From the loamy fields of Montebello once...

By CECILIA RASMUSSEN

Jan. 24, 1997 12 AM PT

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From the loamy fields of Montebello once sprang the Southland’s vastest profusion of roses, and unsightly oil derricks--hence Montebello’s onetime motto: “The City of Flowers With an Oil Well Payroll.”

But Montebello is also the oldest European settlement in Los Angeles County, for it was here that the first Mission San Gabriel Archangel was built in 1771, the forerunner of the San Gabriel Mission, which was built in 1776, after floods forced the abandonment of the Archangel site.

It was another century before five visionaries--a Jewish developer, a water engineer, a Benedictine monk and two guys who made bricks--would lay the foundations of modern Montebello.

In 1900, Harris Newmark--a Jewish merchant who later wrote a history of the Southland’s progress--joined several partners in laying out 1,500 acres for a city, and called it Newmark.

At the same time, engineer William Mulholland was brought in to build the town’s hydraulic water system. At his suggestion, the town was renamed Montebello, Italian for “beautiful hills.”

A Benedictine monk was drawn to the picturesque hills when he came from Oklahoma in 1905 to build a monastery; the site, where City Hall stands today, would soon gush with oil.

And the two brick makers were Iowa emigrants Walter and Joseph Simons. As the triangle-shaped town grew, so did surrounding cities, and by 1905, bricks were in high demand. The Simons brothers began to build “El Pueblo de Simons,” a town within a town, for their 3,000 Mexican immigrant workers. The brick workers’ labor would endure in many landmarks, including the Assyrian-style Uniroyal plant in nearby City of Commerce, today an outlet mall.

The area south of Whittier Boulevard became a hodgepodge of homes, truck gardens and, soon, flower fields. By 1913, the Chamber of Commerce advertised: “Come to Montebello--come where the flowers grow.”

Before World War II, 37 commercial nurseries and 150 varieties of roses made floriculture the city’s largest business until industrial development.

But the town did not always smell like roses. When adjacent cities planned to turn the hills above Montebello into a sewer farm, Montebello protected its sovereignty by merging with Monterey Park in 1916.

It was a short marriage. Black gold was discovered in 1917 in the Benedictine monk’s hills, triggering an oil boom. Montebello split from Monterey Park and incorporated in 1920.

Two years later, a fleet of four city buses regularly rumbled down city streets. In 1928, city fathers sold their experimental bus operation to Southern Pacific Railroad, which eventually spawned the countywide transportation system known today as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The post-World War II housing boom was a bust for the Simonses. Brick homes didn’t suit the need for prefab haste. The plant closed in 1952, oil wells began to dry up, and suburbs started to replace the oil derricks.

Today, 145 oil wells keep pumping, and although the commercial rose acres are gone, Montebello still grows and sells birds of paradise--the official flower of the city of Los Angeles.

By the Numbers

CITY BUSINESS

Incorporated: October 16, 1920

Square miles: 8

Number of city parks: 8

City employees: 450

1996-97 operating budget: 58 million (capital & restricted funds excluded)

ETHNIC MAKEUP

Latino: 68%

White: 17%

Asian: 14%

Black / Other: .1%