A Sense of History
Elizabeth Day Palmer Canyon
By Judy Wright
Palmer Canyon is known for its beauty, legends, and water fights. One of the most beautiful legends is that Ramona and Allesandro, made famous by Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona. They spent their first days in Palmer Canyon after their flight from Rancho Moreno. As Frank Wheeler said in his scrapbook, “We do not vouch for the accuracy of the legend, but if the lover of nature were to search the whole of California over, to find the most likely spot to which these two lovers retreated, the most ideal spot to select would be Palmer Canyon.” The novelist Edmund Mitchell spent time in Claremont and Palmer Canyon and in 1908 had this to say about the canyon: “This canyon has a rare look of New England beauty about it, for the watercourse has never inflicted a washout, so that the riot of flower and fern, tree, and shrub, remain unimpaired.”
Gold was rumored to be plentiful in the Palmer Canyon Creek by many early settlers, including the first mayor of Pomona, Charles French, who filed claims in the creek in the late 1800s. Although rumors persisted and many early settlers continued to pan for gold, no fortune was ever documented. Charley Clevenger, Claremont’s marshal and night watchman in the early 1900s, remembered one time when he and his brother panned for gold and struck it “rich.” securing enough “color” to buy two $12 breech-loading shotguns. They took the $24 out in one day. Charley also remembered that miners in the early 1900s dug a tunnel several feet into the hill looking for gold, but gave up after several months.
The feuds in Palmer Canyon were not over gold metal but liquid gold—water. The Creek became a water source that was disputed for over fifty years. They feuds began with the first real owner of the canyon, Henry Palmer. John Hughes, who was using the water from the creek, thought he owned the property because he had taken out “Homestead papers” but he had never completed the process. When Henry Palmer, the founder of Claremont, moved to the Pomona Valley during the boom of the 1880s, he not only invested in his newly platted City of Claremont but also in land north of Claremont’s original settlement boundaries. The north locale was a hilly, red clay soil area, and included the canyon just over one mile long. Palmer was enthusiastic about each of his land investments and wrote to his family in Oakland about them. He called the hilly area Olive Hills only after he and his helpers personally planted hundreds of Olive trees on the spot we now call Padua Hills.
Henry also wrote home to his daughter, Elizabeth Day Palmer, in 1887 and told her that he had named his new canyon for her. How fortuitous that naming was since Elizabeth became a well known Los Angeles botanist and Palmer Canyon is famous for the variety of its plant life. Since Palmer purchased both Olive Hills and Palmer Canyon, he supposedly controlled the water, but it took almost ten years to move Hughes away from the creek. Palmer was heavily in debt because he bought too much property during the boom. He also had land in North Pomona, Piedmont (now Piedmont Mesa), Pomona Heights (Ganesha Hills), and Santa Ana. Henry finally left his Claremont property and moved to Los Angeles with a new job and a salary so that he could pay off his debts. While he was gone, several “squatters” and homesteaders started using the creek. In 1910, Henry sold part of Olive Hills and the land around the canyon to Mrs. Mary Stoner, who thought she owned all of the canyon and water rights. Fights ensued, both legal and illegal. One squatter’s house was even burned in the middle of the night. From about 1912 until the late 1920s, the canyon was peaceful, but in 1927, Elizabeth Palmer sold her property to the Phillips Company of Los Angeles and the battles began again. Through a court case, it was determined that while Elizabeth had owned the canyon, she had not filed for all of the water rights and Mrs. Stoner became the owner of two thirds of the water rights of the creek. She eventually sold all of her property and water rights to the Padua Hills Corporation.
The canyon has long been a favorite spot for botanists because of the many species of plants. One botanist reported that ninety-four different wild flowers were gathered in Palmer Canyon in one afternoon. The canyon was also used as a mountain “recreation” area during the 1920s and 30s, became a residential neighborhood in the 1950s, and was the center of a vicious wild fire in 2003. The vegetation is returning. Perhaps with all of the rain this winter, even the abundant wild flowers will return.
