It is with great sadness that I inform readers of this column that the regular contributor, Bill McBurney, passed away June 18.

About a month ago, I was asked by Bill to take over this column while he was on hiatus. It was a great honor to do so, since I thoroughly enjoyed Bill’s history articles. His columns were full of interesting stories and anecdotes that he relayed while describing historic photos of the local area.

In this piece, I wanted to stay true to the history column and honor Bill’s life. I also wanted his last column to contain his words and thoughts, which many of his readers have come to enjoy.

As a result, I incorporated some of Bill’s childhood memories of growing up in Hemet and French Valley. These nuggets were mined from an autobiography that his family was kind enough to send me.

Bill was born in Hemet in 1928, and he spent much of his childhood there until his family moved to Auld Valley when he was 9. One of his memories in Hemet was the annual Ramona Pageant.

The following snippets were plucked from Bill’s autobiography:

Since we lived on Girard Street, all the traffic for the Ramona pageant passed by our door. On weekends in April and May, the Pageant was the focus of nearly all the town’s social life. Both Pop and Mother had parts in the play, as did most of my aunts.

Professional actors and actresses played the lead roles in the play. Local teenagers played all the bit parts.

My mother was especially impressed when Leo Carillo, a famous actor of the time, would drive by in his grand automobile… We took great pleasure watching all the rich people from LA drive by slowly in the traffic jam after each performance.

In the fall of 1937, Pop sold the house on Girard Street and we moved to a ranch way out in the country in an area called Auld.

The ranch was 640 acres of bottomland where two creeks met, and hills going up to the Rawson Ranch, north and east of it, including the valley that now holds the northeastern arm of Lake Skinner, which is part of the San Diego Aqueduct.

He planted the lowland in watermelons and leased 40 acres from Mr. George Auld for cantaloupes and Persian melons in the area near the Skinner Dam.

The family moved into the old ranch house that was on the side of the hill where Rawson canyon comes into Skinner Lake.

The old house was single wall construction with a loft bedroom for my brothers Homer, John Advertisement
and me, and one bedroom downstairs for the folks.

The house was constructed of rough sawn pine lumber held together by hand wrought nails.

Each nail had been hammered into shape on an anvil by a blacksmith… Getting two or three wagon loads of lumber from Winchester or Temecula to the ranch must have taken a couple of weeks at the time the house was built (1880 to 1890).

Homer and I walked to Hyatt school, which was about two and a half miles from the ranch (uphill both ways in the snow). We had to ford Tucalota Creek, which was no big deal because we went barefoot anyway.

Once it rained heavily for a couple of days so Homer and I could not get home because Tucalota Creek was too deep. Homer and I spent the night with the Shelds, who were most generous in taking us in.

In 1940 there was a great El Niño-type storm that made all the creeks four or more feet deep. Walls of water came down our twin canyons as well as Tucalota Creek.

Mother, Homer and John were surprised by the walls of water and were unable to get the sheep on high ground in time. We lost about 30 of the 250 sheep in the herd.

On about the fourth day of the deluge, Sherman Sheld showed up on horseback with some canned goods in case we were running out of food. The Shelds were always great friends to have!

Bill joined the Navy when he was 18 and served in World War II as well as in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. He met his future wife, Alice, while on leave in 1953 and they were married four years later. They have three children. After a long military career, Bill retired from the service in 1970.

The McBurneys returned to Temecula in 2002. Bill was a Temecula Valley Historical Society board member for several years and recently served as vice president.

His forthcoming Arcadia book on French Valley, co-authored with Mimi Milholland, also from a local pioneering family, contains wonderful photos and stories about growing up in the Valley.

The Temecula Valley Historical Society meets the second Monday of each month from 6 until 8 p.m. at the Pujol schoolhouse on Santiago Road in Temecula. The public is invited to attend the meetings.

The July 13 speaker will be Mimi Milholland on Tucalota and Sage history.

TVHS board member and longtime Temecula resident Lisa Woodward, Ph.D., is the archivist for the Pechanga Cultural Resources Department. Her degree is in Native American studies from the University of California, Davis.

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