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to the depression of real estate values). At the end of the meeting,
Huntington had said, “Take my word for it, Mr. Fithian, the work of the
gap will be pushed.”
Fithian’s will left his entire estate to Fannie. Three years later, Richard
Barrett Fithian cabled Santa Barbara from Paris to inform the
Morning
Press
that Fannie had died from a clot on the brain. The newspaper
said
that without a doubt, she was one of the most charitable and generous
ladies in the community, just like her late husband. Her obituary said that
during her brief visits to this city, Fannie had been “prominent in society
and indefatigable in her charitable efforts.”
Joel Remington
and Richard Barrett Fithian
In 1901, Richard Barrett Fithian, his wife Anne Stow,
and their daughter Dorothy departed Montecito for Europe,
presumably to take care of Fithian banking and business interests
there. They would live abroad until the outbreak of WWI, only
occasionally visiting Santa Barbara.
For a boy raised and educated mainly in Europe, Joel
Remington Fithian surprisingly took to the West like a duck to
water. Under his stewardship,
Rancho Miramar
in Carpinteria grew
from 500 acres to over 3,200 acres. He built reservoirs on the upper
ranch and found profit in oranges and lemons. He was proud of his
achievements, and published a book of hand-tinted photographs
bound in hand-tooled leather showing the progress of the ranch.
Joel became great friends with fellow easterner Francis
Townsend Underhill who, like him, was raised with great wealth
and social prominence, but had succumbed to the allure of
the “Wild West.” And like Underhill, Joel loved to drive, often
ferrying his friends over the mountains to Underhill’s
El Roblar
ranch or his own
Rancho San Juan
. Joel had purchased the 5,000-
acre ranch in the Los Alamos Valley from the Den-Bell family
sometime before 1900.
Moguls & Mansions
92
winter
|
spr ing
(Top)
Joel R. Fithian (seated
wearing large hat) and his ranch
hands at Rancho Miramar in 1896
(Below)
Seen here at the reins, Joel
drives the stage he had purchased
from Wells Fargo in a Fiesta Parade
(Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical
Museum)