Howell House ~ Escondido, California
Posted by: 
brwhiz
N 33° 06.913 W 117° 04.627
11S E 492806 N 3664061
The Howell House, or Leighton House was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 20, 1992.
Waymark Code: WMAJ71
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 01/19/2011
Views: 5
This house would have been one of the first built in the fledgling city of Escondido. Starting life in 1843 as the Rincon del Diablo (Devil's Corner) Spanish land grant, the land was sold in 1850 to Judge Oliver S. Witherby of San Diego. In 1868 he sold the property to the Wolfskill brothers ofLos Angeles and the Valley was known as Wolfskill Plains for a while.
A land boom in the 1880s created a settlement called Apex near the present site of Jesmond Dene, north of present-day Escondido. On April 24, 1884 the name was changed to Escondido (Hidden Valley).
In October 1883, a group of investors from Los Angeles and San Diego bought the grant from the Wolfskills and then a year later sold it to the Escondido Company, the first time the name Escondido appears on a document. On March 1, 1886, the Escondido Company deeded the grant to the newly formed Escondido Land & Town Company, which proceeded to subdivide the valley into small farms and lay out the town site. The Company even built a few houses in town, giving prospective residents places to live in while they were in the process of buying property.
A branch line of the Santa Fe railway was extended to Escondido in 1887, and provided an economic boost to the community in the transportation of passengers and freight. As the Land & Town Company had just erected a two-story building and opened a bank, they did not have the capital to proceed with development as planned. A. W. Wohlford came to Escondido, bought the building and bank, and was prominent for many years in the financial development of the city.
The people who settled in Escondido in the early nineties were well educated and in comfortable financial circumstances; they built many beautiful homes, some of which are still standing. The Howell (Leighton) House could very well be one of them since it was built sometime during the 1890's.
The two-story house, by an unknown architect, is built in a style variously described as Queen Anne, Stick/Eastlake, or Second Empire. It is situated on a rise at the southeastern edge of the Escondido Historic District, facing generally north to northwest and has a commanding view of the heart of the city.