La Cañada History: Cheers heard, relief felt inside JPL as the Phoenix Mars Lander makes successful descent onto the red planet

Employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Canada Flintridge react as Phoenix Mars Lander touches down in a northern polar region of Mars on May 25, 2008.

By Carol Cormaci

May 21, 2018 4:40 PM PT

Ten Years Ago

Cheers went up at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge as the Phoenix Mars Lander touched down — according to plan — in a northern polar region of the red planet on May 25, 2008. The lander was then NASA’s newest hope in the search for signs of life on Mars, following the dramatic December 1999 loss of the Mars Polar Lander. The Phoenix Lander was launched in August 1997.

Twenty Years Ago

Citing the need for expansion, Georges Ghaby, then the owner of Hill Street Café in La Cañada, leased the former Lloyd’s Restaurant on Foothill Boulevard at Angeles Crest Highway and was in the process of moving his successful business there from its first location on the corner of Foothill and Hill Street. “It will be a bigger and better Hill Street,” Ghaby said.

Thirty Years Ago

Themed “Fiesta of Flight,” the 1988 Memorial Weekend Fiesta Days Celebration was referred to by organizers as “the biggest one yet,” drawing large crowds to all of its venues, including a community picnic at La Cañada High School where members of the Freedom Parachute Team landed on the grounds near the gymnasium.

Forty Years Ago

For the first time in nearly three decades, a race to represent the Foothills in the state Assembly was wide open, with 11 candidates trying to get to the finish line first. The contest was set into motion on the final official retirement of Frank D. Lanterman, a fixture in the Assembly for 28 years.

Fifty Years Ago

As La Cañadans prepared to go to the polls in the June 4, 1968 California Primary, the breakdown of the town’s 11,080 eligible voters was: Republican, 8,603; Democrat, 2,188; American Independent, 47; Peace and Freedom, 26; miscellaneous, 50; and declined to state, 166.

Sixty Years Ago

Sonita, a 6-year-old elephant kept by Charles Franks at the Spalding property stables (where the La Cañada High campus is today) was reportedly kept very busy during the spring of 1958 as local Republican leaders pressed her into service as a symbol of their party.

Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.