We came to Palmdale in October 1913 from east of Pasadena where we had been working on the Chapman Ranch which was next to the old Baldwin Ranch. I owned a team of horses which we had bought in Pasadena and brought with us, along with a wagon, household goods, etc. from Oklahoma by Railroad in an emigrant car. We moved to Palmdale with the team and wagon, it took several trips and each trip took three days coming up. We camped out the two nights on the way. We came through Soledad Canyon because the road followed the creek and so we could get water for the horses. The trip back to Pasadena could be made in two days.

    We lived in a wall tent on our lot for awhile, until we could get a house bull t, there were no houses to rent.

   The first time I came to our place I wondered why my Father had bought so far out of town, what is now 932 East Ave. Q-10, right in town now but it was on the outskirts then. We could look across to the Southern Pacific Depot, there were no buildings in between. There was brush on the vacant lots and brush covered desert east of 10th Street East where the Maryott School and Park is. We boys were raising rabbits and coyotes used to come right in our yard and try to get the rabbits out of the hutches.

   There was a Mr. Tinkman who owned a block machine and was making concrete blocks for the Moore Building, later the McBride Building on the corner of Sierra Highway and EAst Ave. Q-9. Several years ago the building burned. The Antelope Valley Press is at that location now.

    Mr. Tinkman needed help so my Dad went to work for him, making blocks and laying up walls. Soon after the Tinkmans went back to Pasadena so we bought the block machine and we made the blocks for our house.

   The first work I did here was teaming. The pear orchards had been planted in the spring of 1913. They planted them without leveling the ground first so we had to try to level as best we could between the trees so they could be cultivated and watered. There weren't any pipelines yet so we watered the trees from a tank of water on a wagon.

    I was called into the Army in July, 1918 but before I left we had made the blocks for the Community Presbyterian Church that stood on the corner of Palmdale and 9th St. East, for many years the only protestant church in Palmdale. The church was built while I was in the Army and Reverend Wilson came during that year for he was here when I returned in July 1919.

   Before I left for the Army I had started making blocks for my own house so as soon as I got back I made the rest of the blocks and laid them up, the house was completed and rented in the spring of 1920. When I was married in July 1923, my wife and I moved into it and have lived here continuously since. During the years we have remodeled and added some, as the house was too small for us by the time our four children came along.

   When the first paved road into Antelope Valley was completed to Palmdale in 1921 there still wasn't a road from here to Lancaster where Sierra Highway now follows the Railroad. It was too sandy for a dirt road; we had to drive out to 10th St. West to get to Lancaster while they paved a road where Sierra Highway is.

    I went to work for the Los Angeles County Road Dept. in Dec- ember 1921 and worked continuously until my retirement in July 1958. The first roads we made were just dirt trails that we cleared with a fresno and a team of mules and scraped somewhat level with a drag. Later we got some old trucks and when we had to haul dirt or gravel we loaded those trucks by hand with a scoop shovel and unloaded the same way. Then we progressed to some new dump trucks and machine loaders. We really thought that was pretty wonderful'

    I remember the floods of 1938. Our trucks were stalled all over Antelope Valley and we had to build new roads all over the Valley too, as they were practically all washed out. Traffic was at a stand- still - many of the school buses couldn't get to their destination and people in town took the school children into their homes and cared for them until the roads could be opened in a day or two.

    During all of these years we have seen great changes take place in our valley and with the promise of things to come, we will see greater changes yet if we live a few more years.

    My family came from New Jersey to Los Angeles in 1901, then to Lancaster in 1902. They came looking for a milder climate. It was cold in winter and so hot and humid in the summer in New Jersey. Mother had lost her two sisters with tuberculosis and was threatened with it herself. Dad had a slow heart, and the Doctor advised a warmer place to live. Ironically, the first winter they were here, they had nearly three feet of snow; that was unusual of course, but they didn't know that and was my poor mother disgusted. She told how hard it was, leaving her relatives and friends, and her church where she taught Sunday School and sang in the choir, crossing the continent to get away from that cold white stuff only to find more of the same in California.

    Several years before my father had bought some acreage in Belleview (now the Quartz Hill area). The company selling the land was to plant almond trees and care for them until they were ready to produce a crop, then the buyers took over. As soon as Dad could get a house enclosed (everyone built his own) he moved the family into it and they completed it while living in it. Later we home- steaded 160 acres in Godde's Pass and we built there. Both little houses are gone now.

    The earliest memories I have of Palmdale must have been about 1905Or 1906 when my father drove the ten miles or so to Palmdale with a horse and buggy. (I wish I had a picture of that rig, as they called those outfits). I don't think there was even one automobile in Antelope Valley yet.

    We had to drive either to Palmdale or Lancaster for groceries and supplies. A lot of things we had to send for from a mail order store out of the "wish book". We only got mail when we came to town for groceries once a week and that was the only time we got a news- paper, and remember, there weren't even radios then either. When the weather was pleasant, Daddie used to bring me with him on those drives so I could play with Agnes Schneckenberger. He was an organist and piano teacher and gave lessons to several children in Palmdale. While Agnes had her lesson, I played on her swing under the big trees, then we played together while Dad gave the other's lessons. What a treat' That was about the only time I had another child to play with until I went to school and then only at school. There were no kindergartens and we weren't started in the first grade until we were around seven as it was too far for little children to walk to school, and we had to walk. We lived two miles from the school--most of the children lived at least that far away.

   The Schneckenberger place was the house where Mrs. Wilkerson now lives on 6th St. East. The big barn that was torn down a few years ago was quite new then. There was sweet smelling alfalfa hay to play on and sometimes there were kittens. I've been told that barn was built in 1901. It had a big Bull Durham advertisement painted on the side, and you could see the more than life-size bull from all over town as there weren't many buildings then.

    I can remember the Southern Pacific Depot (how we hated to see it torn down). It was a big thrill when a train came through when we were in town' There was the Pearland Hotel on 8th St. East and Ave. Q-7; I understand that it was one of the first buildings in Palmdale. Also there was the store in the brick building across the street where there are doctors offices now. You bought every- thing that could be bought in Palmdale at that store: groceries, shoes, hardwood, oil lamps, oil lamp chimneys, yardage, ribbons, feed and hay - you name it. In one corner at the back of the store was a little room partitioned off and that was the Post Office. There was one window where you bought stamps and asked for mail. Most of it came general delivery, though there were a few boxes for people living in town. There was a barn south of the store where they kept hay and feed.

    The blacksmith shop at that time was across on the north side of East Ave. Q-7, about where McMahan's parking lot is now. Later when among the many poems we memorized, we learned "The Village Blacksmith", I always associated it with that shop and watching the blacksmith shoe our horse.

    The drive to Palmdale was over a dirt road, really just a trail, through mud puddles after a rain, and dust when it was dry. The wheels wore deep ruts on each side and if you happened to meet another rig which was not very often, one or the other pulled the horses to one side to climb out of the ruts where there was a place fai lv clear of brush, and juniper and yucca to pass. They usually stopped to talk a few minutes too, as it was nice to meet someone on those lonely drives. The road came diagonally across what is now Desert View High- lands, and followed about the route Palmdale Boulevard follows now between Palmdale and 10th St. West. West of Desert View, it crossed Armagosa Wash and there was often a shallow stream running which we had to ford, and I remember that the horse always stopped right in the middle of the creek to take a drink. It was such fun to sit there and watch the water run under the buggy, and I always wished I could get out and wade in it for water was scarce and we never had any place to play in water except when there was a thunder storm, and then there were sometimes ditches across our orchard with water in which we could play when the rain stopped.

    Coming into town from the west we passed the old brick school, it was on the outskirts of town then, just west of 6th St. East. It was torn down about 1937.

   There were no telephones in those early years; the only means of communication out of the valley, except mail, was by telegraph; the only transportation in or out of the valley was by train.

    For many years there were no doctors in Palmdale and a good part of the time none in Lancaster either--people took care of themselves and each other or went for Mom Everett, a midwife who delivered most of the babies, scarcely ever lost one either. She was a pretty good substitute for a doctor.

    I remember once my dad had a terrible attack of something that must have been appendicitis as he was doubled up with severe pain. My sister, several years older than I, drove to Lancaster to telegraph my brothers in Los Angeles that they were going to bring Daddie down on the train. The Post Mistress told my sister to see Mom Everett. she thought hot sitz baths would help him. This was about the most dangerous thing to do, they tell us now, but it relieved the pain and he recovered without ever having another attack. The Lord surely cared for those pioneer people or they would never have made it.

    Those were really pioneer days; there were only dirt roads into and through Antelope Valley before 1921. In April of that year, the concrete highway through Mint Canyon was completed to Palmdale. There was a big celebration -- a barbecue dinner was served out of doors on the vacant lots east of the Moore building on the southeast corner of Sierra and East Ave. Q-9. This was later the McBride Building which burned several years ago. A band was brought up from "down below" and a special. train brought a lot of people from over the mountains. That was a big event for Palmdale.

    Growth was slow and changes came about very gradually. With the advent of the aircraft industry, there was probably as much development in ten years as in the preceding fifty.

    I lived with my sister in Alhambra for a few years prior to 1920. At that time no one there had heard of Palmdale or Antelope Valley -- it was at the ends of the earth. Well, we are on the map now and with the promise of things to come, will soon be known inter- nationally. "Palmdale we salute you."
Best wishes,

Lyle Sadler

    I am sorry I am so slow in getting this to you. I got swamped at Christmas time and I am trying to do the best I can. I am not so young anymore.

    We migrated to Los Angel es, California in 1911. We were a very homesick bunch 'til we moved to Palmdale 2 years later. The census had been taken just before our arrival. The record was 450 people in this Antelope Valley.

   The only amusements here those days was to go and watch the four thirty p.m. passenger pull in on Sunday afternoons or walk the Highland flume up Little Rock Creek to the Old headgate.

    The Schneckenbergers came here in 1900. I don't know if he Homesteaded it but their place was the southwest 160 acres at Ave. Q and lOth St. West. He later moved his house to Palmdale where it now stands. He said on New Years day 1901 it was so warm they all went barefoot. He helped scrape out and dig the Palmdale Reservoir with his mule team. His wages was 50 a day at that time.
Wish I was able to add more to this. Lots of luck to you.