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Photograph circa 1910 of Palmer Leland "Richey" Richardson, born April 8, 1885, in South Dakota near Lulare in Boondocks. Palmer married Tomasita Vellarde in 1913 and was a chauffeur in his youth. During the 1930s, he owned and operated Richey's Garage in downtown Redlands.
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Black and white image of four men, including Armando Gonzales (batter, third from left) at Community Park. This image was taken during the 1947 Pony Major Championship held at the baseball fields at Community Park in Redlands. Like many baseball leagues across Southern California and the Southwest, Mexican adults and children played in segregated "Mexican Leagues" rather than integrated teams.
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"The Romero, Herrera, Enriquez, Zamarripa, and Trevino families were among those who came to Redlands around 1901 to settle and establish the Spanish-speaking chuch La Capillita, Iglesia El Divino Salvador in 1913. The building was the focal point for the Mexican Presbyterian community. The church continued as a primarily Spanish-speaking congregation until 1969, when a combination of factors resulted in a name change and a move away from the conservative, Spanish-language traditions that the church was founded upon. The church was renamed Community Presbyterian in the 1990s and still serves as a spiritual home for English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese-speaking congregations." (Vasquez and Carpio, 30)
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Dionicio "Nicho" Coyazo of Redlands and two of his sons, Cruz "Cuni" Coyazo and Blas Coyazo circa 1943. Cruz, on the left, was killed when the B26 Marauder he was tail gunner in was shot down over Belgium. His family recieved only a telegram declaring him missing in action. They only recieved more information years after his death when a congressman found some answers in 1980, discovering that he had been killed in action and burried in Belgium after the wreckage was found in 1952. Paul Aranda has worked to document his great uncle's life and on Memorial Day 2021 Cruz was honored in Memory Lane at Hillside Memorial Park.
https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2021/05/28/world-war-ii-tail-gunners-death-pieced-together-by-redlands-family/
https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2020/05/24/world-war-ii-tail-gunner-almost-forgotten-but-not-by-redlands-family/
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"Santos Coyazo, pictured here with her children Consuelo, Sam and infant Blas in 1911, walked pregnant with her husband, Dionicio, and two children to come to the United States. Over 80 years later, Blas recalled, "My parents came from Mexico, from the state of Zacatecas. It's a mining city, and my dad used to work there when he was a young man. That would be around the turn of the century. Things were getting tough for them, and they wanted to come to the United States to better themselves. So they decided, my mother and my dad and one son and one daughter, to come to the United States. They came from Zacatecas all the way to Juarez in the state of Chihuahua and to El Paso. In those years, people would pay a certain amount, which was not too much to cross the boundary from one nation to the other. So from there we came to Redlands in 1910, and I was born the following year, 1911." Blas Coyazo was the first interview for Antonio Vasquez's oral history project and was interviewed twice." (Vasquez and Carpio, 15)
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The Redlands Mexican Drum and Bugel Corps, founded by drummer Leopoldo Gonzalez and bugler Manuel Manzanales, poses in front of the Manzano family home on Tribune Street in the late 1920s. Tom Manzano, shown in back holding the flag, recalled that his parents let the group drill on their property. Other musicians in the group were Joe Delgado, Sam and Nick Coyazo, and members of the Manzano family. Often accompanied by a 60-piece boys marching band, the group performed and competed in venues across Southern California. Sponsored by the Mexican American social clubs El Junto Patriotico and the Alianza Hispano Americana, the corps played popular and patriotic sons from the United States and Mexico. According to cornet player Howard "Joe" Herrera (fourth from left), the group would be featured frequently at Mexican celebrations like Dos de Abril and Cinco de Mayo. He recalled,. "We would come marching in playing Zacatecas or some other song like that and people would go crazy."
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A black and white wide shot photograph of the Mexican Drum and Bugel Corps performing as they march down Colton Avenue in Redlands during the Dos de Abril festivities in the late 1920s. The band was sponsored by Mexican patriotic and fraternal organizations.
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1920s black and white image of the Redlands Mexican Philharmonic Orchestra. Not much is known about the group, led by Professor Juan Balderas (center, holding cornet). Juan Balderas was a musical arranger and conductor who organized the first philharmonic orchestra of Los Angeles. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1893 and traveled trough Southern California, teaching and forming musical groups. Epimenio Guzman was a musician who played in the group, his granddaughter Connie McFarland recalled, "That's the band right there, that's my Grandpa with the saxophone [seated second row, fourth from left]. He said they used to play at the old opera house at the corner of Orange and Colton Avenue. It was called the Wyatt House."
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Black and white photograph of Aurelio Placenta as a child playing with a guitar at his home on High Street, Redlands during the 1930s
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"An unidentified soldier home for a visit with Joe Hernandez (second from left) Mr. Saldena, and picking foreman Ismael "Smiley" Tejada." (Vasquez and Carpio, 35)
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Black and white image of three members of the Roque family, likely two sisters and their brother in the center, pose on the steps of a house. The man in the center wears a military uniform.
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Color portrait of a member of the Roque family in military uniform.
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Pictured from left to right, Joe Guerrero, Lalo Ramirez, Peter Ruiz, Tony Torres, Leonard Torres, Marion Torres, and Frank Coyazo depart from the Pacific Electric Depot in 1943 for duty during World War II."" (Vasquez and Carpio, 52) They were among many young Mexican and Mexican American boys who served during World War II.
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"Amelia (Sadie) Cordero is shown here in front of the family home at 305 High Street in the early 1930s." (Vasquez and Carpio, 25) Amelia wears a drop waist dress with her hair pulled back in finger waves.
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Leo Cordero posing with a 1927 car outside his home on High Street. Like many working class people he benefited from the improved roads and access to motorized vehicles. "He and his family would travel to job sites across California." (Vasquez and Carpio, 43)
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Black and white photograph of Sadie Cordero and her three children, a daughter and two sons, picking grapes in Salinas, California. Some Mexican American families in California would go pick various California produce in the Summer and Fall. Some picked apricots in Hemet, walnuts in Concord, stone fruit in Fairfield, and other crops. For many, following the crops was a matter of survival in the absense of local, full-time, year-round work Families would spend summers and the early fall months harvesting crops throughout California and other parts of the West.
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Black and white fourth-grade class photograph of Lincoln school in Redlands, California taken in 1935. This was the classroom of Nellie Hernandez. In the photograph Nellie has labeled some students.
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"Students cross Fern Street in front of Redland High School in the 1940s." (Vasquez and Carpio, 50)
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Black and white photograph of a member of the Roque family posing in uniform during World War II under a tree.
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Margaret Roque Castro pictured with her older sister, Guadalupe. The Roque family lived in the neighborhood known as "Barrio Judeo". Margaret Roque Castro described the neighborhood: "I was born in a little area right there on Herald Street, they used to call it El Barrio Judeo, because it belonged to some Jewish people. There were several houses, little old houses, but they were, you know, liveable. Then my parents bought that house on Herald Street, 1113 Herald Street. You now, the same street, but farther down." (Vasquez and Carpio, 22)
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Aerial view of the Redlands Valley showing the 1-10 freeway, the city of Redlands and the San Bernardino Mountains including Mount San Gorgonio. Most likely taken in the 1960s.
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Color photograph of the Lupe Sanchez Band with Blas Coyazo on guitar; Hemet Califorina, New Year's Eve 1964. Blas Coyazo said: "I play the bass guitar and the electric guitar and the electric guitar so for the last fifty years also, or more, out of the eighty-three years that I have, I've been playing with bands in the Inland Empire here. San Bernardino, Colton, Riverside, Hemet, Palm Springs, even Indio and Coachella, Perris, Pomona, Fontana, Bloomington, Corona...Saturday nights I used to go out mostly every week and earn perhaps twenty, twenty-five dollars extra...So I made that as a side work, you know, because I'd -- well, I learned how to play the guitar way back in 1927, '28."
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A photograph of a man looking at a Mexican migration map, designed by mapmaker Sean Redar.
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Display of the May 2000, Visions and Versions exhibition at the A.K. Smiley Public Library. Inside the case is citrus picking equipment including a helmet, gloves, clippers and bag.
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Black and white photograph of three generations of Ramon Romero's family fathered at Fairbanks Ranch in 1944 for Thanksgiving. The photograph includes his granddaughter Ramona and her Swedish husband, Harris "Harry" Dalhberg (standing on the far left). "The ranch, comanaged by Dalhberg and Ramona's father, Jacinto "Joe" Romero (Second row, third from right, holding orange), extended along Highway 99 from California Street in Redlands to Mountain View Avenue in Loma Linda. Eunice Romero (Gonzales) (second row, center, in dark shirt) reminisced about ranch life: 'They had groves of oranges, groves of grapefruit. And they had lemon trees. The Castillos lived on one ranch, the Browmans lived on one ranch, the Martinezes lived on another ranch. So then the Romeros lived on another ranch, the Dahlbergs, the Coyazos lived on Fairbanks Ranch. Those were people that socialized and worked together.'" (Vasquez and Carpio, 45)