Bonita Old-Timer Recalls Early Days in the Valley
- Media
- Feb 6
- 1 min read
I found this newspaper clipping hanging on the wall of the Bonita-Sunnyside Museum. Fred Higgens was interviewed by The Star-News in 1985. He recalls a different time in Bonita.
Mr. Higgens graduated from National City High School in 1916. There were fifteen graduates that year and only 200 students in the entire school. They were bussed in from Chula Vista, Otay City, Palm City, Nestor and the Tijuana River Valley. The Bonita bus would break down and the kids would jump out and push the bus up the hill!
He recalls horse and buggy rides from Imperial Beach to Coronado for summer picnics with neighbors.
He tells of a quarry below the Sweetwater Dam and how the larger rocks were taken to Coronado for a rock seawall. I looked at those rocks every day when I lived in Coronado and had no idea that they came from Bonita where I would later move.
Mr. Higgens' family left England and arrived in Bonita, California in 1898 when he was a one-year old. Mr. Higgens recalled that Bonita started getting less county in the early 1960s. Wouldn't he be surprised to see how it has changed now!
[Click on image to enlarge for easier reading]
By Fred Higgens | August 1, 1985 | The Star-News
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