Samuel and Martha Bowron, like many Midwesterners attracted by the San Diego area’s balmy climate, brought their family to Poway from Kansas in 1886.
The Bowrons joined other Poway pioneers, including the Kent family, which had lived here since the 1870s. Samuel teamed up with an ex-sea captain named Lynch, who had begun planting a vineyard on the lower slopes of Twin Peaks. Grapes, dried on the vine for raisins, would be an important crop for Poway farmers for many years.
Samuel first worked with Captain Lynch on his property, building a nursery stock of grape vines and fruit trees. Later he would move on to planting vineyards and orchards for himself and others in the valley.
Among those he planted for was Dr. Louis Hilleary, Poway’s first physician. In exchange, he received the land on which he would build his home and plant his own crops.
He also served as the foreman and chief worker on the construction of Community Church the year after the family arrived here.
Fletcher, known as “Tad,” was the youngest of the five Bowron children, born here in August 1887. He and his siblings attended the one-room Poway school, located near Community Church for elementary school. An attempt to operate a high school here in the mid-1890s would last only a year.
Education was important to the family and the Bowrons moved briefly to Pasadena in 1893 so their older sons could continue their schooling. They returned to Poway for a time before finally moving permanently to Los Angeles in 1903. Fletcher attended Los Angeles High School, where he was on the yearbook staff and voted by his fellow students the most likely to be elected to Congress. Like his brother before him, he went on to U.C. Berkeley. He then enrolled in USC law school.
For financial reasons, he paused his education and worked for a while as a newspaper reporter.
His career path was interrupted by service in World War I. Upon his return, he completed his law degree and opened a legal practice. In 1926, he was appointed to the Superior Court, where he became the first jurist on the West Coast to use a pre-trial calendar.
After a dozen years on the bench, he was elected mayor of Los Angeles on a reform ticket, replacing a series of corrupt officeholders. He earned kudos for his role in cleaning up the notoriously corrupt city. He served as mayor until 1953, later returning to the Superior Court bench until his retirement in 1962.
I had to opportunity to interview Fletcher Bowron and his older brother, Bernard, in July 1968 for an article in the Poway News Chieftain. They were visiting Poway researching a piece Fletcher was planning to write about the town, for which he still felt a deep affection. He and Bernard had been working on it since 1960.
Sadly, he would die two months later, suffering a heart attack while driving his car in Los Angeles. The book was never finished.
In his obituary, he was saluted by the Los Angeles Times as the finest mayor in the city’s history. Fletcher Bowron Square was dedicated in his memory near Los Angeles City Hall in 1975. The accolades were many.
Fred Allbee, a well-known local character and longtime honorary mayor of Poway in the days before incorporation, presented a framed picture of the Bowrons’ home at the dedication, for which Bowron’s widow thanked him profusely.
When it came time for the roads in Poway to get formal street addresses in about 1960, the road by the house was named for the Welton family, who had lived there later. Bowron Road wound up to the west, where it serves the library and Valley School. That’s probably an appropriate choice, given the Bowrons devotion to educating their children.
The Bowron family’s house still stands at the southwest corner of Poway Road and Welton Lane. It narrowly avoided being torn down in 2003 when city officials, realizing that it was on their historical/cultural resources list, rescinded a permit to demolish it for a car dealership. Efforts for the city to acquire the building and relocate it to Old Poway Park or to a planned park at the Big Stone Lodge site fell through, but the building was saved.
The Bowron house is now used as offices for a commercial enterprise. While many changes have been made to the inside, and there are additions to the back, the front still looks much as it did more than 130 years ago.
Shepardson is vice-president of the Poway Historical and Memorial Society.