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| Census | Pop. | Note | %± |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1880 | 391 | — | |
| 1890 | 4,882 | 1,148.6% | |
| 1900 | 9,117 | 86.7% | |
| 1910 | 30,291 | 232.2% | |
| 1920 | 45,354 | 49.7% | |
| 1930 | 76,086 | 67.8% | |
| 1940 | 81,864 | 7.6% | |
| 1950 | 104,577 | 27.7% | |
| 1960 | 116,407 | 11.3% | |
| 1970 | 112,951 | −3.0% | |
| 1980 | 118,072 | 4.5% | |
| 1990 | 131,591 | 11.4% | |
| 2000 | 133,936 | 1.8% |
Pasadena, California was founded in 1874 and incorporated in 1886.
The original inhabitants of Pasadena and surrounding areas were members of the Native American Hahamog-na tribe, a branch of the Tongva Nation, speaking the Tongva language (part of the Uto-Aztecan languages group) that lived in the Los Angeles Basin for thousands of years. Tongva dwellings lined the Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County) in present day Pasadena and south to where it joins the Los Angeles River and along other natural waterways in the city.
They lived in thatched, dome-shape lodges. For food, they lived on a diet of acorn meal, seeds and herbs, venison, and other small animals. They traded for ocean fish with the coastal Tongva. They made cooking vessels from steatite soapstone from Catalina Island. The oldest transportation route still in existence in Pasadena is the old Tongva foot trail, also known as the Gabrielino Trail, that goes along the west side of the Rose Bowl and up the Arroyo Seco past the Jet Propulsion Laboratory into the San Gabriel Mountains. That trail has been in continuous use for thousands of years. An arm of the trail is also still in use up what is now called Salvia Canyon. When the Spanish occupied the Los Angeles Basin they built the San Gabriel Mission and renamed the local Tongva people "Gabrielino Indians," after the name of the mission. Today, several bands of Tongva people live in the Los Angeles area.[1]
Pasadena is a part of the original Mexican land grant named Rancho del Rincon de San Pascual, so named because it was deeded on Easter Sunday to Eulalia Perez de Guillén Mariné of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. The Rancho comprised the lands of today's communities of Pasadena, Altadena and South Pasadena.
Prior to the annexation of California in 1848, the last of the Mexican owners was Manuel Garfias who retained title to the property after statehood in 1850. Garfias sold sections of the property to the first Anglo settlers to come into the area; Dr. Benjamin Eaton, the father of Fred Eaton, and Dr. S. Griffin. Much of the property was purchased by Benjamin Wilson who established his Lake Vineyard property in the vicinity. Wilson, known as Don Benito to the local Indians, was also owner of the Rancho Jurupa (Riverside, California) and mayor of Los Angeles. He is the grandfather of WWII General George S. Patton, Jr. and would have Mount Wilson named for him.
In 1873, Wilson was visited by one Dr. Daniel M. Berry of Indiana who was looking for a place in the country that could offer better climate to his patients, most of whom suffered from respiratory ailments. Berry was an asthmatic and claimed that he had his best three nights sleep at Rancho San Pascual. To keep the find a secret, Berry code-named the area "Muscat" after the grape that Wilson grew. To raise funds to bring the company of people to San Pascual, Berry formed the Southern California Orange and Citrus Growers Association for which he sold stock. The newcomers were able to purchase a large portion of the property along the Arroyo Seco and on January 31, 1874, they incorporated the Indiana Colony. As a gesture of good will, Wilson added 2,000 acres (8 km2) of then useless highland property, part of which would become Altadena.
At the time, the Indiana Colony was a narrow strip of land between the Arroyo Seco and Fair Oaks Avenue. On the other side of the street was Wilson's Lake Vineyard development. After more than a decade of parallel development on both sides, the two settlements merged into the City of Pasadena.
The mail came to the Indiana Colony via Los Angeles so marked. In an attempt to obtain their own Post Office, the Colony needed to change the name to something the Postmaster General would consider more fitting. The town fathers put three names up to a vote. The first was Indianola. The second was Granada, in keeping with the area's Spanish heritage. The third was proposed by Dr. Thomas Elliott, who had contacted an Indian missionary friend in Michigan who had worked with the Minnesota Chippewa Indians. He submitted four names for translation: "Crown of the Valley," "Key of the Valley," "Valley of the Valley," and "Hill of the Valley." The names came back starting with "Weo-quan pa-sa-de-na," "Hat of the Valley." All the names ended in "pa-sa-de-na (of the valley)".[2] The name was put to a vote, and due to its euphonious nature, it was accepted as Pasadena. Pasadena was incorporated, the second incorporated municipality of Los Angeles County after Los Angeles, in March 1886. In 1892, John H. Burnett of Galveston, Texas had visited Pasadena and when returned to his home near Houston, Texas he plotted a town along two bayous and named it Pasadena, Texas after the California city for its lush vegetation.
The popularity of the region drew people from across the country, and Pasadena eventually became a stop on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, which led to an explosion in growth. From the real estate boom of the 1880s until the Great Depression, as great tourist hotels were developed in the city, Pasadena became a winter resort for wealthy Easterners, spurring the development of new neighborhoods and business districts, and increased road and transit connections with Los Angeles, culminating with the opening of the Arroyo Seco Parkway, California's first freeway. By 1940,[3] Pasadena had become the eighth largest city in California and was considered by many to be a twin city to Los Angeles.
The first of the great hotels to be established in Pasadena was the Raymond (1886) atop Bacon Hill, renamed Raymond Hill after construction. The original Mansard Victorian 200 room facility burned down on Easter morning of 1895 and was not rebuilt until 1903. It was razed during the Great Depression to make way for residential development. The Maryland Hotel existed from the early 1900s and was demolished in 1934. (Note: On April 27, 1935, Mary Stubbs Warner sailed from NY to SanFran and listed her home as The Maryland Hotel in Pasadena, California. This demolition date should be verified.) The world-famous Mount Lowe Railway and associated mountain hotels shut down four years later due to fire damage. Two hotel structures have survived, the Green Hotel (a co-op since 1926) and the Vista Del Arroyo (now used as a Federal courthouse).
The Hotel Green started construction on South Raymond Avenue at Kansas Street in 1887 by Mr. Webster who was unable to finish it. Colonel George Gill Green, a wealthy patent medicine distributor from New Jersey, finished the six story edifice in 1888. In 1898, he finished construction on a second edifice on the other side of Raymond and connected the two buildings with a bridge and a tunnel. The patrons arrived by train at the adjacent station. In 1902, the hotel was extended to the P.G. Wooster building at the corner of Fair Oaks Avenue and Green Street. In 1924, the hotel became a private residence. The annex was razed to its first story and sold, today known as Stat's Floral Supply. In 1970, the two wings of the hotel were partitioned creating two separate buildings. The 1898 section remained the private residence now called the Castle Green. The 1902 portion was taken over by the government's HUD program for senior residents and disabled persons, and is called the Green Hotel. In 1929, Kansas Street was widened and renamed Green Street.
The Vista Del Arroyo Hotel on Grand Avenue, commandeered by the Navy as a hospital during World War II, now houses the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The American Craftsman era in art and design is exceptionally well represented in Pasadena. In architecture Greene and Greene, the Green Brothers firm, developed the style with many residences still existing. Two examples of their Ultimate bungalow versions are the masterpiece Gamble House (public tours),[4] and the Robert R. Blacker House (private). Both are designated California Historical Landmarks and on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The Second World War proved to be a boon to Pasadena as Southern California became a major staging area for the Pacific War. High tech manufacturing and scientific companies made the city their home, a trend which continued in the decades following the war, notably with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Tetra Tech and Ameron International.
In the 1950s, Pasadena saw a steady influx of people from the Southern United States, especially African-Americans from Texas and Louisiana. Pasadena also began hosting a large immigrant community, particularly from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Armenia.
In 1969, the Pasadena Unified School District was desegregated, though the issue would continue to be fought in court for a decade. A year later, the 210 Freeway was built along a newly chosen route. The freeway's construction was controversial, as it caused the demolition of over a thousand homes, many historic, and many claimed that the route was designed to cut off the city's less wealthy neighborhoods.
The situation did not improve. Downtown Pasadena became dangerous in some parts and deserted in others, and incidences of murder and arson skyrocketed. Old Pasadena faced destruction as plans for new high-rise developments were drawn up, though they were mostly stopped by increasingly active preservation advocates. Pasadena suffered demographically as many residents decamped for the nearby suburbs or the Inland Empire, causing an overall decrease in population. Despite these setbacks, many local artists and hipsters moved in to take advantage of low property values. Their legacy can be seen today in the Doo Dah Parade which began in 1976.
The 1970s also saw the meteoric rise of gang violence in Pasadena, a trend which culminated with the 1993 Halloween Massacre, wherein three teenagers were murdered by members of the Bloods and three more were wounded. This led the Pasadena Police Department to crack down far more heavily on gang activity, which receded in the mid-1990s.
In the early 2000s, several civic beautification campaigns began in earnest and many traditionally impoverished neighborhoods began gentrifying. The 2003 opening of the Los Angeles County Metro's Gold Line reopened Pasadena for rail rapid transit for the first time since 1951, and high-density condominiums began to pop up in the major business districts, leading to a major population increase. However, Pasadena's development has stalled due to the late 2000s Recession. In addition, gang violence surged beginning in 2005 and continues to rise today (according to the PPD, gang-related crimes are at their highest level in the city's history), along with incidences of robbery and arson.
Despite these setbacks, Pasadena continues to grow as nearby suburban communities lose residents to the Subprime mortgage crisis and locals increasingly choose to live closer to work.
Pasadena was in the film 2012, as the residence of Jackson Curtis and his ex-wife's family.
