La Cañada History: From Turkey Bowl to Winter Olympics

Ten Years Ago

Kate Hansen, then an eighth-grade student at La Cañada High School 7/8, won the sportsmanship award for School 4 following her performance in the November 2005 campus Turkey Bowl tag football game. Hansen, now 23, later gained sports fame as an American luger who was the youngest Junior World Champion in 2008 and a member of the U.S. team competing in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Twenty Years Ago

A business landmark in La Cañada for about 40 years, the Sparr restaurant closed its doors in November 1995 after its owner lost her lease on the building. Taylor’s steak house later replaced the Sparr at the location.

Thirty Years Ago

A man dressed in black and wearing a ski mask over his face entered the Berkshire Avenue bedroom of a sleeping woman early one Sunday morning in November 1985 and ran out with the victim’s purse after the woman awoke and began screaming. He fled through the same living room window through which he had originally gained entrance to the home.

Forty Years Ago

As of the afternoon of Nov. 25, 1974, no La Cañada homes had been hit by the disastrous (and then still active) Big Tujunga fire that had blackened approximately 50,000 acres and destroyed 12 homes as of the paper’s press deadline. Scores of La Cañada residents living closest to the Angeles National Forest had to be evacuated from the upper Ocean View section. Others, who lived in the upper Alta Canyada area, had been told to pack up and be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

Fifty Years Ago

Directors of the La Cañada Flintridge Chamber of Commerce and Community Assn. asked for a two-part feasibility study of cityhood for La Cañada, with or without the inclusion of Flintridge. In other LCF Chamber news, the organization vowed to fight a proposed motel on Foothill Boulevard at Beulah Drive unless the developer met several conditions, including reaching a “satisfactory agreement” with the residents of Houseman Street whose homes could be negatively affected by the construction of a motel there.

Sixty Years Ago

The La Cañada Young Republicans Club decided in November 1955 it would not be entering a candidate in the annual Young Republicans of Los Angeles County Queen contest the following month. A spokeswoman said the decision had been made because in 1954, when the La Cañada club had entered three residents in the competition, a Los Angeles GOP group entered a professional model rather than a club member.

Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci