by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As part of the celebration of the City of Industry’s 60th anniversary, here is another outstanding photograph as part of the “Time Capsule Tuesday” series. This is an aerial view of portions of what became the City of Industry and Hacienda Heights as it they appeared over eighty years ago on 8 September 1935.
More than twenty years before the founding of the city, the area was still agricultural and rural, with very few homes scattered in the landscape dominated by citrus groves and farmland.
In the view above showing the entirety of the image, the Workman Homestead, where the museum is now, is at the upper right, with Hudson Road (today’s Hacienda Boulevard angling towards the top right corner and Valley Boulevard just out of view at the top edge. Hudson largely moved straight towards the south, with a bit of a curve as it still does at Tetley Avenue, before (outside the image) running into and through the Puente Hills into La Habra Heights.
Turnbull Canyon Road, also known as Tenth Avenue moved at an angle from where the Homestead was situated and then straightened as it passed into what was known as “North Whittier Heights” (the name “Hacienda Heights” wasn’t adopted until about 1960). Turnbull then forked, as it does now with its path heading to the right and Vallecito Drive going to the right.
The Homestead’s southern border is the meandering bed of San José Creek with the track of the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, now Union Pacific, just beyond. The clear path of Gale Avenue and above that those of Palm Avenue and Los Robles Avenue are also notable.
The section of the Puente Hills at the left center did have some houses and avocado groves on it, but the portions at the bottom right and left, now filled with tract homes from about 1960 onward were barren of development a quarter century before.
What isn’t visible at all, for obvious reasons, is the path of what, in the late 1960s, became State Route 60, the Pomona Freeway (though we will see the right-of-way clearly in some 1960s aerials that will be in future “Time Capsule Tuesday” posts.)
A really interesting comparative view is through this Google Maps link showing the same general area in satellite view.
Check back next week as we jump ahead about 25 years to see an aerial photo of the area from 1961!