Northside - City of Riverside

the water company is Northsider Sam Gregory, who still farms and irrigates his
rural parcel west of the survey area. As Alamo Tract lands have changed hands and
been reduced to smaller lot sizes throughout the 20 th century, shareholders have
dwindled, but the company remains the only privately-owned water company in
the City. Several original above- and below-ground structures of the well-and-canal
irrigation system are still extant outside the survey area, and the Alamo Water
Company lands and any associated buildings, structures, or objects are
recommended for further study in Phase II (Mermilliod & Klure 2005a).
Railroad
Though often overshadowed by the pivotal role that canal irrigation played in the
early prosperity and enduring stability of Riverside, the success of citriculture, local
tourism, and settlement through the introduction of rail transportation into the
region and the City cannot be understated. The railroad more than threaded the two
original colony settlements and the Government Tract together; it offered a
connection to the southern California region and far beyond. The arrival of the
railroad at this time, and particularly the competition between rail companies, was
critical, allowing Riverside to quickly lead the nation’s citrus industry and
participate in the real estate boom of the late 1880s that was felt throughout southern
California.
Travelers, boomers and boosters began to flood California and the southern
California region with the completion of the transcontinental railroad to San
Francisco in 1869, and by the time Riverside incorporated as a city, the first rail line
had just arrived in Riverside. In 1882-3, the California Southern (part of the ATSF
system after 1884) completed its route through Box Springs, East
Riverside/Highgrove, and points north. In 1885-86, with the assistance of local
communities and citizens who donated right-of-way land, this line was expanded to
the west with a branch line through Riverside and a station constructed on the
eastern edge of the Mile Square, which replaced the original ATSF station at Point of
Rocks, approximately 3 miles to the north at the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain
(Patterson 1996:161). This new ATSF line through downtown was Riverside’s first
direct rail link to Los Angeles (via Corona) and was used by the Riverside, Santa
Ana, and Los Angeles Railway Company, a subsidiary of ATSF that consolidated
with others in 1887 as the California Central Railway Company. Soon, stations began
to pop up all over Riverside – Pachappa Station at Arlington Avenue, Casa Blanca
Station at Madison Street, Arlington Station at Van Buren Boulevard, and Alvord
Station at the crossing of Magnolia Avenue (no longer extant; Hammond 1995:5 and
Patterson 1996:161, 184).
In 1892, the competitive Southern Pacific Company extended a Colton branch line
into Riverside, which came in from the northeast and branched in two different
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