Month: May 2018

This week
has been kind of an odd one for me. I had planned to finish up the metadata for
the Chaffey letters, but I encountered some issues with our metadata software,
CONTENTdm. I was in the middle of uploading a series of documents about the
Colorado River Aqueduct and the Hoover Dam to the Claremont Colleges Digital
Library when the metadata software started operating very slowly. After doing
some trouble shooting with Tanya and the software providers, we eventually got
the metadata software up and running again.

In the
meantime, I’ve been doing some miscellaneous tasks related to the Chaffey
brothers and Frankish letters. I used an excel spreadsheet to track metadata
for the documents for which I couldn’t use CONTENTdm. I also cleaned up some of
our internal files, in particular a file which tracks the progress for each and
every item that we work on. These internal files help CLIR CCEPS fellows keep
track of the items in the collection that we all work on and sometimes it is
nice to make sure that these files are up to date. This is especially the case
because pretty soon we will have some new faces here at CLIR CCEPS. I was happy
to see that for the most part these files were in pretty good condition, but it
is always nice to double-check that things are complete and consistent.

The big
lesson I learned this week was how important our technology, especially our software,
is to this project. We use very specialized equipment and software every step
of the way to get the original physical documents onto the Claremont Colleges
Digital Library, so it’s important that everything is working. I’m glad our
metadata software is back up and running!

If you have
been keeping track of our social media accounts, you may have noticed that we
have recently started posting photographs from around 1911-1915. Last week
Tanya and I went through an album of incredibly interesting photographs of the
San Antonio Canyon and the Pomona Valley. The San Antonio Canyon is
responsible for carrying water down to the Pomona Valley from the San
Gabriel Mountains. Claremont and this surrounding area is part of the Pomona Valley. However, sometimes the Pomona Valley floods when lots of
water runs down the mountains and through the San Antonio Canyon. Flooding can
cause damage to homes, infrastructure such as roads, and agricultural lands.
This was a huge problem in the early 20^th century for local
residents who primarily relied on agriculture for their livelihood.

Flood
control was an important issue for people during this time and a variety of
things were done to protect this fertile alluvial plain. These measures were
documented and now they are part of the Willis S. Jones Papers at The Claremont
Colleges Library. There are photos of streams, ditches, rock dams, cement dams,
and even of the damages sustained in certain floods. This album specifically
highlights the Osgoodby Dam in the San Antonio Canyon and a series of floods in
1914 that caused major damages in the Pomona Valley. I have taken
photographs of particularly interesting parts of this album and over the next
several weeks I will be sharing them on our social media accounts, which are
listed below. Join in the conversation with #CLIRWater!

Twitter:
@honnoldlibrary

Instagram:
@honnoldlibrary

Facebook:
CLIRWater

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0in;
mso-para-margin-right:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0in;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

In the
first part of 1884 William Chaffey sent letters to C. H. Dwinelle about what it
would take to set up a farm in Ontario, California. In the first letter I came
across, Chaffey describes the different kinds of fruit tree available along
with the prices of each type of tree. Chaffey also explains that the trees for
Ontario farms come from Los Angeles nurseries which in turn get their trees
from the north. The next letter, dated a couple days later was about which
lots in Ontario Dwinelle was interested in buying. Apparently Dwinelle was
interested in purchasing three plots of land, but the ones he was most interested
had already been purchased. In the latest letter I found,  William Chaffey describes the kind of work his
workers can do to set up and care for Dwinelle’s land. Chaffey lists the
approximate price for the materials and the labor. I found this series of
letters interesting because I was able to see a little bit of the progression
for someone interested in purchasing land from the Chaffey brothers during
this time period.

Last week I came across a
letter that referenced the price of land in Ontario in 1884. I’ve seen
references to property prices before but this was the first time I thought
about what those prices really mean. In 1884 prime property sold for $200 per
acre and the rest sold for $150 per acre. I got online and did some research
about what $200 in 1884 would translate to money today. Apparently $200 from
1884 converts to about $5,000 in 2018, an immense difference!

However, I went one step
further. After all, the value of land is related to more than just a simple
calculation of inflation over time. In 1884 Ontario, California was in its
infancy, whereas today Ontario is part of the greater Los Angeles urban area.
I’ve already spoken about the population growth in Ontario from its initial 200
residents to 170,000 people. The population increase is just one symptom of
people wanting to reside in Southern California. Rent and property prices are
another symptom, as more people need housing, property prices increase.

So I returned to the internet
for more answers. How much does an acre of undeveloped land cost in Ontario
today? Any guesses from the audience? Drum roll… $500,000! For one acre of
land. That’s 100 times the price (taking inflation into account) of land in
1884. 

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0in;
mso-para-margin-right:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0in;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

Hello All!

This is my last week as a fellow. This week I learned how to convert files to PDF-A1b and meta-data. Both tasks are relatively tedious, but very important to the archival process. As I reflect on my time as a fellow I am glad that I was able to work here for the semester. I learned a lot about working in special collections, learned some skills, and read several letters from Charles Frankish.

Thanks for a great semester!
Sydney

Hi everyone!

This week I continued my work on metadata! Unfortunately, this will be my last day at CCEPS for the Spring 2018 semester! But, I will be coming back in June to continue my work with the Frankish Letters and I hope to continue discovering new and exciting information during my time here in the library!

See you later,

Angel Ornelas

This week I ran across a
letter addressed to Wells Fargo & Company. It was interesting to see the name of a company that still exists today. I was inspired to do a little bit of research to find out more about the history of the company. The first thing I learned was that the company was named after its two founders, Henry Wells and William Fargo. I had never thought about how Wells Fargo & Company got its name, but I guess it makes sense that it would have been named after people.

I also did a little research about
the founders of Wells Fargo & Company after
finding this letter. Henry Wells first became successful after he started an
express postal company that would carry mail at a lower rate than the United
States Post Office. William Fargo started carrying mail at the age of 13!
Eventually, the two came together to form Wells Fargo & Company AND the
American Express Company in the mid-1800s. Again, I was surprised to hear about
the initiation of a company like American Express.

The letter to Wells Fargo & Company is actually not that exciting. George Chaffey is writing to Wells Fargo & Company about sending cash to someone named E. B. Love through Wells
Fargo & Company. I could not figure out who E. B. Love was or what his
significance might be–that will have to be a task for a historian who is better
equipped.

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0in;
mso-para-margin-right:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0in;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}