INTRODUCTION

For thousands of years, the Tongva people inhabited the region that encompassed the entire Los Angeles basin. They ruled the region relatively unchallenged until Spain established the first European settlements in California in 1771.

The first settlement in the area was Mission San Gabriel, which was established near the San Gabriel River in 1776. San Gabriel flourished and soon became one of the most successful of the 21 missions, with large numbers of livestock and vast farmland extending far eastward to encompass the rolling hills and valleys of present-day Diamond Bar.

As the missions flourished, their influence and power grew throughout California, and when Mexico became independent from Spain in 1821, a movement began to reduce Spanish power and distribute their lands. The secularization of the missions began in 1830, and the first land grant in the Pomona Valley was issued on April 15, 1837, when Mexican governor Juan Bautista Alvarado conveyed a 22,000-acre parcel of land to California natives Ygnacio Palomares and Ricardo Vejar, who named their new home Rancho San Jose.

In 1840, a second land grant, containing approximately 1,004 acres south of the San Jose Creek, was deeded to Jose de la Luz Linares. This property, which he named Rancho Los Nogales (Ranch of Walnut Trees), is the current location of the city of Diamond Bar.

After Linares died in 1847, his widow, Maria, sold a choice portion of the ranch to Vejar, who already owned the adjacent Rancho San Jose, for $100 in merchandise, 100 calves, and the assumption of her late husband’s debts. Over the course of the next 10 years, Vejar, along with his sons Ramon and Francisco, obtained possession of the entire original Los Nogales land grant, increasing his land assets to more than 13,000 acres and making him the fifth-wealthiest landowner in Los Angeles County.

Like other area ranch owners, Vejar was land rich but cash poor, so he resorted to borrowing money to feed his cattle and keep his land. He mortgaged his property but was unable to repay his loan, and in 1864, his property passed to the ownership of the merchants.

Soon after, the merchants sold the land and everything on it for $30,000 to a young livestock trader named Louis Phillips. Over the next few years, Phillips parceled large portions of the former ranchos and sold the land to new settlers from the South who were trying to escape the devastation of the Civil War.

One of the first settlers to whom Phillips sold a portion of the ranch was William “Uncle Billy” Rubottom, who established a tavern and overland stage station (for the Butterfield route) near where the Orange Freeway (Route 57) now crosses Pomona Boulevard. He called the community Spadra, after his hometown in Arkansas, and this became the first named settlement in the area.

Over the next 50 years, the modern age came to the area via the railroads and neighboring settlements, but the Rancho Los Nogales area remained much the same as it had been when Vejar and Palomares settled it.

The legacy of the bountiful land continued when Frederick E. Lewis II, a young man from New York, visited California in search of the perfect setting to fulfill his boyhood dream of owning a ranch. It took him several years to discover the rolling hills and tranquil valleys of the former Rancho Los Nogales, but in 1918, Lewis purchased 7,800 acres of choice land near the town of Spadra, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles.

The primary focus at Diamond Bar Ranch was the establishment of a Duroc-Jersey hog-breeding operation. Lewis constructed a large, 1,200-foot-long farrowing house that could accommodate up to 250 sows and their litters. Soon, the hog-breeding operation grew to include more than 7,500 Duroc-Jersey brood sows. With that many animals to feed, Lewis discovered that the cost of raising hogs on grain in Southern California was not profitable, so he partnered with another hog farmer, A.B. Miller of Fontana, to solve the problem. The two men decided that garbage was a more cost-effective food source for the hogs, and in 1920, they secured a garbage-hauling contract from the City of Los Angeles. Within a few years, the hog business was thriving, and Diamond Bar Ranch had earned a reputation as breeders of high-quality champions.

A lesser known but much more significant activity on the ranch was the breeding of Arabian horses. In late 1918, Lewis made his initial purchase of 10 Arabian horses from the Hingham Stock Farm, owned by Peter Bradley, in Massachusetts. Bradley was credited with financing a significant import in 1906, when Homer Davenport received permission from the Sultan of Turkey to export Arabian horses. Over the course of nine years, 50 registered Davenport Arabians, whose bloodlines could be traced to that original importation, were bred on the Diamond Bar Ranch. The impact of the Lewis horse-breeding operation was of such significance that bloodlines of modern horses can still be traced to those original Lewis-bred Arabians.

Lewis operated the Diamond Bar Ranch for 25 years; in that time, he successfully transformed the rural property into one of the most respected and renowned ranches in Southern California.

In 1943, Lewis sold his ranch to William A. Bartholomae, well-known and respected businessman and president of Bartholomae Oil Corporation of Fullerton. The sale of the Diamond Bar Ranch was one of the largest land deals in Southern California. For $850,000, Bartholomae took title of the ranch’s 7,800 acres. In addition to buying the ranch, Bartholomae also acquired Lewis’s Balboa home, where he moored his yacht, the Sea Diamond.

Bartholomae, a millionaire with movie-star good looks, spent 13 years overseeing 3,000 purebred Hereford cattle on his vast property. After a reported 15-month negotiation, Bartholomae decided it was time for Diamond Bar to continue prospering and establish its place in history with a new beginning, and in 1956, the Christiana Oil Corporation and the Capital Company, a subsidiary of the Transamerica Corporation, purchased the Diamond Bar Ranch for $10 million. The companies hoped to develop the largest master-planned community in Los Angeles County.

The significant acreage of open land under single ownership, along with the fact that it was isolated from other cities yet surrounded by major commercial and industrial centers, made it the ideal setting for a master-planned community that could offer residents a bucolic lifestyle. This appeal became the prime marketing tool for the Capital Company to entice potential buyers to leave busy lifestyles in metropolitan areas for “country living” in Diamond Bar.

Following adoption of the master plan in 1958, the Capital Company promptly began work on the installation of utilities and infrastructure, including development of a potable water network to serve a community of 75,000. It formed the Diamond Bar Water Company, a privately owned public utility, to facilitate the development’s water supply, with Carleton J. Peterson as its manager.

Under Peterson’s direction, installation of a 4,700-foot-long water pipeline along Diamond Bar Boulevard began in January 1959. The installation of other primary improvements followed, and once in place, the Capital Company began selling a variety of different-sized parcels to select builders for the construction and sale of homes in accordance with the overall master plan.

The Capital Company was simultaneously focusing on another important aspect of the Diamond Bar Master Plan—the city’s roadways. The plan called for a network of roads to emanate from a five-mile-long, four-lane highway named Diamond Bar Boulevard, as well as a large central business district at the center of town (at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Diamond Bar Boulevard) with two neighborhood shopping centers in outlying areas. To meet the recreation and leisure needs of future residents, the plan also proposed the construction of several parks in addition to an 18-hole public golf course. Education was also considered in the master plan, with sites plotted for the construction of two high schools, three junior high schools, 22 elementary schools, and even a private college.

The area’s first homes were erected in 1960, and the first Diamond Bar residents wasted no time establishing the area’s first homeowners’ association. By way of a single meeting in October 1960, a small group of property owners created the Diamond Bar Homeowners’ Association (DBHOA).

In many ways, the DBHOA turned out to be the first form of government that residents of the newly formed community turned to for assistance with resolving local issues. For years, the association served the community and acted as an effective intermediary between the residents and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

As Diamond Bar’s population grew, so did the desire for local control, community identity, and a formal voice. While the idea of self-governance was often contemplated, the same conclusion was reached every time: the community did not have, and possibly never would have, a sufficient tax base to enable incorporation.

So, in 1976, as a compromise, residents created a second form of grassroots government—the Diamond Bar Municipal Advisory Council (MAC).

As an advisory body, the MAC served Diamond Bar as a liaison to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, providing a forum for community residents to voice concerns and representing residents’ views on land use, new development, and other matters related to county governance.

Within only a few months of operation, Diamond Bar residents had largely embraced the MAC concept because of its role as a community watchdog and assistance in such areas as traffic regulation, safety, parks and recreation, and zoning.

In the early 1980s, the MAC realized that Transamerica would soon be selling the last of its holdings and no longer overseeing the development, leaving Diamond Bar to raise its own operating funds.

There was also spreading sentiment that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors had stopped being responsive to the Diamond Bar area’s needs for parks and commercial development while allowing developers to overrun the community with unneeded housing.

This sentiment was further compounded in late 1979 when the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) for the County of Los Angeles published a controversial report titled Puente Hills Study, which recommended that the northern part of Diamond Bar be placed into the “sphere of influence” of Pomona.

This recommendation riled local leaders, who saw the report as a potential invitation for Pomona and other neighboring incorporated cities to annex portions of Diamond Bar. MAC vehemently rejected the report and immediately voted to form a committee to explore the possibility of incorporation through a self-determination study that would examine everything from the area’s boundaries to its fiscal viability as a city.

The study, completed in November 1980, posted figures showing that the Diamond Bar area met the prerequisites for self-governing, could sustain itself financially as a city, and would have the city operating with a $500,000 surplus the first year.

These findings conflicted with estimates later produced by LAFCO, which showed that, on the contrary, first-year expenditures for the proposed city would exceed revenue generated by more than $1 million. In spite of the negative recommendation by LAFCO, MAC decided to move ahead with investigating the incorporation process.

When the issue reached the county level in 1983, LAFCO maintained its stance that the proposed incorporation of Diamond Bar be denied because of financial shortfalls the proposed city would face in its first year of existence.

Undeterred by the bleak financial report, MAC proceeded to present its proposal for Diamond Bar’s incorporation to LAFCO. MAC’s perseverance paid off, and after resolving minor objections to the proposed city boundaries, LAFCO approved a resolution to put the issue of the incorporation of Diamond Bar on the ballot on November 8, 1983.

Opponents to the Diamond Bar incorporation included some MAC members who cited that incorporation was economically infeasible; that little would be gained in public services not already provided by the County of Los Angeles; and that if services could be increased, it would cost residents more in taxes.

Only 230 votes defeated the incorporation effort of 1983, largely due to voters’ fears of an increase in taxes, a notion that had been instilled by the opposition.

The debate over incorporation came to a conclusion six years later, on March 7, 1989, when voters overwhelmingly approved the incorporation measure by a margin of 76 percent to 24 percent. With the incorporation election results certified by Los Angeles County on March 21, 1989, the newly elected Diamond Bar City Council delved right into the thick of creating the new city.

In the weeks leading up to its official installation ceremony, the city council met several times to organize for the establishment of the soon-to-be new seat of local government; this included securing office space for city hall, hiring three key city personnel, meeting with the county to ensure continuity of services, and drafting resolutions and ordinances.

The official incorporation of the city occurred on Tuesday, April 18, 1989, during the city council’s first official meeting, which was held in the Chaparral Intermediate School auditorium and attended by more than 300 individuals. The meeting involved a series of administrative decisions, including appointing key city personnel, adopting all of Los Angeles County’s laws and regulations on an urgency basis, setting the dates of future regularly scheduled meetings, and introducing ordinances to establish the mechanism by which to begin collecting the city’s share of taxes collected by the county and the state. In addition to dealing with these issues, the council also had the complex yet exciting task of formulating the city’s first official general plan, required by state law to be completed within 30 months following incorporation, to serve as a “blueprint” for future land-use planning.

To help undertake this city-defining task, the council appointed 30 residents to serve on an ad hoc advisory committee to review the formerly unincorporated community’s general plan adopted in 1982 and create a brand-new plan that would better align with the new city’s vision for maintenance and growth.

The final Diamond Bar general plan was adopted by the city council on July 25, 1995, marking an important milestone for the community. Situated on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, Diamond Bar has grown into a modern city of nearly 60,000 residents. Over the years, Diamond Bar’s business-friendly practices, low crime rates, ample open space and recreational opportunities, and award-winning schools have garnered numerous accolades, including a place among the 100 Best Places to Live in 2012 (Money magazine), 50 Best Places to Raise your Kids in 2009 and again in 2010 (Bloomberg Businessweek), 10 Best Towns for Families in 2007 (Family Circle magazine), and top 10 cities of affordable places to do business for two consecutive years—in 1999 and again in 2000 (Kosmont Cost of Doing Business Survey).

In late 2010, after nearly 21 years of leasing office space within the Gateway Corporate Center, sound fiscal planning allowed the city council to purchase a two-story building at 21810 Copley Drive as its permanent headquarters. City hall operations commenced at this location on January 3, 2012, with the Diamond Bar Public Library opening its doors on the first floor on July 28, 2012.

In looking forward to the next 25 years and beyond, the current city council plans to maintain the tradition of protecting the city’s firm financial foundation through prudent revenue and appropriation policies and decisions—started by the founding council and maintained by the five generations of councils that have followed—in order to continue to protect the interests of the community while also facilitating the growth necessary for the city to be able to provide the same quality of service in the future.