William George Rehkopf

I wrote this biography for my class. He is my great great grandfather.

William George Rehkopf - Biography

William George Rehkopf was born in Bentonsport, Iowa on February 22, 1895. He was raised in Bentonsport and there married Lola May Cupp in 1897. They moved out to Imperial Valley, California in about 1902. William helped to settle the desert area to help pay off the land that he had purchased. William and his brother Gus helped build canals that were to bring water to the desert from the Colorado River. During the day it would get so hot as they were digging that they would look back at the recently overturned dirt and see the tracks of sidewinders who used the moist dirt to cool themselves. There were many scorpions and snakes in the area at this time. It was so hot that William contracted typhoid fever and had to be sent to the hospital by train to Pasadena. He was in the hospital for a time and then he and his wife returned to Iowa for 8 years because his wife was very homesick for her family and friends. After they went back to California his wife was so homesick that she didn’t unpack the barrels for a long time.

After 8 years they returned to California because William had purchased land there. When they returned they built a transitory 2-story structure of a loosely-boarded up home. This is where my great grandmother (Lola Marion Rehkopf) was born. They used to tease her that she had been born in a barn because this house was very simple. William began farming things such as alfalpha, black eyed beans, and winter hay. Later he farmed melons and 2 types of walnuts. He also purchased some sheep and chickens. He eventually had up to 1,000 hens at one time.

William used mules to pull the plow in his fields. There were a lot of farmers and fields in the Chino area at the time and there was a loud whistle that would blow that could be heard throughout the valley to begin the lunch hour at 12 noon. William’s mules would stop dead in their tracks as soon as they heard the lunch whistle and they would not start again until the second whistle blew to signify the start of work again.

Their certificate of marriage

Bailing hay on what is now the bustling Mountain Avenue. The ever so smart mules. And below is William George Rehkopf and his wife Lola May Cupp in their older years.