La Cañada History: Camp Fire Grand Council convenes in Oak Grove Park for 1959 ritual
Ten Years Ago
Kiwanis Club of La Cañada, together with the California Families Soap Box Derby Assn., sponsored the 10th annual Greater Los Angeles Soap Box Derby held on La Cañada’s steep slope on Foothill Boulevard known as the “Michigan Hill” that’s adjacent to the St. Francis High School campus. Racers from all over the Southland competed, with the winner of the stock division (200 pounds car and rider combined) won by 11-year-old Paradise Canyon Elementary School student John Griffith. “I couldn’t have done it without my father, who gave me non-cheating tricks that pretty much helped me with every race,” the victorious youngster said.
Twenty Years Ago
A community meeting was called by developer Ted Slaught to discuss his intent to put a retail development on the northwest corner of Foothill Boulevard and Commonwealth Avenue, which was then an eyesore of a rundown vacant property where a Mobil gas station and a NAPA Auto Parts store had done business in earlier years.
Thirty Years Ago
In local crime news, a La Cañada family entered their Ocean View Boulevard home one Tuesday in early June 1989 to find it ransacked. Suspecting the burglar might still be in it, they hunted down the 29-year-old intruder and cornered him in a room, subduing him by hitting him on the head with a tennis racket and holding him until law enforcement could get there.
Forty Years Ago
The La Cañada Flintridge City Council decided to approve the installation of “golden glow” sodium street lights along Foothill Boulevard because of their energy-serving qualities. Then-Mayor Warren Hillgren said saving energy was more important than the hue of the lights. His council colleague Mike Mount agreed, saying “People do not drive down Foothill Boulevard to see how beautiful it is.”
Fifty Years Ago
Lanterman Auditorum in La Cañada hosted the UCLA a capella choir for a fundraising concert that would help them defray costs of their 1969 summer concert tour through Europe.
Sixty Years Ago
La Cañada Camp Fire Girls assembled in Oak Grove Park (today known as Hahamongna Watershed Park) for their annual Grand Council Fire on an early June evening in 1959. Chanting “Wo-He-Lo” (representing “Work, Health, Love”), the girls arrived at the event dressed in their ceremonial brown gowns topped by leather vests that had achievement beads sewn onto them.
Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.
