Northside - City of Riverside

The Spanish-speaking community was unique in the Rancho period, which was
characterized by livestock ranching rather than farming and did not promote
individual land and home ownership. The independent landholders of La Placita
and Agua Mansa owned their own adobe homes and farms, which were irrigated by
ditches dug from the Santa Ana River. They grew both gain and garden produce
such as grapes and raised animals for meat, milk, and labor. By 1855, the community
boasted about 200 members and eventually had more than 100 little farming fields
(Patterson 1996:127-8), and their horses, sheep, and cattle freely grazed on
government land and what would become Riverside, causing quick and lasting
conflict with Riversiders until the early 20 th century.
The lands within the survey area were also part of Bandini’s Rancho Jurupa and
were purchased by the California Silk Center Association in 1868. In September
1870, the Southern California Colony Association, led by John W. North, purchased
the holdings of the California Silk Center Association, which consisted of
approximately 8,600 acres of the eastern portion of the Rancho, and founded the
colony of Riverside. The short-lived silkworm colony had been founded in 1868 by
Louis Prevost, a native of France, and his death in early 1870 caused the
abandonment of the project by co-investors just before the state of California
withdrew the high, promotional bounties it had been offering for the planting of
mulberry trees and silkworm cocoons (Patterson 1996:35). Almost immediately after
purchasing the silk colony lands, work on an irrigation canal began under the
direction of a former silk colony director, Thomas Cover, who was one of four men
to join the new colony. By the end of the same year, the holdings of the Southern
California Colony Association were surveyed and platted by Goldsworthy and
Higbie as an orthogonal plan with 10-acre parcels to the north and south of a onemile
square townsite known as the Mile Square (plat map 1870). The Mile Square
lies to the northeast within the current city boundaries, and the survey area is
located wholly within the 10-acre parcels to the north. The orthogonal street plan,
which is oriented on a northeast/southwest axis, rather than strictly following the
cardinal points, corresponded with the boundary lines of the Spanish rancherías that
once defined land ownership in the region and continues to the Riverside-San
Bernardino County boundary.
Also in 1870, a nearly 13-square-mile area to the southwest, which included much of
the government land, was purchased by Benjamin Hartshorn. Part of the Hartshorn
Tract, which was also laid out in the orthogonal pattern, was sold in 1874 to investor
William T. Sayward and Indiana banker Samuel C. Evans who soon established the
Riverside Land and Irrigating Company. The area became known as Arlington, a
distinct community (Bynon 1893-4:21). Between the lands owned by the Southern
California Colony Association and the Riverside Land and Irrigating Company
remained a much-reduced, mile-wide strip of land known as the Government Tract,
where streets were laid out on a strict north-south grid and intersect at odd angels
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