Rains and Drought Earlier this month, drought-stricken Southern California experienced fantastic rainfall, the kind that lowers air pressure, creates that lovely white noise and makes people want to take a nap. Still, even with some areas receiving as much as four inches of rain, drought conditions have only slightly improved in the region. In other […]
Early Memories of La Crescenta Last week I featured some memories of one of the earliest settlers in the valley, Winifred Bathey. The Bathey family first came to the valley in 1883, applying for land at the top of Briggs Avenue. After a few years of splitting their time between the Crescenta Valley and Los […]
The Ancient Bridge Across Pickens Canyon In the late 1880s, a heavy wagon bridge was constructed across Pickens Canyon high up near Briggs Terrace. We have info about the bridge from a letter that pioneer Winifred Bathey sent to the local paper in 1966. The Bathey family moved to La Crescenta in 1886 and established […]
Goodbye October, Hello November! *Rain Makes Everything Beautiful*! The Crescenta Valley Town Council’s annual pancake breakfast on Nov. 5 was a success! We had a wonderful time starting early on Saturday morning at 5:30 and continuing to 1:30 p.m. Thank you to all our volunteers who made our event so very special; we couldn’t […]
Reach Deep, California Welcome to California, the sanctuary state for everyone! Everyone? Thanks to “progressive” policies, any woman from another state, where abortion is illegal, is welcome to come to California where luckless taxpayers will foot the bill for some or all of the medical procedure. Ka-ching! Any homeless individual – excuse me, unhoused person […]
Connection To Rockhaven This story is about two independent-minded women in my family – my maternal grandmother Martha Adele and my great-aunt Margaret, her sister-in-law. During WWII when their husbands went off to war both ladies supported the effort at home. Martha worked locally at a munitions plant in a “Rosie the Riveter” type […]
The ‘Great White Hope’ Boxer Lived in Verdugo Canyon For those who know their history, in either boxing or race issues, the term “Great White Hope” has inflammatory meaning. It comes from a period of overt racism, 1908 to 1915, when a Black man was the world champion heavyweight boxer. His name was Jack Johnson. […]
We Must Protect Social Security and Medicare Ever since supply chain problems drove prices higher around the world, I have worked hard to blunt the effects of inflation on the middle class and the most vulnerable among us – especially those on fixed incomes, like seniors and people living with disabilities. Most notably, in Congress […]
The Tragic Sinking of the Good Ship SS La Crescenta Besides being a fan of local history, I’m also a maritime history buff. In this column we turn away from local history to look at an anomaly, that anomaly being the sad fate of an English oil tanker, incongruously named “La Crescenta.” The SS […]
A Revised View of Kimball Sanitarium – Part 4 We now wrap up our fresh look at Kimball Sanitarium, a mental institution that operated from 1922 to 1962 and was located where our Ralphs is today. I interviewed Dave Kimball, the son of Merritt Kimball who owned and operated the sanitarium. We must remember how […]