Residents Preserve Rustic Life Style in Cozy Canyon at Edge of the City

Mary Perkins, proprietor of the Cottage Market in Sierra Madre Canyon, was born in County Tipperary, Ireland, in 1910. She came to the United States at the age of 19, eventually settling in Sierra Madre Canyon in the late 1940s.

Perkins’ two married daughters live on tiny Brookside Lane right behind the market. All told, six of the houses on Brookside belong to Mary’s extended clan. Four generations are represented with members from 7 to 79 years of age. “There are about 20 of us along the lane here,” Connie Hastings, 53, Mary’s eldest daughter, said with a laugh.

Local people simply call the area “the canyon.” Residents enjoy a cozy sense of place, a feeling that where they live is special.

Few neighborhoods around the Los Angeles area have a rustic atmosphere that is as strong. Nature lovers and artistic types have long gravitated to the canyon. The City Council of Sierra Madre declared the entire town a wildlife sanctuary in 1972, long before the U. S. trend toward ecological sensitivity had gained much attention.

About 500 homes nestle among the trees and rocks in the canyon bottom and along the steep slopes above. The entire neighborhood extends only half a mile from a flood control dam down to the canyon entrance, generally less than 100 yards wide.

Breezes Off Mountains

The canyon, which lies near the top of Mountain Trail Avenue, has always had water and trees and breezes off the mountains.

In 1906 a resort called Carter’s Camp was opened in the canyon. Refugees from the heat of the flatlands could spend the summer months in 37 tent-houses and five cottages. Those temporary homes for folks wishing to commune with nature seem to have set the tone for the canyon. The residents and their dwellings have been an eclectic mix.

The unusual combination of convenience and isolation was used as a selling point when the area was subdivided in 1913. One real estate advertisement offered a “true mountain and canyon environment, within walking distance of the streetcars and yet absolutely removed from noisy, dusty city conditions.”

Today the streetcars are gone, but the canyon, about six blocks from downtown Sierra Madre, retains its spiritual distance. Turning off Mountain Trail Avenue and traveling along Sturtevant Drive, you are “in town.”

Then the street swings sharply to the left and narrows, and the trees close in overhead. You are now in “the canyon.” High stone walls flank the street. Narrow, winding stairways of river rock climb steeply up to houses hidden in the thick vegetation.

In the heart of the canyon, a maze of narrow roads, alleys and dirt driveways angle away in all directions. Woodland Drive, the main road, is 12 to 14 feet wide and only slightly less winding than the other roads. It snakes along for half a mile, twice crossing the stream on bridges and ends at the base of Sierra Madre Dam. It also passes the only commercial establishment in Sierra Madre Canyon, Perkins’ Cottage Market.

Perkins bought the business in 1966. Since then she has been open seven days a week dispensing sodas, snacks, detergent and advice to canyon residents.

Moving in and staying seems to be a characteristic of the canyon. Perkins’ neighbor, Bea Iffrig, 90, first hiked and picnicked in the canyon in the 1920s. She moved there in 1938 and from 1940 to 1980 operated a beauty shop on Woodland Drive.

The local vegetation is a robust collection of native and imported species. Walls and fences are overgrown with ivy and lantana. Some good-sized clumps of cactus nestle beside houses or climb the hillsides. One cluster of trees may include pine, Italian cypress and palm, while across the road are oaks, sycamores and perhaps an alder or two.

Most of the lots on the canyon bottom are narrow or just plain tiny. The homes are a hodgepodge of cabins, shacks and “works in progress,” along with newer full-sized houses.

“In 1963 the realtors said, ‘Don’t bother looking in Sierra Madre Canyon. It’s all oddballs and beatniks in old shacks.’ But once we saw the canyon, that was just where we wanted to be,” said Jean Astrin, an artist and businesswoman in her 50s who moved to Humboldt County in 1970 and recently returned to visit the canyon.

The life styles and priorities of canyon dwellers have occasionally caused squabbles in an otherwise peaceful place. Sanitation, access roads, building code violations and boundary problems have all been emotional issues.

Ross Tyree, chairman of the Sierra Madre Planning Commission, says much progress has been made in the past three or four years toward cleaning up the canyon’s problems with property lines, code violations and sanitation.

For one thing, the Pasadena Humane Society patrols the canyon regularly, which has solved the problem of packs of dogs roaming canyon roads.

A local contractor says that in years past people often forgot to obtain permits before adding on to their homes, and many canyon houses sprouted decks, patios, stairways and second stories that often remained uncompleted. Much of the work seemed to defy gravity. The city tightened enforcement of building codes, and violations are less frequent these days.

A visitor to the canyon is constantly reminded of how nature and geography--the meandering stream bed, the surrounding mountain sides and the drop in elevation--shaped the semi-isolated village.

Heavy spring rains in 1926 caused serious flooding in the canyon. The Los Angeles County Flood Control District built a dam above the populated section of the canyon, completing it in 1928. The channel below the dam, following the natural stream bed, was built in the next few years. Whether this channel can handle the deluges of rain that occur once or twice in a century was hotly debated through much of the 1960s and ‘70s.

At one point, locals who opposed building a covered channel feared an invasion of the canyon by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Tyree says the canyon people were not against safety but wanted to preserve the pleasing sights and sounds of the stream.

Astrin, along with a determined cadre of canyon dwellers, faced off with the corps, the Flood Control District and certain factions within Sierra Madre to keep the stream bed in the canyon from being enclosed.

“For me, ‘Save Our Stream’ was the big issue of the 1960s,” Astrin said. In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, “SOS” bumper stickers proliferated in the canyon and beyond.

Equal to Runoff

The 1968-69 rainy season provided evidence that the old channel was equal to any level of runoff. The season total was 46.88 inches of rain in Sierra Madre. The previous year--more typical--was 13.86 inches.

The Sept. 4, 1969, Sierra Madre News quoted Joe Thies, president of the Foothill Areas Assn.: “The 80-year record rainfall experienced this season proved that the present channel is adequate to handle unusually heavy rainfall, even in excess of this season’s.”

Tyree is familiar with the practical aspects of the issue as well as being a lover of the canyon. “Who would want to give up that great river-rock and stonework and the sound of the stream for a concrete tunnel?” he asked.

By canyon standards, Caroline Brown is a recent arrival, having moved there in 1972. Brown arrived after the “Save Our Stream” campaign but she is one of 50 area residents who belong to the Sierra Madre Hillside Coalition. The group watches any plans that the city, county or local developers have for the canyons and open hillsides of the town.

To illustrate how the canyon folk stick together, she talks about the mudslides that followed days of heavy rains in December, 1978. “It seemed that every able-bodied person in the canyon was out in hip boots to shovel and clear mud. We were out there all night.”

After a newcomer has seen the picturesque stream bed, the bridges, the 1928 dam and all the unique homes, one big surprise remains.

Up a small side canyon on a dead-end road named Yucca Trail, the Nature Friends Clubhouse perches high on the hill. The three-story building seems to have been lifted off a Bavarian mountainside and transported to Sierra Madre. The clubhouse, built between 1920 and 1923, and a two-story dormitory across the road are the local headquarters for Nature Friends International, a hiking and nature study organization founded in Vienna in 1885.

Chris Barnes, 26, a member of the group, believes that he has found a dream job. He lives in the dormitory and acts as caretaker for the buildings and grounds, also coordinating rentals of the clubhouse for banquets and dances. From his front window, the ridges of the San Gabriel Mountains rise and curve out of sight.

Barnes also manages a convenience store in the San Gabriel Valley. He is keenly aware of the contrast between the morning screeching of blue jays in the canyon and the rush-hour screech of brakes on the freeway.

“It’s a nice place to escape to,” said Barnes, a relative newcomer who has lived in the canyon less than two years, “I can understand why people who live here feel the way they do about it. There are a thousand great stories about this canyon.”