Petitioners Seek to Save Glendora’s Orange Trees

Mail carrier Marshall Mouw was making his rounds in October when he saw bulldozers at work in one of the city’s four remaining orange groves, making way for the construction of 84 town houses.

A few weeks later, Mouw attended a meeting of the city Planning Commission at which a 24-home development was approved on Boal Ranch, another five-acre orange grove near the center of the city.

“Without thinking at all of citrus trees, they were letting what was once most important to the city, its heritage, go by the boards,” said Mouw, who lives near Boal Ranch.

At its height in 1947, Glendora’s citrus industry boasted more than 5,000 acres of orange and lemon groves. Six packing houses annually processed about 78,000 tons of citrus fruit worth $4 million to $8 million.

Victims to Development

But, like elsewhere in the San Gabriel Valley, most of the Glendora groves were razed 30 years ago, victims of Southern California’s postwar building boom and an epidemic of tristeza, or “quick-decline disease.”

With the city’s centennial celebration just under way, only about 20 acres of the orange groves remain. Patches of old groves dot many backyards, but most of the remaining trees are dying from lack of care. Only one 10-acre grove, the Cotta Villa Ranch in the remote hills of Easley Canyon, is still operating commercially.

“It’s like they had said their goodbys to the orange trees 30 years ago,” Mouw said about city officials.

Angry at the possible fate of the Boal Ranch grove, Mouw formed Save the Orange Trees.

“You just cannot think about this community without thinking of orange trees or citrus fruit,” Mouw said.

Armed With Petition

Armed with a petition signed by 1,500 residents, Mouw and more than 125 supporters packed the City Council chambers Dec. 9 for a vote on the housing development proposed for Boal Ranch.

Despite the protest, the council approved the project. But council members also agreed to consider establishing a memorial orange grove elsewhere in the city and tentatively approved a 15-tree memorial grove behind the city’s historical museum.

The museum site was recommended as one of the best of 20 possible sites in a Parks and Recreation Department review.

Neither Mouw nor Bonnie Deering, curator of the museum and a member of the Glendora Historical Society, is happy with that solution.

Deering said that if the grove is put there, four to eight parking spaces designated in the museum’s expansion plan would be lost.

‘We Want the Real Thing’

Mouw hopes that part of an actual grove can be preserved. “We want the real thing,” he said.

He and his group are seeking $120,000 to buy 15,000 square feet of Boal Ranch. The existing Boal Ranch grove is on that site, and Mouw wants to save some of those trees and plant new ones.

Some of the trees, which date to the 1890s, suffer from quick-decline disease, in which the fruit shrinks, the leaves fall off and the tree finally dies. All the trees in the memorial eventually would be replaced.

Mouw’s group also hopes that more money can be raised to save the 13-room, 87-year-old ranch house.

Some city officials, including Mayor Kenneth Prestesater, like the idea of a memorial grove but think it should be on land already owned by the city, such as the museum site, to save money.

Squeezed by Time

But Mouw thinks it should go on Boal Ranch.

Delmor Boal, who inherited the grove from his parents, William and Eleanor, sold the land recently to San Dimas developer Ernest Hix.

Hix said construction on the site is slated to begin in March and that Mouw must have the $120,000 necessary to buy the property by then.

“I’m not sure it’s a good thing to have for a development,” Hix said of a possible memorial grove. “It could possibly decrease the value of the surrounding property.”

Mouw vows to raise the money for the lots. “If it doesn’t happen here, and if it doesn’t happen now, it’ll never happen--and that will be a crying shame,” he said.

In nearby La Verne, another group, the La Verne Heritage Foundation, worked with that city to preserve 2 1/2 acres of a citrus grove as well as a six-room ranch house.

‘It’s a Really Neat Thing’

The grove and restored house, on land donated to the city, are slated to be opened to the public next fall.

“It can work and it’s really a neat thing. I think its important in this area that we preserve a little bit of our roots,” said David Sardison, chairman of the La Verne Heritage Park project.

In Glendora, Mouw’s preservation effort took many city officials by surprise.

“We really hadn’t had people talk about saving trees or anything until this came up,” said George Menooshian, city parks and recreation director. “Most of the people who are living here are living on them (former orange groves). They (the residents) would never have been here if we saved all” the trees.

‘We Should Do Something’

Councilman John Gordon, whose great-grandfather owned a 70-acre grove, said Mouw’s group brought to the council’s attention “that citrus groves are pretty much a thing of the past in our community and that we should do something to try to preserve them.”

“I remember as a child going out on a cold winter morning and getting the smudge pots ready,” Gordon said, referring to oil-burning stoves used to prevent frost damage to the trees.

“We’re lucky to have any groves left, with the value of land today,” said Gordon, who heads a committee examining possible grove sites.

“I think everybody is saddened” by the demise of the groves in the city, “but I think that the independent property owner has rights too.”

Difficult to Maintain

It will not be inexpensive or easy maintain a memorial grove, he said. “These are not trees you just plant and forget about.”

Mayor Prestesater, who worked in orange groves as a youth, said, “I don’t know how far this has gone, but I can say that if the guy (Mouw) comes in with a $120,000 check, I’d say great.”

However, he said he doubts Mouw can raise the money in time.

“We’re not going to let it drop,” Prestesater said. “We’re going to come up with a suitable location.”

The mayor says he has a different concept for a memorial grove--one that “has a tractor in it, a smudge pot and a mannequin with an orange or lemon sack standing halfway up a ladder. And it has to have a wrought-iron fence around it.” The public could look at the grove but not walk in it.

He said that if Mouw’s group envisions an orange grove “as a place with green grass and picnic areas, to me, that’s not an orange grove. I know what orange grove is. I’ve worked in them all my life.”

Mouw wants to make sure that any memorial grove is easily accessible to the public.

“It won’t be a producing grove as such,” he said. “That’s not the point.”