THE SAGE OF EL AL I SAL
“ A Prophet is not without honor save in his own country” is an axiom inapplicable to Charles F. Lummis despite the fact that he has been decorated by the King of Spain and elected to the Royal Academy of that country.
His forty years of heroic
work for Spanish-America and the Great Southwest as an historian, explorer, archaeologist, ethnologist and critic is recognized at home as well as abroad.
More world-famous people, perhaps, make pilgrimages to his unique, hand-hewn home in the Arroyo, than to any other one house in all the West. Within the Court of the Alcalde Mayor gather statesmen, authors, generals, actors, naturalists, painters, librarians, dancers, historians, singers, educators, composers, sculptors and pioneers to grasp the hand and share the old-time California hospitality of the Sage of El Alisal.The Five
Friendly Falleys
THE STORY OF GREATER HIGHLAND PARK
Written by the
Publicity Department
Highland Park Branch
SECURITY TRUST &
SAVINGS BANK
Second Edition
Published, by the Highland Park Branch of the
Security Trust & Savings Bank of Los Angeles and dedicated to the continuing growth of Greater Highland Park, the Community
Copyright 1923THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
Ex-President Roosevelt at Occidental College, 1911
THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
HEN Theodore Roosevelt was being driven over the Arroyo Seco to South Pasadena on March 25, 1911, after having spoken at Occidental College, he turned suddenly to one of his companions and remarked in his characteristic
way, “This Arroyo would make one of the greatest parks in the world!”
Twelve years later to a day, the former President’s dream became a reality.
On March 25, 1923, acting at the instance of the Arroyo Seco Federation, the Los Angeles City Council passed the necessary ordinance which reserves for all time sixty acres of the bed of this Arroyo as a great playground for all the people.
Thus is spread at the feet of the Five Friendly Valleys one of the world’s most unique recreational centers.
It was but natural that Colonel Roosevelt should grasp the possibilities of the Arroyo Seco at a glance. Men of vision and imagination had always done so. The Colonel’s closest companion that day was Charles F. Lummis, Harvard classmate and life-long friend. Lum-mis had dreamed Roosevelt’s dream away back in 1 885 when he came striding down the bank of the Arroyo on the last lap of his historic transcontinental hike. HeTHE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
3
preached Arroyo Park from that day on, through all the Five Friendly Valleys of the Highlands. And what a reward came to those labors and the laborer himself! For the beloved “Don Carlos” was made president of the very federation which carried the park fight of a quarter century’s duration to a glorious and successful conclusion.
“The Colonel’s closest companion that day was
Charles F. Lummis”4
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“Before the boom the Highlands were but grazing land”
THE LURE OF THE ARROYO
It was the vista of giant sycamores, rugged oaks and green hillsides that brought into being a town in the Highlands in the first place. That
was back in the colorful “boom days of the eighties.” Before the boom, the Highlands were but grazing land. The only building remembered by those who rode the old Los Angeles-Pasadena mail stage
“And when finally the rails of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad were laid in 1885THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
5
was a slaughter house where now stands the Highland Park Ebell Club. A panoramic photograph taken as late as I 887 shows but two or three houses in all of the present Highland Park and but a handful more in the present Annandale and Garvanza.
But, spread before the bare valleys was the lovely Arroyo with its great trees, its restful shade and its inviting grasses. And when finally the rails of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad (later the Santa Fe) were laid in 1 885 and the winter tourists came out from Los Angeles, the scene invited them. It so invited them in fact, that they stayed, and made their homes where they might look out on the sycamores by day and listen to the babbling of the stream by night.
A SELECTED PEOPLE
It was virgin land----a land of gently sloping
hills and soft, undulating valleys. Such a country invariably appeals to a distinct type of people---a people of an artistic and literary
bent.
It was not unnatural, then, that the first action taken after the starting of a school in Miller’s Hall, was the establishing of a public reading room. The people voted to deny themselves the enjoyment of amusement places in Los Angeles for a year and with the savings build up the community library. Mrs. Dexter donated the flour to make paste for the wall paper. Mrs. Lindsay donated chairs, Mrs. Stewart, pictures and a stereoscope with many views! “Harper’s Young People’’ was subscribed for as a good start in periodical literature.
“It was virgin land—a land of gently sloping hills and soft, undulating valleys”THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS

the first branch library ever built in Los Angeles.”
Nor, later, was it hard to understand why the first branch library ever built in Los Angeles should have been located in the Highlands and that to insure its location, the people raised thousands of dollars for a site which they presented to the city. Nor, was it any wonder, in the later nineties when everyone was des-
and kept them alive with an old water cart operated by horse power”THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
7
perately “hard-up” all over Southern California that the community should have raised sufficient funds to buy a ten acre tract which it presented to Occidental College as an inducement to secure its location in the Highlands. Neither was it any wonder during the same bleak period of the “lean nineties,” that the Garvanza Improvement Association should have planted 500 street shade trees and kept them alive with an old water cart operated by horse power. Out of this grew the observance of Arbor Day throughout the county.
AN EDITOR WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR
By the end of 1887, Garvanza, which of the Five Friendly Valleys was the first to be settled, had grown to a population of 500. Lots were selling rapidly at from $350 to $400. It was a going community. Among its many assets 
was the “Garvanza Gazette,” which succeeded the “Gar-vanzan,” a small sheet furnished by one of the realtors. The “Gazette,” fortunately, was edited by a man with a sense of humor---a genus only too rare among country journalists.
And so, just as Judge Glover with his “South Pasadenan,” over on the other bank of the Arroyo Seco, was bringing a weekly message of good cheer to his readers, so was Winfield Hogaboom helping with his "Gazette” to soften the hardships which the settlers in a new and untried country were naturally subjected to. Such men were needed too, and badly, right after the boom broke and the bottom seemed to have dropped out of California. There were no longer any thrills to be imparted, but what the “Gazette” lacked in that, it made up in glorious fun. After waiting seemingly indefinitely to give8
THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
The first paper in the Highlands
his readers a sensation, the scribe was finally accomodated by Jacobson’s old sorrel running away and throwing the driver in “a shapeless mass against the sunbaked road,” only to have “aforesaid shapeless mass appear at the main entrance of our editorial sanctum and kindly request us not to put it in the paper!’’
“Some people seem to think that because an editor can't wear good clothes and lead in prayer, that he wouldn’t make a good delegate to the Republican County Convention,” bewailed Hogaboom at another time. Speaking of the Democratic County Convention he said: “The freedom of the city was tendered the delegates but we noticed a general tendency to bring in the clothes off the line before dark!”THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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The Pioneer Mother, Tempe Sarah Ann Rogers, and her children. Her sons, Ralph (center) and Edward (right) subdivided most of the Highlands
THE PIONEER MOTHER
GARVANZA, at that time, and in later years, York Valley, Hermon, and parts of Highland Park were subdivided and put on the market by Ralph and Edward Rogers. The latter, with three of his sisters, still lives in the com
munity. They had a most remarkable mother. When the great statue of the Pioneer Mother was created by Charles Grafly for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, the sculptor might well have been inspired by this particular woman. Ambitious that her eight sons and daughters might have a real chance in life and seeing none for them in the war-devastated South, Tempe Sarah Ann Rogers, with the help of her husband, banded together one hundred families of Denton County, Texas and with one hundred team of oxen set out in their covered wagons on April 3, 1868 over the Santa Fe Trail for the Promised Land by the Shining Pacific. It was an adventurous journey. Three hundred steers, crazed by thirst, stampeded at the sight of water and went down in the quicksands of the Pecos River. Fortunately, buffalo proved plentiful enough to keep up the meat supply. Mistaking the first sight of giant cacti for distant bands of Indians, the scouts rushed back and got the hundred wagons rounded in battle array. Ralph10
THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
Tempe Sarah Ann Rogers, Pioneer Mother who led a caravan of 100 families across the plains by ox teams in 1868
Rogers, sixteen years of age and the oldest of the Rogers children, was the first scout to venture forth again, prove the mistake that had been made, and start the procession on its way again. An injury to one of his sisters brought a halt of three weeks, none of the whole entourage being willing to leave the Rogers family behind, a prey to the Indians. At other times, death, with a burial in the desert waste, and childbirth, caused a halt. From time to time they came upon the charred wrecks of other caravans that had been annihilated by the savages. The fear of the Indians was only exTHE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
11
ceeded by the dread of an exhausted water supply. A providential midsummer rain on the burning Arizona desert saved the lives of the adventurers on one occasion. Three weeks were consumed in building rafts and in fording the bridgeless Colorado River.
The Pueblo de Los Angeles was reached on October 23, 1868, more than six months from the date of departure, and although the immediate relief was great, it was months before the memories of the songs and the jokes around the camp-fire at night and the blaze of the desert wild flowers, by day, began to supplant the recollections of death and horror and dread among the immigrants.
WORKING OUT A DESTINY
 MR. Rogers passed away twelve years later, but the Pi oneer Mother lived until 1890. She saw Los Angeles grow to a city of 50,000. While a driving over the hills overlooking the city, but three days before her death, she remarked proudly to her daughter, Mrs. Sarah J. Royer, “This town will some day be one of the greatest cities of the world. It will spread from the mountains to the sea!” The Pioneer Mother saw her two sons, Ralph and Edward, build up a prosperous fuel and feed business at the corner of Third and Spring Streets. She saw them excavate for the Baker Block and build the first cable car line in Los Angeles out Temple Street. She saw them subdivide Garvanza at a time when grocery stores would not deliver south of Seventh Street in Los Angeles.
She did not live to see her Indian scout boy penetrate the deepest snows of Alaska and brave the fevered swamps of Central America in search of a fortune. She did not live to see him return and give 95 acres to Occidental College in the York Valley. Nor did she live to see Edward, answering the old call of the open range, go into the cattle raising business when he could just as well have stayed and collected rents off of corner stores and pitched horseshoes at the Old Settlers’ Club.
York Valley from Museum Hill12
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“The rare Matilija poppy grew in the Highlands”
SUBDIVIDING A RANCHO
POSSIBLY the brilliancy of the wild flowers of the Highlands first attracted the Rogers Brothers to this region, for these flowers were famous even in a land where wild flowers are
common. Botanists are said to have classified 180 different varieties during the late eighties in the Five Friendly Valleys. Over eighty varieties are found in the San Rafael Hills now. In the eighties, the rare Matilija poppy grew in the Highlands. The Mariposa lily was to be found in secluded reaches of the Arroyo. The California poppy, the “paint brush," and the garbanzo were radiant on the hillsides. Because the latter flower, a species of the wild sweet pea, seemed to predominate, the Rogers Brothers took its name (changing it later to Garvanza) for their first tract.
Andrew GlassellTHE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
13
“The Mariposa lily was to be found in the Arroyo"
The Rogers Brothers purchased the land from Andrew Glassell, the home of whose son, Andrew Jr., still standing on the Arroyo bank between Avenues 64 and 65, was the first home built in all the Highlands.
The old Andrew Glassell Jr. home14
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Don and Dona Miguel Goldaracena leased all the Highlands for sheep pasture in 1871
Andrew Glassell’s partner was A. C. Chapman and their holdings included practically all of this region. Before they purchased the land in 1870 at one dollar an acre it was a part of the princely Rancho San Rafael of I 14,000 acres as owned by the Verdugos. They leased their broad acres to sheep raisers. Don and Dona Miguel
"The Sierra Madre Villa stage stopped daily at the hotel”THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
15
“Business lots sold as high as $1500”
Goldaracena, grand uncle and aunt of Miss Lorencia J. Etchepare of Highland Park, grazed 15,000 sheep there in 1871. The old Occidental College campus was the sheep herders’ camp and the present Occidental campus was the location of the sheep-shearing corral. An old adobe ranch house stood on the site of Ed W. Hopkins home on Avenue 54.
A home in the Highlands16
THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
There is nothing new under the sun
Associated with the Rogers Brothers were Mr. James Booth and Mr. W. F. McClure, later State Engineer. They were organized as the Garvanza Land Company. The lots sold quickly. Business lots sold as high as $1500. Miller’s Hall was the first business block to go up. The Garvanza Villa was opened by Hepburn & Company on November 15, 1886, with a great reception. It was one of the best of the boom-time hotels. D. O. Mills, the nationally famous banker, always spent his winters there, engaging a suite of rooms from year to year at a figure that compares favorably with rates now charged by fashionable tourist hotels in Pasadena and Santa Barbara. The Sierra Madre Villa stage with its four-horse tallyho coach stopped daily at the hotel.THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
17
THE CHURCH OF THE ANGELS
SAN Rafael Heights and much property beyond and below, was owned at that time by Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Campbell-Johnson of England. Their ranch, also originally a part of Rancho San Rafael, comprised 2200 acres
which they had purchased in 1883 from former Mayor Beaudry of Los Angeles. It was given over to cattle and sheep raising and general farming. Within the ranch was pretty Lake Johnson. The Campbell-Johnson or San Rafael Block, built in 1888 on Pasadena Avenue and Avenue 64, was the first brick building erected between Los Angeles and Pasadena.
While on one of the family’s annual visits from England, Mr. Campbell-Johnson died, and in 1889 the widow built in his memory the famed Church of the Angels, still one of the show places of Los Angeles. The corner stone was laid Easter Eve, April 20, 1889. Although small, this church is so beautifully planned and so perfectly proportioned that it is still a model of church architecture. The plans were brought from England and adapted by Ernest Coxhead, a local architect. Stone, quarried from the ranch, was used in the construction. When completed, it had as perfect a setting as any church in an English countryside. To the back were the gently sloping, poppy-covered hills. In the foreground was a green, sycamore-shaded meadow where grazed contentedly the sheep of the Campbell-Johnson ranch.18
THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
‘‘The corner stone was laid Easter eve, 1889”
The hours were only marked by the sweet-toned bells in the steeple which could be heard faintly in the distant village. Now the church looks out on a rather thickly settled neighborhood, paved highways, street cars and hurrying automobiles.
The Church of the Angels, because of the beauty of its architecture and its setting, drew worshippers from
The first choir of the Church of the AngelsTHE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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Mrs. Andrew Campbell-Johnson at time she built the Church of the Angels
considerable distances. Fashionable stage coaches, with their tall-hatted and liveried footmen, came over regularly, filled with the guests of the Hotel Raymond, until one fateful Easter that great caravansary, the first of the noted tourist hotels near Los Angeles, was burned to the ground during the hours of morning worship.
Previous to the Church of the Angels, the Methodist Church had been built. We read in the “Gazette” of20
THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
“When completed it had as perfect a setting as any church in an English countryside”
two new churches and a $10,000 school building going up at the same time. The building of church and school has been going on ever since until today the Highlands have nine large grammar schools, a high school, two colleges and fourteen churches.
Lake JohnsonTHE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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“The first wedding, that of Thomas Fellows and Miss Mary E. ote,,urt, was a happy event”
LIFE IN THE EIGHTIES
SOCIAL life centered about the churches and the public reading room, with occasional polit-cal rallies and debates to vary things. Ever-so-often one of those traveling doctors with his kerosene torch-illuminated wagon and his
burnt-cork comedians came to town. The editor with a sense of humor speaks of one coming along with a remedy warranted to cure everything from ingrowing toe-nails to asthma, with a book of songs, gags, fresh minstrel jokes, how to propose, and every man his own bootjack, with each and every bottle. At another time, we read of the Ladies’ Aid Society being disappointed in not getting the colored quartette out from Los A r.ge-les but going ahead with the fried chicken dinner just the same. A dance was given at the school house as a benefit to one of the store keepers who was seriously ill and in need of funds. The whole town turned out. The first wedding, that of Thomas Fellows and Miss Mary E. Stewart, was a happy event.
The ratification of Benjamin Harrison’s nomination for the presidency was a rousing affair. All the Repub-l'can candidates for county offices drove out in highly decorated phaetons from Los Angeles. J. A. Donnell, later District Attorney, famed all over the ccunty for hisLl
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A Bouguereau study in the art gallery of the Southwest Museum spell-binding abilities, was the principal speaker. He lived in the Highlands. Then we read that shortly after, a near panic was created among McKinney’s regular boarders by the sudden appearance of the poll-tax collector. “It was astonishing how quickly the boys remembered previous engagements,” wrote the editor with a sense of humor.
The Highlands were a part of the judicial township of Glendale and Burbank. All cases had to be taken to the former place for trial, although, occasionally, the justice of peace would hitch up his rig and drive over and try a case here. At one time, “hizzoner,” while on his way to the Highlands, stopped off at the old roadhouse, then being conducted in Sycamore Park, and arrived, finally, hardly in a frame of mind to take in all the facts necessary to reach a fair and impartial decision.THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
23
Where the roadhouses used to be
LIQUOR AND ANNEXATION
LIQUOR presented a problem to be settled by the Five Friendly Valleys as well as by other communities at that time. It is said that one of the compelling reasons that led George W. Morgan to lay out Highland Park, was to con
fine the saloons in Sycamore Grove to the Arroyo. The editor with a sense of humor grew pretty serious when it came to discussing the saloon question and although he could not lead in prayer according to his own confession, he joined forces with the pastors in keeping the saloons from invading the Highlands. The upshot of the whole campaign was the annexation of Garvanza and Highland Park to Los Angeles in 1898. The annexationists claimed that since it seemed impossible to incorporate as a separate city, in order to keep out liquor, the only solution was to become a part of Los Angeles. Soon after, the roadhouses had to leave Sycamore Grove, now one of the city’s lovliest parks.
The Five Friendly Valleys, like their neighbors, Pasadena and South Pasadena, which border the Arroyo Seco to the north, have always been very pronouncedly on the “dry” side of the liquor question, so much so, in fact, that from the Highlands was sent to Washington Charles H. Randall, the first congressman ever elected on the Prohibition ticket.Student Body of the Frank
Student Body, St. Ignat
Helping dedicate a new school
Franklin High Schoolranklin High School, 1923
Ignatius School, 1923
100I building in the Highlands
:hool R.O.T.C., 192326
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Prize winning canvas by Prof. Judson in the Southwest Museum gallery
THE ART LOVERS EXPLORE.
AFTER the boom had broken, there came, despite the depression, a new influence into the life of the Highlands that was to develop and give the community great fame. It was an influence that continues to be marked today.
It was led by Professor William Lees Judson, a painter and teacher of great ability, who came in 1893 and has lived and painted along the banks of the Arroyo ever since. In those early days, he, with Thomas Fellows, and other kindred spirits roamed the hills and vales in study and recreation. In the Arroyo, just below the Garvanza Villa, they discovered two brush-covered excavations where the Mexicans from the Pueblo de Los Angeles buried their cannon in 1846 to prevent Fremont from capturing them. They also found, plainly marked, the old Monterey Trail, where the Padres trod while journeying from San Gabriel Mission to San Fernando Mission and then on northward. It crossed the Arroyo Seco from the South Pasadena side at about the present entrance to the Union Pacific bridge, coming up the Highlands side at Marmion Way. It went directly over the present Methodist Church corner and by the old Mission Oak that stands today, happily preserved, in the middle of Avenue 63 near Eagle Rock Avenue. The Mission Oak shows signs today of having been used as a camping place by the travelers. From there the trail wended its way out York Valley to the San Fernando Valley. The grooves and ruts worn by the wheels of the carretas were plainly marked in those days.
Remembering that John Wesley was a missionary inTHE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
27
The Mission Oak
Georgia at the same time that Father Serra was a missionary in California, Professor Judson and Mr. Fellows always speak of the Methodist Church corner as the place where the trails of John Wesley and Junipero Serra meet.
. where the trails of John Wesley and Junipero Serra meet”28
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Looking down Monte Vista Street during the “lean nineties.”
THE LEAN NINETIES
LONG with the rest of Southern California, the Highlands suffered a severe depression throughout all of the nineties. Business lots in Gar-vanza that had been purchased at $1500 were sold for as low as $100. Ten acres in High-
land Park were foreclosed at $300 an acre. Even the editor with a sense of humor was finally forced to cease publishing the “Gazette.” Fifty feet of the corner where now stands the new building of the Highland Park Branch of the Security Trust & Savings Bank could have been purchased for $125 in 1893. The corner of Avenue 56 and Monte Vista was purchased by J. P. Stocksdale for $60, who, despite conditions, opened the first store in Highland Park in 1891 and a year later established a postoffice.
The first store in Highland ParkTHE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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Looking down Monte Vista Street, 1923
A postoffice had been established in Garvanza in 1886. Miss Jennie I. Gilbert, honored pioneer of that community, became postmistress in 1890 and remained in that position for thirty years.
The Terminal Railroad, now the Union Pacific, came in 1890 and the Los Angeles Pacific, now the Pacific Electric, was built through the Highlands in 1893.
Miss Gilbert acted as agent for both of these railroads in addition to her work as postmistress. The Terminal, before the advent of the electric line, used to run twenty four trains a day between Los Angeles and Pasadena, all of them stopping at Garvanza. The electric cars, later, practically put the Terminal out of business.
The Los Angeles Pacific (now the Pacific Electric) built through the Highlands during the lean nineties30
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The pioneer Bank of the Highlands, now the Highland Park Branch of the Security Trust & Savings Bank
BIC ENOUGH FOR A BANK
THE Five Friendly Valleys did without a paper until as late as June, 1905, when S. A. Wheaton started the “Highland Park Herald.’’ The country did not feel a real revival until about
that time. The yellow carline had come to the Highlands. The corner of Pasadena Avenue and Avenue 57 rose to $1400 in value and on March 4, 1906, the Highland Park Bank was opened. We read in the “Herald” that “a large audience assembled in Wood’s Hall on Tuesday evening in honor of the occasion, a reception having been planned under the auspices of the Highland Park and Garvanza Improvement Association and the Ebell Club. J. A. Merrill, president of the former organization, and Mrs. Mary G. Osmond, Ebell Club president, both spoke in a happy vein of the recent progress of the community. G. W. E. Griffith, founder and president of the Bank, responded, after which a musical program was given, refreshments were served and a social time enjoyed by all. Adjournment was then taken across the street to view the
G. W. E. GRIFFITH First President of the BankTHE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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New building of the Highland Park Branch, Security Trust & Savings Bank, 1923
new banking building of which Thornton Fitzhugh is the architect.”
The pioneer Bank of Greater Highland Park was capitalized at $100,000. Its directors were E. H. Stagg, John A. Merrill, J. W. Jeffrey, C. T. Crowell, W. R. Bacon, C. 1. Ritchey, William R. Myers, G. W. E. Griffith and S. C. Wing. John B. Merrill was the first cashier. Oren Lientz, his successor, who remained as cashier until the time of his death in 1916, was a strong factor in the upbuilding of the Highland Park Bank.
This is the same bank, which as the Highland Park
Personnel of the Highland Park Branch of the Security Bank, 192332
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Advisory Directors of the Bank. Left to right. Thomas McClement, Dr. C. W. Montgomery, W. R. Myers and Clyde M. Church, vice president and manager
Branch of the Security Trust & Savings Bank has opened the doors of its new banking home at the northwest corner of Pasadena Avenue and Avenue 5 6. A comparison of its deposits, its home and the size of its personnel, with that of the original bank, is eloquent of the growth and progress of the Highlands in the last seventeen years. At the end of the first year of its existence its deposits were about $7 5,000. At the end of its seventeenth year its deposits were $1,390,547. Its personnel in 1906 was two in number. Its personnel this year is 15 in number. Of its original directors, William R. Myers still remains to advise the officers in the conduct of its affairs. The successive presidents of the Bank up to the time of its merger with the Security Bank were G. W. E. Griffith, R. D. List, H. A. Church and Clyde M. Church. The latter has been actively in charge of the Bank’s affairs since 1912 and has taken a leading part in community affairs as well. The present officers are Clyde M. Church, vice-president and manager; C. G. Tilton, assistant manager; D. R. Whitman, assistant secretary. The Advisory Board of Directors, made up of men living in the Highlands, is composed of Thomas McClement, C. M. Church, Dr. C. W. Montgomery and William R. Myers.THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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The New Masonic Temple
A GOING COMMUNITY
OTHER improvements followed quickly the founding of the Bank. Pasadena Avenue was soon paved. The yellow carline was extended out into the York Valley. Business property along Pasadena Avenue rose to as high as $70
a front foot. A Masonic Lodge was organized. By October, 1906, the Highland Park Bank had 500 accounts. The “Highland Park Herald’s” circulation had risen to 1000 and it boasted of reaching every home in the Highlands. “Mother” Ransom started the “Ransom Home,” and Dr. F. E. Yoakum founded “Pisgah Home,”
The Highlands from Museum Hill34
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The Episcopal Home for Children
two humanitarian institutions which commanded wide support. In Los Angeles’ first attempt to vote out the saloon in 1906, the Highlands constituted the only section of the city to cast a majority vote against the saloon. R. D. List, Charles E. Carver, W. F. Poor, G. W. E. Griffith, and C. H. Randall made up the delegation to the Republican County Convention which seemingly stood almost alone in the fight against racing at Ascot Park, the saloon, and the machine.
Strickland Home For BoysTHE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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Occidental College, 1898 to 1904
OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE
CTOBER, 1906, was significant in still other ways to the Highlands for on the twenty-sixth of that month, Dr. John Willis Baer was inaugurated as president of Occidental College. _ The college had been established in Highland Park since 1898, when a gift of land was made the trustees on condition that at least a $10,000 college building be erected. Previous to that, Occidental
The Hall of Letters when Occidental College was on Pasadena Avenue36
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President Taft at Occidental College, 1910
College had been conducted, since its foundation in 1887, in Boyle Heights.
The corner stone of the Hall of Letters facing Pasadena Avenue had been laid in 1904, while Dr. Guy W. Wadsworth was acting as president. President Baer se-
Occidental wins!THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
3 7
A glimpse of Occidental College today
cured sufficient endowments, soon after he came, to build up a still stronger college. The college was recognized by visits from both President Taft and Ex-President Roosevelt. The institution grew so fast that the need for a larger campus was soon felt and just ten years after the Hall of Letters was started, the college moved bodily to the magnificent 95 acre campus which Ralph Rogers gave it in York Valley. Two years later, Dr. Baer retired from the presidency to engage in banking in Pasadena after having secured additional endowments that made possible the beautiful classic structures, now so greatly admired by all who visit the new Occidental. A program of continually increasing endowments and additional buildings is being carried out by Dr. Remsen DuBois Bird, now occupying the presidential chair.
DR. REMSEN DUBOIS BIRD President of Occidental College38	THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
The Judson studios, formerly the College of Fine Arts of the University of Southern California
THE COLLEGE INFLUENCE
OCCIDENTAL College has done much to crystal-ize the Highlands into the character they took back in the late Victorian days when they came into being. A “college town’’ has always been synonymous with a “center of culture, refine
ments and good taste.” It seemed that Occidental came to reinforce the hills and the sycamores in bringing to the Highlands the sort of people who build up such centers.
But in this connection, the College of Fine Arts of the University of Southern California must not be overlooked. It was established on the Arroyo bank near the Pacific Electric bridge in 1901 and for two decades was conducted there by its founder and first dean, Professor W. L. Judson. Here gathered students of art from all over the West to sit at the feet of Southern California’s pioneer artist and teacher. Around this school grew up such a colony of artists as to attract Signor Antonio Corsi, long considered the world’s greatest art model. Like Professor Judson, Signor Corsi still lives here.
The Highlands have furnished inspiration to such artists as Jessie D. Parker, Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Wachtel, Nell Brooker Mayhew, Karl Yenz, C. P. Austin, Hanson Puthuff, Leone Wood, Fannie Duvall and Florine Hyer. Many of them still live here.THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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Writers, too, have found great inspiration by the Arroyo-side. Here live or have lived Idah Meachan Strobridge, Mrs. Harriet Williams Myers, Will Leving-ton Comfort, Bessie Beatty, Olive Thorne Miller and Daniel Marion Hammack. J. M. Guinn, California historian, and Ben C. Truman, author and private secretary to President Andrew Johnson, lived for many years in the Highlands. Other prominent residents of the past or present include Dr. Hector Alliot, curator, decorated by the French government; W. J. Washburn, pioneer Los Angeles banker; Dr. James M. Peebles, author, lecturer, world traveler, and member of the Indian Peace Commission of 1868; Prof. Ernest E. Allen, mathematician, Miss Mary Foy, associate member of the Democratic National Committee; Loye Holmes Miller, naturalist; Dr. Lyman Beecher Sperry, explorer, author and Indian agent; Lorin Andrew Handley, economist and president of the first Woodrow Wilson-for-President Club in America; W. A. Roberts, author of California’s minimum wage law; Harry A. Wishard, author of California’s mothers’ pension law; Dr. John A. Gordon, president of the California Bible League; Belle Sumner Burn, garden authority; Dr. Henry Bartlett Gage, pioneer divine, geologist and astronomer; Dr. Robert G. Cleland, historian; Walter Fisher Skeele, dean of the College of Music of the University of Southern California; Prof. Howard L. Lunt, of the school of education of the same university; Charles F. Lummis, author, explorer, archaeologist; J. W. Jeffrey, state horticultural commissioner; James E. Sprunger, state secretary of the Y. M. C. A.; Ed W. Hopkins, veteran county assessor; Rev. John H. Sammis, composer; Col. H. B. Hersey, scientist, explorer
The first school house in Highland Park40
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The Los Angeles Free Methodist Seminary, Hermon and government meteorological observer; President Remsen DuBois Bird of Occidental College; Dean Thomas G. Burt of Occidental College; Mrs. Clara Hubbs, a founder of the national W. C. T. U.; Prof. Calvin O. Esterly, zoologist; Col. F. W. Hart, pioneer in American pure food legislation; and Dr. William D. Ward, classisist;
Three years before President Baer arrived at Occidental, the Free Methodist Church established the Los Angeles Free Methodist Seminary in Hermon, transforming that pretty but almost uninhabited valley from a rifle range and golf links to a thriving community that today continues to grow and support the Seminary. Built on a hillside, that institution commands a fine view of all the Highlands and draws its students from all over the Southwest. It now offers two years of college work in addition to its secondary department.
Franklin High School, City Champions, 1922THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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The Highland Park Ebell Clubhouse
THE COMING OF EBELL
NINETEEN hundred three was also notable for the founding of the Highland Park Ebell Club with eighteen charter members meeting at the home of Mrs. Howard L. Lunt, who was given the honor of naming the club “The Ebell.”
Here was formed one of the most useful women’s organizations in Los Angeles and a veritable well-spring of community spirit and endeavor for the Highlands. Perhaps the Arroyo Seco would never have been saved as a park had it not been for the cooperation of the Ebell Club, a service of inestimable value not only to the Highlands but to all Southern California. The park was secured shortly following Ebell’s plea for it.
By 1907, subscriptions had been started for a permanent clubhouse for the Ebell with G. W. E. Griffith, president of the Highland Park Bank, leading off the list of donors. On November 19, 1911, the corner stone of the present building was laid with over a thousand people present at the ceremony. Mrs. Mary G. Osmond officiated with the trowel. The crowd was the greatest public gathering ever held in the Highlands up to that time, but could hardly compare with the opening of the clubhouse itself on February 14, 1913, when 20,000 people inspected the new civic, educational and social center of the Greater Highland Park, before the day was over.42
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The Southwest Museum, showing tunnel elevator entrance
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM
NINETEEN hundred three also saw the start of the Southwest Society of the Archaeological Institute of America and for that reason was an historic year for the Highlands. This society, of which Charles F. Lummis was the founder
and first secretary, was formed for the purpose of collecting historical relics from everywhere, but particularly those of the Great Southwest, and providing a suitable museum for their safekeeping and display. The great commanding building on the hill opposite Sycamore Park, overlooking all the Highlands and the great San Gabriel Valley beyond, stands as a monument to the society’s endeavors and purposes.
The Southwest Museum opened its doors formally on August 1, 1914, just at the outbreak of the World War. It, like all other similar institutions, suffered a decrease of support and activity because of the great conflict. The dream of its founder-emeritus as unfolded at the corner stone laying is still far from realization, although many exhibits of great interest and intrinsic value have been installed in the Museum from time to time,
The Southwest Museum is widening its scientific usefulness by direct contact with large numbers and making itself indispensible to the cultural life of the community. It has organized several educational activities and gives support and cooperation to other groups and organizations having a common aim.THE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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The Highlands gave over 200 of her sons to the World War
THE HIGHLANDS AND THE WAR
JUST as the war interrupted the Museum’s activities, so did it revolutionize the life of the Highlands. The Five Friendly Valleys gave over 200 of their sons to the World War. Five of them were wounded in action and five died
in the service. There were ten families which had at least three stars on their service flags. Several branches of the Red Cross were opened, the first of which met at the parish hall of All Saints Church with Mrs. Robert H. Lindsay in charge. No time was lost in giving immediate cooperation to the government. Occidental College closed its term early to permit its students to get into productive work. Drill classes were organized at the new Franklin High School, the community’s secondary school which had been opened but a year before. Here too, school gardens were planted and instruction in camp and invalid cookery and home nursing was given. The Arroyo Seco home guards were formed and drilled on the new Arroyo Seco playground, just opened. An auto ambulance was donated as a memorial to John Nichols Haupt. Every Liberty Bond quota was oversubscribed. Five Boy Scouts of Troop 43 won war service medals for their success in selling bonds. The whole community turned out to the Fourth of July celebration in 1917 at the playground. A community sing was held at this same center every Sunday afternoon. Carl Wheat, Franklin B. Skeele and Joe Waddel were decorated for bravery. Miss Mary A. Morrison, partially blind and paralyzed, knitted a stupendous number of garments for the soldiers. The High School, the Ebell Club, the ladies of York Valley and others gave various benefits and fetes that brought in large sums for war relief activities. The Five Friendly Valleys were as one in their work for the winning of the war.44
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“Perhaps the Arroyo Seco would never have been saved as a park had it not been for the cooperation of the Ebell Club”
THE UNION OF THE VALLEYS
PEACE-TIME activities in the Highlands, since the War, as compared with those before the War, show what a stimulus the great conflict was to united community endeavor. There has been no relaxation. The Five Friendly Val
leys, realizing their common interests as never before, have come together and formed the Greater Highland Park Association. The big dinner at the High School where this union was brought about, was described by those in a position to know as the greatest civic event in the history of northeast Los Angeles. President Bird of Occidental College and Mrs. J. J. Carter of Hollywood, spoke. Out of the dinner came a strong organization of 500 members with a paid secretary. And out of it, too, came the almost immediate victory for the Arroyo Park, the saving of this romantic river bed with its giant sycamores and its age-old oak trees as a playground for all the people for all time. The possibilities of this park can only be realized when it is known that it is one of the completing units of a greater park system to be extended the whole length of the Arroyo Seco from Pasadena to Los Angeles, with a magnificent boulevard along its bank connecting all the cities and communities on the way.
The strongly developed social instinct of the peoples of the Highlands has not only given this great park toTHE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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the Community Clubhouse is available to the use of all without charge’’
posterity, but it secured the land for the playground on which has but recently been built the Community Clubhouse with its gymnasium, auditorium, bowling alleys, billiard rooms, lounging rooms and nurseries, available to the use of all without charge. It turned the old pond opposite the Library into a modern cemented swimming pool. Efforts to gain a playground and park for the York Valley is now receiving the united support of the Five Friendly Valleys. Campaigns for uniform tree planting through all the Highlands and ornamental lights for the business thoroughfares are in progress.
In 1922, building permits totaled nearly a million and a half dollars, as compared with a half million dollars the year previous. The High School enrollment increased from 600 to 1200 in two years time and to the school last year came the inter-scholastic baseball championships of Southern California and the football championship of Los Angeles.
May Day in the Five Friendly Valleys46
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"Perhaps no section of the great city .	.	. does more to
give children a real chance in life than the Five Friendly Valleys"
CARRYING ON
GROWTH of this character with its happy accompaniment of real work accomplished, fortifies the old spirit of the Highlands which organized here the first incorporated public improvement association in Los Angeles and the
largest Parent-Teachers Association in America. It brings into further usefulness the spirit which replaced unsightly wood bridges over the Arroyo Seco with the substantial, artistic concrete spans of today; that stood first in all the city for the Owens River water project; that piled up majorities for good government in the hopeless, graft-ridden days when corruption in municipal government was accepted as inevitable and incurable; that organized in the Highlands the political club that first presaged the great progressive revolt that was soon to sweep the state and a few years later, the nation.
Founded and settled by Pioneers, the Highlands still have their Spirit. Here have always lived those who went on ahead and dared and did in the days when even the daring was unpopular and the doing brought only savage abuse and deep misunderstanding.
But the Colorado has been crossed.
The Pueblo de Los Angeles has been reached!
And here in that portion of it where Tempe Sarah Ann Rogers saw her sons and daughters settle andTHE FIVE FRIENDLY VALLEYS
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And here are offered those things that make boys and girls joyous and wholesome
work out their destinies, are offered today with a profuse hand those things that make boys and girls joyous, wholesome and intelligent. Perhaps no section of the great city the Pioneer Mother dreamed of does more to give children a real chance in life than the Five Friendly Valleys!
Play time in the Highlands48
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A WORD IN APPRECIATION
From the Highland Park Branch of the SECURITY TRUST AND SAYINGS BANK
THE Highland Park Branch of the Security Trust and Savings Bank has published “The Five Friendly Valleys,” knowing that the history of the Highlands, once in type, would be in itself the best possible advertising the community
could have. If you feel that we have told the story well enough for you to mail copies to your Eastern friends and relatives we shall be pleased indeed.
We are greatly indebted to the “Old Timers” who have made this history possible by telling us of days-gone-by and generously loaning us treasured pictures. Our gratitude goes out especially to Mrs. Sarah J. Royer and W. E. Rogers, who as children came with their Pioneer Mother across the plains behind a team of oxen; to Miss Lorencia J. Ethchepare, whose great uncle leased most of the Highlands for sheep pasture in the seventies; to Hugh Glassell, whose father, Andrew Glassell, purchased most all this region from the Verdugos for one dollar an acre in 1870; to Thomas Fellows, pioneer builder; to Mr. Robert H. Lindsay, pioneer improvement society secretary, and Mrs. Lindsay; to Mrs. M. J. Clapp, G. W. E. Griffith, Mrs. D. Louise Stocksdale, Prof. William L. Judson, Miss Jennie I. Gilbert, D. S. Hammack, Mr. and Mrs. C. B. Bradbeer of Eagle Rock, M. Gertrude Hart, Mark M. Horton, Fred M. Johnson, Joseph M. Sniffen, Ed W. Hopkins, Dr. Robert G. Cleland, Prof, and Mrs. Howard L. Lunt, C. M. Jay, A. A. Phillips, and A. J. White. We are also indebted to the “Highland Park Herald” for opening its old files to us.
The Highland Park Branch of the Security Trust and Savings Bank offers this booklet as an evidence of its continuing desire to serve this community, just as it, as the Highland Park Bank has always endeavored to promote the best interests of the Five Friendly Valleys. It is glad that, occupying as it now does one of the best equipped banking rooms in the residential section of Los Angeles and being a part of the largest bank in one community west of Chicago, it is able to more completely serve local needs than ever before. The capital and surplus of the Security Trust and Savings Bank are now $ I 0,525,000 and the resources total over $190,000, 000. All of its many and varied departments are now directly available to the public of Greater Highland Park.
The Highland Park Branch of the Security Trust and Savings Bank, through its officers and advisory directors who remain the same in personnel as have guided the destinies of the Bank for some time past, welcome all of the Highlands to its new banking home.THE OLD MASTER
A DECADE ago George Wharton James concluded an article about William Lees-Judson with these words: “He is still as vigorous and active as ever. Years seem
to have little power over him. He will doubtless paint until the Master Artist calls and thus leave behind him not only a large number of exquisite pictures but the memory of an active, busy, useful, joy-giving life."
If Mr. James wrote today of Dr. Judson he could well re-pen the same conclusion.
The great painter was born in 1842 and is the father of seven children. He served throughout the Civil War.
The crowning years of this pioneer of California Art are being spent in the Highlands. Here on the banks of his beloved Arroyo the Old Master still finds the inspiration that fired his genius to noble achievement thirty years ago.