Mystery History -- Solved!

Liz wins with her 2:56 p.m. Tuesday guess "on the east side of the San Rafael ave bridge...casting balustrades"

In the photo above, an unidentified worker stands with cast iron baluster molds in 1922 near the San Rafael Bridge in Pasadena, which was under construction.

The original photo is on page 16 of the San Rafael Bridge photo scrapbook in the Centennial Room at Pasadena Central Library.

Here's an early construction photo:



And the bridge today:



If you've never been on the San Rafael Bridge, it's the southernmost bridge over the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena. You can access it from South Arroyo Boulevard and from South San Rafael Avenue.

San Rafael Bridge is one of the contributing resources of the Arroyo Seco Parks and Recreation Historic District, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Others among the 14 contributing resources include Brookside Golf Club, Rose Bowl Stadium, Brookside Park, Holly Street Bridge, Colorado Street Bridge, Mayberry/Parker Bridge, La Casita del Arroyo, Lower Arroyo Seco Park and the Bird Sanctuary.

Mystery History -- Solved!

Mike wins with his 10:35 a.m. Tuesday guess "It is Spring Training at the baseball field at Brookside Park (now Jackie Robinson Memorial Field). Early 1930's. Folks on the left are Chicago White Sox players and the young ladies -- maybe the Rose Court?"

In the photo above, shot on March 9, 1938, by a Pasadena Post photographer, members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team toss oversized balls with some young women at Brookside Park during a media event.

The team was in town for their annual spring training, which was to have begun on March 3 but was delayed due to a serious flood.

Relentless heavy rains had poured over the L.A. region non-stop beginning Feb. 27. By March 3 a flood had spilled over the banks of the Arroyo Seco channel.

Damage to Brookside Golf Course was tremendous:




Luckily Brookside Park didn't fare as badly, but the baseball field was too soaked from the rains for White Sox play. Spring training began after it dried out a bit.

My very first Mystery History post was about the Chicago White Sox in Pasadena.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Many thanks to Pasadena Public Library.

Mystery History -- Solved!

Last week I promised to go easier on you, and this week I did! So much so that Dianne nailed it right off the bat with her 10:13 a.m. Tuesday guess "That's my Jack Parsons in the Arroyo getting ready to do the test."

In the photo above, John Whiteside "Jack" Parsons stands in the upper Arroyo Seco on Nov. 15, 1936, with an experimental rocket motor.

Here's a photo of one of the motor tests on Nov. 28, 1936:


Parsons was born to wealth and privilege in Pasadena. From an early age he was a gifted chemist, self-taught explosives expert and had an obsession with the occult.

Parsons teamed up with aeronautical engineer Frank Malina and machinist Ed Forman to test a rocket motor they had thrown together from spare engine parts. After several unsuccessful attempts over the course of four days, the oxygen line unexpectedly ignited and started shooting fire, and the rest is history. Jet Propulsion Laboratory credits these early rocket motors as eventually evolving into the tools of spacecraft.

JPL has a nice little video on its website about these early days.

Here's a photo of Parsons (front right), Forman (back right) and Malina (third from left) along with students Rudolph Schott (far left) and Apollo Milton Olin Smith.



Theodore von Karman credited Jack Parsons's work in solid fuel research with making Polaris and Minuteman possible.

Parsons was only 38 years old on June 17, 1952, when an experiment in his home laboratory went bad and the whole place blew up. He died a few hours later.

Here's an L.A. Times photo showing a Pasadena police officer examining the post-blast rubble.



Rocket fuel from early testing seeped into some City of Pasadena water wells over several years, causing some of them to be closed off. In March 2009, Pasadena Water and Power began construction of the Monk Hill Groundwater Treatment Plant at the Windsor Reservoir near JPL. The new plant will remove perchlorate and volatile organic compounds from four deep wells in that area. It's a collaboration between the City of Pasadena and NASA, and is scheduled for completion this coming fall, when it will be able to treat 7,000 gallons of groundwater per minute, meet all regulatory stands and restore another source of safe drinking water to Pasadena.

Many thanks to JPL for the historic photos.

Mystery History -- Solved

I'm awarding this week's fabulous prize to Cindy for her 7:03 a.m. Tuesday answer "WWII (1943) Rose Bowl. The sheep were used to keep the grass short until games could begin again." (Cindy, please e-mail me at aerdman@cityofpasadena.net with your contact information and I'll tell you about the prize.)

Actually, the photo is undated and there is no cited information that it was shot during World War II, but sure enough, there was a time when sheep were used as natural lawnmowers to keep the Rose Bowl Stadium's field turf at a manageable length.

For many years sheep were part of the landscape in the Arroyo Seco, from the Indiana Colony days until the early 1910s.

In the photo below, a herd grazes at what was known as Sheep Corral Springs on the hillside area at the site of the present-day Brookside Park.


When the Indiana Colony was established, water from the springs was delivered via pipeline to orange groves and homes in the vicinity. The water rights to the springs were owned by the San Gabriel Orange Grove Association, made up of 12 of the colonists.

I feel compelled to write all about water in the early days but I'll save that for another time.

Mystery History -- Solved

Mike Salazar wins with his Thursday 11:56 p.m. guess "They're building the new plunge at Brookside!"

In the photo above, ground is being excavated in 1923 for a new swimming pool -- called a "plunge" -- at Brookside Park to replace the original.

In 1912 the City of Pasadena purchased 30 acres of land known as Sheep Corral Springs for the development of a park in the Arroyo Seco. For many years sheep had grazed in that area.

  
While the park was being planned and constructed, it was known as Arroyo Springs Park. 

Then in 1914 Mrs. Everett Wellington Brooks, the wife of a local investment banker, donated $3,000 to build a municipal swimming pool on a portion of the land. The park was dedicated in her honor (hence "Brookside") and the plunge was added later that same year.

Here's a photo of the plunge, shot in 1917:



And this from 1938:



On Monday morning of this week, I was in the company of a few other local female bloggers*, all seated at the same table at the YWCA Women for Racial Justice breakfast.

As the keynote speaker, Dr. Joy DeGruy, explained, "Healing must occur on multiple levels because the injury occurred on multiple levels. We begin by simply telling the truth."

Many Pasadenans know the uncomfortable racial history of the Brookside plunge, but for those who don't I offer this brief description.

It was a different time in Pasadena and throughout the nation, and segregation was common.

Soon after the plunge was completed, city officials announced that it would be "set aside Wednesday afternoons and evenings for the use of the Negro population of Pasadena."

By 1930 use of the pool by people of color -- by now including residents of Hispanic and Asian descent -- was limited to one weekday from 2 to 5 p.m. The weekly event was dubbed "International Day." No white people were permitted to swim on that day. The pool was drained and cleaned at the end of each International Day and by the following morning there was fresh water in it.

From the book "Memoirs of Toshi Ito":

My homeroom class decided to have a graduation swim party and picnic at Brookside Park in Pasadena. Parents of our classmates and our homeroom teacher, Mrs. Hanna Yoeman, drove us to Brookside Park. We had a wonderful picnic lunch and played some games to pass the time because it was not good for you to go in the water right after eating a meal. We all lined up to pay the plunge fee and rent a towel. When Motomu Nagasako, a Japanese American, got up to the window to pay he was told Orientals were not allowed to use the plunge. There were five Japanese Americans in my homeroom class. He had the embarrassing task to tell us we were excluded. We all glumly sat on the lawn watching the others frolicking in the swimming poool and wishing the afternoon would end and we could all go home. It was my first encounter with being excluded.

On June 17, 1939, with the support of the Los Angeles branch of the NAACP, six African American men, who continually had no right to use the plunge except for the weekly International Day, filed a lawsuit against the Pasadena Board of City Directors, the city manager and the superientendent of Pasadena parks.

Part of their legal argument was that they were tax-paying Pasadena property owners who therefore had helped fund the construction and maintenance of the plunge and should have had the right to use it on the same days as white residents.

On Jan. 3, 1940, the court ruled in favor of the City of Pasadena. The NAACP immediately appealed and won the case, after which the city petitioned the California Supreme Court. The court denied the petition.

This was great news for people of color in Pasadena, but the timing was poor. World War II was in full swing, and emergency housing for soldiers returning from European battlefields was constructed at Brookside Park. The pool was closed and exclusive use of the showers and restrooms was given to the veterans.

In February 1947, after the war was over and the housing shortage had ended, the Board of Pasadena City Directors authorized $10,000 for rehabilitation of the plunge.

The pool reopened to the public on June 7, 1947 and -- 33 years after the original plunge opened -- was finally accessible to all swimmers in Pasadena, regardless of their race.

In 1989 the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center opened on the site, funded with $4.5 million from the City of Pasadena and $2 million in private donations.


From water aerobics and recreational swimming to water polo and diving teams, the RBAC is open to all and is a very popular with swimmers of all ages. If you're interested in swimming, diving, water polo, water aerobics, warm-pool therapy, swimming lessons, competition and more, check out the RBAC next time you're in the neighborhood. It's at the far southwest end of Brookside Park at 360 N. Arroyo Blvd.

* Petrea Burchard, Colleen Bates, Karin Bugge, Susan Carrier, Dianne Patrizzi, Kelly Russell and Susan Russell.

Mystery History -- Solved

Paul Little wins this week's fabulous prize with his guess "workers building the flood control channel south of Devil's Gate Dam."

In the photo above, State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA) workers dig a channel through the Central Arroyo Seco in 1934.

Earlier that year, the Los Angeles County Flood Control District had been reorganized with a semi-independent commission, and a flood bond issue was passed by voters shortly thereafter.

Here's the photo before I cropped it and erased some key identifying information:


This trapezoidal channel with a soft bottom was constructed from Devil's Gate Dam to Holly Street.

The English translation of Arroyo Seco -- Dry Stream -- is deceiving. Many floods have come crashing through the Arroyo Seco, including the worst in L.A. County history in 1884, and continuing over the next 50 years.

The 1930s was an era of large-scale construction projects all over the U.S. by otherwise out-of-work Americans who were employed by SERA as well as the federal Civil Works Administration and Works Progress Administration.

Here's the same 1934 project, but this time we're looking south. Note the Vista del Arroyo Hotel.


The SERA workers weren't responsible for the ugly concrete channel -- that came later, in the 1940s, as the Army Corps of Engineers' response to a devastating 1938 flood.

Since the early 1990s the removal of the concrete has been a high priority in Pasadena.

I don't want to get too far afield from this week's Mystery History photo, so we'll talk about the restoration of the natural stream bed another time.

Many thanks to Pasadena Public Library and the Arroyo Seco Foundation.

Mystery History -- Solved

Nobody got it right on the money but Ben came closest with his answer "first bridge over the Arroyo Seco." He wins a fabulous prize! (Ben, I don't have an email address for you, so please email me at aerdman@cityofpasadena.net and I'll let you know what you've won.)

From the late 1880s to 1913 the Scoville Bridge served as the first and only reliable link between the west and east sides of the Arroyo Seco. It stood within a few yards from where the Colorado Street Bridge is today.

The bridge connected Arroyo Drive (now Arroyo Boulevard) on the east side to a country road that ran along what is now Colorado Boulevard on the west side.

The opening of the bridge represented a whole new world to people who wanted to get from Pasadena to Glendale and vice versa.

The privately owned trestle bridge was part of the Scoville Dam, Bridge and Water Works (you can see the bridge at center left below, peeking out from the trees).


James W. Scoville was a real estate developer, businessman and philanthropist in Oak Park, Ill. (near Chicago), who came to Pasadena along with many other captains of industry in the late 1800s. In suburban Chicago he had been vice president of the Elgin Watch Company and president of the Prairie State Bank. After moving to Pasadena, he was an early trustee of Throop University, which would later become Caltech.


Before the existence of the Scoville Bridge, the only way to get from one side of the arroyo to the other was by riding a horse or walking along trails down the steep embankments, crossing the stream and climbing up the other side. The area was prone to landslides and floods, so it was often a precarious proposition.

The Arroyo Seco was not public land at the time. A land boom in Pasadena in 1886 -- the year the city was incorporated -- was followed by a depression during which James W. Scoville and his son, Charles Burton Scoville, hired workers to construct the dam, bridge and pump house. This project kept otherwise unemployed workers busy for some time.

The pump house sent water from the pond behind the dam up the banks of the Arroyo Seco to irrigate the Scoville family's orange and avocado groves.

The bridge was washed away by storm waters in 1914. The good news was that the mighty Colorado Street Bridge had opened for traffic in 1913.

For the sake of perspective, here's the mighty Colorado Street Bridge under construction near the Scoville Bridge.


The Scoville bridge, dam and pump house are included in an application submitted two years ago by Pasadena Heritage in hopes of having the Pasadena Arroyo Parks and Recreation District included on the National Register of Historic Places. It became official in November 2008.

Remnants of the Scoville project can be seen to this day under the Colorado Street Bridge.

Many thanks to Pasadena Public Library and Pasadena Museum of History for use of the photos.

Looking for Something to Do?

Here's a listing of upcoming free events sponsored by the City of Pasadena:


Saturday, May 2
8 to 11 a.m. -- If you like to take pictures and love the great outdoors, attend a free workshop taught by City of Pasadena naturalists and Armory Center for the Arts photographers at Hahamongna Watershed Park. Whether you prefer to shoot with conventional film or digitally, and whether you consider yourself a rank amateur or a downright crackerjack shutterbug, you'll enjoy this one! Reservations are required: (626) 744-7358 or email ejackson@cityofpasadena.net.

Wednesday, May 6
* 7:30 a.m. -- Take a walk around the Rose Bowl Loop with Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard and Erica Clark, co-founder of the Pasadena: City of Learning initiative. Meet at Gate A at the stadium. It's all part of Up & Moving Pasadena, a community effort to support fitness for health.
* 1 p.m. -- This week's free film in the Donald R. Wright Auditorium at Pasadena Central Library, 285 E. Walnut St., is "The Visitor" starring Richard Jenkins as a widowed professor who develops an unlikely friendship with an immigrant couple he discovers squatting in his Manhattan flat.

Saturday, May 9
10 a.m. to 4 p.m. -- Meet the dedicated men and women of the Pasadena Fire Department during Fire Service Day. At Fire Station 33, 515 N. Lake Ave., firefighters will demonstrate life-saving and fire-suppression techniques including vehicle burns and extinguishments, rescuing someone from a vehicle using the Jaws of Life, aerial ladder operations. Fire engines and other equipment will be display, and there will be hot dogs and other refreshments as well as entertainment. All other fire stations will be open to the public as well: Fire Station #31, 135 S. Fair Oaks Ave.; Fire Station #32, 2424 E. Villa St.; Fire Station #34, 1138 E. Del Mar Blvd.; Fire Station #36, 1140 N. Fair Oaks Ave.; Fire Station #37, 3430 E. Foothill Blvd.; Fire Station #38, 1150 E. Linda Vista Ave.; and Fire Station #39, 50 Avenue 64.

Mystery History -- Solved

"JM in Pasadena" wins with his 7:48 a.m. Tuesday guess "It appears to be the Arroyo and the Rose Bowl is under construction." JM, you didn't include contact info, so please e-mail me at www.aerdman@cityofpasadena.net or call me at 744-4755 and I'll tell you about the fabulous prize!

In the photo above, workers (human and equine) are doing grading in 1920 in the Arroyo Seco in preparation for construction of the Rose Bowl Stadium.

The City of Pasadena had purchased the 10-acre piece of land in 1897.

Meanwhile, the first post-parade football game was played in 1902 in Tournament Park, pitting Stanford against Michigan. Michigan won 49-0.

With such a bitter loss for the west coast, football in Pasadena was replaced by chariot races for several years as the main post-parade sporting event.

(That's Throop University on the right, which would later become Caltech.)

Football returned as the main post-parade attraction in 1916. Every New Year's Day there was a football game in Tournament Park, but the crowds soon outgrew the park's capacity.

Meanwhile, the Tournament of Roses Association got busy raising the $272,000 needed to build the stadium, including the sale of 10-year subscription tickets for $100 each.

The name "Rose Bowl" was conceived for the stadium by Harlan W. Hall, a local reporter who was also the press agent for the Tournament of Roses Association.

Here's construction in progress in April 1922.


The first Rose Bowl Game -- UCLA vs. USC -- was played on Oct. 28, 1922.

Here's Jim Crowley, one of the legendary Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, carrying the ball against Stanford in 1925. Notre Dame won 27-10.


The stadium originally was a horseshoe shape. This aerial shot was taken in 1926.


The stadium was designed by Myron Hunt, who also designed Pasadena Central Library, Huntington Library and Occidental College.

Many thanks to Pasadena Public Library and the Rose Bowl Stadium for the photographs.

Please note that Mystery History will be on hiatus for the next two Tuesdays because I'll be out of town (but I'll keep blogging to let you know my whereabouts!).

Only the Stump Remains

The mature oak tree that fell over a couple of weeks ago was first chopped up and then removed altogether.

Only the stump remains. It will be replaced by another tree in due time.



Sometimes the trunks of fallen city-owned trees have been recycled. An example: the wooden benches that grace the eastern banks of the Arroyo Seco.

I asked my go-to certified arborist in the Parks and Natural Resources Division of the Public Works Department what was to come of the fallen tree. She told me it would be turned into mulch, and that interested people can call her about it.

Here's her info:

Darya Barar
(626) 744-3846
dbarar@cityofpasadena.net

Central Arroyo Stream Restoration

I couldn't be at the dedication marking the completion of the Central Arroyo Stream Restoration on Wednesday.

Here's a photo from the Pasadena Star-News:


And here's an aquarium with some Arroyo Chub:


Finally, here's a slide show courtesy of the Pasadena Independent.