Resident has vivid memories of the flood

KATHERINE YAMADA

Only a few homes had been built in the Rossmoyne area when Gladys and

Harold Mosher purchased a house on East Glenoaks, near the

intersection of Rossmoyne Avenue and Ethel Street, in 1924.

The streets were paved, but it still looked like country with a

large grove of apricot trees across the street and an unpaved Verdugo

Wash running along the edge of their property.

The Moshers had come from the San Francisco Bay Area with their

daughter, Jane Mosher Usher, who was about 4, and their son, Frank.

Usher recalled that she and her brother attended Doran Street

School, now R.D. White.

“We walked to school, through the apricot grove,” she said.

Their back yard was 50 by 100 feet with the rear of the yard

abutting the wash.

“It was just a dirt channel, there were no concrete sides during

the late 1920s,” she said.

Within just a few years, in the good times before the Depression,

she said, many homes were built in this area and the wash behind

their house was lined with a narrow concrete channel.

Usher was 12 when the 1933-’34 flood hit and, for her, it is still

a vivid memory. After a horrendous summer fire above Montrose in

1933, a fierce 14-hour rain storm the last two days of December sent

ash, mud and boulders down the San Gabriel Mountains and into

Montrose and La Crescenta.

Following the natural wash, the water and debris coursed through

Verdugo Woodlands, flooding the streets along Ethel and East

Glenoaks.

“Power and telephone services were out, so we were unaware of the

devastation that was occurring,” Usher said.

They lived three houses below the old Glenoaks bridge, close

enough so that the abutments diverted the water and protected their

house. Usher and her father walked out onto the wooden bridge at one

point and watched as the water came down.

“I remember waves of water in the channel,” she said. “Earlier in

the day, my Dad had evacuated my grandparents and our neighbors, Dr.

and Mrs. Fred Loring, by throwing a heavy rope across Glenoaks and

walking them across the street. Later on, we were stranded in our

house, not being able to cross the street because of the volume of

water and large amounts of debris it contained.”

“Most of the houses on Coronado Drive and on East Glenoaks below

the bridge were flooded and their garages were demolished,” she said.

Three people on East Glenoaks drowned. E.C. Eaton, the County

Flood Control District’s chief engineer at the time, estimated that

600,000 cubic yards of debris came down from the foothills in just 20

minutes.

The flood took out most of the bridges crossing the wash and Eaton

called for the completion of a flood control system.

“In those days, the whole San Fernando Valley would flood,” Usher

said. “It was after the 1933-’34 flood that major flood control was

undertaken to prevent another such flood.”

Usher’s mother continued to live in the home on East Glenoaks

until she passed away in 1966 and Usher has remained in Glendale

since her arrival in 1924.

KATHERINE YAMADA’S column runs every other Friday. To contact her,

call features editor Joyce Rudolph at (818) 637-3241. For more

information on Glendale’s history visit the Glendale Historical

Societys web page: www.glendalehistorical.org; call the reference

desk at the Central Library at (818) 548-2027; or visit the Special

Collections Room at Central (open by appointment only).

READERS WRITE

George Walker, who has been here since 1940, said that he recalled

Vonnie Dunn Rand’s father, Remus.

“I knew him through the Brethren Church at Kenilworth Avenue and

Stocker Street that we attended for 10 years.”

Walker’s wife, Georgiana, and her parents, Grace and Ervin

Masters, were members there.

“I value your columns,” he added. “They are the first things I

read.”

Walker was 23 when he came to Glendale for a new job as a sales

representative. He has lived in northwest Glendale since then and

still goes to work at a manufacturing firm.

The Tubach family, of Montrose, found a photograph of an

unidentified young girl, with bare feet, carrying a milk can. It

appears the photo dates from the 1930s. They wonder if it might be

from an album found by Crescenta Valley Tow a few weeks ago in an

abandoned car. The girl in the album was identified only by her

initials E.E.S. If you have any thoughts on her identity, please

contact me through the following information.

If you have questions, comments or memories to share, please write

to Katherine Yamada/Verdugo Views in care of the News-Press, 111 W.

Wilson Ave., Suite 200, Glendale, CA 91203. Please include your name,

address and phone number.