Where
to begin? What came first the chicken or
the egg? The place to start, I suppose,
is the purchase of land on a newly parceled group of properties between the shores
of the Pacific Ocean and the banks of Mission Bay
(known as False
Bay back then, but that is another story) on top of the Point Loma Formation. The town of Ocean Beach
California had been founded in 1887, and developers wanted to expand further as
the population
grew following “the Great Boom” in San Diego.
John W. Rankin and his
wife Emma E Rankin (Pogue) and their daughter Miss
Margaret Rankin moved to San Diego from Red
Oak, Montgomery, Iowa. John was a
Veteran of the Civil War, who retired as an “Ice Cream Confectioner” at age 57,
moved to Ocean Beach and decided to buy a lot of land just offered for sale by “Charlie” Collier
in a neighborhood he dubbed “Ocean Beach Park” on the northern end of Ocean
Beach. D.C. Collier built
a new trolley line you see, and it connected the ‘remote’ town of O.B. to
downtown ‘New Town’ San Diego. Luckily
for me, the house lasted longer than the trolley line did.
John
and his extended relatives likely ordered a
home kit to build a ‘modern’
bungalow, like those offered by the Pacific Bungalow company of Los Angeles
California, or Sears.
It took him from 1910 to 1916 to build
it. He and his 2nd wife
enjoyed an unobstructed view of modern day La Jolla’s Mount Soledad and sunsets
from their living room over the Pacific Ocean.
Luckily the home was well built, because 1916-1918 saw a string
of weather disasters in San Diego.
Coincidently, the
First World War was being fought, and arguably destroying the world that
John Rankin was familiar with. As the
house was completed, the world that it had been started in was completely
changed. Entire countries destroyed
and birthed new and terrible weapons
and diseases
spread across the world, and new technology like home electricity
and refrigeration
spread. More on that later. Luckily for us, one invention grew in
popularity: the aero plane. In 1917 The
US Army sent a photographer up in an airplane to photograph the California
coastline, and captured the earliest photo I have of the house and the area:
You can see the canvas wing of the aircraft on the right hand
side of the photo. Here is a closer view
of the area in the square.
One more note: Charles
Lindburg flew the “Spirit
of Saint Lious” out of the Ryan Aircraft factory in the far background of
the top photo, and likely it was witnessed by John and Emma.
My first thought when I discovered this photo was: Wow! My house was at a dead end, and what a view
they must have had. The bay was across
the street, the home you see on the bottom left was built and owned by John’s
Nephew who became Ocean Beach’s first Postmaster. That home also has a boat dock on the back of
the house, and it had a fish sink in the middle of the kitchen to clean fresh
catches for dinner. I also noticed, but
still wonder why there was a fence around the property already, as most homes
of that time in this area did not. I can
only chalk it up to a cantankerous old man, who John must have been in his late
60s when this photo was taken. There are
trees on the Boulevard, and the sidewalks are fresh poured concrete. There was a bit of mystery on the dark spot
on the setting sun side of the house, but that got solved with the next
photograph.
John
didn’t leave much information behind. I
uncovered a citation here, a eulogy there.
When I pulled original trim boards off the wall during home renovation,
I found his initials preserved in pencil written on the back side of the
wood. I did find one photograph of him
in the early 1920s, thanks to an extended member and a stroke of fortune:
By the way, this photo solved a mystery from the aerial photo from 1917, the dark splotch on the window to the West was an Awning that has disappeared before I bought the house.
Here is another mystery: When
I was poking inside one of the built ins, I also found a photograph that is
likely older, but there is no date, and no way to ID the people in it. Still, I like to believe that the people in
this photo may be John and Emma.
Anyhow,
time went on, and the area grew. World
War 2 came and went. Sadly, Both John
and Emma died before wars end, in 1943.
Their only daughter Margaret had likely moved out of the house during the
1920s announced their deaths in the paper, but kept the house as a rental property
to supplement her income as a Librarian at the Ocean Beach Library. World War II saw another massive shift in the
world, but specifically San Diego. B-24
Liberators built at Consolidated Aircraft roared out of the production
plant over the house on their path to war in the Pacific. I cannot confirm, but I strongly suspect that
the construction and use of Lindbergh field convinced Margaret to move closer
to the Library and downtown Ocean Beach because of the noise of aircraft
departing from modern day Lindbergh Field.
There was likely a huge increase in air traffic between 1918 and 1944 as
you can read about in “Lost
Airfields of Southern California” I
can guess that the modern day noise we endure from Jet Airliners was likely the
‘last straw’ for Margaret as she moved to Santa Monica Street in O.B.
Over
the next seventy years, more houses grew up, the remaining lots in the area
were purchased and houses built to house the returning veterans and their
families. A survivor of Pearl Harbor was
listed as living in the house in a 1950s phone book. People came and people went. Interestingly, a pair of old ladies who
claimed to have lived in the home in the 1950s visited my wife one day when I
was at work, and asked to be showed around.
To this day I have never found their names, though I have tried to learn
who they were and how to reach them.
One
last photo to note, this is a Sanborn Fire Insurance Map
that I found at the San Diego Library online records. It shows snapshots between 1920 and 1950 of
what the area looked like as it developed.
The progress of housing and the changes in the layout of the city
streets can be seen as development sets in, and zoning takes effect. I always wondered why the builders of the
Western house on my street built on such a small triangular lot, effectively
blocking view of the ocean from our house in 1955. Anyhow, it happened.
Last
but not least I tried to make a side by side photograph of the oldest photo of
the house and the newest photo I could find that was of a similar perspective. This is the best I could manage with my
meager photo skills:
And
so that brings us to today. What a
change over 100 years.
