Tehama County Biographies WARREN N. WOODSON Transcribed by Sande Beach. This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm Widely known as the father of Corning and as one of the most successful land men of California is Warren N. Woodson, owner of the modern and attractive Hotel Maywood at Corning, Tehama county, California. In the development of this place and the famous Maywood Colony, Mr. Woodson has a notable achievement to his credit, and without exaggeration it may be stated that his accomplishment in this stupendous land operation has been surpassed very few times in the entire real estate history of the west coast. History is directly concerned with the lives of men who have built up the country, who have made it produce a livelihood, and who have enhanced the beauties and opportunities of the land for the benefit of others. This is why the story of the real development of Corning and vicinity may be written around the names of such men as Warren N. Woodson. Born in California, September 2, 1863, he is a son of John and Margaret (Fleming) Woodson, who were from Virginia, and came across the plains to California in 1848, settling at Hangtown, now Placerville, where the father mined for ten years, then went into farming and teaming. His latter days were passed at Fresno, California. Warren N. Woodson's early education was limited on account of unavoidable circumstances, but most of his schooling was obtained at Fresno, after which he herded sheep until he was sixteen years of age. He then worked in a planing mill at Red Bluff, Tehama county, for a short time, earning seventy-five cents a day, then took a job in the Tremont Hotel at Red Bluff as a waiter. After this he obtained a position as clerk in the Red Bluff post office, and during the administration of President Cleveland, or from 1886 to 1890, he served as postmaster of Red Bluff, following which period he embarked in the land business, in which he was destined to create a record which will stand for generations to come. Mr. Woodson started in the land business by opening a tract of four thousand acres known then and now as the Maywood Colony, which is, as the title implies, a colony or group of small farms, from five to forty acres each, and designed for the purpose of growing oranges, lemons, olives, almonds, figs, grapes, apricots, apples, prunes, plums, peaches, pears, and walnuts. In the interests of this colony, Mr. Woodson started his activities in the year 1892, and traveled extensively, to San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and New York city. He has sold over twenty-nine thousand acres in this district; and in other subdivisions in various parts of northern California, settlement has been created on the strength of what he did with the Maywood Colony. During his land operations, Mr. Woodson spent one hundred thousand dollars each year advertising in nationally known publications in the east. In the Literary Digest he inserted a full-page advertisement; in Success he did likewise, also in the Outlook. He also advertised extensively in Christian newspapers and magazines; in the Cosmopolitan with a full-page, and in McClure's, even against the advice of the editors. Handsome returns were forthcoming, however, on the strength of his advertising campaign, which was one of the most pretentious in the history of the land business. Twelve thousand acres of the twenty-nine thousand sold is already planted, and the general Corning district is as prosperous as any similar district in California. The chicken, turkey, rabbit, and squab business has grown to be of importance in the Maywood Colony; hogs and sheep are numerous on the colony farms; alfalfa is grown widely, and there is a brisk trade in butter fat. Olives form the predominant and much heralded crop of this locality. The soil and climate are ideal for the cultivation of the mammoth olive native to this district, the fruit being about thrice the size of the smaller olive grown in other sections, and the choicest of the olive is named the Sevillano, the queen olive of Seville, Spain, of which there are about four thousand acres planted in the Corning district, which includes a hundred acres owned by Mr. Woodson. When Mr. Woodson began operations, Corning was little more than a sheep and cattle pasture. It is now a prosperous community of some one thousand five hundred people, known as the Olive Town, and is the market place and trading center of the Maywood Colony, also of a large stock and farming territory surrounding. Civic conditions here are excellent, schools and churches are modern institutions, transportation is unexcelled, and so well modeled is the city that economic problems are much less perplexing than in most communities. There have been additional colonies established and developed on the strength of the success of the Maywood Colony. There is the Los Molinos Colony, also the El Camino Rancho of eight thousand acres and the Richfield Colony of five thousand acres. It may be added that Mr. Woodson made a total of fifty-eight trips to the east in the interest of Maywood, which is a record in itself, but is only indicative of his enterprise, which has made him deservedly known as one of the greatest land men of the western country. The city of Corning is a monument of the realization of one man's dream and its fulfillment through his own unremitting efforts. He served as its first mayor for a term of four years, and for twenty years was a trustee. One of the show places of Corning is the beautiful Hotel Maywood, built and owned by Mr. Woodson. He first constructed a hotel in 1897, but this was destroyed by fire in 1917. He then built the present hotel, which is of Spanish architecture, with fifty rooms, and situated on the Pacific highway (U. S. 99) from Los Angeles to Victoria, Canada. This attractive hostelry is modern in every feature, having baths, showers, steam heat, sleeping porches, garage, golf links, and as a special feature, a swimming pool. Mr. Woodson maintains an office across the street from the hotel, surmounted by a fifty-foot tower. Another subdivision which has grown through the efforts of Mr. Woodson is Cool Air, which is a legal subdivision of an old-time camp resort known as Mineral, located 42 miles east of Red Bluff and sixty miles northeast of Corning, in Tehama county. This mountain colony, with its wondrous change of seasons from mountain winter to valley summer, and with invigorating altitude, is likewise proving a success, as a pleasure and health resort. The whole Corning district is amazing in its matured development and its potentialities; it is now a leader in many ways, being the largest sheep and wool producing section in California, and the home of the best olive, but greater and more important development is inevitable in the future. Mr. Woodson was married July 6, 1887, to Miss Florence E. Bettis. Her parents were from Missouri and settled at Red Bluff, California, in the early days. Her father, R. S. Bettis, was a druggist and was treasurer of Tehama county for six years. Mr. and Mrs. Woodson are the parents of one son, Warren B. Woodson, who married Grace Goodnough and is engaged in the garage business at Corning, California. Source: Wooldridge, J.W. Major History of the Sacramento Valley California, Vol. 2 pgs. 294-296. The Pioneer Historical Publishing Co. Chicago 1931.