The Former Car Dealerships of CV – Part 1 I get quite a few great suggestions for stories from readers. Last year Ed Fortier suggested a story on the car dealerships of the valley, and he gave me several leads. I’ll start with the dealers whose auto showrooms still exist, now housing other businesses. I’m […]
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 […]
Traveling from Pasadena to La Crescenta in 1886 I haven’t found an account of this journey, but we can piece together our own imagined account from various sources. Let’s imagine you are an old friend of Dr. Briggs, and have been invited to rejuvenate your ailing health in his new settlement of La Crescenta. After […]
Who Really Killed the Red Car Trolley? In the first half of the last century, sunny Los Angeles was crisscrossed with the tracks of an efficient, clean and cheap public transit system. You could go anywhere in the city quickly and without the worry of traffic and parking. Even the Crescenta Valley was served by […]
How the Verdugo Family Lost the Crescenta Valley The name Verdugo is attached to so many things in our valley – roads, parks, businesses, even the mountains we look at every day are named for this Spanish family. The name Verdugo is part of our collective DNA. The Verdugo family once owned our entire valley, […]
Some Haunted Places in CV In honor of Halloween I’ll write up a few of the rumored ghost stories I’ve heard over the years. Whether you’re a believer or not, I think everyone has either experienced the paranormal themselves, or knows somebody who has … or at least thought they had. The paranormal is a […]
Black Lives Didn’t Matter in Old CV Race relations in America dipped historically low this year. Several killings of blacks by police followed by revenge shootings of police sparked riots and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, shining a spotlight on still simmering racial prejudice. Here we are, 150 years after the abolition […]
La Cañada’s Famous Resident of the ’90s – Kevin Costner Since the teens of the last century when Frank Flint transformed the rural La Cañada into the wealthy enclave of Flintridge, giants of the entertainment industry have called the area home. Silent movie stars Francis X. Bushman and Nola Luxford Dolberg and cowboy stars Tim […]
Bonetto’s Feed and Fuel – A Landmark Business Anyone who grew up in our valley in the ‘50s and ‘60s is familiar with Bonetto’s Feed and Fuel. The store sat central in the Crescenta Valley, on the southwest corner of La Crescenta and Montrose avenues. A long rambling brick building ran west along Montrose Avenue, […]
The Race to Build Our Flood Control Channels – 1934 to 1938 (Much of what I write here can be found in the comprehensive book covering CV’s flood control, “The Great Crescenta Valley Flood” by Art Cobery.) We tend to overlook our flood control system. The deep square cement channels that cross under our streets […]