History of Pasadena, California

It is also the home of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)[1] At the time of European contact, the inhabitants of Pasadena and surrounding areas were members of the Native American Indians Hahamog-na tribe, a branch of the Tongva Nation.

[3] Pasadena is a part of the original Mexican land grant originally given over from Spain to Mexico, named Rancho del Rincon de San Pascual,[2] so named because it was deeded on Easter Sunday to Eulalia Perez de Guillén Mariné of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel.

Wilson, known as Don Benito to the local Indians,[2] was also owner of the Rancho Jurupa (Riverside, California) and mayor of Los Angeles.

[citation needed] To keep the find a secret, Berry code-named the area "Muscat" after the grape that Wilson grew.

To raise funds to bring the company of people to San Pascual, Berry formed the Southern California Orange and Citrus Growers Association for which he sold stock.

[citation needed] The newcomers were able to purchase a large portion of the property along the Arroyo Seco and on January 31, 1874, they incorporated the Indiana Colony.

In an attempt to obtain their own post office, the Colony needed to change its name to something the Postmaster General considered appropriate.

After returning home, Burnett plotted a town along two bayous, with its similar lush vegetation, naming it Pasadena, after the California city.

[6] From the real estate boom of the 1880s until the Great Depression, as great tourist hotels were developed in the city, Pasadena became a winter resort for wealthy Easterners, spurring the development of new neighborhoods and business districts, and increased road and transit connections with Los Angeles, culminating with the opening of the Arroyo Seco Parkway, California's first freeway.

[8] The world-famous Mount Lowe Railway and associated mountain hotels shut down four years later due to fire damage.

[9] The Hotel Green started construction on South Raymond Avenue at Kansas Street in 1887 by Edward C. Webster who was unable to finish it.

It now houses the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is located in the fully restored former Vista del Arroyo Hotel.

Grand Avenue was, at different times, home to Jared Torrance, the founder of the City of Torrance, J.B. Van Nuys, the founder of the City of Van Nuys, the Cox family, of communications and newspaper fame, the Spalding family, sporting goods titans, and Howard Huntington, heir to Henry Huntington.

[11] Originally, the Second District was an invaluable line; it served manufacturing and agricultural businesses throughout the entire San Gabriel Valley.

Unfortunately, the longer trains had great difficulty climbing the precipitous 2.2% grade at Arroyo Seco, between Pasadena and Los Angeles.

In order to avoid the media in Los Angeles, many celebrities chose to use Pasadena as their main train station, bringing to it an ambience and legacy of the glamour of old Hollywood.

During its time, it was one of the major tourist attractions in the Los Angeles area and offered many unique gardens and fairyland landscapes and structures.

Training actors for the stage in a two-year program, the conservatory was the first school in the United States to offer professional education in the field of acting.

The freeway's construction was controversial, as it caused the demolition of over a thousand homes, many historic, and many claimed that the route was designed to cut off the city's less wealthy neighborhoods.

Old Pasadena faced destruction as plans for new high-rise developments were drawn up, though they were mostly stopped by increasingly active preservation advocates.

Pasadena suffered demographically as many residents decamped for the nearby suburbs or the Inland Empire, causing an overall decrease in population.

The 1970s also saw the meteoric rise of gang violence in Pasadena, a trend which culminated with the 1993 Halloween Massacre, wherein three teenagers were murdered by members of the Bloods and three more were wounded.

However, Pasadena's development has stalled due to the late 2000s Recession, although much needed Seismic retrofitting was completed on the City Hall building in summer 2007.