Can you envision Foothill Boulevard as a canyon of office towers? A little extreme perhaps, but a distinct possibility in a planning document currently being designed by the City of Glendale. The “North Glendale Community Plan” will guide future development in the Glendale portion of Foothill Boulevard, and a 50-foot building height limit is currently […]
The Verdugo Hills Memorial Hall located at 4011 La Crescenta Ave. serves as the home for local American Legion Post 288 and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. It also hosts church groups, exercise classes and Boy Scout meetings. But unbeknownst to most, this hall was the site of swift and powerful violence that took the […]
Listening to Memories One thing I truly enjoy is to hear an old-timer tell stories about life in early CV. Recently I caught up with Joe Rakisits and his wife Linda and wrote down some of his memories. Joe gets a wonderful twinkle in his eye when he tells about the hi-jinks he and his […]
Sadly after two decades of service to the community, the Park Ranger program has been eliminated from the city of Glendale, a victim of the reduced budget enacted last week by the City Council. I spoke to Russ Hauck, who until last Thursday had been a Glendale Park Ranger since the program started in 1991. […]
A few weeks ago, I wrote of a plan to develop the Verdugo Mountains back in the 70s via a roadway along the ridgetops. But there had been a plan earlier than that –1912 to be exact – to bring people to the summit via a “funicular railway” similar to the Mt. Lowe Railway in […]
Whereas Montrose has a sense of stability, Foothill Boulevard’s business center and anchor storefronts have shifted like wind-blown sand dunes in the desert. Although Benjamin Briggs laid out the “city center” of La Crescenta at Foothill and La Crescenta Avenue in 1884, and a one-room post office, stage stop and general store sprang up on […]
I’m not a person of faith, yet I have had to summon a lot of that just that to continue to support John Drayman. The attacks on him have been unrelenting. Some have said, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” I maintain that in some cases, and this is one of them, “Where there’s smoke, there’s […]
I joined the throngs of sightseers last weekend in taking advantage of the long-delayed opening of the Angeles Crest Highway. I’m always impressed with the nearly vertical rock faces the roadway cuts through and I often think about what a colossal task it must have been to build the road in the ’30s, ’40s and […]
Dramatic stories of the New Years Flood of ’34 are seemingly never ending, but here’s one with a twist. This somewhat ironic story was told at the flood survivor’s presentation at the Library a few weeks ago, and comes to us from life-long Crescenta Valley resident Bob Lorenz. In 1933, the Lorenz family had a […]
A unique feature of our community is the two opposing mountain ranges that embrace our valley. The San Gabriels to the north, imposing and rugged, with rock faces rising nearly straight up, are starkly beautiful. Terrible and majestic, like an Old Testament God, they burn and rain rocks down on us, but provide a gateway […]