Remembering When
by
Jerry Person
Huntington Beach City Historian
Dedicated to the people of Huntington Beach
Some Local Area Minor Lost Landmarks
When one thinks of the word "landmark" one congers up the image of some famous battle site or where some majestic mansion once stood. But a landmark can be a piece of ground, a simple building or just an object that has special meaning.
This week we will remember a few lesser-known landmarks that were in and around Huntington Beach that could have been landmarks if they had not vanished.
When I was growing up in Los Angeles I can remember seeing small buildings along the road that were built to resemble something, a blimp, a chicken, Van de Camp's Dutch windmill, an owl, a chili bowl or a derby hat.
Most of these simple California icons were built in the 1920s and 1930s when there was few restrictions and red tape. I haven't found any of this kind of fancy architecture here in Huntington Beach yet, but I am still looking, but let's see a few local Orange County that if still here could have been seen as a landmark.
How many of you remember driving up Highway 39 (Beach Blvd.) and passing the old tee-pee gas station at Bolsa Street in Midway City. That old wooden station was built in the mid 1920s and looked much like any old service station of the time, except that in back was a huge Indian tepee, twice the height of the gas station. I'm sorry to say that the station and tepee was demolished to widen Beach Blvd. on February 3, 1954 and we lost one of our possible California landmarks.
Our next possible landmark was also a service station and it sat at the southeast corner of Beach Blvd. and Talbert Avenue where the Weinerschnitzel sits today. But back in 1922 Harry Groves built a wood-framed gas station when that part of the area belonged to Orange County.
In 1923 Groves sold the station to C.P. Lambert and for 32 years everyone referred to it as "Lambert's station." When C.P. Lambert died in 1944, the Texaco station was operated by his wife Alice and her daughter Mary Jean. In 1946 when Mrs. Lambert's son Robert was discharged from the Navy he ran the station for the family. In March of 1954 the station gave way to progress and was torn down when Robert built a new and more modern station a little east of the old one where he sold Flying A gas for many years. Latter, Robert Lambert would become a city councilman and later mayor of our town.
In the early years of our city around 1906, a hitching rack was installed at the entrance to our pier to accommodate the local farmers who drove their wagons to the pier, unhitch the horses and tie them to the hitching rack before going to the beach for the day. The horse hitching rack is long gone from the pier and the last time I saw the old step stone that passengers would step down onto from their carriages was in a storage building at the back part of the city yard.
Since the oil boom of the 1920s a series of Standard Oil gas stations had sat on the north side of the our pier entrance. The Huntington Beach Company, a division of Standard Oil Co. razed the minor landmark for a beach-front development project on April 14, 1967.
Over in Fountain Valley is our next landmark and if its still standing would be well over a hundred years old. This Fountain Valley landmark is known today as the All Saints Anglican church at 18082 Bushard Street and was then known as the Country Church of Talbert. The church was erected on land that had been donated by Tom Talbert.
In the 1950s it was run by its younger congregation, the pastor was in his early 20s and the 15 to 20-piece orchestra ranged in age from 10 to 16 years old and what was nice was that the older members of the church didn't mind this at all. Robert Campbell founded the church and Virgil Crawford organized the church orchestra in July of 1944.
Our last minor landmark is only a spot where a very minor event took place many years ago. It was on Sunday, November 11, 1923 that Huntington Beach Police Chief Jack Tinsley drove his police car to the corner of Fifth Street and Walnut Avenue, parked it, and went over to Main Street to check things out. At about 6:30 p.m. Emmet Davy, a 17-year old boy from Saginaw, Michigan was strolling along and spotted Tinsley's 1923 Hudson unattended. When Chief Tinsley returned in a few minutes he found that his car was nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile, at 11:30 p.m. Davy had driven the stolen police car to the Mexican border as he had planned to sell the car and use the money to bet on the horse races in Tijuana. But before he could cross over from San Diego, border guard Frank Buck spotted the siren on the car and the special license plate and he refused to let Davy cross into Mexico. After questing by Buck, Davy confessed to sealing the chief's car. At around 1:30 a.m. Tinsley received a call from San Diego police that your stolen car is here. Tinsley went down to San Diego and brought the young car thief back to the Orange County jail.
So if your Downtown near Fifth and Walnut, take a look at this minor landmark site where history says our police chief lost his new police car.