The many interwoven stories of Paradise Valley

The vintage photo of the day has so very many stories behind it, and some stories from my own family concerning the little piece of land in today's photo, and after all, history means nothing if we can't appropriate it for ourselves. The vintage photo of the day is from the late 1890's of the Moses Kimball Tower House on East 10th Street in National City.

Where to start? Let's start with Moses Kimball. First off, he is no relation to the Kimball brothers that founded National City as a community for wealthy easterners and mid-westerners to come to California to enjoy the sunshine and become gentleman farmers of fabulous fruit orchards. Moses was a retired Ohio farmer, who moved west as an old man. He built the Tower House in 1893 for his wife Sarah.

He purchased the land from a Mrs. Elizabeth Brewster. She used the farm to operate a sanitarium, the area had a long history of operating sanitariums. Dr. Potts had a rather famous hospital in Paradise Valley that went belly up in the mid 1890's because of a terrible drought. Eventually the Seventh Day Adventists bought the land and turned it into Paradise Valley Hospital- a whole new story. Back to Mrs. Brewster. She lived in the white structure to the right in the photo.

Mr. Kimball turned her former house into a carriage house and barn. Mrs. Brewster bought the farm in Paradise Valley from a local pioneer of sorts, Mr. Josephus Marion Asher. Asher had befriended a man while in San Francisco named Alonzo Horton the father of New Town San Diego. Horton convinced Asher and his wife that San Diego held great promise. Around 1869, Asher became the first commercial nurseryman in San Diego's history. His growing grounds were in a little vale called Paradise Valley. He called his little venture Fruitvale Ranch. He built the house that still stands today in 1870, which Mrs. Brewster had lived in. It is one of the oldest standing structures in San Diego. Asher opened storefronts for his nursery business in downtown San Diego and eventually Coronado.

Asher later desired to divest himself of his nursery business, and moved to El Cajon to a little spot called Castle Rock Ranch, on the site of what is now Parkway Plaza shopping Center. He sold his business to a local school teacher who had her sight's set on getting into the nursery business herself. Her name? Kathryn Olivia Sessions, otherwise known as Kate Sessions, the mother of Balboa Park.

How is that for a boat load of history so far? Now my own history. My parents came to San Diego, and married here in 1957. They bought a home, their first, on a little street called Paradise Valley Road in National City, a literal stone's throw from Moses Kimball's Tower House. I was born at Paradise Valley Hospital. My dad was an Indiana farm boy, and had never seen so many interesting trees as he found in San Diego. There were still trees on the property in the '50's from when the property was operating as fruit orchards, including a large avocado in the back yard. My dad had never heard of avocados let alone see one or grow one.

Believe it or not, despite owning some of the pioneer avocados of San Diego county my dad never tasted an avocado until he tried one of my buttery Reed's just a couple of years ago. He was in his 80's! He said he wished he hadn't waited so long, "that avocado was darn good". Today, I am raising citrus and avocados. Funny how everything comes full circle. A great deal of history in one small photograph...

By the way, the area looks nothing like the shot in the photo these days. The 805 freeway runs through what is the dark colored orange orchard in the center foreground of the picture. Nope, nothing stays the same.