|
La Crescenta is an unincorporated community formed on March 16, 1989. Its slogan "The Community That Cares" is fundamental in its efforts of helping to maintain and improve the unincorporated area (Briggs to Pennsylvania) of the Crescenta Valley. There are 9 regular council members, and 3 alternate council members.
The land now known as Crescenta Valley was originally inhabited by Gabrieleno Indians and later settled by Don Jose Maria Verdugo, after whom the nearby mountains are named. In 1784, Verdugo was granted 36,000 acres by the Spanish Crown, uprooting many Gabrieleno Indians. He eventually went bankrupt, and the homeless bandits and thieves who roamed the foothills, Gabrieleno Indians among them, became known as ?verdugos.? In the early 1880's Dr. Benjamin Briggs, a physician from Crawfordsville, Indiana, made a worldwide search for an ideal climate and ultimately found his way to Southern California. He named the town after three crescents or mountain peaks he saw while looking out his window one day. It had been his desire to devote himself to horticultural pursuits and the establishment of a health resort, but Briggs did not live to carry out all his plans.
However, many people interested in his ambitions became attracted to the area. Health workers and physicians soon established clinics. Sanitariums for asthmatics and other facilities for the sick were built. As Los Angeles grew in the 192'0s, the health sanitariums and homesteaders gave way to orchards, vineyards and resort homes. After the 1940's, the Crescenta Valley began to enter mainsteam suburbia, farms giving way to tract homes. This process was finalized in the early 1970's by the opening of the 210 Freeway, weaving the Crescenta Valley firmly into the fabric of Greater Los Angeles.
|
