by DON MEADOWS, specialist in California history, OCC evening
college instructor for a number of years.
WHEN TUMBLEWEEDS ROLL across Costa Mesa they drift with ghosts that rise from the same environment. Indians once lived beside a meandering river; Franciscan missionaries built an adobe structure where the Indian village stood; Mexican rancheros usurped the land and seeded it to cattle; Yankee invaders ran lines across the country to lay it out in geometric patterns; an American city sprang up and lingered for a while; the river was forced into a channel.
Once, long ago, the Santa Ana river swung with indecision on either side of a large triangle of land on which a college was to be built. Sometimes the river reached the ocean through Upper Newport Bay; sometimes it seeped into a great willow swamp that stretched westward from the highlands. A thousand years ago, on the west bank of the river, where Adams street dips into the streambed, four or five hundred Indians lived. Their bodies were short and brown with only bare skins to protect them from the wind and weather. They called their village Lukup and the river was named Wanawna. Their houses of brush and tules were shaped "like half an orange" and were scattered over a wide area. When fleas got too prevalent a house was burned and a new one was erected nearby. Their food of fish and mollusks came from the pantry of the sea, and the highlands produced seeds and small animals. They were peaceful people, because there was no wealth over which to fight.
The Lukup Indians believed that the world began in a wet place on the far western side of Orange County. Here in a tiny fresh water pool was an abundance of fish and in the surrounding mud were earth creatures unlike anything that exists today. A god Chiningchinish appeared, and feeling sorry for the crowded fish, enlarged the pool into the great Pacific Ocean. From the mud creatures he created man. With patience he taught man how to build houses, hunt, fish, sing, dance and pay homage to their god. When his job was done Chiningchinish returned to the stars, but before he departed he issued a final warning. In the east was a double-domed mountain called Kalawpa and there, the god said, he would sit in judgment and if any of his subjects failed to obey his teachings he would send down rattlesnakes and grizzly bears to punish the offenders. For centuries Old Saddleback has been held in reverence.
In July 1769 the natives of Lukup were frightened by sixty-two strangely dressed men and a hundred queer animals that moved along the base of Kalawpa. The cavalcade was an expedition of Spanish priests and soldiers in search of an overland route from San Diego to Monterey. On the morning of July 26th, the Day of Saint Anne, the party was camped at what is now Tomato Spring, north of the El Toro Marine Air Base. As the sun came up over Kalawpa and lit the great plain that spread toward the west the explorers, inspired by Saint and sunshine, named the mountains the Mountains of Saint Anna, La Sierra de Santa Ana. With the expedition was a Catalonian sergeant, Don Jose Antonio Yorba. Little did he realize that someday he would own a great part of the land that was being lighted by the morning sun.
The Indians would have been more than frightened had they known the full significance of the marching men. The pioneer trail was soon followed by more soldiers, Catholic priests and people from Mexico. In 1776 church bells rang out in a valley twenty miles from the Indian village. A new religion came to Lukup to replace the power of Chiningchinish. Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded. As it progressed the natives were brought under its control. Mission herds of cattle and horses increased and were pastured further and further away from the establishment. The land around Lukup was lush with grass the year around, and here in the Indian village an adobe house was built as a dwelling for the vaqueros who looked after the mission livestock. Frequently a Franciscan padre would visit the place to bring spiritual food to the faithful. The village became an outpost or estancia of the mission.
Don Jose Antonio Yorba, who came to California with the first expedition, settled in San Francisco and in 1782 married Josefa, the eldest daughter of Ensign Pablo Grijalva. An inducement offered military men to keep them in California was land upon which to settle after retirement. About 1797 Ensign Grijalva completed his service and was given permission to establish a ranch on land east of the Santa Ana river. Grijalva died before a formal grant was made, but in 1810 his son-in-law Sergeant Yorba and grandson Juan Pablo Peralta were given possession of 48,800 acres of land on each side of the Santiago Creek betvieen the Santa Ana river and the sea. They named their great holding Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana. The Yorba and Peralta families lived in harmony on and around the hill now occupied by the village called Olive, but then known as the Pueblo de Santa Ana.
Meanwhile the mission of San Juan Capistrano dwindled in population and influence. The old mission estancia on Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana was occupied by a Yorba heir, Don Diego Sepulveda. Another adobe building with corrals was built one mile north of the estancia and a third ranch house was erected one-half mile south of it by Eduardo Pollereno. Thousands of Yorba and Peralta cattle grazed over the great rancho. For forty years the descendants of Yorba and Peralta held the rancho as a unit, but after the American occupation in 1846 some of the heirs became dissatisfied and wished to sell their part of the heritage. In 1863 the vast estate was partitioned by a United States land court and assignied to more than three hundred holders of equity. The great Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana was dissolved into smaller holdings. American farmers and land speculators soon gained control of the old Spanish grant. A colorful Yankee by the name of Gabriel Allen purchased the old estancia and the surrounding acres from Eduardo Pollereno.
Los Angeles in 1880 was a sleepy little city of 11,000 population, mostly Mexican. For several years the Southern Pacific railroad dominated transportation, but in 1887 the Santa Fe railroad reached the city. Immediately a rate war developed. Both lines encouraged colonists to settle in the surrounding country. New rail lines were extended from Los Angeles. Competition became keen. One memorable day it was possible to purchase a one-way ticket from Kansas City to Southern California for a single dollar. Thousands of people took advantage of the railroad war. New towns sprang into existence. In their enthusiasm for land and sunshine, newcomers lost all sense of value. Thirty-five miles southeast of Los Angeles and five miles south of the city of Santa Ana promoters bought 1,762 acres of land from Gabriel Allen. The price was $298,500 and the date was October. The land east of the old estancia was subdivided into the town Fairview.
Fairview was projected on a grandiose scale. A great highway one hundred feet wide named Fairview Boulevard, now Harbor Boulevard, ran through the city from north to south. On each side of the thorough-fare property was divided into two and one-half or ten acre parcels and sold for farm land. Near the southern side of the tract and cast of Fairview Boulevard a warm artesian well spouted mineral water, and around it fifty acres were surveyed into business and residential lots to be the center of the town. The artesian well was advertised as having great medicinal powers. Near it a swimming pool was built with a bath pavilion at its side. South of the pool a three-storied frame hotel containing twenty rooms was erected. While Hotel Fairview was under construction, frame business houses were appearing along Fairview Boulevard, and residences began sprouting over the surrounding country.
Six months after Gabriel Allen sold his grazing land to a syndicate, the city of Fairview was a place of frenzied activity. It had sufficient population to justify its own mail service and on April 3, 1888, a post office was opened in a store building on Fairview Boulevard. A month later a weekly newspaper, The Fairview Register, appeared. Another great project was under way: the Santa Ana, Fairview and Pacific Railroad began construction of a narrow gauge steam line between the older city and the new one. Work proceeded under pressure and on June 30, 1888 the line was officially opened with a grand banquet in the newly completed Fairview Hotel. Guests were brought from Santa Ana on a special train that steamed down Fairview Boulevard. A few days later a grand excursion brought hundreds of people to the budding city to purchase town and farm lots at auction. Property sold at fantastic prices. More people crowded into town. The hotel was kept filled. to capacity, carriages whirled about on dusty roads, and the sound of saw and hammer cluttered the air. By the end of summer Fairview had a population of almost one thousand citizens. The whole city project had been advanced on borrowed money.
The original tract, the little farms and the city lots were purchased with small down payments and monthly obligations. As summer progressed the promoters needed money to meet impending notes. Warm weather slowed down buying activity. In Los Angeles banks tightened up on real estate loans. Buyers began defaulting on their payments. When fall set in there were signs of financial distress. Newcomers avoided Fairview and people were leaving town.
The winter of 1888-89 was the wettest in history. Roads between Fairview and Santa Ana became impassable. Most of the village on high land escaped with darnp feet, but in the lowland the Santa Ana river left its indefinite banks and flooded the country side. In February 1889 a large section of the Fairview railroad washed out never to be replaced. In April The Fairview Register stopped publication because most of its advertisers had gone out of business. Some farmers tried to meet financial obligations but crops could not be raised. The syndicate went bankrupt. Bit by bit the land reverted to Gabriel Allen. Fairview, after a year of glory, died neglected.
In 1903 the village post office was absorbed by Santa Ana. A few years later some of the frame buildings that were stippled over the countryside were loaded on wagons and hauled to a new subdivision called Huntington Beach. Only the hotel remained to keep alive the memory of a little city, and in time it too was torn down and hauled away. In 1959 Mr. William F. Kimes, business manager of Orange Coast College, removed the last vestige of the ghost town. He ordered a bulldozer to break down and fill in the pool that had once offered mineral water. The pool was about six hundred yards west of the present College library.
When desert winds roll tumbleweeds across the campus of OCC they stir up forgotten ghosts of the past, and in the east the holy mountain of Kalawpa, with arched brows, looks down unchanged.
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