During the 1860s, Henry Mayo Newhall was an auctioneer in San Francisco, selling goods brought in by ship.
According to Newhall family stories, at one point the Newhalls even tried selling the Channel Islands. Apparently there were no takers.
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H.M. Newhall & Co.Office and Salesroom, Corner of Sansome and Halleck Streets Oil Paintings AT AUCTION TO-MORROW, WEDNESDAY . . . . . April 13, 1872 At 11 o'clock A.M., UNDER THE RUSS HOUSE 217 Montgomery Street, . . . WE WILL SELL . . . SEVENTY Elegant Oil Paintings!Handsomely Framed in CaliforniaGold Frames All Original Pictures, by Longworthy, Hartnick, Morrie Granville, Perkins, Westen Ettrick, Melrose and other well-known Artists. The Paintings are now open for exhibition, and may be seen at any time previous to sale. Catalogues may be had at 217 Montgomery St. SALE POSITIVE. Terms, Cash in U.S. Gold Coin. H.M. Newhall & Co.ap11-2T Auctioneers. |
On January 15, 1875, 49-year-old Henry Mayo Newhall paid just under $2 for each of 46,460 acres of the Rancho San Francisco in the Santa Clarita Valley. An old land grant that had fallen into private hands when Mexican Revolutionaries wrested political control from Spanish missionaries in the early 1800s. The drought of 1863-1864 had devastated the Del Valle cattle ranch, and Henry Newhall purchased the land after various speculators defaulted on loans.
Newhall had made a fortune in railroads and knew the Iron Horse could bring people, commerce and prosperity to his new holdings. For one dollar, he deeded a right of way at the eastern extremity of his local Rancho to Southern Pacific's Charles Crocker (of banking fame) and Leland Stanford (co-founder of the California Republican Party). For another dollar, Newhall sold them a plot of land for a whistle stop near present-day Railroad Avenue. Southern Pacific started designing a new town around it later that year and dubbed it "Newhall."
Following Henry Newhall's death in 1882, his widow and five sons sought to avoid the family imbroglios that invariably seem to accompany the division of an estate. Rather than split their California Ranchos among themselves, family members joined forces and created what they called The Newhall Land and Farming Company to manage their agricultural and ranching concerns. On December 23, 1936 -- sixty years after Alex Mentry started pumping high-grade crude out of Pico Canyon, a mile south of Newhall property -- Henry Newhall's grandson-in-law Atholl McBean finally struck oil on the Rancho San Francisco. McBean changed the old land grant's name to "Newhall Ranch."
The Newhall Land and Farming Company spent the 1950s and early '60s readying itself for a change in direction. If it must pay taxes for housing, it may as well build. Family members had strong feelings for the land and were loath to sell off portions piecemeal. Instead, they hired cutting-edge urban planners to design a complete, self-contained town with an appropriate blend of homes, schools, parks, shopping centers and other necessities.
As Henry Newhall had done 90 years earlier, in 1965 an aging Atholl McBean was ready to sell a right of way for the purpose of building a town. By now the automobile had replaced the locomotive as the primary purveyor of people; McBean sold the right of way not to Southern Pacific, but to the State of California for the construction of Interstate 5.
Again a new town would spring up along a major transportation corridor. On the advice of Henry Newhall's great-grandson, Scott Newhall, the town was called "Valencia."
Scott Newhall's grandeloquent editorials graced the pages of The Mighty Signal from 1963, when he purchased the paper, until 1988, a decade after he sold it to Morris Newspaper Corp. He died in 1992 at the age of 78.
Note that C. Newhall arrived on S.S. Tennessee on April 14, 1850 with the Tobins. Later generations of the Newhalls worked at The San Francisco Chronicle during the 1960s (Scott Newhall) and again during the 1980s and '90s (Anthony Newhall, son of Scott). During that time, members of the Tobin family were on the Board of Directors of the newspaper and Richard Tobin Thieriot was publisher of the Chronicle.
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