IN THE PIPELINE:

Happy New Year! As you may have heard, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of Huntington Beach, and throughout the next 12 months there will be plenty of events designed around the big event (the official date of the incorporation is Feb. 17).

So a few things about city history today, the first being a quick time capsule snapshot of what else was happening the year Surf City became incorporated.

On Jan. 1, Robert Fowler ran a then-world-record marathon (his time was 2:52:45.4). The next month he’d run a new marathon record time (2:46:52.6).

Around this time, British explorer Ernest Shackleton found the magnetic South Pole. In February, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed. And the first subway car with side doors went into service in New York.

Also that month, the Boston Red Sox traded Cy Young, then 41 years old, to Cleveland Naps. In March, the first U.S. university school of nursing was established, at the University of Minnesota. And President William Howard Taft was inaugurated as the 27th president during a 10-foot snowstorm. Back in New York, the Queensboro Bridge opened, linking Manhattan and Queens.

Also, in March 1909, Major League Baseball ruled that players who jump contracts would be suspended for five years. Oh, and Gustav Mahler conducted the New York Philharmonic for his first time.

In April, Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson reached the North Pole, Philadelphia’s Shibe Park (later Connie Mack Stadium) opened, and Joan of Arc was declared a saint.

Moving to June, athlete Jim Thorpe made his pro baseball pitching debut for Rocky Mount (ECL) with a 4-2 win. This fact will cause him to forfeit all of his Olympic medals.

July saw the first pro baseball game, a minor league, played under lights; Orville Wright tested the first U.S. Army airplane; and Sigmund Freud began his first lectures on psychoanalysis.

In August, the United States issued the first Lincoln penny and the Indianapolis 500 racetrack opened.

The Wright Brothers were back in the news in November when they formed a million-dollar corporation to manufacture airplanes and in December, colored moving pictures were demonstrated for the first time at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Quite a year, huh?

Teddy Tate appreciates the history of Huntington Beach. She’s Mary Newland’s great-granddaughter and starting in the 1940s, just after she was born, Teddy and her family would take a winter trip to Huntington Beach almost every year and stay at the Newland House, today one of the most historic sites in the city.

We met at the home recently, where she was hanging her original Christmas stockings over the fireplace with her daughter, Baylor. Teddy told me she loved coming back to the house because of all the good memories that seem to still cling to the creaky antique wood and lace curtains. She’d visit the Newland House each winter as a child, and she says Huntington Beach was a much different place back then.

“The big thing was, when we’d drive in from Riverside, we’d have a game to see who could see the Newland House first, or as we called it, ‘Grandma New-New’s house.’ It really stood out back then, and you could literally see it from several miles away, just sitting there on the bluff, surrounded by nothing but fields. And when we’d drive to Knott’s Berry Farm for lunch, there was almost nothing between the house and the farm on Beach Boulevard. Just lots of eucalyptus trees.”

Teddy is not sure if she’ll be part of any of the festivities this coming year, but she seems interested, so if anyone out there is involved in planning and you’d like to speak with her, just drop me a note.

Finally, you may know that this city was named in honor of Henry Huntington, who brought the Pacific Electric Railway to the area.

Recently, I was out at the lush, beautiful botanical gardens at the Huntington Library, at Huntington’s former estate in San Marino. Crowds wandered the fragrant gardens, fields and jungles. The museum and library were also teeming with visitors.

But my daughter and I discovered a spot that was still, peaceful and quiet. It was an old orange grove on the property, and it looked just like our county used to look; and like it still exists on faded linen postcards. We marched through the overgrown grasses, catching an occasional whiff of the sweet scent of oranges. On a map we’d seen a landmark back here, one that other visitors seemed to overlook.

Finally, we arrived at the place we were looking for — the place where we wanted to pay our respects. It was the secluded, grand mausoleum of Henry Huntington.

It’s considered to be the model for the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., designed by John Russell Pope before he won the commission that made him famous. Huntington wanted the Mausoleum to be a Greek temple, erected on the spot his wife, Arabella, chose for her grave site. Made of Colorado Yule marble, the circular peristyle has four bas-relief sculptures with literary quotes alluding to the four seasons.

The Mausoleum was completed in 1929, two years after Henry’s death and five years after Arabella died. In the peace of the grove, we paid our respects to this interesting gentleman whose name the world will be hearing a lot this coming year, the collector, railroad tycoon, and Surf City namesake, Henry Huntington.

On another note: I’ll be signing my new book, Vanishing Orange County, at the Barnes & Noble on Main Street in Orange from 6 to 8 p.m. Jan. 9. If you received the book for the holidays and would like it signed, just bring it by.

CHRIS EPTING is the author of 15 books, including the new “Vanishing Orange County.” Write him at [email protected].