Talk:El Modena, California

User CharlieM1021 wrote: Can someone please generate an infobox for this page? -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by CharlieM1021 (talk • contribs) 18:01, 9 February 2021 (UTC) I was a resident of El Modena from 1964 until 1971, that being some time ago, memory is blurred, but the history of the village is all wrong. The El Modena HS class of 1971 compiled a complete history of the village in order to get the US Post Office to change the name of the office from 'El Modeno' to 'El Modena'.

The village was first formed by members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) who grew grapes for raisins in the area. The old Friend's Meeting House was a white clapboard structure, which was purchased and renovated into the 'Orange Hills Restaurant' in the 1970s (I think it has since burned down). This Meeting House is referenced in the LA Times article that the Rio's family moved their restaurant into.

They wanted a post office, and had petitioned to have a branch established there under the name of 'Richmond'. The post office rejected the name, as there was already another Richmond in California. They then submitted the name 'Modena', from the grape-growing area of Italy.

The Post Office rejected this name as well, as there already was a Modena California.

Faced with this, they then decided to append the word 'El' to the Modena, on the grounds that the area was originally a Mexican Rancho, completely oblivious that it isn't gramatically correct in Spanish.

A Post Office employee (who knew some Spanish), saw the grammar error and, believing it to be an error, changed the name to 'El Modeno', and approved the application.

(Thus, until 1971, there was a disparity in the community calling itself 'El Modena' and the Post calling it 'El Modeno'. My graduating class did a complete research project on it, convinced the US Post to change the name of the branch, and there was a photo in the 1971 El Modena HS yearbook of a sign painter relettering the glass of the Post office branch.)

After the grape vine blight, the grape farmers sold off their land for pennies. The Valencia orange, which had been developed for a juice orange, began to be planted, and bracero's (a guest worker from Mexico) were brought in to work the orchards, and they were the one's who then stayed in El Modena, giving the village the faux Hispanic name some real Hispanics!

The center of village life was the old 'La Purisima' Roman Catholic Church, another white clapboard structure with a small bell 'tower', with a white clapboard rectory behind it on Center Street. Center Street was the only paved street in El Modena until sometime in the 70s, and also had the only street light.

Around 1963, the new church was built on the corner of Spring and Alameda (now Hews).

I don't remember the name of the family who owned the orchard where the high school is now at, it may well have been Hews, (what the article links as a postcard is an orange packing crate label, and the stylized drawing looks what I remember from the foundations and driveway) but they were fairly well off, building an impressive house with a reflecting pond in front of it, and the interior floors had hand-laid mosaic's. The Sappington family owned the orchard next to it, part of which became Hughes Elementry School, selling the land for cash, and one of the homes that Holstein Development built to the west side of Spring Street.

Adjacent to El Modena, on the North West corner of Esplanade and Spring, to the east of Esplanade Elementry School, was a wholesale nursery. North of that, and also the land around La Purisima, was all strawberry's (plowed under when the short hoe was banned).

Esplanade Elementry was built to replace the old El Modena Elementry School, a three story brick structure on the corner of what is now called Hews (it used to be Alameda Street, reference the AAA map) and Chapman Avenue in 1962, built around the turn of the century.

65.167.227.1 (talk) 23:10, 23 December 2013 (UTC)Michael Homsany, 'Elmo' class of 1971


 * hi michael,
 * I lived in el modena from 1953 til 1969. I greww up on s. Almeda in a big 4 columned southern colonial home which is now a mortuary. Classic times. 2 priests lived next to us surrounded by an avocado orchard. It was later rebuilt as a big church. Do you remember any of this?
 * Jerrlyn Hamilton 66.74.129.107 (talk) 19:24, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

IPA
, since you're adding IPAs to the Californian articles that need it, be sure to take notice of when communities have sizeable Hispanic demographics. If they do, you can do a quick search and see if news stations like Telemundo or Univision have had coverage there (or even local Spanish press, but that tends to be written content), because it can give insight into the Spanish pronunciation of toponyms. In this Telemundo coverage of a student death in El Modena you can see that El Modena is pronounced phonetically in Spanish. I'm not familiar constructing IPA guides (to be honest I'm usually fighting against them in obvious cases), but perhaps you'd consider trying to add the Spanish IPAs when possible. Best, Cristiano Tomás (talk) 00:36, 10 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I can definitely add Spanish pronunciations, though I'm not sure which articles would warrant them. You can find an approximate list of all the settlements with Spanish IPA here; there's not that many compared to the hundreds of places in California with Spanish-derived names. Linshee ☺ 01:45, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Firstly, thanks for the link, I didn't know we could conduct a search like that so easily! That's definitely a small number. I don't think all Spanish toponyms need IPAs, like Pescadero for example (which I would say its pronunciation is as intuitive in English as in Spanish). If I had to strategize, I would say Spanish names that employ "Ñ", "LL", "J", and "G" (before "I" or "E"), are the ones that have the higher chance of confusion for an English speaker not familiar with any Spanish phonology. So, places like Jurupa or La Cañada Flintridge or El Cajon, for example. I'd be happy to work with you to identify articles that should have Spanish IPAs if you'd like to do so, but no pressure! Best, Cristiano Tomás (talk) 00:07, 11 November 2021 (UTC) Cristiano Tomás (talk) 00:07, 11 November 2021 (UTC)