The Bear Valley Irrigation Company Album
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BV.Album.Comp 10/30/09 3:12 PM Page 1 The Bear Valley Irrigation Company Album Southern California Landscape Photographs by Herve Friend, 1891 1 Michael Dawson Gallery | Paul M. Hertzmann, Inc. BV.Album.Comp 10/30/09 3:12 PM Page 2 Front Cover: Reflections from nature, Bear Valley Reservoir. Title Page Vignette: Detail from Plate 7. 2 Back Cover: Bear Valley Reservoir from Gilner’s Point. BV.Album.Comp 10/30/09 3:12 PM Page 1 The Bear Valley Irrigation Company Album Southern California Landscape Photographs by Herve Friend, 1891 Michael Dawson Gallery Paul M. Hertzmann, Inc. 535 North Larchmont Boulevard Post Office Box 40447 Los Angeles, California 90004 San Francisco, California 94140 Tel: (323) 469-2186 Fax: (323) 469-9553 Tel: (415) 626-2677 Fax: (415) 552-4160 www.michaeldawsongallery.com E-mail: [email protected] BV.Album.Comp 10/30/09 3:12 PM Page 2 Fig. 1 Redlands from Smiley Hill. 2 BV.Album.Comp 10/30/09 3:12 PM Page 3 Convinced of their right, perhaps even their duty, ization. Nevertheless, Herve Friend’s remarkable Introduction to move ever westward and occupy the lands of the photographs of the Bear Valley reservoir, the early North American continent, European and American settlement in Redlands and other dramatic changes settlers began arriving in California in the early to the arid San Bernardino Valley are the only nineteenth century, displacing the Native Americans known mammoth plate photographs to be made in and even some of the Hispanic “Californios” who Southern California during the last decade of the had displaced the Native Americans before them. nineteenth century. They provide incontrovertible The completion of the Owens Valley Aqueduct by evidence that when water was efficiently trans- the city of Los Angeles in 1916 left little doubt that ported from its source to a center of population this water was the key to the phenomenal economic and precious resource literally made the desert bloom. population growth of Southern California in the early This album is rare. Currently, the only other twentieth century. However, two generations before known example resides in the archives of the the aqueduct created a modern business oligarchy Heritage Room at the A. K. Smiley Public Library in enriched by the ownership of vast tracts of formally Redlands, California. With pleasure, we offer the “arid” real estate, storing water was already the forty-nine photographs from our album. “stuff” of dreams. The finest of these images are included in the Photographers, among the immigrants propelled catalog, along with an original essay by Nathan by “manifest destiny” into Southern California, Gonzales, Associate Archivist with the A.K. Smiley documented its settlement, development and urban- Public Library. Conditions of Sale The photographs in this catalogue are offered subject to prior sale. Customers will be billed for shipping and insurance at cost. Applicable sales tax will be charged. 3 BV.Album.Comp 10/30/09 3:12 PM Page 4 Fig. 2 Bear Valley and reservoir. 4 BV.Album.Comp 10/30/09 3:12 PM Page 5 “In a broad sense he is the creator of the east By May, the town had built a school and a church. Frank E. Brown, San Bernardino Valley” wrote Scipio Craig, editor Frank Brown bought property there in March; of Redlands newspaper The Citrograph of Frank another easterner, Edward G. Judson, arrived the Herve Friend, and Elwood Brown in 1887.1 Brown, an 1876 graduate of following month.3 Judson, a native of Bridgeport, the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University, Connecticut, came to Southern California following the Expansion of arrived in Southern California in the spring of 1877. a twelve-year career as a stockbroker in New York Little did the small community of Lugonia where he City. In 1880 the two easterners went into business the Bear Valley settled know that the east San Bernardino Valley was together, incorporating the Lugonia Packing Com- Irrigation Company about to change forever. pany.4 Orchards of peaches and apricots bore more Lugonia was named for the Lugo family, holders fruit than could be sold fresh, so their new company of the San Bernardino Valley land grant. After the dried and packed the excess. They handled some arrival of the Franciscans and the founding of San 250 tons of fruit in 1881, their first season in oper- Nathan D. Gonzales Gabriel Mission in 1771, the valley was claimed as ation. At the same time they started to hatch a plan mission property and used for grazing the mission’s for a new agricultural colony. If water could be cattle and raising crops. In an effort to wrest found, the worthless, arid hills south of Lugonia control of wealth and property from the Catholic would become incredibly valuable. church, the Mexican government secularized mis- As every student of Southern California history sion land in 1834. Between 1833 and 1846, gover- understands, if Judson & Brown were to make a nors of California made some 500 large grants of go of land development, they would need to secure land to prominent Mexicans.2 Many of these grants a steady water supply. In the semi-arid, desert- were lands confiscated from the missions. Three like greater Los Angeles basin water falls for the sons and a nephew of Don Antonio Maria Lugo most part only between November and April. The were granted Rancho San Bernardino in 1842 by remaining months can be hot and very dry. Rivers, Governor Alvarado. In 1851, three years after Cali- including the Los Angeles, San Gabriel, and Santa fornia became a part of the United States, the Lugos Ana, flow above ground during the wet months, but freely chose to sell their land. They were luckier than otherwise often disappear below ground. “It was many other Mexican grantees who were forced to surely of these rivers that Mark Twain spoke when cede their vast holdings when their titles to the land he said that he had fallen into a California river and were disputed by American settlers attempting to ‘come out all dusty.’”5 In 1868, the first of many usurp their property. The former Lugo lands in the artesian wells soon to be sunk all over Southern San Bernardino valley were soon settled by Ameri- California was drilled near Compton in an effort to cans. The long growing season of Southern California, augment the amount of water collected in surface adequate water for a small population and for run-off.6 Some settlers, however, turned to a concept limited ranching and farming, and cheap land prices which would allow the rainfall and snow melt from made the valley a desirable location for settlers. the wet months to be harnessed for use in the The town of Lugonia was first settled in 1870. dry months: water reservoirs. According to Walter Located several miles southeast of San Bernardino, Gillette Bates in an 1890 article in Scribner’s Mag- the small settlement grew over the next seven years. azine: “The plan of water storage is to impound this In February, 1877, it formed its own school district. water as it runs to waste in the season of flood and 5 BV.Album.Comp 10/30/09 3:12 PM Page 6 use it in the season of drought. Select the proper Their water supply assured, they filed a pre- valleys for water-basins, close their outlets with liminary map of Redlands with the county of San dams, store great lakes of water when the moun- Bernardino. Land was divided into two and one half, tain-snows melt, and then let it out slowly and at five, or ten acre tracts. Wide avenues ran northeast will through flumes and ditches to the lands below and southwest and cross-streets intersected these —this is the essence of the new idea.”7 every half mile. A plaza was placed in the heart of the Officially incorporating the “Red Lands Colony” town, and a portion was parceled into town lots.9 in 1881, Judson and Brown initially purchased 320 However, by 1882, the supplies of water for Redlands acres of land from the Southern Pacific Railroad and were exhausted. A new source of water would be swiftly expanded their holdings to some 4,000 necessary if the colony was to continue to grow. acres. To obtain and deliver enough water to sup- Hiram Barton, who had lived in the area for nearly port agriculture, they incorporated the Redlands twenty-five years and knew its geography well, urged Water Company, the first of its kind in the east San Brown to explore Bear Valley as a possible site for Bernardino Valley, purchased fifty shares of water a reservoir. Bear Valley was located in the San Fig. 3 View on Mill Creek Rd. from the owners of the South Fork ditch, which ran Bernardino Mountains and was used in the summer Mts. San Bernadino and Gray from the Santa Ana River to Lugonia, and built a for sheep grazing. Frank Brown’s first trip to Bear Back in distance. six-mile canal from the ditch to their new reservoir.8 Valley proved a decisive moment for the growth of Redlands. He recalled: “Arriving in Bear Valley… my pocket level soon convinced me as we rode mile after mile down the nearly-level valley, that we were on one of the finest reservoir sites imaginable… When we reached the narrow granite gap, at the outlet of the valley, I saw what I had dreamed of for several years; a place specially designed by Provi- dence for a dam to hold back the winter floods for summer use.”10 A new company, the Bear Valley Land and Water Company, was formed in 1883 with $360,000 capital stock.11 Brown turned his skills as a surveyor and engineer to the design of a dam for Bear Valley.