The Value of Old Newspapers

Old newspapers are invaluable to historians, and fascinating to anyone who has an interest in the past. For instance, our local paper from the 1920s through the ‘70s, The Ledger, is my primary source for the stories I write here. The Ledger was obsessed with our local history, and nearly every copy had some article about or reference to the beginnings of our community and the pioneers who built CV. Just the everyday news contained in the pages of the Ledger gives us surprising insights into what our community is today.

For instance, reading the old Ledger we find that in 1950, when Descanso Gardens was first proposed, the residents of La Cañada fought it hard, even hiring a lawyer to help oppose it.

Did you know that a quarter-midget race car track was once proposed for CV Park, and a drive-in theater for Montrose? Or that in the 1800s our community founders seriously envisioned putting a dam across Verdugo Canyon, and creating a lake in the Crescenta Valley! Who knew?

Sometimes we can get a sense of the community’s mood. I always wondered what led us as a nation to decide to intern thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry. But reading the papers in the days after Pearl Harbor, one reads story after story about Japanese spies being apprehended, or Japanese saboteurs being foiled. The reports were of course untrue, but they give one a sense of the hysteria and fear that gripped our community.

Sometimes we get to read of predictions for our valley that proved false. In the ‘60s, community leaders predicted in the paper that the 210 Freeway would turn our valley into a smoggy ghetto. Stories like that give us perspective on current predictions of ruin.

Recently efforts have been made to keep those old newspapers accessible. In 2002, a local retired history teacher, Art Cobery, who has the same appreciation for old newspapers as I do, spearheaded a one-man campaign to preserve and make accessible the entire 56-year run of the old CV Ledger. At that time, the best method for doing this was to have the newspaper put onto microfilm. It was a Herculean task, requiring tens of thousands of dollars, and hundreds of hours of tedious work. But Cobery accomplished it – with the financial help of County Supervisor Antonovich and the physical help of a bunch of Girl Scouts. Tons of old newspapers were trucked to Sacramento, where each page was photographed and put on microfilm. Microfilm reading machines were installed at the La Cañada Library and Glendale Central Library, and for over a decade, I and other local history enthusiasts have spent hours rolling through microfilm reels.

But time brings changes. As microfilm has become technologically passé, most of the reading machines have not been kept in working order. A few years ago, the Los Angeles Times had all its microfilm reels digitized (converted to computerized files) and made available through public libraries. This has created a path for other microfilmed newspapers to follow.

When our new La Crescenta Library opened, the County was adamant that none of the obsolete microfilm readers would be purchased. Librarian Marta Wiggins, the Historical Society of CV, and the Friends of the La Crescenta Library put their heads together to achieve what the L.A. Times had done in digitizing its old microfilms. After some very hard work, that effort appears to be close to fruition. Hopefully in just a few months, the computerized CV Ledger will be available through the county library system. The digital files would be “word searchable.” In other words, one could type in a word or phrase, your address for instance, and all the articles with your address in them would come up. (Careful – You might discover a heinous murder was committed in your house!) Thanks to computer software, the grainy old newspaper photos would appear clean and sharp.

The digitization project, which is funded by donations, promises to be a good thing and could be of great help in keeping our fascinating local history alive for future generations.

  mike lawler