Verdugo Road always a Main Road

Verdugo Road was just a dusty, narrow road when this picture was

taken in 1912, but it served as a major thoroughfare for travelers

between Canada Valley and Los Angeles. Originally called the Main

Road, it went right through the Verdugo land grant and was eventually

renamed Verdugo Road in honor of the first landowners.

One of the first to settle in this area after the Verdugo property

was broken up was Judge Erskine Ross, who received a large tract of

land, 1,100 acres fronting on North Verdugo Road, from his uncle,

Captain C.E. Thom.

Ross set out deciduous fruit trees and olives and built a mill for

making olive oil. In 1883, he built a large house on the ranch,

calling it Rossmoyne.

Another resident on Verdugo Road was J.C. Sherer, who figures

prominently in Glendale’s history. Sherer was working in a Los

Angeles Western Union office when he became interested in the

Glendale area. He purchased 17 acres on Verdugo Road, part of the

200-acre Julio Verdugo homestead in the southeast corner of Glendale.

Sherer built a two-room cabin on the ranch in 1883 and moved in.

Over the years, he developed the property into a showplace that he

called Somerset Farm, rebuilding the cabin into a substantial house

in 1919.

George B. Woodbury, a young man of 24, arrived in the area a year

after Sherer built his little cabin. Woodbury, raised in Maine, had

worked as a clerk and taught school until 1884 when he and his mother

headed west.

He bought 20 acres of land on Verdugo Road and lived on the ranch

for several years. Woodbury left a description of the area as it

appeared to him on arrival. At that time, the area was called Verdugo

and that was the address on letters arriving at the combination

general store and post office at the southwest corner of Broadway and

Verdugo.

Woodbury described the many fruit trees planted by earlier

settlers.

“This dark green foliage was about the only relief in the

prevailing russet brown over all the valley in 1884.”

Later, Woodbury was credited with being the first to describe the

area as “russet brown” in color.

At that time, a schoolhouse stood on Verdugo Road near what is now

Wilson Avenue. Wesley Bullis, who came to the area as a boy in 1880,

described in “Glendale Area History” how he and the Dunsmoor boys

rode to school together.

“The Dunsmoor boys furnished one horse and I another and a wagon

and after clearing a road through the cactus, we drove to and from

school. This was in 1881, the teacher was a Miss Levering.”

Bullis remembered that Roy Lanterman, another pupil at the Verdugo

Road school, rode horseback between the school and his home in La

Canada.

Roy Lanterman later became a surgeon, practicing in Los Angeles

and Glendale, and many of the Verdugo family members were among his

patients. He and his wife, Emily, later built the craftsman-style

house now known as the Lanterman House.

* KATHERINE YAMADA is a volunteer with the Special Collections

Room at Central Library. To reach her, leave a message at 637-3241.

The Special Collections Room is open from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. Saturdays

or by appointment. For more information on Glendale’s history,

contact the reference desk at the Central Library at 548-2027.