Mysteries and Questions on CV History, Part 2 Question: Now that the Verdugo Hills Golf Course has been declared an historic landmark, does that mean the golf course is saved from development? Answer: Unfortunately, no. The developer who owns the golf course is still determined to build 200-plus homes there. The historic designation requires the […]
Mysteries and Questions on CV History, Part 1 I regularly get questions about our local history, sometimes the same question repeatedly. Over the next few columns, I’ll address some of these questions and attempt to solve a few mysteries about the valley. If you have any questions you’ve been puzzling over, shoot me an email […]
Lake La Crescenta? I love to chronicle the goofy proposals for our community in the past – the schemes that could-have-been. It’s interesting to think about the effects each of these proposals would have on our community. But none would have had a more profound effect than that proposed in 1892 – to put La […]
“City of La Crescenta” Voted Down in 1964 La Crescenta had talked about becoming its own city from its very inception in the late 1800s, but had never seriously given it a shot. In 1951 that issue was clouded when half the valley, including the business district of Montrose, annexed itself to Glendale to take […]
Development History in the Western Verdugo Mountains As I’ve written about many times in past columns, we are privileged to have the mountains on both sides of our valley largely undeveloped. In contrast, two mountain ranges nearby, the San Rafaels above La Cañada and the Hollywood Hills, have seen significant development. They are both transected […]
Two New Hiking Trails in our Local Hills In the Crescenta Valley, we’re blessed with unparalleled access to hiking and biking trails into the beautiful mountains that surround us. The San Gabriels, the Verdugos, and the San Rafael mountains provide scores of trails. Thanks to the City of Glendale, we can add two more to […]
The Nudist Camp in La Tuna Canyon One of the first nudist camps in the U.S., dating back into the 1930s, had its home close to CV, just over the Verdugos in La Tuna Canyon. In 1934, pioneers in the phenomenon of social nudism, Hobart and Lura Glassey, established one of the first nudist camps […]
La Tuna Canyon Road’s 40-Year Construction Nightmare Trouble in many forms plagued the construction of La Tuna Canyon Road connecting CV and the San Fernando Valley. Man, money and nature all played a hand in delaying the building of this road, which today leads from CV through the Verdugo Mountains, crossing semi-rural horse property, finally […]
The ’71 Quake – Through The Eyes of Children Recently a former teacher at St. James Catholic School gave the Historical Society a stack of essays written by her third grade class immediately after the Sylmar Quake in February of 1971. Those writings are priceless! Here are some samples. One boy reported an example of […]
A Wild American Graffiti on Foothill Boulevard I’ve written a lot about 1975’s short-lived Foothill Cruise Night. It was an amazing social anomaly for our normally quiet and conservative valley. In one last memory from Craig Baker, we get a glimpse of how out of control things got, and why Cruise Night just couldn’t last. […]