THE VERDICT:This man was an island

A man named William S. Collins founded Balboa Island. I regret that I never met him. He was must have been the ultimate promoter. He and P.T. Barnum should have been partners.

While still in his 30s, he surfaced in Southern California from a somewhat murky background in Arizona — oil wells, gold mines, subdivisions, a savings and loan company, one of those industries that attract promoters — and plunged right in.

The first thing he did was buy from James McFadden, in 1902, all of the present city of Newport Beach from the Santa Ana River to 9th Street in Balboa. He got it for $70 an acre.

It has been reported that McFadden boasted that he had duped a sucker. Actually, McFadden never knew what hit him. Collins went into partnership with Henry Huntington to bring the Pacific Electric to Newport Beach. The price was a 100-foot right of way through Newport, plus a big mudflat called Electric Island. While Electric Island was practically worthless as a mudflat, with a little artful dredging, it became Lido Isle.

William S. Collins was off and running.

In 1903, he opened a bank. To the surprise of no one, the bank closed a year later. Just what happened to the bank’s deposits is not recorded. In the meantime, he had disposed of all his real estate holdings on the peninsula and turned his attention to what eventually became Balboa Island.

Its first name was Snipe Island, after a particularly hardy shore bird. It had to be hardy to live with all the mosquitoes there were in those days. Its next name was Caruso Island, obviously after Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Caruso. Tradition has it that some poor wretch spent a night on the mudflat/sandbar with all those mosquitoes and announced that not even Robinson Caruso could live there. Collins immediately renamed the mudflat Balboa Island.

As he surveyed his newly named island, he observed that most of it was under water at high tide. Not a problem. With a handy little dredger, he filled in the low places and began to sell lots “with all improvements in and paid for.”

Whether paid for or not, the improvements consisted of a sewer system that emptied into the bay at street ends and an almost useless bulkhead, which merely kept water out long enough to sell lots. He promised a fine concrete bridge to the mainland, an eight-car ferry and a 150-room hotel. Of those, a bridge was built, but it was a ramshackle wooden one.

As the world knows, Balboa Island, like Caesar’s Gaul, is divided into three parts. There is the main island. To the east, there is the Little Island separated from the main island by the so-called Grand Canal, which is neither grand nor much of a canal, particularly at low tide. On the western tip, there is a small island that he modestly named Collins Island. There, he built a castle for his fourth wife, Apolena.

Like most promoters, Collins had his ups and downs, and by 1915, he had lost all his holdings on Balboa Island except Apolena’s castle. Lots that he had originally offered for as much as $760 were now going for as little as $25.

Shortly thereafter, William S. Collins and, I presume, Apolena, left for parts unknown. Rumor has it that he went into the High Sierras, where he subdivided and sold mountain meadows and didn’t have to worry about high and low tides, but my suspicion is that he gravitated to Florida, which had a land boom in the 1920s. Selling underwater lots became an art form. Collins would have felt right at home.

Wherever he ended up, he left his mark here: Collins Island, Collins Avenue and Apolena Street. How many others in the history of this town have left an island and a street named after themselves, plus a street named after his wife, particularly his fourth wife?