Carbon Canyon Historical Artifact #28: A La Vida Mineral Springs Ashtray

It might be appropriate (or not) that this installment comes as some of the history posts here deal with the fire history of Carbon Canyon.

In any case, here is an ashtray that might have been found in a motel room, the restaurant, or other
public areas of the La Vida Mineral Springs resort, which operated from the 1910s to the 1980s, located on the Brea side of the Canyon, a short distance east of Olinda Village.

Interestingly, the wording notes that the resort was in Placentia, not Brea, and this was the location generally assigned to the facility in its earlier years.  For example, directory listings from the 1920s always gave Placentia as the city of location, as did most of the soda bottles using water from La Vida that were issued from the late 1920s (some did say Fullerton, which is where one of the bottling plants was located, while others were bottled in northern California plants such as at Sacramento and Stockton.) 

Notably, the early black-and-white real photo postcards that show the site in the late 1920s or early 1930s invariably will say "La Vida Mineral Springs, Calif," and omit the nearest city or town.

It doesn't appear to be until well after World War II when the the location was given as Brea--these are found on the color postcards that look to have produced in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as other artifacts like matchbooks.

Given this, it appears that this ashtray goes back to the earlier days, perhaps from the 1930s or 1940s, though there is no obvious way to discern the date (the words "MINERAL SPRINGS" appear to look somewhat like Art Deco, which was everywhere in the Thirties.)  It's a utilitarian item, to be sure, but is still one little historical tidbit to add to the history of Carbon Canyon's most notable historic site.