Background
William Franklin Holt was born on January 18, 1864 on a farm in Mercer County, Missouri. He was the son of James Holt, a farmer, and Nancy Brantley.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
William Franklin Holt
Edit ProfileEducation
Holt attended local public schools and remained on the family farm until the age of twenty-one.
Career
In 1885, aided by a loan from his father, Holt entered the grocery business in Princeton, Missouri, and engaged in general merchandising until 1888, but with little success. He was then employed as cashier of a local bank until 1892, when he apparently contracted a respiratory ailment. On the advice of his doctor he moved to the drier climate of Colorado and there found employment in a manufacturing firm. Three years later he migrated to southeastern Arizona, where he established banks in Safford and in the copper camp of Globe.
In 1900, Holt moved to California, where he remained for the rest of his life. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Imperial Valley of southern California was being opened to agricultural settlement as a result of efforts to irrigate the desert land with Colorado River water. Holt's contribution to the valley's economic development was twofold. He was a tireless entrepreneur involved in a wide variety of businesses, and he was a community leader who helped to shape the area's economic institutions.
As a businessman, Holt appears to have had a more rounded concept of regional development than most of his contemporaries. He arrived in the Imperial Valley in the middle of a speculative land boom but, while he participated in this speculation, his interests went far beyond it. He purchased large tracts of land and resold them in smaller lots on the installment plan in order to attract settlers. He also used his land purchases to found towns--first the community of Holton (later Holtville), and then El Centro. In these towns he had numerous buildings constructed to house his own businesses and those of others. Simultaneously, Holt created a wide variety of enterprises to serve the needs of the settlers he was attempting to attract. He organized the valley's first public utilities: telephone service in 1902, electric power in 1903, and a gas plant in 1909.
More interested in initiating enterprises than in accumulating them, Holt often sold businesses a few years after starting them, usually at a profit. The success of Holt's businesses depended upon the economic well-being of the valley's settlers, and he aided them wherever possible. He enhanced his standing in the community by his liberal offers of credit during the disastrous floods of 1905-1906, and helped avert a wholesale exodus from the valley. Holt also put his business acumen at the service of those settlers who were trying to wrest control of the valley's irrigation system from the California Development Company, which proved increasingly unable to maintain and manage the system.
He supported early efforts to place the irrigation system under the control of the United States Reclamation Service, and when this approach was frustrated, Holt helped to found the private cooperative Imperial Irrigation District in 1911. At that time, the California Development Company was in receivership, involved in considerable litigation and ignoring the needs of the valley's farmers. The Southern Pacific Railroad had purchased all the claims against that company by 1912 and refused to sell the company's waterworks to the Imperial Irrigation District for less than $16 million, far beyond the district's ability to pay. But Holt contributed to a scheme whereby area farmers would purchase their water from an alternate source in Mexico, thus rendering valueless the holdings of the Southern Pacific. When the legality of this scheme was upheld by the California Supreme Court (the Thatcher case) in 1912, the Southern Pacific offered to sell its holdings for $3 million.
Faced with the problem of selling bonds that the Imperial Irrigation District would have to issue to support such a purchase, Holt traveled to New York City to see the Southern Pacific's director for Southwest operations. He convinced the director that the most profitable course for the railroad would be to buy the district's bonds itself rather than attempt to operate the irrigation facilities. Thus Holt got the Southern Pacific to finance the purchase of its own property by buying up the entire bond issue, while control of the valley's irrigation system passed into the hands of its users.
In 1917 Holt sold virtually all of his Imperial Valley holdings and moved to Los Angeles for reasons of health. He lived there in semiretirement until his death, although he was involved in dairying and real estate dealings in southern California and Utah.
Achievements
-
Holt became known as a prominent businessman of California who played a significant role in the development of the Imperial Valley. His efforts aided the construction of a network of roads, the extension of the Southern Pacific Railroad into the valley, and his own eleven-mile interurban line between Holtville and El Centro. In association with his brother Leroy, Holt founded banks in each of the four towns in the Imperial Valley. He also owned newspapers, hotels, an ice plant, and a number of other firms.
Connections
On August 16, 1885, Holt married Fanny Jones of Newtown, Missouri; they had two daughters. His first wife died in 1924, and in 1927 he married Grace Smart of Newtown, Missouri.
-
Born
-
Died
January 22, 1951 (aged 87) -
Nationality
American