The History of the Montrose Search and Rescue Team – Our Local Heroes We live on the doorstep of a huge wilderness, the Angeles National Forest. This vast mountainous area is crisscrossed with miles of twisting, narrow mountain roads, and a confusing maze of hiking trails. The hundreds of square miles of nearly vertical mountainsides […]
Wild Times at CV’s Prohibition-era Speakeasy! It’s well known that the Crescenta Valley was a hotbed of illegal alcohol production and consumption during Prohibition. It was close enough to LA and Hollywood to make for easy access, yet remote enough geographically with its many hidden canyons to make law enforcement problematic. The remains of stills […]
When Indy Cars Roared in Montrose – Part 2 Last week I wrote about the Valley Machine Shop, located at 3512 Ocean View, where Augustine and Bailey Glass is today. In the 1930s, a famous racecar builder, Paul Fromm, owned that shop and produced some winning Indy and sprint cars there. I’m reprinting some memoirs […]
When Indy Cars Roared in Montrose – Part 1 A little known aspect of the history of the Indianapolis 500 is the central role that Glendale, and by extension the Crescenta Valley, played in Indy car development and history. Glendale was a powerhouse of race car production from the ’20s into the ’60s, building powerful […]
Montrose’s Auto Assembly Plant – The Flintridge Motor Manufacturing Corporation As promised in last week’s column, we have more local auto history for all our “gearhead” readers. It may surprise you to find out that in February 1957, the Flintridge Motor Manufacturing Corporation established an auto assembly plant in Montrose at 3724 Park Place. The […]
The Former Car Dealerships of CV – Part 6 I think I’ll draw this series to a close. I received an unprecedented response and it’s obvious that the car dealerships of CV are fond memories for many. I could go on forever, but I have more of CV’s history to cover. I have one more […]
The Former Car Dealerships of CV – Part 5 Continuing with the very popular subject of local car dealerships that have disappeared, I received an email from Jeff Olmsted: “Don’t forget Plunkett Motors (Volkswagen) in Sunland at 8614 Foothill Blvd. and Foothill Volkswagen in La Cañada where Trader Joe’s and other stores are located now. […]
The Former Car Dealerships of CV – Part 4 These columns on the past car dealerships have taken on a life of their own. I’ve never gotten such an overwhelming response to my columns before. What I thought was going to be a two-column series is now blossoming into probably a five or six-part series […]
The Former Car Dealerships of CV – Part 3 In the last couple of columns, I’ve been writing about the amazing number of car dealerships we used to have in the Crescenta Valley area. Many of those former auto showrooms are still around. I was writing about those first before I launched into the ones […]
The Former Car Dealerships of CV – Part 2 Last week I began writing about the former car dealerships of CV, starting with the ones whose showrooms still exist. I expected to get some updates and corrections from my readers. Sure enough, I just got an email from Stu McCament, who has lived in the […]