Roundup: May 8, 2013

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA
Social Hour: 5:00PM
Dinner: 6:00PM

Speaker: Joseph Feeney
Subject: “The Second Gold Rush”

The history of Southern California cannot be fully understood without referencing the Citrus industry and the monumental impact it had on this area. In his presentation, Joe will cover the citrus industry from the first groves at the San Gabriel mission to the development of a multibillion-dollar agricultural empire. The history of this transition is not dull to say the least. The first railroad car of oranges left California in 1877, within thirty years there were over 100,000 acres of oranges planted in California, most in Southern California. Joe’s talk will cover the economic and agricultural development of the industry: including, dollar volume, grove size, cost per acre, development of growers co-ops, transportation development and cost, and the reasons for the dominance of the navel orange. All this will be accompanied by pictures of the facilities, groves, and people who are the focus of the talk. Joe will also follow an orange from the tree to the market place to help the audience integrate all the facts and figures into a comprehensive picture. Joe will address the marketing aspects of the industry using the crate label as the focal point. The presentation features many slides of labels from Southern California.

Joseph Feeney is a native of Southern California with a life-long love for Southern California history. Joe has always understood that history is made by people first, and that the historical facts are the result of human actions. He has served as a board member of the Campo de Cahuenga for twenty years, a Huntington Westerner for twenty-five years, and was vice-president of the civil War Roundtable of Baton Rouge while he attended LSU to earn his Masters degree in Political Science in 2003. Joe has been a collector of citrus labels for over thirty years. His collecting interest grew into a desire to understand the industry that fashioned the need for the creation of over a billion labels.

Roundup: April 10, 2013

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA
Social Hour: 5:00PM
Dinner: 6:00PM

Speaker: Steve Lech
Subject: “ The Formation of Riverside County”

Riverside County is the fourth largest county in California, and one of the last ones to be created. Stretching from Orange County to the Arizona border, Riverside County took most of its territory from San Diego County and the rest from San Bernardino County. As is true of much local history, what was understood to be the reasons behind Riverside County’s formation had been copied and recopied from one source, most of which was not true. Long thought to be the outcome of dissatisfaction over the construction of a new courthouse in San Bernardino, the reasons behind Riverside County’s beginnings were numerous. Steve Lech spent more than 4 years researching the development of Riverside County, resulting in the book “Along the Old Roads.” In his presentation, Mr. Lech uncovers many of the reasons, and the back-room dealings, that brought about the formation of California’s fourth largest county in 1893.

Steve Lech is a native Riversider and fellow Westerner as well as our new Branding Iron editor. He has been interested in the local history of Riverside County for more than 35 years and has written eight books on various subjects of Riverside County history, including Along the Old Roads – A History of the Portion of Southern California That Became Riverside County, 1772-1893, considered to be the definitive history of Riverside County. He co-authors the weekly “Back in the Day” column for the Press-Enterprise newspaper in which he explores many aspects of local history throughout western Riverside County. He has been a docent at the historic Mission Inn hotel for more than 23 years, and is currently the president of the Riverside Historical Society.

Larry L. Boerio
Deputy Sheriff 

December 2012 Roundup Photos

Please enjoy this collection of images from the Los Angeles Corral of Westerners’ December 2012 Roundup.

All images courtesy Steve Crise.

Roundup: March 13, 2013

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA
Social Hour: 5:00PM
Dinner: 6:00PM

Speaker: Glen Creason
Subject: “As the City Grew”

Glen Creason has been the map librarian for the Los Angeles Public Library for the past 23 years and a reference librarian in the History department since 1979. Here is more on his biography:

He was a co-curator of the landmark map exhibit “Los Angeles Unfolded” in 2008 and 2009 and in October of 2010 he published the book “Los Angeles in Maps” for Rizzolli International. He has written about local history, maps, and popular culture for local publications including the Downtown News, Mercators World, the Public Historian, the Communicator the Los Angeles Times, and one tasty article for Edible Ojai. He has been a regular writer on entertainment and food for the Los Cerritos Community News for nineteen years and currently blogs on maps for Los Angeles Magazine. He is a native Angelino, born and raised in South Gate and now living in Glassell Park.

The program “As the City Grew” is a selection of maps that demonstrate the growth and identity of Los Angeles from the founding of the pueblo to the metropolis of today. Included are the Ord Survey, the first surveyed map of Los Angeles, a signed copy of the Kirkman-Harriman maps showing Indian villages, the first topographic map of the area, a 1903 automobile road map by Thurston, one of the few copies existing of Laura Whitlock’s depiction of the Pacific Electric streetcar lines and the dazzling Jo Mora pictorial map from 1942.

Glen will also comment on the greatest map gift ever made to the Los Angeles Public Library. The John Feather’s collection was in a private home in Mount Washington destined for a demolition until realtor Matthew Greenberg contacted Glen setting in motion an adventure that ended in over one hundred thousand maps being added to the library’s collection. The Feather’s map house story has been featured in national newspapers, NBC television, NPR’s Morning Edition, and on Dick Gordon’s “the Story” on American Public Media.

Larry L. Boerio
Deputy Sheriff

 

Roundup: February 12, 2013

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA
Social Hour: 5:00PM
Dinner: 6:00PM

Speaker: Michele Zack
Subject: “Southern-minded Southern California”

Fellow Westerner, Michele Zack has given us two talks in the past five years and is familiar with many of us.  Michele is an award-winning writer/journalist with 25+ years experience as a foreign correspondent and a renowned local historian since her return to the States some years ago.  Recent of her book publications have been recognized for “excellence” by the American Association of State and Local History, and have won the Donald Pflueger Award for local history.  In 2012, she was named Altadena Citizen of the Year for her activism on the Town Council and her work with Altadena Heritage over the years.

At this meeting, she will discuss California’s legacy of slavery, a couple of 19th Century Civil Rights leaders, and the role of the stat win the run up to the Civil War.  She will focus mainly on Southern California, but also provide some often-missing context to explain why California is generally left out of Civil War history even though the state was an important cause of the war.  That our state’s Congressional representatives regularly voted with slave states through the tumultuous 1850s is seldom noted.

Michele’s role at the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West for many years has been to connect the dots from local to national history.  Her investigations of the San Gabriel Valley and Los Angeles history have led her current research/book project on Los Angeles and the Civil War.  This talk will share her understanding of California’s importance in our country’s most traumatic conflict, and why it is not well understood of included in most narratives of the war.

Larry L. Boerio
Deputy Sheriff