The Hammond family move to California in 1922
In 1860 my 2x great-grandparents Noah and Rosetta (Taylor) Hammond moved with their children from Massachusetts to the Denver, Colorado, area. Then in 1877 the family relocated by wagon train to the Pine River Valley of Colorado where they were to live for about 45 years. One of Noah and Rosetta’s children was my great-grandfather Nahum – he married Anna M. Little in Durango and their son Gilbert (my grandfather) was born in Durango in 1888. Noah, Nahum and Gilbert were blacksmiths, and with the advent of the automobile, blacksmithing was in a decline. Noah and Nahum Hammond and their families will be the topic of future posts – this post will focus on the move of Gilbert Hammond and family from Durango to Southern California.
Southern California in the 1920s was growing as newcomers, attracted by the Mediterranean climate and the promise of living the California Dream, grew the population from 50,000 in 1880 to 2.8 million in 1930.
In the summer of 1922 my grandparents Gilbert and Mamie (Boyce) Hammond with their two daughters moved from their home in Durango, Colorado, to Southern California. My mother Marian was 2 years old and her sister Marjorie was 12 years old.
In 1980, Mom interviewed her Marjorie about the move. Based on the places named in the narrative (including the photo of La Bajada Hill), it was a distance of about 1100 miles from Durango to Watts (Los Angeles). Here is the text of their conversation:
Marian: Do you know how the family happened to decide to sell the business (N.W. Hammond and Sons – Blacksmith) and move to California?
Marjorie: Yes. There wasn’t any business in Durango. This was when automobiles were coming in and the horses were going out. And there just wasn’t enough business to keep going.
Marian: So did they just fold the business up, or did they sell it to somebody?
Marjorie: I think they sold it but I’m not sure and I don’t think they ever got very much out of it.. It wasn’t the Depression but it was a very depressing time.
Marian: Then they sold the business and decided to move to California?
Marjorie: Yes, and at that time the Boyce grandparents (Joseph D. and Nettie) were already in California. They had been out here, I’ll guess a year – enough to be established. The Hammond grandparents (Nahum W. and Anna M.) stayed in Durango and they didn’t leave until sometime after that, after we got established. We were in our second house, as a matter of fact, before they came. It was really that there wasn’t enough money for the business to keep going.
Marian: Was Grandpa Hammond still in the business, or was he kind of retired?
Marjorie: Oh, no. When we went back to Durango, the only reason we went back was that he couldn’t keep the business going. And the folks (Gilbert and Mamie) had been very happy in Norwood, but he needed somebody to take care of the business and he couldn’t sell it. They needed the income from it. So they, our parents, went back to take over the business and it was not a happy thing for our mother. She didn’t want to go back. She felt that they were forced to buy the business that they didn’t want. It was just survival.
Marian: Was Uncle Owen (Hammond) involved in this at all?
Marjorie: No, not at all. He didn’t ever live in Durango in my memory. He was the eldest.
We were getting ready to leave Durango now and, in those days, there weren’t vans that came in and packed all your things up. We might not have had the money to pay for a van, in any case.
Marian: And no trailers, I guess, not like we know them today?
Marjorie: Oh, indeed not. So what everybody did was to either sell everything they had for what they could get from the second-hand man or wherever or they hired a railroad car if they had a lot of money, or they shipped by freight, which was, of course, expensive.
But what we did, the parents, was to sell everything except things that were small and treasured. That’s why we don’t have any old pieces of furniture, no old dishes, and this kind of thing. I want to put this in while I think of it: Grandma Hammond did have some nice pieces of glassware and china, very nice things that she collected. When they moved she was incapacitated and her housekeeper packed things and didn’t know how to pack. She packed heavy cut glass alongside crystal and everything went together in the bottom of the trunk.
When Grandma Hammond came out to California to unpack things, practically everything was destroyed, just in pieces.
But to go back to our parents and selling all of these things, we left Durango in an old Overland and I know there are pictures of this old car.
Marian: This was a touring car?
Marjorie: A touring car that sounded like a truck. We had to take a lot of food with us because there weren’t any places along the way to eat and we were going across really uninhabited land – across the Navajo reservation, for example.
Marian: They didn’t have restaurants like here and there?
Marjorie: Nothing, nothing. We were going through an area where there were very few towns at all because we went from Durango right across New Mexico. I don’t remember where we – I guess we went to Gallup, that would be where we got the transcontinental road, and in those days that was a long, slow road. We had to carry water, not a whole lot probably, but still it was a desert situation. And I can remember we had some home-cured bacon. Very basic things and there was nothing dehydrated or canned. Our meals would be like bacon and potatoes, just regular…
Marian: Basic?
Marjorie: Very basic, and I’m sure we had sandwiches of some kind at noon. But it was quite a problem to find water where we did get to where it was a true desert. Even at filling stations you had to pay for the water because the water was hauled in on railway tank cars. So you paid by the gallon for water to drink and for the radiator.
Marian: And there weren’t too many filling stations, I imagine?
Marjorie: Oh, no. Probably they took some extra gasoline along, I would guess. The car was very well loaded. The car had running boards so there were chests on the running boards, and everything was packed very compactly. The car was weighed down, and there had to be a lot of tools for repairing the car. As a matter of fact, the car had to be repaired on the way and we had to send for a part.
Again, you had to stay very independent. And so there were mechanics tools and the camping gear. There was nothing like a sleeping bag. We took regular quilts and things like that. The tires were poor and you had to take kits to patch tires along the way.
Marian: I remember those.
Marjorie: Yes, the tubes – you put patches on the tubes, you put blow-out patches in the casing. All of that equipment had to go along. We had a Coleman lantern – no, a Coleman lantern? – we had some kind of light, maybe it was a regular old kerosene lamp. I can’t remember.
Marian: It’s a wonder there was room for people.
Marjorie: Well, there was hardly any room for the people. It’s a good thing two of them were little people. Well, all four were, but there were two smaller. Now what else can I tell you about the basic part of getting out of town… packing that car was a big thing. Well, then, all of our things that we couldn’t take – that hadn’t been sold – somehow we got to use later. I suppose they were sent by freight. That’s all I can think of.
La Bajada Hill - near Sante Fe, New Mexico. Photo from Hammond family photo collection
Notes from Mamie Boyce?
Marian: Was it called Highway 66 then, or was it just the “east-west road”?
Marjorie: It probably was. We had a long way before we got to that. I really don’t remember the surface of the road when we were in New Mexico and Arizona, but I do know that they were working on the road. So there were a lot of detours that were pretty horrendous. [Route 66 was established in 1926.]
Also, one of the things we had to be careful of, there were very few bridges. What you’d do was go down one slope and up the other. Of course, at that time of year there didn’t happen to be any water but they were very aware of flash flood danger. We were probably going 15 miles an hour most of the way. The roads were very, very difficult so that was a real problem.
Marian: What did you do? Just camp beside the road?
Marjorie: Yes, that’s all. There were a few campgrounds that I vaguely remember but not true campgrounds until we got into California. The first one that I really remember was at Victorville and that’s where Grandpa Boyce found us. But along the way, this may have been when we had to order the car part and I can’t remember what it was – a gear kind of thing – we stayed for, I think, two weeks in Holbrook. We had to go there and wait. Also, there was a partly finished building there that was waiting for someone to come by down the road, who knew how to wire it for electric lights and everything. That was something that Daddy knew how to do and, of course, it was a way to make some money. So I think we stayed in that unfinished building instead of camping out. I think we did our camping inside this. As I recall, it was just like a big store – empty room. We stayed long enough for him to put in whatever lighting system they wanted.
Marian: Was there much traffic back and forth on the road?
Marjorie: No, very little. You were really on your own. We did rescue one car. It was a very elegant car and, of course, the parents were sure they were bootleggers because it was an elegant car and the people had money. In those days you didn’t ever take money for doing people a favor. I can’t remember what was done but it was only because we came along that their car was repaired.
Marian: They were just at the side of the road waiting?
Marjorie: Yes, they were completely stalled. I didn’t know how long they had been waiting when we got there. The woman in the car, when we got to civilization – we stayed together until we got into a town – to be nice to us she bought us each a Hershey bar, which, I am sure, was 10 times the size of Hershey bars today. Are we sort of thought “Oh, gee whiz, she thinks she’s so great,” because Grandma Hammond had given us a whole box of Hershey bars to take on the trip. Well, of course, we took them very gracefully and enjoyed them but she didn’t know our secret. She thought we were in poverty.
But there were very few people on the road. I don’t remember any bad weather, that is there were no sudden desert sand storms or rain showers or anything. I think we must have been very lucky.
Marian: Counting the two weeks in Holbrook, how long do you think the trip took?
Marjorie: I really cannot guess. On that I’d try to find out somebody else’s travel, somebody who’s written an early day travel book and estimate how many miles they made a day. [Based on this account of a family’s similar trip, daily distance averaged about 30 miles. So for the Hammonds, maybe 35-40 days? Not sure if this would include the 2 weeks in Holbrook.)
Marian: Because you couldn’t have made too many?
Marjorie: No, it took a long time. I remember that even though the distance wasn’t all that great by our terms today.
Marian: What do you do it in now – three days?
Marjorie: I’m not sure. I think three days wouldn’t be too far off. It really wouldn’t because you drive long days now at a higher speed. Camping out then, I’m sure that we got a very late start in the morning.
Marian: And had to stop early?
Marjorie: Yes. And cooking a regular breakfast – no quick foods – to cook a regular breakfast, get everything loaded and drive and then have to get in early at night in order to cook this meal – over a campfire I’m sure. I do remember we had a very heavy iron skillet – that was a basic thing. Probably an iron skillet and tea kettle. Can you imagine how heavy that was?
Marian: So, then you got to Victorville, and that was a real campground?
Marjorie: That was a real campground. As a matter of fact, it was a campground that was kind of semi-permanent. There were a lot of people who had been there for some time, waiting to decide where they were going to go from there.
What we didn’t know is that we had been so slow coming that Grandpa Boyce had gotten very excited and worried about us. I can’t remember why the parents hadn’t written to him – maybe the mail was slow in those days, too. But he just couldn’t stand it any longer so he got in his old car to set out to find us. I think they (the Boyce grandparents) were living in Watts then but I am not sure. I have a vague recollection. He had bought – I’m sure of this part – he had bought a small meat market.
Marian: I thought he had a meat market in Watts.
Marjorie: Yes, in a very poor section and I am sure that they saw him coming because he didn’t come anywhere near making a living. I don’t know – he may have abandoned it. I don’t know how he got rid of it. But he did come and find us. And that’s something that impressed me so much. To think on a transcontinental highway, to set out to find somebody and actually do it. But there weren’t that many cars on the road.
Marian: You’d never do it today.
Marjorie: There was no other choice [of road]. Well, now the freeways are divided. You don’t know who’s on the other side of the road. He was watching and he would stop cars, or when cars stopped, he’d ask if they had seen this Overland with Colorado license plates with two adults and two little girls in it. He kept asking questions and I don’t know whether he was – whether he came into the campground because he knew we were there or whether he came into the campground and we just happened to be there.
Marian: Everybody must have been flabbergasted, weren’t they?
Marjorie: Well, I don’t know. I wasn’t aware of that part of it, but it must have been a reasonable thing to do to set out to find somebody or he wouldn’t have undertaken it.
There weren’t very many cars on the road, and there was only one road to go. He knew we were out of Colorado and on our way. They probably wrote from Holbrook because we stayed there about two weeks. So that he knew exactly what road we were going to be on, there was no choice across the desert. It was just a matter of how far we had gotten along that road. Part of his concern were the two grandchildren, and he wanted to be of help. So that was the way it went.
Marian: Then you all went to Watts together? Was that more than a day’s trip, do you suppose? It must have been.
Marjorie: I’m sure it was. It would have taken at least two days, I think, from Victorville, because, you see, you are still traveling on very poor gravel roads across the desert. [Note: Victorville to Watts is about 90 miles.]
Marian: And over the Cajon pass?
Marjorie: At least we would have been coming down the pass, which would have been the big thing. But at that time it was the Old Cajon Road. I don’t know if you remember how steep it was, with switchbacks. Even coming down hill it would have been hazardous because brakes were poor at that time.
I can remember that it was a very winding, narrow road, very steep, and of course, having your brakes burn out was a hazard in those days. They really did burn out – you could see the charring.
When we got down to the bottom of Cajon Pass, there was a nice campground, a picnic ground. It would be near San Bernardino, I think. There were a lot of trees there. It was quite pretty and very welcome because we had been out in the desert area. That might have been the end of one day.
Marian: It could be because Victorville – from Victorville to there would be a considerable distance.
Marjorie: A considerable distance and there wouldn’t be too many choices for camping. There certainly was no water between. So anyway we went in there, and the reason it stayed in my mind so much is that it was a very nice place. There were cement picnic tables with cement benches around them and these had all been bought by service clubs, contributed. The parents were so impressed because we found the table that the Elks had given. But now when I go down Cajon Pass, the floods have wiped out every trace of all these trees. The campground area is totally gone.
Marian: I suppose the freeway, too, has…
Marjorie: The freeway, too. But the way it is now, the water is just – because the system has been tampered with, the old narrow channel just isn’t there anymore. It’s just destroyed. It doesn’t look like it did. It was a pretty area.
Marian: I can remember when you came down out of the canyon, it opened out a little bit and it was kind of pretty there. Maybe that’s where it was – before you got to San Bernardino.
Marjorie: It could have been. You were along a stream that had nice trees and shrubs. I haven’t seen anything and I’ve looked for it when I come down through there. The stream banks are all bare of any vegetation now. As a matter of fact, I can remember that, while we lived in Pomona, floods up there washed things out so I suppose it came out early on.
(Interview continues with an account of their first few years in Pomona, about 36 miles east of Watts.)
Map of locations mentioned Durango to Watts
Learn more about La Bajada Mesa
The Cajon Pass Campground opened in 1919 and was big news in its day. The Los Angeles Times had this headline: “Camp Cajon Takes Cake for Comfort, Gives Motor Travelers Great Welcome as They Come in from Desert.” and a lengthy article from the San Bernardino County Sun (10 April 1920) expressed much enthusiasm about a planned barbeque pit for the campground:
This article went on for 10 more column inches! Clipped from newspapers.com
Sadly, the campground was destroyed by flood in 1938. Read more about the history of the park here.
I hope you will agree with me that this is a pretty amazing tale with the unreliable car, unimproved roads, and lack of services along the way. And then, when the family doesn’t arrive when expected, Grandpa Boyce decided to go out to look for them - and found them!
Soon after their arrival, the family settled in Pomona, and Gilbert resumed blacksmithing. Story to be continued in future posts.
Upcoming posts
Frank Pearce and family in New Zealand
Letters from Nettie (Labarge) Boyce in Colorado to her sister in New York
The Danielsens come to California
