Alberhill (formerly, Alberhil) is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

Riverside County Riverside County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most populous county in California and the 10th-most populous in the Unit ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. Alberhill is located northwest of

Lake Elsinore Lake Elsinore is a natural freshwater lake in Riverside County, California, located east of the Santa Ana Mountains and fed by the San Jacinto River. Originally named ''Laguna Grande'' by Spanish explorers, it was renamed for the town of Elsino ...

. It lies at an elevation of 1234 feet (376 m). Alberhill was named after C.H. Albers and James and George Hill.

History

Early history

Coal, along with clay deposits, was found in the area by John D. Huff in the late 1880s. C.H. Albers, James and George Hill organized the Alberhill Coal and Clay Company which mined the low-grade lignite coal and fire clay in the area from 1890 until 1940. Mining in underground shafts and tunnels, coal was dug with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows. We Are Pacific Clay
a company history including that of the Alberhill area from pacificclay.com accessed 6/5/2015 The coal mine was in a canyon, 0.9 miles southeast of what became Alberhill, at the end of a spur line off of the

California Southern Railroad The California Southern Railroad was a subsidiary railroad of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (Santa Fe) in Southern California. It was organized July 10, 1880, and chartered on October 23, 1880, to build a rail connection between wha ...

tracks. The spur was built in 1896, from Lake Elsinore Junction through

and

Terra Cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

, to the mine where coal could be loaded into coal cars. US Dept. of Interior Geological Survey Elsinore Quadrangle, California, 1901 Edition topographic Map, reprinted in 1941.
From lib.utexas.edu accessed 6/05/2015. Shows location of Alberhill Coal Mine and spur line from Elsinore Junction. Alberhill has not yet been created,

, its predecessor appears. Lake Street passes through this canyon between Temescal Canyon Road and Nichols Road. This section of road was formerly named Coal Road. Pacific Sewer Pipe Company had a plant at nearby

, (2.3 miles southeast of became Alberhill) that produced sewer pipe using the Alberhill Company's clay to form the pipe and used their coal to fire the kilns for their production from 1890 until 1915. In 1915 the plant was closed and production was moved to

Santa Fe Springs Santa Fe Springs (''Santa Fe'', Spanish for "Holy Faith") is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is one of the Gateway Cities of southeast Los Angeles County. The population was 16,223 at the 2010 census, down from 17,43 ...

and the new publicly held company was renamed

Pacific Clay Products Pacific Clay Products, founded 1892, was created by the merger of several California Pottery#Southern California, Southern California potteries. The company began producing utilitarian pottery in the 1920s, and introduced solid color earthenware ...

Alberhill

In 1895, the Los Angeles Brick Company started business and soon became the town of Alberhill, making face brick, paving brick, sewer pipe, and roofing tile. In 1918 the company name became Los Angeles Pressed Brick Company.David W. Kean, ''Wide Places in the California Roads: The encyclopedia of California's small towns and the roads that lead to them'' (Volume 1 of 4: Southern California Counties), Concord Press, November 1993, p. 13 Many buildings in Los Angeles were built using its brick and tile, including

Royce Hall Royce Hall is a building on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Designed by the Los Angeles firm of Allison & Allison (James Edward Allison, 1870–1955, and his brother David Clark Allison, 1881–1962) and completed ...

and

Powell Library Powell Library is the main college undergraduate library on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Powell Library is also known as the College Library. It was constructed from 1926 to 1929 and was one of the original f ...

, both built in the 1920s. Alberhill was a company town, with a Catholic church and a three-room elementary schoolhouse that remained open until the 1960s. Alberhill had its own post office, which operated from 1915 to 1969. The name commemorates C.H. Albers and James and George Hill, landowners and owners of the coal and clay mine. The Los Angeles Brick Company was purchased by Pacific Clay Products in 1963.

Today

The brick production facility of Pacific Clay Products, Inc. and the Alberhill Schoolhouse at are all that remain of the original town among the tailings of the clay mines.

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Riverside County, California Unincorporated communities in California