Archeologists delight in the silent world of eroded walls, broken clay, the ashes of fires long burned out and other seemingly uninteresting objects. From bits of pottery and glass, lost, thrown aside or laid away with the dead, their keen eyes and painstaking fingers have conjured up for our wonder entire civilizations of the forgotten past. Well might similar methods be employed in the reconstruction of all that goes to make up the historical background of a parish. True, in Altadena at least, not much in the way of ethnic remains rpay be found, apart from a few Indian "metates" now used as bird baths, or the old bull wheel of the extinct Mt. Lowe scenic railway, left behind on the mountain by the wreckers because they could not move it. Nevertheless, the names of canyons and streets and people as well as the events that took place on the local scene resemble in their own way the layers of artifacts that tell the tale of more ancient things. So we hope that the otherwise lifeless sign posts we see about us may, by our greater understanding of them, transfigure our vision of the past and put- even the present into better perspective.

We may be permitted, then, to commence by losing ourselves in the dream world of myth and legend from which history will emerge. Really, it was not so long ago, that Golden Age of ours, when the simple people who lived here, - the Hahamagnas, the Isanthcognas and the Arivignas, - awoke one fine day to behold gods walking the earth in the burnished glory of Don Gaspar de Portola and the cinctured grey robe of Father Juan Crespi. Suddenly they appeared, of a fragrant spring morning, on the high ground west of the great arroyo where cool water bubbled up in deep grass. Under a great oak tree the gods stood, first looking toward the north, across the rising ridges of sage and chaparral to the towering mountains. Then, turning slowly, they watched the frothy stream of the arroyo, tumbling over great rocks and fallen logs, sweep to the west in a sudden curve and lose itself in the valley of the sycamores. Hahamovic, the chief, stared with fascinated, uncomprehending eyes at a strangely beautiful ceremony the gods performed under the tree. Later, he would call it the Mass. When it was over, a flash of silver cut the air, gashing the trunk of the tree. "Cathedral Oak" for many a year would bear that cross, cut when time began for the Indians. It was the month of April in the year 1770. Red and yellow poppies ran riot over open fields, an undulating cloth of gleaming color like the gilded altar frontals of far away Spain. "La Sabinella de San Pascual," someone exclaimed: the Easter Altar Cloth! It was Easter, indeed, for the weary priests and soldiers. Easter, too, for Hahamovic and his people in the coming of their triumphant Lord. Soon the chief himself would receive in Baptism the name of Pascual.

So the legend runs. Now the land has lost its holy name, the Indians are gone, and Cathedral Oak is no more. But in its place there stands, by the still seeping stream, a simple iron cross to mark the spot where the gods walked, where the Paschal Mystery was celebrated, and where the Pagans first looked upon the sacramental Christ.1

History comes quickly into focus in the year 1771, when Father Junipero Serra took steps to close the enormous gap that separated his first two Missions in Alta California, San Diego and San Carlos, at Carmel. First, a new foundation, dedicated to San Antonio, was made near the present town of King City, in the hills to the west. Then a group from San Diego, led by Fathers Pedro Cambon and Angel Somero, paused by the river of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of the Earthquakes,2 only to press on to the next supply of running water which they called after the Archangel Gabriel. Within a few years that site, too, proved unsatisfactory, owing to the erratic movement of the stream. So, nothing but up and away again, into the fertile plain between the pine covered Sierra Madre mountains and the sun-burned hills of La Puente. The choice was an excellent one. At its zenith, about 1817, San Gabriel Mission could count over seventeen hundred neophytes, while its material assets amounted to nearly one-fourth of the combined production of all the California Missions. Figures are staggering: 26,300 head of cattle, 2,400 horses, 226,000 bushels of wheat from one year's harvest, 155,000 bushels of maize, 163,500 grape vines planted in four vineyards, 2,300 fruit trees. Until other Missions were established, - San Juan Capistrano in 1776 and San Fernando Rey in 1797, - the lands of San Gabriel embraced, generally speaking, the present Counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino.

Gradually a second strata of names comes to view as the far flung acres of the Mission were divided into relatively smaller units. Around San Gabriel itself appear Rancho Potrero Grande and Rancho Potrero Chico. To the east, ranchos San Francisquito and La Puente were laid out; toward the south, San Antonio and Santa Gertrudis, while along the slopes of the Sierra Madre: Tujunga, La Canada, San Rafael, El Rincon de San Pascual and Santa Anita. These were all Crown Lands, as the Franciscans, while administering the Missions and taking care of the Indians, owned no property. As early as the 1780's, Spain was issuing land grants to individuals, although its policy in this regard was to remain quite restricted. By 1823, when California passed under Mexican control, not more than thirty such grants had been made.

In regard to Rancho San Pascual, we are not certain when or by whom it was named. The earliest official document bearing its title dates only from 1833. Father Maynard Geiger, O.F.M., in a letter to the author, makes some revealing observations on the subject. "Practically all of the Mission ranchos were named after saints. It is possible that it (San Pascual) was named by or in honor of Fray Joaquin Pascual Nuez, who served at Mission San Gabriel between April 1813 and December 1821. He is buried at the Mission . . .There is a possibility that the rancho may have begun to exist on the feast of St. Pascual, May 17, in some undetermined year.3 ... If not named in Mission times, it may have been taken possession of by a secular owner on that day, or so called because of the owner's special devotion or the name's significance to his family. . . . In most cases concerning the California ranchos, the facts will never become known because they were not recorded."4

The unusual qualification "El Rincon" de San Pascual may refer to the fact that the rancho bordered the Arroyo Seco, one of the major topographical features of the region. In a similar way, older residents of Ventura and Santa Barbara still speak of the coast road that connects the two cities, and especially the part that skirts the ocean, as "the rincon." The word was also used to designate a quiet or secluded place, but it is difficult to determine from this meaning why the rancho San Pascual should have been signaled out by the title from other equally undisturbed lands.

Whatever the origin of its name, Rancho El Rincon de San Pascual extended south from the Sierra Madre mountains along the western rim of the Arroyo Seco to a point slightly below the present Pasadena Freeway. Turning eastward, the southern boundary passed through what is now South Pasadena, keeping north of Huntington Drive to about Old Mill Road, at which location it made a bend to the northeast and, skirting west of the Huntington Library, returned to the mountains on a diagonal that ended at the mouth of Eaton Canyon above New York Drive. The area comprised 13,694 acres. Apart from its eventual disappearance because of subdivisions, the only change the rancho suffered was the anglicizing of its name under American sovereignty, when the c was replaced by q: San Pasqual. From the rancho would arise, in less than one hundred years, the communities of South Pasadena, San Marino, Pasadena and Altadena.

The opulence of San Gabriel Mission owed little to Rancho San Pascual. Apart from the usable water of the Arroyo and a small portion of arable land in the southern part, it held no interest for rancheros. Like the highland slopes in many mountain regions, the terrain was rocky, devoid of loam, and dry as a bone except during occasional winters when heavy rains would drive flash floods from the canyons to gouge out long fingered ruts and barrancas down the hillside. Over these rough, uninviting acres grew a low, uniform and sometimes impenetrable covering of chaparral, sage, mesquite, buckthorn and greasewood, with occasional clumps of manzanita, wild lilac and scrub oak. No grass or grain would spring up there, no flocks could graze. For all of its magnificent scenery and gorgeous tapestry of spring color, the land could support neither man nor beast. Even the Indians recognized this when they gave their assent that the caretaker of the women at the Mission, Dona Eulalia Perez de Guillen, might settle on the rancho with her husband, Juan Mariné.

At this moment, our quiet story is violently interrupted by the cyclonic blowing in on the scene of one of the most extraordinary characters in southern California history, a legendary hero were his feet planted less firmly on the soil, an Odysseus, Hercules, John Bunyan, Young Lochinvar and Father of the Year, all in one. Sometime about 1815, John Chapman shipped out of Boston on a whaler bound for the Pacific. Shanghied on the Sandwich Islands, forced to serve under the Argentinian pirate, Hippolyte de Bouchard, he took part in the sacking of Monterey. Then down the coast toward Santa Barbara came the corsairs making for the hacienda of Don Jose Maria Ortega who, at the sign of danger, fled the scene with his wife and children, among them the fair Guadalupe. Lassoed in the surf when his boat capsized, Chapman pulled in several vaqueros at the other end of the rope until he was overpowered by sheer numbers. Corporal Antonio Maria Lugo, commanding the relief forces from Santa Barbara, not only saved his life but rode the sailor all the way to Los Angeles, carrying him on his own horse to prevent him from failing, as the man had never sat in a saddle. What to do with him there or anywhere posed a question. At first, he was dispatched with a band of Indians to the Sierra Madre mountains, into the far reaches of Millard Canyon, to cut down timbers for the roof of the new Plaza Church. The terrified Hahamagnas watched him fell one tall pine after another, each crashing down to the exact position he desired. Then, with rawhide ropes, he would haul the trunks through brush and bracken, down the rugged slopes to wagons waiting on the canyon floor. Diablo Chapman they named him. Lugo finally suggested marriage for the Wonder Man. Legally, this entailed his pardon as a criminal, and, in view of the prevailing social- religious order, conversion to Catholicism. Both worked like a charm. In a. remarkably short time, the Governor granted amnesty, baptismal waters were poured on his head at San Buenaventura Mission, and a glorious wedding followed at Santa Barbara to none other than Senorita Guadalupe Ortega. As a protective measure in 1831, Chapman became a Mexican citizen. After building a sixty ton schooner at San Pedro he retired, with his family, to a five thousand acre ranch near Ventura where he died peacefully in the magic year of 1849. Those who don't mind the climb into the mountains may still find the evidence of his mighty work for the Plaza Church. May we not see in it the first gesture in St. Elizabeth's parish to honor Our Lady Queen of the Angels?

Secularization of the Missions by the Mexican government was proclaimed in 1830. Subsequently, the issuing of land grants to favored sons became normal procedure. Rancho San Pascual is mentioned for the first time in a document dated July 15, 1833, wherein Juan Mariné,retired Lieutenant of Artillery and husband of Dona Eulalia Perez de Guillen, petitioned the Comandante General of the pueblo of Los Angeles for possession of property to which the Indians had given their consent during the Mission period. This petition, approved on February 18, 1835, resulted in a transfer of the entire ranch of 13,694 acres into private ownership. Certain conditions accompanied the grant: the building of a house within a specified time, the planting of groves, the introduction of grazing stock and the establishment of boundaries. At Juan's death in 1838, Jose Perez, a relative, became co-owner with Enrique Sepulveda, but inability to fulfill the conditions led to its passing from their hands. So it came about that the recently appointed Governor of California, Manuel Micheltorena, presented the rancho as a wedding gift to a favorite officer of his army, the dashing Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Garfias. The grant bears the date of November 28, 1843. While Garfias did acquit himself well as the first Treasurer of the City of Los Angeles, he had no interest in country life or in ranching except for its value as a status symbol. Of this he was acutely conscious because of his marriage into the aristocratic Abila family.

In 1948, by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States took possession of Alta California for the sum of $15,000,000.00.5 Clear title to land suddenly became a prime issue. Garfias applied to the United States Land Commission. While approval was accorded as early as April 25, 1854, he was not informed that he was entitled to the patent until 1858. Then, as a surprising climax to this otherwise routine matter, there was issued, under the date of April 3, 1863, a patent to Manuel Garfias, guaranteeing title to every piece of land contained in the original Rancho San Pascual, signed by the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.

Meanwhile, Garfias had gone ahead to build one of the most luxurious ranch houses in Southern California, a famous predecessor of later Pasadena mansions. Facing fabled Cathedral Oak, on the east bank of the Arroyo, watered by flowing springs, it commanded an unparalleled view of mountains, hills, valley, and plains in all directions. "La Llave del Valle," Key of the Valley, it was called: a title destined to unlock the imagination of later settlers searching after a name for their township.

Unfortunately, the sunset colors of the Days of the Dons turned from burnished gold to blood red over Rancho San Pascual as month after hectic month brought renewed financial embarrassment. Living beyond his means, investing in livestock which the land could not support, Garfias was forced to seek relief. Borrowing eight thousand dollars, at the current interest rate of four percent, compounded monthly, was no answer. Finally, on January 15, 1859, with a payment of two thousand dollars to cover details of ranch equipment and stock, title for the property was transferred to its new, American owner, Mr. Benjamin D. "Don Benito" Wilson. One wonders what he thought of this transaction as he stood in the luxuriant patio of the Garfias Adobe, gazing across the vast expanse of sage that swept away in undulating rhythm to the foot of the pine crested mountain which, one day, would bear his name. Nothing is recorded of his emotions. But later on, when buyers were to be had, friends said that he did well to be rid of such worthless land.

Benjamin Wilson, after having busied himself in trapping beaver for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, had come to California in 1841, on his way to China. Not finding a ship, he bought the Rancho Jurupa, - now the city of Riverside, - and shortly thereafter consolidated his gains by marrying Ramona Yorba, whose father owned the Rancho Santa Ana. All of this in three years! He then rode out the turbulent days of the American occupation, remained friends with all sides, and emerged in 1851 as Mayor of Los Angeles. Later, in 1854, he bought a small property of 128 acres just below the San Pascual Rancho, in the lowlands where water had been dammed for the old Mission mill, El Molino. He called his property Lake Vineyard Ranch, and in time changed from Prospect Avenue to Lake Avenue the street which led from his property to the mountains.

In his acquisition of Rancho San Pascual, Wilson had been assisted by Dr. John A. Griffin as co-owner. Dr. Griffin, Chief Staff Surgeon with the troops of General Kearney and Commodore Stockton, gave up his commission in favor of permanent residence in Los Angeles, where he combined medical activities with varied and intense business operations. It was he who advanced the money for the purchase of Rancho San Pascual. Through the following years it is not easy to follow the several transactions that involved the rancho. Used as collateral for other investments, the land passed hands with the greatest of ease until 1879, when a first permanent establishment was made by the Indiana Colony.

Aside from these first owners of the rancho, Dr. Griffin's sister, the wife of the Confederate General, Albert Sydney Johnston, deserves passing mention, inasmuch as her home, "Fair Oaks," in the northeast section of the old Rancho, gave its name to a principal street of the later community. Finally, "Judge" Benjamin Eaton rides through the purple sage of Altadena after crossing the plains on horseback in 1851. Taking over Mrs. Johnston's property, he set himself to the task of bringing water to the land for the development of its horticultural possibilities. Today, Eaton Canyon per- petuates his memory.

During the unsettled times that followed the collapse of Spanish rule, the Church struggled on as best it could in the San Gabriel Valley. Despite the confiscation of all Mission properties by the new government and the dispersal of the Indians, the Padres did not give up. Returning to the Mission in 1843, they managed to hold out for ten more years. The sale of the mission itself, a project of Governor Pio Pico, was prevented at the last moment by the arrival of American troops, and eventually, in 1862, the building with its adjacent property was restored to the Church by an Act of Congress.

As Apostolic Administrator of Alta and Baja California from 1840 to 1846, the Franciscan Bishop Francisco Garcia Diego y Moreno endeavored to stem the tide of anti-clericalism with the aid of seventeen Franciscan and four Dominican priests in his enormous territory of some 214,000 square miles. Encouraged by the friendly attitude of Governor Micheltorena, he envisaged a restoration of the Missions. In order to provide priests he engaged the Sacred Heart Fathers from Belgium to establish a Seminary at Santa Inez, one of his few ventures rewarded with a measure of success.

The year 1850 witnessed the creation of the Diocese of Monterey, with a Dominican priest, Joseph Sadoc Alemany, as its first Bishop. On his being transferred to the newly established Archbishopric of San Francisco, three years later, the original diocese was placed in the hands of Bishop Thaddeus Amat, a Vincentian priest of wide missionary experience in the middle west, a Seminary professor, and a theologian destined to make an impression at the First Vatican Council. Until 1859 he resided at Santa Barbara. When, however, the diocese received its title of Monterey and Los Angeles he chose the latter as his see city and established the episcopal residence there. With a total Catholic population of some ten thousand, mostly Mexican and Spanish, he laid deep foundations for the future. On the outskirts of the pueblo, at Second and Main Streets, he built his Cathedral, for the unique distinction of which he received from His Holiness Pope Pius IX, the body of an early Roman martyr, St. Vibiana, whose relies had been but recently discovered in the catacombs. By 1878, Bishop Amat had completed his work. It remained for his successor, Bishop Francis Mora, to carry on until the closing years of the century, 1878-1896.

To return to Rancho San Pascual. High up in one of the canyons, Jesus Rubio, a relative of Juan Marin 6, had taken up squatter's rights as early as 1867. There he guarded a precious spring that was to transform the and highland slope into green groves and gardens, delight residents with its mountain freshness and maintain the luxuriant landscaping of St. Elizabeth's parish plant through the years.

Lower down on the rancho, everything remained quiescent until 1873. In the fall of that memorable year, there arrived from Indianapolis a certain Daniel M. Berry, Purchasing Agent for the California Colony of Indiana, sent "to spy out the land" for a group of thirty three winter-worn midwest families in search of a better climate. The financial panic that followed hard upon Mr. Berry's arrival, while altering immediate plans, did not deter him from pursuing his objective. Forming a new organization, the San Gabriel Orange Grove Association, he arranged for the purchase of four thousand acres of Rancho San Pascual from Dr. Griffin. Most of the property lay between the present Fair Oaks Avenue and the Arroyo, stretching south from Colorado Boulevard to Monterey Road. $25,000.00 was the agreed price. Fifteen acre plots were developed by means of ten thousand fruit trees and one hundred thousand grape cuttings. As a bonus, Dr. Griffin made available to the Association some thirteen hundred acres of undeveloped hillside lying at a distance to the north, along the foot of the mountains, from the Arroyo to a point now marked by Lake Avenue. Because taxes had been paid the offer was accepted. In such an offhand manner, western Altadena emerged from the old rancho.

By 1875, the choice of a name for the colony became a vital consideration. Coming from States foreign to the Latin way of life, strong in their Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregationalist convictions, all agreed with the statement expressed by one of their fellow townsmen that "our people don't like any of the old saintly names." There unity ceased. It was extremely difficult to find an appropriate semantic symbol for beauty, fertility, fair weather, the spirit of freedom, adventure and good health, in one short word. Those who suggested Muscat, a code expression used by Berry in his negotiations to indicate the property, were derided as the Muskrat faction. Some leaned perilously toward the romantic past: New Granada or even Buena Vista. Classicists preferred Hesperia. Kleikos was the most scholarly suggestion, an adaptation of the Greek word for key, inspired by the name of the Garfias Adobe, Key of the Valley, Llave del Valle. While Greek was obviously preferable to "Yavvey," the Hoosier version of the Spanish word, it met with little success. But Thomas B. Elliott, at whose home in Indianapolis the project had started, was thinking along deeper lines. Writing to an old friend, Tuttle Smith, whose father had been a missioner among the Chippewas, he asked for a word that would indicate Peak or Hill or Key or Crown, or something "of the Valley." The heaven-bent father was contacted and in due time "Son Tuttle" received his answer. The Chippewa idiom did indeed possess words to express the ideas suggested. As long as, one were not overly concerned with the delicate nuances of the original tongue, an adequate pronunciation could be acquired. Greater difficulties might be encountered with the Post Office Department or the railways. As examples: WE-O-QUAN-PA-SA-DE-NA, or TA-PE-DE-GUN-PA-SA-DE- NA, Crown and Key of the Valley respectively. Obviously, neither would do. Nevertheless, in repeating them over and over again, the singing sound of "pa-sa-de-na" commenced to haunt the ear: euphonious, open vowelled, carrying an undefinable melody of the sweet mystery of western life. So it was proposed, and accepted. Crowns and keys soon adorned the city seal. Business men, too, would make much of the Crown City. Those steeped in Chippewa held their peace. A few years later, in 1885 to be exact, when the landscape architect, Byron 0. Clark, was thinking of a name for his nursery on North Fair Oaks, he hit upon a fortunate grafting between the old Spanish and Chippewa-Indiana stock. The result was a beautiful hybrid, Altadena, which, with his consent was later extended to the community that commenced to flourish on the highlands "above Pasadena."

As the first colony settled down to the rigors of western farming, Benjamin Wilson decided it was high time to develop his land east of Fair Oaks. Putting his son-in-law, 1. De Barth Shorb, in charge of operations, one hundred seventy-two lots, averaging from nine to ten acres, were staked out under the title of the Lake Vineyard Land and Water Association. The going price per acre in 1876 was $75.00. This subdivision extended east from Fair Oaks to Wilson and from Villa south to Columbia, with a diagonal strip along Lincoln to the Arroyo. Colorado and Fair Oaks became the crossroads of the enlarged community.

At about the same time, northern areas of the rancho were exchanging hands and undergoing subdivisions. Fair Oaks Ranch, comprising some 520 acres, a rectangle bounded by Allen, New York Drive, Eaton Canyon and Washington, had been one of the earliest parcels to be separated from the rancho. By far the largest purchase of land, however, was made by a man from northern Ireland, James Craig, who, in 1869, acquired title shortly thereafter to better than 5,000 acres from Dr. Griffin: all the land east of Lake Avenue, and from the mountains to below Colorado Boulevard, with the exception of Fair Oaks Ranch and a few individual parcels. Subsequently in 1881, another Irishman as well as a speculator who never set foot on local ground, Alexander Grogan, took over the investment and gave his name to the tract.

To the west of Prospect Street, later known as Lake Avenue, other men came to leave their names on the land. About 1868, Henry G. Monks, a relative of Benjamin Wilson, bought a tract of two thousand acres from Dr. Griffin and Wilson. This included everything north from Villa to Woodbury Road and from Lake to the Arroyo, "Monk's hill." There it Jay in the sun for more than another decade, undeveloped, until two men from the Buckeye State, John Painter and B. F. Ball, after pioneering in Iowa, arrived in Pasadena and quickly realized its possibilities. $15.00 an acre for the land plus $10.00 per acre for bringing water from the Arroyo resulted in an eventual profit of $100,000.00 on their investment. Falling for the subtle Spanish idiom, their large hotel at Fair Oaks and Washington, the present site of a public library and park, was entitled "La Pintoresca," or Painter's Hotel. A horse-car line up Fair Oaks, past the hotel to the newly established Mountain View Cemetery, drew the north land into contact with the world, while guests were provided with transportation to Devil's Gate Dam and the Arroyo race track by means of a dummy steam line.

Just before Mr. Monks sold his property to Painter and Ball, two civil engineers from Cincinnati, Peter Gano and his pupil Stanley Jewett, purchased 375 acres of the "Highland Slope," with water rights in Las Flores Canyon, at $15.00 an acre. This property extended north toward the mountains from Altadena Drive and west from Lake to Marengo.

In the same year that Mr. Grogan purchased his property cast of Lake Avenue (1881), Fate brought the Woodbury Brothers from Marshalltown, Iowa. Captain Frederick and John were already successful business men in. their respective fields of farming and banking. Sizing up the situation, they first purchased the Rubio Canyon Farm of 141 acres as a water source. Next, they acquired 937 acres on the Pasadena Highland Slope from the San Gabriel Orange Grove Association: everything west of Lake to the Arroyo, except for the Giddings property, and from the present Woodbury Road to Altadena Drive. Evidently no one thought much more of the property then than they had seven years before when Dr. Griffin deeded it over to the Association, as the purchase price was only $5.00 an acre. The Woodbury Ranch, properly so called, was confined between Lake and Marengo Avenues.

An early offer to sell property for a cemetery was rejected. As a result, the Giddings family, whose holdings cut into the Woodbury property west of Marengo to Fair Oaks, established the Pasadena Cemetery Association and opened Mountain View Cemetery in 1886.

One of the first plans for the development of the Woodbury Ranch involved the obtaining of deodara tree seeds from the United States Department of Agriculture. While on a trip to Italy, John had admired the graceful deodara. Now he conceived a plan for using them on a grandiose scale to beautify the ranch. By 1885 the seedlings were ready to be set out. Planted on either side of a broad drive leading from Woodbury Road to Altadena Drive where John's home, never to be built, was projected, and protected from storm waters by stone lined drains, the one hundred and fifty trees grew and grew and grew, reaching such patriarchal proportions that by 1920 they were deemed worthy of special veneration. Crowned with varicolored lights, they have ever since beckoned untold thousands of tourists to marvel at the nocturnal splendor of Christmas Tree Lane. And even now, despite the widespread competition of ingenious holiday illuminations, they preserve, in solemn dignity, an incomparable grandeur, the blending of great age, heroic scale and unconscious beauty. Other deodaras were planted on the ranch through the years. When, in the late 1950's, the pine tree and the sycamore at the entrance to St. Elizabeth's were cut down, a kindly Providence spared the splendid deodara that still feathers the air above the patio to the north of the church.

In 1885, a movement to secure the incorporation of Pasadena as a town of enormous area met with stiff opposition from residents in South Pasadena and in Altadena. As a result, the present boundaries were established. West of Lake Avenue, Woodbury Road marks the limit of Pasadena and the beginning of county land. Eastward, the line zigzags in a somewhat incomprehensible manner. When time came for a parish to be established "on the north side," nothing could have been more logical than to have included both city and county, with Lake Avenue and Woodbury Road as the axis.

By 1887 the Pasadena Improvement Co. had been organized and the name of Altadena applied to the county section. Subdivision of property, sale, resale and the building of mansions as well as of smaller homes filled out the remaining years of the century. On the second lot to the west of our present parish property, facing Woodbury Road, stands one of the earliest homes in the area, that of Mr. and Mrs. L. W. Schumann who, in 1888, bought sixteen acres and built a ranch house. In one account of their purchase, mention is made of "a fringe of lots on Lake Avenue" reserved for other purposes. At the time no one would have surmised what the future held in store for those lots.

Among the early residents of the area was the well known Chicago publisher, Andrew McNally, who, in 1887, bought considerable property and remained in Altadena until his death in 1904. While yet in Chicago, he had given a daughter in marriage to Mr. Edwin Neff. Moving to California, the young couple eventually settled in Altadena, at Whitefriars, near the McNally estate. One of their sons, Wallace, became a greatly admired architect, whose specialty, if one may use the term, was a contemporary adaptation of the Spanish Colonial and Mediterranean styles. What concerns us here is the fact that when time came for St. Elizabeth's to construct its permanent church, in 1926, Father Corr was fortunate to have within the parish itself a man long associated with the area and one well able to carry out his high ideas to perfection.

Apart from the church itself yet influencing it in many indirect ways, events of unusual character were determining the growth and make-up of the local community. After the Depression of 1888 came a long period of spectacular enterprises, ushered in by the establishment of the Harvard Observatory on Mt. Wilson. While the venture lasted only eighteen months, a start had been made which would result in the present significant installations on the highest point in the parish.

Hotels brought winter visitors who remained on as residents of the community. Colonel Green, of Patent Medicine fame, whose daughter and whose private railroad car both glorified in the name Altadena, played an important role in this phase of civic life. His Ague Conqueror, August Flower and Boschee's German Syrup contributed not a little to bring E. C. Webster's project out of insolvency and to make possible the handsome hostelry on South Raymond Avenue. That street was already bearing the name of a young travel agent from Boston who, on a hill to the south, had constructed "the Royal Raymond" - a refuge for New England's snow weary millionaires, and in its seedier days the sanctuary for diocesan priests during their annual Retreats.

Fantasy mingled with solid financial investments in those days. Professor Gregory's wild dream of the Arroyo Seco Toboggan, for fast transportation from the Linda Vista area to downtown Pasadena and Raymond Hill, was sidetracked only in favor of a more heroic scheme of his to speed fresh water from hidden springs in the Santa Monica mountains to the Mojave Desert. Horace Dobbins did succeed for a time in realizing his Cycleway from the Green Hotel to the Raymond, a ten foot, elevated, wooden freeway for bicycles that eventually was to connect Pasadena with Los Angeles. Its failure denied southern California an incomparable pavilion at Sycamore Grove, a Half Way House in which east and west would meet in the luxurious beauty of a Turkish harem, as a salon, or, for beer and pretzels, in the rugged, masculine comfort of a Swiss mountain lodge!

On the more serious side of life, Amos G. "Father" Throop, a convinced and generous Universalist, established his Polytechnic Institute, later to develop into the California Institute of Technology, and made possible a floriation of Victorian Romanesque in the fantastic wooden church erected on the southeast corner of Chestnut and Raymond. Both properties were destined to become part of St. Andrew's parish plant.

The dominant figure of the day, however, was the impressively named and attired Thaddeus Sobreski Coulincourt Lowe, a man of extraordinary inventive genius. By July 4, 1893, he had completed one of the engineering marvels of the age, his famous Mt. Lowe Railway with its electrically operated "white chariot" cable cars on the Mt. Echo incline. Accompanying this and other ventures came the development of utilities, all manner of transportation, steady growth in population, and the inevitable change of the hillsides from ranches to more concentrated residential neighborhoods.

Despite such transformations, however, the Highland Slope remained famous for its wild flowers. In 1885, Senator Arnold of Marshalltown, Iowa, cruising along the California coast off Catalina Island, remarked, as he later wrote, that he could see in the distance "a tongue of fire above all the rest of the land at the base of the mountains, even though we were eighty miles at sea." The Captain informed him that the shimmering flame was "la mesa de las flores," the flowering table land of Altadena, a landmark by which ships could determine their position offshore. In the light of this incident, it is not surprising that the first photograph of the present parish property, taken in 1895, should show a gay group of Victorian ladies and gentlemen romping, according to the fashion of the times, in golden poppy fields at Lake Avenue and Woodbury Road.

But what now of the Church on the old Rancho San Pascual? Until the boom years of 1885 to 1888 brought to the San Gabriel Valley people of diverse national and cultural backgrounds, the religious complexion of Pasadena suffered little change. Most of the early American settlers were Protestants. Of the five listed denominations in 1885, the Presbyterians and the Methodists possessed permanent churches. In that same year, the Episcopalians built theirs. Roman Catholics drifted in slowly, as individuals. Nevertheless, by 1886, the newly elected Bishop George Montgomery deemed it advisable to provide his people there with Holy Mass and the Sacraments, even though such a service would involve his already burdened Cathedral priests with another Mission. Arrangements were made for Sunday Mass in the lounge of the new hotel, the Los Angeles House. Later, the residence of Mr. G. T. Stamm, on South Marengo, served as a center for the congregation. Then a decision was made to purchase a property on the corner of South Pasadena Avenue and Bellefontaine Street as the site for a church. Dedicated to St. Andrew, this first church on the Rancho San Pascual, was completed in time for Mass on December 17, 1887.6 The first phase of the work had been entrusted to Father Patrick Hamett, later the Vicar General of the diocese. One can imagine the tedious, time consuming, organizational activities of those days, everything made all the more trying by problems of transportation to and from the distant city.

Progress was indicated in the appointment of Father Andrew Cullen as St. Andrew's first pastor, in 1888. Shortly thereafter, a rectory was acquired and with it the familiar pattern of parish life commenced to appear. By the time of his death in 1890, Father Cullen had the satisfaction of seeing his little flock in a flourishing state. His successor, Dr. Comelius Scannell, proved a tireless seeker of souls, going as far as Duarte and Monrovia to care for them. Nearer home, he saw to the moving of the original church and the construction of a larger edifice on the same site. This was in 1895. 1896 witnessed his retirement and the coming of Father Patrick Francis Farrelly as pastor. Within three years an impressive Romanesque-Gothic structure was built on the corner of Fair Oaks and Walnut, a church destined to remain in use until the construction of the present St. Andrew's Church in 1928 under Rt. Rev. Msgr. McCarthy. Designer of the new church was one the pioneer architects of Los Angeles, Mr. Robert B. Young, President of the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, responsible for such well known buildings as the Lankershim Hotel, the Blackstone Building, and the original Barker Brothers. Death in 1914 terminated a significant professional career. His wife, Mary, with their daughter, Mary Young Moore, will enter intimately into the story of St. Elizabeth's parish at a later time.

One year after Father Farrelly came from San Diego to Pasadena as pastor, a universal desire of Catholic families was satisfied in the advent of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary to establish a school. Pioneers in the educational growth of both Oregon and California, having come to the west coast in 1864 from Montreal by ship and portage across the isthmus of Nicaragua, their entry into southern California was in answer to a generous invitation of Benjamin Wilson's son-in-law, De Barth Shorb. Ramona Convent opened its doors for the school year of 1890-91. Seven years later, the Sisters expanded their work by establishing a grammar school for boys and girls and a high school for girls to serve the Pasadena area. After an initial year in a private residence, the Academy found its permanent location across the street from the church, on the southeast corner of Fair Oaks and Walnut. Not a parochial school, but similar to later Academies established at Santa Monica and Pomona, its properties and administration belonged completely to the Order. The 1910 Directory of St. Andrew's Church affords an intimate description of those pleasant halls of knowledge: "Every attention is given to the moral and religious training of the pupils ... Deportment is equally the subject of unremitting care ... Vocal and instrumental music, piano, guitar (mind you!), mandolin and violin are taught according to the most improved methods, while plain and ornamental sewing, a great auxiliary in the cultivation of taste, is also a specialty of the school." Later, on a visit to Pasadena, Mr. Palmer himself had occasion to visit the school, after which he expressed himself highly pleased with the manner in which his Method of Writing was being taught. St. Andrew's was to be "his" School in a Pasadena that generally did not accept his techniques of making circles, lines and letters.

Father Farrelly's years as pastor of St. Andrew's extended to 1909. Shortly after his death, in September of that year, Father William Quinlan was appointed, a position he occupied until 1924. Recollections of the oldest living members of St. Elizabeth's will naturally center on Father Quinlan and his assistant priests as they were wholly responsible for spiritual ministrations to everyone in Pasadena and beyond. With the significant growth of the Catholic population in the area, and given the limitations of service by the two priests at St. Andrew's, one can understand the concern which motivated the women of Altadena, in that year of 1912, to speak directly to Bishop Conaty about the establishment of a parish on the "North Side."

Against this background of the old rancho El Rincon de San Pascual, of the Archdiocese in general, of Pasadena in particular and of a few of the persons who will figure in later years, we now present the story of St. Elizabeth's parish. Told through the persons of its seven pastors, it comprises so many chapters which vary greatly in length according to the years of each: Father Victor Follen, Father Francis Woodcutter, Msgr. William Corr, Father William Mullane, Father John Dunne, Msgr. Robert Brennan and Father Gerald Cahill.

'The monument is situated on Arroyo Drive south of Columbia Street. Across the street, new homes have replaced the Garfias adobe. Below, on the slope of the Arroyo, a spring still flows. Each year, at Easter, the cross is decorated by the Crespi Club.

2Either the Santa Ana River or the Rio Hondo.

3 St. Paschal Baylon, O.P.M., was a Spanish friar of the seventeenth century, renowned for his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.

4 Letter to Msgr. Brennan, February 28,1967.

16

5'Alta California included California, Utah, Arizona, Now Mexico, Texas, with sections ,I C,,lIo,,al,, ,nl Wyoming,

6'No explanation for the title can be found. The Scottish ancestry of Bishop Montgomery may have been a consideration, or the number of Presbyterians in Pasadena!

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