Before there was a city of Fremont, there was the town of Irvington, and earlier still a busy crossroads called Washington Corners. Fields of grain once spilled over an open landscape, spurring production here of the first wheat harvesters in California. After local landowners built the Washington College of Science and Industry in the 1870s, they renamed its host town Irvington. By 1890, it boasted the largest, most advanced winery in the state and had earned the title, "Beautiful Irvington," home of gracious estates, apricot orchards, baseball, and first-class, high-bred trotters. Cows from Swiss dairy farms populated its green fields by the 1920s, and experimental airplanes dotted its blue skies soon after. In 1956, the City of Fremont absorbed Irvington, and its muddy sloughs were transformed into Central Park and lovely Lake Elizabeth.

About the Author

Philip Holmes and Jill M. Singleton, authors of the popular Images of America volume Niles, Fremont, are historians from the Museum of Local History. Assembling many never before published images of old Irvington from their extensive collections, they conduct a skilled excavation through the layers of a modern city neighborhood to find the story of the small town Irvington that lies beneath.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.