If you live in a house built before 1960, you may still have a charred relic of Southern California’s smoggy history, the backyard incinerator.

Before the days of regular curbside trash service, a major portion of household trash was burned in small concrete, cinder block, brick, or metal incinerators in suburban and rural backyards.

In the big cities, many apartment buildings, businesses, schools, and factories, had their own incinerators, fed and tended by a maintenance person.

From the earliest days of community living, humans have struggled with managing their garbage, sewage, and discarded junk.

The great ancient cities became overwhelmed by trash as populations grew and they began to require residents to haul garbage a minimum distance from the city, where it could rot and stink, with fewer complaints.

Advertisement from the San Bernardino Sun Telegram, from Feb. 7, 1954, showing new reinforced concrete incinerators from $18.50 and up, including delivery. These units were made in San Bernardino. (File)

During the Industrial Revolution from about 1760 to 1840, garbage, and waste became untenable, particularly in large European cities. It was during this period that large cities began creating municipal codes to manage waste.

It seems difficult to believe, but there was not a direct health-risk correlation between garbage, sewage, and dirty water, until the mid-1800s.

Air quality was identified as a health concern in very early societies because of the immediate effects of breathing smoke and contaminated air.

Southern California’s population began booming in the 1880s, and the continued explosive growth created complex waste-disposal problems. They were handled in a haphazard and disconnected fashion until the mid-1900s.

The prefabricated backyard incinerator was introduced in the late 1800s, and it became a simple, efficient solution to the ancient problem of garbage disposal.

A concrete backyard incinerator, still intact in Pasadena in July 2022. (Photo courtesy of David Melford)

In the 1890s, Los Angeles was experiencing growing pains, and in 1896, the city’s board of health determined their garbage collection contract was not keeping up with trash generation. As a result, the board recommended modifications to the garbage pickup process, and began allowing residents to burn their own garbage in home incinerators.

San Bernardino became an early adopter of mandatory garbage pickup in 1910, when the city passed a municipal ordinance requiring all homes and businesses within the city to have garbage hauled away by “the regular garbage man.”

Cement contractor James McNair won the contract with the city to pick up the garbage, and he was preparing to construct a large incinerator to burn the material. During the early 1900s, garbage contractors often paid the city for the right to pick up the trash, and they made a profit from recycling discarded materials. McNair’s contract required him to pay San Bernardino $100 per year.

The early garbage collection companies used open, horse-drawn wagons to collect the waste and haul it to a designated dump site, usually on the outskirts of town.

In 1912, the city of Venice purchased a 3-ton Pope-Hartford electric-powered garbage truck for $3,750, and it became one of the earliest cities in California to operate a powered garbage truck. Mechanized garbage trucks started to become popular in the 1920s.

As garbage service became more complex and costly, cities began charging residents fees for collection. Some residents rebelled saying their home incinerators were adequate to handle their garbage, and said they would haul their garbage that couldn’t be burned to the local dump.

Hickey-Carroll & Company of Los Angeles began selling “Peerless” incinerators around 1920 and they became one of the biggest suppliers in Southern California. The company had showrooms in downtown LA for their concrete and cast-iron units that started at $5 delivered.

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Some cities in Southern California, including San Bernardino, were using private contractors who hauled garbage to hog farms in rural areas, where the animals would eat the discarded material.

This solved some disposal problems, but caused several others including the proliferation of rats, flies, foul odors, and illnesses in people from eating under-cooked pork that had been fed trash.

In 1924, San Bernardino County passed an emergency ordinance that prohibited the movement of garbage within the county, which effectively made each city responsible for handling their own material. This change caused the cities to reevaluate processes.

Charging residents for garbage collection became routine in the 1920s, and in December 1928, the city of Redlands negotiated a new contract that would cost each family 50 cents per month for twice-weekly, curbside pickup. The new contract also allowed the contractor to operate a hog farm in Mentone, that would consume some of the garbage. For residents on a tight budget, the trusty backyard incinerator was still an option that could eliminate the monthly garbage collection fee.

By the 1940s, air pollution in the Los Angeles basin, Orange County, and the Inland Empire had become a major problem, and health officials were looking for the source of the pollution which had become known as “smog.”

In 1950, Los Angeles County Smog-Control Director Gordon P. Larson told the Los Angeles city board that the “backyard incinerator must go” if smog is to be reduced. Officials around the state joined in the push to ban backyard incinerators.

Los Angeles County was first to enact a county-wide ban on backyard incinerators in October 1957. But many residents who regularly used incinerators to save money cried foul and protested the ban.

According to a report in the Feb. 15, 1958, issue of the San Bernardino Daily Sun, laws enacted in Los Angeles County had reduced pollution dramatically.

Oil refinery fumes were cut from 800 tons per day to 150, industrial smoke fumes were cut from 100 tons to 25, and pollution from backyard incinerators was cut from 800 tons to nearly zero by banning the use of the county’s 1.5 million backyard burners.

The elephant in the room was of course the automobile, and reducing exhaust pollution from cars would take decades to accomplish.

Municipalities and counties followed suit with bans on incinerators and the residential mainstay of garbage disposal began to disappear from backyards.

A few backyard incinerators linger today as reminders of our former, regular smokey skies.

Mark Landis is a freelance writer. He can be reached at [email protected].