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

The Local History Room of the Fullerton Public Library has microfilm from the Fullerton Tribune newspaper stretching back to 1893. I am in the process of reading over the microfilm, year by year, to get a sense of what was happening in the town over the years. Here are excerpts from some of the articles from 1901.

Local News

Fullerton Votes Against Incorporation

There was a failed vote for Fullerton to incorporate as a city, which would allow for more local control and taxes for things like roads and other infrastructure. Some of those who were against it, like E.K. Benchley, were concerned that it would raise their taxes.

Tribune editor Edgar Johnson was in favor of incorporation, and printed some editorials giving reasons for his point of view.

Evidently, those in the adjacent towns of Orangethorpe and Placentia were (mostly) against Fullerton incorporating.

Fullerton would not officially incorporate until 1904.

Fullerton Oil Field

In 1901, oil continued to be an important and growing industry, alongside oranges. Most of the oil fields were in the hills of the north part of the town, like Coyote Hills.

When Des Granges Rode the Goat

This funny little poem was printed alongside an article about local farmer Otto Des Granges joining the local Masonic Lodge. In the early 20th century, “riding the goat” was a slang term for joining the Masons–which were quite popular locally.

Orange County’s New Courthouse

In 1901, the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana was the New Orange County Courthouse.

Local Businesses

Stern & Goodman’s Department store on Spadra (now Harbor) and Commonwealth expanded to a new “annex” building beside it. The Downtown area was growing.

The Rogers Lathrop Mercantile Company was located on the corner of Spadra and Amerige. This building still exists. Actually, I am typing these words in Made Coffee, which is right next to this building.

The orange industry continued to grow. Here’s a photo of a packinghouse.

Fullerton High School Building

Here’s a photo of the original Fullerton High School building, which does not exist any more.

Bike Lanes

As the city grew, there was movement for better roads, and also bike lanes.

The Electric Line

The Pacific Electric Line would eventually connect Fullerton with a sprawling public transit system.

Odd Fellows

The Odd Fellows were another fraternal organization like the Masons. They eventually built their building on Commonwealth, which still stands today and is one the National Register of Historic Places.

Wilshire’s Socialist Magazine

H. Gaylord Wilshire, who was one of the original investors and builders in Fullerton (Wilshire Ave. is named after him) was a socialist who started a paper that was eventually banned in the United States. Wilshire was known as “the millionaire socialist”–a term full of apparent contradictions.

Constable Pendergrast

Fullerton’s first lawman was constable A.A. Pendergrast, who apparently took ill and sought healing in the hot springs of Riverside.

National and International News

War in the Philippines

In international news, the Philippine-American War continued, which was a consequence of the Spanish-American War.

President McKinley Assasinated

In 1901, president William McKinley was assassinated and succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.

Farmers on Reciprocity

Local rancher Charles C. Chapman organized a farmer’s club. One of their purposes was to urge congress to pass tariffs and treaties on international imports, to protect their business from competition with foreign growers.

Stay tuned for more headlines from the 1902 Tribune!

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

The Center for Oral and Public History in the Cal State Fullerton Library got started back in the 1960s, and for the past 50 years, students and faculty from the history department there have been conducting oral history interviews with local residents. There are literally thousands of interviews in the archives. Some of them consist of a single interview, and others are bound collections of multiple interviews. These have proven invaluable to my research, and I’ve written several little reports on the ones I’ve read so far. To check out more of my local oral history reports, click HERE.

Among these archives is a thick bound collection containing seven interviews with a man named Herman A. Hiltscher, who served as a Fullerton city engineer and administrator from the 1920s until his retirement in 1966. The interviews were conducted between 1968 and 1969, just five years before Hiltscher’s death in 1973.  Before reading these interviews, my only knowledge of Herman Hiltscher was that he was one of those infamous Orange Countians who was part of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. OC Weekly editor Gustavo Arellano did a fascinating series entitled “Profiles of OC Pioneers who were in the KKK,” and Hiltscher’s name is on that list.  But Herman was more than just a Klansman.  The interviews paint a picture of a man who was deeply invested in his community, and his memories provide a fascinating window into Fullerton’s past. And so, without further ado, here’s a brief report on the historical recollections of Herman A. Hiltscher. All photos are courtesy of the Launer Local History Room of the Fullerton Public Library.

Parents and Ancestry

Herman’s grandparents were August and Fredricka Hiltscher, who had five sons (Fred, August, Joseph, Max, and John). They left Sternberg, Austria bound for Southern California in 1886. August Hiltscher was a weaver of fine table linens. The family voyaged from Hamburg, Germany to Castle Garden, New York aboard the steamer “Retzia.” After crossing the continental United States, the Hiltschers ended their westward journey in Anaheim, California where they were met by friends and acquaintances. They purchased twenty acres of land at the northeast corner of Orangethorpe and Nicholas (Euclid) Avenues in what would become Fullerton.  The Hiltscher Ranch was first planted with ten acres of peaches and apricots and then acres of general farming—corn and livestock. Around the turn of the century, the acreage was converted to walnut trees; and by 1921, it was all valencia oranges.

Herman’s parents, August and Elizabeth, were married in 1899. They had four children—Gertrude, Herman, Elizabeth, and Isabel.  At the time of their marriage, August Hiltscher and his brother Joseph owned and operated the Center Market and Sausage Factory located on Commonwealth Avenue, west of Spadra Road (now Harbor Blvd). The butcher shop was in operation from 1898 to 1918, when the Fullerton Hotel was built in its place.  

Describing his father’s job, Herman recalls: “He used to have his own slaughter house—they didn’t have wholesale meat suppliers. He’d have to see the farmers and get the beef and hogs and the sheep and so forth, and do his own killing…They called it a slaughterhouse…It was a place there the they gathered the cattle and sheep and so forth, and then they’d kill ‘em and butcher ‘em. And then he did all of that: made all his own sausage and everything.”

His uncle John drilled water wells and built the first automobile in Orange County in his machine shop—that had steel wheels. Herman recalls, “He used to drive it on Orangethorpe Avenue and he caused many run-aways of horses. They wanted to throw him in jail at one time.” 

The Early Life of Herman Hiltscher

August and Elizabeth Hiltscher’s only son, Herman August, was born 15 October 1901 in the family home on the northeast corner of Highland and Commonwealth Avenues, where Fullerton City Hall is today. As a kid, he delivered meat for his dad.  His father, August, was on Fullerton City Council from 1908-1918.

Herman recalls the 1908 fire “which practically burned the whole 100 block on north Spadra from Commonwealth to Amerige…at that time we had a volunteer fire department.”

When he was a child, Fullerton was mostly agricultural, and he remembers swimming in irrigation ditches: “They had a zanjero [sort of like a water police]…and we were more scared of him than anybody else because he didn’t want us to go swimming in the ditch. And of course, we dug a hole and so it was a little deeper, and we were interfering with his irrigation system. So we’d always be looking for him. When somebody would say, here comes the zanjero, well, we’d scatter out in the orange groves like a bunch of quail.”

Hiltscher recalls how, at one point, the Bastanchury family had the largest orange grove in the world–4500 acres!

For recreation, Herman recalls fishing for trout in Trabuco and Silverado canyons, and hunting rabbits. For entertainment, there were church socials, Sunday drives, his grandmother’s victrola, singing together, and going to Otto Evans’ candy store.

“One of the big events of the week,” Herman recalls, “was to come into town in an automobile and park on the street next to the curb, and then do your shopping.  Everybody from all around came into town on Saturday and all the business was thriving—that was before we had these shopping centers, you know—that was the only business in town.”

Young Herman completed his primary and secondary education in the Fullerton public school system. He graduated in the class of 1919 from Fullerton Union High School. In high school, Herman got a job at Boege’s Bicycle and Sporting Goods Shop. 

Here’s a brief section of one of the interviews with Herman, in which he describes Fullerton as a kind of “Wild West” town:

H: They had to have law and order, you know.  They used to come in—the cowboys and all—shoot up the town and get—

S: Cowboys!  We had cowboys in Fullerton?  Really!

H: Sure. And they would—

S: Do you remember cowboys shooting up the town?

H: I remember cowboys, but I know they used to carry guns when they’d come in.

S: They did!

H: Sure.

S: Now, who are ‘they’?  Where were these—?

H: Well, they had the ranches. They’d come from Placentia area and Buena Park and Yorba Linda and La Habra and different places.

S: But why did they carry a gun?

H: I don’t know. Shoot rattlesnakes, maybe.

S: Oh! No, Fullerton really wasn’t that lawless was it?

H: No, it wasn’t that, but then most cowboys, you know—They didn’t all carry guns, but then sometimes—I have seen them.

Saloons in early Fullerton were a controversial thing, just as they are today.  Hiltscher recalls how saloons were a target of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and how drunk driving was even a problem: “Lots of these old ducks would go or there and they’d get drunk. Then they’d get in their horse and buggy, and they’d start off and have a runaway. I remember one time, I don’t know who he was, but he came around the corner of our home at Commonwealth and Highland in his little ole buggy and the thing tipped over. He was drunker than a hoot-owl, and it didn’t hurt him a bit.”

“Fullerton’s always been straight-laced,” Herman remembers, “There wasn’t too much drinking in Fullerton except just, you know, a few.” His Aunt Clara Meiser, the first girl born in Fullerton, was active in the WCTU. To drink, most people went to Anaheim, where they had breweries, wineries, etc. All the old Dutchmen used to go in Brandle’s Saloon across the street from his father’s butcher shop.

Regarding infrastructure in early Fullerton, Hiltscher remembers that there used to be a “sewer farm” where the Fullerton airport is today. “There was quite a bit of odor there,” he remembers. Early garbage disposal involved collecting “the garbage from the city and some of the other cities around here, and they fed it to the [Bastanchury’s] hogs.” As for water: “in the early days we didn’t have a water system in Fullerton: most of the people had their own wells.”

Fullerton in the 1920s

After two years of college, one at U.S.C. and one at U.C. Berkeley, Herman completed his formal training. Over the years, he took special extension courses in engineering and administration. In the summer of 1922, he joined the labor force of the Gallagher Tank Company in the oil fields at Santa Fe Springs, California. Before the end of the year, he had started his forty-five years of service with the city of Fullerton, doing mainly surveying.

In 1924, he married Dorothy King, who was origianlly from Kentucky.  In 1920, following the death of both parents, Dorothy moved to Fullerton to live with her aunt Frances Shepherd. Dorothy graduated FUHS in 1922, then attended Fullerton Junior College. After FJC, she was secretary of Southern Counties Gas Company until her marriage to Herman.

Herman and Dorothy had two children: Donald (born 1927) who married Betty Grant of Orange (they have 4 kids), and Ann (born 1929) who married Bruce Royer of Fullerton (they have three kids).

Hiltscher explains how Fullerton has encountered a few “booms” throughout its history. The first was the real estate boom of the 1880s, which resulted in the formation of the town in 1887. Then there was the economic boom of the 1920s, which was an expansion  of the citrus industry, the oil industry, and building.  Regarding the oil boom: “Some of these people that had these orange groves, you know, just had a medium living. Well, overnight, they were more or less millionaires.” Over time, Standard and Union oil bought out most of the local mineral rights.

The packing houses for the booming citrus industry were mostly along Walnut, east and west of Spadra (Harbor). “And you know, funny thing,” Herman said, “I believe every packing house in Fullerton has burned down..some of the biggest fires that we had in Fullerton were those packing houses.”

Because he was both a city engineer and then city administrator, Hiltscher had a lot to say about water use in Fullerton. He explains how Fullerton was one of the original 13 cities that joined the Metropolitan Water District in 1928, the entity that secured water from Colorado River for the growth and expansion of Southern California.

When asked why Fullerton joined the MWD, Hiltscher explained “It was just looking ahead. Our only source of water was well water, and you could see that the level was dropping each year as more development came in. The ranchers were using part of the Santa Ana river for water all all these cities springing up and growing and all. And we knew about Mulholland going up into the Owens Valley to bring water into Los Angeles, and he was one of the leaders on this, too. So they had this bond issue and then they—I guess they were the original thirteen cities and they all approved it: Santa Ana, Anaheim, Fullerton, Los Angeles, Pasadena, etc.”

Fullerton During the Great Depression

In 1930, Mr. Hiltscher obtained his Registered Engineer’s license from the State of California and moved into the office of the City Engineer. He became Fullerton’s City Engineer and Street Superintendent in 1932, and remained in this capacity until 1952 when the newly created office of City Administrator was formed at which time he was appointed to fulfill his duties.

Herman recalls the devastating 1933 earthquake which “was one of the worst that we ever had and I’ve witnessed many of them. But Long Beach was hit the hardest. So the people just flocked here by the hundreds or thousands and they pitched their tents in Hillcrest Park…We still have the effects of that; they condemned most of the schools.”

One of the most significant local engineering problems during Hiltscher’s tenure with the city was flood control. He remembers how ”During heavy rains, why, they’d wash through the City uncontrolled, and for years we had heavy damage the would bring the silt from the hills and deposit it in the lowland.  We used to spend most of our winter months fighting the flooding conditions in Fullerton—it was terrible.”

He remembers the devastating 1938 flood, the worst in local history: “I think seventy-five people were drowned…It was right after that we started lining these channels and protecting for floods.”

Ironically, it was during the Great Depression that most of Fullerton’s massive flood control projects were built, as part of FDR’s New Deal: “It was during and right after the Depression—from ’33 to ’42—who we had relief labor, we started to try and control the channels by lining them. Break Creek Channel was lined and east Fullerton Creek Channel was lined with concrete. And then two dams (Fullerton and Brea) were built…That was the salvation to the city on flooding.”

As City Engineer, Herman supervised many of the WPA projects. He recalls supervising 800 local workers to do public works—cleaning out storm channels, renovating Hillcrest Park, planting trees along Harbor, building the baseball field and grandstand at Amerige Park. Local buildings built with WPA money include City Hall (now police station), Fullerton College, the Library (now Fullerton Museum Center), and others.

A funny thing, Herman recalls, was that every one of the Councilmen during the Great Depression was a Republican, which did not incline them to take federal assistance money, like the WPA provided. But, whatever their political philosophy, the fact remains that Fullerton benefitted tremendously from the Democrat FDR’s social programs. Herman’s theory on WPA money was this: “My theory was that if they were going to hand it out to every city in the United States, we might as well get our share of it: that was really what we used to say. We had people right here in Fullerton that needed work and if we didn’t provide projects for them here, they’d have to go someplace else.”

Herman recalls the financial hard times of the Depression: “We even had to give twenty-five percent of our salaries to just help these people without jobs. And people that we knew! because there weren’t any jobs; there wasn’t anything. Then the banks closed and I think my folks owned around $8000 on this home and ranch and everything, and they couldn’t borrow anything so they just lost the whole works. I mean, it was just that critical. Many others were the same way.” After his parents lost their hotel and orange grove during the Great Depression, his father went to work for Alpha Beta as a butcher.

One of the more unfortunate events of the Great Depression in Fullerton was the fact that nearly all of the Mexican labor force on the Bastanchury Ranch was deported, as part of a “repatriation” effort, because white people supposedly wanted their jobs. Gustavo Arellano has written an excellent article on this called “The Lost Mexicans of the Bastanchury Ranch” which I helped him research. Here are Hiltscher’s recollections of this sad event:

S: Do you remember the Ranch School up on the Bastanchury Ranch in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s?  Where they had a school for Mexican workers?

H: Oh! Yes. It was over here on Euclid, a little this side of where the Rider’s Arena is. There was a big Mexican camp there and they worked on the Ranch. And this was what threw us off. In 1930, we had 10,882 people and in 1940 we had 10,300 and something; and we finally found out that the reason for the population loss was because we lost the workers up there.

S: Were they citizens? Were these Mexican laborers American citizens?

H: I don’t know where they were or not. I don’t think they had wet-backs then.

S: I wasn’t thinking of illegal entry, particularly, but—

H: Yes, I think they were. We counted them as part of our population.

S: You did. That’s interesting.  Was there more than one camp?

H: They had a camp down here on Balcom and then they had another—well, the camp’s still there off of Raymond Avenue where the citrus workers lived. I don’t know whether they still bring them in. You see, the citrus is more or less going out of this whole area.

S: There wasn’t enough labor for citrus available in Fullerton and Orange County?  Is this why they st up Mexican labor?

H: Well, no. You couldn’t get the local people to pick oranges…You see, there was a lot of citrus around here.

In the 1930s, the Bastanchury Ranch school was moved to the Ford School, and became a soup kitchen, organized by the school district. Mrs. Hiltscher worked there.

Fullerton and the Post-War “Boom”

After World War II, Fullerton (and pretty much all of Southern California) experienced a massive housing and population “boom.”  This was the “baby boom” and a period of great financial prosperity in the United States. This boom involved lots of housing and industrial development of this area. As agriculture was declining, Fullerton needed a new tax base, Hiltscher explained: “That’s one reason why we can keep our tax rate down is the revenue you get from all these industries.”

When asked, “What was the basis for the selection of industry? What specifically was the city after?” Herman replied, “We were after good clean industry that didn’t pollute the air or the streams or cause us any trouble with our sewer systems or anything like that.”

The main dude who was responsible for wooing industry to Fullerton in the 1950s was a guy named Bob Clark. “We’d send Bob [Clark] back East to contact industrialists that were talking about coming to California,” Hiltscher recalls, “Plus he’d go to LA to meet industrialists and railroad people. Bob got property owners to sell our to various industries.

Ironically, the main opponent of these industries was the Fullerton Chamber of Commerce. “They thought maybe it might hurt the City,” Hiltscher remembers, “in getting obnoxious industries in the city.” Some of the post-war industries in Fullerton included: Kimberly Clark (paper and other products), Beckman Coulter (medical instruments), Hughes Aircraft, Rheem (water heaters), and Hunt foods.

On the industrial development of Fullerton after World War II, Herman said: “Fullerton from its incorporation was known as a city of fine homes and schools and churches. We didn’t stress industry or commercial too much…And this went on for years until 1952 when Anaheim started to build factories right at our southern border. We could see that they were getting industry right next to us. So we decided that if we could get some good clean industries that wouldn’t affect the purpose or the environment of the city, why, it would be good for the city. We’d figured out that one acre of industry, as far as revenue for the city and schools and all, was about four times more productive than residential development.”

Around this time, a conflict emerged between Fullerton and Anaheim regarding the boundary between the two cities. After a lengthy legal battle, the final decision was handled at a somewhat secret meeting between four dudes: the mayor and city manager of Fullerton (Tom Eadington and Herman Hiltscher) and the mayor and city manager of Anaheim (Charlie Pearson and Keith Murdock). The meeting took place at Orangethorpe school, and the line was decided at its current position near the 91 Freeway.

During that early post-war boom, Fullerton almost got Walt Disney to build Disneyland here, but then the 5 freeway was built, which made Anaheim the more desirable location. Fullerton also almost got UCLA and Westmont Colleges.  Ultimately, however, we ended up with California State University, Fullerton.

These interviews were conducted in 1968-69, when there were actually anti-war demonstrations going on at Cal State Fullerton and Fullerton College.  Here’s what Hiltscher had to say about that: “If they don’t get too many demonstrations over there and start burning everything down, why, it’ll be an asset.”

Looking to the future, Hiltscher saw traffic as an emerging problem, as the area became more developed and populated. “I see a traffic problem on every street in Southern California in ten years,” he said, “I predict that in five years from now, the people won’t be able to go frontwards, backwards, or sideways on freeways and side streets.” It’s ironic that the things that made Fullerton prosper (good roads) was now causing severe traffic problems.”

Herman Hiltscher’s Thoughts on What Makes a Good City

The last part of the interview consisted questions about Herman Hiltscher’s philosophies on Fullerton and what makes a good city. Since he worked for the city for most of his life, his insights are instructive.

On early Fullerton..

“Every city has certain characteristics and I think the first City Councilers, the old timers that founded the City, more or less established the personality of the City.  For instance, Mr. Chapman, who was the first mayor, was a very religious man. It was a city of mostly agriculture—we then had the revenue from the oil in the hills—and churches. And Anaheim was just the opposite of Fullerton…the ones that wanted their beer—they had to go to Anaheim every weekend and haul it over here.”

Comparing early Fullerton to more recent times…

 “They (early city leaders) didn’t have too much time to plan ahead then like they do now…They were trying to take care of the bare necessities: to get water, and get a sewer system, and get streets…Now cities are all built up and you have all this planning and everything. Now, they’ll spend more time in planning and maybe some of the cultural things. They never thought anything like that then: they were just trying to get everybody out of the mud and get some water.  Just the main basic things to exist.”

On the legacy of the WPA on Fullerton…

“That’s probably when we started thinking ahead. We thought ahead on our public buildings: we built that City Hall which will last for hundreds of years—the original one. And we were thinking of the many floods we’d had and all this, so we were planning ahead on the physical part. And we knew that you couldn’t build things helter-skelter—it had to be in some kind of order—and I think that’s when the planning first started, way back there.”

What is your concept of a city?…

“I think that a city should be designed and planned in such a way that you serve all the people adequately and at a minimum of cost…one of the main objectives is to see that you have a good clean city without corruption that you find in some of the Eastern cities. You don’t find so much corruption in the cities in California…I don’t believe that we’ve ever had any recalls or anything in the City Council or any officials…

On the ideal size of Fullerton…

“I think to have a well balanced city, to have a good place to live and raise your family, and to enjoy and taken advantage of some of the cultural things that we have here, we shouldn’t have over, oh, 85,000. It’ll probably be more than that. It’ll probably get up to a hundred. When you get over 100,000, why, the businessmen will probably encourage this all the time because when you get more people they have more business and all this. But I think Fullerton is an ideal size city right now (78,000 people). Of course, we still have some land to be developed and we’ll have more people, but I don’t think it’s going to be a better place to live.”

On downtown Fullerton…

 “I don’t think that’s too good a place for people to live in the heart of a city. I think that if you confine that to, well, financial institutions, savings and loan, banks, and commercial-insurance firms and more or less commercial high rise buildings, you might be able to salvage it.”

On the problems of the future…

“I don’t think the problems of the future are going to be physical. The problems will be more culturally inclined, I think: that is, getting along with people and trying to develop our relationship between the government units and the people so you can get things done…it’s going to be human relations—trying to get along with people will be the big problem…I mean, now its hard to get them to understand what government wants and what the people want.”

Today, Hiltcher Trail is named after Herman Hiltscher.

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

Gordon Melgren was interviewed by Anne Riley for the Fullerton College Oral History Program in 1977. Melgren had retired that year after 31 years with the college. He taught history and political science, and was the first person to hold the position of Dean of Instruction, a position he held from 1955 to 1962. Here is a summary with some highlights from that interview:

Gordon Melgren was born in Chicago. His parents died when he was very young so he grew up with his grandparents in northeastern Kansas. He graduated from KU, and worked as a schoolteacher before he “did what many mid-westerners did in the late thirties,” and moved to the west coast, eventually settling in California.

During World War II, he enlisted and served in the European Theater for nearly four years.

After the war, in 1946, he got a job at Fullerton College, teaching history and government. He was hired by Dr. William Boyce.

After the war, Melgren said, “The GIs just streamed in…virtually doubling the enrollment…Then came the Korean War, and the enrollment dropped again.”

“The really big growth didn’t come until after the Korean War,” Melgren said, “when in addition there was this big onslaught in the population movement into California…[and] the change from a small, almost family-like, local institution to one serving a much larger area with lots of out-of-state students.”

Melgren became dean of instruction in 1955; he he describes the years 1955 to 1962 as “the years of the most fantastic growth from the standpoint of the building program and the student growth, ending with a student body in ‘62 of over eight thousand daytime students…In those years we were bringing in new teachers at the rate of 20 and 30 a year.”

In these years, the city of Fullerton was experiencing a massive population boom, and the landscape was changing from agricultural to more urban and industrial. The new industries created a big demand for an educated workforce.

“The press for manpower in those years, unless you lived through it, you couldn’t believe it,” he said. “There were shortages of teachers, and shortages of engineers, and shortages of doctors. We had an exploding population, and more than that, we had a demand for more health equipment, more sophisticated industrial equipment and even gadgetry. It’s an era in American history we’ll have a hard time to duplicate, if we ever do.”

Melgren recalls how in the 1950s and 1960s, during the McCarthy era and Cold War there was an ultra-conservatism that was felt even on the college campuses.

“You only need to go back to the magazines and the literature of the time. The John Birch Society to start with,” he said. “Their hate Russia feelings and their big campaign of anti-communism, even on this campus, and the textbook censorship that was attempted.”

He recalls how Fred Schwarz spoke to large crowds at the Fullerton High School auditorium for his Christian Anti-communist crusade.

“[Schwarz] got the students dismissed to go to hear his rabid rabble-rousing,” Melgren recalls. “Here at the college Dr. Sheller and I resisted dismissing classes, but I was powerless to say that students couldn’t go. So we had a number leave the class on one or two occasions when Dr. Schwarz was here.”

Melgren said that this reactionary feeling was “in the grade schools too. Citizens here in Orange County joined, including the county superintendent of schools at the time…This, of course, was the image of Orange County as the bulwark of ultra-conservatism.”

Melgren attributes this conservatism or “Orange County Syndrome” to the attitudes of the early farmers: “[The] community itself was still so grounded in the fundamental conservatism of New England and the German traditions.”

The conservatism, he said, was as “a protective reaction which will change as the population mix changes, labor unions move in, and the young who grew up in the sixties mature.”

But then he asks the question, after the conservative beliefs of the older generation pass, “Where will be the base of stability? Where will be the traditions that guarantee that the thing is going to hang together and mean something?”

Melgren was at Fullerton College through the turbulent 1960s, recalling “the confusion and disruption we have had over the years, even including the worst of the middle and late sixties, which was aggravated by the Vietnam War and the so called generation gap.”

While Fullerton College did not experience the same student activism as other colleges of the time, there were protests against the Vietnam war and for civil rights at both the Junior College and at Cal State Fullerton. There was [briefly] an underground “anti-establishment newspaper called The Black Flag” that “raised eyebrows.”

When asked if there were “minority problems,” Melgren said: “Oh, there were no minorities, other than the Spanish, and this was the day of the bracero, so they were out of sight, out of mind, as nothing. Looking back at it now, it doesn’t look very good, but if you could know it, it wasn’t on the scale that it was to become. It was probably more like the better aspects of feudalism.”

He is describing the situation of Mexican and Mexican-American farmworkers in Fullerton, which I have written about in some detail HERE.

Melgren remembers “a big wooden barracks camp along the railroad tracks just west of Raymond” for Mexican farmworkers.

Melgren contrasts the affluence and opportunities of the postwar generation with the situation in the late 1970s: “The day is gone, it’s long gone, when we could think of the college experience as four years away from home in which you’re carefully nurtured, almost like the equivalent of an elitist class, our substitute for the royalty as it were. You can’t maintain that, and it’s been eroding…we oversold college as a meal ticket, as a means to status. Now it’s so common that it can’t be that anymore. We’re training far more people for these status positions of doctor, lawyer, than we can possibly use. Probably, in the immediate future education will have a rough road. There will be a big disillusionment on the part of the people thinking that it didn’t deliver…I think the educational problems were hard at the time I was active, they will be considered a snap in comparison to what’s coming.”

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

Howard Crooke, a long time Fullerton resident, was Interviewed by Ellis Delameter for the CSUF Oral History Program in 1975. Here’s a summary of that interview, along with some historic photos.

Crooke was born in Odon, Indiana in 1905. Around 1921, he moved to Fullerton where he had two brothers. He graduated from Fullerton High School in 1923.

He went to Fullerton Junior College one year, and then USC where he studied electrical engineering. After graduation, he worked a number of jobs, including for Southern California Edison’s Big Creek project, and for the Griffith Paving Company.

He was married in 1929.

The Flood of 1938

Crooke’s recollections of the devastating 1938 flood are worth including here:

As the water came down the Santa Ana River, it carried lots of debris and built a debris dam in the upper portion of the Santa Ana Canyon. Then when the water that was building up behind this dam cut loose, it all came down in a rush…the river broke out to the north and came down where the Old Santa Ana River channel used to be. It went southwest through what is now La Palma park in Anaheim. Then the river went down within about five or six miles of the ocean and just fanned out in the lowlands…It sure raised havoc around the county.

Sometime during the night of the flood, I heard quite a noise. Later, I found out that the noise was created by some fifty thousand barrel oil tanks that had broken loose in Atwood and were bobbing down Orangethorpe Avenue in the water. Of course, the oil was probably gone out of them, as they had ruptured. There was a lot of oil in the orchards and there was deep sand and silt deposits in some of them. They had to dig the trees out.

There were quite a few people killed in the flood. I have forgotten how many, somewhere between 20 and 40, but we finally got the mess cleaned up.

The water went through the southerly portion of Fullerton…I went to my brother’s house…we had to wade in water about three feet deep to get to the house…

The northern part of Anaheim got it very bad. It put many people out of business. Some automobile dealers had cars under water and full of sand. Many of them did not survive the financial loss…

Orange County’s German Prisoner of War Camp

During World War II, Crooke worked as manager of the German Prisoner of War Camp in Garden Grove. Here are his recollections of that experience:

In 1941 Orange County was one of the largest citrus producing counties in California…During World War II there was a heavy demand from the military for manpower and support help…The farmers were in difficult straits and a demand for farm workers had developed…

We had many German war prisoners here in this country…We needed some of this help in Orange County…I was asked by Citrus Growers, Incorporated to handle the camp and the manpower in the German prisoner of war camp. We had about 700 of them, 75 GIs, and 3 officers. We had to build the camp to house them. Uncle Sam paid the citrus growers one percent of the value of the camp per month, while it was occupied by the prisoners of war. We had these boys one season and part of the next so we didn’t get much salvage of our investment in the camp. The camp had a heavy chain fence around it, with barbed wire on top and machine gun towers on diagonal corners. We broke these men up, 600 of them, into 20 crews of 30 men each. Each crew had to have a picking foreman and an armed guard with it…

After the war, Crooke managed a citrus packinghouse in Garden Grove and became active in the Associated Chamber of Commerce [of Orange County], and became president in 1952.

In this role, he worked with local leaders to develop a countywide sanitation system, and to improve the County’s flood control system.

In 1953, he became manager of the Orange County Water District at a time of explosive growth in Orange County–the beginning of urbanization and industrialization, and the decline of agriculture.

“The water situation was to me the most vital and important of all,” Crooke recalls. “We were already experiencing growth. We knew we had a limited water supply of water.”

In order to increase revenues for Orange County’s water supply, Crooke helped to establish a “pump” tax, which was opposed by some farmers, but ultimately passed.

Securing Orange County’s water supply also meant legal action against water companies and users who were drawing from the Santa Ana watershed further upstream, above Prado Dam, in Riverside and San Bernadino counties.

A legal action was brought against these upstream water users and went to trial in 1956. The trial lasted 114 trial days and involved so many lawyers that “We used almost a whole floor of rooms at the California Hotel.”

The case ended [somewhat] favorably for OCWD.

The story of water use in Orange County is a long and complicated one. For further reading, I recommend “A History of Orange County Water District.”

Howard Crooke retired in 1968.

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

The Local History Room of the Fullerton Public Library has microfilm from the Fullerton Tribune newspaper stretching back to 1893. I am in the process of skimming over the microfilm, year by year, to get a sense of what was happening in the town over the years. Here are some local headlines from the year 1899.

A Fatal Cave-In

Two sons of Pierre Nicolas, an early rancher in Fullerton, died tragically in a gravel pit cave-in.

High School Building Completed

Fullerton’s first high school building was completed in 1899. The high school would move to a new building in 1910, which would burn down about a year after it was built. To learn more about the history of Fullerton High School, read my summary of Louis Plummer’s history.

Below, faculty and students stand outside Fullerton’s first high school building at the northwest corner of Wilshire and Lawrence avenues. When the new high school was built, this building was used by the elementary school district. It was torn down in 1913.

The New Oil Wells

At the turn of the century, Fullerton was becoming an oil-producing area.

Fruit Grower’s Bank

The Fruit Grower’s Bank was Fullerton’s first bank, established in 1895.

Jumped in a Reservoir

Lillie HIndes, whose father started a vegeterian/spiritualist commune in Placentia, committed suicide.

Found Dead This Morning

Davis, Drown, and Linebarger

One of the owners of the Davis, Drown, and Linebarger Livery Stable was Dallison Smith Linebarger, who later served as an Orange County Supervisor for ten years.

Agreement of Water Companies

In 1899, the two main water companies drawing water from the Santa Ana River were the Anaheim Union Water Company and the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company. To read more about local water issues at this time, check out my post called Fullerton Water Wars.

The Plain Blackmailer

There were two newspapers in Anaheim–the Gazette and the Plain Dealer. Apparently, Tribune editor Edgar Johnson took issue with the Plain Dealer.

Fullerton Ostrich Farm

Fullerton’s ostrich farm, which was started by Edward Atherton, was sold to new owners; however, Atherton stayed on as manager.

Brandle Saloon

Saloons had been (mostly) banned in Fullerton, except for one that had obtained a county license, the Brandle hotel/saloon, which still was encountering some problems. To read more about the fight over saloons in early Fullerton read my post Fullerton in 1894: The Fight Over Saloons.

War in the Philippines

In international news, the Spanish-American War took place in 1898, which resulted in the United States obtaining Spanish colonies like the Philippines. This prompted another war with Americans fighting Filipinos.

Sun Never Sets on Old Glory

The Spanish American War was part of American imperialism, as shown by this somewhat disturbing image in the Tribune.

Views on Patriotism

Locally, school children were writing essays on patriotism.

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

The Fullerton College web site contains digital archives of the Weekly Torch (now called The Hornet), Fullerton College’s newspaper, stretching all the way back to 1923. As part of my research into local history, I’ve begun going through these archives, year-by-year, because newspapers are information-rich sources of local history. Below are some articles and ads from the years 1926-1928, with a bit context…

Betty Miller is Tunnel Heroine

This story tells of a group of students who got stuck in the tunnels under Fullerton High School/Fullerton College, and were ultimately rescued. Fullerton Observer columnist Emerson Little did a great story on the tunnels last year.

Here is the full text of the article:

To the bravery, persistence, and lung power of Miss Betty Miller, active member of the J. C. student body is attributed the rescue of twelve students of this college from a horrible death in the subterranean passage beneath the campus last Monday evening. The other members of the party were Anita Stone, Anne Allen, Lillian Hezmalhalch, Betty Berkey, Robert Rundstrum, Clifford Taber, Afton Reinert, and Lee O’Kelly. 

At 7:22 Monday evening, Mr. Neal Harlow, returning on an errand to the engine room, was startled to hear blood-curdling screams issuing from the direction of the underground tunnel that leads from the engine room and circles for two miles in the earth beneath the J C.campus. Supposing from the nature of the screams that some animal had lost itself in the passage, he quickly opened the door and whistled.

The screams continued, and after listening for a few seconds, Mr. Harlow was horrified to distinguish something that sounded like “’help.” Realizing that humans were trapped within the tunnel, he hastily formed a searching party, and a thrilling man hunt was launched. The increasing volume of the scream assured the party that it was on the right track as it pressed further into the narrow, dark subterranean hallway.

After fifteen and two-thirds minutes the searchers came upon the unfortunate students huddled, exhausted on the floor of the tunnel, their clothing torn, faces scratched, and hair disheveled, a a result of their long struggle to escape. The valiant Betty Miller was the only one whose lungs were still active.

She leaned against the wall, her hand clutching her side in her now famous manner, screaming persistently. 

As the rescuers appeared, she gave one last scream, and fell at their feet in hysterics. The other members were so over-come that they were unable to give coherent accounts of the near-tragedy.

“Without Betty, we should have been lost,” exclaimed Lee O’Kelly, hysterically drying his eyes. “This is the last clean handkerchief I have with me”, he exclaimed tearfully. 

At that moment Robert Rundstrum revived from a faint to beg for a comb, explaining mournfully that he had used his in a vain attempt to dig an opening in the top of the tunnel. “And now it’s all filled with dirt,” he added. Mr. Rundstrom this proved himself the hero of the day. 

An application is being made for a Carnegie medal to be presented to Miss Miller.

Programs and Films at the Mission Court [later called Fox] Theater

Chapman’s Alician Court Theater was built in 1925 by C. Stanley Chapman, son of Fullerton’s first mayor Charles C. Chapman, and it went through many name changes over the years, including the Mission Court Theater, before it became the Fox Theater, which is currently being restored by the Fox Theater Foundation. This new Hollywood style movie palace was a popular spot for college kids, and so the theater advertised in the local college newspaper. This is a cool window into when theaters like this included both motion pictures and live vaudeville shows.

Ten years since World War I

The Scorcher

The Torch put out an annual satirical issue called The Scorcher or The Weekly Scorch.

Fullerton J.C. Has Beautiful Library

$200,000 Vote Cast for H.S. Auditorium

Funding was secured for the building of the High School Auditorium, which in the 1960s was called Plummer Auditorium. In 2020, the “Plummer” name was removed due to Louis Plummer’s alleged association with the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, when there was a large and active local KKK.

It wasn’t until 1935 that Fullerton College began to get its own campus. Prior to this, it shared a campus with Fullerton Union High School.

Fifty-Five in Graduating Class

The graduating class of Fullerton Junior College in 1927 was 55 students.

Americanization Department in Novel Program

In the 1920s and early 30s, there was an “Americanization” program, which involved sending local teachers into the segregated Mexican work camps around town.

Fun local advertisements…

The Chapman-Wicket Co. was a department store on the ground floor of the Chapman Building, which was co-owned by Charles C. Chapman.

The Sanitary Laundry was located where the Magoski Arts Colony used to be located on Santa Fe.

Dan O’Hanlon was a local businessman who had a cross burned on his front lawn by the Ku Klux Klan because he spoke out during a 1924 Klan rally at Amerige Park.

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

The Local History Room of the Fullerton Public Library has microfilm from the Fullerton Tribune newspaper stretching back to 1893. I am in the process of skimming over the microfilm, year by year, to get a sense of what was happening in the town over the years. Here are some local headlines from the year 1898.

Spanish-American War

The major national (and local) news item of 1898 was the Spanish-American War, which the Tribune glamorized with the fanciest layouts seen to date, as shown below.

This was the beginning of the age of U.S. imperialism, and part of impetus for the Spanish-American War was U.S. support of Cuban rebels against Spanish rule. Whether or not the Cubans fared better under American influence after the war is a matter of debate.

Home Guard Meets

The Spanish-American War, like all American wars, prompted a surge of ultra-patriotism throughout the United States. Locally, this took the form of the formation of a Home Guard and the erection of a giant flagpole.

The Home Guard drew from prominent members of the community. Here’s (most of) the text of the article:

A meeting of the newly-organized home guard was held Saturday evening in Chadbourne hall, E.R. Amerige acting as temporary chairman.

The hall committee reported there would be no charge for the hall while used for drilling purposes, excepting the actual expenses of lights and janitor work.

The following gentlemen were nominated for captain: B.F. Porter, E.S. Richman, W.E. McFadden, H.C. Head. W.E. McFadden moved to elect Mr. Richman by acclamation. Motion prevailed.

H.C. Head and B.F. Porter were nominated for first lieutenant and on motion the former was elected by acclamation.

E.R. Amerige was also elected second lieutenant by acclamation.

The following committee was appointed to take the necessary steps to procure arms and other equipments: Edgar Johnson, H.C. Head, O. des Granges, W.E. McFadden, W.R. Carpenter.

Drs. Clark and Rich were unanimously chosen as surgeons of the home guard and the house fairly went wild when C.E. Holcomb was declared to be the choice of every member for chaplain of the new organization…

The band and A. McDermont were tendered a vote of thanks for the free use of their halls, and H.C. Head was added to the flag-pole committee, after which the meeting adjourned.

Even advertisers like Hood’s Sasparilla took advantage of the swell of patriotism.

In a somewhat disturbing article, Tribune editor Edgar Johnson argued that one benefit of the war was that Americans were learning more about the world.

Even school children were roped into supporting the war.

The United States won the Spanish-American War, resulting in new American colonies (like the Phillippines), and this provided new business opportunities for enterprising Americans.

A Disastrous Fire

In other local news, there was a massive fire that destroyed some buildings downtown, including part of Stern & Goodman’s store, which was the main store downtown at this time.

Here is the full text of the article:

A raging fire broke out here early Monday morning and destroyed several thousand dollars worth of property before the flames could be controlled.

 The fire started from the explosion of a gasoline tank in a small building between the Pacific Billiard parlor and Stern & Goodman’s store, first burning the small building and then the billiard parlor, after which the flames soon reached a large warehouse owned by Stern & Goodman, and the harness shop owned by Ed Culmer. Few of the goods in the warehouse were saved; most of the harness stock and the billiard tables were saved. The harness and leather stock was greatly damaged.

Stern & Goodmans department store, which, with the stock was worth over $50,000, was saved after hard work by at least 100 men and women. Most of the entire stock of goods were removed from the building being scattered all over the streets. The Anaheim fire department arrived in time to do some good work. The buildings across the street were saved. The billiard room building, warehouse, oil storage building and harness shop building were burned to the ground. The loss is fully $5,000, probably more. The Southern California railway had tank cars and apparatus on the road from Los Angeles, but they were stopped at Rivera, as the fire was under control by the Santa Fe’s fire apparatus had reached that station on a special train. The freight train which passed Fullerton just as the fire broke out was ordered back from Orange by Agent Davis who feared that the depot and freight cares on the sidetracks would be destroyed.

Arthur Porter was in the tank house when the explosion occurred and was severely burned. Mrs. Denkle who helped to remove the goods from Messrs. Stern & Goodman’s building overheated herself and fainted, but soon recovered. Several persons were slightly burned.

At the time of the fire there was not a drop of water in the town tank but a bucket brigade was organized at once and was soon carrying water from the large storage tank on Commonwealth avenue, about 200 yards from the burning buildings. The fire extinguishers owned by 5 or 6 residents were also used to good advantage in bringing the raging flames under control.

The large warehouse in the rear of the north room of Stern & Goodman’s store being covered with corrugated iron did not burn. The south side of this building was badly scorched and was ablaze once or twice but it was saved by hard work. Had it went up in smoke the Sansimena block and Stern and Goodman’s department store would have burned to the ground which would have increased the loss $25,000. Two hogs and about 150 chickens belonging to Stern & Goodman were burned. After the Anaheim fire company and the residents of Fullerton had dome so much good work Stern & Goodman served refreshments to all, extending many thanks to the good people who had so ably assisted them.

The intense heat when Mr. Conrad’s building was burning caused the large plate glass window in the Brandle hotel front to break into more than a dozen pieces.

Death of Ernest Brown

There were some deaths, including the grisly death of a Mr. Ernest Browning, a local rancher.

Death of Mr. Stone

Jerome B. Stone, an early settler of Fullerton, died.

A Sudden Death

Carolina Dierksen, owner of a controversial saloon/hotel in Fullerton, died.

Election Returns

1898 was also an election year.

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

Mary Laura Campbell, a long time Fullerton Librarian, was interviewed in 1972 for the CSUF Oral History Program by Shirley E. Stephenson. Here are some excerpts from that interview, along with some historic photos.

I was born in South Dakota in 1896 and my people brought me out here at the age of eight months…

I went through the local schools here…which included the old red brick schoolhouse at the corner of what is Wilshire and Lemon now and through the high school which was then located at West Commonwealth where Amerige Park is now. 

I was there about a year, when that high school burned down. 

Finally, they got one started on East Chapman and I continued there. I was going to junior college and living across the street from what was to be the location of the Carnegie Library–this was on north Pomona. My father bought property between Wilshire and Whiting and he built some houses there.

In 1907, when Andrew Carnegie made the gift of ten thousand dollars for the library building, this corner opposite our home was chosen for the site. They built this library which looked something like a mission. It was stucco and had a tile roof and the shape was a little bit like some of the missions. It was dedicated in 1907, and I was in and out of the library from then on. I was very crazy about books and made really good use of it…

My going into library work was by what I think you might call osmosis because I lived so close and I was there so much. I was going to junior college when this chance came to go into the library. I needed a job and they would give you six months training in those days. So I worked there and I liked it very much. I worked for free for six months and then I believe I got twenty dollars a month, which gives you some idea of salaries in those times. Miss Minnie Maxwell, the first librarian was the librarian then. She was a former schoolteacher and a very, very fine person…

There was a room for children in this new building but not a very big room…I think there were about a thousand books perhaps. The children were reading the stories about Betty Wales. Betty Wales, Freshman and so on through the Bachelor of Arts and Betty Wales in Europe. The LIttle Colonel stories by Annie Fellows Johnson were also popular. The boys were reading adventure stories, of course, and the Boy Mechanic Volume 1, Volume 2, and the American Boy…

Over the years I took special courses in the Los Angeles Library School…I had the Management of Children’s Room, Supervision of Children’s Rooms, and Cataloguing.

Was this still in the Carnegie Library?

We were still in the Carnegie Library building but we soon outgrew this library and they decided to build a little separate building for the children. It was next door, just west of the Carnegie building, on the same property and it was quite an attractive little building…

The people decided that a new library was needed so that it was all under one roof. For two years we had to be downtown in an old garage building at the corner of Chapman and Harbor, which was then called Spadra. After two years there in that barnlike building, the new building the corner of Wilshire and Pomona were ready and we moved in there. I think it was about 1941…Our librarian at that time was Miss Carrie Sheppard and when Book Week came around, which came in November, she liked to have it celebrated in a big way…

One thing the Children’s Department did was to bring authors or illustrators of famous books to the library. We had such people as Leo Politi, the famous illustrator…He not only talked to us, but he painted a picture right then and there and we had it framed and hung in the library. It was a picture of Mexican children, and a little burro…Besides Mr. Politi, we had Clancy Holling and Mr. and Mrs. Conrad Buff, Margaret Leighton, and Maud Lovelace…We also had the marionettes each time. There was a company in Fullerton, the Thompson marionettes…so that was the closing event of the week…

During these years I think I was making the nucleus for a collection of historical books about children’s literature…I remember we had the facsimile, The New England Primer, and some Kate Greenways and some Chatterboxes and things like that. That was the beginning of the Mary Laura Campbell Book Collection which Mrs. Johnson really pushed and carried on. It’s to credit and it now has about one hundred books I think. She has even traveled in Europe and purchased books which have gone into that collection. I’m very proud of it and very thankful to to her for this…

Then we had an ostrich egg. Fullerton had an ostrich farm here in the early days, not far from here. It’s where Acacia School is located. The Athertons bought ostriches here and kept them for several years to exhibit and I suppose hoping to get the benefit of the feathers. Well, somehow the library got one of these eggs and it’s well preserved now. Mrs. Sim, who takes groups of children through the library and teachers them library lessons says she couldn’t get along without the ostrich egg.

We also made arrangements with the school for the library to service the elementary schools…they remodeled two old buses and they were used to go from school to school. That was the beginning of the bookmobile.

What schools did you service?

Maple School was one. Ford School. Raymond School. I think they were the first and then Valencia Park was a little later.

I retired in 1959…The children’s room is now carried on by Mrs. Carolyn Johnson. She’s called Supervisor of Children’s Work and is now planning a new department in the big new library on West Commonwealth.

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

C. Stanley Chapman, son of Fullerton’s first mayor Charles Chapman, was interviewed in 1976 for the California State University Fullerton Oral History Program by Nita June Busby. Here are some excerpts from that interview, along with some historic photos. I have also included a bit of commentary to clarify or give context.

We became connected with Fullerton in 1894, although we did not move down here to live until 1898. We acquired the property for our first grove in 1894…So we have been connected with the city for a goodly number of years.

To tell you what the town was like when we came here, it was an ordinary village. It was, of course, on the railroad and it was a shipping point for, strangely enough, asparagus and walnuts–there were many walnuts. As an orange shipping place, it had no particular standing at all. I suppose you are aware that the name “Orange County” was not from the orange industry. It was named by A.B. Chapman and Glassell who founded the city of Orange and named it after Orange, Virginia, I think.

When we first came here, I was quite young. We had come from Chicago. The actuating reason was my mother’s health. She only lived a very few months after we came here.

Father had been in a great number of activities in Illinois including a very considerable operation of publishing county histories…He had a very limited education; in fact, he never did actually get beyond the fourth or fifth grade, but he was a man who educated himself by his association with others. He became exceedingly well read and a very fine public speaker.

We came out here in the Spring of 1894 and a year or so later built a small cottage on our Fullerton property which was two miles east of the center of town on what is now State College Boulevard. It was then Cypress Avenue and we lived in that little cottage until 1903 when we built a very substantial three-story house, with some beautiful formal gardens and an arrangement of buildings which misled many people who came out to think they were in a separate community.

Father’s acquaintance with oranges up to that time had been only when he had been in Florida and had seen some growing. When we came to the grove, among many varieties which were there, were twelve rows of variety the neighbors all said should be budded because they did not get ripe in time to ship. So he watched them and said, “Why don’t you hold them on the tree?” They said, “Oh, you mustn’t do that because they have to get off the tree by June at least.” Well, he had come from the East where he knew that certain times of the year there were no oranges at all. So he did hold them, and then, in September of 1895, he shipped the first carload of Valencias that had ever been shipped into New York. They were an immediate success and he was known universally as the “father of the Valencia orange industry.”

Orange County turned out to be ideally climatically placed for that orange and it became the universal planting.

We had over fifty-five acres of walnuts–Placentia was the beginning of the walnut industry and the Placentia Perfection is still the choice walnut of the whole industry although it has all moved up north. This land down here became too valuable for that kind of crop.

Fullerton itself was a small community. There were, I think, about four or five stores and about that many saloons. On the main street there were not even any sidewalks. The haulage was all by wagon and team. It was a very familiar site to see a four horse team pulling a big hay load down through the middle of town.

There were three or four types of stores. Stern and Goodman had their big department store on the corner where Stein and Strauss came later, where the Fullerton Hardware store is now. 

The Balcom Bank was across the street where the Security Bank is now. In the middle of that block was the Greater Gem Pharmacy of Mr. Starbuck.

That was the place where the telephone exchange was. At that time there were, I think, five telephones. We had one of them. You never had to use a number; you just rang up and said, “Sophie, get me Mr. Dean.” Dean had the hardware store. There was a clothing store on the east side. On the southeast corner was the ice-cream fountain Mr. Ford had. In the middle of that block was the blacksmith shop.

So it was a real community and everybody knew everybody else. It was a very pleasant place to live.

Father was interested in progress, of course, and he was active in the incorporation of the town and became its first mayor.

There was a hotel on the northeast corner of Commonwealth and Harbor–Harbor used to be known as Spadra Road. It was the main road, the old stage road over the hills to the town and station of Spadra so that’s where it got its name.

That big hotel [The St. George Hotel] was one of a series that had been built by the railroad in 1883. They had this big drive for people to come out here and they gave free passes to travelers. There was one in Anaheim, one in Olive, one in Santa Fe Springs. All became great places for the kids to play in, in later years. The Ameriges had the one here in Fullerton.

The first move of the new city council was to put in sidewalks. There was a great deal of opposition to it until they saw the first set put in on the first block on Spadra and then, of course, everybody wanted them. It was in 1910 or 1911 that the first paving was done in the main block.

The activity of the community was all agriculturally directed and it wasn’t until along in the fifties that industry began.

The high school was on the northwest block of Wilshire and Balcom and the grammar school was on Wilshire, where the junior high [now the School of Continuing Education] is still located. Fullerton High School was the center of seven school districts. Ours was the largest graduating class up to 1905. We had thirteen members and were the first ones to publish an annual…We called it the Lucky Thirteen…There were thirteen of us and about four or five teachers. We had strict discipline.

I came down to high school in 1901. The high school had just received an athletic field due to the fact that for some unknown reason a whole grove of walnut trees fell down one night and it turned out to be a nice place for a baseball field. How it happened, nobody ever knew (laughter)…

Our senior year we had quite a pitcher who came down from Olinda named Walter Johnson, who turned out to be something pretty good…

I feel that one of the greatest educations that can be given to any child is discipline and the fact that the world is not going to take care of him when he gets out…

I never saw that second high school. I was away at college when it was built. They said it was a very nice school but it burned just about a year later…

You mentioned some of the businesses–Stern and Goodman and the blacksmith shop. Did they have lots of businesses? It was a small town.

There was the Hiltscher Brothers’ machine shop and butcher shop. They had the only refrigeration in town from their machine shop…

One thing I am curious about is: were there any Mexicans or Chinese, or whatever around at the time that Fullerton was beginning? Where did our barrios come from, our own Fullerton barrio down around Truslow?

The barrio came in much later. I wouldn’t know what year. Nobody thought of it as being a barrio. On our own ranch we had housing for our own employees. We had about twenty or thirty full-time employees, teamsters and irrigators, and we had a place over on the hill across Placentia Avenue where we had a little village for them…homes, multiple homes, single homes for them to live in. When we first came, we had a bunkhouse for the teamsters, dining room and all. They lived there and ate their meals. Then, of course, we had our own crew that did our picking and our own packinghouse. The girls came in from their homes. But there was no development in that area as far as housing was concerned. The downtown residential portion was almost nonexistent. Have you talked to Lillian Yeager?

No.

She lived right downtown and one of my earliest recollections of her is standing up on a box so she could turn the crank on the first gasoline pump the town had.

Did her family own the place?

Yes, that was their home there right across the street from the church, the Christian church for which Father built the first little chapel. They moved the chapel over to Union avenue.

Was it the only church at the time?

Oh, no. There was the Baptist church, the Methodist church, and the Presbyterian church which was down on Highland and Commonwealth. Those three were the only churches here. The Catholic church was in Anaheim.

Would you tell me a little about the law enforcement?

Charley Ruddock was the chief of police in town. He was not the first constable, I’m sure, but he was the first one I remember. He went on to become Orange County sheriff. The police force was never very big…

What did people do for entertainment in the early days?

Until the first theater came in–my wife’s father had the first motion picture theater in Fullerton, that would have been along about 1915 or 1916–up to that time we made our own entertainment…We had parties and picnics. To have fun, it was not necessary to have mechanical equipment…we used to have nice high school parties and grammar school shows…Very few people had cars and the roads were not fit to go anywhere if you did…I remember starting out to go hunting in the Santa Ana Canyon with the little one cylinder car…

Could we talk about the orange ranch and packinghouse?

Our property in the east of town was owned by the Placentia Orchard Company when we acquired it and the company is still in existence. It was incorporated in 1892 so it is probably one of the oldest in the state. We still maintain that corporation.

Most of the growers belonged to associations and to the Fruit Growers’ Exchange which was organized a bit later. The growers’ associations formed the exchange.

A lot of people think Sunkist is a brand; it is only a quality mark.

When father first started to ship, the growers said, “Don’t use the same label twice because the people will remember and they won’t want to buy the fruit.” In those days, the fruit was all shipped in wooden boxes. He said, “Well, why don’t you make a label they will like?” They said. “You can’t do that.” But he and his brother, Frank, who had started out in Covina, had always been impressed with the old missions and they looked for a label that would display it. They started the “Old Mission” brand. For thirty in the New York market, that Old Mission brand brought the highest price…That was the first quality brand label, as I said, before Sunkist came into being as a quality mark.

Each packinghouse and each association had its own brand but they have to pass a certain quality for the Sunkist mark. Father was given credit for that, too, in the citrus business.

It was amazing, after he had been here for only a short time, he was going around to “citrus institutes” telling people how to grow and sell oranges. He became quite an authority.

Could we talk about water? I would think that citrus fruit would take a lot of water. Where did the water come from?

Water in this area comes from the Santa Ana River. The water is divided between the Anaheim Union Water Company and the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company. It was years ago that it was divided. Father was always on the Anaheim Union Board. There were some wells, but most of this area was all developed by the Santa Ana River water…

So much water was later taken up here from wells that the artesian flow stopped. The “saltwater barrier” gave way and the salt water moved in. But, water was no problem in those early days. The river furnished everything that was needed up here. 

Please talk some more about your family: your mother and sister and so forth.

Well, as I said, Mother died. My sister was the queen of the first Orange County Fair. She married Dr. William Wickett.

Tell me more about the medical services in the town.

When we came, there were two doctors, Dr. Freeman, a general practitioner who was our doctor and Dr. Rich who was the surgeon. Dr. Rich had the fist Oldsmobile in the town. In those days the doctors came to your house. There was no such thing as going to a doctor’s office…Dr. Clark came in later. His home was taken out to the university.

Can you talk about Atherton’s Ostrich Farm?

We always felt the ostriches were a novelty for them and as far as I know they did not commercially operate. All our relationship with the ostriches was when once in a while we would take a bag of oranges up and throw them over the fence and watch them. They would swallow the oranges whole and you could see them going down around their necks. So that was our only contact…

Your list of topics here mentions the Bastanchury Ranch. The Bastanchurys were one of the large group of Basque people who came here in the very early days. I do no know if you are familiar with them. Many of the families are still here.

The Bastanchury Ranch was the largest. They had about three thousand acres and they ran a lot of sheep on their property in the early days.

I was never well-acquainted with any of them as much as I was with Gaston who was one of the sons. I remember going out to the ranch in the old days where they had sheep and going into the dining place where the men were all around this long table. They would pass around great loaves of bread. Each man would cut off a slice. They had wine in leather bottles that they passed along. There was a quill in the end of the bottle. They would squeeze this into their mouths without ever touching the quill at all. It was a great novelty for me.

Subsequently, when Gaston formed the Bastanchury Ranch Company, they set out the whole thing in citrus and it was just too much. They also set out the Union Oil Company land across from what is now Harbor Boulevard. In raising some of his money, he had sold bonds. The bond-holders took the ranch over under the name of “Sunny Hills.” It was really a very tragic thing because if it had been done a little at a time, it could have been a tremendously successful operation…

With the thirties came the Depression. In relation to the citrus business, it was remarkable. In 1930 we got one of the highest prices we ever received for oranges: $3.10 a box on the tree. In 1931, we got $.86; 1932, $.64; 1933, $.54. All that time, of course, the operation had to be kept going. It was a terrible thing. It represented a terrible monetary loss. It took many years to recover. That same year, came the earthquake.

Were there soup kitchens?

One of the things Alice was instrumental in was a kitchen at the Ford School. At that time we had a meat plant over in Anaheim and we supplied the bones and meat to make the soup. Molly Thatcher, who just recently was named “Woman of the Year” by the Business and Professional Women, was the principal. She was determined that no child would know whether the others were paying for their meals or not. So she established a “token” system. The parents, if they could, would buy tickets for their children so that no one would now. For many of the children it was the only hot meal they were getting…

When I built the theater [the Fox Theater, originally called Chapman’s Alician Court Theater], my aunt, Mrs. Dolla Harris, who had established a great reputation in Los Angeles with tearooms, under the name of Mary Louise, put a tearoom in the building that was a beautiful place.

In the old days music for the movies used to be a great kick. They had the player piano with two sets of rolls. They would run the picture and set the rolls to go with the scenes…My sister-in-law, Mrs. Winifred Semans, was a high school teacher for years at the Fullerton High School. She played the piano at the theater first and then Alice took it over. Then when we went into the big movie house, we had a beautiful pipe organ. It was really a gorgeous thing, with an echo organ on the roof.

On the walls–and I’ve often just about cried about this–on each side, there were three great big arches, and on each side a set of beautiful murals depicting early California, Portola’s landing and all that on both sides…beautiful. When the Fox Movie people bought it, they got in a hurry and went in there and put white paint over the whole thing. The murals were on canvas. I would have paid ten thousand dollars for them but they painted them over with just white paint. Those beautiful murals.

Who did the murals? Where did they come from?

I forget who painted them. They were done in Los Angeles. They were on canvas. They could have been removed. I would have gladly taken them over to Chapman College. They would have been gorgeous over there. They were really beautiful sets of historical California.

So progress destroys. I’ve often thought that progress is the worst thing that can happen to anybody or any place. It seems like it moves with a hand that is intent only on the greatest return right now. It neer thinks about fifty years from now. What will they think of this modern trend in buildings? They used to be beautiful. Now they’re just straight up and down.

Now mention the Fullerton library…I think that is without question the ugliest building I have ever seen.

I think everybody has read Fountainhead, that book by Ayn Rand where the hero takes all the facades off and makes everything plain. I think all architects read that so there is no more rococo or embellishmments of any kind. It is a shame.

Father built that five story building [the Chapman building] that was just ahead of the town a bit, too. The store, the first one was too good and the second was too poor.

In 1937 there were two physical disasters. One was a big freeze and the other was a flood [the flood was actually in 1938]…The Santa Ana River broke over its banks and came back into its old bed, right down what we called the “sand wash,” and went right down into the Mexican village of La Jolla…The American Legion…one of our activities was disaster relief.

When we went out in the truck along Atwood Road, you could hear the people calling for help across the great rushing river. It was just a mad torrent. The whole river went through. The next day, when it had eased, we went through the water in the truck and picked up a lot of people and took them up to the Fullerton Legion Hall.

The Legion Auxillary ladies were all up there. Alice took a lot of baby bottles and nipples and milk and so on. I think we had about 165 people living in the Legion Hall for white a long time. I remember I was wading across the river, looking around and I found this little girl’s body. It was a terrible thing.

Do you suppose it could happen again?

No, the Prado Dam has been put in since then. That flood was before there was any dam at all on the river or any control of any kind. So it will never happen again…

What did that frost do to the orange groves?

It was not anywhere near the killer that the 1913 frost was. That was the bad one…

Did the Masons start to be a big force in the thirties? When was the Masonic Hall built?

The temple was built in 1920. The old temple was down on the corner of Amerige and what is now Harbor…The lodge was chartered in 1890…it was quite an influential organization because many of the prominent men belonged to it…

Is it more social and service oriented?

Yes. It is an organization of men who are devoted to the improvement of themselves and society, the schools and the things that are for the benefit for all mankind, but it absolutely never engages in any political activity of any sort.

I can see then that it was just the exact opposite of the Ku Klux Klan. Was it ever very large in Fullerton?

Oh, for heavens sake, no. The John Birch Society was more important than that. I never knew anybody that belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. I don’t think it was ever anything here.

[Note: There was an active Ku Klux Klan in Fullerton in the 1920s that included many prominent citizens.]

We had no racial problems here whatsoever. As for the Mexican population, well, they located by themselves but there was never any racial problem. The association in the old days was a very delightful one with the Mexican people because the older ones were the most gracious and lovely people you could imagine. We never felt that they were working for us. We were all just working together. The association was always delightful. One boy, Joe Martinez, who is in the hospital now, has been with us for fifty years. He lost one of his feet here years ago, but he kept on working…

[Note: Relations between Mexican Americans and the larger white community were not as rosy as Chapman relates. There was active segregation and discrimination. Click HERE to read more.]

Our employees are getting fewer and fewer…John Reyna, a truck driver who is up at our Yucaipa property now and is getting up toward his sixties was born on the ranch…

There was never any racial problem in the old days and the idea of a barrio or anything like that just did not exist. They were more comfortable living together. As I said in the other interview, on our ranch we had our own housing for them.

There was never any need for the Ku Klux Klan to come in and ruin everything, like they did in Anaheim?

No. In the schools there were never any pressures.

Did the Mexicans go to the same schools as everybody else?

Oh, sure. Of course, in the olden days, there was no parochial school in Fullerton. The only Catholic church was over in Anaheim. There was never a need for forced integration or forced anything of the kind. It was a natural association.

[Note: There were at least two “Mexican” schools in Fullerton: one on the Bastanchury Ranch and one at a Mexican work camp at Balcom and Pomona.]

Were they allowed to use the swimming pools and the movies and everything else, then, too?

Oh, sure.

[Note: According to an oral history interview by Jessie Corona de Montoya, Mexicans were often excluded from the public pool in Fullerton.]

There were only a few Negro families and they were very high in the estimation of the community. There was this poet, she was just tops. Her name was Ruby Goodwin. Her people were most highly respected. There was never any feeling of difference between us.

[Note: According to numerous Black residents interviewed for the book A Different Shade of Orange: Voices of Orange County, California Black Pioneers, there was in fact housing discrimination in Fullerton. Warren Bussey, an African American man who moved to Fullerton in the early 1950s, said “We [blacks] were only living on two blocks [he lived on Truslow as well]…Living in California at that time, it was more prejudiced than it was in Texas.”]

Were the people proud of the Fullerton High School football team?

There was great support for them.

Do you remember the mural at the high school that the WPA artist painted? Why did they paint that out?

I don’t know. They put one in the Post Office titled “Picking Oranges.” How anybody ever imagined such a thing! Have you ever seen them pick oranges? Men have a bag over their shoulders with the bottom that drops out to lower the front into the box. This picture showed women up on ladders picking oranges without clippers and throwing them at the box. It is the stupidest thing. Anybody who would try it would break his back or his neck. The one down there at the school was almost as absurd. They were painted by that WPA business and the painting did not go with the architecture of the school. It was a great relief when they did paint them out. They were not an artistic addition to the building by any means.

Can we talk about the politics in the thirties on the national level now?

Yes, we had that big blow up with the Bull Moose Party and Hiram Johnson here in California and the Southern Pacific Railroad and Teddy Roosevelt with his Bull Moose.

My father was always very active in the Republican Party and he was very much opposed to the Bull Moose Party. In fact, at that time, he actually considered running for the Legislature, or the State Senate, just to hold the party from the Progressives. He always called it the G.O.P., the Grand Old Party, and he was always very active in it; not wanting an office, but wanting the Republicans to be kept in office. He was a conservative and he was very active in getting the tariff on oranges and lemons that made the whole industry possible. He made many trips to Washington. On one of the trips, Herbert Hoover invited him for lunch.

The foreign producers had the advantage of cheap labor and their freight was actually cheaper to ship than it would be from California by rail. So, ti became evident that if the orange industry was to survive, there had to be some protection. And it began to mean a lot to a lot of people as the industry and planting grew. Father made several visits to Washington to work on various congressmen and senators and so forth until they did get–I think it was a cent a pound on oranges and on lemons. Of course, the lemon market was completely in the hands of the foreign producers. When this tariff was established, it immediately gave us a chance to compete because it would make up for the difference in cost and freight and so on. They even got the Democratic Congressmen to support them even though their great rule was “free trade.”

Actually the life of the industry was protection from foreign growers…Several times in the course of the next fifteen years we had to defend this thing. The Democrats wanted to take it off.

That was one reason Father was always a Republican. He believed in the protection of American industry. “Buy American for the Americans.”

When was the tariff put in?

I think the first one was along in about 1905.

Being as Fullerton didn’t encourage saloons, did Prohibition make a difference?

Father was a great Prohibitionist and one of the things about the incorporation of the city was his desire to control or get rid of the saloons. The city got fifty dollars a year, I think, from each saloon. Some felt that if they put them out, they would not be able to carry on the city. So he said, “I’ll make up any deficit.” So they put them out. He never had to pay a nickel. The business and everything jumped in the town. Orange County was never involved in the grape business to any extent. The big vineyards were up near San Bernadino.

There were no “blind tigers”–places where people could get illegal alcohol in Fullerton?

I doubt it very much because Anaheim had always been the Mecca. They had the Germans in the first place; they had their wineries, and they had grapes over there, and they had their saloons and everything. It got to be the custom: if anybody wanted anything, he went to Anaheim, and I presume there were places over there. It never became a factor of any moment that I ever heard of in Fullerton. There was plenty just across the “sandwash.”

There’s one little sidelight that might be of interest about the citrus topic, and that is the decline of the citrus industry. For a number of years, we had noticed that along the highway the trees didn’t do well. We all thought it was the dust or something like that. Then it began to be evident that it was the exhaust from the automobiles. As that increased, the damage increased.

Then there was a very tragic and important thing. Have I ever said anything about sour stock or sweet stock? Trees on sour stock were subject to a good many more diseases than trees on sweet stock. From 1916 on, about 85 percent of all plantings were on sour stock. Then, in Brazil, the industry was destroyed by “quick decline.” Then there was an infestation of quick decline up in Glendora…there was no starch in the tree. So this was the “quick decline.”

…And it meant that all of this planting, which was eighty five percent on sour stock, was doomed. There was nothing you could do about it. And this kept spreading, and all they could do was to dig out the tree and burn it. They found it was a virus carried by a little wasp that pierced the leaf…

The land began to get more valuable for other things, but it was a tragedy. If we had stated with the sweet roots, these other diseases were secondary in damage. But, of course, the smog would have gotten them.