The Origin of Our 210 Freeway

The 210 Freeway is an accepted part of our valley today. It’s noisy but we trade that for the ease with which we can get around Los Angeles. But in the 1960s it was bitterly fought over and residents here feared its completion would spell doom for our happy valley. This is its origin story.

The planning for this freeway began almost 80 years ago. It was part of a transit master plan laid out in 1944. It and other freeways of the master plan slumbered quietly on the drawing board until 1959 when California legislators funded the project. The Division of Highways moved forward in drawing up plans for the new “Foothills Freeway.”

In our valley no one took note of the freeway plans until 1963 when the state began approaching local property owners for purchases. Locals united in opposition to the freeway but the state was firm. It was going to happen. La Cañada was the first to organize resistance but the engineers responded only with a few freeway routing options.

Maps were presented with four proposed routes. The orange route traveled across the Crescenta-Cañada Valley above Foothill Boulevard. The blue route and the green route went through the middle and the red route was far south, cutting a path through the San Rafael and Verdugo Hills. This set various homeowner groups and community groups against each other. For instance, the La Cañada groups wanted the red route through the hills in order to save more homes, even though it would have meant the loss of Descanso Gardens. Glendale wanted the blue and green route because at that time it had plans to heavily develop the Verdugo Mountains. The fighting over routes entirely split any serious effort to oppose the freeway.

The fighting came to a head at a grueling two-day public meeting in 1964. Although the various factions argued hotly, it became obvious that it would really come down to a decision by the cities of Glendale and Los Angeles and, most importantly, the LA County Board of Supervisors. Strongly in our corner was Supervisor Warren Dorn, who stated: “Only God can build and create a valley such as we have. And only man can destroy it.” He was one of the few who still entirely opposed the freeway, calling it a “rape of our valley.” He advocated the funding be funneled to the 134 Freeway

Glendale, however, was all in and was the first to sign the agreement with the state. It stated outright that it had never opposed any freeway and the freeway would be good for our community. That angered and alienated the residents of the Glendale annex areas of the valley.

It really came down to a vote of the board of supervisors. In 1966, Dorn was joined by Kenneth Hahn in opposing the freeway but the vote was three to two. Opposition was over. The freeway steam-rolled forward on a route through the center of the valley.

The first section was from Ocean View Boulevard to Lowell Avenue. Homes were bought and leveled, with a few being moved intact to empty lots. That portion opened in 1972 with other sections on either side to follow. Several TV shows and movies were filmed on the uncompleted portions of the freeways through the 1970s, such as “CHiPs,” “Emergency,” “Earthquake” and “Death Race 2000.”

But, as I said at the beginning, today most of us are comfortable with the 210. It is what it is.

I’ll wrap up with a weird footnote to this story: the short section of the Foothill Freeway that was built in La Cañada in about 1956. Only a couple of miles long, it went from the east side of the Arroyo to Foothill at Gould Avenue. Apparently, it was built ahead of the rest of the freeway in order to alleviate traffic across the Arroyo. But it proved too narrow and was bypassed by the 210. The west half of the old freeway was torn out and dumped into Flint Canyon where it is visible today along the creek bed. The eastern portion remains as Oak Grove Drive where it crosses the Arroyo.