Name Origins for the Peaks Around Us – Part 4 On our next name discovery tour of the San Gabriel Mountains we move onto the front range, just to the east of the Crescenta Valley. Brown Mountain and Mt. Lowe are quite historic and have great stories behind them. They’re just west of Mount Wilson. […]
Name Origins for the Peaks Around Us – Part 3 Last week I mentioned that I had no info on the naming of Hoyt Mountain. Avid hiker Bob Gregg emailed and reminded me that there are several books on the San Gabriel Mountains. In John Robinson’s, “The San Gabriels” I found the origin of Hoyt. […]
Name Origins for the Peaks Around Us – Part 2 Continuing my series on name origins for the peaks and geographic features along the San Gabriel Mountains above us, we move east from Mt. Lukens. At this point, let’s drop over the top of Lukens to Big Tujunga Canyon just behind. The “Big” is to […]
Another La Crescenta Landmark Falls to Development On a vacant lot on the northwest corner of Manhattan and La Crescenta avenues sits a tiny stone house. It’s tucked away behind trees and walls and can’t be seem from the street. No one knows when it was built or who built it – just that it […]
Ghost Hunters Visit Rockhaven Sanitarium, But Sorry – No Ghosts! As most of my readers know, Rockhaven Sanitarium, located on Honolulu Avenue in Verdugo City was a high-end rest home for women with mental disabilities from 1923 to 2006. It was unique for its time in that it was run by women for women. Agnes […]
The Twelve Oaks Debacle – CV Betrayed! My column usually concentrates on history, but this one is slightly different as we’re currently seeing history made right before our eyes. We’re seeing corporate greed and chutzpa on a scale the valley has never experienced before. There are many layers of greed to this story, but let […]
The Czechoslovakian Hall of La Crescenta To recap last week’s article, Slovakian immigrant Henry Biescar, after prospering in Los Angeles around the turn of the century, retired to La Crescenta in 1915. The Slovakian community in Los Angeles was vibrant, and several cultural organizations for both Czechs and Slovaks thrived here. In 1928 several LA […]
Slovakian Henry Biescar Moves to La Crescenta Those who know CV’s history are familiar with the various ethnic and international groups that have made up our history. Starting with the Indians, then the Spanish and Mexicans and, into the ’20s and ’30s, the Italians and Germans. The Germans established Hindenburg Park which attracted German-Americans from […]
The Mysteriously Short-lived Triangle Building of Sparr Heights One of the most spectacular pieces of architecture to ever grace the valley was the “Triangle Building,” so called because it was in fact triangular shaped. It was built in 1928 in a triangle-shaped lot fronting Verdugo Road in Sparr Heights, bounded on the other two sides […]
Murder and Mayhem in the Crescenta Valley “Murder and Mayhem in the Crescenta Valley” is the unlikely title of a new book, co-written by Gary Keyes and me. I say unlikely because CV is such a quiet, nice place – how could there have been murders here? Any community, no matter how nice, has its […]