Almost every day early in 1887, entrepreneurs in the Inland Empire strained their ears to hear the tantalizing sounds of money and success moving ever closer.
That distinctive noise of great fortunes was in the form of work being done by crews grading the route of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad from San Bernardino to Los Angeles. The product of this train route would soon create new towns, new businesses and help grow what became the area’s huge agricultural success.
But suddenly there was a problem, and all work stopped.
Charles Frankish, the man who took over the development of what became Ontario and Upland from the departed George Chaffey, did the unthinkable. He said “no” to the Santa Fe.
In those days, no one tugged on Superman’s cape. The all-powerful railroads did whatever they wanted. They knew full well that all of Southern California badly needed them for shipping crops east and bringing frost-bitten Easterners here to buy property and start businesses.
For a month in 1887, crews had moved quickly west from San Bernardino grading the proposed Santa Fe route through empty land mostly littered with sagebrush and sand.
But on Jan. 24, 1887, they got to the edge of the property of the Ontario Land Company and were stopped in their tracks by an injunction obtained by Frankish.
The Santa Fe had determined it would run its tracks on top of Eighth Street through Frankish’s development in what today is Upland. Frankish had offered the railroad rights of way between Seventh and Eighth or between Eighth and Ninth streets, but not right on the dirt street itself.
“The railroad representatives proposed to run right through wherever they pleased without the formality of asking the consent of any one,” noted the Ontario Record of Jan. 26. “An important street could not well be given up to the railroad without serious damage to property owners, and inconvenience to the whole colony.”
While the mess was being negotiated, the Santa Fe workers were temporarily sent to the railroad’s other project in Orange County.
The Record applauded his boldness but, just like Frankish, it stood to benefit from all the expanded business the railroad would generate.
“Ontario cannot well afford to ‘buck’ against the Santa Fe system,” noted the realistic newspaper. “We trust the matter will be settled at an early day to the satisfaction of all parties concerned.”
And Frankish actually prevailed. The final slightly revised route turns slightly north near Grove Avenue and crosses Upland directly between Eighth and Ninth streets, just as he wished.
Frankish’s objection resolved, grading through his development resumed and was completed on Feb. 27, reported the Record. By March 25, the Santa Fe grading crew reached the San Gabriel River to meet the route of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Railway, recently purchased by Santa Fe, to prepare the line into Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Times said actual laying of track got fully underway west of San Bernardino on Feb. 11 and “arrangements have been made to lay down the iron at the rate of one mile per day.”
Once all the tracks were in place, our once-sleepy area became “Showtime!”
Anybody with land anywhere near the Santa Fe route got busy and plotted out a city, planned a hotel, and began selling property. The Herald Sept. 4 said in a matter of only a few months 32 “towns” had sprung up along the 31 miles of Santa Fe track east of Los Angeles.
On March 22 and 23, a syndicate which owned 7,000 acres in and north of what became San Dimas sold lots worth $230,000. And this was despite the place was still known as the hardly appealing name of Mud Springs.
And the brief legal hangup not withstanding, Frankish continued selling Ontario land.
The Record on March 9 advertised lots on sale for “The Foothill Paradise,” called San Antonio Heights. On April 25, put on the market were 198 choice business and residential lots in Ontario, all at 10 percent off list price if purchased that first day.
A week after the Mud Springs sale, an estimated 2,500 people attended the May 25 opening of Lordsburg — the future town of La Verne. In one day, 283 lots were sold for $75,900, bringing the value of land purchased before and during the sale to about $146,000.
But some of these boomtowns ultimately failed, often doomed by too many purchases by speculators and a downturn in the economy shortly thereafter.
On the site of what would later become Upland was the “new” town of Magnolia, with “all the features of a promising town of equal merit with Azusa,” as listed in an April 22 advertisement in the Herald. Magnolia failed within a year or two as too many speculators — and not permanent businessmen or residents — bought land and ultimately defaulted.
The town of Marquette, along the Santa Fe route mostly between what today is Grove and Baker avenues in Rancho Cucamonga, saw a grand auction held there on June 14. Sales were all right but subsequent downturns doomed Marquette, and by the 1890s, there was nothing left of the place.
Another community that crashed and burned was Rochester, north of the Santa Fe tracks along Rochester Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga. Charles W. Smith bought land, created a water company and sold land beginning in 1889. Things were going all right until he was sued — It turned out he didn’t own the water rights he promised each property purchaser. About the only traces of what was Rochester are the street of that name and Charles Smith Avenue.
And exaggeration and outrageous claims were often the rule when it came to selling land along the Santa Fe route.
One developer north of El Monte sold land adjacent to the San Gabriel River, boasting of the prosperity that steamboat travel up and down the river would soon bring the area. West of San Dimas was the development of Gladstone, named for British Prime Minister William Gladstone, who the developers claimed was to be given lots there.
Even with some failures, gross claims and speculation, the boom created by the Santa Fe’s arrival in 1887 changed the region forever, and the sound of fortunes being made was a tune heard often for the next 132 years.
“The prophecy … that there will soon be one continuous city from San Bernardino to the sea appears to be rapidly approaching fulfillment,” wrote the Herald on Sept. 4, 1887.
Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Empire history. He can be reached at joe.blackstock@gmail.com or Twitter @JoeBlackstock.
