information, and public comment. Folks
are hopeful for a bright future.
One local blog
points to the year 1999 as “the beginning of large, affordable homes.” The
census population ten years ago, when Eastvale’s growth spurt had just begun,
was 6,000. During the three previous census counts (1970-1990), the population
count had been stable, at about 1500.
The time period beginning about 1970 is often described as Eastvale’s “dairy era.” Many current residents remember this land use pattern. In the 1960s and 70s, rapid population growth in Los Angeles County forced dairies to flee eastward, and many of them settled near Eastvale. But by now, all but a handful have relocated to central California, to the Imperial Valley, or out of state.
As dairies moved into Eastvale, they displaced “diversified farms” of the kind I remember from before 1959. To most current residents, a date so long ago evokes only the haziest of images – let’s zoom in for a closer view. (But we’ll save for later the huge Fuller Ranch that stretched along the north side of the river.)
Half a square mile, 320 acres, was considered a large farm. Although most farmers raised some cows, milk was not their principal product. Fred Eldridge, who grew up on the ranch that was later sold to the Harada family, has pointed out that “except for the sandy area east of Hamner,” Eastvale has fertile soil where crops grow well. However, Galleano Winery considers the sandy soil ideal for their dry-farmed grape vineyards.
Some farms grew seed grains such as wheat, barley, and oats on portions of their land, rotating the crops and leaving some fields idle each year. There were fruit and nut orchards (peaches and apricots, walnuts and pecans), and olives. Most farms had a few beef cattle, sheep, or horses.
Alfalfa was a favorite crop because it keeps growing for several years, and the same field is harvested several times each year. The farmers fed some of it to animals and sold the rest at retail. Like other legumes, alfalfa enriches the soil by “nitrogen fixation.”
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My first real job was on a farm, during the summer of 1944 following my junior year at High School. The farm was located on Merrill Ave west of Archibald and just north of the Eastvale boundary. Alfalfa was one of the main crops. At harvest time, mowed alfalfa was raked into long rows that had to be baled early the following day to retain moisture, essential to the curing process. On days when baling was scheduled, I mounted my bike at dawn and rode three miles from home to the field. The gasoline-powered baler was pulled by a mule. More experienced farm workers pitched alfalfa in, to be pressed into bales while I tied the baling wire and guided the mule. By nine or ten o’clock the day’s baling quota was finished, and the mule was hitched to a wagon that hauled the baled hay into the barn.
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This baler at a contemporary Amish farm near Strasbourg PA, obviously pulled by horses instead of a mule, is similar to my 1944 recollection. (Photo by John S Murray.) |
Besides alfalfa, the farm where I worked grew vegetables including black-eyed peas, potatoes, and sweet corn. A problem with potatoes is the large amount of labor required for digging them. My employer was testing a digging machine somebody had invented, but he found it unsuited to the soil texture of his farm because it produced clods about the same size as potatoes, making mechanical separation difficult. Sweet corn was a “truck crop”: we harvested it and packed it into crates, which were picked up by trucks each afternoon during the season and taken to early morning produce auctions near Los Angeles.
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Written history, more permanent than human memory, adds images that extend further back to the time before I was born in 1928. It’s hard to imagine the open uncultivated prairie that was once Eastvale. Norco was subdivided soon after 1910, and there was a spurt of growth north of the river before 1920. That year’s census lists some family names that could still be found in Eastvale well past World War Two. There are more links to my photos, citations, and abstracts at EASTVALE INDEX.
In 1989, Roger G Hatheway wrote a report ( http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA226945 ) “The Pomona-Rincon Road and Its Place in the Regional Transportation Network,” which describes the development of this region during the 19th and early 20th centuries:
Mission tradition stock ranches were the earliest agricultural units …. This tradition persisted from the first [Spanish/Mexican land grant] ranches to the 1870s, when it was replaced by smaller general farms or homesteads. The nineteenth-century homestead tradition lasted from the 1870s to the early years of the twentieth century. The farms were quite small, from 40 to 160 acres, and were generally operated by a single-family unit. Prior to World War I, many of these smaller farms were purchased or leased by extended single-family cooperative farming groups. In addition, heavy emphasis was placed on the development of dairy farms as specialized production facilities. This trend continued after World War I, ultimately resulting in the virtual disappearance of the small general farms, and their replacement with either larger corporate farms or larger single-family specialized farms focusing on dairy production with some associated general crops.
These farms raised alfalfa and/or corn for feeding to the dairy herd or to work animals. As noted in a 1938 appraisal report, “The practice is to rotate from alfalfa to corn, to tomatoes, to sugar beets and back to alfalfa.”
Hatheway quotes George Schmutz, who wrote in 1938:
Immediately before the World War [I], great strides were made in the opening of new highways into hitherto inaccessible areas, and in the construction of hard surface pavement on country roads, and in the electrification of rural areas. A great area of new farm lands were brought into production by the opening of new regions and the development of reclamation projects and the installation of deep pumps. In addition thereto, the introduction of power to farming operations, such as the tractor, tremendously increased the per capita production of farm products.
Local libraries and the internet give us
glimpses from even further back. The route through Temescal Canyon and Rincon,
to Pomona and Los Angeles, was popular. Wiki describes twice-weekly mail and
passenger service via stagecoach, operated by Butterfield Overland Mail Company
from 1857 to 1861, over
… a southern route between St.
Louis and San Francisco that avoided the snow of the Rocky Mountains by
traveling through Texas, the New Mexico Territory and Southern California. The
trip of 2,900 miles was always made in twenty-four days or less.
A Butterfield stage station with two original adobe buildings survives at Warner Springs CA just northeast of Mount Palomar. From that point the route traversed Temescal Canyon, crossed the Santa Ana River at Rincon (now Prado), and continued through present-day Chino. “Landmark Adventures” website states:
Old Temescal Road …
was used by Luiseño and Gabrieleño Indians, whose villages were nearby. [”Luiseño” refers to Mission San Luis Rey de Francia near
present-day Oceanside CA, and “Gabrieleño” refers to Mission San Gabriel
Arcángel near Pasadena.] Leandro Serrano established a home here in 1820. Jackson
and Warner traveled the road in 1831, and Frémont in
1848. It was the southern emigrant road for gold seekers from 1849 to 1851.
According to Lech (“Old Roads,” p 35), Don Juan Bandini received a Mexican land grant in 1838 that included all of present-day Eastvale and Jurupa Valley south of the Bellegrave Ave alignment (for more, with map, CLICK HERE). Bandini lived in “… a small adobe house … situated on a bluff approximately one thousand feet west of present-day Hamner Avenue, about a half mile north of the Hamner Avenue bridge over the Santa Ana River” – perhaps 500 yards east of the present site of Eleanor Roosevelt High School. After about a year, Bandini annexed a smaller area (9 square miles) near present-day Prado, and moved to a larger residence on that grant.
Shoshoni Indians lived near here during the pre-European era, perhaps 1500 years ago; and prehistoric artifacts have been found in bluffs above the Prado basin.
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East Vale School District since 1893
“East
Vale” School District appears on an April 1893 list of 53 School Districts in
the newly formed Riverside County (see Lech, “Old Roads,” p 784. A book by
Bynon [Historical Commission Press 1992, Reprint, vol 1 p 141] has a slightly
more detailed version of the same list that is in Lech’s book – Bynon also
shows the name of a clerk for each district, but there is a blank for the
clerk’s name at East Vale as well as for a couple of other districts on the
list.)
County records from 1893 do not mention
a school building in East Vale District. At that time Corona “was ringed with
one-teacher schools in which each teacher was responsible for all students in
eight grades … Gradually these schools were torn down or folded, and the
students were assimilated in other schools.” (Reynolds and Eldridge, Corona
California Commentaries, Corona Heritage Library 1986, p 80)
An East Vale school building was
constructed between 1896 and 1898, according to contemporary newspaper reports.
In August 2011, Kim Jarrell Johnson located some items in Los Angeles Times
archives that mention East Vale school district. The school district “created”
in April 1893 was “organized” about 6 months later (LA Times 5 Sep 1893). One
of the directors was O.B. Fuller, manager of Fuller Ranch, whose daughter Rhea
had been born on the ranch in January 1892 (according to the 1900 US Census and
other sources). A $2500 bond issue was proposed (28 Mar 1894) and bonds were
sold (11 Jan 1896). An item in the Times 13 May 1896 states, “The East Vale
district will build a $2500 school house.”
An 1898 Riverside newspaper shows “EAST
VALE SCHOOL HOUSE, SIX MILES WEST OF CORONA.” Judging from the picture, it was
a one-teacher school like the ones Eldridge described. I am assuming this
school house is the building anticipated in the 13 May 1896 Times article. I do
not know the precise location. Note that the Riverside Daily Press photo is
dated about five years after Riverside County formation. I am assuming that
classes were conducted in some existing building (perhaps on Fuller Ranch),
pending construction of the school shown in the photo.
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Reprint from
Riverside Daily Press, 1898 (Page 28) |
As a sidelight, I
note that Hatheway’s article (mentioned above) includes a 1904 map showing
“Valley School’ on a road along the southern boundary of Section 33 (in T2S
R7W). This road is a westward extension of Eastvale’s Chandler Ave, and the
school site is about a half mile west of Hellman which forms the County line.
At this same location, a map sent to me by Kathleen Dever from Corona History
Group shows “Valley School 1890.” Students near Fuller Ranch might have
attended this school prior to the separation of Riverside County from San
Bernardino County, and some arrangement might have made for them to cross the
county line and continue attending Valley School till East Vale had its own
building.
After 1912 a second East Vale school house was constructed on the west side of Sumner Avenue, just north of the present intersection with Schleisman Ave. This is the elementary school I attended from 1934 to 1941. It had two classrooms with four grades in each room, plus a library that became a third classroom after 1941.
Land maps on record at Riverside County Archives in Moreno Valley show the school site at this location. Also in the Archives is a deed (dated November 6, 1912 and recorded November 27) transferring this land at “the southeast corner of Section 26, Township 2 South, Range 7 West” to East Vale School District of Riverside County. The site is described as 4 acres in area, extending 21-1/3 rods (352 feet) north and 30 rods (495 feet) west from the section corner.
These 4 acres, for which the school district paid $750, had been part of a much larger farm owned by James P and Barbara S Mushrush. The Mushrush family appears in Riverside County census records as late as 1930, and descendants named Hixson may have lived near Corona after 1990.
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Back row: Grace Bynum [Teacher], Leslie Brower, Loren
Meissner, Front row: Leo Stengel 7, Bill Meuser 5, John Wilkin, Clair Harvey 7, Doris Meissner, Betty Steele, Victor Scamara Jr, Delores McKinley |
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Photos courtesy of Doris (Meissner) Klock Left: Grace Bynum, Principal and teacher of Grades 5-8, in front of East Vale Elementary School (on Sumner Ave, abt 1913-1958); photo abt 1937. Right: Eastvale Recorder Band (see Paloma Prouty, below). Photo must have been taken during school year 1938-1939 when I was in sixth grade, because I can recognize students from two older grades (7, 8) and one younger grade (5) in the picture. The back of the picture shows nicknames for the kids, and I have filled in the surnames. |
1938:
The white building
near the center was East Vale School. Above and to the left was a utility
building. Large diagonal white region was a sand dune, the limit of useful
playground area. Note eucalyptus trees all around. |
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Riverside newspaper archives, which have
recently become available, include a mention 4 Dec 1912 (only a week after the
Mushrush deed was recorded) of a contract let by trustees of Eastvale School
for a new school house costing $7750.
A few years later, JP Mushrush placed an
advertisement for dairy cows in Los Angeles Times 18 Feb 1917, which mentions “my ranch on the farm of the Eastvail School” east of
Archibald, perhaps indicating that by 1917 the school house on (unpaved) Sumner
Ave was a well-known local landmark. These dates are consistent with my
recollection that the building might have been about 20 years old when I
attended during the 1930s.
Later history of elementary schools in
Eastvale, after Corona school district unification in 1947, is described by
Asst Supt Ted E Rozzi, facilities manager for Corona-Norco Unified School
District (email Oct 2011; see also “Corona Commentaries”). A third Eastvale
Elementary School building, with classrooms for six grades, was constructed on
the present site at the northwest corner of Cleveland Ave (now Scholar Way) and
Orange St. In fall 1958, the new school opened and classes at the Sumner Ave
site were discontinued. This third Eastvale Elementary School closed in 1981,
and the District opened Horizon Continuation High School at the same location,
where it was in turn replaced in 2006 by the present Eastvale School. There are
now (fall 2009) five elementary schools in the area that had been served more
than 100 years before by the one-room “EAST VALE SCHOOL HOUSE, SIX MILES WEST
OF CORONA.”
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Riverside
County school specialists visited the outlying schools a few times a year. This
included the county superintendent, the PE specialist (Mr Lunt), Music
specialist (Miss Prouty), Art specialist (Ms Hurd),
and “School Nurse” who changed from time to time. Some of these names have to
be somewhere in county school archives.
[Miss Paloma Priscilla Prouty, born 15
Mar 1898 [CA death record says b 1903] in NE, USA; died 25 Nov 1974 in
Riverside Co, CA, USA. There is a report online, of a
talk she gave for a Music Education meeting in 1931, telling how important it
is to expose rural kids to music.]
Miss Prouty held a “Cantata” at Riverside Civic Auditorium each spring, where kids from all her rural elementary schools sang in unison after practicing independently. About 1939 most all of the upper-grade Eastvale kids purchased “recorders” (mass produced, about $3 as I recall – a strain on some Depression-era budgets), for a model “recorder band” that Miss Prouty organized at Eastvale because our upper-grade teacher Grace Bynum was an accomplished flute player. Then we visited other schools (I remember Alvord near Home Gardens-Arlington maybe where Tyler Mall is now; Alberhill in Temescal Canyon, and some place near Perris). Inspired by our visits (and otherwise by Miss Prouty), some of the other schools also formed “recorder bands” and we all played in unison as an extra feature of that year’s Cantata.
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Fuller Ranch
Parts of the Fuller Ranch history are recorded in two separate places.
The earlier stage is described in genealogical documents and census records: In 1880 two brothers from Iowa, Ortus and Charles Fuller, arrived at Los Angeles and soon became wealthy entrepreneurs in transportation and merchandising. About 1890 they acquired several thousand acres of land along the Santa Ana River, where Ortus lived in 1900 with his wife and two young daughters. After Ortus died in 1922, the ranch passed into the hands of O.R. Fuller, son of Charles.
The more dramatic second stage, stars O.R. Fuller who first constructed a handsome vacation estate here in the “Roaring 20s,” then was forced to make it his permanent home during the early part of the Depression, and finally turned it into a successful dairy and turkey farm as well as a country resort for Hollywood celebrities. A daughter, Marcellie (Thompson) born 1920, recorded an oral history that is archived at Corona library.
= 6 =
HOW DID EASTVALE GET ITS NAME?
[Note: In the following story, the characters Elliot, Heather, and Billy are fictitious, notwithstanding any resemblance to actual persons. All other persons and places are real.]
My friend Elliot has a daughter who lives on Lemon Valley Avenue, with a fourteen year old daughter named Heather and a ten year old son named Billy. One day when Elliot was visiting, Billy said he wanted to fly his kite. “Can you drive me over to the Norco bluff?” he asked his grandpa. “The wind’s steadier over there.”
Elliot agreed, and Heather decided to come along. “I’ll pack a lunch for the three of us,” she offered.
Soon they were on the grassy bluff, looking north across the river toward Eastvale. “Why is it called Eastvale?” Billy asked his grandpa. “Looking from here, our town is north, not east. And most of the buildings on the other side of the river are way above it, not in the ‘vale’ down there.”
“You’re right. But it’s been called Eastvale for more than a hundred years.”
“A hundred years?” Heather looked up at her grandpa.
“Even longer than that. When Riverside County was established in 1893, somebody made a list of 53 school districts in the new county, and East Vale was on the list. Jane Davies Gunther wrote a book almost 30 years ago that mentions the list, but she wrote, ‘Origin of the school name has not yet been revealed.’ And that’s still true: the source of the district’s name is still hidden, in the mist of history.”
“It’s a mystery, in the mist of history!” Billy sang. “Will it ever be solved, Grandpa?”
“Not any time soon, I’m afraid. But I’ve been doing some reading and thinking about it, and I’ve come up with a guess. My idea involves a man named Henry Harrison Fuller, who was head of the family that owned a huge ranch, down by the river over there, for about 60 years between 1890 and 1950. At that time, it was the largest ranch anywhere around here.”
“And you’re gonna tell us your idea, about what Mr Fuller and his ranch had to do with the name,” Heather surmised.
East Vale School District before 1900
“Yes, I will. But first I want to explain some of the facts that seem to lead me to my guess. First of all, there’s that list Jane Gunther tells about in her book. It’s mentioned in some other books too, including one called ‘Along the Old Roads’ by Steve Lech. The list is part of a record of the first meeting of some new County officials. So far, nobody has found any earlier mention of this name, for any place around here.”
“Fred Eldridge was one of the authors of
another book called ‘Corona California Commentaries.’ Fred once owned a ranch
in Eastvale, where Harada Elementary School is now. His book says Corona was
once ‘ringed with one-teacher schools in which each teacher was responsible for
all students in eight grades … Gradually these schools were torn down or
folded, and the students were assimilated in other schools.’ In 1898, Riverside
Daily Press printed a photo of East Vale school house. Judging from the
picture, that building was a one-teacher school like the ones Eldridge
described.”
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Reprint from
Riverside Daily Press, 1898 (Page 28) |
Heather echoed, “East Vale School District was already here in 1893. An East Vale School building existed in 1898 – there’s proof, in black and white. When did Harrison Fuller come on the scene?”
Eastvale, Pennsylvania
“Hold on just a minute more – back to ‘Why Eastvale.’ It might be reasonable to suspect that Eastvale was named for some other place. Cities like Boston, Plymouth, and Concord are named for places in Europe where their founders had lived. There are a couple of places in Great Britain named East Vale. And in Pennsylvania there’s a village named Eastvale, about 40 miles north of Pittsburgh. Soon after1825 when the Erie Canal was completed, a connecting link was opened between the canal and the Ohio River. Eastvale was a popular stop on this route.”
“OK,” Heather said, “but … ?”
“Well, it just so happens that Eastvale, Pennsylvania, is not far from where Henry Harrison Fuller was born.”
“Ooh!” Heather and Billy gasped, in unison.
The Fuller Family
“Henry Harrison Fuller was usually called Harrison. He was born in 1832 at Buckstown Pennsylvania, about 75 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. When he was ten, his family moved 40 miles south to Grantsville, just over the Mason-Dixon Line in the Maryland ‘panhandle.’ Harrison’s father taught him how to be a bricklayer, and later he worked for his brother Elijah in a dry goods store. When he was 23, Harrison moved with his wife and daughter to Iowa, and settled at Mount Pleasant where two more daughters and three sons were born. Harrison again worked in a dry goods store, and later as caretaker for Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant. He was always interested in government affairs. During President Grant’s administration he was appointed to a six-year term as Indian Agent at Lemhi, Idaho, and after that he returned to Mount Pleasant. A history of his mother’s family, the Shockeys, tells about all of this.”
“In 1883 Harrison moved his family from Iowa to southern California, and settled on a farm at Azusa where he raised citrus. He was active in local government till his death at age 70 in 1903. Two of Harrison’s sons, Ortus Benton and Charles Henry Fuller, came from Iowa with their father. Ortus was also known as O.B. Fuller. Charles had a wife and a young son named Olive.”
“Charles had a wife named Olive?” asked Billy.
“No, Charles’s wife was Maude. They actually named their son Olive Ransome Fuller – his name does seem confusing. When he grew up he was called O.R. Fuller.”
“By 1890 Charles and Ortus Fuller were both very successful business men in Los Angeles. Southern California was booming, largely because of the recent arrival of transcontinental railroads. The Fuller brothers owned Fuller Department Stores, and Pioneer Transfer Company which was probably kept busy with local transportation to and from the railroad terminals. Their father, Harrison Fuller, was still at Azusa. Besides the Shockey family history, they are recorded in the 1900 census.”
Fuller Ranch
“By 1890, the Fuller brothers had enough money to buy a ranch of ‘several thousand acres’ along the Santa Ana River. Gunther’s book and the Shockey history explain that besides other farming activities, they raised horses for their transportation business. Ortus Fuller married Daisy, and two daughters were born on the Fuller ranch: Rhea in 1892 and Muriel in 1895. Some other 1893 documents from Riverside County, reported in books by Gunther, Bynon, and Lech, show ‘Fuller O B, farmer,’ ‘O.B. Fuller, election inspector,” and ‘Fuller Chas, engineer.’”
“In 1898, the Riverside Daily Press
printed the photo of ‘East Vale School House, Six Miles West of Corona.’ The
building in the photo must have been somewhere on the Fuller ranch or nearby. In
1913 it was replaced by a two-teacher school on Sumner Avenue, where I attended
from 1934 till 1941. The Sumner Avenue school building was still in use in
1947, when Eastvale joined Corona school district.”
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East
Vale Elementary School on Sumner Ave, abt 1913-1958
(Photo abt 1937 Courtesy
Doris (Meissner) Klock |
Speculation
Heather seemed puzzled. “So before 1900, there was an East Vale school, and a big ranch somewhere near here, along the river. The head of the family that owned the ranch was born in Pennsylvania, near a village named Eastvale. I don’t see how that proves there was any connection between the names.”
“It doesn’t prove anything. I told you, all I have is a guess. But I think my idea could fit in with the known facts. I’ll try to steer you through the connection, but it’s a kinda bumpy ride. Fasten your seat belt, and let me explain.”
“OK. I’m holding on tight. Go on,” Billy said.
“MAYBE, one day about 1890 when Charles and Ortus Fuller were visiting their father at Azusa, he pointed out that they had been working hard for almost 10 years at Los Angeles and had accumulated lots of money, and he suggested they might not need to stay in the city all the time. Ortus was only 57 when he later died: maybe he was already having health problems.”
“And MAYBE Harrison Fuller suggested that his sons could buy a ranch, perhaps in the developing inland region. They could still be active: Ortus in farming, and Charles in engineering, but with competent helpers they might be able to spend some of their time relaxing on the ranch. Exploring the idea, they located some land along the Santa Ana River that had originally been part of Rancho Jurupa, Rancho El Rincon, and Rancho La Sierra land grants.”
“And MAYBE, during a visit to the Santa Ana River valley, Harrison had a flash of recognition, and thought some corner of the ranch land near the river reminded him of Eastvale Pennsylvania, a place he had visited or read about. The ranch was east of Los Angeles and Azusa where they’d been living, in it was in a vale along the river.”
“And MAYBE, a year or two later, as his sons were getting settled in the Santa Ana valley, the civic-minded Harrison discussed with them the news he’d been hearing, about formation of the new Riverside County which would include their ranch. He may have heard of a discussion concerning school districts for the new county. Besides the existing Rincon, Santa Ana, and Auburndale School Districts, there would still be a large area in the west end of the new Riverside County north of the river which, although almost uninhabited in 1893, deserved to be designated as a school district for development at an appropriate time.”
“And MAYBE Harrison Fuller, about 1893, suggested that this proposed school district should be named East Vale.”
Heather was lost in thought for a while, and then she spoke up. “Hmm. Yeah, I guess all of that MIGHT have happened.” And Billy agreed.
= 7 =
“East Vale” was the name of an elementary school district in Riverside County at least as early as 1893, and till its “unification” with Corona schools in 1947. After that, most of the time from the 1950s till quite recently, Eastvale was simply an elementary school in a much larger district. But “Eastvale” as an urban community did not exist till a few years ago.
The current burst of residential growth at Eastvale began in 1999, according to one local blog which points to that year as “the beginning of large, affordable homes.” Developers gave many different names to their tracts, including “Corona Valley” and “Cloverdale.”
The community was called Eastvale at least as early as March 2007, when a group of residents formed “Eastvale Incorporation Committee.” Later that year, the group met with the Local Agency Formation Commission to begin the formal process that culminated with incorporation in October 2010.
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When I attended Eastvale Elementary School (between 1934 and 1941), the people of the district did not identify their place of residence as Eastvale – they would hardly ever say to someone in Corona or Riverside, “I live at Eastvale.” When they used the name, it was “I (or my children) go to Eastvale School.”
The earliest known use of the name in this area was in 1893, when “East Vale” was listed among 53 School Districts in the newly formed Riverside County (see Lech, “Old Roads,” p 784). The school building has occupied at least three different locations. Riverside Public Library has an 1898 photograph of “East Vale School House, Six Miles West of Corona” from Riverside Daily Press. The building shown in this photo is obviously one of the “one-teacher schools in which each teacher was responsible for all students in eight grades,” described by Fred Eldridge in “Corona California Commentaries.” The two-classroom school I attended was constructed on Sumner Ave, soon after 1912. The name Eastvale (or East Vale) designated the elementary School District, till about 1947 when the district was absorbed into Corona (later, Corona-Norco) Unified School District, and a new Eastvale Elementary School was constructed at the present location on Cleveland Ave between Schleisman and Orange.
At Eastvale School in the 1930s, we often made elaborate maps of the School District, which then included all of Temescal Township north of the Santa Ana River.
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“Huh?” … (blank stares) … “Temescal Township?” Turn to WIKI articles “Township (United States)” and “The Public Land Survey”:
“A civil township is a widely-used yet loose term applied to varying
entities of local government, with and without municipal status. Though all
townships are generally given names and may be abbreviated Twp, their function
differs greatly from state to state. While cities, towns, boroughs, or villages
are common terms for municipalities; townships, counties, and parishes are
sometimes not considered to be municipalities. In many states, counties and
townships are organized and operate under the authority of state statutes. In
contrast, municipal corporations are often chartered entities with a degree of
home rule. However, there are some exceptions. Most notably, in New Jersey and
Pennsylvania, townships are a class of incorporation with fixed boundaries and
equal standing to a village, town, borough or city, analogous to a New England
town or towns in New York.”
Even before the Louisiana Purchase, the Federal government had become responsible for large areas west of the thirteen original colonies. Thomas Jefferson proposed the Public Land Survey, to facilitate distribution of land to Revolutionary War soldiers in reward for their service, as well as to sell land as a way of raising money for the nation. Before this could happen, the land needed to be surveyed.
Where topography permitted, the Land Survey divided land into 6-mile-square townships, which were subdivided into 36 one-mile-square sections. [Early maps of Southern California, and modern maps of National Forests and other Federal lands, still show these designations.]
Townships in rural California provided “a degree of home rule,” more intimate than the County level. As I recall it from the agricultural era of the 1930s, Temescal Township included the western end of Riverside County, south of a line along the present position of Bellegrave and Limonite; continuing southward through Corona and Norco to include much of Temescal Canyon. The “home rule” included an elected Constable and a Municipal Court (housed at Corona).
Census records between 1900 and 1930 show two main divisions of Temescal Township: the City of Corona, and the remainder of the township. During some years, the rural portion was further subdivided into “precincts” with names such as Rincon, Auburndale, and Temescal. As I knew it during the 1930s, Eastvale School District consisted of the portion of Temescal Township north of the Santa Ana River.
After World War 2, most California counties gradually became more urbanized, and the “home rule” aspect of historical townships gradually faded away, till now almost all government functions are assigned to incorporated cities or are provided at the County level.
Note that there is no government requirement for agreement among city limits, School District borders, township lines, voting precincts, postal zip code margins, and similar civic boundaries, except that most political areas do not cross state lines.
Eastvale City Boundaries
West of Hamner Ave and north of the river, Eastvale city boundaries follow traditional Riverside County and Temescal Township lines. During the difficult process over the past few years that led to incorporation, the eastern boundary of the city was initially set at Wineville Ave, based on earlier studies at the county level. Jurupa residents later proposed that the line be drawn farther west, along Hamner Ave. A compromise, supported by Supervisor John Tavaglione and finalized by the incorporation vote in Jun 2010, extends Eastvale eastward to the I-15 freeway.
Lands south of Limonite, between the freeway and Etiwanda Ave, remain in Corona-Norco Unified School District but are not included in Eastvale city. West of Wineville, the city boundaries exclude VanderMolen Fundamental Elementary School, and the houses and Vernola Marketplace along Pats Ranch Road.
Also outside the city is the Riverdale Acres tract, where I grew up. The tract was laid out about 1925 (according to Jim Hofer at Riverside County Archives), on land that was already part of Eastvale School district, and was later absorbed into Corona-Norco Unified. Riverdale Acres lies east of Wineville Ave, and was never seriously considered for incorporation as part of the new Eastvale city.
Some other areas outside the city, between I-15 and Etiwanda Ave (including Galleano Winery and Sky Country north of Limonite, and Goose Creek Golf Course along the river), also share some “traditional” School District and postal designations with parts of the city.
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HERR DOKTOR PROFESSOR MEISSNER
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Prof Loren Meissner, Eastvale Elementary School 1934-41, now living at San Jose CA Left front: Freda (Pritchard) Morrow, Eastvale Elementary School 1941-48; sister of Loren’s wife Peggy (Pritchard) Meissner. Freda still lives at Riverdale Acres after almost 60 years. Right front: Doris (Meissner) Klock, Eastvale Elementary School 1933-41, sister of Loren, now living at Lake Elsinore |
I have a lot of information about my ancestors – I’ve been putting it together since my High School days when I spent a couple of weeks one summer visiting my dad’s oldest sister Dillie. There was hardly anyone else around, so she spent some time telling me what she knew about the Meissner family. That was more than 60 years ago, and I went on from there.
My great-grandparents were a mixed bag: some German immigrants, some Pennsylvania “Dutch” (German Mennonites) and Scots-Irish, some miners fresh from Cornwall, a couple of Mayflower descendants. I have traced some of them back to around 1600, before which date few records were kept. I have made contact with historians in a little mining town on the eastern border of Germany (next to Czech Republic) where there are records of the founding of their town about 1650 by several Lutheran families fleeing religious persecution, after a border shift had changed the official religion of their previous town from Lutheran to Catholic. My Meissner ancestors were among the miners already living there, who welcomed the “exiles.” They petitioned the Duke of Saxony, elector Johann Georg, for permission to create a village on a portion of his land, and he granted permission with the proviso that the village should be named Johann-georgen-stadt. I first found this story in a box of papers left in the house at my great-grandfather’s Wisconsin homestead after he died; and I have since confirmed it with the local German historians who also sent me church records and mining records they had compiled.
Overall, my ancestors are split almost evenly between German and British origins, with very few exceptions. The mother of my great-great-grandfather William Bray was “an Indian squaw” according to family lore – genealogists from Towanda PA where he was born suggest a “likely” candidate, who was one sixteenth Mahican Indian (native American) and one sixteenth black. William’s father was Irish (which of course counts as British) and might have been Catholic; otherwise I don’t know of any Catholic ancestors.
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My father was one of 11 children of a “poor dirt farmer,” Adolph Meissner, and his young wife Loretta, both born in Wisconsin. Adolph’s father came from Germany about 1845; Loretta’s ancestors had been in America for a very long time, including the Irish (etc) guy and the Mayflower Pilgrims. Loretta was never satisfied with her lot, and kept the family moving – from Wisconsin to southern Oregon (where my dad was born in 1897), to Texas, then to Oaxaca in southern Mexico. When Americans in Mexico became “undesirables” during Pancho Villa’s revolution in 1914, the Meissner’s left, with only the shirts on their backs, and came to Upland California where their oldest daughter Dillie was living. But three or four years later they went to Panama with the youngest half of their children. My dad and one brother worked on some finishing touches for the Panama Canal, while Adolph and Loretta with the younger kids moved to a small “plantation” (which I now realize should more accurately be called a “jungle clearing”) in the Panama highlands near Costa Rica. I have some letters Loretta wrote from Panama admiring the climate of the highlands, expressing satisfaction that nothing like the Pancho Villa episode could happen because the US Government needed to protect Panama on account of the Canal, and complaining because there weren’t enough Americans nearby to provide adequate schools for her children. Mainly for the latter reason, they came back from Panama to Los Angeles about 1922. But with all the moving around, mostly to places with inadequate education, my dad and several of his siblings ended up almost illiterate.
My mother’s maternal (Reed) family were miners in Cornwall who immigrated to the area along the Mississippi River near where Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa meet, about 1865. By 1902 all the Reed family members except one had died: my grandmother lived till 1945 and I knew her well. Mom’s father Joseph Alonzo Kleeberger was half German and half Scots-Irish (from West VA); he became a Methodist circuit rider in Nebraska but after his first wife died Joseph returned (with two very young sons) to live near his parents in Illinois. He married my Cornish grandmother, had four more children in quick succession, and died in Mississippi from a tropical disease. (I’ve never been quite sure why he went to Mississippi.) My mother was the oldest of the four (born 1891); she went to work at a pretty young age; then in her 20s she went to a Bible school in Indiana for a while, and overflowing with missionary zeal she came to Los Angeles, intending to convert the Mexican Catholics to the “true” Protestant religion. Meanwhile she got a job as a nursing assistant at a maternity hospital (where I was later born).
So my parents met at church in Los Angeles about 1922, when Mom was in her early 30s and Dad in his late 20s. He took a shine to her, but my Cornish grandma thought he was too uncouth for her daughter.
But wait … the plot thickens! Loretta (Dad’s mother) still owned the little chunk of land in Panama. She knew she’d never go back there, but while she was in Panama she’d noticed the natives all had very bad teeth, because they never had milk to drink. She wrote a letter to the Church mission board, offering to let them use her land to raise cows to help with the Panamanians’ teeth problems, meanwhile teaching them about Jesus. I’m not sure the letter was ever sent, but Dad heard about the idea and proposed to Mom that they should get married and fulfill his mother’s dream of providing milk for the Panamanians. And at the same time Mom, who I think wasn’t having much success converting the Los Angeles Catholics, could try her wiles on the Panamanians (who, in the highlands, I don’t think were Catholics or much of anything else). So they went to Iowa (where Dad’s brother had some cows) and they were married in June 1924, about a week after Loretta died in California in a car accident, while chasing her dreams to another “promised land” near Palmdale CA – but they didn’t get the letter about her death till after their wedding.
Late in 1925, my parents took a boat from New Orleans to Panama, accompanied by two heifers. The cows soon died of whatever tropical disease (tick fever?) had long inhibited the Panamanian dairy industry. (I have said, they might have done better with goats or yaks as a milk source, instead of cows.) But they lived at the “jungle clearing” for about a year – till Mom discovered she’s pregnant, and my sister Doris was born April 1927 at a hospital in Canal Zone. They had been subsisting on their jungle crops, but they soon found there was not enough left over to feed another mouth, so Dad got a job helping build a railroad maybe about 30 miles away, and he came home on most weekends. When Doris was about a year old – oops, Mom’s pregnant again (it’s me). They decided, no way were they going to support a family of four from that little piece of land, so in August 1928 they returned to Los Angeles where by now a lot of both Dad’s and Mom’s siblings and their surviving parents were living. They sold the Panama land for enough to buy a lot and materials for a house in the Los Angeles basin; and Dad had enough construction skills to put it together. (He was a very intelligent and skilled guy, even though he could barely read and write.) Mom’s sister Ruth was living in Mira Loma (or I guess it was called Wineville then) and she told them about Riverdale Acres. They bought a lot on Charles Street and rented a house across the street for a few dollars a month while Dad built a little house. I was born November 24 1928, at the hospital in Los Angeles where Mom had worked.
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My sister Doris started in first grade at Eastvale Elementary School in 1933, a year before me. The school we attended during the 1930s housed all 8 grades in two rooms.
I was a very high-profile guy so a couple of years in, the teacher decided to push me up a grade to keep me busy. From then on, Doris and I went through school together including high school at Corona and community college at Chaffey. Most of the other students thought at first we were twins. My younger age, which advanced me academically, made my social integration even more difficult: I was too uncoordinated for athletics, and even more immature than my male classmates in relations with girls.
During the fall of my first year (1941) at Corona Jr High, a few foreign airplanes dropped unfriendly stuff on some battleships in Hawaii, so my secondary school career coincided rather closely with World War Two. By the end of my senior year (1945) most of the young men in my class had been drafted or enlisted in the military. In that year’s graduation, the only guys were me and a couple of medically challenged fellows.
I began to hit my stride at Chaffey, since age groupings at college are much less homogeneous. During my second year there, the student body was swamped with veterans a few years older, taking advantage of the GI Bill. I strongly admired some of my professors, including especially math professor Arthur Flum who was an alumnus of UC Berkeley – he posted some Cal literature on his bulletin board which helped me decide to put in my application there.
Another dominant influence in my early life was the church in Corona where our family attended. When I was about sixteen, I invited Peggy Pritchard to go to church with me. She was a couple of years younger than me and had recently moved to Riverdale Acres. Our friendship deepened over the next few years, and produced lots of revenue for the US Postal Service while I was at UC Berkeley. In June 1949 I graduated (BA Math), Peggy graduated from Corona High, and a month later we were married. (I tell people I was a Bachelor for one month.)
We lived in Corona, not too affluently at first. Then by a stroke of luck, in 1951 the US National Bureau of Standards decided to build a West Coast laboratory in surplus Naval Hospital facilities, using a group of buildings on the south side of Lake Norconian (west of Hamner, between third and fifth streets in Norco). They hired me as a Mathematician, and I thrived in the computing culture there.
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But by about 1959 I had advanced about as far as possible without an advanced academic degree. (As the Wizard of Oz said to the scarecrow: “Anyone can have a brain … they’ve got one thing you haven’t got: a diploma!” – in my case I was wisely advised to go for a PhD.)
Peggy and I moved to the SF Bay area in 1959, where we have lived ever since, and where our three children grew up. While in graduate school and for many years afterward, I worked at the “Rad Lab” on the hill above the Berkeley campus, and eventually became slightly famous as author of some Computer Science textbooks. In 1981 I left the Lab for an appointment as Professor of Computer Science at University of San Francisco (Jesuit school) where I taught till 1995.
Meanwhile, when our youngest of three children finished high school, Peggy went back to school (in her 50s) and got a Nursing license, and was immediately hired by the Veterans Hospital system. She retired soon after I did, and we settled down in our home in the Berkeley hills.
But a few years later, we found
ourselves driving quite regularly to San Jose and Fremont where our children
now lived with their families. So we decided, as Peggy put it, to “move while
we had a choice.” In 2003, well into our 70s, still in quite good health, and
having spent more than half our life in our Berkeley home, we moved into a
newly constructed house in San Jose near our son and his 4 children (and two
more born since 2003). So we have been spending a lot of time helping with our
grandkids. Our daughter at Fremont has two sons, the older of which was
recently married – so maybe there will be some great-grandchildren after a
while?
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EASTVALE
INDEX |
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HISTORIC AERIAL VIEWS OF EASTVALE 1938 to present (Note: These may take a minute or two to download)
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RIVER WALKS – Essays by LPM, including: How Did Eastvale Get Its
Name? (Nobody knows, but here’s a guess.) |
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Eastvale Area History before 1848
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JURUPA RANCHO History and map |
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