La Cañada History: Gravel truck towing trailer leaves 210 Freeway, lands in restaurant lot

Ten Years Ago

The Valley Sun profiled two 6-foot-tall sisters, Courtney and Kim McCutchan, who, along with their teammates on the La Cañada High School girls’ varsity volleyball team, were enjoying a great start to the season.

Twenty Years Ago

The La Cañada Flintridge Educational Foundation, which had originally been known as “SOS” (Save our Schools), presented the La Cañada school board with a check for $550,000, the largest amount to have been donated to the district as of 1997.

Thirty Years Ago

An empty gravel truck and trailer traveling eastbound along the Foothill (210) Freeway at an estimated 55 miles per hour left the road and careened over an embankment, crashing into empty cars parked in the La Cañada McDonald’s parking lot. The driver did not survive the injuries he sustained in the accident, but no one else was harmed.

Forty Years Ago

Although it was met by opposition from neighboring residents, the Crescenta-Cañada YMCA’s request for a conditional use permit to expand its facility was approved by the city’s planning commission.

Fifty Years Ago

La Cañada voters went to the polls in October 1967 and approved funds for a detailed sewer trunk line cost study. The study would be in preparation for a bond election that could bring a sewer system to town.

Sixty Years Ago

A flu epidemic swept through the community in October 1957, reducing attendance at La Cañada’s public schools. La Cañada Junior High reported a 24% absentee rate, with 226 students ill. The hardest hit elementary campus was La Cañada Elementary, but the single classroom with the highest incidents of flu was a third-grade class at Paradise Canyon Elementary.

Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.