(San Diego - Pacific Beach) [Photograph of Calvin H. Turner's Lemon Orchard in Pacific Beach, San Diego] Midwinter in San Diego County California.

Anonymous

Published by Anonymous, 1897

About this Item

Anonymous / 1897 / (San Diego - Pacific Beach) [Photograph of Calvin H. Turner's Lemon Orchard in Pacific Beach, San Diego] Midwinter in San Diego County California. (SPD 5, 107796) Original albumen photograph. Cabinet card format, mounted on card. Minor light surface crease to image. Else condition is very good. Pacific Beach (San Diego) in 1897   Lemon Orchards This 1897 photograph stands among the earliest to show the San Diego community of Pacific Beach when it was still mostly covered with lemon orchards. Indeed, before 1893, with the exception of the San Diego College of Arts and Letters (built in 1888), Pacific Beach was an undeveloped village with a handful of homes. The subject of the photograph is a recently planted lemon orchard owned by Calvin H. Turner, one of the pioneer lemon orchardists of P.B., who poses next to some of his lemon trees along with his son Marcus Turner, and possibly his grandson, Terence Turner. About a dozen homes are visible in the background, with a completely undeveloped and treeless Mount Soledad in the distant background. An interesting early 20th-century ink inscription on the verso of the mount reads: Pacific Beach, California. February 1897. In Jany. 1893 there were about two houses. First lemon orchard set out in Feby. 1893. In Feby. 1897 there had been cut 1200 boxes during year. C.H. Turner had the sage brush cleared from Pacific Beach land during 1893   1894. The orchard in foreground belongs to C.H. Turner. 3 year old lemon   orange - with peaches between - 10 acres. Cut 22 boxes in February 97. Turner's orchards covered acreage in the vicinity south of present-day Grand Ave, between Ingraham and Lamont Streets. Calvin H. Turner and his wife Eliza had acquired blocks 249 and 272, between Grand and Reed Avenues, Kendall and Lamont streets and between the Honeywell lemon ranch north of Grand and the Raiter ranch south of Reed. The Turners may have piped their property but they never did build on it or move from San Diego, where he was listed as manager of the Pacific Beach Land Co. with an office at Sixth and Broadway. Their son Marcus Turner, however, did become a major player in the Pacific Beach real estate scene after the turn of the twentieth century, along with Madie Arnott Barr, who later became his wife Originally a furniture merchant, he was described in 1891 as a director of the Pacific Beach Company and in the 1893 and 1895 city directories he was listed as being with the Pacific Beach Land Company. - Webster, Another Side of History, page 116. Pacific Beach Real Estate Development Pacific Beach, San Diego, was subdivided and developed in the late 19th century, with the Pacific Beach Company formally laying out the community in 1887 as part of the broader boom of real estate speculation in Southern California. Promoted as a seaside resort with attractive lots, early development included a railroad line connecting the area to downtown San Diego. In its early years, Pacific Beach was primarily an agricultural community, renowned for its lemon orchards, which flourished due to the favorable climate and fertile soil. The lemon industry became a significant part of Pacific Beach s economy, with large-scale lemon ranches dominating the landscape until the early 20th century when residential and commercial development began to reshape the community. Seller Inventory # 107796

Bibliographic Details

Title: (San Diego - Pacific Beach) [Photograph of ...

Publisher: Anonymous

Publication Date: 1897

Binding: No Binding

Condition: VG

Book Type: Map