![]() Atop a hill near the town center-known today as Beacon Hill but once known as Chocolate Drop Mountain-he built a 38-feet tall lighthouse with a powerful revolving light that pulsated like the North Star in the night and became the symbol of Norco. Norco was essentially in “the middle of nowhere,” so Clark sought to draw attention to his remote community. Serving Norco’s children from 1924 to 1947, that school survives as the Norco Community Center. The American Legion now sits on that site and to its west, Clark built the Norco School. To the south of these buildings, Clark built a pavilion where town-folk and farmers could meet, dance, pray, and exchange ideas. The Land Company building was given a new façade shortly after the City incorporated in 1964 and now is the main part of the Norco Branch Library. Upham’s Drug Store was built next door to the offices of North Corona Land Company and the Orange Heights Water Company later in the 1920s, and is now occupied by the Friends of the Library and the Norco Historical Society. Early Norconians dined at the Norco Grill, gathered at a meeting hall and checked out books at a library staffed by volunteers from the Women’s Progressive Club. The Norco Store offered groceries, clothing, hardware, dry goods, auto parts, and other essentials. There, a Norco resident could arrange to have a home built, buy a prefabricated chicken coop, purchase irrigation pipes, buy a tractor or have one serviced. North of the Norco Store, Clark created a manufacturing district with a warehouse, plumbing shop, pipe-making facility, concrete block-manufacturing operation, machine shop, lumber yard, and construction department. Clark named his new town “Norco” a contraction of the first two parts of his company’s name, the North Corona Land Company.Ĭlark’s town consisted of five Norco Farms subdivisions surrounding a village center containing a general store, gasoline station and the Norco Garage. He promoted his development to the “average Joe” looking for a chance to make a living from the sweat of his brow. He believed in the goodness of mankind and that independence fosters creative energies and economic prosperity. By 1922, with most of the lots sold, Citrus Belt Land Company was looking for a buyer of its unsold lots and several thousand acres of un-subdivided land north of these tracts.Įnter, Rex Clark, a businessman but also a dreamer and passionate, creative individual. This tract became an area of successful farms yielding peaches, pears, apricots, alfalfa, peanuts, sweet potatoes, lettuce, and other vegetables. Citrus Belt platted Orchard Heights, a subdivision of farm lots consuming most of the land south of today’s Fifth Street. Hole and Pillsbury sold most of the land west of the Norco Hills to investors that came to be known as the Citrus Belt Land Company. In the Norco Hills of Riverside, he built a beautiful stone mansion where he lived until his death in 1936. ![]() Hole retained the portion of the rancho east of the Norco Hills and subdivided it into farm and town lot parcels, but also farmed a large portion of these lands for nearly 30 years. Hole and George Pillsbury handed over $500,000 to buy the sleeping giant. Well, Rip blinked his eyes open in 1908 as Willits J. The Los Angeles Times, commenting on its long delayed sale, observed, “…as the years passed…La Sierra entered on a sleep longer than that of Rip Van Winkle ….” Its owner, the Stearns Rancho Company, held onto the land in hopes of selling it whole to a potential developer. Unlike other rancho properties in Southern California, this one remained undivided well past the boom years of the late nineteenth century. At the turn of the twentieth century the area that would become Norco consisted of the open range of Rancho La Sierra (Sepulveda). However, Norco did not start with Rex Clark. Clark saw Norco as a refuge for city dwellers-no boss, no commute, no postage stamp-sized apartment-just fresh air and the satisfaction of making your own way in the world. Norco was developer Rex Clark’s vision of a utopian settlement of independent farmers reaping the rewards of their hard work on small farms and ranches. That’s what greeted readers of the Los Angeles Times on April 26, 1923.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |