La Habra Heights Co. Est. July 25, 1919 · CA Entity #0088378 · Rancho La Habra Archive

Los Angeles County Surveyor Archive · Official Map Books 1 & 2

How a 1919 Avocado Experiment Carved the Canyons of La Habra Heights.

On July 25, 1919, developer and citrus pioneer Edwin G. Hart incorporated La Habra Heights Co. to transform 3,600 frostless hillside acres of old Mexican-era Rancho La Habra into what he called the “Hanging Gardens of Southern California.” Rather than bulldozing the Puente Hills into flat city blocks, Hart’s civil engineers surveyed winding contour roads, gravity-fed redwood forebays, and terraced subtropical orchards that gave birth to the global Hass and Fuerte avocado industry.

Original Grant
Rancho La Habra (1839)
Incorporation
July 25, 1919 (#0088378)
County Official Maps
O.M. Book 1 & Book 2
Inspect the 1929 & 1932 Plats View full-resolution Los Angeles County Surveyor sheets from Official Map Books 1 and 2. View 1919-1928 Photographs Uncropped photographs of Edwin G. Hart, the 1920 steam trenchers, and early hillside groves.
Los Angeles Times Display Advertisement (October 28, 1925): Edwin G. Hart’s illustrated route map from 7th & Broadway out Whittier Boulevard to Hacienda Country Club and La Habra Heights, asking Southern Californians whether they would rather own a 50-foot city lot in Beverly Hills or five producing hillside acres of avocados.
Los Angeles County Recorder & County Surveyor Plates

Original Recorded Surveyor Plats (1929-1932)

Between 1919 and 1929, La Habra Heights Co. sold hillside groves by metes-and-bounds descriptions tied to canyon ridge stations. Because scores of curving private roads and irregular orchard tracts had been carved out without a single master subdivision map, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ordered County Surveyor J.E. Rockhold under Political Code Section 3658a to compile two monumental map series: the 1929 La Habra Heights Tract (Official Map Book 1, Pages 8-19) and the 1932 Official Map of Regions 45 & 46 (Official Map Book 2, Pages 1-42). Click any surveyor sheet below to inspect it at full size.

Official Map Book 2, Page 1 · Filed September 1932 · Master Index Sheet

Master Index Map of Regions 45 & 46 (La Habra Heights Canyons & Sheet Divisions)

The master index sheet to the 42-page 1932 County Surveyor atlas of La Habra Heights, mapping the entire network of winding canyon roads across Divisions 86, 94, 95, 96, 107, 108, and 184-186 down to the southerly boundary of Rancho La Habra (L.S. 1-53).

Official Map Book 1, Page 8 · Filed July 30, 1929 · Scale 1" = 150'

La Habra Heights Tract: 1929 Title & Polaris Certification

The cover sheet of Official Map Book 1, Page 8, certifying that bearings across the subdivision are based on a true observation of Polaris and compiled from the 1916-1929 field surveys of G.G. MacLeish, L.V. Miller, and A.M. Morrison. Note the surveyor’s rule at the bottom: all lot areas and distances extend to the centerlines of the roads.

Official Map Book 1, Page 9 (Sheet 1) · Filed July 30, 1929

Kashlan Road & Fullerton Road Gateway (Lots 4, 5 & 6)

Shows the southern gateway into the Heights where Fullerton Road crosses the Orange County line and curves northeastward past Kashlan Road and the historic Lowell Joint School District tract (O.R. 6331-395).

Official Map Book 1, Page 10 (Sheet 3) · Filed July 30, 1929

Fullerton Canyon Contour Curves (Lots 1, 2 & 3)

Illustrates why La Habra Heights roads never follow a grid: every bend along Fullerton Road is plotted with precision delta angles, curve radii (R=250.00' to R=531.34'), and centerline lot acreage calculations.

Official Map Book 2, Page 6 (Sheet 6) · Filed Sept. 1932 · Scale 1" = 200'

Hacienda Blvd. & East Road Junction (Division 95, Lot 22)

Covers the high ridge where East Road (O.R. 4806-218) meets Hacienda Boulevard (O.R. 9290-350), mapping the 39.09-acre Lot 22 tract and the 20-to-30-foot perimeter strips reserved along the canyon rim for road purposes.

Official Map Book 2, Page 7 (Sheet 7) · Filed Sept. 1932 · Scale 1" = 100'

Southeast Corner of Hacienda Blvd. & East Road (Division 96, Lot 10)

Maps the 24.29-acre Lot 10 estate tract (Assessor’s Map No. 81, Parcel 587-C1) tucked between Hacienda Boulevard and the western boundary of the 1929 La Habra Heights Tract (Lots 192-225).

County Surveyor Road Ledger p. 189 · Jan. 28, 1931 · O.R. 10646-92

1931 Popenoe Road Dedication Abstract (C.S. File B-1064)

A surviving page from the Los Angeles County Surveyor’s handwritten road ledger documenting how La Habra Heights Co. formally dedicated the 40-foot right-of-way for Popenoe Road (named for avocado explorer Wilson Popenoe) across Lot 127.

Photographic & Press Archive (1919-1928)

Faces, Steam Trenchers & Hillside Groves of Early La Habra Heights

Before a single avocado tree could be planted on the dry sheep pastures of northern Rancho La Habra, Edwin G. Hart and the La Habra Heights Mutual Water Company had to lift irrigation water from the San Gabriel River basin up to twelve separate hilltop reservoirs. These surviving photographs and period newspaper dispatches capture the people and machinery that built the community in the 1920s.

Edwin Giles Hart (1874-1939) Founder and President of La Habra Heights Co. (1919) and first president of the California Avocado Association (1915). Hart pioneered contoured hillside irrigation and subtropical orchard subdivisions across Southern California.
Archival Portrait · c. 1925
Edwin G. Hart in a La Habra Heights Grove (1928) Hart (left, wearing his trademark fedora and tie in the field) stands beside a grove superintendent inspecting fruit set on a nine-year-old terraced avocado orchard in La Habra Heights.
Field Photograph · 1928
The 1920 Redwood Forebay & Crawler Pipeline Trencher Two photographs from an original 1920 construction album: assembling the steel-banded redwood Forebay tank (top) and running the heavy crawler-mounted wheel trencher across the treeless hills to lay the high-pressure water mains (bottom).
La Habra Heights Construction Album · 1920
“Valley East of Club” Before the Groves (c. 1920) Looking across the open barley fields and sheep pastures east of Hacienda Country Club in 1920, just as G.G. MacLeish’s survey crews began staking the contour road alignments.
La Habra Heights Construction Album · c. 1920
Picking Hillside “Ahuacates” (1920s) An early La Habra Heights orchardist on a wooden picking ladder alongside his children and four galvanized pails filled with freshly harvested hillside avocados.
Community Historical Archive · 1920s
First Hillside Homesteads (c. 1922) A pioneer board-and-batten cottage perched above freshly plowed contour irrigation furrows on a five-acre La Habra Heights homesite.
Community Historical Archive · c. 1922
Aug. 1, 1919 Original Press Dispatch · Covina Argus

“Edwin G. Hart Buys Rancho La Habra: Four Thousand Acre Ranch Within Twenty Miles of Los Angeles to Be Subdivided for Citrus Planting”

Just one week after La Habra Heights Co. filed its articles of incorporation on July 25, 1919, newspapers across the San Gabriel Valley broke the news that Edwin G. Hart had acquired the 3,600-acre hillside ranch from Willits J. Hole for approximately $450,000.

As reported in the August 1, 1919 dispatch at left, executive officers Edwin G. Hart (president and general manager) and Percy M. Allen (secretary) immediately purchased water rights from the Whittier Water Company and dispatched surveying crews into the canyons to stake the reservoirs, pressure pipelines, and contour roads that define La Habra Heights today.

Chronicle of the Puente Hills

Six Eras of Land, Water, Avocados & Subsurface Engineering (1839-1978)

The topography of La Habra Heights is unique in metropolitan Los Angeles: a maze of steep, frost-drained canyons rising 500 to 1,200 feet above sea level, cooled by afternoon ocean breezes slipping through the Coyote Hills gap. Here is how a Mexican grazing grant became one of California’s most storied agricultural and geological landscapes.

  1. 1839-1893 U.S. Patent Book 1, Pages 275-276 · LA Leases Book 19, Page 195

    I. Rancho Cañada de La Habra & Domingo Sansinena’s Sheep Camps

    On October 22, 1839, Mexican Governor Juan B. Alvarado granted the 6,698-acre Rancho Cañada de La Habra to Mariano Reyes Roldán. Across the 1840s and 1850s, the rancho passed through Andrés Pico (brother of Governor Pío Pico) to Southern California’s largest land baron, Don Abel Stearns, whose droughts and mortgages in the 1860s broke up the old Spanish-speaking ranchos.

    In the rugged northern hills, Basque sheepherder Domingo Sansinena acquired the steep canyons where natural asphaltum and heavy black crude oil seeped to the surface in spring-fed ravines. On July 31, 1893, widow Maria A. Sansinena executed the first recorded oil and mineral lease across 3,864.45 acres of Rancho La Habra (Los Angeles County Leases Book 19, Page 195).

    LA County Leases Book 19, Page 195 (July 31, 1893): Maria A. Sansinena’s early oil lease across 3,864.45 acres of Rancho La Habra.
  2. 1919 Incorporated July 25, 1919 · CA Entity #0088378 · Deeds Book 6909, Page 64

    II. W.J. Hole, Edwin G. Hart & the Birth of La Habra Heights Co.

    By the early 1900s, Riverside financier and yachtsman Willits J. Hole had assembled roughly 4,000 acres of northern Rancho La Habra, conveying the deep hydrocarbon estate on the eastern 3,400 acres to H. J. Rudisill in May 1903 (Deeds Book 1824, Page 69) and Union Oil Company in March 1904 (Deeds Book 1994, Page 236).

    In summer 1919, Edwin G. Hart (who had already proven the value of frostless hillside citrus and avocado estates at North Whittier Heights in 1913) purchased the 3,663.61-acre ranch from W.J. and Mary B. Hole (Deeds Book 6909, Page 64). On July 25, 1919, Hart and secretary Percy M. Allen incorporated La Habra Heights Co. to engineer a premier country-estate community.

    LA County Deeds Book 6909, Page 64 (1919): Root vesting deed from W.J. and Mary B. Hole to La Habra Heights Co. covering 3,663.61 acres.
  3. 1920-1928 Subtropical Horticulture & Mutual Water System

    III. The Subtropical Laboratory: Popenoe, Ryerson, Fuerte & Mother Hass

    Hart understood that avocados thrived on warm, well-drained slopes above the valley frost line, provided pressurized water could reach the ridgetops. Beginning in 1920, crawler trenchers laid miles of steel pipe fed by pumping plants in the San Gabriel Valley, lifting water to hilltop redwood and concrete forebays, while every out-conveyance deed reserved perpetual 10-to-20-foot road and water pipeline corridors.

    To guide plantings, Hart collaborated with USDA agricultural explorers Wilson Popenoe and Knowles Ryerson and subtropical botanist Dr. J. Eliot Coit, naming the winding canyon roads (Popenoe, Kashlan, Kanola, Chota, Dorothea, Subtropic) after prized avocado cultivars and explorers. In 1926, Pasadena mail carrier Rudolph Hass purchased a hillside grove at 430 West Road and patented a rough-skinned seedling in 1935 that became the Mother Hass Tree, ancestor of more than 80% of the world’s commercial avocados.

    September 25, 1924 La Habra Heights Co. deed executed by Edwin G. Hart and Percy M. Allen reserving hillside road and water-main corridors.
  4. 1929-1932 Official Map Book 1 & Official Map Book 2

    IV. The County Surveyor’s Contour Plats & Centerline Lot Geometry

    Because the early 2-to-15-acre groves were conveyed by custom metes-and-bounds surveys tied to ridge monuments, County Surveyor J.E. Rockhold spent three years compiling the 1916-1929 field books of civil engineers G.G. MacLeish, L.V. Miller, and A.M. Morrison into two official county map series: Official Map Book 1, Pages 8-19 (filed July 30, 1929) and Official Map Book 2, Pages 1-42 (filed September 1932).

    A distinctive hallmark of these plats appears in the surveyor’s certification block: “All areas and distances extend to the center lines of roads and parcels marked streets or roads on this map.” Rather than carving out separate municipal street strips, each hillside estate lot extended to the centerline of the winding canyon road, with 20-to-30-foot marginal easements dedicated for road and mutual water pipeline purposes.

    Official Map Book 2, Page 8 (Sept. 1932), mapping Region 45, Division 107 along Chota Road and Fullerton Road.
  5. 1940-1971 OR 17625/46 · OR 38154/403 · OR M3800/57

    V. Soundproofed Drilling Islands & the 500-Foot Subsurface Relinquishment

    Following Edwin G. Hart’s death in December 1939, corporate stewardship passed to longtime officers F. E.aly and Percy M. Allen. Under the April 1, 1940 Form 918-A Agreement (OR Book 17625, Page 46) and January 1, 1951 Remaining Lands Agreement (OR Book 38154, Page 403), Union Oil Company of California and participating landowners established the Sansinena pooled royalty structure across the deep Miocene fault blocks discovered beneath the canyons.

    On June 22, 1971 (recorded February 29, 1972 in OR Book M3800, Page 57), La Habra Heights Company and Union Oil executed the Agreement Re Drill Sites and Surface Rights, consolidating operations onto five designated fee drill sites while Union Oil quitclaimed surface entry and the upper 500 feet of subsurface across the remaining residential estates.

    OR Book M3800, Page 57 (1971): Agreement Re Drill Sites and Surface Rights between Union Oil Company and La Habra Heights Company.
  6. 1978 Rural Preservation & Cityhood

    VI. Incorporation of the City of La Habra Heights (December 4, 1978)

    For nearly sixty years, the community remained an unincorporated rural oasis governed through voluntary civic groups like the La Habra Heights Improvement Association (founded 1939) and the volunteer fire department. When suburban tract developers in the 1970s proposed high-density grading across the remaining groves, residents rallied to incorporate the City of La Habra Heights on December 4, 1978.

    The new city codified the very principles Edwin G. Hart’s surveyors had drawn on the 1929 and 1932 maps: a one-acre minimum lot size, preservation of natural canyon contours, equestrian trails, and the absence of commercial strip malls, sidewalks, or street lights.

    LA County Grantee Index (1913-1920): Official ledger recording the foundational 1919-1920 land acquisitions of La Habra Heights Co.
Cartographic Cross-Reference

Historical Subdivision & Street Corridor Index (1919-1971)

Use the filter below to look up how modern street corridors in La Habra Heights correspond to the original 1929 and 1932 Official Maps, postwar numbered tracts, and historical County Surveyor files.

Historical cross-reference of La Habra Heights Co. subdivision maps, street corridors, and recorder citations (1919-1971)
Subdivision / Map Unit Recorder Map / Citation Street Corridors & Lots Historical Survey & Engineering Notes Archival Series
La Habra Heights Tract (Southern Gateway) O.M. Book 1, pp. 8-10
Filed July 30, 1929		 Fullerton Rd, Kashlan Rd, Chota Rd (Lots 1 through 15) Surveyed at 1"=150' on Polaris bearings by G.G. MacLeish, L.V. Miller & A.M. Morrison; includes Lowell Joint School District site. O.M. Book 1
La Habra Heights Tract (Central Groves) O.M. Book 1, pp. 11-15
Filed July 30, 1929		 East Rd, West Rd, Popenoe Rd, Kanola Rd, Subtropic Dr (Lots 16 through 145) Heart of the 1920s avocado belt named for USDA explorer Wilson Popenoe and early California Avocado Association varieties. O.M. Book 1
La Habra Heights Tract (Upper Ridges) O.M. Book 1, pp. 16-19
Filed July 30, 1929		 Hacienda Blvd, Dorothea Rd, Elgerlas Rd, Reposado Dr (Lots 146 through 226) High northern and western ridges bordering Hacienda Country Club; lot areas computed to street centerlines. O.M. Book 1
Region 45, Division 95 (Hacienda & East Rd) O.M. Book 2, Page 6
Sheet 6 · Sept. 1932		 Northeast & Northwest junction of Hacienda Blvd (O.R. 9290-350) & East Rd (Lot 22, 39.09 Ac.) Compiled under Pol. Code Sec. 3658a at 1"=200'; delineates 20-foot and 30-foot perimeter road reservation strips. O.M. Book 2
Region 45, Division 96 (Hacienda & East Rd SE) O.M. Book 2, Page 7
Sheet 7 · Sept. 1932		 Southeast corner of Hacienda Blvd (O.R. 1866-40) & East Rd (O.R. 4806-218), Lot 10 (24.29 Ac.) Designated Parcel 587-C1 on Assessor's Map No. 81; adjoins Lots 192, 193, 194, 198, 220 & 225 of O.M. 1-8 to 19. O.M. Book 2
Region 45, Division 107 (Fullerton & Chota) O.M. Book 2, Page 8
Sheet 8 · Sept. 1932		 Fullerton Rd (O.R. 7378-333), Chota Rd, bordering O.M. 1-8 Lots 4, 7 & 8 Covers the southeastern boundary along the Orange County line and the southerly line of Rancho La Habra (L.S. 1-53). O.M. Book 2
Regions 45 & 46 (Western & Sansinena Canyons) O.M. Book 2, pp. 9-42
Sheets 9-42 · Sept. 1932		 Divisions 86, 94, 108, 184, 185 & 186 (West Rd, Virazon Dr, Nabal Rd, Reposado Dr, Canyon Ct) Includes the steep western oil-seeps and grazing canyons later developed into the Sansinena Oil Field and postwar estates. O.M. Book 2
Tract No. 13640 (Postwar Estate Subdivision) Map Book 274, pp. 31-32
Recorded 1947		 Hillside residential estate lots recorded with Declaration of Restrictions (OR 24614-314) First major postwar residential tract filed by La Habra Heights Co., establishing architectural review and rural setback lines. Postwar Tract
Tract No. 19363 (Mid-Century Estates) Map Book 546, pp. 40-42
Recorded 1955		 1950s rural hillside lots subject to recorded protective covenants (OR 48628-237) Designed to blend one-acre ranch homes with existing mature Fuerte and Hass avocado terraces. Postwar Tract
Popenoe Road & Canyon Road Dedications O.R. Book 10646, Page 92
Recorded Jan. 28, 1931		 Popenoe Rd across Lot 127 (C.S. B-1064), plus East Rd (O.R. 4806-218) & Kashlan Rd (O.R. 9506-97) Series of 40-foot road and water main easements conveyed by La Habra Heights Co. to the County of Los Angeles between 1924 and 1971. Road Ledger
Field Notes & Historical Curiosities

Why the Canyons Look the Way They Do Today

Horticultural Landmark · 430 West Road

The Mother Hass Tree & the Named Roads of the Heights

Nearly every primary road in La Habra Heights is a living monument to early 20th-century subtropical botany. When Edwin G. Hart and his agronomists laid out the 1919-1929 groves, they named the winding roads after the avocado varieties tested on the hillsides: Fuerte, Puebla, Ganter, Kashlan, Kanola, Chota, Nabal, Benik, Mayapan, Lamat, Panchoy, Tertoh, Dorothea, and Leucadia.

“In 1926, Rudolph G. Hass planted three Lyon avocado seeds at 430 West Road and grafted Fuerte buds onto them. One graft failed, leaving a hardy chance seedling whose nutty, pebbled black fruit received U.S. Plant Patent No. 139 on August 27, 1935.”

That single tree on West Road stood for seventy-six years before succumbing to root rot in September 2002, having parented tens of millions of grafted Hass trees across California, Mexico, Chile, and New Zealand.

Legal & Geological History · 1924-1971

From Early Wildcat Derricks to Slant-Drilled Canyon Islands

Because the oil seeps of Sansinena Canyon were well known long before 1919, deeds executed by La Habra Heights Co. between the 1920s and 1971 routinely included historical clauses governing subsurface oil, gas, and hydrocarbon rights, hillside road strips, mutual water company pipelines, and country-estate architectural standards.

“When deep directional drilling arrived in the late 1940s, the California courts (including Union Oil Co. v. Domengeaux, 1939, and Gillespie v. Ormsby, 1954, arising directly out of a hillside residence on East Road in La Habra Heights) helped shape modern California law on slant drilling and hillside representations.”

As a result, preliminary title reports and county recorder chains across the city still read like a century-old museum ledger of early California water, road, and mineral engineering.

Corporate Secretary & Archival Desk

Corporate Archive & Land Records Inquiry

This digital gazetteer is maintained to preserve the surveying, agricultural, and corporate history of La Habra Heights Co. (incorporated July 25, 1919, California Secretary of State Entity #0088378).

Whether you are a local historian, a La Habra Heights resident researching the history of your grove or parcel, a surveyor examining the 1929 and 1932 Official Maps, or a land or title professional with a question regarding historical corporate records or deeds, our records desk is glad to hear from you.

Direct Archival & Corporate Records Line:
Telephone: (713) 542-0799
Entity Reference: La Habra Heights Co. (Est. July 25, 1919 · CA Entity #0088378)

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