The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

For this series, I compare a historic photo of Fullerton with a contemporary one from approximately the same angle. Below are two photographs of the northeast corner of Malden Ave. and Commonwealth Ave., one from the early 1900s, of a Presbyterian Church (which has since been torn down), and one from 2023, of a car dealership.

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

For this series, I compare a historic photo of Fullerton with a contemporary one from approximately the same angle. Below are two photographs of the northeast corner of Harbor Blvd. and Amerige Ave., one from around 1910, of P.A. Schumacher’s Real Estate/Insurance/Notary Public business (which has since been torn down), and one from 2023 of The Night Owl, a coffee shop.

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

For this series, I compare a historic photo of Fullerton with a contemporary one from approximately the same angle. Below are two photographs of the northwest corner of Harbor Blvd. and Commonwealth Ave., one from 1891, of the Chadbourne building (which has since been torn down), and one from 2023 of a salon.

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

For this series, I compare a historic photo of Fullerton with a contemporary one from approximately the same angle. Below are two photographs of the bridge at Malden and Chapman, one from 1935 when the bridge was constructed as a WPA project during the Great Depression, and one from 2023.

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

Dorothy Newton was interviewed by David L. Miller in 1970 for the CSUF Oral History Program. Here are some things I learned from her interview.

She was born in eastern Colorado, then moved to to Illinois, where her father was a minister at the Christian Church. She moved out to California for college, where she attended UCLA and USC. In 1934 she was hired to teach English at Fullerton Union High School. At that time there were around 800 students, and Fullerton was the only high school in the area. Students came to campus on buses from neighboring cities like La Habra and even Yorba Linda. It wasn’t until the post World War II population boom that other local high schools were built.

The only buildings that remained in 1970 from when she arrived in 1934 were the auditorium and the gym. All the rest of the buildings had been replaced. These included the original English building, mathematics building, library, administration building, science building, junior college building, industrial arts building, and the music and speech-arts building. These buildings were eventually torn down and replaced with larger, more modern ones, to accommodate a larger student body and to have buildings that are up to code. Since the Auditorium was built five years after the rest of the high school, it could be stated that none of the original buildings of the high school still stand.

Lest we get too sentimental about this, it should be remembered that the current Fullerton High school is actually the third iteration. The first was torn down, and the second burned down.

When Newton arrived, the junior college and the high school were on the same campus and were under the same Board of Trustees. The division then began when the junior college bought the property across the street and began to build their own buildings.

When she first arrived at FUHS, Newton recalls, “we had a rigid dress code and it, of course, affected the girls more than the fellows. The girls were required to wear midis and dark blue or black skirts and the only difference in their appearance was the color of their ties. Freshman, of course had to wear green ties, sophomores wore red ties, the juniors wore blue, and the seniors wore black ties. That’s what they wore and that was the requirement so far as clothes were concerned. The first break in that was when they finally declared Wednesday as ‘civilian day’ and they could wear a school dress on Wednesday. Little by little, you can see dress codes have disappeared from the scene.”

In addition to teaching English, Newton taught drama (including play production), and speech.

She remembers that, at times, students were placed into levels of English based on ability, and other times they were placed in classes with multiple ability levels mixed–depending on the prevailing teaching philosophy of the time.

As time passed, new classes were added, such as economics and auto mechanics, while others were taken away, such as printing and foundry. Others were modified to reflect changing times, such as home economics.

“Every department has adjusted according to the changing of pattern and requirements of the time,” she said.

In the English department, “They [students] have a much wider choice of whether they want to pursue science fiction, classical background, British literature, United States literature, Biblical literature, or whatever,” Newton said. “They have modernized the study of mass media in the line of types of mass media that we’re living with today.”

Because Fullerton used to be an agricultural area, Newton remembers that “in the beginning of the school year, a number of youngsters who worked in the fields would be two or three weeks late in entering because either their families, or perhaps the older youngsters themselves, were itinerant farm workers. This is no longer a part of the pattern of our life.”

Speaking of agriculture, FUHS has long had a strong agriculture program. This program still exists, long after agriculture has gone from the surrounding area.

Newton remembers the shock of the U.S. being attacked at Pearl Harbor and entering World War II.

“That was one of the most traumatic experiences for us, and the school, too,” Newton said. “The uncertainties of what lay ahead…the youngsters were just as disturbed and very, very realistic because many of them did enlist as soon as they could.”

Newton herself also enlisted and was gone from campus from 1943-1946. 

“I was part of the Women’s Reserve of the Navy and had the interesting experience of encountering a number of my own former students at the Naval Air Station at Alameda, California, where I was,” she recalls. “It was a far different experience during those years, that was true, and there is a bitter part to it, too. Those youngsters came to be very close friends and as word came back that some of them wouldn’t be returning, it was pretty hard to take.”

Because of young men (and some teachers) enlisting, the high school and junior college had lower enrollments during the war years.

After World War II, the area experienced rapid growth and more high schools were built–La Habra High School, Buena Park High School, then Sunny Hills High School.

When asked if she noticed any differences between the student of 1940 and the student of 1970, Newton replied, “I don’t think I can find any major differences; kids are kids, They went through the same processes, the same uncertainties and the same feelings of growing pains then that they do now. Matters of their entertainment and their free time changed with the patterns of life, but so far as the youngsters’ attitudes themselves, I don’t think there is a great difference.”

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

Juanita Hawkins was interviewed in 1973 by Kamila Hardy for the CSUF Oral History Program. Here are some things I learned from her recollections about her family and Fullerton:

Hawkins (whose maiden name was Frazee) moved to Fullerton from Kansas with her family in 1920, for her father’s health. Her parents were Myrtle and George Frazee. Her sister was Mary Louise and her brother was Dick Frazee. They first lived on the corner of Pomona and East Truslow, and then to 141 West Wilshire, where the Wilshire Promenade apartments are today.

According to Hawkins, “things were booming” at the time. This was the second big boom in Southern California–the first being in the 1880s, the second in the 1920s, and the third after World War II.

Her father was a plumber and then he went into contracting and did lots of work because there were many homes being built at that time. 

She remembers that some of her neighbors at the time were Black, including “a Negro lady named Lollie Smith,” and the Roscoe family, who owned a livery stable in town. This is fascinating because I was under the impression that Blacks and Mexicans were not allowed to purchase or rent homes “north of the tracks” until civil rights laws passed, decades later. It seems that there were exceptions to this pattern, as shown by Hawkins’ childhood neighbors around Wilshire and Malden in the 1920s.

Although they lived basically downtown, it was still “predominantly orange groves all around us and walnut trees.”

In 1924, the family moved to around what is now the 800 block of West Commonwealth.

Hawkins was eight when she came to California, in the fourth grade. She remembers the old red brick school house on the corner of East Wilshire and Lemon.

She married her husband Jim Hawkins in 1931. They moved around a lot in the early years of their marriage, mainly for financial reasons (it was the Great Depression).

They lived for a a while on a farm on Ball Road in Anaheim, where they raised the pigs, turkeys, and chickens. One notable thing about this property was that it contained the original boysenberry plants that Rudy Boysen and Walter Knott created for Knott’s Berry Farm.

During World War II, Jim worked in shipyards and the family moved into the family house on Commonwealth.

In 1954, the family moved to Buena Vista Drive, near the Muckenthaler mansion.

“The Muckenthalers got their money from oranges, because they owned that whole area up in there at one time,” Hawkins recalls. “They owned as far down as where the Lucky Market [now Stater Bros.] is on the corner of Euclid and Chapman Avenue.”

She remembers the 1933 earthquake.

“I heard this grumbling, it sounded like a whole fleet of trucks, heavy heavy trucks and the ground tremering just a little bit, and I could hear this dog howling and then just all of a sudden it was waves, besides the shakes, it was just actual like walking over waves,” she said.

She also remembers the 1938 flood. At the time, they were living on Ball Road in Anaheim.

“I looked out the window of the front door and the water had raised from the street level up to the second step of the porch and we had five steps up to our house,” she said. “It was just like a raging river. Our chickens and our turkeys, the ones that couldn’t fly up, and our poor old cow she came floating along and finally her rope hooked on to something and she was standing there with her head up trying to keep her head out of water…All of Anaheim was under water. People were on their roofs.”

After the war, Jim worked for Union Oil. Juanita worked for a glass company.

Juanita and Jim’s first four children died either in infancy or early childhood. They then adopted a boy named Norman who lived into adulthood. They had one daughter, Judy, who lived into adulthood.

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.

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

Robert “Bob” Clark was an orange rancher who worked for the city of Fullerton to bring industry in the early 1950s. He later served on the board of the Orange County Water District. Bob was interviewed by B.E. Schmidt in 1970 and 1971 for the CSUF Oral History Program. Here are some things I learned from these interviews.

The Town of Orangethorpe

Bob Clark’s wife was Helen Olgar, who was from a pioneer family in the Orangethorpe District. The town of Orangethorpe, which no longer exists, was a 6.25 square mile area that encompasses parts of what is now south Fullerton, north Anaheim, and Buena Park.

Some of the first farmers in the area settled in Orangethorpe, even before the town of Fullerton was created.

In a 2018 article for the Fullerton Observer, Terry Galvin wrote, “Well into the 1950s, Orangethorpe consisted primarily of ranch homes surrounded by grove upon grove of orange, lemon, and walnut trees. Farmers and ranchers in Orangethorpe formed a tight- knit community, and many important Fullerton families—the Royers, Gardiners, Spencers, and Hiltschers— came from the Orangethorpe district. The most famous individual born in Orangethorpe was guitar legend Leo Fender (1909-1991), who attended the Orangethorpe School.”

The Olgar’s family farm was on Brookhurst and Orangethorpe. The town of Orangethorpe had their own school and district and Helen’s father served on the school board board.

According to Galvin, the residents of Orangethorpe voted to incorporate in 1921 as a city “in order to prevent being annexed by Fullerton and to stop a planned sewage farm from being built by Fullerton. In 1923, a sewer line running from Fullerton to the ocean was planned, ending the sewer farm threat, so on December 31, 1923, the residents of Orangethorpe voted to unincorporate. However, the sewer farm was ultimately implemented by Fullerton because the sewer line to the ocean was never built. The sewer farm was abandoned by 1926, and ultimately became the site of the Fullerton Municipal Airport in 1927.”

Bob’s father-in-law was a leading citizen who had organized the Orangethorpe School District and incorporation back in the 1920s to prevent the sewer farm from being placed near his property.

Bob and Helen met in Los Angeles and were married in Santa Barbara. For a while they lived in Los Angeles, and Bob worked as a “special effects man” for movies. Eventually, they moved back to Orangethorpe and got into orange ranching on land the family owned.

Bob served on the Orangethorpe school board in 1949, at a time when the area was experiencing rapid growth and transformation from orange groves to housing subdivisions, and commercial and industrial centers.

Annexation of Orangethorpe

As the cities of Anaheim and Fullerton began to grow and subdivide in the post-World War II years, they each sought to annex Orangethorpe.

“The City of Anaheim learned that Fullerton was subdividing and moving to the west,” Clark remembers. “Anaheim took kind of a spider web strip annexation out through La Plama and expanded it across our ranch and my wife’s folks’ ranch and others.”

The Orangethorpe farmers opposed the annexation, so community leaders organized a sit-down with Anaheim Mayor Charles Pearson and administrator Keith Murdock and Fullerton Mayor Tom Eadington and city engineer Herman Hiltscher.

“We just asked them to come and sit down at the Orangethorpe School House and try to discuss, in a gentlemanly fashion, what was a rational, logical subdivision of the lands, and what each city could do” to serve the landowners with services like water and sewer,” Clark said.

Eventually the cities agreed on a demarcation line that was around what would become the 91 freeway.

According to Galvin, “In 1954, the school district was divided between Fullerton and Anaheim, and the entire Orangethorpe area was eventually divided and annexed to Anaheim, Fullerton, and Buena Park, although a few pockets of unincorporated county territory remained for many years.”

Fullerton vs. Anaheim

Clark remembers that in the early days, Fullerton and Anaheim were very different towns.

“Anaheim…was a swingin’ town. And Fullerton was a very churchy/WCTU [Women’s Christian Temperance Union] town,” Clark said. “On Commonwealth for years, they had several fountains with the little marble plaque dedicated by the WCTU. It said. ‘Drink water’…people would go over to shop in Anaheim…they’d buy their groceries and their can of molasses for the week and then get their can of beer from over at Anaheim because the brewery was there. And sit around and watch each other get haircuts–this was the excitement in those days.”

Post-War Industrial Development

As the tax revenue from the oil fields and orange groves were declining, city leaders approached Bob Clark about attracting industries to Fullerton.

“Anyone with foresight could see that the orange groves were going to give way to housing subdivisions and industry,” Clark said. “Plus the groves were suffering from quick decline. I was the youngest grower, I guess, except for the Eadington family, in the whole valley. There just weren’t any children interested in groves. Well, you couldn’t…make the groves pay.”

Clark became “industrial coordinator” for Fullerton in 1953.

As an orange grower himself, he went to talk to other growers about selling their property for industrial development.

“I could go out there with a country boy approach as an orange grower and talk to them about what do you think about the disposal of your property,” Clark said. “Of course most of them were conscious that the west side was getting subdivisions. And most of the orange growers were getting old, I mean, they’d been in business fifty, sixty years and they were worried about who’s going to take over; our children aren’t interested in raising citrus, the market’s going to pot, our costs are skyrocketing, the tax assessor is making it impossible to raise citrus on these expensive lands. And I would sooth them with the fact that, well, this should be a consolation to you; if the value is growing each year, you’re making more money than you are out of raising crops on the land by just holding your property until you can find a higher and better use for it, and it seems to me that industrial property–industrial land would be the highest and best use in this market since you’re getting $2500 for subdivision land and you can get as much as $4,000 to $4,500 for industrial property to begin with.”

Clark identified the area east of Harbor, between Lemon and Placentia for industrial development.

“Once we put out plants like the National Cash Register and the Moore Business Forms and the first Sylvania plant which were beautiful…plants set back with nice gardens and so on, it was an example that set the pace and people began to go along with the program,” Clark said.

One of the big enticements to industrial businesses was the fact that they had rail access for shipping their product.

He got Kimberly Clark (paper products) and Rheem Manufacturing Company to locate in Fullerton.

He recalled a story about having lunch with Jack Kimberly, and him striking a deal with the railroad in a very Mad Men way: “So Jack Kimbrerly was here and we were having lunch and he said, well, I know that ole buzzard Gurley [from the rairoad company], and I have an idea he’s back at the Athletic Club having a drink about now. And he said, let’s try to get him on the phone and let’s get this thing resolved…and they, of course, it was hi, Jack; hi, Fred, what’s the big hang up…So I got a telegram that stated, you can have anything you want, buster, signed Fred Gurley.”

Other industries he got to locate in Fullerton included: American Meter Company, Arcadia Metal Products, U.S. Motors, and of course, Beckman Instruments.

Fullerton eventually annexed the land that included the Beckman Plant.

“I had to go up on the hills along with Walt Chaffee, the city attorney, and talk to various groups of people–property owners–about the benefits of coming into Fullerton,” Clark remembers.

He remembers getting pushback from the La Habra city attorney Harld McCabe: “Hissing Harold, we called him. Because all McCabe wanted to do, of course, was earn a fee and get some property he had up on Spadra over into La Habra where he could control it–with the La Habra planning commission who were a whole lot more amenable to him…Anyway these things happen: men all have different ideas as to how something develops and mostly…based on whether they make a profit out of it. This is understandable, the name of the game.”

With increased industry in Fullerton, some companies began to work with public schools for vocational training.

“Dr. Beckman donated equipment to local schools for vocational training…to try to make these people of some value when they hit the street after graduation,” Clark recalls. “This was to be permeated down into the shop level where the kids in an auto shop didn’t just come out learning how to bang a few dents out of a fender, but learning how to be a certified welder, or how to operate a punch press…or some of the more technical equipment than they get in the average high school or junior college…it seemed like a great way to employ our youth.”

Although Hughes Aircraft came into Fullerton in 1957, after Bob left Fullerton, he remembers meeting Howard Hughes.

“I met Howard Hughes in the Board of Director’s room quite casually,” Clark said. “He flew in when we were discussing the final phases of the purchase of the land and just ducked his head in the door looking father shoddy in golfer sweater and sloppy pants and just addressed his remarks to Dr. Highland: oh, you’re working on that Fullerton thing, Pat, huh…And Hughes didn’t shake hands: he just nodded the introduction and with a grimace rather than a smile and walked out of the room.”

One other selling point to potential industrialists was the fact that Fullerton had an airport.

“The Hughes people wouldn’t have located here unless they could have had an airport,” Clark said. “They’re very air-minded people and have their own helicopters and…planes…many of the industries used the airport.”

Clark ended his employment with Fullerton in 1956, after three years. He went to work for United California Bank with their industrial business accounts. 

St. Jude Hospital

Clark recalls the early establishment and development of St. Jude Hospital in Fullerton.

He remembers that “The [catholic] sisters were pushed around when they first came here…they first had a site out on some property below Chapman’s land on Pioneer and State College. And they were unsuccessful in getting zoning…they were given a slap in the face and turned out.”

“We decided one day that the only way to get a hospital in here is first to use the catholic sisters because they’ve got half a million dollars they could put into it; two, use the industries in north Orange County because they are going to be responsible for the bulk of donations from private sources…the other third was to come from state funds…” Clark remembers.

With all the residential and industrial growth in post war Fullerton, “We had a terrible shortage of hospital beds. What with all the growth going on, it looked like we were really going to be in trouble.”

So Clark and a doctor named Fernandez organized a luncheon at the Greenbriar Inn and invited all the local captains of industry–Arnold Beckman, Hubert Ferry (Union Oil), and representatives of other companies like Sylvania. They donated some funds for the hospital.

“We got the site up by the Fullerton Dam from a private owner, Miles Sharkey, the Sunny Hills Ranch owned that parcel, And he gave it to them at a real nominal fee,” Clark remembers.

Water

When Clark went to work for the city of Fullerton, he was aware of the problem of reduced groundwater.

“It came to us quite closely because we had owned two commercial wells and several domestic wells on our land in the west Anaheim area. And we, of course, could see the water table dropping away from our pumps,” he said. “I was very conscious of it and so was everyone that came in here, like Kimberly Clark and Sylvania…realized that they couldn’t depend entirely on wells, that they would have to have a secondary source of water because the basin was slipping away, and there was no opportunity to replenish it except during wet years when they have excessive runoff up in the mountains.”

In 1954, the Orange County District (OCWD) began importing water from the Metropolitan Water District (largely Colorado River Water) and putting it back into the groundwater basin to replenish it.

Clark was appointed to the Board of Directors of the OCWD in 1967 or 1968.

In 1971, when he was interviewed, he talked about future OCWD projects: a desalination plant (which has never materialized), and a wastewater reclamation plant, which does now exist.

Legacy

One unfortunate consequence of bringing industry to Fullerton was a legacy of pollution, specifically groundwater contamination. As a direct result of manufacturing in the southern industrial area of Fullerton and north Anaheim, Fullerton now has a Superfund site called the North Basin Contamination, a 5-mile plume of industrial solvents that threaten local groundwater. Here is a map of the plume.

To learn more about the North Basin Contamination site, visit its EPA page HERE.