Historic pool to be remembered

Young men in high-waisted swim trunks and women in rubber bathing caps splashed through their summers at Indian Springs swimming pool until the facility hung its “closed for the season” sign for the last time in 1966.

But residents can revel in those bygone days at the Historical Society of Crescenta Valley’s “Memories of Indian Springs” talk on at 7 p.m. Monday at the La Crescenta Church of Religious Science, 4845 Dunsmore Ave.

A short presentation on the history of Indian Springs will precede a campfire-like storytelling session, when residents get a chance to pass the microphone, each adding a personal memory to Indian Springs’ oral history, according to Michael Lawler, historical society president.

“Every time we talked to an old-timer, it seemed to be a favorite memory,” Lawler said of how Indian Springs has resonated with residents who dove into its 40-by-140-foot pool modeled after the pool at Brookside Park in Pasadena, .”It seemed to strike a chord.”

The recreation spot, once nestled in a canyon in La Cañada Flintridge near the border with Montrose, also offered a snack bar, picnic areas, dance halls and tennis courts, where the Indian Springs Plaza — a shopping mall that includes a Vons and Radio Shack, now stands on Verdugo Boulevard.

At 92, Lyle Draves and his wife Vicki, 81, will be on hand at the historical society’s event to share their collective memories of the swimming haunt.

Lyle Draves — who worked at Indian Springs intermittently in the 1940s and ran it during the 1950s after the original owner Charles Bowden died — trained several first-rate divers who went on to win national and international medals, he said.

In 1927, Bowden purchased the property, which is rife with oak woodland and a flowing stream, and by May of 1928, he had transformed it into a recreation spot and a place to preserve Native American customs, according to a brief history of Indian Springs written by Fred Hoeptner, who will read his history at the “Memories of Indian Springs” event.

The most enduring of Lyle Draves’ coach-diver relationships is his 60-year marriage to Vicki, who occasionally trained at Indian Springs and went on to win two gold medals at the 1948 London Olympic Games, Draves said, “the first Olympics since the war ended.”

“She had gold medals written all over her,” Lyle Draves — who grew up in Waterloo, Iowa — and lived in Glendale for a time, said about seeing Vicki dive for the first time.

The aquatic couple met when Lyle Draves was working at the Athens Club in Oakland in the early 1940s, Draves said.

When he returned to the Los Angeles area — where he’d worked for the Los Angeles Athletic Club and for the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard — Vicki, without a coach, followed him down, he said.

Before the Draves settled down to raise their four boys — all of them divers — they toured in a few water and diving shows that played at Indian Springs, Draves said.

The couple worked with famed actors and swimmers Buster Crabbe and Johnny Weismuller, who became film’s first Tarzan.

Vicki Draves recalled the facility’s beauty and tranquillity and its place in her family history.

“My two older boys learned to swim there as little boys,” Vicki Draves said of Indian Springs. “I think it’s such a shame it’s not still there, that it had to be citified.”