JERRY PERSON -- A Look Back

This week we’ll look at three milestones that shaped Main Street in

Huntington Beach.

On any weekend evening, Main Street turns into a real gas with

party-goers mingling with shoppers under the soft yellow glow of its

street lights.

If you have ever been to San Francisco, you know that it is divided into

many quaint-sounding districts, one being its gaslight section.

Huntington Beach had its own gaslight section along Main Street in the

early days. I’m referring, of course, to the real gaslight that

illuminated early Main Street businesses.

Before 1927, Main Street glowed with a different yellow light. It was the

era of cheap natural gas from the nearby oil field. Because of cheap gas

-- 25 cents per thousand cubic feet -- Huntington Beach saw no need to

convert its aging gas lights to electricity.

But as time went on, the old system began rusting and leaking gas to the

extent that the city was losing money. By 1927, it cost the city about

the same to light Main Street with gas as it cost to light the rest of

the city with electric lights.

The city was paying $583 a month to light 107 gas lights at $5.45 per

light, against $703 to light 475 electric street lights at $1.48 per

lamp. When it was found that the city would have to pay more than $10,000

just to repair those gas lamps, a petition was drafted and signed by Main

Street businesses and property owners asking the City Council for modern

electric street lamps.

On May 9, 1927, the petition was presented to the council. The lamps that

the petition requested were to be an ornamental, two-light per pole

version of the Marbelite style, with G.E. glass globes. These would run

on Main Street from the pier to Yorktown Avenue.

The council agreed and extinguished the flames of its old gas lights

forever.

Our next important Main Street milestone occurred during the same decade

as the gas lights when George Taylor, the city superintendent of streets,

painted marked 45-degree angle stalls along Main starting in July 1920.

Now if you wanted to park your car in one of the new stalls, one of your

tires had to touch the curb to be legal.

We have those same diagonal stalls today.

The third milestone occurred as World War II was coming to a close.

Main Street found itself with a parking dilemma, more cars and not enough

places to park. Councilman Ted Bartlett suggested at the February 19,

1945, council meeting that the city should install parking meters as a

solution to the problem. But no action was taken until a year later.

In 1946, Main Street got its parking meters and she still has them, but

the meters no longer take pennies as the old ones did.

* JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington Beach

resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at P.O. Box

7182, Huntington Beach 92615.