![]() |
Photo of Thomas Benton Potter, from
Dobbins-Duff family Tree at Ancestry.com. |
The 1900 U.S. Census
shows T. B. (Thomas Benton) Potter working as an advertising agent, and his
family living as boarders in a household of ten, at 232 S. Hill Street in Los
Angles, California. A year later they were living at 418 Eugene in
Portland, Oregon, and Potter had formed a real estate partnership with H.L.
Chapin, with offices at 246 Stark (1901 and 1903 R.
L. Polk Portland City Directories via Ancestry.com). Burt and Margie Webber say Potter amassed a fortune from 1902-1906 developing subdivisions in Kansas City, Missouri, Portland, Oregon, and
Half Moon Bay, California (Bayocean:
The Oregon Town that Fell Into the Sea,
Appendix D). He lost most of his fortune chasing a
dream at Bayocean, but neighborhoods and buildings give tribute to his earlier
success to this day, several of them named after his daughter, Arleta Natalia Potter.

Arleta Park No. 3 is the only subdivision located within the Mt. Scott –Arleta Neighborhood, and it makes up just a very small part of it. The reason its name was attached to the larger neighborhood is that Arleta quickly became a community of its own, with its own Arleta School, post office, and library, all named after it. Grocery stores and other retail stores made it a retail hub. Potter and Chapin likely chose the location because it was midway between downtown Portland and Lents on the Mt. Scott Trolley. The lots were cheap relative to downtown, so working families could afford to buy them, build a home, and catch the trolley to work each day.
![]() |
A. Natalia (Potter) Dobbins, from Dobbins-Duff Family Tree at Ancestry.com |
In 1906 T. B. Potter developed another Arleta Park at Half Moon Bay on his own (as well as another subdivision called Reis, per California newspaper ads). He likely saw the potential of this area becoming a suburb of San Francisco by way of the Ocean Shore
Railroad, which reached there in October, 1908. Local history buffs indicate (via Wikipedia) that there was an Arleta Station at
Railroad Avenue and Poplar Street that is now used as a residence.
Webbers
suggest that Arleta started going by Natalie as an adult because she
didn’t appreciate her father naming subdivisions after her. One can just imagine schoolmates kidding her about having an entire community in Portland named after her. She must have got her point across, because nothing in Bayocean Park bore her name. However, Arleta was the last Potter to own any property on Bayocean. She stopped paying taxes on lot 81 in block 39 only after an ocean storm destroyed it in 1952.
Potter and Chapin had no problem selling Bayocean lots. They went fast. But building and running a resort requires a completely different skill set, and the railroad to Tillamook took three years longer than projected to finally get there. The hectic schedule and stress may have been what caused Potter's health to fail. In 1910 he retreated to his home in California, where he died in 1916. By then, his son Thomas Irving, and wife had lost control of Bayocean to a court receivership. Two succeeding ownership groups couldn't make a financial go of it either. The Bayocean dream failed financially long before the ocean washed it away.
No comments:
Post a Comment