On yesterday's edition of Menifee Valley Talk Radio, Therese Daniels and Mieke Jacobs spent a portion of their show talking about property values in Sun City Core, and how the 55+ age requirement has worsened the situation.

Therese was asked if Sun City Core was always a 55+ community, to which she said, "no". Here's her answer, as transcribed from the show...

Therese: No. This has been my beef and my debate for sometime now. When Del Webb founded Sun City in the 1960s, mid-1960s, he founded it as an 18+ community. It was an adult-only community as age 18+, not 55. It remained like that until 1997. In 1997, one of the board members, Jean Loberge, I think that was her name, started a project called "Project 55". In order to... You see this is in the CC&Rs. In order to get something changed in the CC&Rs, one has to get a petition of at least 250.

Then after the petition is signed, then it goes to a ballot and then it's taken to general vote. What happened is, there was a little chicanery there. After she got her 250 signatures, I don't know what she was thinking, probably sitting around thinking, "Oh God, it's so much work to take this to the ballot, they're going to approve it anyhow. Why don't I just save them time and money." She took, and went over to the County Recorder, and recorded that, that there was a majority approval, and that we are now a 55+ community.

Nobody at the County Recorder's office challenged that. Now that is about as corrupt, and about as dishonest as you can get. But by golly let somebody grow verbenia, and if they don't like those flowers, those verbenia, they will literally fine the people and say you can get rid of those, they're weeds!

You know, they want everbody to conform to their arbitrary ways, but yet they wanna break every law and get away with it.

Now, and for the last, uh, since 1997 or 98, when they did that and recorded that, there was only one signature, ONE SIGNATURE, and that uh, filing. By the way not all seven board members, just her signature. Now, I just can't begin to you tell how outrageous that is. I hope that answers her question.

Mieke: In the um, Hi Therese, in the History of Sun City, which is kind of a proud, published item, how is that justified? How is that recorded, that in 1997 they moved to a 55, was that for convenience sake, or how is that looked at now?

Therese: Well that's a good question, and there's a mix. Some people just love the idea of a 55+. They hate the idea of families, they don't want children skateboarding in front of their house, and uh, they like to think that, you know, this is just a nice quiet little place for little old people to live.

Uh, but other people, and a large percentage of them, resented for one thing, it keeps their property values down, their opportunities to sell are less, because it's a limited market, because your buyers... Well a buyer could be younger than 55 to own a home in Sun City, but you must be 55+ to live in Sun City. Most buyers, if they're buying retired homes, are buying homes to live in. So this limits the buyers by as much as 60%. And in a slow market like this one, that's like you know, bringing it to a stand-still.

The market has just about come to a halt. And yet we have the best buys around. We have some of the best buys around today. And they can't even give them away!

Mieke: There are actually some nice homes in Sun City right now, for under a $100,000.

Therese: Yeah! You know, this is really truly a buyer's market. Not only are the homes available under that price, the interest rates low, very very low, the sellers are desperate out there, they'll do almost anything to make a sale. A buyer could come in and take advantage of this market. And as the real estate market pendulum swings, which as we've talked about before, it always does, they're going to have a very nice little investment for themselves.

Therese went on to explain that Sun City Core can change the community back to 18+, by running another petition and putting it to ballot.

Albeit the entire real estate market in Southern California is still in the dumps, Sun City Core's market is even worse because the 55+ requirement makes it very difficult to find buyers. That in turn made property values fall even further.

Labels: History, Sun-City, Sun-City-Civic-Association

The Californian published an article pertaining to the history of Menifee, particularly the man whom the community was named after, Luther Menifee Wilson.

It's a pretty entertaining read about the house he lived in, and the mining work he did...

http://www.nctimes.com/..../californian/22_47_5612_16_07.txt

Labels: History

You have to wonder how a name like "Ethanac" comes along.

A couple of history books I've across gives some explanation.

"History of Riverside County, California", written by Elmer Wallace Holmes, originally published in 1912, by the Historic Record Company, gives the following passage...

The Temescal Water Co. has its station at Ethanac, on the Santa Fe, a few miles southeast of Perris. Ethanac was named in honor of Ethan Allen Chase of Riverside, and is a pretty little town, the inhabitants being chiefly the employes of the Temescal Water Co.

"Building the Future: The Story of the Eastern Municipal Water District", published by the EMWD in 2000, gives the following passage...

In 1900, a town called Ethanac was laid out along the San Jacinto Valley Railway tracks by Riverside nurseryman Ethan Allen Chase, who named the tract after himself. A few settlers came, but the town never really developed.

And there you have it.

Labels: Ethanac, History

Canyon Lake resident Elinor Martin, whose family ranched in the area of Canyon Lake and Menifee Valley since the late 1800s, has a new book out called, "Images of America: Canyon Lake".

The book also includes some history about Menifee Valley.

Here's what The Friday Flyer has to say about the book...

Elinor writes about "The Early Years" after her grandfather, Henry Evans, moved to the Menifee Valley in 1890, eight years after California Southern Railroad built a line from Perris to Elsinore through what became known as Railroad Canyon. The railroad's first station was at Pinacate St., now the location of the Orange Empire Railway Museum and home to the Perris Valley Historical and Museum Association.

The railroad line was later sold to the Santa Fe Railroad and became part of its transcontinental line. Troubles with flooding beset the railroad almost from the beginning. On February 16, 1927, the railroad experienced its third washout since it was built. Pictures in Elinor’s book show how the bridge washed out from under the tracks at the southern end, where I-15 meets Railroad Canyon Rd.

The book is on sale for $19.99 at the Canyon Lake Market, Pepe's Restaurant and Pack, Wrap and Post.

Labels: Canyon-Lake, History

I came across an article publishing on another website, that details an account of someone spotting a flying saucer hovering over Menifee, California. This apparently took place in 1996 or so.

Here is an excerpt...

We were driving straight ahead, no other cars on the road and we came across these water pump things, and hovering over them was a huge craft! The best way I can describe this thing was it looked like a stereotypical saucer. The kind of things you would see in cartoons. A saucer shape, with the glass kind of bubble on top, black all the way around it and blinking lights on the sides. The lights blinking though is the thing that confuses us the most because the colors of the lights were red, white and blue, government craft??? We have no clue. Now you won't believe this but it was within I'd say 100 yards away from us on the left side of the road!! And so you get a feeling of what we saw, it wasn't "a light in the sky". It was like, well imagine standing in your driveway and looking across the street at the house on the other side and only hovering about 50 yards off the ground. That's the best way I can describe the distance away from us and the size of this thing. And it made NO NOISE!

I guess even aliens from outer space are looking at real estate here.

To read the full report, click the link below...

http://www.hbccufo.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=429

Labels: History, Strange-News, UFOs

There is a book covering the early days of Menifee and the area. You can buy this book at the chamber of commerce or at the Menifee Mail Station, next to Albertsons on Newport Road.
Check it out, it is very interesting if you like that kind of thing.

Labels: History

I was going through some old newspapers when I found an article about Sun City, California. The article was dated October 23, 1969, and appeared in the LaVerne Leader.

It goes into detail about Del Webb's innovative new sales technique that eliminated the traditional practice of building a set of model homes apart from the rest of the homes. Instead, they scattered their models throughout the community, and allowed people to buy them on the spot. This way potential buyers could see the models at various places around the community, and get a better idea of what the environments looked like.

The article also goes on to discuss the Sun City Shopping Center, and throws out numbers and figures. Good stuff for history buffs.

I transcribed the entire article below. Of course, the article is still under copyright protection, but being so old, I hope the folks at LaVerne Leader won't mind...

SUN CITY - They call this Del E. Webb Corporation resort retirement community Sun City for a reason.

Here, is the tranquil Menifee Valley in Riverside County, the smogless and blue skies have contributed more to the economic and demographic growth than anything, officials say.

Sun City's location 25 miles south of Riverside on U.S 395 is sun-drenched most of the year, and because of the climate and population increase has been somewhat surprising to Del E. Webb Corp. Sun City executives.

It has been the catalyst that has forced the Del E. Webb Corp to initiate a building program that calls for both commercial and housing expansion at Sun City, now with 6,400 population.

The company will construct immediately $1 million in new homes and add $800,000 in commercial construction to the $1.6 million Sun City shopping center, reports Joe Aubin, Project Manager.

Aubin said Sun City has launched a different sales approach to its model home complex, and it has already responsible for the sale of $500,000 in new dwellings.

Heretofore, he said, Sun City prided itself in the display of model homes in a special area. Now, a completely new approach to model home exhibit is being achieved.

Aubin said the company will start its model home exhibit program with the construction of 20 models, valued at $500,000.

The models will be scattered throughout the expanding areas of Sun City, and they will be sold upon immediate demand, Aubin said.

He said this approach is in reverse of the traditional, which has been to build a model home complex and permit potential buyers to make tours of the models.


"All units will be available for immediate sale and occupancy whenever demanded", says E. Wayne Grippin, project sales manager for the Del E. Webb Corp. "We are in the position of constructing a series of new models on a continuing basis. This eliminates the model area and provides greater flexibility to people who get the opportunity to study the environment as it really is."

The homes are brand new designs, fresh from the drawing boards of Del E. Webb Corp. architects in Phoenix, Arizona. He said home sales will be directed from a new sales headquarters to be located at the Sun City entrance from U.S. 395.

Detailing Sun City's 1969 growth, Aubin said that the Sun City shopping center should gross $4 million this year, up about 10% over 1968.

Additions to the shopping center area are seven new shops and one service station. A $500,000 Safeway store is expected to start construction soon.

Other expansion moves include increasing the size of the Sun City community recreation center and the travel trailer parking area and planned additions are the Perris Masonic Lodge and County Fire Station. A U.S. Post Office was constructed recently.

Sun City already has a 7,000-ft. regulation golf course. In December, it will open another golf course, one block away. The new golf course will 3,817 yds. and par 61. "It should relieve the playing pressure on the regulation course", says Aubin. The new course cost $500,000.

Aubin reports that 254 home were sold last year at Sun City, with a real estate value of $6,350,000. He says home sales this year will approach this figure.

Besides the climate, Aubin says, one of the greatest attractions of Sun City is the community recreation center with its more than 100 clubs and activities, including swimming, shuffleboard, lawnbowling and social, hobby, travel and civic groups.

"Residents of Sun City are the cream of the nation's retired intellectuals and professionals," he says. "Your neighbor may be a former football player or actor, or he may be an economist or an archaeologist. They have come here from state in the union and from 15 foreign countries."

He says Sun City features both single-family and apartment environments. The new Sun City homes, priced $20,790 to $32,990, are designed in the manner of Contemporary, Mediterranean, and Spanish, and there is on that instills the architectual flavor of old fashioned country living.

Sun City is reaching via the San Bernardino Freeway, right at the Riverside-Corona off-ramp to U.S. 60 and then left to U.S. 395.

Labels: History, Sun-City

Was going through another old book, this one entitled, "My Seventy Years in California, 1857-1927", by Jackson Alpheus Graves. Graves was born in Iowa in 1852. His family left there in 1857 to go to California.

Graves grew up in Northern California, but later moved to Los Angeles. In his book he describes his life's memories, and shares some information about the politics, the social scene, and industry of Southern California. And he also mentions something about the way of life in Menifee, though he doesn't mention Menifee by name.

Here are some paragraphs I found, located in Chapter XXIII of this book, concerning William Newport, and a "quail preserve":

Harry was as good a fisherman as he was a shot. Whenever we went out, we always got game. A crowd of us had a quail preserve of 2,000 acres fenced and posted, some nine miles south of Perris, in Riverside County. We had good shooting there until the March flying field was built there, during the war. They actually scared all the quail out of that section.

I sometimes think that it is a wonder that I am alive, considering some of the fool things I have done for the sake of shooting. After I lost my left limb, and before I had an artificial limb, I went out to our grounds several times, quail shooting. We used to stop at Billy Newport's (a bluff, hale, good-natured Englishman). He was a good sport and a good shot. He would drive me around in a wagon, and he would get in the most impossible places. One day we were away up on a hillside, amid rocks, boulders and brush. The ground was so steep that the wagon absolutely careened. Chanslor, Schwarz and Klokke were in good shooting, near the foot of this small mountain. All at once, and immense flock of quail flew up in front of them, clear to the top of the mountain. Newport handed me the reins, and jumped out, and said he would run around and head them off. He went around the side of the mountain, until he got opposite where the quail lit, and then started up to the summit. Pretty soon I heard him shooting, and the quail began to whiz past me. I sat there in the wagon and killed six, which fell in various places on that steep hillside. When the flight ceased, I tied the reins to the spring of the seat, so the horses could not move, got out of the wagon, and on my crutches wandered around on that sidehill, and got my six birds. The last one was on a flat rock at the foot of a steep declivity, which I could not possibly negotiate with my crutches. I laid them down, sat down, and went down the hill on my hands with my one foot out in front of me. I got the bird, again sat down, and went up the declivity backwards on my hands, got to my crutches, and when Newport came back I was in the wagon, my six birds lying on the seat. He could hardly believe that I had done this.

Could the "quail preserve", which Graves described as being nine miles south of Perris, be why Quail Valley got its name?

By the way, the "Harry" that Graves mentions in the first paragraph refers to his chauffeur, Harry Graves, no relation.

Labels: History, Quail-Valley, William-Newport

William Newport was one of the earliest pioneers of Menifee. Yes, he's the guy whom Newport Road was named after. I found an entry in an old book entitled, "History of Riverside County, California", written by Elmer Wallace Holmes, originally published in 1912, by the Historic Record Company.

In the Chapter 18, entitled, "The Perris Valley", is a paragraph describing William Newport:

Another pioneer to be mentioned in the history of the valley is William Newport, rancher in Menifee. Mr. Newport was born in England in 1856. He came to this country in 1876, and came to Perris valley in 1885 and purchased 2,000 acres of land. When he moved to Menifee, although a young man, he resembled the patriarchs, as there were twelve wagons in his train, loaded with implements, provisions, lumber, and his cook-house on wheels was a bulding 9x18 feet. He found the valley very dry, and inhabited only by a few poor people; but poor as they were pitied the young man who, as they thought, was to make a failure of farming. After unloading the caravan he built a good ranch house and two large barns, and began farming his 2,000 acres, nearly every foot of which was tillable. Could you see this same ranch today you would find a beautiful home presided over by a dignified, queenly wife, who was Miss Katherine Lloyd, also a native of England. There are four fine, manly boys, sons of Mr. and Mrs. Newport, and one daughter, Katherine. The house is filled with many luxuries and interesting curios, and the grounds about the place is large and beautiful. Mr. Newport has been a most valuable factor in showing what can be done with land in that section when properly handled.

Further into the same chapter, William Newport is mentioned again, this time in the subject of water:

In 1904 William Newport brought action against the Temescal Water Co. to prevent them from pumping water from the Perris valley into the Corona valley, for he believed the water level in the Perris valley was being lowered. He was defeated in the courts, however, and the Temescal Water Co. still operates at Ethanac.

To shed some light on this subject, the Perris valley had been supplied with water from Bear Valley reservoir, a dammed lake up in the San Bernardino Mountains. Water was delivered via steel pipe. But by the middle 1890's, that water supply dwindled, and the farms of the Perris Valley died, and the farmers packed up and left.

Then in 1895, a farmer by the name of Dr. W. B. Payton, moved in with the intent of digging a well, and using a gasoline engine to pump out water to irrigate lands. It worked. Soon, farmers everywhere were digging wells to irrigate their crops. Then the Temescal Water Co. began digging wells and piped the water north to Corona. This brought the ire of William Newport, who filed the lawsuit.

But also note that the Temescal Water Co. had its pumping station at "Ethanac". The same history book also explains the origins of that unusual name:

The Temescal Water Co. has its station at Ethanac, on the Santa Fe, a few miles southeast of Perris. Ethanac was named in honor of Ethan Allen Chase of Riverside, and is a pretty little town, the inhabitants being chiefly the employes of the Temescal Water Co.

Labels: Ethanac, History, William-Newport

If any of you are interested in studying the history of Menifee, I came across a scanned and imaged copy of "History of Riverside County, California", written by Elmer Wallace Holmes, originally published in 1912, by the Historic Record Company.

In the Chapter 18, entitled, "The Perris Valley", there is the story of the Aikin Family, which describes the trip they made when travelling to their permanent home in the Menifee Valley:

Mining and "dry farming" now began to attract the outside world to this section, and people began to come in and settle on claims. In 1882 came Mr. and Mrs. Henry W. Aikin and settled on a 160-acre tract in Menifee. Mr. Aikin is a native of Wisconsin Mrs. Aikin is a native daughter. They are the oldest pioneers living in the valley. When they staked their claim not a tree was to be seen growing in the valley. In November, 1882, they left their home in Los Angeles county for Menifee, the party consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Aikin, a year old babe, Mrs. Aikin's sister, Miss Mary Lee, and a young man by the name of Shoemaker. They traveled with a canvas-covered wagon, bring what farming implements they could. They were two days making the trip, camping over night on the plains between Pomona and Riverside.

The next morning, they drove a few miles to the river, where the horses were watered and the party breakfasted. While preparing breakfast, Mrs. Aikin climbed up to get something out of the wagon, and in stepping backward to the ground she took hold of an iron rod and in some way her wedding ring was broken. No doubt this was taken by the young wife as a peculiar omen.

When they started on again, a hard north wind was blowing, so Mr. Aikin fastened the canvas curtain down in front of the wagon, and they saw nothing of the country through which they were passing until they reached the top of Box Springs grade. The wind had ceased blowing, so the curtain was raised, and the San Jacinto plains stretched away before them, a barren plains with rocky hills. You can imagine the disappointment of the young wife, who had pictured a valley, surrounded by rolling hills, covered with live-oak trees. To her it seemed hardly fit for a sheep pasture.

When the party neared the Copeland ranch, a man came running toward them beckoning. When they had driven near enough, he told them an old man had been killed in a well thye had been digging, a large bucket of rock and dirt having fallen on the old man while working down in the well. Mr. Aikin and Mr. Shoemaker went at once to his assistance. Mr. Aikin took half of the windlass rope and by means of it climbed down into the well, which was about forty feet deep. The old man, whose name was Abe Reed, was not killed, but very badly hurt. They brought him out of the well and put him on a moving machine, which Mr. Aikin was trailing behind his wagon, and after making him as comfortable as possible they took him to his own cabin a few miles farther on. He asked them to drive to Pinacate station and tell his sister-in-law, a Mrs. Reed, about his accident.

When they reached Pinacate they found the Hickey and Reynolds families celebrating the wedding of Prico Hickey and Miss Mattie Reynolds. Miss Mattie Reynolds was the sister of A. W. Reynolds, who still lives in the Perris Valley. Leaving Pinacate they drove on a few miles farther south, and on the close of Thanksgiving Day reached the place that for many years was to be their home.

The writer can well imagine the loneliness of the days and nights that followed their coming into this seemingly desert land. No doubt the young wife bore it bravely, all for love's sweet sake - love for her husband and the baby boy. That baby now is a successful business man in Los Angeles - the city of his mother's birth.

Labels: Henry-Aikin, History