Olinda History Presentation at Chino Hills State Park Discovery Center Next Friday

The Discovery Center at Chino Hills State Park is the setting for a series of Naturalist Night presentations and next Friday, 31 July at the facility, located at 4500 Carbon Canyon Road in Brea, is a discussion of some of the history of Olinda.

This includes the ranch, the briefly boosted boom town of Carlton, the oil field, and more.  A meet-and-greet is at 5 p.m., with the talk at 6 p.m. and a Q&A about the park at 7 p.m.  Artifacts related to Olinda will also be on display.

We hope to see you there!

Olinda History Presentation at Chino Hills State Park Discovery Center on 31 July

On Friday, 31 July at 6 p.m. at the Chino Hills State Park Discovery Center, 4500 Carbon Canyon Road in Brea just east of Carbon Canyon Regional Park, the Friends of Chino Hills State Park is hosting a presentation on some of the history of Olinda, the portion of Brea that was a ranch, location of the short-lived boomtown of Carlton and then, for decades, a very productive oil field, among the last of which is now being decomissioned and developed as the Brea265 project.

The illustrated talk will feature great historic photos, including of the Olinda School and oil wells, as well as maps, newspaper articles and more detailing some of the remarkable history of this area, with ties to Brazil and the Hawaiian island of Maui, as well as locally.

A caveat is that traffic eastbound at that time of day is quite heavy and the backup on Carbon Canyon can be lengthy from Valencia Avenue, so, anyone coming from the west (Orange County) should be aware of those conditions.  If you're from that side of the Canyon and have time, come early to see a bit of the park (bearing in mind summer weather) and see the exhibits at the Discovery Center before the talk.

We hope to see you there!

The Gaines and Brown Families of Carbon Canyon, Part 10: Olinda Village Middle School Students, ca. 1913

This coming Monday the 27th marks the first day of school in the Brea-Olinda Unified School District, so this is a good time to highlight another great photograph, courtesy of descendant Joyce Harrington and her collection from the Gaines and Brown families of Carbon Canyon, of students from the original Olinda School.

Dated to 1912 or 1913, the image shows 7th and 8th graders of the school, which served the residents of the Olinda community, largely based around the oil producing areas surrounding the campus.  The view shows 35 students and their teacher Mr. Turley standing (and, in a few cases, seated) at the steps to the open front doors of the school building.

A list of those shown in the photo was also provided and is shown here, including the names of twins Ora and Nora Brown and Aileen Gaines from the two families from which Joyce is descended.  It is interesting to peruse the first names of the students to see how different they are from today's names.  So, we are not likely now to see such examples as Earl, Hattie, Oscar, Herman, Wilfred, Willard, Frances, Myrtle, Bessie, Olive, Edna, Ernest, or Walter!

Reflective of the demographics of the community, only two of the students are Latino with the rest being White.  In 1910, there were just under 1,500 residents of Olinda and 88% were White with 8% being Latino. 

Another demographic point of note is that there were only 14 girls in the class, constituting 40% of the total.  This is a bit lower that the representation of females in the Olinda population at large, which was 44% in the census.  Given that Olinda was an "oil town," this is not that surprising broadly, because many single men worked in the fields, but that doesn't account for the disparity in the student population at the school, so that might just be an anomaly.

It is also interesting to look at how the students were dressed, considering this was probably a very rare "formal" occasion for them.  Note that quite a few of the boys sport ties (one has a natty bow tie) and some have the short pants common for the time.  Yet, a number wear the overalls expected in a working-class and rural community, though some spruced up their look by adding some neckwear.  The young gent at the far right of the top row even thought it good to accessorize his look with his baseball glove on his left hand!

The boys do have some variation in color, but check out the absolute uniformity of the girls, with one notable exception, when it comes to clothing color.  All wear radiant and pure white, while the girl third from the right in the middle row strikes a sartorial note of difference with a long-sleeve dress of a color that is not white.  Hairstyles, though, do vary and a couple of the young ladies did add hair bands to make their appearance distinctive and one girl in the front row set her self apart with her white hose and shoes.

School portraits, from any place in any era, are always interesting to look at in terms of the elements discussed above, but also as comparisons and contrasts to what we see today.

The Gaines and Brown Families of Carbon Canyon, Part 8: Olinda Oil Field Photos, 1909

Here are another pair of interesting photos, courtesy of Joyce Harrington, showing members of her family, Argus, Maggie and Earl Brown, at the Olinda oil field in 1909.

Argus, a native of Missouri who also lived in Iowa during his younger years, and Maggie (nee McLeish), also from Missouri but who spent some of her early years in Ohio, married in Worth County, in the northwestern corner of Missouri on the Iowa border, in 1886.  They remained there (the county today only has about 2,000 people) until after 1900 when they relocated to California and came to Orange County.

Maggie and Argus Brown at the Olinda oil field, ca. 1909.  This and the other photo are courtesy of Brown descendant, Joyce Harrington.  Click on any image to see them in enlarged views in a separate window.

Their daughter Nora, born with her twin brother Ora in January 1898, recorded some of her memories of Olinda many years later and recalled that her family moved there in September 1907 and noted that her father built many of wooden derricks for the oil wells on several leases in the field.

At the time these photos were taken, in 1909 and thereabouts, he was working as a carpenter, the profession listed for him in the 1910 census.  However, Nora noted that he later worked as a pumper on the Santa Fe lease, where the Olinda Ranch subdivision is today.  Her recollections will be the subject of a post in the future, so check back for that.

Earl Brown, son of Argus and Maggie, at the right, who worked as a tool dresser with drillers Charles Nevin, left, and Charles Dale, right, on well #58, probably at the Santa Fe lease (today's Olinda Ranch subdivision), 25 August 1909.

Meantime, these images provide a notable look at oil well sites at Olinda over a century ago, especially as we are seeing the last of these remnants of once thriving industry gradually being removed and replaced with the usual trappings of suburbia in the form of houses, shopping centers, parks and schools.

The first photo show Maggie and Argus Brown standing in front of a rough wood structure that might have been a shop for carpentry, ironworking and other vital components of oil field work.  At the lower right are about a dozen pipes and other material.  A very simple ladder is behind Maggie.  The overall appearance is a reminder that wells came and went and associated buildings were not, clearly, designed to last.

The Brown family, at the bottom, as enumerated in the 1910 federal census at Olinda.

The second image is a great one of a trio of young men at a rig and is also notable because someone actually took the time to write information about it.  So, we know the view was taken by a Mr. Griffy and it was done on 25 August 1909 at oil well #58, perhaps at the Santa Fe lease though this was not stated.

Captioned "3 of a Kind," the photo shows Earl Brown, son of Argus and Maggie, at the right with his name conveniently written where he stood.  He was then about 19 years old and his occupation in the census showed him as a tool dresser, who worked to keep drill bits sharp and engaged in other tasks to make sure the material used on the rig were functioning property.  The dresser worked closely with the drillers, which is why the caption was written as it was.  At the left is Charles Nevin and in the center Charles Dale, both drillers in the census.

Charles Nevin and his family listed in the census.

Nevin and Dale were older, more experienced oil field workers.  The former was 32 and from Pennsylvania, where America's oil industry started in 1859.  He, his wife Frances, also from Pennsylvania, and their son and two daughters (ages 8 months to 8 years), were among the many families that rented company-owned houses on the lease.  Dale was a 28 year old native of Illinois, and his Kansas-born wife Lulu and their three sons (ranging from 9 months to 5 years) lived on Santa Fe Avenue on the lease of that name.

Charles Dale (his family were on the next sheet) from the census.

Working on the rig was noisy, dirty and physically demanding work and the "3 of a Kind" photo definitely reflects the blue collar labor that kept the oil industry humming during the boom years of the first few decades of the 20th century at Olinda, one of the earliest major fields in greater Los Angeles.

The Gaines and Brown Families of Carbon Canyon, Part 5: Olinda School, 1910s

Because it was located in a district that had extraordinary tax revenues from a booming oil field, Olinda School may have been the best-funded elementary through junior high school in the region.

For the Gaines and Brown families, whose descendant Joyce Harrington has shared many of the family photos, this meant a quality education outside of the established cities in northern Orange County like Fullerton and Anaheim.

When it came to going to high school, Olinda students would make the long bus ride to Fullerton Union High School, which gave a good education, just not with the tax revenues of Olinda!

It seemed particularly appropriate at this point, as our schools have completed their year and students are headed for their summer vacations, including some who have graduated, to post a couple of the images provided by Joyce of the Olinda School.

The facility was located near the banks of Carbon [Canyon] Creek after it flowed out of Carbon Canyon, past the confluence with Soquel Canyon and its creek and headed into what is now Carbon Canyon Regional Park.

The Olinda School, located in what is now the eastern end of Carbon Canyon Regional Park, from a circa 1910s photograph provided courtesy of Joyce Harrington.

Those familiar with the old park entrance, near which is a state historic landmark plaque for the Olinda community, will recognize in one of the photos the steep hill behind the school, which is above the park's eastern edge and where housing tracts in Yorba Linda overlook the park just to the west of today's Diemer water treatment plant operated by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

At the left of the image, behind a small tree is the covered projecting entrance of the school, situated under a bell tower with arched openings.  Again, this is pretty fancy school for such a rural area.

The other photo shows the graduating 8th grade class of 1917, exactly a century ago, posed on the front steps of the Olinda School.  As with almost all school photos, it is fun to see the varied dress and expressions of the students, some with broad smiles and others are serious, while a few students look away from the camera.  At the bottom left is the mark of Hartsook, a major photography studio with offices in Los Angeles and Oakland.

The 8th grade graduating class of 1917 at the Olinda School.  Courtesy of Joyce Harrington.

The Olinda School operated well after the post-World War II period, even as the residential population of the oil fields diminished significantly from the late 1920s onward, with the rise of the automobile allowing oil field workers to live further from their job site.  When the Carbon Canyon Dam project was completed in the late 1950s, the school was razed.

The name of Olinda School, however, was revived when the Olinda Village subdivision was built further east where the Gaines' Flying Cow Ranch was located.  Olinda Elementary School opened in the mid-1960s and operated until recent years, when new housing at Olinda Ranch and projecting subdivisions in the shuttered oil fields north of Lambert and west of Valencia prompted the move of the school to its current location on Birch Street.

Thanks to photos like the ones provided by Joyce, we can document the existence and usage of the original Olinda School.

The Gaines and Brown Families of Carbon Canyon, Part Two

Here are a couple more great photographs provided by Joyce Harrington of her ancestors in the Brown and Gaines families, who were in the Olinda oil fields (Brown) and at the Flying Cow Ranch (Gaines) where Olinda Village is now.

The first photograph shows Earl Brown and others at an office, probably the Santa Fe lease where the Olinda Ranch subdivision now is located, on the Olinda lease.  The date was given on the photograph as 1909 or 1910.

Employees at an office, probably on the Santa Fe lease, at Olinda, ca. 1909-10.  The photos shown here are courtesy of Joyce Harrington.

The second image is a look at the Gaines family home from the southeast.  It looks as if the photo was taken on what is now the Hollydale mobile home park.

The dirt road leading to the house probably came up from the old road through Carbon Canyon, which was down along the creek as it came from Olinda to the west, met the confluence with Soquel Canyon and its creek and then headed uphill to Carbon Canyon just east of the ranch.

The Flying Cow Ranch house of Ed and Fannie Gaines seen from the southeast.  The location of the photo appears to be on what is now the Hollydale mobile home park and the peaked hill in the background is to the west of the Olinda Village subdivision.

People familiar with the area will recognize the peaked hill in the background, which is to the west of the Olinda Village tract.

More fantastic photos coming soon!