Remembering When
by
Jerry Person
Huntington Beach City Historian
Dedicated to the people of Huntington Beach
Remembering the Hospitable Hermit of Huntington Beach
This week we are going to remember a man who wanted to help others, yet he himself didn't have much in the way of material treasures and yet would help and had faith in others. This man was Thomas Bishop Watson, the "Hospitable Hermit of Huntington Beach" who lived here from 1908 to the 1920s.
His "castle of content" was located 500 feet from the west end of the old Pacific Electric bridge near the mouth of the Santa Ana River, near a sand dune that was a 40 X 60 foot piece of property that was set in a depression and hidden from view. It was laid out like a boat, pointed on one end and tapered on the other.
Now Watson didn't really own that land, he just claimed it through squatter's rights and on this property Watson had built his stockade of wild cane, reinforced with strong lumber that had been washed ashore. Around his property were thick walls with a strong gate to enter that gave it a fort-like appearance. Inside Watson had constructed three small huts or doll cabins as he called them.
Entrance through the gate was made by calling from the outside, since the gate could only be opened from the inside and entrance was nearly impossible otherwise.
But Watson rarely kept visitors out and once inside there were carefully attended fruit trees, flower gardens and shrubbery. There were three vegetable gardens, one for each cabin. The soil for the gardens was brought there by Watson in a basket that he laboriously carried on his back from the inland.
The cabins were nearly six feet high and contained a built-in fireplace for warmth and cooking. Wood was stacked neatly around the stockade. The walls inside the cabins were papered in a snow-white paper and were spotlessly clean.
There were cupboards in each where he kept food around for visitors, his cat and kittens and grain to feed the birds.
at and kittens and grain to feed the birds and a built-in bed to sleep. Around his stockade were found fishing poles for food but no gun would he have.Watson was born at sea in 1845, his parents were en route from Bohemia to the United States to live. Watson grew up in the U.S. where he worked as a landscape gardener, fisherman and at time as a beach comber.
Watson was a kind and gentle man, standing some five foot eight with gray hair and beard and he was a devoutly religious man and kept his Bible always nearby and practiced his philosophy of neighborly relations.
When Watson would leave for the summer, he would leave the gates of the stockade open and on his cabin table he placed what provisions and money he didn't absolutely needed for guests who might be in need of a place to stay.
They could stay as long as they wanted and when Watson returned there would be more money on the table then when he left. Watson believed that the world was honest and that men were good.
Near his cabin he had a wooden keg that had once been part of an old ice cream freezer that was his water jar and above this was a cup for anyone needing a drink of cool water.
In the early 1920s, Watson met a Frenchman from Corsica by the name of Mihaels and they became fast friends. Watson invited Mihaels to live in one of the cabins as Mihaels shared the same philosophy of life as Watson.
A short time later the two men met Henri Marki, a man from Switzerland working in the bean fields here and the three men worked the fields for meager wages. Watson invited Marki to live in the third cabin.
Watson believed in not eating salt or sugar long before it was popular not to. He ate fish, herbs and wild mushrooms and he did not touch whiskey, for he believed that if God had meant us to have whiskey, He would have made it in rivers and lakes.
So in this oasis beside the Santa Ana River lived the "Hospitable Hermit" of Huntington Beach so today when we see someone who is not as wealthy in material things but could be far more wealthy in god's graces.