BGuthrie Photos: CA -- Ontario -- Museum of History and Art

CA -- Ontario -- Museum of History and Art:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. ONTMUS_100730_004.JPG: Ontario California Old City Hall 225 South Euclid Avenue 1937 The Mediterranean Revival building with Italian Villa styling was built in 1937 as part of the Works Project Administration (WPA). Designed by DeWitt Mitcham, the building served as City Hall until 1979. It was built on the site of the Ontario Country Club building, the original City Hall. Ontario Historic Landmark No. 2 Designated on September 7, 1993 The Model Colony
2. ONTMUS_100730_006.JPG: A highway makes a grand exhibit you won't just look you'll really live it! Road Ways straight ahead
3. ONTMUS_100730_011.JPG: Roadways This gallery is the beginning, and only the beginning, of your Road Ways experience.
4. ONTMUS_100730_023.JPG: 66 No road, anywhere, has symbolized The Road better than Route 66 -- the highway that inspired a hit song, a television series, and a million post cards and t-shirts. As early as 1927, its promoters were publicizing 66 as "The Main Street of America." The nickname remains even today, reminding us of how Route 66 defines American highway culture, even in places where the local highway has some other number.
5. ONTMUS_100730_027.JPG: Road were bad -- when they weren't awful. In the nineteenth century, most transportation money went to railroads. Roads were the responsibility of counties and towns, and the quality varied from bad to worse. Dusty roads turned into mudholes on rainy days. In the worst places, builders experimented with wooden road surfaces: this "corduroy road" of logs, and plank roads through the shifting sands of the California desert. But wood was only a short-term solution. In the cities they were developing hard surfaces using asphalt and concrete. But there was no money, or political pressure, to extend those surfaces into the countryside.
6. ONTMUS_100730_038.JPG: The Auto Club: Founded in 1900, the Automobile Club of Southern California was a leader in the drive for road construction. The Club also provided and maintained road signs -- a function not completely taken over by state and local government until 1956 -- and sent out California's first "Highway Patrol" to check on conditions and assist motorists.
7. ONTMUS_100730_042.JPG: Who started the campaign for good roads? Bicyclists. Bicycles were the new sports craze of the 1880s. Bicycle clubs liked to ride into the countryside and race between towns. On a high wheeler, one pothole could send you flying. Clubs like the League of American Wheelmen coined the phrase "Good Roads," and started campaigning for more government involvement.
8. ONTMUS_100730_050.JPG: Before the highway... ... before the automobile, the road already held a powerful allure for Americans, the most mobile of people. Oftentimes, "road" was only a figure of speech. The reality might be just a pair of wagon ruts, or a foot trail -- or it might be a river or canal, the main thoroughfares before the coming of railroads. Whatever its form, it was on the "road" that the unique American restlessness could express itself. Freedom Road: For slaves in the American South, the destination was freedom, and the direction was northward. The constellation of the "Drinking Gourd" (a name used by slaves for the Big Dipper) pointed to the North Star. The "Underground Railroad" had no locomotives or tracks. It was a network of routes and safe-houses loosely organized to assist fugitive slaves on their dangerous journey to the free states of the North. Exodusters: The Civil War brought freedom, but not equal treatment. Once again, some Southern blacks sought to improve their lots by changing their destination. This time, the destination was in the West. In the 1870s, a former slave named Benjamin "Pap" Singleton organized the first of a number of African American colonies in Kansas, where Blacks could own their own farms and live with dignity. Thousands made the long journey -- by train or wagon, even on foot. They called themselves "Exodusters," after the Biblical story of the Hebrew Exodus from bondage in Egypt. The Trail to Zion: While many others were moving westward to seek adventure and opportunity, the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- the Mormons -- sought a place to practice their religion without persecution. In 1846, church leaders designated the valley of the Great Salt Lake, in remote Utah, as the place to build their new city. Members migrated by the thousands, some taking the long journey entirely on foot, drawing their possessions on handcarts. The Highway Revolution: In the days before the federal highway system, businesspeople along potential routes banded together in highway associations to promote cross-country highways. These highways had names, not numbers: Lincoln Highway, Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, National Old Trails Highway. Signage was seldom more than a set of stripes on an occasional telephone pole, so you had to have sharp eyes and a good set of directions. State and federal governments took responsibility. A pioneer as usual, California created its first agency for road construction in 1895. In 1897, it sent a commission all over the state to survey conditions. The commission proposed a state highway system, with routes very similar to those we have today. The federal government created its Bureau of Public Roads in 1916, and finally, in 1926, created the US Highway System, which replaced highway names with numbers. In the 1950s, construction began on the Interstate freeway system. Dream Highways: After the Second World War, road planning took a more ambitious scale than ever. The United States Interstate Highway system began as a civil defense measure at the height of the Cold War. But for the general public, the new freeways became a symbol of progress and the good life. Roads, autos and lifestyles were all re-engineered around an ideal of easy mobility. The Destination: the prize at the end of the road: Sometimes a journey is its own reward -- but many American journeys have been for the sake of the destination, not the experience. Seeing it as our "manifest destiny" to subdue the continent, Americans have learned to think of progress in terms of moving from one place to another. And for much of our history, the next place tended to be farther west. The road is our symbol of progress. The destination is our symbol of achievement.
9. ONTMUS_100730_057.JPG: US Plans 40,000-Mile 'Road to Everywhere' "Greatest highway system ever conceived by man" will link 48 states and 209 big cities with multi-lane, high-speed freeways. (Popular Science article, May 1956.
10. ONTMUS_100730_060.JPG: This ceramic half-round object is called officially "pavement marker" -- unofficially, it is called a "bots dot." Prior to the use of "bots dots," only reflective paint marked traffic lanes. Heavy snowfall or rainstorms rendered paint difficult to read for motorists. The "bots dots" system was developed in the late 1960s to counter rising traffic fatalities and accidents due to severe weather conditions. Created in a CALTRANS research library by E. Bots, "Bots Dots" alert the driver to traffic lane boundaries. "Bots dots, " coupled with reflector pavement markers and reflective paint, delineate traffic lanes even in extremely adverse weather conditions.
11. ONTMUS_100730_062.JPG: Highways used to go right through town along city streets, transforming communities in ways we can still see today. The "new" US highway system of the 1920s included four major routes that passed through the Ontario-Upland area on their way across the country. Until the coming of the freeways, these highways were also streets, such as Holt Boulevard and Foothill Boulevard. This created economic opportunities -- and traffic headaches. The roadside landscape -- the roadscape -- of these streets developed in unique ways, serving the needs of a mix of travelers and locals. Even today, the roadscapes of these hidden highways are a museum of their own past. Up ahead are some good vantage points where you can start training your eye for a cruise through time on these old highways. The Ultimate Bypass: The freeways changed everything. They completed the separation between travelers and locals that had begun, locally, with the Mission bypass. Businesses that had sprung up to serve passing motorists were left high and dry. Some survived on the local trade, but many more failed. And the roadscapes? Some are still frozen in time, others falling into decay and disrepute, still others swept away as communities adjust to changing times. The first freeway through the area opened in 1954 -- the Ramona Freeway, now known as the San Bernardino or I-10. The Pomona Freeway opened in 1970. The designations of US 60 and 70 disappeared in California, though they still run from Arizona to the Atlantic. US 99 still exists, though it is not marked locally.
12. ONTMUS_100730_065.JPG: Photograph, looking north from Euclid Avenue media and the railroad tracks, 1889.
13. ONTMUS_100730_077.JPG: Illinois Department of Transportation workers remove Route 66 signs in Grant Park, Chicago, January 17, 1977. Cruising through time on Route 66: America's favorite highway, US 66, came along Foothill Boulevard on its route from Chicago to Santa Monica. But journeyers were coming along this way long before the famous highway existed. The springs at the foot of Red Hill made Bear Gulch a natural stopping place as the trail developed into a wagon road, and newer attractions awaited travelers when the road became a highway. Today, a roadside monument commemorates the old road, and from its side you can see landmarks from many layers of roadscape history: the venerable Sycamore Inn, grown from a nineteenth-century stage stop; a courtyard motel; a gas station turned coffee house, and a couple of classic roadside restaurants. On Route 66: Commissioned in 1926, replaced by Interstate freeways in the 1960s and 1970s, officially decommissioned in 1985, US Highway 66 is the road that refused to die. Its enthusiasts have kept it alive as the symbol of America's mobile culture. Years of lobbying won approval of a historical designation. The highway signs have gone back up, marking Historic Route 66 and America's love affair with the road. In the 1930s, the Great Plains and parts of the Southeast suffered the double blow of the Great Depression and a terrible drought. As crops died and massive dust storms rolled across the plains, the area became known as the Dust Bowl. Many farms were lost to creditors, and families took to the road in order to survive. Oklahoma was especially hard hit. Thousands of "Okies" loaded what they could onto cars and trucks, and took to the narrow roads of the new US highway system. US 66 brought many to California, where they struggled to find work.
14. ONTMUS_100730_080.JPG: The Madonna of the Trail statue, at the corner of Euclid Avenue and Foothill Boulevard, reminds us of the struggle of families during America's westward migration. The monument is one of a dozen erected during the 1920s along the route of the National Old Trails Highway -- the predecessor of Route 66.
15. ONTMUS_100730_093.JPG: Roots of the Road Roads and the American way of life
16. ONTMUS_100730_096.JPG: Gem of the foothills One Grand Gold Placer: From the discovery of gold in 1842 in what would become Placerita Canyon until the 1890s, there were dozens of discoveries and gold "rushes" in the San Gabriel Mountains. In December 1859, the Los Angeles Star newspaper boasted that the region from Newhall to Lytle Creek was "one grand gold placer." Significant amounts of gold were mined from the San Gabriel Mountains -- perhaps up to $8 million total. But even the largest of the "rushes" brought only 300 or so miners into any given area. The real economic impact was on the growing merchant and business sector in Los Angeles which provided much-needed food, supplies, and freighting services. Setting the Stage for the Chaffeys: The Economic Transformation of Southern California, 1850-1880 The old California was marginal and isolated and had drawn hardy and self-sufficient settlers. Wealth equaled land and cattle. The population was scattered and the routine of daily life seemed timeless. The new California would be based on capital investment, the market economy, and commercial endeavors. The great ranchos would be sub-divided . Real estate development, town building and the picturesque vineyard and citrus industries would replace the ranchos as the typical romance image of Southern California. Technological innovations in irrigation, transportation, and communications would transform daily life. Madison Moses Kincaid: One of the earliest pioneers in the area, Missouri-born Madison Kincaid received a US government grant of property in the mouth of San Antonio Canyon in 1864. He built a stone house, raised sheep, kept bees for honey and planted a peach orchard. The Kincaid ranch was purchased by the Chaffeys -- a key piece of land needed to provide access to the water in San Antonio Canyon. MM Kincaid's son, William Jefferson Kincaid operated a general store on San Bernardino Road that served the area. Joseph Garcia: A retired Portuguese sea captain, Garcia settled in the Cucamonga area in 1868 and began investing in real estate. He purchased a portion of the John rains vineyard and winery in 1871 from Isaias W Hellman and later sold it back to Hellman and his partners in the Cucamonga Vineyard Association. By 1880, he had built a house and developed an orchard and vineyard irrigated with water rights from Day, Cucamonga and Middle Canyons. He sold this property to the Chaffey Brothers in 1881 and it became Etiwanda. Using some of his profits, Garcia was among the first to purchase property in the Chaffeys' Ontario Colony. He built his first residence in the new town and served as the first Chairman of the local school board. He lived in Ontario until his death in 1902. The Chaffey Brothers and the Mutual Water Company: Impressed with Joseph Garcia's basic attempts at irrigation, George and William Chaffey purchased 1,000 acres of Garcia's property and all his water rights in 1881. Their Etiwanda colony featured the hallmarks of the new Southern California -- reliable water, access to transportation and communications. The colony quickly sold out and within a year, the Chaffeys had purchased more land from Garcia as well as the Madison Kincaid Ranch to found Ontario. The 1870s: Drastic change would not come to the inland valley until the 1880s, but a number of important things occurred during the 1870s, to set the stage. The railroad -- at Spadra (early Pomona) in 1874 and Colton in 1875 -- began to connect the area to the nation as a whole. Some attempts at real estate sub-division began as well but were hampered by inadequate water and a national economic recession (then called a "panic") in 1875. Still, the population grew as the region attracted those willing to take risks for a better future. Some were ranchers who made early efforts at farming and irrigation. Others were businessmen and investors whose banking, financing and marketing services would be essential in the new economy. Isaias W. Hellman: Although Isaias Hellman never lived in the inland valley, this activities here are an excellent example of the new economy,. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1856 at age 16 and worked in his cousin's dry-goods store where he slept under the counter. Ten years later, he entered the banking business and in 1871, he purchased the Rancho Cucamonga in a sheriff's foreclosure sale making him one of the biggest land owners in the area. He quickly sub-divided the land and launched the Cucamonga Homestead Association in 1874. But, he proved to be a better banker than real estate developer. His Farmers and Merchants Bank survived the Panic of 1875 and began a key source of financial capital in the booming decades to come. The Cucamonga Homestead Association, however, did not supply reliable water and was never a success. Transformation to American California: In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and made California a part of the United States. The change of flag did not bring immediate changes to the inland valley but by the mid 1860s, the cattle economy was devastated, the ranchos were breaking up and American society with its market economy was replacing the old Californio way of life. The Last Great Years: Immediately after the change of flag came the discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada. The early years of the Gold Rush were a boom time for Southern California rancheros. Their cattle were suddenly in demand to feed the rapid influx of gold-seekers to the north. Many rancheros took out loans to enlarge their herds -- while enjoying new luxuries from abroad. The ranchos reached their peak, and it seemed this traditional way of life would thrive in the American era. Disaster and Disease: By the middle of the 1850s, the boom was in danger. Ranchers from Texas, the American midwest and California's Central Valley were competing with the Southern rancheros, driving down cattle prices. Then in the 1860s, with the nation embroiled in a Civil War, natural disaster struck. Devastating rains began in December 1861, drowning thousands of cattle and sheep, washing away adobe houses and altering landscapes. Two years of drought followed the floods. The grasses died and the cattle that had survived the flood now starved. Many rancheros sank deeper into debt. In the worst blow of all, a smallpox epidemic spread through Southern California in the fall of 1862. Sentries guarded the entrances of Rancho San Jose. Visitors, especially strangers, were questioned and tubs of disinfectant sat by the gates. Palomares' daughter and grandson as well as many Indian and Mexican workers died of the disease. .. Mormon San Bernardino and Biddie Mason: The Mormons settled San Bernardino in 1851 as a way-station along their supply and missionary route between Utah and the Pacific. It became the first real inland town. The settlers at San Bernardino included several African-Americans, who had come west as slaves of Mormon families from the Southern states. California, however, was a free state and Mormon leader Brigham Young instructed his pioneers to free their slaves on settling in San Bernardino. Among these slaves was a woman named Biddie Mason. When her owner refused to free her, Mason filed suit to gain her freedom. By the end of her life some 40 years later, she had become a wealthy Los Angeles landowner and philanthropist.. Newcomers to the Inland Valley: Along with new wealth, the Gold Rush brought newcomers from different countries and backgrounds to the inland valley. Many gold-seekers took the Old Spanish Trail into the south to avoid the High Sierra passes, and made their first stop in Chino or Cucamonga. Some stayed, others continued north but made their way back to the inland valley after disappointment in the goldfields. By the time President Abraham Lincoln commissioned a US Post Office in Cucamonga in 1861, many new names -- George Haven, Daniel Milliken, Isaias Hellman, Pierre Sainsevain, Joseph Garcia, "Uncle" Billy Rubottom, Madison Moses Kincaid, George Day -- began to enter the region's history. At first, many seemed to blend into the existing society, but it soon became clear they represented the first ripples of a wave of change overtaking the inland valley. Fate of the Ranchos: As the newcomers moved into the valley, pressure grew on the vast landholdings of the rancheros -- who were already weakened by economic changes and natural disasters. A land commission was set up to convert Spanish and Mexican land grants to American titles. Eventually, the commission confirmed most of the original grants, but the process was so complicated and expensive that many Californios, already in debt, had to sell off more and more of their land to pay the legal and attorney fees. The ranchos were subdivided and a way of life began to disappear. Without regular maintenance, most of the adobe buildings of the ranchos melted into ruins. A few were preserved as the growing population found roots in idealized images of "Old California." Rancho Cucamonga -- Securing the Frontier of the Frontier: In 1839, Tiburcio Tapia, whose father and grandfather had come to California with the 1776 Anza expedition, petitioned for El Paraje Illamado Cucamonga (the placed called Cucamonga). A choice piece of land around Red Hill, where the Tongva was built Kuukamonga, the Rancho Cucamonga extended from San Antonio Creek to just beyond current-day Etiwanda Avenue. The original southern edge was the old road between San Gabriel and the San Bernardino estancia, approximately Fourth Street. At the top of Red Hill, Tapia's Indian laborers built a fortress-like adobe house with a clear view for miles in all directions. Tapia, who lived near his store in Angeles, hired a major-domo named Jose Maria Valdez who planted corn and a vineyard and managed the Rancho Cucamonga. The Rancho Cucamonga guarded the Cajon Pass -- a gateway to the wilderness of the Mojave Desert. Throughout the 1830s, group of horse-thieves rode into the valley, raiding the region of its fine horses and then driving them along the Mojave River and the Old Spanish Trail to be sold in Santa Fe -- 1,200 miles away. The raiders were usually some combination of mountain men (whose beaver fur trade was declining) and Great Basin Indians -- most famous among them the Ute chief Walkara. Murder on the road from Cucamonga: In 1858, John Rains, a cattle foreman for Isaac Williams, purchased the Cucamonga Rancho. Rains had married Williams' daughter Maria Merced soon after her father's death. He used her inheritance to buy Cucamonga and built a new house east of Red Hill. On November 17, 1862, Rains set out for Los Angeles on business as he had many times before. The pistols he normally took with him were missing that morning and he left unarmed. Eleven days later he was found dead. Maria Merced was now a widow with four small children. Her brother-in-law, Robert Carlisle, talked her into giving him power of attorney. Merced turned to an employee of Rains, Ramon Carrillo, for help but he was killed in an ambush. In 1865, a judge ruled that Carlisle's power of attorney was fraudulent but Maria Merced was bankrupt and her estate was sold to Isaias Hellman. El Viejo Lugo -- Old Lugo Horace Bell described him as "eminent, not as a politician or as a man of learning, but as a man of princely possessions, of great generosity, and unblemished honor. To be a kinsman of old man Lugo, in the remotest degree, was an assurance of an ample start in lands and cattle with which to commence the battle of life." The Californios and the Glory Days of the Ranchos: From the 1820s into the early 1860s, a few Californians enjoyed a way of life that came to symbolize the romantic California good life. They called themselves Californios. Their hospitality, horsemanship and social gatherings were legendary. This charmed way of life was built on free government land, cattle for food and trade, and the labor of the Indians whose traditional way of life was now almost totally destroyed. "Every year I load my hides and take my tallow to the ships waiting at the sea shore. Every year I trade them for all the things my family needs -- silks, shawls, fans, combs, sweetmeats for the children, sugar, salt, coffee and tobacco -- enough for another year." -- Ygnacio Palomares In the Inland Valley, the San Bernardino estancia was abandoned. Ranchos began to appear near the old Tongva villages where there was ample water and other natural resources. Like the rest of California, the Inland valley ranchos engaged in the hide and tallow trade from the late 1820s until the Gold Rush. New England industrialists purchased California cattle in the form most suited to the long voyage around Cape Horn -- hides for leather goods and tallow for making candles. Mexican Independence and the Secularization of the Missions: Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821 and secularized the California Missions in 1836, reducing them to simple parish churches. Secularization was intended to return mission lands to the Indians but most ended up in the hands of well-connected civilians -- the Rancheros. The rancho economy was built almost entirely on cattle. The skills Indians had learned in the missions were no longer needed. Many Tongva moved north toward Bakersfield or south toward San Diego and Capistrano. The labor of those who remained became very cheap. Living Large: Rancho San Jose: "Every smoke you see rising is from the home of one of my children or one of my friends to whom I have given land. These fat cattle are mine. There is must pasture and fertile land for the Indians to grow corn and beans. There is always plenty of water from the springs and the river that flows through San Jose." -- Ygnacio Palomares, sometime after the Gold Rush in the 1850s Of the various Inland Valley ranchos, the Rancho San Jose of Ygnacio Palomares and Richardo Vejar most fits the popular image of the Californio era. In 1837, Vejar, the grandson of a Spanish woodcarver who had worked at the San Gabriel and San Juan Capistrano missions, and Palomares, the son of a soldier, petitioned the Mexican governor of California for a land grant of property along the base of the hills at the western edge of the valley, where the Tongva of Tooypinga had gathered tuna cactus and hunted along San Antonio Creek. Vejar built in the hills to the south. Palomares took the northern part of the rancho, building his house near the cienega beside the San Jose Hills. It sill stands today at 1569 North Park Avenue in Pomona. Rancho Santa Ana del Chino: Crossroads of a Changing Land: In 1841, Antonio Maria Lugo (El Viejo) purchased about 22,000 acres of land near the old Tongva village of Pahiinonga. He named it Rancho Santa Ana del Chino and almost immediately deeded a half-interest in the property to his son-in-law, Issac (Don Julian) Williams. Lugo's sons handled the horses and cattle. Williams managed the rancho's buildings and property. El Viejo himself lived mostly in his Angeles town home A trapper and trader, originally from Pennsylvania, Williams had come to Angeles in 1832. He opened a store, converted to Catholicism, became a Mexican citizen and began calling himself Julian Williams. In 1836, he married Lugo's daughter Maria de Jesus. During the Mexican-American War, Williams found himself in a very tight spot. Following a brief skirmish in September 1846, known as the "Battle of Chino," Williams and other American-born Californios were held captive by native Californios suspicious of the Americans' loyalty. By the early 1850s, Williams had become famous for his hospitality to travelers on their way to the northern gold fields. But he would never again be trusted completely by his old Californio friends and neighbors.
17. ONTMUS_100730_125.JPG: Missions, Pueblos and Indian Response Populating California: Mission San Gabriel Archangel, the fourth of the Franciscans' missions, was founded on September 8, 1771 in an area of oak forests near four Tongva communities. The first years were difficult. Supplies failed to arrive, crops failed, the Indians rebelled. The soldiers, who were supposed to protect the mission, often caused trouble -- usually over the Indian women. In time, however, San Gabriel became the most productive of all the California missions possessing 80,000 cattle, 30,000 sheep, and 3,000 horses which grazed on ranchos scattered all the way to San Bernardino. "... I hate the padres and all of you, for living here on my native soil..., for trespassing on the land of my forefathers." Toypurina, a 24-year old shaman, at her inquest for inciting an Indian rebellion at San Gabriel Mission in 1785. Some Indians were drawn to the Missions out of curiosity. Others chose to stay to be near family members who had been converted -- or forced to convert. Others were forced to stay by the soldiers assigned to protect the Mission. As the cattle, sheep and horses of the mission destroyed traditional food sources, many Indians were forced to stay out of necessity. Indians rebelled against the missions in varying ways. Running away was the most common form of Indian rebellion against the Missions but there were several organized and more violent attempts. Among the most famous is the 1785 attempted rebellion at Mission San Gabriel led by the 24-year-old female shaman, Toypurina. As late as 1810,a group of up to 800 unconverted Indians raided San Gabriel Mission statehouses. The Franciscans estimated it would take ten years to convert the Indians to Christianity, European ideas and ways of life. By the time Mexico secularized the missions in 1833, the mission system had changed the world of the California Indians forever. Tens of thousands had died from venereal disease and later smallpox. Like traditional sources of food, their religious practices and traditional culture were shredded by forced missionization. Still, some Indians were able to avoid the missions -- especially groups like the Cahuilla whose lands were far inland. Tongva and other California Indians sometimes found refuge among the Cahuilla. Others managed a living doing work for Spanish civilians and growing crops of their own, such as melons, corn, and beans. One such group, probably a mix of Tongva and other peoples, lived in the Pomona area until 1883. El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles del Rio de Porciuncula (The Told of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels by the River of "Little Portion") Colonists from the 1781 De Anza expedition helped found a pueblo (town) seven miles west of the San Gabriel mission, on September 4, 1781. They called it El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles del Rio de Porciuncula (The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels by the River of "Little Portion"). In the Spanish and Mexican periods it was usually known simply as "Pueblo," or "Angeles." Supplies and Colonists from Mexico: The Anza Expeditions: In January 1774, Juan Batista de Anza led a party of 34 soldiers and priests in search of an overland supply route from Mexico to California. Sebastian Tarabal, a Baja California Indian who had escaped from San Gabriel Mission and was familiar with the region and some of the Tongva language guided the expedition. They crossed present-day Euclid Avenue near De Anza Park and camped along San Antonio Creek on March 21, 1774. In 1775-76, Anza led the first party of pobladores ("populators," or colonists) over the same route. The party included three officers, three priests, 38 soldiers and 29 of their wives, 136 other family members -- mostly children and assorted muleteers, vaqueros and servants, for a total of 241 people. There were also 165 pack mules; 340 horses and 302 cattle. They crossed the Santa Ana on New Year's Day 1776, and camped at the same spot alongside San Antonio Creek. The Anza route helped stabilize Mission San Gabriel in its first troubled years, bringing up to one-half of the earliest colonists to California. After 1781, however, when the rear-guard soldiers of an expedition were killed by Yuma Indians along the Colorado River, the Spanish largely abandoned the overland route to California. El Camino que va a San Bernardino (the road that goes to San Bernardino): At Rancho San Bernardino, near the Tongva village of Kaawchama, the church established an outpost or estancia, where padres occasionally held services for neophyte Indians who worked the rancho. The route from the main mission became a well-traveled road, known simply as El Camino que va a San Bernardino (the road that goes to San Bernardino). It passed through the Ontario area roughly where Fourth Street in today, probably crossing Euclid Avenue at about "I" Street. Under Snow Mountain: The native people who lived in our area before Spanish, Mexican and American explorers were part of one of the wealthiest, most populous and powerful native groups in California. Daily life was not easy, but it was comfortable if the traditional ways were followed. The Spanish would call them Gabrielenos, after the San Gabriel Mission, but they called themselves Tongva -- people of the earth. What we know today as Mt. Baldy, they called xaayy ywatt -- Snow Mountain. There were several Tongva villages in the area around today's Ontario. Tooypinga sat at the base of the San Jose Hills in today's Pomona. San Antonio Creek provided water and supported a wide variety of plants and game. The community was remembered for its large supplies of tuna or prickly pear cactus. There were two communities in present-day Cimino. Pashiinonga, near the Chino Hills and San Antonio Creek, was named for the chia (pashi) that grew there. Wapijanga, farther toward the marshes of the Santa Ana River, took its name from a large stand of junipers. The village of Kuukamonga was well situated at the transition between the mountains and the plain, and near the springs and marshes east of Red Hill. Its name has been translated variously as "sandy place," "place of many springs," "light over the mountain" and "I shuffle my feet on the ground."
18. ONTMUS_100730_134.JPG: Gold Mining in the San Gabriel Mountains One Grand Gold Placer: From the discovery of gold in 1842 in what would become Placerita Canyon until the 1890s, there were dozens of discoveries and gold "rushes" in the San Gabriel Mountains. In December 1859, the Los Angeles Star newspaper boasted that the region from Newhall to Lytle Creek was "one grand gold placer." Significant amounts of gold were mined from the San Gabriel Mountains -- perhaps up to $8 million total. But even the largest of the "rushes" brought only 300 or so miners into any given area. The real economic impact was on the growing merchant and business sector in Los Angeles which provided much-needed food; supplies, and freighting services. Lytle Creek was the site of the first strike in the local region in 1864, followed by Baldy Notch in 1869. Small-scale mining continued in San Antonio Canyon throughout the 1870s. By 1879there were six different mining companies operating in the canyon. Hydraulic mining was done in both Lytle Creek and San Antonio Canyon. The largest local operation was the Hocumac's hydraulic techniques were muddying the domestic water supply and clogging the irrigation pipes of Ontario's San Antonio Water Company. Following some legal wrangling and settlements, the Water Company bought out Hocumac in 1900, effectively ending mining in San Antonio Canyon. As in the Northern California Gold Rush, the miners of Southern California were a diverse group -- Indians, Californios, Sonorans, Americans from the northern and southern states, Europeans, Chinese and African-Americans. Small-scale placer mining took place in almost all the San Gabriel sites. Americans and Europeans were known for moving about following one strike after another. Mexico and Chinese miners tended to stay behind. Mexican miners often used the slow but steady arrastre -- a circular drag mill -- for crushing stone. The Chinese were adept at 'salvage recovery" -- panning mine tailings for tiny bits and flakes left by earlier miners.
19. ONTMUS_100730_140.JPG: Assay Office, 1900s: Charles C. Barnes settled in south Ontario in the early 1900s. His ranch was located what is now the property just north of the 60 Freeway and Euclid Avenue. Barnes used this building to process and test, or "assay," ore to determine its mineral content. Barnes mined in the San Bernardino Mountains and worked several claims from the early 1900s into the 1940s. Barnes and his wife, Wilhelmina, grew a variety of crops at their ranch, including peaches. Wilhelmina developed the "So-Cala" peach and applied for a patent in the 1940s. She died before the patent was issued.
20. ONTMUS_100730_146.JPG: French Vintners in Southern California: Perhaps the most well-known area winery was Brookside Winery operated by the Vache-Biane family. The Vaches -- Adolph, Emile and Theophile -- were French immigrants who founded Brookside Winery in Redlands in 1882. Marius Biane, who had immigrated from France in 1892, worked for the Vaches and married Marcelline Vache, Adolph's daughter. When Redlands established local prohibition in 1916, Marius Biane moved the family to Cucamonga. He went to work for Garrett and Company as vineyardist and winemaker and set out his own vineyards. In 1936, after national prohibition was repealed, the Bianes established the Cucamonga Growers Cooperative. Marius' older son, Frank, became production manager for the Cooperative. His younger son, Philo, named for family patriarch Theophile Vache, worked for the San Francisco-based Fruit Industries, a marketing organization. Philo eventually moved back to the Cucamonga area established a new Brookside Winery in the 1950s.
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2010 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used the Fuji S100fs until the third one broke and I started sending them back for repairs. Then I used either the Fuji S200EHX or the Nikon D90 until I got the S100fs ones repaired. At the end of the year I bought a Nikon D5000 but I returned it pretty quickly. Trips this year: Civil War Trust conferences (Lexington, KY and Nashville, TN), and my 5th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles). My office at the main Commerce Department building closed in October and I was shifted out to the Bureau of the Census in Suitland Maryland. It's good to have a job of course but that killed being able to see basically any cultural events during the day. There's basically nothing of interest that you can see around the Census building. Number of photos taken this year: about 395,000..
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