The Big Yellow Blues, Part 2

Part 2: Doctor Norton’s Rental House

Immediately following the expansion of his family, Henry Williams tagged a handful of lots on the edge of his new town for his own use and built the one-story wooden home at 108 Pierpont. Completed in 1890, the modest home had a small basement, a stone foundation, and a fabulous view of the ocean and beach. It required six Summerland lots.

This home, which eighty years later would become the Big Yellow House, was initially rented out to a Doctor Norton. Norton lived and held séances there for the better part of the decade until he built a home of his own on the western end of town.

Norton’s séances were noted for their authenticity. In his spare time, Norton would greet strangers as they waited for trains at the Southern Pacific flag stop. Asking them if they had any personal items in their pockets, he would select one and summarily toss it into the adjacent field. Counseling patience to the upset traveler, the object would supposedly soon reappear in its owner’s pocket.

Doctor Norton was one of many practicing mediums in town. Séances were held regularly at the Williams’ home over the ridge. Many of these were conducted by a French woman known only as Smoner.

A meeting house called Liberty Hall was erected in 1892 on the eastern slope of Ortega Ridge, just down the street from Doctor Norton’s home. This was a gathering place for Spiritualists, but was also a popular place to hold séances. One medium to perform here was Harry Allen. Allen was feared in part because he first drank himself into a stupor, but in greater part because he consistently called forth dark and angry spirits. One, a massive black man who liked to play cards, stood seven feet tall and had hands the size of swim fins.

Another medium in town, Professor Loveland, held séances in his home on Lillie Avenue which is still standing behind The Big Yellow House. A Mrs. Fisk was popular because she could materialize spirits so that nearly everyone could see them.

Bright Nights and Crude Days

By 1890, the Spiritualist center of Summerland was nailed down. A quarter of the lots had sold and several businesses had taken root. Then, in a very short span of time, the gas and oil Williams suspected was underfoot was found and dramatically changed the face and focus of Summerland.

There are several stories about how oil and gas were discovered at Summerland. May Lambert, in her book Growing Up With Summerland, recalled that children first found the abundant supply of natural gas underground when they pounded pipes into the ground and lit the tops, creating torches. The children would pound in rows of these along their playing fields to light their nighttime baseball games, creating the first known lighted nighttime sports play in the country.

But this probably occurred after a resident drilled for hot sulfur water where a spring was oozing from the earth in 1890. He hit a large pocket of natural gas and sparked a towering flame.

For a few short years, the production of natural gas kept Summerland busy. Williams, who still owned much of the town, supplied the whole town with water and gas, although many residents dug their own gas and water wells. Warren Darling and his two sons established the Darling Brothers Machine Shop on the eastern slope of Ortega Hill and were the top gas well drillers in town. But the wells produced more than the demand could accomodate. Prices fell and interest and effort in finding and producing gas fell with them.

Walker Tompkins, in his posthumous The Yankee Barbarenos, relates how oil was discovered in 1894. “One day, a well digger, Smith L. Cole [by some accounts Smyth Cole], while drilling a well for owner Albert Lambert [May Lambert’s husband], returned to the job to find the hole filled with a thick, black, viscid substance—petroleum! Cole had discovered Summerland’s first posthole-depth oil well, and new day dawned for Summerland.”

The discovery transformed Summerland. There was a ready market for petroleum in tar for streets and for manufacturing. The first wells were dug by hand and were from 5 to 200 feet deep. Oil was removed with buckets dangled down the shafts on ropes.

Henry Williams jumped into the business at once, drilling and selling, designing new drilling and production equipment and methods, and becoming one of the leading oil producers. In 1897, Williams produced 1,400 barrels, second only to Wilson-Doulton Company’s 1,800 barrels.

Wells were soon cropping up on the beach and then marching out over the surf on pilings and piers. These were the world’s first known offshore rigs, and they cluttered the beautiful beachfront for decades. Along with the derricks and the clutter of industry, businesses sprang up. Within a year, there were machinists, carpenters, tank builders, a general store, drug stores, a laundry, real estate offices, barber shops, a post office, and a hardware store. The Miller Hotel and Boarding House and The Evalina Hotel were opened. Worst of all to the Spiritualists, two dance halls and several saloons opened.

The Spiritualists were not alone in their disappointment in the open industry in the town previously known for its beauty. Montecitans complained of the unsightly rigs, seen from the windows of every train, and of the strong odors of tar and gas that swept over Ortega Ridge and filtered through their gentleman’s farming community.

At the Bottom of the Well

Henry Williams kept his fingers in every pie in Summerland. His oil production remained an important and remunerative focus. But he also introduced his new wife and family to Spiritualism and continued to promote its growth. In 1892, Williams drafted a letter to the Spiritualists of the world. He promised to

“…make Summerland what it was intended by the spirit world – to be a beacon of light for the world – and to secure the undoubted and immense mineral resources of the Ortega Rancho for the benefit of and to aid the promulgation of the truths of Spiritualism; to build homes for worn out mediums, sanitariums, colleges and other institutions of learning; to aid in the most practical way, the higher classes of mediumship.”

“Spiritualism, with its millions of believers needs a home where its truths may be developed and taught in a systematic manner, which home should be in as perfect a climate as possible, where the climatic conditions will aid in securing the ends to be accomplished. All of these conditions exist in Summerland. The Spiritualists of California, both Northern and Southern, need a permanent Camp-Meeting ground, one which is cheaply accessible, as this will be on the completion of the connecting link to San Francisco which the Southern Pacific Railroad Company is under contract to do at once.”

But in 1898, Henry took a fall into an abandoned well and during his recuperation contracted pneumonia. He traveled to San Francisco for treatment, but died there on January 13, 1899 at 58 years of age. In his will, he left his estate equally divided between his wife, Agnes, and his two children, Edith Bea, and Harry.

Agnes stepped in and attempted to run his businesses, but the books were in disarray, and the house too big, and she moved to San Francisco for a time to gather her wits. A year or so later, missing Summerland, she contracted to have the old rental house of Doctor Norton renovated with most of the modifications taking place on the interior. This was 108 Pierpont, the future Big Yellow House.

In the meantime, she had met George F. Becker, a San Francisco jeweler, suffering in an overstayed marriage. In a flurry of activity in April of 1900, Becker traveled with his wife, Sophia White Becker, to Reno to dissolve their marriage. Agnes followed them, and on April 16, Agnes and George were wed in the immediate slipstream of his divorce.

Story continues in Part 3.