Chapter XIV
Pioneering at Pomona College
“It must be a college of the New England type—just where and how it is to be started is the question,” said one of the men who, one evening in the middle eighties, were discussing with my father and grandfather the possibility and need of a good college in Southern California, one of high standards of character and scholarship. There was no question of necessity—only of ways and means. The boys and girls must be given the same type of education as that offered in the far away homeland.
Southern California was booming, and hearts and hopes were high. It was a bold undertaking for the small group of Congregationalists, but with faith and hard work and time it could be done—the founding of a college, “Christian, but not sectarian, for both sexes,” a slogan from the first. Later the hopes and dreams of the few crystalized into action and the word came home that a committee had been appointed to find a location.
After much jaunting, even so far as Banning, on the east, the choice fell upon Piedmont, a sightly mesa north of Pomona, a little town that had recently been growing up some forty miles east of Los Angeles; and until a permanent name could be decided upon (pos
