The Katherine Meigs home overlooking part of her gardens. The home came to be known later as “Tall Trees” as Meigs’ plantings matured.
In April, the Redlands Area Historical Society hosted a lecture and a garden party telling the story of forgotten Gilded Age Redlands historical figure Katherine Campbell Meigs.
Board member and former of the Redlands Junior Historical Society, John P. Beall, presented an evening about “The Marvelous Mrs. Meigs” to a full capacity audience at the Contemporary Club outlining the life of Meigs as well as her lasting impact on Redlands. Since those events, Beall has been invited to give his talk to other community groups, including to the Noon Kiwanis of Redlands. Beall is writing a book on this subject.
Katherine Campbell, daughter of a prominent New York banker and board member of the Clearing House, married Charles Henry Meigs, son of a national banking examiner and nephew of a president of the New York Stock Exchange. The family vacationed at a country house in the Hudson River Valley near Mohonk Mountain House.
Charles H. Meigs died young while visiting his brother at Santa Barbara, who is the namesake of the ocean-front Meigs Road leading out of his former ranch in the Mesa into downtown Santa Barbara. Peverill Meigs was an early citrus and olive rancher there whose olive mill is the namesake for Olive Mill Road in Montecito, California. The olive mill would later become the home of actress and singer Lena Horne.
Katherine had heard great things of Redlands, and she ultimately spent the last 35 years of her life calling Redlands home. She brought plantings with her from Montecito, including rare Chilean Wine Palms and olive trees that remain standing today.
Katherine Meigs was a force in her own right. She was either a founder or an officer of more than 10 of the city’s philanthropic institutions, including several Smiley-founded or directed charities. She helped to found the Redlands Day Nursery and Redlands Community Hospital. She was on the boards of the Contemporary Club of Redlands and Associated Charities (now Family Services).
She was a benefactor of other organizations such as the Redlands Presbyterian Church, furnishing a Ladies’ Chapel and Sunday School in the 1903 structure, participated in the fundraising to build the original Contemporary Club building, and was a benefactor the A.K. Smiley Public Library.
A frequent and ardent champion of public beauty in the young city, she served on Jennie Davis’ Tree Committee alongside Helen Cheney Kimberly (mother of Mary Kimberly Shirk). Her home and gardens were on the official tourist route of Redlands for over a decade.
As a member of the Redlands Horticultural and Improvement Society later in life, she won awards for her plant specimens among competitors drawn from across Southern California. Interestingly, as late as the 1920s the city of Redlands was also a contestant in these competitions and did receive honorable mentions for their plant care.
One of the greatest laurels in Redlands’ crown was the hosting of three sitting Presidents (McKinley in 1901, Roosevelt in 1903, and Taft in 1909). Meigs helped to host President Theodore Roosevelt when he held his California Summit at Redlands in 1903, where the governor and leadership of the state met the president at the Casa Loma Hotel rather than the president making a journey to Sacramento.
Meigs directed the decoration of the mile-long parade route with flower float archways and palms. This custom, still perpetuated in Pasadena’s Rose Parade, was a well-established convention in several Gilded Age resort communities on both sides of the country, including Newport, Rhode Island and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachussets.
She was also a benefactor of the Redlands Academy of Music that arranged musical and cultural performances for Redlands prior to the advent of the Redlands Bowl. Redlands contains several “eastern institutions” transplanted here, and Katherine and Henry Meigs had been involved with the Academy of Music in New York, an institution that had been part of the rift between the Astor and Vanderbilt social circles of New York that partially inspire the HBO series “The Gilded Age.”
It is a unique feature of Redlands worth mentioning that boards composed of both men and women did exist early in its history. It is also worth noting that Meigs was frequently one of those women seated on these boards.
Meigs had no children, although her nieces and nephews and their families remained in Redlands at least as recently as the 1970s.
Nothing in Redlands bears her name, and she had no children to sustain her memory. Isn’t Redlands recognizable in her and haven’t we all felt her impact in some way here in Redlands?
John Beall is an occasional contributor to the Redlands Community News.
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