How the ’33 Long Beach Quake Affected CV By the 1930s the Los Angeles area had experienced two unusual phenomenon – a very long stretch of time without significant seismic activity (1857 had been the last big quake), and an unprecedented building boom with construction techniques brought from the eastern U.S. That combination spelled […]
Going to the Movies For residents of CV from 1924 to 1987, going to the movies meant a trip down to Honolulu Avenue to the Montrose Theater. According to history, the building of the theater in 1924 was a community project with several Montrose businessmen pooling their money to create a draw for the […]
Marilyn Monroe in Tujunga? The famous movie star Marilyn Monroe was an LA girl. She grew up in LA and came to fame here as well. Locally, we know that her mother was a resident of Rockhaven Sanitarium, although it’s unlikely that Monroe ever visited her there. But I just became aware of two […]
Duck and Cover – The 1955 A-bomb Drill For a scant four years after WWII, the U.S. was the only nation with “the bomb.” That all changed in 1949 when the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear device. We were shocked that they had caught up with us so quickly, and we raced ahead […]
The California Wine Industry Started in … Glendale? That’s a provocative title, but it may very well be true. There is evidence to suggest that the first secular (outside the missions) wine production in California was done by none other than our own Jose Maria Verdugo at his rancho in what is now North Glendale. […]
Montrose Search and Rescue – Successful Rescues I’m aware that I tend to gravitate to the “if it bleeds, it leads” philosophy of journalism. Stories of violence and gore are just more dramatic than stories of goodness and grace. Also, as a historian I’m aware that we’ve heard all the stories of good deeds by […]
A Deeper History of the La Crescenta Elementary School Bell A couple of years ago I wrote about the resurrection of the big school bell that is mounted in front of La Crescenta Elementary School. It had been hung in the original one room schoolhouse in 1888 and then was transferred to a newer larger […]
Montrose Search and Rescue – Whittier Narrows Earthquake Buries Construction Worker It was a clear morning just after 7:30 on Oct. 2, 1987. In the mountains above Altadena, a construction crew was digging a deep shaft, three feet wide and 37 feet deep, which was to be filled with concrete to create a footing […]
Where was our Native-American Village? Members of the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley recently discussed this question. From historical records we know that there was a Tongva village called “Wiqanga,” and that it was associated with La Tuna Canyon. Wiqanga means “place of the thorns,” referring to the prickly pear cactus that grows […]
Montrose Search and Rescue – Long Search for a Plane Crash In March 1982, a winter storm was blowing in from the north and was predicted to bring rain and snow to the higher elevations. Late on a Tuesday night, a Cessna 340, a small twin-engine plane, taxied for take-off from Van Nuys Airport. […]