On this date in 1914, the Santa Ana Register ran this ad for the new “Atlantic City of the West” — Seal Beach!
By now, we’re all familiar with the Seal Beach booster pitch: incredible real estate opportunities, safe beach, fun for you and your family, act now or you’ll lose out! Seal Beach took decades to take off the way its promoters had hoped, but it’s hard not to love an ad with a seal with a cane and a top hat.
C’mon, who doesn’t want a lot near the spray? Only $500!
– Michael Dobkins
Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?
If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.
Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you.
This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.
On this date in 1932 at 12:55 a.m., a southbound Pacific Electric interurban train struck a man and woman on a curve between Seal Beach and the Surfside Colony. Depending on which newspaper account you read, the couple was either sitting on or walking along the tracks when the accident occurred.
This aerial photo taken on May 30, 1931 shows how the Pacific Electric tracks curve just after the Anaheim Bay bridge and then again as they approach the Surfside Colony. Either curve could be the location of the accident.
The Pacific Electric motorman, Lee Marshall, and conductor J. E. Beardsley told investigators they stopped when they saw what appeared to be a box on the tracks, only to discover the couple. Due to the early morning hour, the only other witnesses were the passengers in the street car.
The male victim was Jay P. Bassett, a 37 year old meat cutter, a prominent member of the Long Beach post of the American Legion and the father of three children. He was taken to the Long Beach Community Hospital where he died from a fractured skull at 2:30 a.m.. He never regained consciousness.
The woman was killed instantly and remained unidentified for hours at Dixon’s Chapel in Huntington Beach. She was described as approximately 25 years of age, well-dressed and wearing a dark brown coat and tan-colored dress, and having beautiful red hair. One newspaper couldn’t resist sharing that her body had been broken, with one foot completely severed and the other foot almost cut off, and that death was probably caused by a jagged hole in her skull.
Blood and gore sells newspapers.
She was identified later that night as Eloise Wilson at Dixon’s chapel by her ex-husband, Harry H. Wilson, and her 18 year old daughter, Marguerite, who fainted when she saw her mother. Eloise was actually 43 years-0ld and the mother of four.
No reporter from any of the newspapers covering the accident bothered to report how Jay’s wife, Isabelle, reacted to the news and details of her husband’s death.
Two days later, Coroner Earl Abbey’s jury exonerated Marshall and Beardsley of any wrong doing.
Whatever circumstances brought Jay and Eloise together on that last night of their lives, they’ve been kept separated in the years since. Jay is buried in the Long Beach Municipal Cemetery, and Eloise’s final resting place is in the Westminster Memorial Park.
courtesy of findagrave.comcourtesy of findagrave.com
– Michael Dobkins
Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?
If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.
Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you.
This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.
On this date in 1906, both the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Herald ran this ad pushing the idea that Bay City (Seal Beach’s original name) was “to Be the Best Lighted Beach On the Southern California Coast” and promising that “Plans to This End Are Now Being Made and They Will Be Carried Out.” The ad also mentioned that “Four New Two-Story Cottages” were “Contracts for or Plans Drawn Last Week.”
Further details were shared in identically worded articles that ran in the real estate sections for both the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Herald. Mrs. Dwight Whiting of Los Angeles had let a contract for a handsome two-story cottage on First Street, W.J. Edwards has ordered plans for a two-story home at Second Street and Central Avenue (today’s Central Way), Dr. W. J. Nance planned to build a another two-story cottage at Fifth Street and Ocean Avenue, and finally John L. Plummer was preparing to build his, you guessed it, a two-story cottage somewhere on Fifth Street.
There’s a weak irony that in publicizing so many two-stories, two Los Angeles newspapers ran the exact same single story. I hate to break it to idealists out there, but newspapers printing press releases as news is not a recent trend in journalism. In both stories, the new 1500-foot pier and a new hotel and store building were also mentioned, and, of course, the plans to make light up the beach.
“This is a pretty big contract, and the outcome is awaited with considerable interest,” noted the Times and Herald. The Times story concluded there, but the Herald added one additional sentence: The Bayside Land company has a habit of carrying out its promises.”
Also running on this date in both the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Herald were two similar ads for Pacific Electric that mentioned Bay City. The ad copy is exactly the same but the layouts are slightly different with different choices in typography, so ad copy was probably given to each newspaper the ads themselves were designed in-house.
Both shared that Los Angeles people are fortunate because “If they chance to fare seaward they can get fast cars at almost any hour for San Pedro, the wonderful harbor, and for one Beach, the Atlantic City of the Pacific coast; for Alamitos Bay, Bay City, Huntington Beach or Newport.”
So Los Angeles people had that going for them. Which is good.
I’ve shared the Pacific Electric ad below for comparison.
– Michael Dobkins
Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?
If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.
Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you.
This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.
On this date, the Los Angeles Times ran a story on eighteen year old John L. Scott and the baby seal he adopted.
Earlier in March, John had been working in his hot dog stand when he noticed a shimmering shape in the surf. Assuming it was a fish, John, apparently an intrepid soul, charged into the surf to capture it. When he swam closer and heard plaintive bleats, John realized he was not tracking a fish, but was after a baby seal. He took the baby seal home and began nursing it by feeding it milk every two to three hours. John’s theory was that Pat’s mother had been shot by fishermen.
In the days that followed, “Pat” as John named him, would follow and play with his rescuer both on land and in the sea. Their antics attracted local attention and word-of-mouth publicity, and the Santa Ana Register sent a reporter to cover the the unlikely pair on March 5th. That story mentioned that Pat and John would swim together three times a day off Dolphin Avenue between 9 and 10 am, again between 1 and 3 pm, and finally between 4 and 5 pm before retiring to John’s home for the night.
Not to be outdone and knowing a good human (and marine mammal) interest story when they saw it, the editors sent a reporter and a photographer to Seal Beach. Neither the Register or Times saw fit to ask John’s mother or the rest of the family what they thought about his new pet.
It’s hard to tell from the photo, but it appears that Pat didn’t have ear flaps, which would make him a seal and not a pet seal lion as featured in this 1917 post.
There was also never a follow up story covering Pat’s eventual fate, but any marine biologist worth his or her salt water will tell you that adopting a seal or seal lion as a pet is not a good idea and will likely not end well for the critter. We can only hope that at some stage Pat moved on to have a full normal life in the ocean.
(Incidentally, John seemed to be prone to car accidents. When he was fourteen, John broke his leg in Naples when he was thrown from a reckless friend’s car when it overturned while passing another car. In 1933, John was behind the driver’s seat this time and narrowly escaped when the delivery truck he was driving was clipped by a Pacific Electric train at Electric Avenue and Seventeenth Street in Seal Beach. The truck spun around and was knocked 50 feet down the road.)
– Michael Dobkins
Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?
If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.
Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you.
This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.
On this date in 1957, Los Angles auctioneer Ted Gustafson was in Seal Beach to sell the 9-unit motel at 257 Bay Boulevard (Seal Beach Boulevard today) to the highest bidder.
Not described in the Los Angeles Times ad was how the south building of the motel had been built at an angle to the boulevard to accommodate the adjacent Pacific Electric right of way. When the U.S. Navy took possession of Anaheim Landing in 1944, the red car tracks were rerouted from Electric Avenue at Fifteenth Street to meet Pacific Coast Highway past Bay Boulevard. By 1957, the Pacific Electric red cars were no longer running on the track, but the supply trains used the track as a spur for loading well into the sixties.
There are no details to share of how the auction went, but someone must have won because the motel is still there, converted into apartments under the cozy and inviting name of Snug Harbor.
– Michael Dobkins
Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?
If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.
Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you.
This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.
– Michael Dobkins
