Taking Steps to Preserve Chula Vista

Rich with history fine and old Where each day new joys unfold With the future still to mold in Chula, Chula Chula Vista ---- From the song “Viva Chula Vista!” by Pauline Perry Millan and Bob Austin When John Rojas walks around Chula Vista--and he walks around it a lot--he sees things that most people don’t.

The water pipes attached to the outer walls of the old house on 2nd Avenue, for instance, indicating the house was built before interior plumbing became commonplace.

Or the city’s first sidewalk, a cracked strip of concrete on F Street inscribed with the year it was constructed--1911.

Rojas recognizes these things for what they are, clues to Chula Vista’s past. And he is doing what he can to bring them to the public’s attention.

In conjunction with Chula Vista’s 75th anniversary this year, Rojas is leading 75 walks around the city. The walks, sponsored by Walkabout International, visit different areas, but Rojas’ reason for leading them is always the same: He wants people to learn about the city’s history, whether it is ancient or in the making.

Rojas, a stocky, kindly looking man of 56, works 40 hours a week as a distribution clerk at the Chula Vista post office. The rest of the time--when he isn’t out walking--he is the president and newsletter editor of the Chula Vista Historical Society, which he helped found five years ago.

“We thought maybe 40 or 50 people would be interested, but we have almost 750 members now,” he said. “We’re interested in preserving our history and particularly some of the older homes in Chula Vista, before they’re demolished. We hope to educate children, too, about why people originally moved out here and what came before the modern city you see today.

“It’s something that should not be forgotten.”

Sylvia Arden, head librarian for the San Diego Historical Society’s collection of books and other documents, said the Chula Vista Historical Society “has done amazing things for such a young organization. Its leadership is quite dynamic, and I’m sure a lot of that is due to John.”

In particular, Arden praised the society’s newsletter for printing well-written, well-researched articles that “contain information important to (local historians). There are many small community historical societies in the county,” she added, “but Chula Vista’s is one of the best.”

In addition to publishing a high-quality newsletter, the society has completed a survey of historic homes in Chula Vista and a slide show about the old Otay Watch Co. But for details on the community’s history it would be hard to beat the walks led by Rojas, who is a fountain of minutiae about Chula Vista.

On one recent walk that featured some of the city’s oldest homes, for example, Rojas pointed out Chula Vista’s first sidewalk--built the year the city was incorporated--and the house where Chief Myers, a catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, lived during the 1930s.

He also stopped in front of the Cordrey house, an old white two-story mansion that

contrasts sharply with the modern houses surrounding it. “This house was built in 1909 by Alfred Haines, a judge who moved out here because he didn’t want his kids to grow up as delinquents in the big City of San Diego,” Rojas noted. “Hansen Cordrey bought it later.

“The house originally stood on five acres. Most of the city blocks you see around it now were lemon orchards, with homes spaced far apart.”

Rojas--who sets a brisk pace on his walks that often has his companions huffing to keep up--explained that before California became part of the United States, Chula Vista, National City and much of the rest of the South Bay belonged to a sprawling ranch where livestock grazed under the administration of Spanish and, later, Mexican officials. But in 1868 Frank Kimball, a builder from San Francisco, purchased the 26,632-acre ranch for $30,000 and began developing it.

“Kimball needed three things: water, transportation and people,” Rojas said. “To provide water he built the Sweetwater Dam, which still stands. For transportation, he built the National City and Otay Railroad, which ran from San Diego to the Mexican border.”

To attract people, Kimball planted lemon trees, subdivided part of his property into 5- and 10-acre parcels, and built relatively large homes for a wealthy clientele. Many of the early residents “were retired people from the East Coast. They had to be wealthy to afford these homes, which cost a minimum of $2,000,” Rojas said.

By the end of the 19th Century, Chula Vista had 60,000 acres planted to lemons--the largest lemon orchards in the world, according to a visiting journalist. The fruit was packed in a warehouse in National City and shipped to San Diego on the National City and Otay Railroad. From there it moved eastward by rail, helping to slake the nation’s thirst for lemonade.

But a frost followed by a heat wave in 1913 damaged many of the trees, and a flood in 1916 washed out sections of the railroad tracks. With the stock crash of 1929, the community’s halcyon days as a rural retreat were over and the Depression settled in.

Several large, regal houses from the late 1800s and early 1900s still stand in Chula Vista, including the Cordrey house, the Crockett house--built by Civil War veteran Ellison Crockett--and the Bronson house, an enormous structure that some historians believe was designed by James, Watson and Merritt Reid, the same architects who designed the Hotel del Coronado.

Nevertheless, “compared with Coronado or Point Loma, there really are not many old houses left in Chula Vista,” Rojas said. “There weren’t many to start with because it was an orchard-type community, and when the city started to subdivide after World War II, they tore down a lot of them.”

Last year, the Chula Vista Historical Society conducted a survey that identified 350 historic or “architecturally interesting” houses that are more than 50 years old. According to Rojas, the information that society volunteers compiled by noting the location of old houses, talking with longtime residents and examining city records and newspapers will be sent to state officials, and could lead to preservation efforts if the houses are threatened by development.

Rojas, who moved to Chula Vista 26 years ago when he was still in the Navy, said he originally became interested in history while working as a volunteer in the San Diego Historical Society’s photo archive. “I saw photos of some of the old houses in Chula Vista, and got to wondering if they were still there. Then I started looking up old residents and talking to them,” he said.

About three years ago, he began leading walks around the city a few times each month, and he has expanded his schedule this year in honor of Chula Vista’s 75th anniversary.

Not all of the walks are journeys into Chula Vista’s past. Rojas recently led one group on a tour of the city’s waterfront, and another to the developing EastLake area “when it was just bare land. We’ve gone back since then to see the houses being built and the hillsides being scraped away.

“Sometimes we just go to places we’ve never been before and see what’s there. I want people to see what their city is, and you really don’t know what it is until you go out and look at it.”

An average of about 15 people show up for each walk; many are retired Chula Vistans.

Howard Wilson, 66, retired to Chula Vista from Bloomington, Ill., six years ago and is now a regular on Rojas’ walks. “I’m at the age where I’m just interested in history,” he said.

Leslie Trook, 40, is another regular. She is a member of the Chula Vista Historical Society, has a degree in history from UC San Diego, and said she tries to go on one walk every week “for the exercise and to learn from John.”

Those who do stroll around the city with Rojas are liable to hear, sooner or later, about the Otay Watch Co., which was established by Frank Kimball and other investors in 1888. “Kimball wanted to bring high-class families out here, and he figured that having a high-class watch factory in the area might help,” Rojas explained. “So a big three-story watch factory was built on Otay Mesa.

“The factory made a good watch for the time, but it was overpriced. The cheapest model made there cost $10, whereas a ‘working-man’s’ watch of the era cost only about $5. After producing about 1,000 watches the watch capital of the West ran out of capital. The building was torn down in the 1930s.”

Rojas also is fond of pointing out the largest bird-of-paradise plant in the county, a treelike thing that towers above a house on Del Mar Street. In the 1930s, Chula Vista’s first resident doctor claimed to have the largest bird of paradise in the county, a claim that was supposedly challenged by the director of the San Diego Zoo, who was convinced that his own was larger. When the plants were measured, the doctor’s stems were judged supreme.

Since World War II Chula Vista has become “a modern little city,” according to Rojas. Light industry has replaced the once vast lemon groves, and apartments and tract homes have replaced the stately houses built by Frank Kimball.

On Jan. 1, the city annexed the Montgomery district, which includes the communities of Otay, Castle Park, Harborside and Woodland Park, and it hopes to annex Bonita. The annexations have “expanded the population, and crime has increased over the years, too. It’s no longer a little city where you can go down to the shopping center and know everybody,” Rojas said ruefully.

But he is hoping that through the efforts of the Chula Vista Historical Society--which is trying to raise funds for a museum--at least some of the past can be preserved. That would mean a lot to Rojas, whose feelings for the breezy little bayside community that he first saw 26 years ago run deep.

“Chula Vista and I grew up together,” he said simply.