Riverside’s Regal Route Bridges Past and Present

Victoria Avenue once looked as regal as the British queen it was named for.

The 10-mile boulevard used to link the new and growing city of Riverside to the nearby orange groves that were fast becoming the symbol of sunny and exotic Southern California in the early 1900s.

“The avenue,” as locals call it, seems made for leisurely afternoon drives. Early in the century, corseted women and handsomely dressed men rode down the boulevard in horse-drawn carriages.

The avenue remained a popular drive until World War II.

Thousands of tall trees and flowering bushes provided shade and atmosphere. And the citrus groves just behind the rows of trees perfumed the air.

Victoria Avenue became known across the nation, because growers named a brand of oranges after the boulevard, which was depicted on shipping crate labels.

But the groves began disappearing in the 1950s, as farmland gave way to suburban tracts. As the groves left, city leaders paid less and less attention to the avenue, historians said.

The trees and flowers along the divided roadway and in its median were not maintained, historians said. As the groves disappeared, so did the connections to the water source that kept the median green.

But residents and community groups have been trying to reverse the decline.

“It’s well worth saving,” said Dr. Dan Hays, a retired surgeon and president of the Victoria Avenue Historic Restoration Project. “This is not only aesthetically one of the most beautiful parkways in the world ... it’s an outstanding example of Victorian landscape design.”

Plans for Victoria Avenue were begun in 1890 by Swiss landscape artist Franz Hosp. The divided boulevard is 175 feet wide with a 36-foot wide median garden. The almost 6,000 trees of 67 species were placed in quarter-mile sections of the median and the borders, Hays said.

The parkway was dedicated to Queen Victoria in 1900 and completed two years later.

“It was really unique because it wasn’t created through the center of town, but through the center of this agricultural area,” said Lori A. Yates, president of Victoria Avenue Forever, which organizes tree dedications as a way to pay for planting new trees.

“It addresses how incredibly important the citrus industry was to the city of Riverside.”

That history has driven efforts to restore the street.

In 1979 and 1989, voters passed initiatives that prevented large housing tracts and businesses from rising along the boulevard.

Property there cannot be subdivided into less than five-acre lots, said Craig Aaron, the city’s principal planner.

For 12 years, the Victoria Avenue Historic Restoration Project has been working to extend the irrigation system that waters the remaining citrus groves adjacent to the avenue. It also plans to replace trees that have died from neglect.

The historic restoration project has completed its agenda in some sections of the parkway by applying for federal grants and appealing to private donors, Hays said. In conjunction with the city, the organization buried utility cables between Myrtle and Central avenues.

Future projects include replacing dead eucalyptus trees near Jefferson Street using a $275,000 grant from the California Heritage Fund. Hays said his organization is waiting for an additional grant to repair the area between Adams and Harrison streets.

Yates said the original members of Victoria Avenue Forever were stewards for the avenue, “because the city wasn’t handling it .... The group that formed basically went to bat and told the city, ‘You have to take better care of Victoria Avenue.’ “Another major project for Yates’ group was replacing the roses that once filled the median, a variety called ragged robin. Today, the roses color the parkway’s center because of volunteers who propagate them.

Victoria Avenue Forever also got the historic portion of the parkway placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Riverside designated the avenue as a linear park, which has advantages when applying for grants, Aaron said.

Yates said preserving the thoroughfare is necessary because of its beauty and its historical importance.

“The most common comments that are made [in community meetings] are that Victoria is a step out of time, that it’s peaceful and tranquil ... and that it’s away from all the hustle and bustle,” Yates said.

Although most of the citrus groves are gone, fans say the avenue still has a place in Riverside.

Its current role is to link downtown Riverside and the remaining orange groves, they say. Bicyclists and joggers also use paths by the side of the road.

“It’s really amazing,” Yates said. “People say, ‘For God’s sake, preserve Victoria.’ ”