A Page from History: Arena y Fango — The battle for Dutch Flats

I liked the old main post office on Midway Drive. Perhaps I should have spoken up sooner. The place was intentionally, brutalistically, functional. Plus, it was close.

Remember the Old Town Philatelic Center in there? No? I don’t know if stamp collectors made much use of that desk or not, but somewhere in that big airplane hangar of a room I once noticed a plaque on the wall, maybe 16 inches square, that proclaimed “DUTCH FLATS — On this site on April 28, 1927, the Spirit of St. Louis was flight-tested by Charles A. Lindbergh.” How cool is that?

I had heard of Dutch Flats, but it is certainly not a place name that folks use these days.

The area referred to as Dutch Flats is simply the alluvial flood plain and former arroyo created by the watercourse of the San Diego River as it flowed past Old Town at the base of Presidio Hill, hung a hard left and was seemingly drawn directly toward San Diego Bay. A substantial portion of what is now arbitrarily referred to as the Midway District, all of the Marine Corps Recruit Depot and parts of Liberty Station and San Diego International Airport were once known as Dutch Flats.

It may be hard to visualize the contemporary tangle of strip malls, apartment complexes and impenetrable traffic jams as a serene salt marsh populated by kingfishers and jackrabbits, but such was once undeniably the case.  (What have we done?!)

So why “Dutch”? What was so Dutch about it, you ask. Nobody knows. A mystery — something for you to work on over the holidays.

I’ll reveal that pioneering San Diego historian John Davidson, who explored the origins of hundreds of San Diego County place names, was stumped by Dutch Flats. Writing in the Tribune in 1937, Davidson reported that an 1850 survey map created for promoters of Alonzo Horton’s New Town labeled the area as Grass Flats. A much earlier harbor survey by Juan Pantoja in 1782 denotes the area as simply Arena y Fango, or Sand and Mud. Accurate and descriptive, if not particularly romantic.

You know what they say in the real estate game, though: “Location, location, location.” The area was hundreds of acres of flat, albeit soggy, bayside property.

While Col. Lindbergh was merely an adopted son of San Diego, the roster of Dutch Flats devotees includes several very prominent historical San Diegans, including Congressman Bill Kettner, Col. Joe Pendleton, T. Claude Ryan and our old pal Al Spalding.

Fore!

It may help to clarify some of what follows if we stipulate that what we know today as Rosecrans Street did not traverse the Midway District north of Loma Portal toward Old Town at the turn of the 20th century. In fact, Lytton Street was the very northernmost end of Rosecrans, where the flow of traffic, from downtown toward the Point, streetcars and automobiles traveling west on Lytton, made another hard left and proceeded on a southerly tack toward Fort Rosecrans.

Clear enough? Then let’s start with the golf course. Country club? OK, country club.

In 1912, former Hall of Fame pitcher, sporting goods mogul, Lomaland resident and serial doer Albert G. Spalding decided to put in another golf course. Al owned a hillside south of the Loma Portal subdivision and just west of what was known as Dutch Flats. He envisioned fairways lined with posh Mediterranean-style homes.

Spalding was very well-invested in San Diego real estate, and, of course, he famously manufactured golf gear.  Nationwide, duffers swinging Spalding clubs required courses to conquer, and Spalding had been involved in the creation of many.

Scotsman Tom Bendelow had been a salesman of golfing equipment for Spalding. He had worked his way into the position of the company’s director of golf course development and designed many well-known courses. The nine-hole Point Loma Golf Club, soon expanded to 18 holes, was another of Bendelow’s designs.

To be honest, these were no lush, green, tree-lined fairways. Dusty and tumbleweedy might be a closer description. Water hazards though? Yes, you could certainly check that box.

Imagine a clubhouse near the present-day intersection of Seville and Locust streets in Loma Portal and you will be in the neighborhood. The course played downhill in the direction of what is now Midway Drive and back up toward where Dewey Elementary School stands today.

Continuing east over the current home of St. Charles Borromeo and crossing Tide Street (Barnett Avenue), Spalding’s course played through what would soon become the Marine Corps Recruit Depot and back up the hill through the future Naval Training Station. The Loma Club at Liberty Station is not strictly a remnant of the old Point Loma Golf Club, but if you want to think of it as such, you won’t get in too much trouble.

Now, you may have read that the old Point Loma Railroad — Charlie Collier’s streetcar — clattered along Tide Street and up Lytton at that time, so how did that work with the golf course crossing? We have found no accurate data regarding that slight complication. You probably just shouldered your sticks and crossed the tracks. We are only talking four trains an hour — two in each direction — and light automobile traffic in the early teens.

The following year, members of City (Balboa) Park’s San Diego Country Club (a successful golf course centered approximately where the zoo parking lot is today) learned they would soon be evicted from their Florida Canyon links to make way for the Panama-California Exposition planned for 1915.

In his story “The Early Years of the San Diego Country Club,” Dean Knuth tells us that Al Spalding stepped in to help:

“Spalding offered to merge SDCC with his Point Loma Golf Club. The terms of the merger were that the golf course would be leased to SDCC for a minimal charge, that Spalding would build houses along the golf course in his Loma Portal development and course-side homes would come with a membership in the club, and that the club would be called Point Loma Golf Club to promote his project. SDCC members had to maintain the golf course. Finally, Spalding offered to build a beautiful clubhouse at his cost.”

The terms were accepted by the membership of the San Diego Country Club.

The match was a hit. The beautiful clubhouse was built flying the pennants of PLGC.

Al Spalding passed away suddenly in fall 1915. His course-side subdivision never materialized.

When the United States entered the First World War in 1917, some of the first stateside casualties were approximately nine holes on the Dutch Flats side of the Point Loma Golf Club. By 1920, the San Diego Country Club had secured a permanent home in Chula Vista, and the continued existence of the Point Loma Golf Club proved to be unplayable.

The battle for Dutch Flats

You will hopefully recall San Diego’s ebullient and hyper-effective congressman, William Kettner. Among many other sterling attributes, “Brother Bill” was demonstrably a man of vision. In his book “Why It Was Done and How,” Kettner recalled that he had “for several years lived on Horton’s Hill.” He had gazed repeatedly across the empty acreage of the old river bed, trying to imagine what the future might hold for the scruffy, boggy property. Something that might take advantage of San Diego’s unique natural harbor and might bring commerce and maybe some government bucks to the little coastal town. Something like a Marine or Navy base.

True story, at least according to the congressman. He told it on several occasions, and unlike many other elected representatives we are all only too familiar with, Brother Bill was not known to prevaricate.

Through a bit of serendipity, Congressman Kettner and his Chamber of Commerce backers found a kindred spirit in fighting leatherneck Col. Joseph Pendleton. Having been deployed around the globe with the Marines, the year 1914 found Col. Pendleton as commander of USMC’s 4th Regiment on San Diego’s North Island. He had spoken publicly of his support for a permanent Marine base in San Diego.

At a lavish dinner thrown at the U.S. Grant Hotel, part of a San Diego holiday recognizing the city’s military leaders and families, Col. Pendleton famously went on the record stating “We have learned to love you and your city, and … wherever the units of the 4th Regiment may be scattered, from its colonel to its youngest member, wherever one of us be found, there will be found a San Diego booster.”

The first real salvo in the battle for Dutch Flats had been fired.

This is an abbreviated summary of these events, of course, and additional details may be found here. But a local celebration, the Panama-California Exposition of 1915, and catastrophic world events involving the United States’ entry into the first World War soon persuaded previously disinterested U.S. government and military leaders to refocus their attention on San Diego.

Pendleton had originally favored a permanent base near where he was bivouacked at North Island, but he was soon swayed by the persuasive congressman to see the advantages of the vacant Dutch Flats property.

The exposition brought many influential politicians to town, including Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Pendleton’s 4th Marine Regiment was transferred to an encampment on the exposition grounds, and the daily Marine drills became a favorite spectator sport for exposition visitors.

The expo came and went, but the San Diego Chamber of Commerce seemed to have hooked the Navy and War Department’s interest in the port. The San Diego Securities Co., owner of the Dutch Flats property, was persuaded to reduce its asking price from $400,000 to $250,000, a price that seemingly moved the needle for the Navy.

You’ve heard of being under water in a real estate deal? Get this, the city of San Diego further sweetened the pot by throwing in an additional 500 acres of tidelands — land seldom above water. The deal for what was at first known as the 2nd Advance Marine Base was done.

Panama-California Exposition lead architect Bertram Goodhue was again hired and designed the base buildings in what had become his San Diego signature Spanish Colonial Revival style. Goodhue subsequently designed the buildings of the adjacent Naval Training Station in Point Loma (later renamed the Naval Training Center) and the North Island Naval Air Station.

When the base was commissioned as the headquarters of the 5th Marine Brigade in 1921, Joe Pendleton was its commander. Two years later, the Marine Corps Recruit Depot was relocated from San Francisco to its new home on Dutch Flats.

Writing in the Tribune in 1951, longtime Copley editor and Nixon communications chief Herb Klein observed that “Marine histories which record the glories of the Corps at Tripoli, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima make no mention of the campaign for Dutch Flats. But for San Diego, Dutch Flats was a Marine victory of ranking importance. Because of Dutch Flats, San Diego is the West Coast home of the Marine Corps.”

To be continued …

Eric DuVall is president of the Ocean Beach Historical Society. Membership in OBHS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is $25 annually. Visit obhistory.org.