Sheltered by the historic black walnut woodlands...

Sheltered by the historic black walnut woodlands in the rolling San Jose Hills, the seemingly quiet community of West Covina has had more than its share of controversy amid its pleasant suburban atmosphere.

In the years following World War II, this middle-class community in the middle of the San Gabriel Valley was the fastest-growing city in America, its population increasing more than 1,000% per year.

This being Southern California, such explosive growth brought the inevitable freeway in 1956, splitting Covina and West Covina. Almost three decades earlier, West Covina residents had distanced themselves and incorporated to stop Covina from building a sewage dump on Glendora Avenue.

From one fast lane to another, the city leaped to notoriety July 18, 1959, when prominent physician Bernard Finch and his beautiful lover, Carol Tregoff, shot and killed his very chic wife, Barbara Finch, at their home on Lark Hill Drive overlooking the South Hills Country Club. The first two Finch-Tregoff trials ended in hung juries. A third jury found them guilty of murder.

West Covina’s bucolic San Jose ravines were transformed in 1963 into what would become a controversial 583-acre landfill operation. Much of the surrounding land with its undulating ridges remained vacant until the 1970s when houses, apartments, condominiums and shopping centers proliferated around the BKK dump. A decade later, families were evacuated from some of those homes because of high levels of methane and more than $43 million was paid out in settlements to more than 500 neighbors of the dump.

After years of battling in and out of court, the BKK landfill that proved a cash cow for the town has officially agreed to shut down in mid-September

The community came under new scrutiny when a Times series explored the problem of undernourishment at Edgewood Middle School and how conservative school board members had balked at providing a federally funded breakfast program on philosophical grounds.News of hungry schoolchildren in middle-class suburbia sparked an outpouring of community support by residents, who banded together to launch a school breakfast program.

Through the years, the city of 96,000 has become more ethnically diverse; city officials say its Filipino population of 7,185 residents is among the state’s largest.

Slowly, the 17-square-mile suburb that blossomed from orange and walnut groves has become a mecca for businesses. Indicative of that shift, it has changed its unofficial name from the “City of Beautiful Homes” to the “Headquarter City.”

* IDENTITY CRISIS: When West Covina turned 26 in 1949, tired of being confused with Covina, it weighed the names of El Camino, Paloma, Tierra Linda, Glenwood, Valencia, Valinda and finally Fleetwood. But the ballot measure was defeated 391 to 341.

* NEIGHBORING: When the going got tough, proposals surfaced to close down the government and allow Covina to swallow the town whole. City officials and residents, however, persevered to keep West Covina’s identity. But beginning in the early 1980s the two cities have joined to provide various services, including animal control and sewer maintenance.

* KEEPING THE PAST: To preserve the city’s heritage, the planning department and local historical society created a historical district park. The two-story, refurbished Craftsman-style, 1,800 square-foot house, built by Almo Reginald Taylor in 1912, will become a museum of local history and the home of the West Covina Historical Society.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

By The Numbers

City Business

Incorporated: Feb. 17, 1923

Area in square miles: 17

Number of parks: 13

City employees: 397

1995-96 budget: $27 million

*

People

Population: 96,086

Households: 30,105

Average household size: 3

Median age: 31

*

Ethnic Breakdown

Asian: 16%

Black: 8%

Latino: 35%

White: 40%

Other: 1%

*

Money and Work Median household income: $42,481

Median household income / L.A. County: $34,965

Median home value: $201,100

Employed workers (16 and older): 50,333

Percentage of women employed: 60%

Percentage of men employed: 79%

Self-employed: 3,015

Car- poolers: 7,243

*

Retail Stores

Number of stores: 590

Number of employees: 5,613

Annual sales: $672 million

*

Families:

Married couples with children: 35%

Married couples with no children: 27%

Non-family households: 19%

Other types of families: 18%

Source: Claritas Inc. Household expenses are averages for 1994. All other figures are for 1990. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number.