The Carlton Chronicle rides again!

Last week, Newspapers.com added 111 titles to their searchable database. So of course, I had to see if any Orange County newspapers were included. Imagine my surprise to see the Carlton Chronicle on the list – a paper I’d never heard of, let alone seen! Then imagine my surprise upon seeing that only one issue – the inaugural edition of February 25, 1888 – was available! 

On the other hand, this one issue appears to account for 50% of the Carlton Chronicle’s run, which continued for one more weekly issue, only to go AWOL during the second week of March 1888. 

Carlton, wrote Phil Brigandi, was “a failed townsite laid out in 1888 near Prospect Avenue and Imperial Highway in what is now Yorba Linda. It was surrounded by the Olinda Tract and consisted of scores of tiny little lots. But the Boom of the Eighties had already burst when Carlton when on the market and the town never went anywhere.”

One of the best features in the first edition is this map.

The Chronicle was just one of numerous efforts to make the doomed town seem viable to potential investors. It featured articles with headlines like "A Brilliant Future -- Carlton's Flattering Prospects" and "How We Progress: Rapid Development of a New Town in Southern California." Above the fold on page one was an article entitled, "How Blizzards Work," giving the impression that folks in Carlton were altogether unfamiliar with the concept of bad weather.

In short, today's historian isn't going to glean as much information about the few residents of Carlton as they might like from these four pages. But it's a great document of one of the many Southern California boom towns that fizzled in the late 1880s and how they tried to promote themselves.

To make sure nobody igonored it, the Chronicle's masthead was printed in red – an unusual feature mocked by other local papers, including the Los Angeles Tribune and the Anaheim Gazette. The Santa Cruz Sentinel also commented on "the redheaded Carlton Chronicle, published by a green firm in a fresh Los Angeles county burg..."  

The Chronicle was published by the "Carlton Printing and Publishing Co." and printed in Los Angeles. There were plans to begin printing it in Carlton within a month of the first edition, but the little rag didn’t survive that long.

If you know where to find the second and final edition of the Carlton Chronicle, drop me a line.

Tract map of Carlton (Not from the pages of the Chronicle.)

The Hotel Rossmore, Santa Ana

An early view of the Brunswick/Rossmore Hotel, Santa Ana

The Hotel Rossmore, which stood at the northwest corner of 4th and Sycamore streets in Santa Ana, opened in about 1887 as the Hotel Brunswick: a "boom era" tourist hotel financed in part by city father William "Uncle Billy" Spurgeon and operated by W. W. Ward. 

Of course, the railroad boom went bust, and by the early 1900s, it was redubbed the Hotel Rossmore. It eventually became known for catering to traveling salesman. 

The Woolworth's building, on the same location, as of Sept. 2025.

The Rossmore was badly damaged in the so-called "Long Beach Earthquake" of March 10, 1933. In fact, two people were killed as they exited the hotel onto 4th Street and were immediately buried by falling rubble. In the quake's aftermath, the hotel was largely demolished and only partly rebuilt. The new iteration, called the New Rossmore Hotel, had 32 room -- half its original number.

Postcard image of the destruction at the Rossmore Hotel in 1933. Arrow over the door shows where two people were killed by falling debris.

Having finally become unprofitable, the hotel closed on May 1, 1950 and plans were made for a new Woolworth's "five-and-dime" store to be built in its place. Woolworth's had previously been in another building on 4th Street, which had also been badly damaged in the 1933 quake.

The leases for the last tenants in the hotel building were up in 1952 and demolition began promptly thereafter, followed by the construction of Woolworth's. The new store opened in February 1953. 

Woolworth's was a fixture and a staple for locals in the years before shopping malls took over the retail landscape. But the times did change, and in 1992 Woolworth's closed. In the decades since, the building has housed other businesses, including Fallas Paredes and now the El Vaquero clothing store.