Diamond Bar owes its name to a cattle brand. The Diamond Bar Ranch was established in 1918 by wealthy New Yorker Frederic Elliott Lewis 2nd (1884-1963). Four years earlier, Lewis’s father Percy Pyne Lewis died and left his son a mind-boggling $15 million. Lewis decided to spend some of that fortune in SoCal, briefly planning an estate next to Henry Huntington‘s, then purchasing 7,500 acres (some say 8,000) of the old town of Spadra so he could play gentleman rancher. Thus Diamond Bar was born. Before moving here full-time, Lewis kept his mansion in Westport, CT, where in 1920 honeymooners F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald rented a neighboring house. Some believe the reclusive young millionaire inspired The Great Gatsby, but unlike Jay Gatsby, Lewis was a husband and father who came by his money legally. At any rate, he sold Diamond Bar to oil tycoon William A. Bartholomae Jr. in 1943, then Bartholomae sold it to Transamerica subsidiary Capital Co. in 1956, who would convert the ranch into suburbs. (Diamond Bar Blvd. was laid out in 1958-1959.) Lewis retired to Seattle and British Columbia to focus on his boating hobby; Bartholomae was stabbed to death by his sister-in-law in 1964.
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