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.
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