Wintersburg Buildings, Relics Recall Huntington Beach’s Past

For two decades before railroad baron Henry Huntington’s name was tagged onto a beachside town, a small farming community called Wintersburg operated 4 miles inland.

Wintersburg was founded in the 1880s by farmer Henry Winters on the northern fringe of what today is the Oak View area. Its residents included pioneers of the region--with such names as Gothard, Nichols and Graham--and a sizable Japanese community.

As the area evolved, it expanded and attracted a predominantly Latino population, and was still known as Wintersburg until it was annexed by Huntington Beach in the 1960s.

Through the decades, a handful of structures from Wintersburg’s original Japanese community has survived.

The remaining relics are easy to spot while driving eastbound on Warner Avenue. Built long before the avenue was, the structures jut out about 10 feet from the regular curb line, like old jagged edges that haven’t been smoothed out by progress.

Encroaching onto Warner at Gothard Street is the Warner Avenue Baptist Church, built in 1906 as the home of a Japanese Methodist church. Next door is a two-story home built in 1910 for the Furutas, a prominent Japanese family.

The curb line then swerves outward, before slicing back onto Warner at Nichols Street, where a manse, believed to have been constructed between 1904 and 1906, now stands, said Jerry Person, a member of the city’s Historic Resources Board.

Today, neither the manse nor the Furuta House is particularly alluring. The manse is painted faded pink with green trim, which is chipping. Its roof sags in several areas, and the wooden structure is punctured and frayed.

The Furuta House appears more well kept. Its brown and white paint similarly is chipping and fading, but the home’s design is still an attraction with its high roof line and spacious porch.

The Warner Avenue Baptist Church, which the Methodists used until moving down the street in 1964, is the best maintained of the original Wintersburg structures.

The church, with its distinctive white cross above a four-story steeple, shows signs of aging, but remains attractive. The stained-glass windows are faded but charming, and the white-and-brown exterior conjures an image of the small-town church it once was.