Opinion: Finding Meaning

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The Women of Moss Point

Did you hear the historic Moss Point home sold the other day? I know it’s an incredible site, but $20 million seems a lot of money for an old house, even in Laguna. Which, of course, leads to a story.

Lulu V. Goff, from the Goff family of early coastal homesteaders, was the first owner of the land around Moss Point. She completed a 132-acre homestead in 1891, which, doing the math, means she started her five-year improvement period when she was just seventeen. Maybe she got the idea from her father Hub Goff, who Joe Thurston thought, “The brains of the Goff brothers.” Anyway, per the research of our late Beryl Wilson Viebeck, Lulu did it.

In the 1890s, Riverside orange growers were prospering. To escape the summer heat, it became fashionable to have a beach cottage in Laguna. Priestly Hall, a Riverside orchardist turned developer, bought Goff’s homestead.

Hall later sold the land to two sisters, Florence and Blanche Dolph, who were investing their inheritance in coastal property under their cleverly-named Dolphin Company. Hall may have kept the Moss Point site because Kate Overton, his sister-in-law and an artist of some note, built a settlement style beach cottage there in 1905. It was a tasteful use of an incredible site, perhaps the nicest Laguna cottage of the time, and our sixth oldest home.

Now a Texas family enters the story. The wealthy across the U.S. discovered Pasadena’s mild winter weather in the late 1800s, made accessible by an 1887 rail station. Enough mansions were built that Colorado Boulevard became known as “millionaires row.” In 1913, Colonel Henry House, a Texas lumber magnate, built a Texas-sized Italian-Renaissance-Revival mansion. He also had a beach place, of course, near our Moss Point.

Colonel Henry House had a famous brother, perhaps a cousin, named Colonel Edward House. This Colonel House (keeping our colonels straight) was the brains behind four Texas governors. He then befriended Woodrow Wilson, a New Jersey governor with ambitions. House led Wilson’s presidential campaign, became his European adviser and representative during World War I, and helped negotiate the Versailles Treaty based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Heady stuff.

After Wilson’s 1916 reelection, Colonel Edward House visited the other colonel’s beach cottage and fell in love with Moss Point. He convinced Overton to relocate her home back near Coast Highway (where it still stands) and built his dream beach cottage, a blend of Cape Cod and Craftsman styles, on the point. President Wilson stayed there in 1919, making it the first Western White House, thus adding, by my guess, $10 million to the recent sale price. 

I’m fascinated by the women of Moss Point—Lulu Goff, Florence and Blanche Dolph, and Kate Overton. They were exceptional. Remember that magazine slogan, “Never underestimate the power of a woman”? There’s meaning in that.

Skip fell in love with Laguna on a ‘50s surfing trip.  He’s a student of Laguna history and the author of “Loving Laguna: A Local’s Guide to Laguna Beach.” Email:  [email protected]

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