Olinda Oil Field History: Origins of Olinda, Part 9

With the end of the nineteenth-century, the hurried activity at the Olinda Oil Field, Orange County's first such center of petroleum prospecting, continued unabated.  For Olinda Ranch founder William Hervey Bailey, this meant further manueverings to protect and maximize his interests.  As noted previously, Bailey created the Olinda Oil Company and then assisted in the organization of the Richfield Oil Company.  But, by late 1899, he engineered the formation of the Consolidated Olinda Oil Company, which appeared to be a front for the powerful Union Oil Company.  Still, the legal issues continued.

In the 22 July 1900 issue of the Los Angeles Times, it was noted that "disputed ownership of territory in the Fullerton [really Olinda] field promises to result within a short  time in the opening of litigation involving the property of nearly every company in the district."  In this instance, this had to do with discrepancies in surveys affecting the boundary of land controlled by two entities: the Fullerton Oil Company and the Fullerton Consolidated Oil Company, the latter controlled by Charles Victor Hall, who was profiled here a while back.

As to Bailey's own consolidated firm, the issue had a short notice that "The Olinda Consolidated is moving a rig to the old Carlton township," indicating an interest in developing its operations further south and perhaps east of its main concentration in the area in and around today's Carbon Canyon Regional Park. 

There was other interesting local news.  For example, the new Soquel Canyon Oil Company (a stock certificate of which was highlighted in this blog some time back), sunk its first well, but found trouble in drilling, so pulled the rig and started a second one nearby.  This company, while working in the area where Soquel and Carbon canyons meet, near Olinda Village and the Hollydale Mobile Home Park, believed it had oil prospects because of successful wells on the same geological "strike" as that of the Columbia and Fullerton companies.  By 1902, however, the Soquel Canyon firm went belly-up as its wells turned up dry.

Meanwhile, further east and south, it was announced that "a large corps of surveyors has been at work on Chino ranch land in Telegraph Cañon . . . good oil conditions exist there."  Telegraph Canyon is the main east-west canyon that runs along the north portion of Chino Hills State Park and some interesting history there will someday be added to this blog. 
A little more than a mohth later, on 31 August 1900, the Times announced further news concerning W. H. Bailey's Olinda activities.  Some 4,400 acres of land was purchased by Bailey and partners for yet another oil firm, the Olinda Crude Oil Company.  This company's capitalization was much higher than Bailey's earlier endeavors, totaling $2 million, and featured a larger pool of investors.  These included prominent Los Angeles businessmen like Abraham Haas, Herman Baruch, H. H. Kerckhoff, M. A. Hamburger, S. H. Mott,  F. W. Braun (men involved in wholesale grocery, furniture, and pharmaceutical enterprises) and Times publisher Harry Chandler.  Its directors also featured banker Herman W. Hellman, lumberman William H. Perry, Braun, Baruch and, of course, Bailey.

Some of the new concern's lands were oil producing under lease to the Columbia and Fullerton companies and 10% of the 4,400 acres were under lease and new wells were being drilled on those, while the remaining company-owned land was to be thoroughly investigated for new wells paid for by the Olinda Crude entity.  By early January 1901, in fact, the Times reported that its first well struck oil at 740 feet.

This was Bailey's last oil company on the ranch he founded in 1887.  His oil-prospecting enterprise seems to have had some success over the years, although it was again reconstituted, using the name Olinda Land Company.  State oil reports in 1918 and 1921 noted that the firm had ten, then eleven, wells and was under the leadership of Bailey's son, William, Jr.  Meantime, in October 1906, remaining land at the Olinda Ranch was sold by Bailey to Jacob Stern, the highly successful German-born Jewish merchant, born in Saxony in 1859, who came to America in 1884 and went first to New York, then Cleveland, where he spent five years in the clothing business.

Stern arrived at Fullerton in 1889 and opened the Stern and Goodman mercantile house on Spadra Avenue, now Harbor Boulevard, building an impressive business building there.  Stern and Goodman had branch stores at Anaheim, Placentia and Olinda and eventually controlled fully 75% of all the hay and grain business in the area.  While Goodman attended to the store, Stern branched out into hay and grain dealing and real estate through a Los Angeles office.  He emerged as a particularly successful and under-recognized real estate investor, having stakes in Yorba Linda (much of the town was founded on his holdings); Placentia; Whittier; Corona; Pomona; Santa Ana; Sunset Beach (just now absorbed into Huntington Beach); one-half of the famed Rancho Cucamonga, which he leased to Charles Victor Hall of Olinda renown; other lands in Los Angeles, Kern, Imperial, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Fresno counties; and, finally, in Mexico, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas!  At one time, he owned some 20,000 acres.

In 1918, Stern and Goodman liquidated their store, while keeping the valuable Fullerton building.  Stern also had oil lands in Placentia (the old Richfield townsite) which he leased to General Petroleum Corporation.  After living in Fullerton until 1904, Stern moved to a palatial residence on five acres in what was then a rural outpost west of Los Angeles called Hollywood.  In fact, his property was at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street!  As to his Olinda land, Stern paid $140,000 and planned to subdivide it into fivce, ten and twenty acre tracts.

William Hervey Bailey lived a few years beyond the Stern sale and retained presidency of the Olinda Crude Oil Company until his death at age 64 on New Year's Day 1910 at the Lamanda Park Hospital in Pasadena after a year's battle with pneumonia.  In a Times obituary, it was pointed out that "a little more than twenty years ago . . . he bought a large piece of land in the Fullerton district and organized the towns of Olinda and Richfield.  At that time it was thought the land was most valuable because of the agricultural possibilities, and it was not for many years thereafter that its true worth was discovered through the striking of oil."  Bailey's full-time residence remained in Oakland, but he had a room at the Hotel Melrose in Los Angeles.  After he contracted pneumonia, it was decided to bring him back to Pasadena for the warmer winter climate than what was to be found in the Bay Area.  Bailey was, however, interred with his parents and brother Edward at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.

Bailey's son, William, Jr., as noted above, took the reins of the company, which continued to operate some wells as well as receive lease income from other oil firms with producing wells.  It doesn't appear that Olinda Land expanded during the son's tenure, but it maintained its operations, with some occasional indications of new success, such as a 1921 well, its twnety-third, "in an undeveloped section of Olinda and Chino Canyon," this latter seeming to mean either Carbon, Soquel or Telegraph canyon.  But, in early 1938, Olinda Land Company voted to issue a liquidating dividend on its capital stock based upon "the sale of the company's real holdings in Orange county to the Shell Oil Company for $500,000."  Other assets of the firm, basically in marketable securities, were also liquidated and distributed to the company's stockholders.  After just over a half-century, the Bailey family's direct involvement at Olinda was concluded.  Two years later, in July 1940, William H. Bailey, Jr., manager of the Olinda Land Company for almost three decades, died at age 66 at his West Los Angeles home and was buried at nearby Rosedale Cemetery.

With this entry, this series of Olinda Oil Field history comes to a close, although there will be much more to add about the field in later entries focusing of different subjects.

Olinda Oil Field History: Origins of Olinda, Part 8

As the Olinda oil field grew in importance in the waning years of the 19th-century, Olinda Ranch founder William Hervey Bailey continued to work to improve his position within the field.  Having already sold or leased large portions of the ranch he established a decade prior during the fabled Boom of the Eighties, Bailey formed the Olinda Oil Company and the Richfield Oil Company.

In early October 1899, however, he moved to expand his reach, as announced by the Los Angeles Times in an article on the 3rd, which announced that "there seems no longer to be any doubt as to the important position Orange county [sic] is to occupy in the development of oil on this Coast."  Referring to important sales of oil land in the area, the paper offered that "yet the general public has but little conception of the real extent to which the development of this industry is destined to go."  In truth, the paper had little idea either, given the oil production had not seen the advent, in any major way, of the emerging automobile industry and the Wright brothers and their airplane were still a few years off.

Interestingly, the Times indicated that, while oil was found in Olinda only within the previous few years, "it was believed to be in very small quantities—scarcely enough top justify development."  After, however, "several men with capital were attracted to this locality," lands deemed only usable for sheep grazing became highly prized for the petroleum potential.

This led to the news that "today four deeds were filed here transferring over eight thousand acres of oil land to the Consolidated Olinda Oil Company, the aggregate consideration being $340,000."  The paper went on to state that "this land was formerly owned by W. S. Bailey, Jr.," though they certainly meant William H. Bailey, Sr., not his 26-year old son.  The next sentence has a little syntax and grammar problem: "The Olinda Oil Company, the Richfield Oil Company, and the Olinda Ranch Company, the Consolidated Olinda Oil Company, has secured control of the oil interests of the other companies above mentioned."  What this seems to mean is that the new consolidated firm absorbed all the interest in the former Olinda Ranch of the ranch company, as well as those of the Olinda and Richfield entities.  The article closed by noting that "this company will make extensive developments in the oil district in this county during the next few months."

Just two days later, though, the Times reported "that the big oil deal a few days ago, by which the Consolidated Olinda Oil Company became the owner of more than 8000 acres of oil-bearing land in this county, and for which they paid $340,000, was made in the interest of the Union Oil Company."  In addition, a Union Oil representative appeared before the Board of Supervisors in Santa Ana "to present a petition for permission to pay an oil pipe line from the oil wells back of Fullerton along certain county roads to the Alamitos beet-sugar factory."  Moreover, it was observed that Union first proposed securing a right-of-way to Newport Beach, but "that the use of the wharf at Newport could not be procured."  Further, the company intended to build the line from Los Alamitos (near where the San Gabriel River empties into the Pacific at the border of Seal Beach and Long Beach [and, therefore, at the junction of Orange and Los Angeles counties]) and over to the harbor at San Pedro, recently the subject of massive federal appropriations for creating a man-made port facility that led to the modern day Port of Los Angeles.

The following day, on 6 October, the Times noted that the Consolidated Olinda Oil Company filed its articles of incorporation at Santa Ana and that $500,000 of stock was to be issued, divided into 50,000 shares at a par value of $10 each.  At the time, though, only $1,220 was subscribed among those stockholders who constituted the Board of Directors.  These were William Hervey Bailey and T. V. Bakewell of Oakland, Ralph Jones and a Mr. Donzel of San Francisco and Bailey's brother-in-law, Warren Olney, Jr., also of Oakland.  Notably, Bailey held $1,000 of the initial subscription amount, while Olney and Donzel took $100 and Bakewell and Jones but one share of $10 apiece. 

A little sidenote of interest:  Olney was married to Bailey's sister.  His namesake father was from frontier Iowa and was a teacher (one of his students was the legendary Texas judge, Wyatt Earp) before serving in the Union Army in Missouri during the Civil War.  Warren, Sr. earned a law degree from the University of Michigan and then migrated to San Francisco in 1868.  Although a sucessful attorney and mayor of Oakland from 1903 to 1905, the senior Olney is perhaps best known as a founder with John Muir of the Sierra Club and wrote its first charter, as well as serving as vice-president.  As to Olney, Jr., he also had a distinguished legal career as an attorney and served on the California Supreme Court from 1919 to 1921.  The younger Olney's son, Warren III, continued the family tradition of law and was Assistant Attorney General under President Eisenhower in the 1950s and oversaw the criminal division of the Department of Justice.  More well-known than them all, though, is Warren Olney IV, a longtime news reporter, anchorman, and radio personality in Los Angeles.

Back to Olinda.  Readers of posts on Tonner Canyon will recall that the Union Oil Company, founded in Santa Paula by Pennsylvania veterans of the oil industry like Lyman Stewart, Thomas Bard and Wallace Hardison, will recall that Hardison's sister married William Benjamin Scott, one of the "three brothers" of Tres Hermanos Ranch in upper Tonner Canyon in Diamond Bar/Chino Hills, and founder of the Columbia Oil Company, which had a significant presence in Olinda.  William Hervey Bailey's Consolidated Olinda Oil Company as a front of sorts for Union was further expounded upon by the Times in an editorial on 8 October 1899, when it referred to the recent deal with Consolidated as a transfer "from the Olinda Oil Company to the Union Oil Company."  Because, "the latter is known to have very heavy capital," it was fully expected that Union was going to get its product from the field via pipelines to ports for transfer.  This presaged a great boom for Olinda and, indeed, this was the case.

Yet, it is interesting to note that, on 13 October 1899, the Times reported that Consolidated Olinda filed a lawsuit against Columbia Oil, William Benjamin Scott, Wallace Hardison and others to take possession of 320 acres of land which it claimed it owned and which was said to be oil-bearing, as well as seeking $500 in damages.  The outcome of that case has not been found by this blogger.

Meantime, in early November, the Southern California Railway petitioned Orange County's Board of Supervisors for a right-of-way across public roads because "it is the intention of the railroad to construct a branch from the Santa Ana Cañon to the location of the company's oil wells [the Santa Fe lease] in the vicinity of Olinda."  This spur line will be the subject of a future post and reflected another example of important infrastructure to get crude oil from Olinda to shipping points.  While Union Oil was looking at a lengthy pipeline system to San Pedro Harbor, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe via the Southern California Railway was relying on a shorter, simpler transport by rail.

Another sidenote in the same 8 November 1899 Times column from above:  Burdette Chandler, a principal in the Puente Oil Company operating a few miles west and north of Olinda in modern Rowland Heights, also owned some oil lands in the vicinity of the junction of Tonner and Brea canyons and just consummated a deal to sell 200 acres to the new Brea Cañon Oil Company.

As 1900 dawned, the action was increasing with greater force and speed.  More to come next entry.

Olinda Oil Field History: Origins of Olinda, Part 6

After the first oil well at Olinda was brought into production in April 1897 by Edward Doheny in association with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad's Southern California Railway subsidiary, matters moved rapidly toward the development of the area, which was called the Fullerton field.

In June 1898, the Los Angeles Times did a brief profile on the Olinda Ranch, noting that the 4500-acre parcel was subdivided during the great Boom of the Eighties a decade before "with a townsite in the middle of the tract, named Carlton."  It referenced founder W. H. Bailey and his transfer of the ranch to the Olinda Ranch Company.  Yet, as the paper pointed out, "few sales were made, and most of the townsite has now been transformed into acreage," meaning larger lots of probably the 5, 10 and 40 acre ones promoted for the ranch outside the Carlton townsite.

Of note, however, was the fact that a new entity was entering the field at Olinda (fortunately, the name "Oil Center" proposed in April 1897 went nowhere!)  As reported by the Times, this was the "Richfield Oil Company," which, the paper continued, "has secured extensive rights of development, pipe-line privileges, etc., from the Olinda Ranch Company, and proposed operating not only directly, but by subleasing lands for oil development . . ."  Observing that "the Olinda Ranch lies south and west of the Santa Fe wells," which was not technically the case, as the "Santa Fe wells" were within the original Olinda Ranch property, the paper noted that W. L. Watts of the California Mining Bureau had visited the ranch to assess its oil-bearing potential.  Because of Watts' favorable report, the Richfield Oil Company, later the Atlantic Richfield Company now known as ARCO, was formed to work the field.

Also of interest is the fact that Richfield was then composed of "San Francisco and local capitalists" and that oil men in the Orange County and surrounding areas would have the opportunity to sublease from Richfield.  Readers of this blog's posts about the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino will recall that, during the 1890s, a San Francisco-based real estate firm, Easton, Eldridge and Company, were hired to market and sell sections of that ranch.    When the incorporation papers for the Richfield Oil Company were filed, this was done by Easton, Eldridge and Company, thus providing another tangible link between Olinda and Chino.

On 3 July, the Times reported that the Mining Bureau's Watts as back in the area reviewing oil properties from Puente Hills to Olinda and further east and south along what is now known as the Chino Hills, but then considered part of the Puente chain, to the Santa Ana River.  Watts, however, believed that there was no indication of oil bearing lands anywhere east of Olinda, which has proven to be the case.  As a sidenote, some attention was paid in the article to Watts' investigations in a canyon near the Southern California Railway's Gypsum side track (this, of course, being Gypsum Canyon) and that a favorable indication of coal was located where existing efforts to mine the material had already been made.  Coal Canyon, naturally, is where Watts was conducting his investigation.  In 1900, Watts completed a report, including a series of maps, that were the first comprehensive effort to examine and interpret the oil lands of southern California generally, including the new Olinda segment of the Fullerton field.

As to Richfield Oil Company's efforts, an article in the same paper from two weeks later, noted that "work on the first of a series of wells to be put down on the Olinda ranch commenced this week."  Commenting that oil experts were favorably impressed with the potential at Olinda, the Times reported that "if expectations are realized, plans made for an extensive pipe-line sustem will be put in effect at once."  This system was projected to run "from the ranch to Richfield station on the Santa Fe [Southern California Railway]."  This refers to the station at what became Atwood, along today's Richfield Avenue in Placentia, where the railroad track still runs parallel to Orangethorpe Avenue.  From that point, the article continued, "from Richfield, over an easy route, the line will be run to this city [Los Angeles], coming in at the west-end depot of the Southern Pacific.  From there it will be run to Los Alamitos, where, it is said, the sugar factory will be supplied with oil for fuel," a contract apparently being imminent.  By sugar factory, this was a sugar beet facility like the one Richard Gird established at Chino, though, eventually, sugar beets as a source of sugar dissipated in favor of protected tariffs for production from Louisiana and Hawaii's sugar cane fields.

As to the wells owned by the Santa Fe Railroad, an August 1898 feature in the Times noted that 8000 barrels of crude were extracted and shipped from Olinda by the company in July and that expectations were for a larger proportion in August.  Well #1 continued to be the best producer, at 125 barrels per day, but an unspecified number (probably a few) were also in production.  Of course, Well #1 is still in operation today and is a feature of the Olinda Oil Museum within the Olinda Ranch housing subdivision on the old Santa Fe property.  Another tangential tidbit:  the article referred to two officials from the Santa Fe being at Olinda looking over the situation, one of these men being Chief Engineer for the company, Fred Perris.  He, of course, is the namesake for the Riverside County city of Perris, a station stop on a company-owned line (once on the California Southern Railway) from San Bernardino to San Diego.

More on early Olinda oil fields next time!

Olinda Oil Field History: Origins of Olinda, Part 4

From its creation during an immense southern California real estate boom in 1887-88, William Hervey Bailey's Olinda Ranch was intended as an agricultural subdivision, promoting "fertile farms" and "beautiful villa sites."  Early ads, as noted in a previous entry here, promoted the raising of fruit, grain, alfalfa and other products with an "ample supply of water for irrigation and domestic use."  In addition, promotional materials trumpeted the "now building" Anaheim, Olinda and Pomona Railroad, which, evidently, was going to go north and south through Brea Canyon between the established towns of the former and latter.  Notably, there was mention of a $50,000 plant to develop "immense deposits of asphaltum" found on the northern portion of the tract.

The great boom went bust, however, by the end of the Eighties and the 1890s proved to be a long, dreary decade of drought and depression.  As noted in other posts here about Richard Gird's struggles to develop his new town on the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, the real estate marked remained moribund for that period.  But, like Gird, Bailey made efforts to promote his subdivision despite prevailing conditions.

In late Summer 1891, for example, a small article appeared in the Los Angeles Times about Olinda Ranch, subtitled "Where Orange Land May be Had at a Reasonable Price."  The piece noted that, while oranges could not be raised everywhere in the region, it could be done at Olinda for under $200 an acre in 5, 10 and 40 acre parcels.  Described as "beautifully located on gentle, sloping ground, commanding a magnificent view of the surrounding country," the ranch was noted as being "on the Santa Fe line," meaning the railroad line of the Southern California Railway, a subsidiary of the massive Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway then engaged in a storied battle with the Southern Pacific Railroad for control of western America's burgeoning railroad system.  Actually, Olinda Ranch wasn't exactly "on the line," though a spur line was constructed from Atwood (now a neighborhood in Placentia) northwestward to the ranch.

The article also claimed that the parcel was "just far enough from the ocean—about 13 miles—to escape fogs and yet insure [ensure] a temperate climate all year round."   This also tinkered a bit with the truth.  The distance to the Pacific from Olinda is more like 20 miles and while dense fogs may be very rare now, a certain blogger who lived in Placentia thirty years back can well remember heavy blankets of fog in the area.  Still, the temperate climate part is basically the case.  Another example of toying with accuracy was the statement that Olinda "adjoins the celebrated Chino beet sugar ranch," although, of course, a few miles of the Chino Hills and Carbon Canyon separate the two.  While noting that there was an existing "orchard of bearing orange and other trees," the piece went on to say that the tract's land was "adapted to vegetables, grain and stock."

In fact, regarding the last item, there was an attempt to graze cattle on the ranch during this period, but it proved unsuccessful or, at least, not profitable, as the Olinda Ranch Company advertised in the Times in August 1892 for the sale of registered Gallaway cattle, bulls, cows and calves "at a bargain" through an Anaheim office. 



This detail from a 1924 California State Mining Bureau map shows the Olinda area, including the abandoned Carlton townsite, the Santa Fe Railroad spur line from Placentia and parcels still held by the successor to the Olinda Ranch Company, the Olinda Land Company, headed by William H. Bailey, Jr., son of the founder of the ranch.  Courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.



The following year, the Company tried trumpeting some success with a field crop, as the Times noted in a June 1893 issue that "a field of red Texas oats on the Olinda ranch, near Fullerton, has yielded this season the large crop of five tons of hay to the acre, which sells readily at $12 per ton."

Two years later, in December 1895, the Times published an article about castor bean growing, citing The American Cultivator's discussion about the difficulties in raising the crop, used as a "purgative" or laxative, because of the need for very rich soil and "peculiar" and costly machinery to hull the bean from the pod.  Although the Cultivator noted that some farmers in Kansas and Missouri were raising the bean for a St. Louis market, the further expense in pressing the oil from the bean was also viewed as an issue.  Consequently, the journal opined that the bean was better raised in small home gardens for local use rather than on a larger farm-based scale.  Undeterred, the Times offered the rebuttal that "in this region the harvesting of the bean does not entail any such trouble."  It went on to say that, "Mr. Bailey, who owns the Olinda ranch in Orange county, informs The Times that he obtained 2 1/2 cents per pound in San Francisco for the hulled beans which he raised."  The paper reported that Bailey, who offered that growing castor beans was basically like raising corn, simply had the pods spread upon the ground in the hot sun, which effectively hulled the beans without machinery.  Moreover, the Times observed that "Mr. Bailey finds that his castor beans pay about $30 to $40 an acre" and concluded that "this is enough to warrant the farmers in Southern California to pay some attention to a crop which can be easily marketed."

This did not prove to be the case and the difficulties of promoting and selling the land, even as Bailey did so in his native Hawaii, advertising Olinda in the Hawaiian Gazette newspaper, for example, during 1896, led him, in Spring 1897, to transfer the main office of the Olinda Ranch Company from Los Angeles, where it had been for almost a decade, to San Francisco, across the Bay from his home in Oakland.

Still, by Spring 1898, the agricultural and ranching possibilities of Olinda were being touted, as the Times, in early April reported that, due to the efforts of San Francisco real estate firm Easton, Eldridge and Company, sales of two tracts totaling some 90 acres brought in $12,500.  Notably, the connection to Chino comes to the fore here, as Richard Gird hired the same firm to market and sell his ranch during the same period.  Moreover, the buyers of the two Olinda parcels were "cattle men from Arizona, one of whom is feeding cattle on the adjoining [!] Chino ranch, with pulp from the sugar factory."  Gird, as blog readers might remember, bought the Chino ranch with money made at the Tombstone, Arizona mines he helped found and develop and these ranchers were associates of his from that territory.

Whatever may have transpired with this stock-raising activity, the 1898 piece hearkened back to something touched upon, but not heavily emphasized, in earlier promotional efforts about Olinda.  Namely, the piece observed, "in the hill section of the ranch are oil deposits, which are reserved.  Several wells have been sunk here by the Southern California Railway Company" and it concluded by reporting that "another sale of several thousand acres of this ranch is pending." 

Indeed, Olinda was on the verge of a transformation from a stagnated subdivision intended for farming and cattle ranching to a new enterprise that would make it far more famed than William Hervey Bailey or anyone else, for that matter, could have foreseen a decade before.

Olinda Oil Field History: Origins of Olinda, Part 3

William Hervey Bailey, who founded the Olinda Ranch Company in the late 1880s, was the third of five sons born to Edward Bailey (1814-1903) and Caroline Hubbard (1814-1894), both natives of Holden, Massachusetts, about forty miles directly west of Boston.  The two were devout Congregationalists who, just a week after their November 1836 marriage, joined a missionary company under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM).  The ABCFM was an organization formed at Williams College in Massachusetts a quarter century before during a period called the Second Great Awakening, a Christian revival movement that swept the United States through camp meetings and other non-traditional means.  New religious groups like the Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists and the Churches of Christ sprung from this religious ferment and intense missionary activity also marked much of the movement.  The ABCFM sent its missionaries to many areas of the world, including India, China, the Middle East, and Africa.

Edward and Caroline Bailey were in the eighth company sent by the ABCFM to what were commonly called the Sandwich Islands, better known as Hawai'i.  They arrived on 9 April 1837 and were promptly assigned to a station at Kohala on the island of Hawai'i, usually referred to as the "Big Island."  Shortly thereafter, they were relocated to Lahaina, Mau'i, where they remained for about two years.  Finally, in 1840, they were assigned to Wailuku on the same island.  For the next decade, the Baileys worked as missionaries and Edward Bailey ran the Wailuku Female Seminary from 1840 until its closure in 1849.  The following year the Baileys severed their ties with the ABCFM and Edward Bailey went into the sugarcane industry and remained connected with it for some thirty-five years, including with the Wailuku Sugar Company from 1862 and then, from 1882, the Planters Labor and Supply Company, which beame the powerful Hawaii Sugar Planters Association.

The Bailey family included Edward, Jr. (1838-1910), Horatio (1839-1899), William (1843-1910), James (1846-1891) and Charles (1850-1924).  The family occupied an early American-style house in Wailuku, that was on the site of the royal compound Kahekili II, the last ruling chief of Mau'i, and which was the home of the Wailuku Female Seminary when Edward and Caroline Bailey took it over in 1842.  After the seminary's closure, the Baileys acquired the house and land, the latter of which became a sugarcane plantation.  Not only did Edward Bailey become a sugarcane grower, but, in his early fifties and without any training or education, he took up painting.  He proved to be so adept as a "Sunday painter" (that is, an amateur) that his art works, consisting of some 100 landscapes of Mau'i, have become famous there and a book showcasing his life, career, and art has recently been published.  Moreover, the family residence, taken over by the C. Brewer Company, one of the famed "Big Five" sugar conglomerates of Hawai'i, became, in the late 1950s, the headquarters of the Mau'i Historical Society and is now the Bailey House Museum.

William Hervey Bailey (1843-1910), a missionary's son from Wailuku, Maui, who created Olinda Ranch in 1888.  From the 1902 "mug book" (a mug book was a history that contained biographies submitted by those who paid for their inclusion) Men of the Pacific Coast.

William Hervey Bailey, like all of his brothers, attended Punahou School, which also included O'ahu College, in Honolulu, but was there far longer than his siblings, being enrolled from 1853 to 1862.  Presumably, he joined his father and older brother, Edward, in the sugarcane industry.  At the end of 1869, William was married to Anna Hobron, daughter of ship captain Thomas Hobron, best known for being the builder of the first railroad on Mau'i, the Kahului and Wailuku Railroad, a small-gauge line serving sugar plantations sending their product to the port at Kahului.  Hobron was also owner of the Grove Ranch Plantation.  William and Anna had two children born in Wailuku: Minnie born in 1872 and William, Jr., born the following year.

William, with his father and brother, was a shareholder in the Planters Labor and Supply Company, a sugarcane industry association formed in March 1882 that worked to find cheap foreign labor in Hawai'i's plantations.  Among the powerful names involved in the company were Castle, Bishop, Dillingham, and Thurston, all major figures in the development of sugar and in politics.  William served on the firm's labor committee and, in an issue of its Planters' Monthly publication, reported on Japanese migrant laborers that "as irrigators they could not be beaten, and they were steady and honest."  Within a few years, however, of joining the PLSC, William, his parents and some of his brothers decided to move to California, settling in Oakland in October 1885.  William's mother, Caroline, died in Oakland in 1894 and his father migrated south to the Los Angeles area, dying in Alhambra in 1903.

About 1888, a few years after coming to California and during the colossal land boom that engulfed the southern California region, William made his purchase of land in northeastern Orange County that he named the "Olinda Ranch."  Now, as to why he bestowed that name on his new purchase.

In 1535, the Portuguese established one of their earliest colonies in Brazil and called it Olinda.  That city, now a UNESCO World Heritage Centre, became the center of a burgeoning industry in sugarcane.  Consequently, when sugarcane was established on Mau'i, Hawai'i three centuries later, the place name of Olinda was given to an area in the Kula Highlands, at about 4,000 above sea level along the slope of the volcanic mountains that lead to the famous Haleakala National Park.  It has been said that the moniker was given by Samuel Alexander, another missionary scion and founder of the "Big Five" sugar company Alexander and Baldwin, for a home he had in the area.  Notably, after Alexander relocated to Oakland in 1882, he bought land south of Redding for a ranch and built, in 1884, a brick mansion that he called Olinda and the place name survives there today.  There is also an Olinda in Australia, not far from Melbourne.

It seems obvious, then, that William Hervey Bailey chose the name Olinda because of the memories he retained of his more than forty years on Mau'i and may have been following the lead of Samuel Alexander, with whom he grew up as sons of early missionaries on Mau'i. 

Who would have known that Olinda was named for a place in Hawai'i?

Olinda Oil Field History: The Origins of Olinda, Part 1

Back in the earliest days of this blog, a reference was made to the beginnings of the Olinda oil field (see here) regarding its founding by a W. H. Bailey in 1891. This post offers a correction and a good deal more (interesting?) information about the origins of the community.

Early in 1888, when the Los Angeles region was deep in the throes of a massive land boom known as the "Boom of the Eighties" and real estate speculation was in a frenzy, an advertisement appeared in the Los Angeles Times that was typical in its florid, overheated language praising "The Olinda Ranch" and its "fertile farms" and "beautiful villa sites."

The notice went on to claim that "this land is some of the most fertile in the Santa Ana Valley," which was a little strange because Santa Ana is a good deal south, although the reference could have been to the old Rancho Cajon de Santa Ana, which was historically near the tract. Moreover, it claimed that the property was "highly improved and now producing a great variety of fine fruits, grains, alfalfa, etc."

By improvements, this presumably meant the most important of all, a reliable water supply and the piece went on to claim that there was an "ample supply of water for irrigation and domestic use." Yet, it went on to note that "Hotel and Water Works in course of construction [italics added.]"

In addition, there was mention of "a $50,000 plant to develop the immense deposits of Asphaltum and Oil on the north line of this ranch," a direct reference to the fact that asphaltum was so common in the area that the name of a ranch, "Cañon de la Brea," embracing Brea Canyon, was a reference to the tar that residents in the area during the Spanish and Mexican eras used to coat their house roofs (the tar pits on Rancho La Brea, now part of the La Brea Tar Pits at the George Page Museum, were the source for Los Angeles residences.) It also followed by three years the discovery of oil nearby in what is now Rowland Heights on the north side of the Puente Hills within the portion of Rancho La Puente owned by former sheriff William R. Rowland.

Moreover, the ad stated that "the Anaheim, Olinda & Pomona R.R., now building, gives direct communication with Los Angeles and the sea." This project was evidently projected to go through Brea Canyon to connect the established towns of Anaheim and Pomona.

An advertisement filled with hyperbole and rampant over-enthusiastic observations
about the newly-subdivided Olinda Ranch, Los Angeles Times, 24 January 1888.

The parcel was said to contain a "fine view of sea and mountains and the neighboring towns of Santa Ana, Anaheim, Orange and Long Beach [the latter was hardly neighboring, though]."

Most importantly, however, was the fact that "the finest portion of this ranch" was "surrounding the Rousing Town of Carlton." This townsite, "situated in the midst of the ranch" was said to be "rapidly taking its place as an important town, and is preparing for electric lights, newspaper, bank and business buildings." Not only that, but its unnamed "principal boulevard is to be paved throughout with asphaltum, making a handsome drive through the town and ranch."

Carlton was located at what is now the area east of Rose Drive and north of Imperial Highway. Even today, 123 years later, some of its streets survive, including the east-west thoroughfares of Wabash Avenue, Chestnut Street, Chicago Avenue, Walnut Street, Brooklyn Avenue, Pacific Avenue (though east of Valley View or the old First Street and, therefore, outside the actual Carlton boundary), and Los Angeles Street (while Orange Street is now Marda Avenue and Richfield Avenue is today's Bastanchury Road.) Of the numbered north-south lanes, First is now Valley View Avenue, Fifth is now Prospect, Seventh is today's Rose Drive and Eighth and Ninth seem lost to history. But Second through Fourth and a sliver of Sixth streets are all still around. At the southeast end of the old townsite, there is even a small little lane called Carlton Place. Most of the site is now situated within the City of Yorba Linda, although some of the western portion is in Placentia, where pieces of Brooklyn and Chicago avenues extend west of Rose Drive and flank Golden Avenue, which might be the western extension of Walnut Street.

To top off the hyperboles, the ad claimed that "three-fourths ofthe town of Carlton was sold in 30 days, and prices have advanced 400 per cent. This acreage will rise in the same proportion, though its opening prices were promoted at a mere "$100 per acre upward" in lots of one to twenty acres.

The piece concluded by offering daily excursions to "fertile Olinda" with trains leaving at 9:30 a.m. and returning at 3:15 p.m. (presumably offering a free lunch in the bargain.) Interested parties were requested to inquire at the Los Angeles office of the company with its agents, Maurice Clark and George W. Parsons.

For a time, this ad and slight variations of it appeared in the Times, but the problem was that the real estate boom was filled with myriad other examples of Olindas and Carltons and the speculation was so rampant that the inevitable bust came by the end of the year.

Still, despite the failure of the real estate market and the collapse of Carlton and the Olinda Ranch subdivision, its owner, W.H. Bailey pressed on. Next, more on him.