Altadena

Altadena. A Short History.

Benjamin Eaton first developed water sources from the Arroyo Seco and Eaton Canyon from the mid-1860s to his vineyard near the edge of Eaton Canyon. This made development of Altadena, Pasadena, and South Pasadena possible. Nonetheless, a real estate scheme called the San Pasqual Plantation failed by 1870 despite the irrigation ditch Eaton engineered that drew water from around the site of present day Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Arroyo Seco. 

In 1881, the land that became Altadena was sold to the Woodbury brothers, John and Fred, who launched the subdivision of Altadena in 1887 just as Southern California's great land boom busted. The land remained mostly agricultural, however, Andrew McNally the printing magnate from Chicago and his good friend Col. G.G. Green built mansions on what was to become Millionaire's Row, Mariposa Street near Santa Rosa. A small community slowly developed through the 1890s and into the new century.

The newly sprouted community of Altadena immediately began to attract other millionaires from the East. Newspaper moguls William Armiger Scripps and William Kellogg built side by side just east of Fair Oaks Avenue. The grandson of Andrew McNally, Wallace Neff, who became a famous Southern California architect started his career in Altadena with the design and construction of St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church.

Altadena long refused wholesale annexation by neighboring Pasadena but the larger community nibbled at its edges in several small annexations of neighborhoods through the 1940s. With early 1960s redevelopment in Pasadena, the routing of extensions of 134 and 210 freeways, and lawsuits over the desegregation of Pasadena Unified School District, there was white flight and convulsive racial change in Altadena.

In 1960, its black population was under four percent; over the next 15 years, half the Caucasian population left and was replaced by people of color — many of whom settled on the west side of town after being displaced by Pasadena's redevelopment and freeway projects.

The name Altadena derives from the Spanish alta, meaning "upper", and dena from Pasadena; the area is adjacent to, but at a higher elevation than Pasadena.