The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.
Dona Odom was interviewed in 1970 by Kathleen Hall for the CSUF Oral History Program. Here are some things I learned from this interview:
Odom came to Fullerton from Kansas with her mother (a Mrs. M. Shay), and her siblings in 1913.
“Mother’s two sisters were living in Los Angeles,” Odom remembers. “I guess they must have been here in 1890 and they must have encouraged mama to come.”
For two years, her mother ran the Santa Fe Hotel and a snack shop near the train depot.
“My sister married shortly after we came out here,” Odom said. “A young man she was going with worked as a telegraph operator with the railroad and he was transferred out here.”
About a month after arriving in Fullerton, her brother was blinded in a dynamite accident.
In 1915, her mother took over management of the oldest hotel in town. Built in 1887 by town founders the Amerige brothers at the corner of Spadra (Harbor) and Commonwealth, it was originally called the St. George hotel. The hotel had different names over the years: the Midland, the Pinson, and ultimately the Shay Hotel (after Dona’s mother).
They served meals for 25 cents.
“I waited on the tables and Mama did the cooking and she had a lady to
help her in the kitchen. Then we all got in and washed the dishes afterwards,” Odom said. “My mother was a wonderful cook.”
She remembers when the city was first paving North Spadra (Harbor) from the Masonic Temple to “up over the hill, why we had to get up at 4am in the morning as the workers had to get up and be at work at 5 in the morning. Many of them boarded with us.”
She remembers, when they took over the hotel it had about 40 rooms, and was painted green on the outside. The hotel had a large lobby with “a great big pot-bellied stove.” It had bannisters “that you loved to slide down as a child.” There was only one bathroom upstairs, and another downstairs, so guests had to share.
The hotel was two and a half stories, and was set back quite a ways from the street. They could host banquets that seated about 75 people.
In addition to overnight guests, the hotel also had long-term boarders.
“We had quite a number of regular boarders,” Odom remembers. “There was an old carpenter who gave me [a] pedestal. There were a lot of fellows who worked in the oil fields.”
She remembers guests gathering in the lobby to play cards and visit.
“It was a friendly type place,” she said.
They had an ice box and would get their ice from “the old ice place down on Truslow off of Amerige.”
They would get their meat from Hiltscher’s Meat Market.
She remembers William Jennings Bryan staying at the hotel in 1917 for the Chautauqua Circuit.
“I always admired him,” Odom said. “You know one thing, he ran more times for the Presidency than any other…But yet he was never President.”
Among other notable guests was “a group of Negro singers on the Chautauqua Circuit.”
“You know I can’t remember how it worked out because it used to
be that no one would sleep in a bed that a Negro had slept in,” she said. “As I remember these men were very grand looking, I am pretty sure that they stayed overnight. It was probably one or two nights because that was
the length of the Chautauqua meetings usually.”
Odom won a car in a contest from the local newspaper, the Fullerton Tribune, for selling the most subscriptions.
Even though many people were driving cars, the hotel still had old hitching posts outside for horses.
In those days, Fullerton was a fairly quiet town, what Odom called “a home community.” Anaheim, on the other hand, “had a number of saloons and was pretty lively.”
In 1917 there was an earthquake which damaged the chimneys of the hotel, causing it to be condemned as unsafe. According to Odom, there were already plans in place “to expand the business area also and the hotel had to go.”
In 1918, the Shay Hotel, one of the oldest buildings in town, was torn down.
Fullerton History 
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