La Cañada History: Then-presidential candidate Ron Paul in La Cañada for $2,000-a-plate campaign fundraiser

Ten Years Ago

The 2008 presidential campaign of Republican hopeful and Texas congressman Ron Paul was brought to La Cañada Flintridge in September 2007 when a $2,000-a-plate fundraising dinner was held on his behalf at a ranch on Angeles Crest Highway owned by William Johnson. Johnson, a white nationalist, chairs the American Freedom Party.

Twenty Years Ago

A grassroots neighborhood group, the Conservadores de Las Colinas, announced a campaign to save Rockridge Terrace acreage on the southwest side of town from development and to raise $150,000 toward purchasing the land from USC. They engaged the city of La Cañada Flintridge in the effort and the city in turn eventually garnered funding to make the purchase. Today, there’s a passive city park there.

Thirty Years Ago

The La Cañada Thursday Club celebrated its Diamond Jubilee anniversary in the fall of 1987. The club was founded by a pioneer in the community, Elizabeth Knight, who in 1912 invited a group of women to meet in her home. The organization’s clubhouse, still in use on Woodleigh Lane, was built in 1927.

Forty Years Ago

Several La Cañadans complained to the City Council that too much movie and television filming was taking place in residential neighborhoods, causing a nuisance. The council subsequently passed an emergency ordinance limiting such activity.

Fifty Years Ago

A community service program on the Hippie movement taking place in the late 1960s was presented here by the local Foothill TACT (Truth About Civic Turmoil) Committee. The program, held in Lanterman Auditorium, was titled “Hippies, LSD, Sex” and was led by Ken Granger, a news photographer who had chronicled the Hippie happenings from the Sunset Strip to the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco.

Sixty Years Ago

Population gains and community development in La Cañada resulted in an uptick of telephone expansion by about 25% between 1955 and 1957, according to a Pacific Telephone official. The phone company’s district manager said that as of mid-September 1957 there were 9,200 telephones in town and approximately 75 new numbers were being added each month.

Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.

UPDATES:

Sept. 13; 5:46 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about William Johnson.