Carbon Canyon Historical Artifact #61: "Tidwell's at Sleepy Hollow, Carbon Canyon," 1933

At the far east end of Sleepy Hollow on the south side of Carbon Canyon Road are some decrepit buildings, last in the news because they were red-tagged by the City of Chino Hills as not meeting basic standards of livable conditions by ordinance.

In the front, right up against the state highway, is one building, while a two-story home is at the very rear of the property.  In between the two are a variety of other structures, all of which were deemed in substandard condition.

The absentee owner and landlord was ordered to make repairs and upgrade the structures before they could be used again as residences and, though there was some initial work, nothing has been done there for quite some time.  Who knows if these buildings will ever be livable again at this rate?  At one time the front building was a store, one of a couple in the community in days gone by.

Tonight's post features a real photo postcard with the caption "Tidwell's at Sleepy Hollow.  Carbon Canyon."  This was Tidwell Oaks, owned by David and Velma Tidwell and which included a store and tavern further west where Carbon Canyon Road and Rosemary Lane intersect. 

David, a native of Alabama, and Velma, who hailed from Texas, were in the first census conducted in Sleepy Hollow when they were enumerated there in May 1930.  He was 39, she was 36, and they owned property valued at $3,000.  He appears to have come to California after 1900 and live with his parents near Pomona, where David was a hired hand on local ranches and farms. 

This real photo postcard of "Tidwell's at Sleepy Hollow, Carbon Canyon," has a message dated 18 June 1933, just as Prohibition was coming to an end, which seems to explain why the couple at the center, maybe David and Velma Tidwell, who owned the store and tavern on the property, have beer bottles on their table and why beer crates are stacked up in the right foreground.  Click on the image to see it enlarged in a separate window.

After he and Velma married, the couple lived in Los Angeles near today's Staples Center and he was a conductor for the Los Angeles Railway system of streetcars that ran all over the growing city.  By 1920, the Tidwells were in the Rowland township where La Puente, Rowland Heights and Hacienda Heights are located now, and he was an oil well worker.

In that 1930 census in Sleepy Hollow were three of David's brothers: Henry, Harvy, and Andrew, who ranged in age from 23 to 33.  Henry was a rotary driller for an oil company and the others were general laborers and they may have rented places to live from their older brother.

The image shows a bucolic scene of seven persons seated at tables on a raised patio with an attractive curved low rock wall at the left and a wall of brick around the patio.  An opening in the brick wall in the front includes small pillars on which are potted plants and a few steps leading up to the patio, which was partially built around a sprawling oak tree.  Other trees are in view in the verdant landscape.

Notably, there are several beer crates stacked up at the right, including some marked "Eastside," the name of a popular Los Angeles-made brew from the Los Angeles Brewing Company, established by George Zobelein, who had a partnership with Joseph Maier from the early 1880s to the early 1900s.  The term "Eastside" came from the brewing company's location on the east side of Los Angeles' downtown industrial core right off today's U.S. 101 before it terminates and splits off into Interstates 5 and 10.

The reverse of the postcard with a short message from a woman named Esther who, according to a later ink inscription above, worked at Tidwell's, said to be "near Brea Calif."

There may have been a reason to have included those crates because, on the reverse, there is a message from a woman only identifying herself as "Esther" and who wrote "Hello Mom, Wish I could see you.  Can't this time."  Above that is what looks to be a much later ink inscription, "Where Esther worked near Brea Calif."

Esther's short and dry note is dated "June-18-1933," which was less than six months before the end of Prohibition, the fourteen-year "social experiment" in which most production and consumption of alcoholic beverages was banned.  Yet, in early April, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a repeal of the Volstead Act, the legislation which enacted Prohibition, and this allowed brewers to make up to 3.2% alcohol content brew. 

So, it seems like the photo at Tidwell's was taken to celebrate the availability of near-full strength beer just weeks after the president's repeal.  The folks in the table at the center, who might well be David and Velma Tidwell, have two brown bottles in front of them (the gent at the left, by the way, is holding a guitar, while a small child, a young woman and two young men (maybe two of David's brothers?) are the others in the scene.

This is a very rare early artifact related to Sleepy Hollow, which was established by Cleve Purington and fellow investors just a decade prior, and it gives a sense of the bucolic, rural nature of the community as the Prohibition experiment came to a close.