The two Huntingtons

A LOOK BACK

Last month, I had the honor of attending not one, but two Huntington

high school alumni picnics in a single weekend.

When I stopped at Lake Park at 11 a.m. that Sunday, there were

already more than 100 people there, and more were still coming. And

who should I first run into? None other then Ann Minnie and Arline

Howard.

Little did these two ladies know that I had been sent on a spy

mission to the picnic.

You see, the day before I had attended another Huntington alumni

picnic at El Dorado Park in Long Beach. This picnic was for students

who attended Huntington Park High School. My orders were to penetrate

the Huntington Beach High picnic and find out how they could get so

many former students to attend their reunion picnic.

Volunteers such as Minnie and Howard were equally matched by

Huntington Park’s Glen Powers, Sheila Kasparian Tierney and Gary

Moffett and their fellow Spartans.

So I thought this week, we would look at some of the history that

binds Huntington Beach and Huntington Park together. The first is, of

course, a similarity in names.

In 1901, William Newland, Phil Stanton, and General Finley laid

out 40 acres of land and called it Pacific City. Also in 1901, A.L.

Burbank and E.V. Baker laid out 100 acres of land and called it

Sunrise Track, and later, L.A. Park.

Both groups enlisted Henry Huntington to bring his Pacific

Electric Red Car into town and both groups renamed their towns after

Huntington.

For many years, Huntington Beach was just over three square miles,

and so was Huntington Park.

It was in a small room above Smith’s Grocery at 121 Main St. in

Huntington Beach that a small group of residents gathered in June

1904 to form a church in town. The church that they organized was the

First United Methodist Church of Huntington Beach.

Thirty miles to the north, a group of 12 residents were gathered

in a one-room schoolhouse to organize their church to be called the

First United Methodist Church of Huntington Park.

That same year, a small number of folks in Huntington Beach

organized the First Baptist Church in a makeshift building at 6th

Street and Orange Avenue. That makeshift building was torn down in

1905 and was replaced with a new building that was completed and

dedicated on May 10, 1906. The building still stands.

About this time, the folks in Huntington Park were organizing

their First Baptist Church. I came across a newspaper clipping of the

church in Huntington Park, and the two look so much alike.

Huntington Beach was incorporated as a city on Feb. 17, 1909, with

Ed Manning as its first mayor. The city to the north was incorporated

three years earlier, on Sept. 1, 1906, with A.A. Weber as its first

mayor.

When Huntington Beach began, our business streets were Main Street

and Ocean Avenue. The main business thoroughfare for Huntington Park

is Pacific Boulevard. So together, we had the “Pacific” “Ocean,” get

it?

Just after both towns were formed, each had its own local

newspaper -- the Huntington Beach News and the Huntington Park

Signal.

Football was all the rage in 1925. A man named “Cap” Sheue came to

Huntington Beach High to begin a legendary career. About that same

time over at Huntington Park High, the legendary athletic coach “Pop”

Squire began his career.

The old guy in the red suit with white fur trim ushered in the

Christmas holiday in Huntington Beach with a Santa Claus parade down

Main Street, and then did the same along Pacific Boulevard in the

city to the north.

When the big quake occurred on March 10, 1933, both cities

suffered greatly, and several of the buildings were reduced to

rubble.

Both towns, in the early years, needed the guidance of a Woman’s

Club to set the city’s course for the future -- for the beach town in

1908 and in 1906 in Huntington Park.

In 1904, J.B. Corbett became the first president of the Huntington

Beach Chamber of Commerce. Huntington Park’s chamber can trace its

history back to the same year, when they formed the Huntington Park

Improvement Assn. Bet they never had anyone as great as our own

William Gallienne.

Both towns boasted an Elks Lodge, a Rotary Club, etc.

When I attended Huntington Park High, my principal was Noble

Waite, and when I came to Huntington Beach, who should I find running

the town’s drug store but his son, Noble Waite.

One of the more popular businesses in Huntington Beach for

tourists and residents is the Sugar Shack Cafe. Believe it or not,

there was a Sugar Shack on Florence Avenue just west of Pacific

Boulevard in the 1970s.

These are just a few historical similarities that the two cities

of Huntington share together in our golden past. About my first

spying mission at Lake Park, the ladies of Huntington Beach High

bribed me to forget what I had learned with a big In N Out hamburger.

After a couple bites of the bribe, I forgot everything.

* 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.