Mystery History -- Solved

Tammy wins with her 8:30 a.m. guess on Tuesday: “The freeway bridge being built next to the Colorado bridge.”

When the Foothill (210) Freeway was planned in the early 1950s, the California Department of Transportation made known its intention to demolish the Colorado Street Bridge. But after much public outcry and appeals from the City of Pasadena and other organizations, Caltrans allowed the bridge to stand and built their own bridge parallel to it.

Pasadena Pioneers Bridge is named for the party of settlers led by Dr. T.B. Elliot, a physician who held meetings in his Indianapolis home for people interested in moving to California and settling where the sun would shine year-round. After extensive fact-finding, the party of settlers came by train, then boat, then wagons to what became the Indiana Colony.

Ground was broken for Pioneers Bridge in 1951. By then, daily traffic on the Colorado Street Bridge was causing stress to that structure to the point where traffic was not allowed during peak hours.

Here’s Pioneers Bridge under construction:


It is 1,364 feet long with three spans and is 131 feet tall. More than 41,000 cubic feet of concrete were used on the project, which includes 5.5 million pounds of reinforced steel. Total cost was $6.5 million. At that time it was the largest bridge ever built by the State of California.

The dedication ceremony on Oct. 8, 1953, was spectacular. The 2 p.m. event included a parade, entertainment and plenty of speechifying. What made it particularly monumental was the presence of a handful of surviving pioneers and many descendants.

The opening signal was given by 95-year-old Jennie Hollingsworth Giddings, whose father had been the first to purchase a lot in the Lake Vineyard area of the colony after owner Benjamin "Don Benito" Wilson parceled off his ranch.

Later in the proceedings the ribbon was cut by Alice Eaton Smith, whose father, Judge Benjamin Eaton, had been a pillar of the Indiana Colony. As she cut the ribbon, Mrs. Smith said, “I dedicate this structure as Pasadena Pioneers Bridge to the memory of all Pasadena pioneers, especially to the 27 founders of the city.”

Here's a photo taken that day:


Other second-generation Pasadenans in attendance were Don C. Porter, Sidney A. Bristol, Lola Bristol Edmondson, Mrs. P.N. Giddings, Miss Barbara Baker, Mrs. John B. Johnson and William B. Hutton.

Additional guests, all introduced by Clarence A. Winder, mayor and chairman of the board of city directors, included California Governor Goodwin J. Knight, members of the U.S. House of Representatives, officials from the California Highway Commission and mayors of neighboring cities.

The keynote speech was given by Harrison R. Baker, vice chairman of the California Highway Commission.

Here’s an excerpt:

Upon another historic date, Dec. 13, 1913, the beautiful Colorado Street Bridge was completed and opened to use – stately in the artistry of its design and adequate for the traffic needs of its day – another step forward. Another landmark in the march of Pasadena’s progress, this great, graceful structure became one of the best-known bridge structures in the west, and stands today as a tribute to the energy and foresight of the pioneers of that day.

They planned so well that we are now preserving this fine old bridge and incorporating it into the freeway pattern of which the new bridge is a part, for the purpose of carrying a parallel service road across the Arroyo Seco.

Today’s ceremony is more than a dedication of a great new structure – it is a dedication in honor of the spirit of the pioneers – particularly that of the 27 founders of Pasadena, but also of the host of other pioneers whose vision and energy have contributed to the building of the community as we know it today.

As to the physical feature of the new bridge, it will combine a modern, new, functional motor vehicle traffic facility with distinctive architectural beauty in harmony with the old companion bridge and with the community character of Pasadena.

The California Highway Commission has been acquiring right-of-way to extend this freeway westerly from Patrician Way to Eagle Vista Drive in the Eagle Rock section of Los Angeles. We hope to construct this link shortly which will give Pasadena a freeway approach from the west connecting with the four-lane divided highway section of Colorado Boulevard through Eagle Rock extending to Glendale.”

I just love old postcards:



This poem, by James W. Foley, was printed on the back page of the program for the day’s festivities:

To the Pioneers of Pasadena

Let us tell of the Pioneers, of the steadfast women and men
Who dreamed a city that should be fair and went and builded it then.
Let us tell of the Pioneers, who came on a barren place
And grubbed and plowed and planted the earth and gave it a smiling face.

Who made it a garden from scrub and sage.
Let us write the names on a golden page
Of the dauntless souls of the hard, lean years,
Let us tell of the Pioneers.

Let us carve us a stone to stand, where the story of them is told,
And mount upon it a granite hand that shall hold a heart of gold.
The hand that grubbed and planted and plowed and made us a grove to grow,
And the heart that was golden with worth and proud that its Master had made it so,

To dream the city that was to be,
To build the house and to plant the tree,
Let us carve us a stone to stand
In the midst of the garden land.

Let us lift up a song of praise and kneel in grateful prayer,
For those who found but a barren land and dreamed of a city fair,
Where mountains rise to the blue of skies and where valleys stretch afar
To the tides of sea, the city to be, where the groves and gardens are.

And ours with a spirit proud and free
To build the greater city to be,
To cherish through all the years
The dreams of the Pioneers.

Foley had been poet laureate of North Dakota before moving to Southern California. He died in 1939 and is buried at Forest Lawn.



Many thanks to Pasadena Public Library and Los Angeles Public Library.

Mystery History -- Solved

Karin wins out of sheer tenacity: "I figure if I keep saying the same thing week after week, eventually I'll be right. People walking on colorado blvd when Pasadena was known as the Indiana Colony." Close enough, kiddo! Hey, I'm nothing if not fair.

In the photo above, a parade of Indiana Colony residents heads west down Colorado Street in September 1885 to celebrate the coming of the first railroad to these parts.

From the 1917 book “Pasadena, California, Historical and Personal, A Complete History of the Indiana Colony” by John Windell Wood:

...the whistle of the first locomotive to enter the good town echoed in every household and sounded its new note of progress. The citizens hurried with one accord down Colorado Street to view the iron horse, the first to enter, and bid it a merry welcome. Morris W. Reeder, who died in 1917 at Lamanda Park, held the throttle and enjoyed himself sounding the shrill jubilation loud and often, until the most distant and most inattentive must know that something unusual was afoot—as indeed it was.

Here’s an 1885 photo of the train making its way from Los Angeles north to Pasadena along the same route as the present-day Metro Gold Line:


But let’s back up for a moment.

In 1872 a number of families escaped the coldest winter ever experienced in Indiana and settled here.

Getting here wasn’t easy: They had to take a train to San Francisco, then a ship to San Pedro, then ride on wagons inland until they came upon this lovely little spot at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains.

In 1874 they officially named the spot the Indiana Colony.

Two years later the Southern Pacific Railroad left bustling San Francisco and headed down brand new tracks bound for Los Angeles (population 10,000), linking the two cities for the first time.

That didn’t help the Indiana Colony. The only public transportation between here and Los Angeles was a stagecoach that was put into service three times a week. Those who could afford it could pay for private service from the John Allin Livery Company on Raymond just above Colorado Street:


More from the book:

The growing colony was quite satisfied with a stage for a time, it was safe and it was picturesque; but better and quicker service was hoped for. To Stanley P. Jewett, a young engineer, there came the idea of a railroad communication between Los Angeles and the fertile valley of the San Gabriel; tapping its settlements and growing with them—that was the expectation. Jewett lived in the Indiana Colony, where he had come in 1879, and had pondered much over this idea.

Jewett tried to get L.A. bankers to invest in his plan – including James Filmore Crank* who lived on a ranch in these parts called Fair Oaks – but the deal fell apart and the bankers walked away. Except one.

J.F. Crank had a change of heart and brought together other Indiana Colony investors including his brother-in-law, Albert Brigden, who also had a ranch, and this group of local investors raised $450,000 for the ambitious effort.

There were fits and starts throughout the project, from rights of way being only partially secured to contractors going belly up. So Jewett took charge of the entire endeavor.

A public meeting was called by the exercised people, who passed very urgent resolutions voicing the loudly expressed sentiment declaring “the importance of bringing the locomotives to our very doors, etc,,” all of which is somewhat different than some of the expressions now heard, which declare that this road is a menace upon our streets and must be removed!

A committee made up of Indiana Colony leaders who have streets named after them today – including J.P. Woodbury and James Craig – worked with Jewett to maneuver through legal mazes and other complicated matters.

Fast-forward to that long awaited day when the locomotive chugged into town to the waiting throngs! Here are people enjoying some rest and refreshments in what was probably very welcome shade:


Beginning that celebratory day, the train ran on a regular schedule between L.A. and the Indiana Colony.

Tourists, new residents and entrepreneurs began flocking to the area via the LA&SGV Railroad. The next year, in 1886, the town known as the Indiana Colony was incorporated and renamed Pasadena.

And the rest is no mystery!

* J.F. Crank was a nationally famous figure in his day. After purchasing Fair Oaks Ranch from Judge Benjamin Eaton, Crank hired workers to till the soil, then planted the first varietal citrus seeds in the Indiana Colony. The seeds germinated and grew into trees, and he made a fortune off this area's first orange groves. After bringing together the local investors for the railroad line to Pasadena, Crank became president of the Los Angeles & San Gabriel Valley Railroad, the tracks of which went all the way to Duarte before he sold the rights of way to the Santa Fe Railroad for a whole heck of a lot of money. He was also among the investors who created Monrovia.

Many thanks to Pasadena Public Library and Pasadena Museum of History.