Island’s founding barely above board, or above water

A man named William S. Collins founded Balboa Island. I regret that I

never met him. He was must have been the ultimate promoter. He and

P.T. Barnum should have been partners.

While still in his 30s, he surfaced in Southern California from a

somewhat murky background in Arizona -- oil wells, gold mines,

subdivisions, a savings and loan company, one of those industries

that attract promoters -- and plunged right in.

The first thing he did was buy from James McFadden, in 1902, all

of the present city of Newport Beach from the Santa Ana River to 9th

Street in Balboa. He got it for $70 an acre.

It has been reported that McFadden boasted that he had duped a

sucker. Actually, McFadden never knew what hit him. Collins went into

partnership with Henry Huntington to bring the Pacific Electric to

Newport Beach. The price was a 100-foot right of way through Newport,

plus a big mudflat called Electric Island. While Electric Island was

practically worthless as a mudflat, with a little artful dredging, it

became Lido Isle.

William S. Collins was off and running.

In 1903, he opened a bank. To the surprise of no one, the bank

closed a year later. Just what happened to the bank’s deposits is not

recorded. In the meantime, he had disposed of all his real estate

holdings on the peninsula and turned his attention to what eventually

became Balboa Island.

Its first name was Snipe Island, after a particularly hardy shore

bird. It had to be hardy to live with all the mosquitoes there were

in those days. Its next name was Caruso Island, obviously after

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Caruso. Tradition has it that some poor

wretch spent a night on the mudflat/sandbar with all those mosquitoes

and announced that not even Robinson Caruso could live there. Collins

immediately renamed the mudflat Balboa Island.

As he surveyed his newly named island, he observed that most of it

was under water at high tide. Not a problem. With a handy little

dredger, he filled in the low places and began to sell lots “with all

improvements in and paid for.”

Whether paid for or not, the improvements consisted of a sewer

system that emptied into the bay at street ends and an almost useless

bulkhead, which merely kept water out long enough to sell lots. He

promised a fine concrete bridge to the mainland, an eight-car ferry

and a 150-room hotel. Of those, a bridge was built, but it was a

ramshackle wooden one.

As the world knows, Balboa Island, like Caesar’s Gaul, is divided

into three parts. There is the main island. To the east, there is the

Little Island separated from the main island by the so-called Grand

Canal, which is neither grand nor much of a canal, particularly at

low tide. On the western tip, there is a small island that he

modestly named Collins Island. There, he built a castle for his

fourth wife, Apolena.

Like most promoters, Collins had his ups and downs, and by 1915,

he had lost all his holdings on Balboa Island except Apolena’s

castle. Lots that he had originally offered for as much as $760 were

now going for as little as $25.

Shortly thereafter, William S. Collins and, I presume, Apolena,

left for parts unknown. Rumor has it that he went into the High

Sierras, where he subdivided and sold mountain meadows and didn’t

have to worry about high and low tides, but my suspicion is that he

gravitated to Florida, which had a land boom in the 1920s. Selling

underwater lots became an art form. Collins would have felt right at

home.

Wherever he ended up, he left his mark here: Collins Island,

Collins Avenue and Apolena Street. How many others in the history of

this town have left an island and a street named after themselves,

plus a street named after his wife, particularly his fourth wife?

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.