It is also home to many scientific, educational, and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena City College, Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, Fuller Theological Seminary, Theosophical Society, Parsons Corporation, Art Center College of Design, the Planetary Society, Pasadena Playhouse, the Ambassador Auditorium, the Norton Simon Museum, and the USC Pacific Asia Museum.

The last of the Mexican owners of Rancho del Rincon de San Pascual was Manuel Garfias,[20] who retained title to the property through the American conquest of California in 1848 and statehood in 1850.

In 1873, Wilson was visited by Dr. Daniel M. Berry of Indiana, who was looking for a place in the country that could offer a mild climate for his patients, most of whom suffered from respiratory ailments.

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

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.

The original Mansard Victorian 200-room facility burned down on Easter morning of 1895, was rebuilt in 1903, and razed during the Great Depression to make way for residential development.

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

Pasadena also began hosting a large immigrant community, particularly from China, Japan, Philippines, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Italy, Armenia, and India.

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.

The Arroyo Seco, a major geographic feature and home of the Rose Bowl, flows from headwaters in Pasadena's towering Angeles National Forest greenbelt in the San Gabriel Mountains.

[34] Pasadena has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csa), with typically hotter summers and slightly cooler winters than nearby coastal areas.

Its location relative to the San Gabriel mountains allows the orographic lift to add several more inches of rainfall per year than nearby areas.

[74] It features unusual and absurd entrants such as the BBQ & Hibachi Marching Grill Team, the Men of Leisure, and the Bastard Sons of Lee Marvin.

Beckman Auditorium and other venues on the Caltech campus present a wide range of performing arts, lectures, films, classes and entertainment events, primarily during the academic year.

In the song, Jan and Dean sing of an elderly lady who drives a powerful "Super Stock Dodge" muscle car and is "the terror of Colorado Boulevard".

A number of artists of national repute, such as Guy Rose, Alson S. Clark, Marion Wachtel and Ernest A. Batchelder, of the Arts and Crafts Movement, made Pasadena their home in the early twentieth century.

Located on a campus of 2 acres (8,100 m2), it has gardens, a history center, the Finnish Folk Art Museum, the Curtin House, and the Fenyes Mansion, a 1906 Beaux Arts-style architectural residence and a Pasadena Cultural Heritage Landmark.

The press publishes over twenty titles of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction each year as well as a biannual literary magazine called The Los Angeles Review.

Because of the number of landmark mansions, the street earned the name Millionaire's Row, an appropriate sobriquet considering that the estates that once lined this spacious boulevard and the surrounding neighborhood read like a Who's Who of American consumer products.

He started a water-gas company, founded the Citizens Bank of Los Angeles, built numerous ice plants, and purchased a Pasadena opera house.

[110] The brilliant, but troubled, rocket scientist John Whiteside Parsons sometimes shared his residence with other noteworthy people, including L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.

[152] Colorado Boulevard .net grassroots news website was launched in 2013 and covers both the Pasadena and Alhambra areas with stories written by residents of the communities instead of professional journalists.

Construction began in June 2010 to extend the Gold Line east through several additional foothill communities of the San Gabriel Valley, including Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Irwindale, and Azusa.

But longer trains had great difficulty climbing the precipitous 2.2% grade at Arroyo Seco, between Pasadena and Los Angeles, requiring the costly addition of extra locomotives.

[27][156] Amtrak took over passenger rail operations in 1971, serving Pasadena with trains such as the Southwest Chief, Las Vegas Limited, and Desert Wind.

[158] The construction of the Gold Line also allowed the closure of the former railroad crossing along Colorado Boulevard which meant that motorists and the Rose Parade would no longer be hindered by trains.

Efforts to complete the Long Beach Freeway were met with strong opposition, including the possibility of using advanced tunneling technologies to overcome objections.

This 2-mile (3.2 km) stretch of highway in the Angeles National Forest is north of La Cañada Flintridge and west of Mount Wilson and is approximately 3,000 feet (910 m) in elevation.

[169] A widely accepted story is that they were part of the stock that were set free for their survival from the large pet emporium at Simpson's Garden Town on East Colorado Boulevard, which burned down in 1959.