La Cañada History: A new post office opens in July 1959 on Foothill at Vineta Avenue
Ten Years Ago
After months of work and years of planning, the La Cañada Flintridge Parks and Recreation Commission on an evening in July 2009 unveiled the newly refurbished Glenhaven Park. The small Rancho Cañada Road facility in the southwest corner of the city was given fresh landscaping, its tennis courts were resurfaced and new equipment was installed in its children’s play area.
Twenty Years Ago
About 25 protesters from a group calling itself Free Our Forest picketed the La Cañada Sport Chalet on a Saturday in July 1999 to protest its sales of the Adventure Pass, a $5 pass to park in the Angeles National Forest that was then a pilot project of the U.S. Forest Service. Sport Chalet officials called the decision to picket their store “unfair and inappropriate.” (The recreation fee program is still in existence today and the passes are still priced at $5.)
Thirty Years Ago
Three different brush fires blazed in La Cañada and La Crescenta on Sunday, July 16, 1989, all ignited within the space of one hour and all believed to have been intentionally set. The La Cañada fires started on Corona Drive at Highland Avenue and on Angeles Crest Highway at Harter Lane. The La Crescenta fire started at the intersection of La Crescenta and Henrietta avenues. This was within the same period (1984-1999) that John Orr, a fire captain and arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department later convicted as a serial arsonist and murderer, was working in the Foothills. Today 70, Orr is serving a term of life in prison.
Forty Years Ago
The La Cañada Flintridge City Council voted to support residents on the western edge of the community if they wanted to tie into a new sewer system proposed for La Crescenta. The council set aside $2,000 for gathering information to be presented at a town hall meeting for those owning homes in the Ocean View area.
Fifty Years Ago
Plans for an area hospital to be built on Verdugo Boulevard where La Cañada borders Glendale were given fresh impetus with the final approval of a $1.6-million grant from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
Sixty Years Ago
The newly built La Cañada post office on Foothill Boulevard at Vineta Avenue (where a Firestone store operates today) officially opened for business on July 17, 1959. The facility was almost three times the size of the previous post office at 1019 Foothill. This new structure, however, was closed about 10 years later due to the construction of the Foothill (210) Freeway and the government instead built the post office we use today on Foothill at Rinetti Lane.
Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.
