Before Olinda: The Shanklin Ranch

As noted before, the area that became Olinda and extended into Carbon Canyon as far as the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino boundary, just east of today's Sleepy Hollow neighborhood in Chino Hills was considered public land from the Spanish period of California onward through the Mexican era.

Public lands became important as common grazing lands between ranches like Chino, Cajon de Santa Ana, La Puente, Cañada de la Brea, La Habra and others in the area, so that cattle could be moved from the ranches to the public lands to equalize the effect of grazing on grasses and other plant material.

James W. Shanklin's listing in the Great Register of Voters, San Francisco, 1866.  Click on any image to see the set in enlarged views in a separate window.

Once the American conquest of Mexican California took place in 1846-47, there were no immediate changes to that status, because the regional economy was still cattle-dominated and the ranches in full operation.

By the late 1860s, however, matters had changed considerably.  The end of the Gold Rush, an economic downturn in the late 1850s, floods in 1861-62, and drought to 1865 all contributed to the decline of the cattle industry and to the loss of many of the ranches that existed to serve it.  A new era was at hand, led by agriculture, including vineyards and orange groves, primarily.

In the late 1850s, President James Buchanan reversed the policy of Franklin Pierce and ordered tens of millions of acres of federal public land placed on the market--this followed the Depression of 1857 and a need for increased revenue was part of Buchanan's decision.  Between 25 and 30 percent of this land was in California alone.

James W. Shanklin's entry in the Great Register of Voters, Alameda County, 1870.

A problem was that surveys of California lands under the auspices of the federal General Land Office were proceeding slowly as land claims from Spanish and Mexican grants on ranchers was also moving through the courts at a glacial pace.

The state legislature passed an act in 1863 allowing persons interested in acquiring public land to apply to the state, which would then check with the federal land register.  If the land in question was determined to be open, not mineral land, or subject to any legitimate claim, the surveyor general would do a recheck.  If the land was considered available, it was up to the state to issue a patent, after one had been given from the federal government to the state.

Finally, public land sales, mostly to speculators and wealthy land owners with a great deal of pull, accelerated in the latter part of the Sixties.  By 1869, public land sales in California were more than those of all other states in the Union combined and another 8 million acres of lands initially set aside for schools, colleges, and as swamp lands, were being put on the market, as well.

Photo from James W. Shanklin obituary, San Francisco Chronicle, 1 March 1902.

It was in this context that former public lands in northeastern Orange County became available.  In a 1916 court case, Stutsman v. Olinda Land Company, the judge observed that property later part of the Olinda Ranch was composed of lands 'in lieu of a certain thirty-sixth section given to the state [by the federal government] under general grant for school purposes."

The plaintiff in this case, W. A. Stutsman, argued that the acquisition of the land at issue in this case was acquired by James White Shanklin in 1868 from a deputy federal surveyor, Henry Hancock, and that the property, being mineral land, could not be sold nor could Shanklin, who Stutsman argued was the state surveyor general, acquire the land.  Unfortunately for Stutsman, his facts were somewhat off base.  The judge, moreover, ruled that "the conveyance to Shanklin came from the state of California and not from the {federal] government" rendering Stutsman's argument moot and the matter was dismissed.

What did happen to the land that became Olinda, though, is that these former public lands were assumed by the federal government after the conquest of California, were in limbo as surveys were being completed and land grants sorted out, and then assigned to the state for sale by the late 1860s.

In early March 1874, Shanklin acquired 4,360 acres in the former public lands of northeastern Orange County for $1,000 from C.G. Jones and his associates.  Notably, Shanklin also filed an "agreement as to conveyance of lands" with Hancock, who was no longer a surveyor but an attorney specializing in land cases,  A week later, Hancock and others then conveyed their one-third interest in the 4,360 acres to Shanklin for $2,500.

Los Angeles Herald, 6 March 1874.

James W. Shanklin was born 5 August 1824 near Rochester, New York and worked on the family farm before briefly becoming a teacher and then studied the law in Rochester.  When the Gold Rush erupted, he followed the teeming hordes to California and mined on the American River.  He also participated in a lumber business.

In 1864, President Lincoln appointed Shanklin as the receiver in the federal land office in San Francisco just as California's public lands were beginning to be transferred to the state.  He then became the register in the same office, the same position mentioned above.  In 1870, Shanklin moved to Oakland, where he served on that city's Board of Education and then its city council during the following decade.  It was, of course, during these years that Shanklin acquired his property in what later became Orange County.  The Anaheim Gazette in its last issue of 1875 mentioned his "sheep camp," with the raising of these animals growing in significance in those years.

Shanklin then moved into state politics when he was elected in 1879 to be the state surveyor general, responsible for the surveying and tracking of the transfer of lands from the federal to the state government.  Shanklin served in this position from 1880 to 1883, when he decided not to run for reelection and returned to private life.

Los Angeles Herald, 19 March 1882 [the year was inadvertently listed as 1881 by the paper].

He did, however, add to his ranch holdings in what became Olinda.  In March 1882, Charles M. Laughlin sold to Shanklin additional acreage of an unstated amount (lots and sections were, however, listed, including areas within and to the east and south of future Olinda) for $6,000.

Early in 1883, Shanklin, having just left office, authored a bill to be introduced to the state legislature by Reginaldo F. del Valle of Los Angeles, concerning the better regulation of water for irrigation.  This was a contentious issue, concerning whether riparian water rights to be available to any land owners along the course of the river, stream, creek, or wash was to be superior over the right for nearby landowners to draw water by means of irrigation.

The Shanklin family's census listing, Oakland, 1900.

In semi-arid southern California, especially, the question of water rights and access was not only controversial but could lead to violence.  In Shanklin's case, he clearly needed irrigation to draw water from the Santa Ana River to his ranch.  In 1878, he was the president of the new Cajon Irrigation Company, formerly the North Anaheim Canal Company.  That November a new flume was completed, which was cause for a large celebration (documented in the accompanying photo from the collection of the Anaheim Public Library) and documented in the Anaheim Gazette and reprinted in the Los Angeles Herald.

Shanklin could not be present at the event, but had a letter read by W.M. McFadden, who then discussed the origins of the irrigation canal project in early 1875, just after Shanklin's purchase of his ranch and of a state law which cleared the way for such work.  The North Anaheim Canal Company was not named in McFadden's address, but the financial problems of continuing the work after eight miles were dug were noted.  Then, in 1877, a new effort was launched by seven men, (in addition to Shanklin and McFadden, there were names like Crowther and Gilman involved--the names of the latter three memorialized in Placentia street names today), with the 8-foot deep, 15-miles long ditch capable of irrigating 10,000 acres finished at a cost of $50,000.

The celebration of the completion of Flume #7, Cajon Irrigation Company, November 1878.  From the collection of the Anaheim Public Library.

Problems ensued, however, internally and externally and involving lawsuits, so in 1884, a new enterprise, the Anaheim Union Water Company, was created to embrace Cajon and two rivals.

In 1886, Shanklin and R.J, Northam were the heads of the Anaheim Anti-Riparian Irrigation Club, as listed in the Proceedings of the State Irrigation Convention.  That same year, an address to the State Irrigation Committee included this caustic commentary

J.W. Shanklin, once Surveyor-General of this State, ‘hogged’ more water in Los Angeles county than he has land to cover, or has ‘hogged’ more land than he has water to cover, we know not which, is up at Sacramento ‘bellyaching’ against the irrigation bills.  The burden of his song is that the laws proposed don’t fit his case.  Shanklin ought to buy an uninhabited island and move on it.  Then he could pass laws to suit his own views. 

Another potential problem, it seems, had to do with land squatters.  In June 1883, the Los Angeles Herald published an editorial claiming that squatters from Las Bolsas, near the Pacific in modern Huntington Beach, were flocking to the Santa Ana Mountains because of reports of oil found there.

The paper noted that there were several large landowners in the general vicinity, including Shanklin, and that these men "will not stand any squatter sovreignty" and "will use their lands for pasturage at present" for cattle, horses and sheep.  Most relevantly, the Herald continued, "there is no water for their stock in that highland plateau at present."

Shanklin took to renting out a large portion of his holdings, said by the Gazette to amount to a substantial 12,000 acres.  One such advertisement, in the Herald in August 1884, sought someone to take a lease on 5,000 acres, being "a splendid place for hogs or sheep," but also having access to "a good ditch of running water," presumably the irrigation canal, near which were 73 acres of alfalfa.

Los Angeles Herald, 13 August 1884.

The following year, 1885, brought the direct connection of a transcontinental railroad to Los Angeles through the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line, which ran along the southern reaches of Shanklin's domain.  Within a couple of years, the famed "Boom of the Eighties" erupted in the region.  Thousands and thousands of emigrants flocked to the area, land prices skyrocketed, and wild speculation was the order of the day.

Looking to get in on the action, former Los Angeles newspaper publisher Jesse Yarnell and future Los Angeles mayor Henry T. Hazard purchased some of Shanklin's ranch in March 1887, during the frenzy of the boom, for $50,000.  Within five months, Yarnell and Hazard were part of a syndicate planning a "colony" on their new holdings.  As reported in the Herald on 26 August, the group looked at their "patch" of 750 acres, valued at $150 an acre, for the laying out of a townsite adjacent to the new railroad line.

Los Angeles Herald, 8 September 1887.

A few weeks later, in early September, the Richfield Land and Water Company was incorporated, including Yarnell; Hazard; H. C. Witmer, a banker, streetcar line owner and real estate developer; W.H. Bonsall, whose realty deals included the Centinela Land Company near today's Los Angeles International Airport and the Redondo Beach Company and who was a Los Angeles city council and Board of Public Works member; and George O. Ford, who became the company's agent and whose home in the historic Angelino Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles still stands.

The company then announced a new townsite to be called Richfield, but, by the end of 1887, the Herald reported, in its 23 December issue, that it "now goes by the name of Carlton."  Perhaps in the flurried activity of the boom the paper got its towns mixed up, as Richfield was located by the Santa Fe rail line in what is now the Atwood neighborhood of Placentia.

Los Angeles Herald, 23 December 1887.

The other issue is that Carlton was not in the Yarnell-Hazard tract at the southern portion of the Shanklin Ranch, but was in the northern section.  This was sold by Shanklin, also in March 1887, to William Hervey Bailey, who was fellow Oakland resident.

As extensively covered in this blog, Bailey was the son of Congregationlist missionaries on the Hawaiian island of Mau'i and he and his family resettled in Oakland in 1885.  Earlier posts suggested he bought the land "about 1888" that he renamed "Olinda" after his family's sugarcane plantation in Mau'i, which in turn was named for the famed Brazilian region of Olinda.

Instead, Shanklin executed an "agreement to convey ranch" of just a smidgen over 4,857 acres on 30 March 1887 to E.W. Blaisdell of Oakland.  Then, that same day, Blaisdell issued "an assignment of above" to Bailey.  It was later reported, in October, when Edward Record bought a one-third interest in this parcel from Bailey for $33,333.33 that the purchase price by Bailey was $70,000.

The Herald did go on to say that "Carlton is on the same slope with Whittier," that is along the foothills of the Puente Hills-Chino Hills range.  Carlton, moreover, was said to be one mile from the rail line and that a proposed railroad to run from Pomona through Tonner Canyon and then to the coast was to pass through it.

Los Angeles Herald, 12 January 1888.

Significantly, the paper reported "an oil well has been drilled in the foothills one mile north of the place, and oil is now flowing from it."  This was a foretaste of the great Olinda oil field that was still a decade away from developing.

The article went on to say that Carlton sat amidst a very fertile region, as

large flocks of sheep are no grazing upon it, and within one mile are corn fields and orchards of almost all kinds of fruits.  Hundreds of wagon loads of pumpkins and watermelons are lying uncared for in the fields, and hundreds of acres of alfalfa are growing in the neighborhood.

The piece ended by predicting that "a new town will soon—perhaps within ninety days—look down upon the distant sea from this sunny slope."

Los Angeles Herald, 28 January 1888.

In January 1888, the first advertisements for Carlton were taken out in the Herald and a sampling of those is offered here.  With the usual hype, hoopla and hysteria, Carlton was pumped up to be many things, including "The Greatest Town of the Age!"  It was anything but, as the boom soon went bust and whatever was actually built in Carlton was probably little more than window-dressing for a speculative project that typified the excesses of greater Los Angeles's first huge growth boom.

Los Angeles Herald, 3 February 1888.

As for Shanklin, his luck continued with selling off pieces of his ranch to a great profit.  Having already pocketed $50,000 in sales to Yarnell and Hazard and $70,000 to Bailey, he returned to the ranch in April 1888 after a trip back from the East and, as noted by the Herald, spent a couple of days "during which the [ex-Surveyor] General will close up some of his business interests in the Shanklin ranch, near Anaheim." Among these "closures" was the sale of more parcels in the Yarnell-Hazard subdivision.  Still, in the Directory of Grape Growers and Wine Makers of California for 1888, Shanklin was listed among the many local vineyardists.

An ad selling a piece of the former Shanklin Ranch, Santa Ana Register, 9 February 1920.

Yet, some of the former ranch property remained in his possession until his death in Oakland in February 1902 at the age of 77.  He left behind a son, Edwin, a mining engineer, an adopted daughter Georgia, and his wife, the former Adaline Slater.  When his widow died in early 1920, she still had some of the old ranch land in her estate, which her son, as executor, sold, ending the Shanklin family presence in the Olinda area after nearly a half-century.

Olinda and Carbon Canyon on an 1889 Orange County Map

Created for the newly-organized Orange County, this 1889 map, by S.H. Finley, includes a rendering of the Olinda Ranch, which was recently subdivided into lots as well as the townsite of Carlton.

As discussed here before, William H. Bailey, the owner of Olinda Ranch was trying to ride the wave of the famed "Boom of the Eighties," when a massive population increase and related real estate activity was transforming southern California.

Tired of playing second fiddle to Los Angeles, leaders in Santa Ana and Anaheim led the charge to create a new county as far back as 1870, but finally succeeded in the late Eighties.

As for Bailey's ambitions with Olinda, they came to a halt when the boom went bust.  Nothing much happened for several years, until Edward Doheny, in partnership with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, discovered Orange County's first well at Olinda in 1897 and changed the course of local development.

The Carbon Canyon area is in the numbered sections5-7, and 10-12 at the upper right of the second photo, but there wasn't too much going on in the canyon in 1889.

Olinda Oil Field History: Origins of Olinda, Part 5

As noted last post, the Olinda Ranch, as established by William Hervey Bailey in the late 1880s, was promoted as an agricultural subdivision and struggled to do so through depression and drought for most of the 1890s.  Fortunes changed dramatically in 1897, however, thanks to the efforts of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad and oil man Edward L. Doheny.

Doheny, born in Wisconsin in 1856, became a government surveyor while still in his teens, working in Kansas before leaving the profession to become a mining prospector in South Dakota, New Mexico and Arizona.  While living in Kingston, New Mexico, he met Albert Fall and Charles Canfield, who both figured prominently in Doheny's later exploits.  Doheny and Canfield worked together in mining, but did not experience financial success, so the latter went off on his own to another mining area nearby and made a small fortune.  Canfield then went off to Los Angeles about 1887, the same time that William H. Bailey made his purchase of the land that he named Olinda Ranch.  Although Canfield lost most of this money during the ensuing bust of the real estate boom, Doheny caught up with him in Los Angeles, arriving there in the Spring of 1891.

Hearing about the presence of asphaltum in the area, Doheny used a $400 investment from Canfield to hand-dig a primitive oil well just west of downtown starting in Fall 1892.  Within months, the well proved to be successful, though a small producer, and it inaugurated the Los Angeles Oil Field.  Despite his initial success, however, Doheny struggled to keep himself as a player in the rapidly-emerging and evolving industry, until he formed a partnership with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad and its local subsidiary, the Southern California Railway.  This latter had a new line which went into Los Angeles through Santa Ana Canyon, passing through the area on what is now the track that parallels Orangethorpe Avenue through much of northeastern Orange County.

Doheny convinced the Southern California Railway that the emerging regional oil industry would allow the railroad to move to oil-powered engines rather than coal.  Because of the success of the Puente Oil Company, a company founded by William R. Rowland, former sheriff and scion of an early ranching family in the eastern San Gabriel Valley, with William Lacy and Burdette Chandler, which, in 1885, made a discovery of oil on the north side of the Puente Hills in what is now Rowland Heights, Doheny looked to nearby areas as possible sources of oil.  It should also be noted that surface appearances of asphaltum or tar were so common in the general area that the canyon dividing Los Angeles from Orange County on the eastern end of the Chino Hills had been known in the Spanish and Mexican eras as Cañon de la Brea, and a Mexican-era rancho of that name was created there.  Local ranchers used the raw brea to cover the roofs of their adobe brick homes long before any thought of drilling for oil was considered.

Doheny settled on the area in and around the Olinda Ranch and worked to obtain a lease for some 3,000 acres of the ranch from Bailey.  By the end of 1896, a test well was started at the hilly northern end of the ranch.  Readers of earlier posts in this series will recall that, in 1888, when Bailey began promoting the Olinda Ranch, advertisements noted the presence of oil in this area, but it was completely untested.  At least, until Doheny and the Southern California Railway entered the picture.  Working with an executive from the Santa Fe, the SCR's parent company, named Almon Maginnis, Doheny sited the well and began drilling.

At 400 feet, a shallow depth, oil was encountered, but the well was deepened to twice that depth.  Although the pump encountered typical levels of sand in the well, there was such enthusiasm for the potential of a major strike that the Los Angeles Times trumpeted the project before it was fully determined to be a producing well.  Indeed, in its 28 April 1897 edition, the paper announced that there were plans to have oil extracted from Olinda taken eight miles by a pipeline to Fullerton and the Southern California Railway line.  Addtionally, it was noted that timber was already being gathered about 500 feet away from the first well for a second one.

Interestingly, the paper wondered whether or not it was accurate to label this newly-discovered oil field as part of the Puente field, which was not only several miles to the northwest, but was part of a different geological setting.  Ironically, it was decided in short order that the new field should be referred to as the Fullerton field, though it was several miles from that small, emerging town.  The fact that there was a plan to send oil from the new wells to Fullerton seems to have encouraged state mining officials and others to refer to the new field by that name.




This is a ca. 1920s photograph of the Olinda oil field, which, upon the April 1897 announcement of the first well dug by Edward Doheny for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad's Southern California Railway subsidiary, was first called by the inelegant name (even for an oil field) of Oil Center.


Meantime, the Times also pointed out that Union Oil Company, which got its start in Santa Paula in Ventura County, had obtained some nearby property for oil prospecting, while, up in Tonner Canyon, a tract owned by the People's Bank of Pomona was involved in negotiations for sale and development for oil, as well. 

In these early days when the geological formations and the science of examining and identifying these was still in a primitive stage, the paper reported that there was some confusion and uncertainty about the nature of the new field's structure. Lacking familiar means such as examining rocky outcroppings, prospectors would have to deal with the fact that "the whole country is upturned," presumably meaning not uniform as to surface indications.  Doheny's first well was sited close to an area in which brea was seeping to the surface and the second well was placed near another like tar deposit, in the expectation "that the rocks slope downward to the north" and thus indicating a direction where oil would be most likely to pool.

Two days later, on 30 April, another article promoted that new oil discovery, particularly noting that the Southern California Railway had its own source for oil, independent of middlemen, for its newly-emphasized reliance on the product for fueling locomotives.  While the first well was described as at 900 feet and not complete, there were already some 40 to 50 barrels of crude being extracted daily.  The railway, which had a twenty-year lease, was planning its pipeline, which, thanks to the geography of the new field, would allow oil to simply flow down to the company's tracks by gravity.

Interestingly, the paper reminded readers that, because oil prices had skyrocketed a few years before, the SCR had switched its use of fuel from oil to coal, but, now that there was every expectation of an oil bonanza at the new site, it was looking to return to oil.  The Times also noted that, as the orange industry comtinued to blossom (!), the need for more trains to ship the product out of the area was becoming more pronounced.  It also pointed out that, unlike in Los Angeles, where oil promoters had to deal with the lease of many small lots, the discovery of oil in the hinterlands of Olinda Ranch meant that developers could lease or buy larger tracts and not have to deal with the smaller parcels that could bring a host of issues.  Finally, the paper also stated that older maps, from the 1870s or so, indicated that the area consisted of "coal lands" because of the knowledge of existing tar seeps at the surface.  Of course, the adjacent "Carbon Canyon" also was part of that earlier identification of "coal lands" for the Olinda area.

By late May, another feature was issued by the Times, which, on the 25th, stated that the first well was still not done, but the output from the current apparatus was yielding some 50-60 barrels of crude per day.  However, the second well was in the process of being dug and "will probably be producing oil before many days."  There were immediate plans to begin the digging of the third and fourth wells, too.  In discussing the desire of the railroad to move back to oil-fueled engines, the paper reported that the advantages included less smoke, no cinders, and the resulting cleanliness of the cab meant "that the engineers can almost wear their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes without fear of getting soiled."  The work of the locomotive firefighter would also be materially easier with oil than coal, while other workers on the cars would benefit from not having "to shovel coal till your back breaks."

As to the very earliest name of this new oil field, the first Times article of late April was eager to note that "this new metropolis has sprung unheralded upon the world, and probably this is the first time its name has been seen in print."  Even though there wasn't yet a proven well on the property, the paper saw fit to note that "yet the possibilities of the location seem unbounded."  Consequently, it was announced, the new name of the field was Oil Center and the by-line was so indicated.

Fortunately, the very direct, but clunky name of Oil Center did not stick and soon the Olinda appelation came to be accepted, even under the broader field designation of Fullerton!