Allen McCombs: A Champion for the Chino Valley

In 1956, a young man from northern California, steeped in a journalistic background because of his father's long newspaper experience, came to the rural town of Chino to take over the operations on its paper, the Champion.  Though he had a MBA from Harvard and was viewed by some as an outsider, Allen McCombs overcame some local skepticism and became not just a stellar journalist and newspaper owner, but a pillar of the community, serving in many leadership roles, including the planning commission, school board, and a committee working with CalTrans on the routing of the 60 Freeway through the city.

Even though he was head of a small town paper, McCombs was president of the state newspaper publishers association and was widely known for his dogged defense of a free press and the First Amendment.  His ownership of the paper lasted a staggering 60 years until he sold the Champion in 2017, though he retained the title of publisher emeritus and continued his management of the editorial pages and the writing of his always-informative and entertaining "Rolltop Roundup."

As Chino Hills began to emerge as a growing unincorporated community, McCombs recognized the importance it would take in coming years and formed the Chino Hills News in the late Eighties.  He later created an edition of the Champion for the city, after it was incorporated in 1991, and he did a stellar job in reporting on news and events in the new community as he did for Chino.

Launched by Chino's founder Richard Gird in 1887, the Champion is the second oldest continuously operating newspaper in the greater Los Angeles region, being a half-dozen years younger than the Los Angeles Times and it is hard to overstate how much of an accomplishment it was for McCombs and partners like Bruce Wood to keep the local weekly viable as print media shrunk dramatically in recent years.  It is a testament to his vision, faith, keen understanding of community and sheer hard work that McCombs was able to not just keep the paper afloat, but of top-notch quality all of those years.

McCombs was also a keen student of history, generally and locally, and was a veritable storehouse of knowledge about Chino Valley's rich past, including that of Carbon Canyon.  He always wrote incisively about aspects of our area's history and, in person, could retrieve long-stored facts from his prodigious memory that was astounding even as he got into his nineties.  It was an honor to be asked by him to submit monthly columns, starting in 2018, in the "History of the Hills" series, sharing aspects of the history of Chino Hills as a complement to Kerry Cisneroz' excellent columns on Chino.

Though I did not know him for long or that well, I always enjoyed speaking with or corresponding with Al about the history of the Chino Valley, including at meetings of the Chino Hills Historical Society, where he gave a great presentation about local history.  He lived a long and eminently useful life and his achievements in community building and the operation of a newspaper for six decades, especially during the lean years that have shuttered so many papers, are truly impressive and inspiring.

Thank you, Al, for all that you have done and given to the Chino Valley for 65 amazing years!

18 September Talk on Antonio Maria Lugo and Rancho Santa Ana del Chino

Chino Hills Historical Society Presents:

“A Look Back at Antonio María Lugo and the 

Early Years of the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino”

Monday, September 18th 

The Chino Hills Historical Society will host a presentation by Chino Hills resident and historian Paul R. Spitzzeri at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, September 18th at the Chino Hills Community Center, 14259 Peyton Drive.  Spitzzeri will share the history of Antonio María Lugo and the early years of the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino.

According to Spitzzeri, Antonio María Lugo (1775-1860), born near Monterey, Mexico just six years after the Spanish first settled California, was one of the most prominent and remarkable persons in greater Los Angeles during his lifetime.  A soldier in the Spanish Army during his younger years, Lugo was granted the Rancho San Antonio, encompassing nearly 30,000 acres southeast of Los Angeles.  Later, he and his family acquired the Rancho San Bernardino and Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, the latter including today’s cities of Chino and Chino Hills.

“Lugo was torn by the loss of California to the Americans during a war that included the Battle of Chino, which was fought on what is now Boys Republic,” said Mr. Spitzzeri, “He was known for his forthright personality, hospitality, and strength of character.”

Mr. Spitzzeri has lived in Chino Hills for 20 years.  He is the Museum Director at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry, where he has worked since 1988. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree and Master of Arts degree in history from California State University, Fullerton and has published on local, regional and state history in many journals and anthologies.  His book, The Workman and Temple Families of Southern California, won a 2009 Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History.  Since 2008, Paul has maintained the blog www.carboncanyonchronicle.blogspot.com.

“Paul really captivates the audience as he paints a picture of the history of the area,” said Chino Hills Historical Society President Denise Cattern.  “We are so happy that he has returned to share the story of Antonio María Lugo!”

The Chino Hills Historical Society is a non-profit organization funded through memberships and donations.  For additional information, please call (909) 597-6449 or send an email to chhistory@aol.com.

The Rancho Santa Ana del Chino in the 1870s

The Rancho Santa Ana del Chino covering today's cities of Chino and Chino Hills and extending almost to Sleepy Hollow in Carbon Canyon, was granted in 1841 to Antonio María Lugo, who had his son-in-law, Pennsylvania-native Isaac Williams assume the management of the ranch and then assigned the property to him.  In 1856, Williams died and ownership passed to one of his daughters, whose husband, Robert Carlisle, took control.  Carlisle was killed in 1865 in one of the most famous gun battles in early Los Angeles and Jim Bridger became the manager of the Chino Ranch.

At the time, southern California was just emerging from a punishing drought, which following calamitous floods in 1861-62, had decimated the economic backbone of the region: the cattle industry.  But, as rainfall increased, so did the population as post-Civil War western migration brought thousands of new residents to the greater Los Angeles.

With the growth in people came new businesses, an expanding agricultural foundation for the economy, and a rise in land values for small farms and townsites.  Among these latter was Compton (established 1867) and then a spate of others by the mid-1870s, including Artesia, Pomona, Santa Ana, Orange and San Fernando.

With climbing real estate prices, investors were looking for remaining regional ranches to purchase with an eye for subdivision and sale at great profits.  One such enterpreneur was Isaias W. Hellman (1842-1920).  Born to a Jewish family in what later became Germany, Hellman migrated to America in the late 1850s as a teenager to join relatives in Los Angeles and worked in a cousin's store.

Los Angeles Herald, 9 April 1875.

By the middle Sixties, as the area emerged from the drought and was poised for growth, Hellman went on his own, opening his own store and quickly becoming a success.  He even began to transact an informal banking business (banking was actually illegal for a number of years in California) at the back of his store as a sideline and earned the business of many residents of the Los Angeles region.

In 1868, Hellman formalized his enterprise, taking on two partners in longtime San Gabriel Valley ranchers, William Workman (half-owner of Rancho La Puente) and Workman's son-in-law, F.P.F. Temple (co-owner of Rancho La Merced).  Hellman, Temple and Company was the second bank opened in Los Angeles, following ex-governor John Downey's Hayward and Company by a few months.

While business grew along with the regional economy, fundamental differences in management of the institution arose between Hellman and Temple, and Hellman dissolved the partnership in early 1871.  Downey closed up his bank, joined ranks with Hellman and the pair opened Farmers and Merchants Bank, which became a dominant financial institution in Los Angeles for decades to come.  Temple and Workman formed their own private bank of that name and the two institutions had something of a friendly rivalry as the only commercial banks in the growing city.

It was in 1875, as the local growth boom spiked, that Hellman expanded his growing portfolio of real estate holdings.  Four years before, he and partners bought Rancho Cucamonga, which had been owned by John Rains, another Isaac Williams son-in-law, and, after Rains' murder in 1862, managed for his widow, Merced.  Cucamonga was widely-known for its vineyards and wine and brandy production, which Hellman continued.

Los Angeles Herald, 5 May 1875.

In 1874, he partnered with John Lazzarovitch and William H. Workman (nephew of his former banking partner) in subdividing the Paredon Blanco (White Bluffs) property Workman's wife, Maria, inherited from her father, Andrew Boyle, naming the new subdivision on the east side of the Los Angeles River from downtown Los Angeles Boyle Heights.  Ironically, it was at Paredon Blanco that Americans who had been taken prisoner by Californios at Isaac Williams's house at Chino were kept under lock and key during the last stage of the American invasion and conquest in 1846-47.

On 9 April 1875, the Los Angeles Herald newspaper published a small article titled "The Chino Ranch" in which it was reported

The solid foundation of real estate in Los Angeles county is well demonstrated by the late purchase of a half interest in the above named ranch by Mr. I.W. Hellman . . . [who] on the eve of his departure for Europe he saw no better investment for $150,000 of his surplus capital than to put it in solid ground . . .

Hellman, who had become quite wealthy due to his business acumen, was preparing for his first trip to his homeland since he had left nearly twenty years before.  The Herald continued that

The entire ranch contains some 35,000 acres, beautifully situated in the Spadra valley, six miles East of Spadra and within three-quarters of a mile of the railroad.  Ten thousand acres of Mr. Hellman's purchase is moist land and capable of producing anything that grows in semi-tropical California.  The whole tract is well-watered by streams from the adjacent mountains and foot-hills, and besides has numberless springs flowing the year round.   Heretofore it has been devoted to pasturage, but it is capable of much better things, and we expect some day to see it divided into small farms and under the best state of cultivation.

The paper's geographical knowledge was a bit skewed.  The Southern Pacific railroad line, completed to Spadra in 1874 and to Colton a year or so later, was about five miles north.  Spadra was a community established by the excellently-named William W. Rubottom on a corner of Rancho San Jose and named for Rubottom's Arkansas hometown.  Later in 1875, the new town of Pomona was created on that same ranch and Spadra is now an almost-forgotten remnant of an industrial section of the city along Pomona Boulevard between the 71 and 57 freeways.  The Chino ranch is actually southeast of Spadra and constitutes its own Chino Valley.

Praising Hellman's wisdom in acquiring the Chino ranch, the paper claimed "we doubt not that it is well worth a half million dollars."  Well, at the time, the real estate boom in the Los Angeles area was such that the assigned value by the Herald might have seemed realistic.

Los Angeles Herald, 13 June 1875.

A month after the purchase announcement, photographer S.P. Smith of the short-lived Cottage Gallery in Los Angeles took a "photographic tour", covered by the Herald, of points east from the growing city, including San Gabriel, El Monte, Spadra, San Jose (what became Pomona) and the Chino Ranch.  There, Smith and his party met a Mr. Stewart, a native of Great Britain, who was leasing the ranch for sheep-raising, these animals having replaced cattle in many of the region's ranches.

Smith observed it was the last day of sheep shearing (say that ten times fast) and then took photographs of the ranch and the stock of animals for Stewart (it would be great if prints of these views were still around).  After spending the night at Chino, Smith and his party finished taking more photos, enjoyed "a bountiful breakfast," packed up and headed back for Los Angeles.  The article ended with the statement that

Should you ever visit the Chino Ranch you will find a pleasant place, a social and entertaining host, and have a good time generally.  Them's our sentiments.

By mid-June, however, a short notice appeared in the paper noting that

We learn from parties who profess to know that the Chino ranch will be cut up into small farms, and that a town will be laid off.  The surveying will be commenced this coming week.  This movement serves to confirm the report of the change of route of the Los Angeles and Independence R.R., published in the [San Bernardino] Argus a few days ago.

The Los Angeles and Independence Railroad, a project led by F.P.F. Temple and intended to tap the transportation of silver from mines near the Inyo county town of Independence, was in the process of construction, starting with a branch line from Los Angeles to the new resort town of Santa Monica.  The line opened later in 1875, but only lasted a little over a year before being absorbed by the Southern Pacific.

At around the same time, the Centinela ranch (near today's Los Angeles International Airport) and Lake Vineyard (modern Alhambra and San Marino) had been or were soon to be subdivided for sale, so Hellman and his unnamed partners were looking to cash in on the action while the real estate market was white hot.

A little over two months later, though, a deep chill descended on the economy--speaking metaphorically, as it was the dog days of a very warm August.  Silver mining speculation gone haywire in Virginia City, Nevada collapsed, sending shockwaves to San Francisco, which was the financial center of the silver frenzy.  The Bank of California, the state's largest, went belly up and the telegraph ticked the news southward to Los Angeles, where a panic erupted.  Both of the commercial banks, Temple and Workman and Farmers and Merchants, suspended business for a month to try to allay depositors' fears.

Los Angeles Herald, 4 November 1875.

Hellman was in Europe, but furiously cut short his trip when he learned what Downey had done when Temple and Workman asked for assistance in ordering the suspension of business.  Notably, that took place on 1 September 1875, the day of the county elections and F.P.F. Temple, president of his namesake bank, was elected Los Angeles County treasurer.  Rushing back home in what might have been a record time, Hellman borrowed money in New York from his financial connections there and, upon arrival in Los Angeles, reopened his bank with the new-found cash, thereby saving his bank.

As for Temple and Workman, there was no such luck.  Their reputation for loose management (which Hellman had experienced first hand when they were all partners) kept them from obtaining a loan, especially as the well-heeled in San Francisco sat on their surpluses.

But, another investor in southern California real estate, Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, who bought the Rancho Santa Anita (modern Arcadia and nearby areas) in spring 1875, loaned Temple and Workman money, but at a devil's bargain, most revealed in the satanic details of the mortgages issued to cover the loan.  Temple and Workman's gamble failed and the bank collapsed in January 1876.  The boom was over and a bust was on.

Still, in early November 1875, the Herald published another long piece on the Chino Ranch, observing that

The largest tract of moist land in Southern California and unquestionably the finest body of farming land on the Pacific Coast, is comparatively uninhabited.  We refer to the Chino Ranch . . .

Describing the property as a "savanna . . . entire covered with waving grass," the paper went on to note that "a splendid road free from dust (owing to the moisture of the land) passes across the center of the ranch", this describing the Butterfield Stage road, now roughly the route of the 71 Freeway.

Then, the piece continued, "on either side as far as the eye can reach are seen vast herds of cattle feeding upon the rich grasses," with an estimate of some 10,000 cattle and horses given.  The animals were said to be kept hydrated by abundant cienegas (springs) found throughout the ranch.  In fact, this blogger's first Chino Hills home included access to one such spring--when a backyard plant died and was pulled out of the heavy clay soil, just below the hills adjoining Chino Hills State Park, water rose to the surface and did not stop for seven years afterward.

Los Angeles Herald, 10 November 1875.

Going on to describe the "sandy loam" of the soil and the abundant water, the article claimed that the little agriculture practiced at Chino yielded "fifty to sixty bushels of barley, seventy-five to one hundred bushels of corn, and fifteen to eighteen tons of alfalfa" and some forty to sixty bushels of wheat.

The platitudes just kept coming:

As a place of residence no part of California is superior to this valley, the climate being superb and the scenery excellent . . . the immigrants arriving now are directing their attention to the East of Los Angeles. and this large ranch, capable of supporting three or four thousand people, will soon be thickly settled.  Lovely villas will ere long dot the beautiful plain, and the hum of industry be heard on all sides.

If the estimate of four thousand people sounds ridiculously low, the Herald must have realized it, because a brief note in the paper on 10 November, stated that Chino "is capable of supporting a half million of people" but at the time "is now only a wild expanse on which graze sheep and cattle."  As for those villas, Payne Ranch, Oak Tree Downs and Vellano might be the closest examples today.  The "hum" is more likely our growing street traffic and the rumble of trucks in south Chino!

The article ended with the note that investors with Hellman in the Chino Ranch included his banking partner Downey, San Francisco capitalist Alexander Weill and Louis Phillips, owner of the southern portion of Rancho San Jose, namesake of the Phillips Ranch community of Pomona and whose home, the 1875 Phillips Mansion, is a Pomona historic landmark.

Sacramento Record-Union, 31 December 1880.

The 1875-76 economic disaster proved to be a decade-long depression locally.  Any plans to develop the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino were shelved.  The plans of Hellman and his partners for quick, immense profits vanished, but another investor showed up at the end of 1880.  Flush with cash from the sale of mines at Tombstone, Arizona, Richard Gird made a deal with Hellman and associates, as briefly reported in the Sacramento Record-Union of 31 December 1880:

I.W. Hellman, the banker, is said to have sold to Dick Gird, an Arizona millionaire, the Chino Ranch for $225,000.

Hellman's half share cost him $150,000, so there was something of a loss, but it didn't hurt the financier in the long run.  He went on to run the Nevada Bank and Wells Fargo and was one of the wealthiest people in western America until his death in 1920.

As for Gird, he was buying at a good time, when prices were still low.  Within five years, a transcontinental railroad built by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe reached Los Angeles and ushered in a new population and land boom exponentially greater by far than that of the late 1860s and early 1870s.  Like Hellman, though, Gird did not do well on his investment in the Chino Ranch--no one would until E.J. Marshall, Texas oil tycoon, bought the largely-intact ranch and took advantage of good market conditions after 1907 to finally make a good profit on speculation in the Chino Valley.

L.B. Joralmon and the Rancho Lindero in Carbon Canyon

Over the years, Carbon Canyon has been home to a number of ranches, large and small.  One of the bigger examples was Rancho Lindero, a 400-acre property that was owned by Louis Bogart Joralmon, a major figure in Chino Valley real estate for nearly a half-century.

An advertisement from Louis B. Joralmon's Campbell-Joralmon Company for farm and ranch sales assistance in the Chino Valley, from the 21 January 1927 edition of the Chino Champion.

Joralmon was born in December 1870 in Fairview, Illinois, a rural village in the west-central part of the state near Peoria.  His father, John, was from New York City and related to an old, well-known family from Brooklyn where a Joralemon Street memorializes the family name.  John graduated from Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1852, becoming a minister with the Reformed Church of America (formerly the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church).  His mother, Martha Condit, also grew up in Newark and after she married John, the two volunteered to be missionaries in Amoy (now Xiamen) China for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

John and Martha Joralmon stayed in China for four years before returning to the United States in 1860 "on account of sickness."  In fact, after John was assigned to be the pastor of a church in Fairview just after their return, the couple's first child died of an unspecified illness.  Aside from Louis, there was another son, Henry, who became a banker and mining millionaire in Denver and then lived in New York.

A Champion article from 24 December 1937 reporting on the approval of a land swap proposed by L.B. Joralmon on Marshall Estate Properties he was liquidating to the City of Chino in exchange for forgiving delinquent taxes.

After some thirty years in Fairview, John Joralmon became a minister in Norwood Park, which was a suburb of Chicago until it was annexed in 1893.  During the family's stay there, Louis attended the University of Chicago, where he graduated that same year.  By the end of the decade, however, the family relocated to Denver, where Louis joined his brother in the banking business and also worked in real estate, while their father finished out his ministerial career.  In 1902, Louis migrated to Salt Lake City to further his real estate career, but he doesn't appear to have stayed in Utah for long.

It is not known exactly how Louis Joralmon came to Chino, but, in 1905, as E. J. Marshall was developing the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino through his Chino Land and Water Company, Joralmon was hired to be a land agent for the company.  He continued in this capacity for several years and moved up to be the chief agent by the early 1910s, overseeing all sales for properties of the company in the Chino area.

An 13 April 1934 ad from the Joralmon Land Company about contacts to local land owners from the Champion.

Sometime around mid-decade, Joralmon joined forces with Los Angeles realtor Thomas Campbell as a partner specializing in Chino Valley property, as well as other real estate deals in the Los Angeles region.  In 1919, the firm became known as the Campbell-Joralmon Company with Campbell as president, Joralmon as vice-president, and Jared S. Torrance, a Chino Land and Water Company officer and founder of the city of Torrance as an unspecified officer or partner.

Campbell (1882-1966) was a native of Grand Forks, North Dakota and studied mechanical engineering, earning his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of North Dakota and then doing post-graduate work at Cornell University,  In addition to running his family farm in Grand Forks, he owned a concrete company and built the first streetcar in his hometown.  In 1910, he relocated to Los Angeles, which was then on the cusp of another of its many real estate and population booms.  He established the realty firm Thomas D. Campbell and Company in a downtown Los Angeles office, while residing in a tony neighborhood in Pasadena.

A Champion article from 1 December 1933 about Louis B. Joralmon's acquisition of the control of the Campbell-Joralmon Company, renamed the Joralmon Land Company.

Campbell became quite a real estate mogul as he not only was very successful in Los Angeles, but owned a 95,000-acre Montana ranch that made him the biggest American farmer of any kind and one of the largest wheat farmers in the world.  This distinction earned him a front cover photo in Time magazine at the beginning of 1928 and his Montana Farming Corporation was given a feature story.  He was also the owner of a staggering 500,000 acres in New Mexico.

The archival holdings of famed humorist Will Rogers included correspondence between Rogers and Campbell in which the latter, who served as an advisor to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin starting with Stalin's first five-year plan in the late 1920s and who was one of the first Americans to meet with the strongman.  Campbell helped organize the creation of millions of acres of wheat and the mechanization of these farms for the Soviets and Rogers sought to meet Stalin on a proposed trip to the Soviet Union, which did not take place.  He also consulted with the governments of England and France on agricultural techniques.

Campbell was also a brigadier general in the Air Force, serving in both World Wars and was the prime mover in the development of napalm, used first in the Pacific Theater in World War II and notorious for its application during the Vietnam War.  He served as a special consultant at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 that coordinated Allied plans for the conclusion of the war.  His boyhood home in Grand Forks, North Dakota, built by his Scotch-Canadian immigrant parents, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

An ad for the sale of bulls at L.B. Joralmon's Rancho Lindero at the San Bernardino/Orange counties line in Carbon Canyon from the 7 February 1941 edition of the Champion.

When the Campbell-Joralmon Company was established in 1919, it was because Campbell, though retaining the presidency was turning over the day-to-day management to Joralmon while he focused on his Montana wheat empire.  The business did realty work throughout the Los Angeles region and had a branch office in Fullerton for its Orange County transactions, while Joralmon used his experience with Chino Land and Water Company to continue marketing properties in the Chino Valley through his firm.  In 1925, Joralmon moved up on the marquee as the company was retitled Joramon-Campbell-Rowley, Inc. and a new partner, Walter J. Rowley, taken on.

Among the major deals consummated by Campbell-Joralmon and Joralmon-Campbell-Rowley in this area were:

• the 1922 sale of 800 acres of land off Carbon Canyon Road, out near where Peyton Drive and Chino Hills Parkway meet today, to dairy farmer A.V. Handorf, who had his main dairy business in today's City of Industry; 
• the sale of the 1187-acre McAllister Ranch in 1929 to Louis Abacherli in what is now the southern extremity of Chino Hills and some of which has been the subject of recent debate on rezoning for potential future residential and commercial development;
• a 1924 sale of the old "Home Ranch" of Joseph Bridger, later owned by E.J. Marshall, to the Long Beach syndicate that developed Los Serranos Country Club and a tract subdivision on the 716-acre property; 
• and what was touted as the last major sale of the former Rancho Santa Ana del Chino lands, a 400-acre property near Los Serranos sold in 1927 to F.W. Harris, a Chicago tycoon who was developing an Arabian horse breeding ranch.

One deal that appears to have fallen through, but would have been very notable, was one that involved William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic Party candidate for president, a well-known "populist" supporting small farmers and laborers against big corporations and other moneyed interests, a renowned orator, and an attorney who won the famed "Scopes Monkey Trial" case, which led to the conviction of a Tennessee high school substititute teacher who discussed evolution in the classroom.

An Orange County Register ad for the sale of Holstein Friesian bulls at Rancho Lindero, 23 May 1941.

In early 1924, the Champion announced that Bryan, then in the thick of the Scopes trial, had purchased 100 acres in what is now Chino Hills for a country residence, though details were not available.  Even if Bryan bought the land, he would probably have had to wait until the trial was ended before developing his new estate--but, Bryan died just five days after the momentous decision in the case was handed down.

Joralmon was also active in selling land in Soquel Canyon, which started, like Carbon Canyon, to be a desirable place for country homes and weekend retreats during the 1920s.  In fact, Joralmon was a prime mover in appealing to the Orange County Board of Supervisors in 1926 to study the possibility of building a road through the canyon where it meets Carbon Canyon at today's Olinda Village eastward to the new Los Serranos Country Club, which had opened the previous year.  A projected Soquel Canyon Road, while never built, remained on county maps as a possible project until just within the last several years or so.

A 13 April 1926 article from the Register covers a proposal from L.B. Joralmon and James Macklin of Huntington Beach to the Orange County Board of Supervisors for the consideration of a county highway through Soquel Canyon.

At the end of 1933, Campbell decided to bow out completely from the real estate business and Joralmon assumed complete control of the firm (Rowley had evidently only been a partner for a short period), which was refashioned into the Joralmon Land Company.  Even during the depths of the Great Depression, Joralmon, who was well into his mid to late sixties, was a very active and prominent person in local real estate.

An ad for the lease of 200 acres of what appears to be the Rancho Lindero, 19 March 1926, from the Champion.

One of his most interesting transactions was the liquidation of the holdings of E. J. Marshall, who transformed the Chino Land and Water Company into The Marshall Properties and then passed away in 1937 with some considerable unsold property in Chino.  From an office at Central and Chino avenues, Joralmon worked aggressively to dispose of the remaining lands. 

Late in 1937, Joralmon made a novel proposal to the Chino city council:  some choice property in downtown could be essentially traded from Joralmon's firm to the city in exchange for forgiving all delinquent property taxes on the property.  Articles in the Chino Champion detailed the acceptance of the plan because the city could use the parcels for civic and park purposes.  Today's civic center complex is largely situated on the land transferred to the city by Joralmon at that time.

Joralmon's work in local real estate continued until just after the conclusion of World War II and his final ad in the Champion was in March 1946 when he announced he was liquidating Marshall Estate property in downtown that he unsuccessfully tried to swap in a second tax eradication scheme with the city.  By then, he was 75 years old, though he remained in contact locally by continuing his subscription of a half-century with the Champion and by maintaining ownership of a ranch in Carbon Canyon, which he called Rancho Lindero.

A Champion ad from 22 March 1940 for pasture for rent at Rancho Lindero.

The word lindero in Spanish means boundary and, between 1923 and 1926, Joralmon and partner John C. Miles, an attorney whose office was in the same Los Angeles office building as Joralmon's, acquired 400 acres from the Chino Land and Water Company that was situated on both sides of the boundary line of San Bernardino and Orange counties, just north and west of the new subdivision of Sleepy Hollow, laid out in 1923.  

The first transactions, in April and September 1923, were for the San Bernardino County section and others, in January, June and September 1924, included the section within both counties as well as in San Bernardino County.  In October 1924, Sleepy Hollow's founder Cleve Purington and his associates sold property within their subdivision, probably as an easement for access from Catrbon Canyon Road, to Joralmon and Miles.  Finally, in April 1926, S.W. Smith sold additional land adjacent to the others to Joralmon and Miles, which appears to have been the final consolidation of their total holdings.

Joralmon, who maintained a residence in Hollywood for most of his life, appears to have both ran his own cattle and sheep on the Rancho Lindero, as well as leased the ranch out for those purposes.  Unfortunately, there is not much information available about the ranch or its uses, aside from an occasional advertisement taken out in the Champion by Joralmon for leasing opportunities on it.

A public notice statement establishing the name of L.B. Joralmon's Rancho Lindero Stock and Poultry Farms on the San Bernardino/Orange counties line from the Champion, 10 May 1940.

Among the tidbits located was that in 1928, Joralmon repoted to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors that a house was built on the easement to Carbon Canyon Road near his access to the ranch and that the building could be removed as a nuisance.  In 1936, the Chino Fire Department received the donation by Miles of a pig from the ranch for a banquet and it was noted that Miles, the guest of honor, spoke to the crowd and thanked the department for using Rancho Lindero as a place to demonstrate fire prevention work,   The year afterward, a water well was brought in on the ranch.  In 1940-41, Joralmon advertised for land to lease and for the sale of cattle from the property.

Beyond that, the ranch seems to have been owned by Miles and Joralmon until the former died at age 65 in 1955 and then Joralmon passed away a couple of years later in September 1957 at the age of 87.  The status of Rancho Lindero over the next fifteen years has not been tracked so far, but, in 1972, the ranch was sold to Frances Krug, leader of the St. Joseph's Hill of Hope religious community that has occupied the property for the last forty-five or so years.

Chino Hills Historical Society Presentation Last Night

Last evening's talk at the Chino Hills Community Center for the Chino Hills Historical Society by Champion owner and publisher emeritus Allen McCombs was filled with great photos of the Chino Valley from the 19th century to the very recent past and punctuated with interesting anecdotes and stories about the people and places of the area.

McCombs came to Chino in 1956 fresh from a three-year stint in the Navy and with a journalism pedigree and training, purchased the Champion, which continues now in its 127th consecutive year under the original name and still very much a viable paper (even in this technological period), thanks largely to his leadership.

His talk covered everything from Antonio María Lugo, grantee of the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino in 1841, to the creation of Chino in 1887 by Richard Gird, to early landmarks and significant residents in that town, to the development of Chino Hills in the last quarter century, and much else.

The one-hour presentation covered a lot of ground and some of the best parts were when McCombs shared his personal connection to people, buildings and locales, with some of the more humorous and telling recollections coming during the question-and-answer period after the formal part was concluded.

There is no one in the area with more knowledge of the community's development and, while McCombs has shared much of this through his paper and, specifically, his "Rolltop Roundup" column, there is clearly a great deal more information that has not been made public yet.   Hopefully he'll do so because he is one of the last living links to the small-town Chino Valley which predominated until probably the 1960s or 1970s.

It was fun to hear the stories and see the images--preserving as much of the remarkable store of historical material McCombs possesses becomes that much more important because we'll not see the like of him again in the Chino Valley.

The next presentation for the Chino Hills Historical Society is slated for Monday, 9 February 2015 when the focus will be on the archaeological work done in the area over the years.  That should be an interesting presentation on the unearthing of the previously-buried history via artifacts found at building sites in the valley.

Chino Hills Historical Society Presentation This Monday

Following on the heels of a very successful June talk in front of over 200 persons, the Chino Hills Historical Society is hosting its next lecture this Monday, 13 October at 7:00 p.m. at the Chino Hills Community Center, 14250 Peyton Drive.

The speaker is Allen McCombs and his topic is Chino Valley's Role in How the West Was Won (And the People Who Played an Important Part in It.  McCombs is the publisher emeritus of Champion Newspapers, the oldest newspaper published under its original name, having been founded in 1887.  He bought the paper in 1956, just after arriving in Chino after three years in the Navy, and his family retains ownership after nearly sixty years.

A native of Berkeley, McCombs earned his bachelor's degree in journalism at Stanford University, followed by a Master's in Business Administration from Harvard University.  In addition to his career running the Champion, McCombs served on the school board and the Chino Planning Commission and is a lifetime member of the historical societies of Chino and Chino Hills.

The Historical Society has recently sprung back to action, spurred on by the recent completion of the Chino Hills Community Center and a core leadership that is actively working to promote local history through presentations like the one McCombs will give, as well as to conduct oral histories.  The Society is entirely funded by membership fees and donations.

For more information on the upcoming presentation, call (909) 597-2051 or e-mail chhistory@aol.com.

Happy 125th Birthday to the Chino Hills Champion

The newspaper industry has seen a precipitous decline in recent years and who knows where the whole concept will be in five, ten or fifty years, so it is all the more remarkable that the independent and local Chino/Chino Hills Champion is not only 125 years old this year, but is still viable and valid (at least it is to some of us.)

The Champion does a great job of covering local news, provides editorial balance, and emphasizes the community aspects of the cities of Chino and Chino Hills in ways that just are not seen that much any more and the achievement of its publishers and staff cannot be overstated.

The newest issue, out this past weekend, is also chock full of interesting historical material, including some pertaining to Carbon Canyon, though reading about local history generally is pretty cool.  With publisher emeritus Allen McCombs providing the bulk of the material about the history of the area, it makes the Champion that much more valuable.

So, congratulations to everyone at the Champion for continuing the long tradition of excellence and may the paper last at least 125 more years.