La Cañada History: Runaway dump truck avoids traffic, crashes into sign

Ten Years Ago

Late on a Monday night in late July 2006, two masked men entered Taylor’s Steakhouse on Foothill Boulevard and robbed patrons of jewelry and cash. After an unsuccessful attempt to access the restaurant’s office, the suspects made their getaway through the rear parking lot.

Twenty Years Ago

Equestrian Anne Kursinski, who began training with the late Jimmy Williams at Flintridge Riding Club as a child, was representing the U.S. in the 1976 Olympic Games, held in Montreal. It was her fourth Olympics.

Thirty Years Ago

Quick thinking on the part of a 21-year-old dump truck driver whose vehicle developed overheated brakes prevented calamity at the intersection of Angeles Crest Highway and Foothill Boulevard. Beeping his horn down the ‘Crest as he approached Foothill, he steered his truck away from traffic and into a driveway at the Union 76 station. After crashing into a sign pole there, the truck flipped over. Station personnel snuffed out a fire that broke out underneath the vehicle because of a gas leak and pulled the driver from the upturned cab.

Forty Years Ago

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a Nov. 2, 1976, election on the proposed incorporation of La Cañada and Flintridge as a city. At the same time, the supervisors denied the proposed boundary exclusions of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Flintridge area.

Fifty Years Ago

Groundbreaking ceremonies were held for the Behrens Memorial Hospital that was to be built on Verdugo Boulevard, on land the city of Glendale annexed from La Cañada for the project. (It was renamed Verdugo Hills Hospital before it was opened.)

Sixty Years Ago

The Regional Planning Commission gave La Cañada resident Ara Melickian the green light to construct an apartment building on the west side of Chevy Chase Drive between the Youth House (Community Center) and a Foothill Boulevard gas station. It would be the first apartment complex in town.

Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.