Covina, California

Covina is a city located in Los Angeles County, California about 22 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 46,837.

History

The city was founded in 1882 by Joseph Swift Phillips, and traditions have it that it was named by either he, his wife Mrs. Cornelia (Hunt) Phillips, or his surveyor Frederick Eaton, in 1885 when the survey was finished. One of them supposedly noticed the many vineyards nestled in the San Gabriel Valley and devised the name "Covina" from "cove of vineyards".

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The city was incorporated in 1901. However, it would be orange and lemon trees, not vineyards, that would soon blanket the area and make it famous. By 1909, the city was the third largest orange producer in the world, and it still claimed to have "the best oranges in the world" as late as the 1950's. Since World War II, however, the orange groves have been largely replaced by single family and multiple family dwellings.

Related Topics:
1901 - Orange - Lemon

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The city's slogan, "One Mile Square and All There" was coined by Mrs F. E Wolfarth, the winner of a 1922 slogan contest sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, when the incorporated area of the city was only (some say slightly less than) one square mile, making it the smallest city in area in the country.

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Today, it claims to have the largest movie theater multiplex in Los Angeles County, the AMC 30.

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The Covina Valley Historical Society maintains an extensive archive illustrating the city's history in the 1911-built Firehouse Jail Museum, Covina's first municipal building, located immediately behind today's city hall at 125 E College Street in Covina's Old Town.

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