Mysteries in our city’s history

What would life be without a bit of mystery? This would explain the popularity of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal detective, Sherlock Holmes.

I bought a book of the exploits of this popular detective from our library’s book sale recently, and I thought it would be fun to look back at a few of our past mysteries here in Huntington Beach.

The first one I call “The Case of the Red-Headed Torpedo.”

It was a beautiful April day in Huntington Beach in 1919 as Huntington Beach Marshal E.E. French sat in his office reading an official notice he had just received.

As he read, his eyes widened, for it said that a red-tipped practice torpedo had somehow disappeared from the Navy’s submarine base in San Pedro and was thought to be drifting south along the coast toward our fair town.

Marshal French spent the next several days searching our coastline for the missing torpedo, but he found no sign of it, and to this day its location remains a mystery.

Our next mystery I call “The Case of the Hot Car.”

One August night in 1933, Art Wilson, superintendent for Standard Oil Co., received word that one of his tank trucks was on fire.

Wilson rushed out to Pacific Electric’s No. 8 oil well on our coast to find the vehicle ablaze and its driver, Earl Quiggle, standing nearby.

Wilson hobbled over to Quiggle ? he had sprained his ankle on a rock in an effort to hurry to the scene ? and asked him what happened.

Quiggle looked a mess ? his eyebrows were singed and he had lost some hair in the fire. He told Wilson that after filling the gas tank for the well’s engine, he had climbed into the cab and was getting ready to leave.

Just as he stepped on the starter, there was an explosion and the interior of the cab burst into flames.

Our heroic fire department arrived, but it was too late to save the vehicle.

What caused the explosion was never satisfactorily explained and remains a mystery to this day.

Our third mystery is called “The Case of the Grade A Standard.”

On a cool Jan. 14 in 1941, dairyman Virgil Brewster parked his milk wagon in front of his home on Speer Avenue.

When he returned to his wagon, he found it had mysteriously vanished.

He couldn’t figure out why anyone would steal it, especially since it had a special device on the carburetor that prevented it from going over 30 mph.

The next day he received word that his milk wagon had been found in Los Angeles.

Police believed that Brewster’s wagon had been taken by a trio of youths who also tried to burglarize Fred Swartz’s café earlier that day.

Swartz surprised the trio and fired a shot into the air, causing them to flee and leave their getaway car behind.

But Brewster didn’t care who stole his wagon, for he got it back and could again deliver milk to his customers.

Our fourth mystery we call “The Case of the Mysterious Apparition.”

It all started on June 11, 1945, when several employees of Standard Oil saw what looked like a parachute floating in the ocean near Golden West Street.

At about 5 p.m., Gene Belshe and Dave Jones heard a minor explosion coming from shore.

Several lifeguards, including Bud Higgins and Tom Henrickson, swam out to a crumpled object, but an oil slick on the water obscured the object and it could not be identified.

No one saw a plane crash, the Coast Guard and Navy patrolled the coast but found nothing, and no fliers were reported missing from local bases.

Could it have been a spy? No trace was ever found.

The last of our mysteries I call “The Case of the Missing Link.”

It was in October 1945 that Roscoe McIntosh began constructing a building on his property at 224 Main St.

When he had his property surveyed, he found it was one link shy ? that’s 7.92 inches ? smaller than it should have been.

That doesn’t sound like much, but McIntosh wanted to know who stole his property.

When Huntington Beach was laid out in the early days, the chain system of measurement was used.

One chain equals 66 feet, with 100 links to a chain.

Contractor Frank Catching solved the mystery when he discovered that the Security First National Bank at Main and Walnut measured 50 feet, 7.99 inches.

Since this was the first building to be built in the block, every other building in that block was one link off.

City Engineer Harry Overmyer came up with a solution: He asked the City Council to deed one link of its property to the corner building at Olive Street, permitting McIntosh to encroach one link onto his neighbor’s property, and so the case of the missing link was solved.