Other San Diego Historical Society publications
Our Hills and Valleys:
A History of the Spring Valley-Helix Area
by Thomas Joseph Adema
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Our Hills and Valleys is the story of the Helix-Spring Valley Region of San Diego County, from the Indian Area of the 1700s to the modern day, researched and told by Thomas J. Adema, former photograph archivist for the San Diego Historical Society. Adema's book tells of the Meti Indians who inhabited Spring Valley long before the arrival of Europeans. It describes the era of the California missions in the Mexican and Spanish period of the early 1800s, and narrates the colorful story of the early settlers including Rufus K. Porter, a promoter who gave Spring Valley its name; Hubert Howe Bancroft, the wealthy California historian who planted olive and fruit trees on his Helix Farms ranch; and Alfred Isham, the unscrupulous businessman who bottled Sweetwater Springs water and sold it as a cure for baldness.
The origins of the region's many communities are described including Casa de Oro, Brookside, La Presa, Mount Helix, Sweetwater Springs, Rancho San Diego, Spring Valley Estates, Dictionary Hill, and Calvo Gardens.
Our Hills and Valleys is beautifully illustrated with original photographs--many of them the work of Francis Elliote Patterson, a noted pioneer photographer and Spring Valley resident of the 1880s.
196 pages, 176 photographs, softbound, $14.95. ISBN 0-918740-15-0
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Mail order form for publications available. For more information about these and other San Diego Historical Society publications, or to receive a free copy of our Publications Catalog, please call (619) 232-6203, ext. 114.
