So when I decided that my eyes, fortified by glasses, were not yet gone, and that I must go to school again, grandfather suggested that I try the new one at Pomona. “Of course it is pioneering, but seems genuine and worth trying,” he said. Consequently, on a hot August day, Aunt Martha and I went forth to investigate, and, perhaps beginning a long line of the mistaken, sought Pomona College in Pomona.
After some delay we found a man with an express wagon who took us to Claremont, an hour’s drive under a scorching noonday sun. We soon left the little settlement, passed the apricot and peach orchards that have since been replaced by oranges, and struck off in a diagonal through virgin land to the large building, gabled and turreted, standing alone in the distance. As we came nearer we discovered that there was more town than we had realized. The same Santa Fe station that is now in use was in its place—would that we had arrived there instead of at the Southern Pacific in Pomona!
On the sandy road, now Yale Avenue, there was one store, which contained the post office,—a primitive department store kept by Mr. Urbanus, whose name was the only suggestion of a city in the region. A little farther up the road was a spare, white, box of a house, which has since grown porches and a garden, where we found the principal of the school, Mr. Norton, with his wife and baby girl, Katharine. To the east was Mr. Biely’s barn; to the west Colonel W. H. Holabird’s two-storied house; and two or three other small empty houses peeked over the top of the brush. On the outskirts rose an imposing red and yellow towered and ornamented school house, waiting for the children of the visioned city to materialize. Some twenty years later it was supplanted by the present attractive grammar school, moved across the street, and, with form and color made more modest, given over to the use of the city fathers.
The ex-hotel belonged to the same architectural period as the Del Monte at Monterey or the Coronado at San Diego, but naturally it was of lesser glory.
Such was Claremont in 1889; no streets, no walks, just a few spots reclaimed from the desert, connected by trails or sandy roads; all the rest sage, cactus, stones, an occasional oak or sycamore; but the same ever-beautiful and mysterious mountains stood guard, the same sunny skies and fragrant air gave charm. Rabbits scuttled between the bushes, lizards and horned toads enjoyed the climate, rattlesnakes found a peaceful home, and at night coyotes ranged and sang.
A little clearing had been made about the aforetime hotel now devoted to the incipient college, and vines and trees had been planted but as yet they had not made sufficient growth to be noticeable. The oak tree that now stands in the center of College Avenue was then in its native state in the midst of the brush. The building with its meager furnishing had stood empty all summer and accumulated dust added to its dreariness. However the plan of work offered me was attractive and, much to the surprise of my aunt, I decided to enter in the fall, thus beginning the procession of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren of the old scholar who from that day to this have been connected with the college.
In September the third member of the so-called “old faculty,” Miss Spalding, arrived. She was destined to develop the English department, but this year filled in, teaching Latin, German, spelling and composition, and how many other subjects I do not know.
All the activities of the school were in the one building. The large parlor with the circular window was chapel and assembly room. The room occupied in recent years by the Dean of Women was study hall for the younger students; Prof. Norton had a small classroom on the east side, Miss Spalding had half the dining room roughly partitioned off, and Prof. Brackett dispensed mathematics and physics over the bar in the hotel bar-room. He dispensed the physics so successfully that I was able three years later in Wellesley college to rely once or twice on Claremont knowledge to carry me through a physics lesson otherwise unprepared.
The Hall housed all the resident members of the school except Mr. Norton’s family. Mr. Brackett and his bride were on the first floor; and upstairs, divided by a partition, pervious to sounds and notes, if not to persons, were the men’s and women’s dormitories—eleven boys in the former, four girls and two teachers in the latter. Here also roomed Miss Roe, sister of E. P. Roe of Chestnut Burr fame, a forerunner of the easterners who now make Claremont their winter home.
At this time there were about sixty students in the school, only one of them, Helen Sumner, being of college rank. In the senior preparatory class which I joined, there were about a dozen. They formed the unique class that for seven years was the most advanced in the school—think how dangerous to heads the experience of being seniors for seven years! This class graduated from Pomona college in 1894 and numbered among its members Dr. George Sumner and Dr. David P. Barrows.