History

This house has a fantastic history.  The family who built the house was a wealthy East Coast shipping family.  J. Howard Williams was the son of the wealthy shipping magnate and found his way to San Diego after working as a captain on his father’s ships.  He lived in San Diego for a few years, apparently met Irving Gill in that time, and moved to Porterville to run cattle (45 minutes from here in the San Joaquin Valley ).  He also discovered a small business in California Hot Springs which had great potential – a natural hot springs – an artesian well with over 300,000 gallons a day of pure hot water.  He partnered with the owners and infused a great deal of capital into the hot springs business, building hotels, cabins, pools, and other services.  The community thrived for over 60 years.  Williams began to build his summer retreat house in California Hot Springs in 1908, (now known as “Hilltop House”), but died in 1910 just prior to its completion. 

According to the locals, this house was operated as a bordello sometime in the 1920s.  In the 1970s, the house was rented out and operated as a group home for inner-city boys.  Sometime following, the first large organic garden in the history of the property was planted and camouflaged by brush and trees.  (My mother’s garden was the second organic garden on the property, but she grew an entirely legal crop.)  A former Sheriff's deputy told tales of watching them cultivate their crop through his binoculars from a nearby hill.  They were gone minutes before the raid and they took their entire crop with them.  So far, we have not found their crop to be a re-seeder.  The only evidence left of the cannabis was nails on the window trim under the eaves of the north side of the house.  A dry space out of the direct sunlight is a perfect place for drying plant matter.