First Lady of Huntington Beach -- Mary Reed

A LOOK BACK

First off, I recently received news of the passing of Robert “Bob”

McGuire, 94, who lived in Huntington Beach for many years. His home

was where the parking lot of the Downtown Police station is today.

Bob was the first Eagle Scout in Troop No. 1, Russ Paxton told me,

and I hope to have a column on Bob in the near future.

But this week, we’ll look at a truly remarkable member of a

pioneering Huntington Beach family and, to some, the First Lady of

Huntington Beach.

When Mary Reed came to the area, the tiny beach town of Pacific

City had just been organized.

Mary’s father was born in Missouri, and her mother in Iowa, at a

time when our country was growing westward in the early 1800s. These

two families each crossed the plains in covered wagons pulled by ox

teams and each struggled to cross the rugged Rocky Mountains.

They both arrived in California to settle in the Sacramento

Valley, where they homesteaded the land and worked the fields. Mary’s

parents were married in 1858. Mary was born in 1863 in Sutter County,

but the family soon moved to the San Diego area, where Mary’s father

farmed 160 acres of land.

When I see school buses picking up children to bring them to

school a half mile away, I wonder how they would like to walk five

miles to school and five miles back home. That is just what Mary had

to do each day because all the horses on her farm were needed to pull

the plow. But through it all, Mary received a fine and proper

education.

During this time, Mary met a handsome older man by the name of

Jacob T. Reed, and in a short time, the two were wed, in 1882. Mary

and Jacob (Jake) farmed in and around Valley Center near San Diego

for several years. The Reeds moved to Fountain Valley in 1897 before

the townsfolk changed the name to Talbert.

Three years later, the Reeds pulled up stakes and relocated to

Westminster to live on the old Edward’s ranch. Jake and Mary operated

a dairy for a while on land where Westminster Memorial Park is today.

Mary bought the fixtures from the Sycamore restaurant in Santa

Ana.

On April 1, 1903, the Reeds moved to Pacific City (Huntington

Beach) to live. They saw that the small town needed a restaurant and

a good hotel, so they rented a two-story house on Pacific Coast

Highway between 2nd and 3rd streets from John N. Anderson.

They fixed the house into Pacific City’s first bed and breakfast,

with the top half housing the rooms for the Pacific Hotel and the

bottom half for the restaurant.

Mary would do the cooking for the guests that stayed there. At

this time, there were only about 12 families living here. When the

town changed its name to Huntington Beach with the backing of Henry

Huntington, people began coming down in greater numbers on the old

Pacific Electric Red Car.

Business boomed and kept Mary busy at her restaurant. In 1905,

Jake was made manager of the Huntington Beach Company’s ranch. Clara

Christianson, Pacific City and Huntington Beach’s first school

teacher, boarded at Reed’s hotel, and so did Huntington Beach’s first

storekeeper and postmaster, Walter Smith.

Before the Huntington Inn was built by Henry Huntington on the

corner of 8th Street and Pacific Coast Highway for the men who laid

the tracks for the Red Car, the men stayed at Reed’s Pacific Hotel.

Mary, along with a few ladies, was instrumental in starting the

first school upstairs in a building in the first block of Main

Street. These ladies also cleaned and equipped a small wooden

building near 3rd Street and Walnut Avenue that became the site of

Huntington Beach’s first library.

Mary relocated her restaurant several times in those early years.

She opened a new and used furniture store in town and later operated

a curio shop on the same site where years before she helped start the

library.

Mary became a charter member of the Huntington Beach Woman’s Club

and an officer in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which tried

to keep the city dry of the demon rum.

During World War I, Mary served in the Women’s Relief Corps No.

110. She was still an active charter member during World War II.

In 1943, the Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce awarded Mary a

life membership in its organization.

One of Mary’s pastimes was taking old newspapers and modeling them

into different objects. Some of these artworks were exhibited in

hobby shows all around Southern California.

Mary and Jake lived on Walnut Avenue and they were the parents of

six children -- Muryle, Martha, Eulallia, Grace, Minnie and Wesley.

Mary’s devotion to her town and family extended throughout her

entire life in Huntington Beach. Today, there is no plaque or marker

to this remarkable woman, but Mary Reed was a truly gifted woman and

a woman that Huntington Beach can be very proud to have had in its

history.

* JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington

Beach resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at

P.O. Box 7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.