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Hit or Myth by Daniel M. Kelty
Back in the day I was proud of my walks across the Rio Hondo bridge into El Monte, California. My goal was Kelty Hardware on Valley Blvd. and the Grayhound station next to the El Monte Legion Stadium. At the station I picked up copies each month of Classics Illustrated comics. I bound my comics and still have them.
I was a happy kid until my world shattered in 1986
When the Santa Fe tradition was finally debunked. In reality, it was really just a resting place along the Spanish trail. So my pride, in a “coon skin cap” was a myth.
As a retired librarian of 49 years I had to research and rebuild the pride of El Monte. So I attacked the giant rival in the next county, San Bernardino. They claimed to be the first “American” city in southern California. I challenged this myth with the counter claim that El Monte was actually the first “American” settlement.
On August 9, 1850 about 90 Brewsterite Saints left Independence, Missouri to plant a colony in “Bashan”[1] On March 23, 1851 over 500 LDS Saints left Payson, Utah for California to plant a colony in the San Bernardino Valley.
On June 11, 1851 the Utah caravan unloaded their last wagon in the sycamore grove at Devore. They were 31 miles away from their new home at Chino ranch. Isaac Willliams, brother in law to Stephen C. Foster, doctor of the Mormon Batttalion changed his mind and refused to sell so the families waited until October 1, to enter their new home the San Bernardino rancho.
[1] Kelty, Daniel. End of the Santa Fe Trail? THE THOMPSONS. Brewsterite name for Zion, located in Colorado River Valley
On July 17, 1851 Ira Thompson of the Brewsterite group found a river with lots of water and remembered, “We would make our home at the first place where water was to be found in abundance. “ “The next morning the travelers crossed the sandy river bottom and met Fielding Gibson who helped they camp at the Bob Hicks’ place until they settled on the Willow Grove Ranch.[1]
Thus, El Monte was first. However the two cities had very much in common and in difference, Both were Mormon colonies with San Bernardino being the orthodox city while El Monte was home for dissidents like Thompson, Hazen Aldrich, and Joseph Clapp who helped in organizing the first RLDS branch in June 1864. Both cities had southerner colonists. A Mississippian cluster came with the colony to SB, while Texans and folks from Arkansas grew El Monte.
Lexington (early name for Monte) became a raucous western town of saloons and confederatism while SB had religious upstanding church going saints. After 1857, when the main LDS returned to Utah, this changed as Methodists and Baptists took over El Monte and the rifraf moved east to buy the empty homes in SB.
Now as to what kind of moral to this tale. Like Moses at the Jordan. If the saints had gotten the Chino they would not have had the lumber and water from Big Bear Lake, and El Monte instead of waving a confederate flag in the street became a melting pot. “It was here at the El Monte Legion Stadium for the first time that all races were welcome by the city…and guess what? They were all there just to have fun and listen to music.”[2]
[1] Root 15
[2] Miriam Caldwell The Lost History of El Monte’s Legion Stadium https://www.diaryofvilma.com/diaryblog/the-lost-history-of-el-montes-legion-stadium