La Cañada History: Cots set up at Oak Grove for weary firefighters in September 1979

Ten Years Ago

After a year during the Great Recession defined by tightening credit lines, falling home prices and foreclosures, La Cañada Flintridge real estate agents told the Valley Sun in September 2009 they were seeing indications that recovery in the residential real estate market was underway.

Twenty Years Ago

The city of La Cañada Flintridge’s first city clerk, Pat Anderson (no relation to the current president and chief executive of the local chamber of commerce of the same name), announced her retirement after 27 years in City Hall. A longtime La Cañada resident, Anderson had accepted the job in 1977, shortly after the city incorporated.

Thirty Years Ago

An idea to include a four-screen, 800-seat movie theater building in the proposed Sport Chalet complex on Foothill Boulevard at Angeles Crest Highway met with opposition from local residents. The opponents said such a theater would attract too many outsiders to the community, bringing with them excess traffic, parking headaches and crime problems.

Forty Years Ago

La Cañadans in mid-September 1979 were keeping a nervous watch on a wildfire dubbed the Sage fire that was blazing uncontrolled in the Angeles National Forest. Several small structures were lost and more than 31,000 acres were burned. Oak Grove Park (now Hahamongna Watershed Park) served as a respite spot for the 2,648 firefighters called into action here. That same week there were a 13 different wildfires blazing in the Southland, putting a strain on firefighting resources, destroying properties and frazzling nerves from San Diego County to Santa Barbara County.

Fifty Years Ago

With the 1969 season opener against Crescenta Valley High School then just a week away, head coach Bob Mahoney said 17 players on his La Cañada High School varsity football squad were on his “Red Cross unit” and unable to work out. Five of the 17 were suffering flu symptoms while the others had sustained injuries.

Sixty Years Ago

The La Cañada school district welcomed back 2,265 students to its four elementary school campuses and 1,050 to its junior high on Cornishon Avenue. Some 950 teens were attending Muir High School in Pasadena, as the local high school had yet to be built.

Compiled from the Valley Sun archives.

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