Before it was the name of a hotel chain, a ramada was an open-air shelter used by Native American families during the daytime. Below is a replica of a ramada, constructed of natural materials, at the Kumeyaay Ipai Interpretive Center (KIIC) in Poway. (Photo credit V. Rossi) The center, in the heart of Poway, preserves the site of a village inhabited by the Kumeyaay, the original residents of this county going back some 2,000 years.

During the heat of the day, a Kumeyaay mother might do some food preparation or basket-weaving under this shelter while watching her small children.

The name “ramada” was, of course, Spanish in origin. But the Spanish-speaking settlers often affixed their own words to denote Native American places or objects. Or they sometimes tried to express the indigenous words in Spanish, as in “Paguay,” a mispronuniciation of the Kumeyaay word “Pagui,” which meant the meeting place of two creeks, the place we today call “Poway.”

Actually, there may be more of a historical association between the word “ramada,” and the resort idea than most people realize. Here’s what I mean.

Judge Benjamin Hayes, a lawyer originally from Maryland, moved to California in 1850 and began a career that made him a district court judge and general mover and shaker in southern California politics.

In 1867, Hayes wrote a letter to his brother-in-law about a visit he paid between court circuits to the area we now call Warner Springs. This area was originally called Kupa, after the indigenous people who first settled it. That was not what they called themselves, but remember what I said a couple of paragraphs back about that language thing.

Sixteen years before, in 1851, the native people, after enduring decades of oppression and cruelty, first at the hands of the Spaniards, then from their Mexican and Anglo successors, staged an uprising. The revolt ultimately was put down, but it resulted in the recognition of some rights for the indigenous people over the springs area, at least for a time.

“As to the Indian title, some importance,” Hayes wrote in 1867. “I know of no state law or state authority that could dislodge the Indians of the village …..Their planting grounds surround the famous Hot Springs. This is of great value.”

The Indians well recognized that value, as Hayes pointed out.

“I paid them a dollar for my bath, at the rustic bathing establishment they have constructed,” wrote Hayes, “consisting of two goods boxes sunk in the ground, sheltered by a ramada, and communicating with the spring by means of a trough a quarter of a mile long.”

The people we today know as the Cupeños would lose their springs, and their home village. They would eventually regain them, but that’s too much history, sordid and triumphal, to portray in one or two blog posts. I would urge readers interested in the history of San Diego County to visit KIIC and the Cupa Cultural Center.

For more information, including hours, visit the KIIC website at http://www.friendsofthekumeyaay.org/ and the Cupa Cultural Center’s website at http://www.palatribe.com/cupa-cultural-center .

Sources for this post included historic San Diego newspapers and two pamphlets, Introduction to the Cupeño People, published by the Cupa Cultural Center, and Cupeños Trail of Tears, by Milford Wayne Donaldson on behalf of E Clampus Vitus. The latter pamphlet was published to accompany the dedication of a commemorative plaque at Warner Springs Ranch in 2003.

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Accounts of Easter in San Diego papers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries sound similar to our celebrations today. One can find some variations perhaps owing to the more rural nature and sensibilities of the populace then, such as this account from the April 15, 1895 San Diego Union:

“The old custom of Easter egg-rolling was observed at La Jolla yesterday, a large number of persons participating in the pastime. The search for rabbits’ nests was also a feature of the days observance of Easter, both being thoroughly enjoyed.”

An item in the April 6, 1896 Union described the streets of Coronado on Easter Sunday morning as “alive with church goers” with “exquisite flowers” decorating the churches. “Many out-of-town visitors were on the beach during the day, enjoying the sea, the hotel grounds and court and listening to the orchestra concert.”

A 1915 event for members of a children’s music class, appearing in the Union, described “Easter songs and Easter singing games. Numerous surprises greeted the little folks throughout the afternoon. Dainty marshmallow chickens and highly colored real Easter eggs delighted the children. Mesdames S. J. Wines, S. S. Hage, Ed. Gamle, C. M. Richardson, W. Clarence Randal and Ruth Brattan were among the patron guests.”

Side by side with notices about Easter worship and cultural celebrations were notices about Passover.

“Tifereth Israel will hold services in their synagogue at the corner of Eighth and I streets, H. Meyer officiating,” concluded an April 3, 1909 Union article on the significance of the feast. “The Reforned congregation will hold services at the Temple Beth Israel, corner Beach and Second streets, Rev. Ellinger officiating. An elaborate program of music has been planned.”

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Ad from 1901 San Diego City Directory

It was a saloon. But its owner, Peter Becker, sometimes referred to it as a “resort,” or “drinking resort,” in newspaper ads. It turns out, in looking at newspapers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that the word “resort” would sometimes be used for saloons and restaurants, perhaps to convey the image of a place where patrons could relax, drink and eat in peace and comfort.

That certainly appears to have been Becker’s marketing strategy. Becker was a German immigrant who came to San Diego in the late 1880s. The word “eintracht” in German means “peace, harmony, or unity.”

An early ad for the place, in the San Diego Evening Tribune on February 20, 1896, , was pretty basic: “Fine Wines, Liquors and Segars. Hot Lunch forenoon. Steam and lager beer on draught. Mixed drinks a specialty.” That was it.

But the ads ran daily, and soon became bigger. A typical one in the Evening Tribune of June 9, 1897 proclaimed:

“PRIMA BEER

Always cool and fresh and just the right temperature for drinking can always be found at the EINTRACHT,

959 Fifth Street, Two doors from the corner of D.

Headquarters for the San Diego Prima bottled and keg beer.

PETER BECKER, Proprietor.”

The business must have justified his ad budget, because in July of 1898, he announced in the San Diego Union that he was moving “the well-known and popular ‘EINTRACHT’ saloon” to “more spacious and convenient rooms…at 1327 D, between Fourth and Fifth Streets.”

Becker could be clever and topically opportunistic in his ads as well. An ad from the fall of 1898 in the Evening Tribune appears from the headline to be an election notice. “NOTICE OF PRIMARIES,” it says in bold caps, “For the election of delegates to the various conventions to nominate CANDIDATES for COUNTY OFFICES will be announced soon. In the meantime all CANDIDATES irrespective of party will be enabled to better keep their proper temperature by cooling off with PRIMA BEER at the ‘Eintracht’……”

Sometimes the ads got smaller again, but they were still clever. Like this one from April 1903:

“The Mississippi Rising

So is the quality of liquors at Peter Becker’s Eintracht, D near Fifth Street.”

Becker ran the Eintracht through 1912, then moved on to run other establishments. It obviously paid to advertise.

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How does a place in north San Diego County, occupying former Mexican rancho land, wind up with the German name for “olive grove?”

In 1880 Warren and Frank Kimball, already big landowners in National City, Chula Vista and Jamul, found themselves owning the 4,400 acre Rancho Las Encinitas.

They advertised the rancho for sale, and in 1884 they found a buyer in Theodore Pinther, a German immigrant then living in Denver who had an idea to develop a German-speaking colony in his new country. By June of 1884 twenty people had signed up as fee-paying members of the Colony of Olivenhain.

The rancho land was purchased on October 3, 1884. On October 31, the colonists, by then totaling 67 men, women and children, boarded a train in Denver and headed west.

It turned out that conditions on the rancho were not quite what the colonists had been led to expect. Promotional brochures had promised the immigrants a rich, well-watered soil that was already yielding an abundance of olives. The reality was quite different.

The colonists began digging wells, but, time and time again, they came up dry. “The colonists finally realized the awful truth,” states a website on the colony’s history, “the land lacked sufficient water!”

There were other revelations too, such as overcharges on land prices, secret sales commissions paid to Pinther by the Kimball brothers, and other provisions of a contract originally written in English and only provided in German translation at the demand of increasingly irate colonists.

Pinther and another leader were literally forced to leave the community and the colonists demanded a new contract from the Kimball brothers. A team of arbitrators, including banker Jacob Gruendike, were brought in, and a new deal was negotiated.

Many of the colonists left. But the small group who stayed began to work the land and make the best of it. A report in the San Diego Union on May 23, 1889 called Olivenhain “beautiful and prosperous. Many of the first settlers, through the fraud and misrepresentations of their agents, suffered much loss and disappointment, and some of them had to look elsewhere. But those who remained are thriving….”

Among their most successful crops in that period were sugar beets, which inspired a San Diego Union article in September 1890 with a pun for a title, “Beats Other Beets.”

The article was reporting on an analysis of county beet crops for sugar content. The analysis was conducted by by J. D. Spreckels, who knew something about sugar.

“The latest analysis shows that Olivenhain, Leucadia, La Mesa, and Otay produce beets richer in sugar and with a greater coefficient of purity than is required, a gratifying fact that will have its bearing on Spreckel Bros.’ decision as to what portions of the State shall have the ten sugaries they contemplate erecting.”

Sources for this post included historic San Diego newspapers, the website of the Olivenhain Town Council, http://www.olivenhain.org/ , Leland Fetzer’s 2005 book, San Diego County Place Names A to Z, and the 1890 book, Illustrated History of Southern California, by the Lewis Publishing Company.

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“Mr. Cambron has been very busy the past week putting his orchard and vineyard in apple pie order. With working his ranch and taking care of the roads we think friend Tom must have his hands full.”

From the “Poway Points” column in the Poway Progress newspaper, March 23, 1895.

Thomas Jerome Cambron was a busy man indeed. He’d been farming and raising livestock in the Poway Valley since arriving from Illinois around 1873. By the 1890s he was farming some 300 acres and apparently doing pretty well.

“T. J. Cambron last year had some 1,200 pounds of dried peaches, and he anticipates having about the same quantity this year,” proclaimed the Poway Progress on July 21, 1894. “His principal crop of peaches comprises the early and late Crawfords, and they are among the best raised.”

A week later that same paper reported Cambron taking 2,300 pounds of hay over the Poway Grade into San Diego, where he sold it “a the rate of $16.50 a ton.”

Early in 1895, Cambron was appointed a roadmaster. The San Diego County government appointed local citizens to do road maintenance in unincorporated communities. Remember, at that time the Poway Valley and its immediate environs were still considered “the back country.” Locals were hired and paid a nominal wage to grade and clear the then-unpaved roads.

There are a number of accounts in Poway and San Diego papers from the mid-1890s to around 1904 that describe Cambron working to repair various roads, sometimes in the company of one or two others, at other times with what is described as “a force of men.”

“T. J. Cambron and A Danielson have repaired the worst break in the road to Stowe, an improvement which is appreciated by the mail carrier on that route,” read an account in the Progress of August 3, 1895.

He also managed to find the time to participate in the civic life of his community.

“T. J. Cambron and Adams Chapin have been named as deputy county clerks in this township,” announced the “Poway Notes” column in the San Diego Union of January 29, 1903.Cambron’s name also appears in jury lists and as a polling official in Poway during elections.

He wasn’t as well known as some other San Diego pioneers, but he certainly did his civic duty, while also tending a farm and raising two children with his wife Martha.

Here’s to Good Citizen T. J. Cambron!

Sources for this post included historic Poway and San Diego newspapers, the 1880 and 1900 U. S. Censuses, and the archives of the Poway Historical and Memorial Society.

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