It is a street name that is begging for an explanation. What compromise? Who compromised and what exactly did the compromising parties come to terms with? It is easy to guess that the compromise was in the form of a boundary line which formed the basis for a new road, something Glendorans now take for granted as Compromise Line Road, a short diagonal street with termini at Valley Center at its west end and Route 66 on its east side.Where exactly the name came from is still one of Glendora’s many mysteries, but it is clear that it was the result of a land dispute. But which one? There were countless scuffles in this area, from Dalton's initial partition of his property to land development around the turn of the 20th Century. There are only four known stories of how Compromise Line Road got its name—The Glendora 100th Anniversary book (Golden Book), Bettin’s This I Remember, Brackett’s 1920 History of Pomona Valley, and Jackson’s Beautiful Glendora—and three out of the four have a different explanation.
Which one is right?
In order to head in the right direction toward the answer to that question (one that is never quite answered), it is beneficial to look at the history of the land itself.
Until 1834, the land that surrounded Compromise Line Road and what would be Glendora (and Alosta, Lordsburg, Palomares, Mud Springs, Spadra…etc.) fell under the jurisdiction of the fourth mission in a chain of 21, founded on September 8, 1771 by Fathers Pedro Cambon and Angel Somera. Officially named San Antonio de Padua and San Gabriel Mission, construction on the church itself didn’t begin until 1779, but when completed, the mission controlled much of the land from Los Angeles to San Bernardino.
In 1834, the Mexican government, fresh from their break from Spanish rule, deemed the Spanish missions unnecessary and made their vast holdings of land available to the public. Called secularization, it simply means that the church no longer controlled the land, and most of it was quickly converted into multi-thousand-acre ranchos and sold to the public. Large swaths of it was granted to special Mexican citizens for the return of favors to the government in exchange for colonization of the land.At the time, Ygnacio Palomares (above) and Ricardo Vejar leased some property from Maria Rita Valdez de Villa on her Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas, which is now Beverly Hills. However, with a large collection of livestock, the 4400-acre tract of land was quite crowded, and it was decided that Palomares and Vejar would take advantage of this newly available land east of the Mission.
When the weather began to warm in the spring of 1837, Palomares and Vejar trekked to the Pomona Valley to see for themselves the possibilities in the east. Along the way, they stopped at the San Gabriel Mission and met Padre Jose Maria Zalvidea, who agreed to join them and consecrate their new endeavor. On March 19, 1837, the two families and Father Zalvidea met under an ancient oak tree (shown here around 1920) while the Father held a Benediction, blessing their new home. Today, the site of the blessing is at 458 Kenoak Place, just east of White and south of the 10 freeway in Pomona. The old oak was razed in 1922 and all that remains is a stump and a bronze plaque placed there by the Pomona Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Palomares and Vejar (right) named the land San Jose in honor of Saint Joseph, as March 19 is the feast day for the Saint. Eight days later, the two men filed a petition with Governor Juan B. Alvarado for “the place being vacant which is known by the name San Jose, distant some six leagues, more or less, from the Ex-Mission San Gabriel.” Without much fanfare, the petition was approved by the ayuntamiento (city council) of Los Angeles and granted to Palomares and Vejar.Simply enough, the two men divided the land equally and arbitrarily: Palomares took possession of the northern half, which became known as Rancho San Jose Arriba (Upper), and Vejar settled in the southern half, which became known as Rancho San Jose Abajo (Lower). Later that year, on August 3, Jose Sepulveda, acting as the mayor of Los Angeles, ordered a survey of the lands to map out the boundaries of the rancho. Lacking solid landmarks, the surveyors used what was available to mark the boundaries, items like a skull inside the boughs of an oak tree or wooden crosses set against the rocks would come back to haunt them years later when the land claims came into question by the United States government.
Enter Luis Arenas to the picture in 1838, serving with Palomares in LA city government and eventually becoming his brother-in-law. On March 14, 1840, Arenas was granted a league of land to be attached to the Rancho San Jose, and the deed was regranted to include Arenas as the third partner with Palomares and Vejar. Arenas took possession of the 4430-acre rancho known as the “San Jose Addition” but built his house near his brother-in-law at the intersection of McKinley and Gibbs Avenues in Pomona (it no longer exists). His livestock grazed on land that would some day be known as Glendora.
On November 8, 1841, Arenas received another league of land adjacent to Rancho San Jose Addition. It was called Rancho El Susa, which consisted of 4,431 acres. Arenas received the land by a grant from Governor (pro-tem) Manuel Jimeno. In 1844, Henry Dalton, a native of England, bought both ranchos belonging to Arenas for $7,000. He chose Rancho El Susa as his home renaming it Azusa de Dalton. Rancho Azusa de Dalton became what is now the City of Azusa. Dalton built a house here on a place known as Dalton Hill. The Dalton home site was near 6th Street and Cerritos Avenue in Azusa.
The following year, Henry Dalton convinced Ricardo Vejar and Ygnacio Palomares to request a formal partition of Ranch San Jose, that is, Dalton wanted to know exactly what land was his as opposed to what land was Vejar’s or Palomares’s. Palomares was reluctant at first but curiosity got the better of him and he agreed to the partition. Judge Juan Gallardo was the mayor of Los Angeles at the time, and he hired surveyor Jaspar O’Farrell to map out the divisions of the two ranchos. It took him five days to produce the map that Judge Gallardo approved on February 12, 1846. Shown here is the Palomares Rancho San Jose House in 1875.In Frank Parkhurst Brackett’s 1920 book The History of Pomona Valley, he describes the conflict that arose: “Between the original owners there had been no trouble, no thought of separation, no question of boundaries. The San Jose de Ariba was Palomares; the San Jose de Abajo was Vejar’s , and the “Addition” was Arenas. There were no fences and the cattle were separated from time to time, as they must also be from those of other herds, at the rodeos, by their brands. But after Arenas had sold out his interest to Henry Dalton, the question of division arose. Palomares objected to the partition and protested against the division proposed.”
Not surprising, Ygnacio Palomares was not satisfied with the results. For years, he disputed the findings of the O’Farrell survey in a series of legal battles. It was the first of many legal battles to be fought over this property, but did this one in particular result in the great compromise that bore the street’s name?
In order to answer that question, it is necessary to take a look at the surveys taken of the eastern part of the San Gabriel Valley, specifically the O’Farrell survey and how it stacks up with today’s map of Glendora.
As mentioned above, the first official survey of the three ranchos was done by Jasper O’Farrell in February 1846. Born in Wexford County, Ireland, in 1817, O’Farrell was educated in Dublin before making his way to San Francisco on October 20, 1843 (via Chile). He became the official surveyor of San Francisco and in 1858 he was elected to state senate, representing Sonoma County. In 1849, he married Mary McChristian and went on to father eight children, of which five lived to adulthood.
His survey, which took him five days to complete, clearly shows the boundaries of the three properties, but the big difference is that the O’Farrell survey does not include Rancho Azusa de Dalton, only his Addition property. The upper left hand corner of the survey begins at San Felipe Hill, better known today as the site of the Fairmont Cemetery. On the other hand, the compilation survey shows the three accepted U.S. government surveys of Thompson, Hancock and Wheeler, and on that map, Rancho Azusa de Dalton is included, sharing a common point at San Felipe Hill (at least Thompson’s portion does; Hancock’s version has them entirely apart).
Two versions of the O’Farrell survey still exist: One is the full document submitted to Gallardo, showing all three of the properties owned by the three men and their relation to each other; while the other one appears to be a copy of the original specifically for Vejar (which he spells with a B), as it only shows his sectioned portion of the land.
To perhaps dismiss that Compromise Line Road got its name from Palomares's complaints of the survey, a closer look at the O’Farrell survey is necessary. Because of the angle of Compromise Line Road, it would seem logical that the dispute is a boundary line between the two sections of land that travels east to west similar to the delineation of Compromise Line Road. A conflict that would affect this line would more than logically consist of boundary claims that would push the property lines to the north or the south depending on how it was resolved. The only place this is possible is where Palomares’s San Jose Abajo meets Vejar’s San Jose Arriba, and the only way to get there is to follow the survey.
According to early descriptions of their properties, the line dividing San Jose Abajo and San Jose Arriba started at roughly a block or so north of today's Holt Avenue in Pomona. At about Huntington Boulevard (just west of White Avenue in Pomona) the dividing line diverted to the northwest, skirting the west banks of Puddingstone Reservoir (which, of course, wasn’t there at the time) and on to the northwest corner of the rancho, where the boundary line crosses Bonita Avenue. At least on the west side of their properties, this puts their common boundary lines in a suspicious position.
The only landmark shown on the O’Farrell survey that is known today is San Felipe Hill, which is the only place to begin. The goal here is to measure on a current map the location of the boundary points derived from the O’Farrell survey to find where the boundary line between Palomares and Vejar’s properties was and how that relates to Compromise Line Road today. The units of measurement of the survey (and of all surveys of the times) are shown in Spanish varas (aka California varas, as there are four different types of varas used in land measurement), and the degrees of declination are difficult to read (but not impossible). For starters, one California vara equals 2.75 U.S. feet, and roughly 5,280 feet equal a mile.
Leg One: From San Felipe Hill, the western boundary of the San Jose Addition ventures southward 21 degrees west of north for 2,100 vara, or 5,775 feet. Plotted on a current map, this first leg of the journey takes us to N. Cerritos Avenue just south of Matchwood Street in Azusa, which is now the site of Azusa High School.
Leg Two: From there, the boundary continues south, 36 degrees east of north for 6,325 vara, or 12,393.75 feet. The end point for this leg is the intersection of Groverdale Street and Delay Avenue in Covina, southwest of Cienega and Grand avenues.
Leg Three: The boundary line takes a sharp left-hand turn 15 degrees north of true east and travels for 2,600 varas, or 7,150 feet. This short jog ends at the point right where the westbound lanes of the 210 Freeway crosses Big Dalton Wash west of the 1100 block of S. Glendora Avenue and just west of the Grand/Glendora exit ramp.
Leg Four: Unfortunately, the measurement and declination for this next section are obscured by the boundary line itself, so the exact numbers cannot be ascertained. However, if the survey is drawn accurately (and it was by a man who discovered that a previous survey of San Francisco was off by 2.5 degrees, eventually referred to the “O’Farrell Swing”), a simple protractor shows the declination is 10 degrees east of true north. Also, based on a measurement of the other legs, it can be accurately estimated that this leg is 1,400 varas or 3,850 feet. That puts the western most point of Vejar’s San Jose Arriba west of Glendora Avenue in the parking lot behind The Hot Spot tanning salon, south of the railroad tracks. This point on the boundary line is approximately one mile to the northeast from Bonita Avenue, where the description provided above suggested it should have been. In all fairness, it said the boundary crosses Bonita Avenue, and Leg Three does come fairly close (and the next leg follows it slightly to the south).
Leg Five: The boundary line dips south now, 34 degrees south of true east to be exact, and it goes for 5,325 varas, or 14,643.75 feet (2.77 miles). This point is in the Ralphs parking lot at the corner of Arrow Highway and Lone Hill. It is at this point where Dalton’s, Palomares’s and Vejar’s property all meet, and it is the southwestern most corner of Palomares’s San Jose Abajo. At least, according to O’Farrell.
The next leg of the boundary continues along this same heading for another 4,115 varas where it is said that it meets at White Avenue in Pomona…
Though an interesting look back into time, essentially it looks as though this exercise has fulfilled its goals. It appears as though the boundary between Palomares and Vejar are nowhere near the current Compromise Line Road, which is a clear mile and a half to the north.
Is the O’Farrell survey wrong? Probably not for the times, especially when there were very few roads through the area. Who knows the truth? There is very little to go on, some arbitrary descriptions of non-existent landmarks, a hand-drawn map that may lack some technical accuracy and no record of Palomares’s official complaint. Perhaps 12 years later, Hancock had a different interpretation of the boundaries and shifted it north to match that of Compromise Line Road-Route 66-Foothill. There is always that possibility.
But what of the road itself? Compromise Line Road, at the point where it intersects with Valley Center, follows a 12 degree delineation south of true east all the way until it meets Route 66, which follows the same angle as far as Garey Avenue in Pomona before it turns due east again.
The reason this works out like this, according to a 1921 Glendora map produced by O.A. Gierlich (at left), is that then-Alosta (then Route 66, then Alosta…now Historic Route 66) did not go all the way through directly like it does today. Instead, it met up with Compromise Line and Valley Center to form a three-way triangular-shaped intersection. From there, Compromise Line Road took cars out of town to the east. It probably wasn’t until 1929 when the Santa Fe railroad built the overpass that Alosta was straightened, bypassing Valley Center altogether and canceling out most of Compromise Line Road in its place.
Of course, this detail doesn’t offer a hint to the road’s namesake, and a look into other descriptions of the San Jose Addition, at least according to Hancock, isn’t much help either: In Frank Parkhurst Brackett’s 1920 book The History of Pomona Valley, he describes the boundaries of the San Jose Addition: “The San Jose Addition is a five-sided piece, of irregular shape, one side of which coincides with the sixth side of the Rancho San Jose between the corners of the Tinaja and Botello Oaks. Another side runs north of west from the corner of the Botello Oak to the much disputed north corner, southeast of Glendora. This corner was marked by an oak which parties living to the north attempted again and again to burn or destroy, so as to push their south line farther south. There was much dispute over the corner, but finally it was located by formal agreement, and the road which follows the new line from the Botello Oak corner to this one, has since been known as ‘Compromise Road.’”
The confusion of the landmarks is very evident… Tinaja?… Botello Oak? Looking at the O’Farrell survey, those landmarks are not mentioned and it is well assumed that those two trees are no longer around. But they are mentioned quite frequently in numerous publications. However, this unnamed oak tree in Brackett’s book is intriguing. It seems to coincide with the Botello Oak.
In the book American and English Railroad Cases by William McKinney (1891), he describes the boundaries of the San Jose: “That the lines of the survey of San Jose be run as follows: Commencing at the willow at the southeast corner, as the point designated by Hancock as ‘large rock in the center of water pool, agreed on as the place where the black willow of the juridical possession once existed;’ thence westerly along the base of the mountains, so as to include the springs near the ravine, to the black walnut; thence northerly to the oak of the Tueaja [sic]; thence northeasterly to the Botello oak; thence easterly in a direct line to a point on the arroyo of San Antonio, 9,700 varas north of the black willow, and thence southerly along said arroyo of San Antonio to the place of beginning.”
Sheldon Jackson weighs in about Compromise Line in his book Beautiful Glendora, when he discusses the boundaries of the Addition, per the adjusted Hancock survey, but he leaves the road’s origins decidedly vague. The northwest corner of the San Jose Addition, as finally settled, was near what is now the intersection of Gladstone and Ben Lomond Avenues and from there it ran diagonally, skirting the north side of the South Hills, to a point a few hundred feet north of the present Santa Fe Railway viaduct which crosses Highway 66. From this point (the present road is significantly called ‘Compromise Line Road,’ and extends from the end of Valley Center Avenue to Highway 66 just east of the viaduct) it traveled diagonally once again almost parallel to Highway 66, and then hooked onto the main body of the San Jose Rancho.”
However, it is clear that the original complaint by Palomares after the O’Farrell survey isn’t the one that resulted in the formation of Compromise Line Road. Instead, there are two conflicting reports published in two credible books about Glendora in the last 20 years. The evidence, although not pointing to a specific conclusion, suggests that the Jackson book is in error of crediting the Compromise Line Road to the wrong generation of ranchers in Glendora.
One: In the Glendora’s 100th Anniversary book (the “Golden Book”) it lists street names and their apparent origins on Page 176, claiming that Compromise Line Road was a result of a boundary dispute “between Rancho Azusa and the San Jose Addition (1850s).
There was only one survey done in the 1850s and that was by the now infamous Henry Hancock in 1858, when he split up Dalton’s land, moved the Addition about two miles to the east (so Rancho Azusa de Dalton and the Addition were no longer touching), and opened up most of the Azusa Valley to renters, squatters, homesteaders and/or settlers (depending on your point of view). In Keith Vosburg’s book Azusa: Old and New, he spells out the boundaries of the San Jose Addition by Henry Hancock’s 1858 survey: “Except on the south, the boundaries of the Azusa were equitable enough; but while taking San Felipe Hill as the northeast point of the Azusa, Hancock refused to accept it as the northwest corner of the San Jose Addition. He ran such lines that the two not only did not border each other, but did not even meet at any point.”
If the 100th Anniversary book is true, there couldn’t possibly be a conflict between the boundaries of the Rancho Azusa (owned by Dalton) and the San Jose Addition (also owned by Dalton). Why would he contest the boundaries of his own land? As well, if the Hancock survey is taken into consideration, the two properties, as surveyed in 1858, did not even meet at any single point along each of their entire boundaries.
Two: On Page 76 of the well respected This I Remember by Helen Kennard Bettin, a story written by Leslie A. Warren (the son of C.C. Warren, who lived on property very close to Compromise Line Road) talks about the road and the “Bar T” oak: “The Bar T oak stands at the intersection of Compromise Road and Route 66. It is—or was—marked with a bar and a ‘T.’ It served as a landmark in the early days. When Mr. Joy bought the present Warren land, he wanted the disagreements settled between the San Jose Ranch Company south of Highway 66 and the ranchers north of 66. So both sides ran a survey—and disagreed. Finally, a compromise was agreed upon and the present line of Route 66 established.”
C.C. Warren and family came to Glendora in 1898, bought a seven-acre tract of land from F.D. Joy on the corner of today’s Amelia and Route 66 and set up a two-room house. In addition to Joy, his neighbors were Harvey Davenport, Stoddard Jess and Charles Cunninghams. Five hundred acres of land in that area was previously owned by Joy, Stoddard Jess (who was the president of a bank in Pomona) and a third, unknown man. In Bettin’s This I Remember, Mrs. F.D. Joy wrote in November 1945 about Compromise Line in the most vaguest of terms: “It was through the efforts of Mr. Joy and Mr. Warren that ‘Compromise’ Road, off our present Highway 66, was gotten through.”
This provides, at the very least, a timeline of Compromise Line Road, if Bettin’s book is to be taken as first-person fact. Both Joy and Warren purchased property between 1898 and 1900, which they are given credit for creating the road, and Compromise Line Road itself shows up (maybe for the first time) on a map printed in 1921.
What happened in those 22 years? Whom did Joy buy his property from?
Furthermore, Leslie Warren’s story supports the ideas found in Brackett’s book that a tree was instrumental in deciding the boundary line, perhaps the two oaks mentioned in both books are, in fact, the same oak tree. The problem is discovering where exactly this elusive Botello oak used to stand and if it is in line with the current configuration of Compromise Line.
On the Hancock/Thompson/Wheeler compilation survey map (above), there is no mention of a Botello oak; however, at the southeast corner of Hancock’s version of San Jose Addition, marked on the map on Old San Bernardino Road (which is now Arrow Highway) at the corner of the Addition and Rancho San Jose proper is “Place of the Encino Del Tenaja.” This, in conjunction with the descriptions of the Tenaja and the Botello oak in McKinney’s book as well as Brackett’s book (both quoted above) places the Botello oak roughly where Baseline meets Route 66 just east of San Dimas Canyon Road. Brackett’s description is worth mentioning again: “Another side [of the San Jose Addition] runs north of west from the corner of the Botello Oak to the much disputed north corner, southeast of Glendora. This corner was marked by an oak…” On any map of the Glendora/San Dimas border area, follow Route 66 from the Baseline intersection in San Dimas toward Glendora… it goes directly to Compromise Line.
What is most interesting, perhaps the crux to this story, is that shown in the photograph at the top of this page of Route 66 looking west past Compromise Line Road is a giant old Live Oak on that very corner, so big in fact that it obscures Compromise Line Road as it meets with Valley Center and Route 66. It is quite an imposing landmark. There is very little doubt that the oak tree Brackett is referring to and the “Bar T” oak in Warren’s story—the unnamed oak that makes the southern line of the San Jose Addition (according to the Hancock survey because it was the accepted rule of thumb by then)—are the same, making it logical that Leslie Warren’s story about a more modern boundary conflict between the San Jose Ranch Company and ranchers who owned the northern property most probable.
A extra note worthy of mention here: Explore the Glendora region in any modern Thomas Guide (1996 and 2001 editions specifically) and you'll see that the Thomas Brothers still hold a candle to the Hancock survey by including the boundaries of the Rancho San Jose Addition, which follows just north of Compromise Line. Also, look at the 1921 O.A. Gierlich map above. The dotted line that peaks just northeast of the Valley Center/Compromise Line Road junction is the Hancock surveyed San Jose Addition line as well.
If there was a compromise that led to the formation of this road, it no doubt involves this line.
So what was it about San Jose Ranch Company that caused such problems? First it is necessary to discover exactly how the San Jose Ranch Company came to being and how they ended up controlling so much of the land in the area. San Jose de Ariba isn’t the portion of the land that is in question—at least not all of it—and what needs to be focused on is the part of the Rancho San Jose that is currently south of present day Route 66. Even though the O’Farrell survey clearly shows the line between the two halves of the San Jose was further south, perhaps over time (more importantly, after the Hancock and Thompson surveys), the line shifted north to the point of conflict in question.
By 1863, Rancho San Jose was in decline, hit hard by a smallpox epidemic that killed or scared off most of the settlers. The following year, on November 8, Palomares himself became ill and died. Drought soon followed, cattle died and crops withered. Ricardo Vejar, up until then one of the wealthiest men in the state, was forced to borrow money to keep his rancho, but it wasn’t enough. Late in 1863, unable to repay a $30,000 loan, he turned his section of the San Jose (the lower half) over to creditors. In Spadra in 1882, he died in poverty (other accounts having him falling from a horse and dying in 1863). Shown here is the Palomares Adobe in 1938 before its renovation.
The American businessmen and creditors who foreclosed on Vejar’s land were Isaac (some sources have referred to him as Louis) Schlesinger and Hyman Tischler. The language of the deed is as follows: “All that certain rancho, tract, and the parcel of land situated, lying, and being in the county of Los Angeles, state aforesaid, known, called and described as the rancho of San Jose, for a more particular and accurate description reference being had to the grant of the same by the Mexican government, the confirmation thereof by the United States land commission, and the district court of the United States for the southern district of California, and the survey of the same by the government of the United states, containing two leagues, be the same more or less.” But neither Schlesinger nor Tischler were ever given the chance to take possession of the land. Tischler was ambushed by vengeful Mexicans, where his partner Edward Newsman was killed. It was enough for Tischler, who was plenty frightened for his life, to flee to San Francisco to manage the property from afar. Schlesinger, on the other hand was killed…which makes for an interesting sidebar story: It involves now sunken treasure, betrayal and foul play aboard the Los Angeles Harbor ferry boat, the Ada Hancock, on April 27, 1863.
Since the Los Angeles harbor wasn’t large enough or deep enough to handle the big steamers General Phineas Banning, owner of the Banning Dock in Wilmington, owned several smaller ships to ferry passengers and cargo from the large ships off the coast into the dock. The Ada Hancock (coincidentally enough named after the daughter of Henry Hancock, who plays such an important role in Glendora’s prehistory) was 85 tons and 65 feet long.
Isaac Schlesinger was a Wells Fargo agent at the time, but he also moonlighted as a loan shark, charging exorbitant interest rates to large estate owners in the hopes that they would default on the loan and sign over the land during foreclosure proceedings. When Schlesinger went to Vejar’s land to foreclose on his property, he met up with a very agitated Ramon Vejar, Ricardo’s son, who instead of submitting nicely, attacked Schlesinger and his men, killing one and injuring another.
Later Schlesinger heard that Ramon Vejar wasn’t yet finished voicing his dislike for Schlesinger's business practices and was out to seek revenge for trying to foreclose on his father’s property. In rather of a panic, Schlesinger sold his remaining loans to a man named Clark for $100,000 in gold.
In the lobby of the Bella Union Hotel in L.A., Schlesinger met with Wells Fargo coworker, William Richie, asking him to take his money to San Francisco for him while he fled east, as far as possible from Vejar. What Schlesinger didn’t know is that Richie already had $25,000 on him and with the additional $100,000, changed his final destination for the South Pacific instead, to live out his life in immeasurable comfort.
As the Ada Hancock was pulling away from the dock to ferry its passengers—along with General Banning and some of his family—to the S.S. Senator (shown above) anchored a mile out to sea, one last passenger ran up the dock and demanded to be let aboard. It was Schlesinger who had caught wind of Richie’s plans.
From an article published by the Land-Sea Discovery Group called “Lost Gold of the Ada Hancock” it writes: “The vessels lines were cast off and the ship had started to swing away from the pier when a late boarder ran up and demanded to be put on the ship. Some of the crew tossed out a line and by hand pulled the ship into the pier so the man could be boarded. Later a Mexican deck hand reported that the man was Isaac Schlesinger, a man he knew well on the docks. The dockhand said that Schlesinger was very angry. One of the passengers who saw the affair said that the ferry had cast off and then gone back in to pick up a passenger [Schlesinger]. When [he] finally boarded the ship [it] backed away from the dock and proceeded towards [the Senator]. He watched for a short period of time and then he says he stepped back to let a crewmember pass and while his eyes were diverted he heard gunshots. When he looked again to the ship it exploded.”
A May 31, 1863 article in the New York Times says: “The boiler, which exploded, spreading such terrible devastation, was a new one, put into her only a year since, and no suspicion was entertained of its safety. Thus far, as in most other cases of boiler explosions, the cause of the accident is involved in mystery.”
The Ada Hancock immediately sunk into the harbor, taking twenty-six of the over fifty passengers with it. All but two of the survivors were injured. Schlesinger and Ritchie also both died in the blast.
What actually happened aboard the ship? No one really knows. But some believe that the boiler was hit by a wayward gunshot, causing it to explode and take the ship with it. Others suspect that Schlesinger’s gunshots hit barrels of gun powder that had been loaded on the Ada Hancock earlier in the day, but regrettably not yet unloaded. Spectators on the docks stated that the air was thick with the smell of gun powder. On the other hand, a Banning employee claimed that the Ada Hancock’s boiler was defective.
Three days after the explosion the mutilated corpse of William Ritchie washed up on shore. Schlesinger’s body was not discovered until 1912 when workers excavating the shoreline uncovered a skeleton with a silver belt buckle marked with the initials “I.S.”
To this day, the $125,000 in gold has yet to be found and is somewhere at the bottom of the Los Angeles Harbor.
In the end, Schlesinger was dead and Tischler was scared of Vejar enough not to return, placing Louis Phillips in charge of the property. Phillips was from Germany, but came to California in 1850 as part of the Gold Rush. He moved to Los Angeles in 1853 and became a merchant in Paredon Blanco, which is now Boyle Heights. For taking care of Rancho San Jose Abajo for Tischler, Phillips received $100 a month and half of any increase in livestock. On April 6, 1866, for whatever reason, Louis Phillips received a quitclaim deed from Tischler for the rancho in exchange for $30,000.
The trouble with a quitclaim deed is that it is used only when the original owner (the grantor) is no longer interested in the property. Much less than a granted deed, a quitclaim deed doesn’t actually prove that the grantor ever owned the property to begin with. In 1875, Phillips built the first brick structure in the valley and lived there until his death on March 16, 1900. The house, located at 2640 Pomona Boulevard in Pomona, is still there. The area is now known as Phillips Ranch.
Further north, Phillips sold some land to William Rubottom, who named his new land Spadra after his hometown of Spadra Bluffs, Arkansas. It later became Pomona, a city too far away to concern this topic. The Palomares family sold 70 acres to Robert S. Arnett in 1868 and two years later Cyrus Burdick bought land in what would become Ganesha Park. In 1873, Reverend Charles F. Loop and Alvin R. Meserve purchased 2000 acres of Palomares land in the northwest section of the rancho for eight dollars an acre. This land is situated about three miles northeast of Pomona and is perhaps known locally as the Loop and Meserve Tract—at least it was 100 years ago.
But Phillips was tangled in his own legal problems regarding his land. From the hearings of the Supreme Court in California on February 13, 1888, Phillips vs. Mound City Land and Water Association, whom both claimed portions of the Rancho San Jose as their own: “Here the United States have recognized the existence of the right of the original Mexican grantees to the land which has been patented, and by the patents in vested them with any title which passed under the treaty from the Mexican government to that of the United States.
“As to this there is no controversy now; neither is there any dispute about the construction of the patents or the decrees on which they rest. Indeed, it was substantially conceded in argument that a decree could only be given by the district court, "in view of the controversy disclosed by the petitions," for an undivided interest to each claimant, leaving it to be determined in some other way whether there had been a partition or not. The following is the language of counsel on that subject: ‘The effect of the decrees of the district court was . . . simply to leave the question of partition undetermined -- that is to say, if, as claimed by Palomares, there was no partition, then the land was confirmed to the parties interested as co-tenants; but if, as claimed by Vejar and Dalton, there was a partition, then upon well established principles it was in effect confirmed to them in segregated portions, as allotted to them by the partition.’
In his book cited above, Brackett explains: “It is interesting to observe here that while the original grants were recognized later by the United States Land Commission, and confirmed by the United States District Court in 1875, and while the United States Government issued a patent to Dalton, Palomares and Vejar for the Rancho, yet as late as 1884, the Supreme Court of California, in a case brought by the Mound City Land and Water Company against Phillips and others to quiet title, set aside the decree of partition made by Juan Gallardo [the O’Farrell survey], and ordered a new partition. This new partition, however, has never been made, and the old partition has been valid to all intents and purposes to the present time.”
Information regarding anyone who bought any land north of Spadra—even north of Charter Oak—or west of Mud Springs is difficult to come by. It is known that Dalton, because of his heavy debt resulting from the extensive legal action protecting his land, ironically was forced to sell the Addition property indirectly to the Mound City Land and Water Association in 1878. Technically, he deeded half interest in his four ranches to Francois L.A. Pinoche, and when he died in May 1874, his heirs foreclosed… this is the source of Dalton’s major legal problems. In the end, on January 27, 1877, Dalton’s attorney Louis Wolfskill, took over the debt on the property and it became his. Enter the Mound City Land and Water Association and its major stockholders (James B. and David H. Seawell, Thomas H. Hudson, W. A. Spurlock. George W. Morgan and Lewis Wolfskill…joined two months later J. N. Teague and his father, and by James H. and Wm. T. Clark). The company was incorporated July 25, 1878, with a capital stock of $200,000. Wolfskill and Dalton signed over everything to the Mound City Land and Water Association.
From the popular Lewis publication: Perry D. Cover “was a member of the well-known firm of Stewart, Chamberlain & Cover, and was an incorporator and president of the Mound City Land and Water Company. This company purchased 500 acres of land and founded Mound City, perfecting a fine irrigation system by piping water from Bear valley, built a $30,000 hotel, etc. Mr. Cover is quite largely interested in improving lands, planting orange groves, etc., at Mound City. He has a firm faith in the future wealth of the city of his creation.”
This is a good point to clarify that by this time, 1874-1880, the Hancock survey had reared its head in the Azusa Valley, shifting the various portions of the ranchos to the legally accepted locations (at least at the time) and the town that would be Glendora was beginning to take shape, as most of the original settlers (the ones that stayed for the duration) had already arrived and set up house…Whitcomb would be along in a couple of years, however, bringing with him his idea of Glendora.
A year after Mound City, 1879, what was left of the property ended up on the auction block. Beckett elaborates: “In the next five years, the four great ranches of thousands of acres were tossed back and forth like a basketball… deed after deed was made out for the whole property, and mortgages were assigned and reassigned, with amounts at issue running from $1,000 to $100,000. Wolfskill to Cardwell, Daltons to Sabichi, the Pinoche executors to J. Mora Moss, and then to Martz and Martz, everybody by the sheriff to the Los Angeles County Bank.”
Between 1880 and 1887, almost all of the property not sold to individual ranchers was deeded to J.S. Slauson, who went on to found the City of Azusa. By this time, most all of the primary people involved in the various ranchos were dead, but a larger land boom was on the horizon, brought to the valley by the puff of smoke from the Santa Fe. From this new development, C.T. Mills and Moses L. Wicks (both from the Pomona Land and Water Company) formed a new company that included some Santa Fe officials and several from the Mound City Land and Water Association. Some of the largest stock holders were M.L. Wicks, George W. Hughes, R.F. Lotspeich and F. Sabichi along with about 30 other men in the valley. The company was named the San Jose Ranch Company and incorporated on February 28, 1887, receiving most all of the property held by Slauson and those of the Mound City Land and Water Association. Additionally, it bought 665 acres at the northwest corner of Louis Phillip’s half of the San Jose Rancho, thus now processing most all the land north of the San Jose Hills (those above Cal Poly) from LaVerne to Glendora and onto the Azusa ditch… basically, the San Jose Ranch Company controlled all of the San Jose Addition and all of Dalton’s portion of the Rancho San Jose, nearly 8,000 acres.
From here, the San Jose Ranch Company ran into conflict with the San Jose Land and Water Company over control of the land in and around the San Dimas Canyon and points west. They weren’t interested in the land, just the water in it. Dozens of lawsuits resulted, including some visits to the Supreme Court. In the end, most of the original founders of each company filtered off to start their own water companies (as such was where the real money was at the time), all coming together in 1911 to form the San Dimas Water Company.
The land in question fell to various settlers as it was sold off in bits and pieces over the course of several years.
In the 1920 book The History of Pomona Valley, it states: “After two years on the Chino, Mr. Burdick decided to have a ranch and cattle of his own [in 1868], even if on a small scale. In the San Dimas Canyon, north of Mud Springs, there was living at this time a Dr. Charles Cunningham and his family, who had come from San Bernardino not long before and taken up a quarter section of government land. He called Mr. Burdick’s attention to a part of a section between his land and that of Henry Dalton in the addition to the San Jose Tract, near the mouth of the San Dimas Canyon…Thus it came about that he selected for his ranch the place on which is now the C.C. Warren house and grove. Here they built a dwelling house, barn and milkhouse.”
The following year, he sold his ranch to the Cunninghams and moved south to the Ganisha Park area.
Irrigation in California by California Office of State Engineer, William Hammond Hall, describes the holdings of the San Jose Ranch Company as of 1888: “The San Jose Ranch Company was incorporated in 1886 [1887, actually], with a capital stock of $300,000. It claims the water of the San Dimas canon, upon the basis of its claims to land embracing this canon for several miles of its course through the mountains above, and upon the basis of its contract with the San Dimas Land and Water Company, heretofore referred to San Jose Land and Water Company. This company has several hundred acres of land in the gore north and west of the San Dimas wash near the mouth of the canyon, and south of the mountain slope, and owns a tract of land embracing the bed of the canon, about two miles from its mouth.”
It goes on to state: “As yet, the water has not been used by this system and no organization for its distribution has been effected. The claims of this company are in direct conflict with those of the two next before spoken of, and there is litigation pending as to the merits of the respective claims.”
After all of this, what is left to tell about Compromise Line Road? Nothing but the fact that it is still there and the historic sources on this topic have been exhausted. On one side of the road lives the Warrens, the Joys and the Cunninghams and on the other, controlling interest lies with the San Jose Ranch Company. They were at odds over the borderline that revolved around the unfortunate placement of a grand oak and how it relates to their lands.
There is no further information leading to any solid conclusions.
The only two credible mentions of the origins of Compromise Line Road are by the wife and son of one of the permanent settlers in the immediate area, C.C. Warren, who owned the land on the corner of what is now Route 66 and Amelia.
Here’s where the story ends: Warren and Joy (with perhaps others) disputing the boundaries of their properties along a borderline that would become Compromise Line Road sometime between 1898 and 1921.
But fairer yet shall bloom our fields,
And grander orchards grow,
And sweeter music than the birds
These pleasant vales shall know.
For Science here shall rear her seats,
And, versed in arts of peace,
Our public schools shall emulate
The shrines of ancient Greece.
But San Jose, sweet San Jose,
Thou mountain valley fair,
Begirt by half a hundred hills,
Enthroned 'mid beauty rare,
Shall see thy towering domes arise
Where Phillips herds his sheep,
And orange orchards yet shall stand
Where Vejar's mustangs sweep.
The flocks of Palomares
Must seek some distant land.
His hog-trod rich cienegas
The golden wheat shall yield.
And all those glorious uplands.
Where rabbits burrow now,
Shall thrill beneath the Saxon’s trod,
Behind a Yankee plow.
The Indian for a thousand years
That lovely vale possessed,
The Spaniard for a century
The native race oppressed.
But now the blue-eyed Saxon.
From o'er the distant main.
With' steady step is driving back
The dark-eyed race of Spain.
I see a thousand vineyards.
Alt o'er that lovely plain :
I see the fair-haired Saxon
Where dwelt the sons of Spain.
I hear the laboring engine.
Where once carretas crawled:
I hear the sons of children
Where Spanish oxen bawled.
I see the lovely cottage
Where rancheria stood,
I hear our country's music
From out the distant wood.
And where base superstition-
Was once the people’s guide,
I see arise the public school —
The freeman’s hope and pride.
0 comments:
Post a Comment