La Cañada History: Ground-breaking ceremony at Verdugo Hills Hospital

Ten Years Ago

The La Cañada school board was weighing whether to seek a $500 parcel tax to address a budget crunch looming for the 2004-05 school year.

Twenty Years Ago

Area kids of all ages were participating in rehearsals in preparation for Foothill Summer Theatre’s 1993 production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical, “Oklahoma!” to be staged in the auditorium at La Cañada High School.

Thirty Years Ago

Ground-breaking ceremonies were held for a $20-million expansion project at Verdugo Hills Hospital. A special guest of honor was 5-year-old Matthew Stearns, who donated nine pennies to the hospital’s fundraising foundation to help pay for the construction.

Forty Years Ago

La Cañada High instructors Richard Phillips and Donald Scott were among 100 auto shop teachers to attend the General Motors Summer Workshop Program held in Burbank. There they learned the most recent developments in automotive technology to bring back to their students.

Fifty Years Ago

ZIP Code, the new system to improve U.S. Postal Service deliveries, was set to go into effect on July 1, 1963 and La Cañada’s residents were urged to use its assigned five-digit code, 91011. Flintridge, which had previously carried the postal designation of “Pasadena 3,” was given 91103 as its ZIP code. The latter code remained in effect until the latter half of the 1970s, when the two areas of town were incorporated as one city and Flintridge gave up 91103.

Sixty Years Ago

The Regional Planning Commission reported to La Cañada school officials that acreage on Hillard Avenue was the best location for a new, much-needed elementary school and that land known as the Avery property on Palm Drive near Fairmount Avenue was “next to most desirable.”

-- Carol Cormaci, carol.cormaci@latimes.com

Follow @CarolCormaci on Twitter.