NOSTALGIA

Charles Collins remembers Sierra Madre in 1930 as “a happy community with all of 2,500 people and an equal number of animals.” And he means cows, horses and chickens as well as dogs and cats. James Heasley Jr. was a teen-ager there in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He worked for stables that provided pack animals to camps in Big and Little Santa Anita canyons. Heasley, now 75, says it was a common sight for 20 or 30 head of horses or mules to be herded along Sierra Madre’s dusty back roads to corral or pasture. “Oh, yes, this was real cowboy stuff.”

Those who can remember the village of 60 or 70 years ago speak of open land sloping toward the San Gabriel Valley beyond an uncongested Foothill Boulevard. Among the giant oaks were dairies and citrus orchards. Harold Brett, who moved to Sierra Madre in 1935 at age 11, recalls “the mountains on one side, the Baldwin Ranch on the south side, the Japanese truck gardens on the east and Hastings Ranch on the west.” He describes the Baldwin Ranch (present-day site of the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum) as “all wild--it was grazing land and there were two good-sized washes, all wild country that was fun to explore.”

For those who only know the town as the home of 12,000 people, in which almost all the level land and many of the hillsides have been subdivided, these memories are being preserved by Jayne Kistner. In 1989, with the help of a group of volunteers, she began to record the stories of more than 100 longtime residents. (The 250 hours of reminiscences will be published in cooperation with the Oral History Program at Cal State Fullerton.) When contacted by interviewers, many subjects doubted that they could recall enough information. “But once they get started,” Kistner says, laughing, “you can’t shut them up.”