Sierra Madre may share an earthquake fault...

Sierra Madre may share an earthquake fault with nearby communities, but otherwise it’s as distinct from its neighbors as a Mercedes-Benz in a lineup of Ford Escorts.

The hamlet at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains--with its placid tree-lined ambience and Mayberry-like storefronts--is a city known as a haven for artists, poets and creative types.

It was founded and developed by an ambitious real estate huckster named Nathaniel C. Carter in 1881. He bought 1,100 acres on the incline rising to a mountain range called, at the time, the Sierra Madre. He laid out plans for a Utopian community that would be called “Nature’s Sanitarium.” His own estate, Carterhia, occupied 103 acres.

By the turn of the century, riding on a speculative land boom, Sierra Madre was well established as a prosperous town with its own water system, post office, amateur drama society and sanitarium and even a cigar factory, on East Laurel Avenue.

This bastion of small-town Americana has a well-honed sense of civil pride. Local debates have raged over topics from the mundane placement of potted plants downtown to the volatile issue of breaking away from the Pasadena Unified School District.

In 1960, Sierra Madre parents voted to join the Pasadena school district, one of the best in the area at the time. But it was a decision that many parents have come to regret; they complain now of gang-related problems and low academic achievement in the Pasadena schools.

In 1990, the slim hopes Sierra Madre parents had of affiliating with the more affluent Arcadia district fizzled when the State Board of Education denied their petition.

The community’s spirit rebounded under adversity after chimneys fell all over town on June 28, 1991. The 5.8-magnitude Sierra Madre earthquake damaged more than 400 structures, and 22 were eventually razed. After the disaster, residents quickly began restoring the town, often volunteering to help neighbors with housing or rebuilding projects.

Two years later, the city’s 44 unpaid firefighters were among the crews battling firestorms that overflowed ravines and threatened hillsides. No homes in the community were lost.

Sierra Madre residents take pride in their town’s time-warp atmosphere, along with its volunteer search and rescue team, its Fourth of July parade, the Huck Finn fishing derby and summer concerts in the park.

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Sierra Madre Inside Out

EIGHT-LEGGED LANDMARK: The stolen treasure of Sierra Madre didn’t have anything to do with the 1948 John Huston film, but was a statue of a violin spider--a deadly South American arachnid whose infestation plagued the town in 1969. That year, as a joke, an artist donated to the city a five-foot statue of the spider, an intimidating mass of sheet metal and steel rods. A month later, the spider was missing from the park where it had been displayed. To date, no further sightings of either the live or the metal arachnid have been reported.

WHISTLE-BLOWERS: In an all-out effort to dramatize air pollution, entomologist/Mayor John N. Simons in 1970 decided to blow the whistle on smog. The civil defense siren atop the old City Hall wailed for one minute every hour whenever ozone pollution reached an unhealthy level. Today, the siren still blares emergency calls for the city’s 44 volunteer firefighters.

IN THE MOVIES: The historic Sierra Madre Hotel, a town landmark converted into an apartment building, was featured prominently in the 1956 original film version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” a tale of sinister pods from outer space that turn humans into unfeeling automatons. The Penny House on Lima Street--a 110-year-old former hotel, where the 1955 Bob Hope movie “The Seven Little Foys” was filmed--still stands. Many movies and commercials use the Italian villa setting at Alverno High School, a private Roman Catholic institution, and the Passionist Fathers have played host to film companies on their 80-acre retreat.

ROYAL TREATMENT: On Feb. 28, 1983, in pouring rain, Queen Elizabeth visited the senior citizen residents at the British Home in California on Manzanita Avenue.

FLORAL FUNDS: Every spring since 1918, visitors have trekked to see the 102-year-old fragrant lavender Chinese wisteria vine that extends over more than an acre. The weight of the vine caused the house it originally overgrew to collapse in the 1930s. It is the world’s largest blossoming plant, according to the Guinness Book of World Record. Proceeds from lovers of its 1.5 million blossoms have contributed to the coffers of several city departments.

MYTHICAL AND GOOFY: The Sierra Madre City College marching band--its emblem is a turkey, its motto is “Gobble Gobble” and its purpose defies explanation--is composed of more than 100 unrehearsed locals with vivid imaginations. Never mind that there is no college in town. The band, founded in 1980 for no particular reason, marches in the annual Fourth of July parade. It survives only with fund-raisers that often raise more than needed and gives it all away, only to begin again with nothing.

CRITICS: In 1974, Sierra Madre residents were tuning in to cable television to watch City Council meetings, which offered information, drama and even a laugh or two--especially when a councilman received a call from a subscriber asking him to “please stop picking your nose.”