Altadena didn’t just “happen.” It was assembled—parcel by parcel, pipe by pipe, and rail by rail—by people who controlled land, water, and capital. Long before plats and sales brochures, these foothills were part of Tovaangar, stewarded by the Tongva/Gabrielino people; every later “improvement” sits on that foundation. Understanding how the place was marketed and made helps explain why our housing market looks the way it does today—and how a fairer future might work.
In the 1870s and 1880s, Pasadena and its foothills became a destination for white Midwestern settlers lured by climate, citrus, and the promise of health. The Indiana Colony laid out early tracts in 1876; landholders like Benjamin Wilson subdivided to the east. In 1880, brothers John and Frederick Woodbury purchased 937 acres of ranchland from Dr. John S. Griffin and Dr. Benjamin S. Eaton. A few years later they formed the Pasadena Improvement Company to turn those foothill holdings into a new community. They hired nurseryman Byron O. Clark to brand it; he fused alta (“upper”) with “-dena” from Pasadena. Altadena was born—a place defined as much by marketing as by map.
Rails made the sales pitch real. In 1883, James F. Crank’s Los Angeles & San Gabriel Valley Railroad connected Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles, turning a pastoral foothill ideal into a commutable suburb. When that line was folded into larger systems, the tracks kept doing quiet work: moving people, capital, and, crucially, demand. Leisure lines followed—the Mt. Lowe Railway carried tourists to Echo Mountain’s hotel and zoo—embedding a narrative of aspiration: the foothills as a refuge with a view. Even when the land boom cooled in 1887, the template held: subdivide, advertise, extend water, sell a lifestyle. And water was the throttle—cases like Pasadena v. California-Michigan make plain that whoever controlled the pipes controlled where houses could go, and how fast.
As the physical systems took shape, people arrived in distinct waves. Black families came in greater numbers during the Great Migration, finding work first in rail and service, and later in defense/aerospace—with JPL/Caltech anchoring a regional tech corridor. Despite Home Owner’s Loan Corp. (HOLC) redlining and FHA rules that shut out many Black buyers, churches, the GI Bill, union jobs, and community networks helped families stake claims in Northwest Pasadena and, over time, in pockets of Altadena. Two threads deserve special mention here. First, abolitionist John Brown’s sons, Owen and Jason, settled in the Altadena Meadows; their presence helped create a cultural magnet for Black settlers seeking freedom and community at the foot of the San Gabriels. Second, decades later, local realtor Vernice Roberts actively helped Black buyers circumvent exclusion policies to purchase in Altadena when other doors were closed. The results still echo: roughly 81% of Black residents in Altadena own their homes, extraordinarily about twice the rate of “chocolate cities” like Atlanta or D.C. and roughly 20pts above the national average. For context, Black residents now make up under 20% of the town’s population.
Latino communities have roots that predate statehood and broadened through the Mexican Revolution, the Bracero Program, and later arrivals from Central America. Construction, logistics, education, and public service drew families who built businesses around parish life and transit corridors, often in the very neighborhoods that earlier subdividers had platted for modest homes. Affordability, immigration policy, wage volatility, and wildfire recovery now shape where families can rent or buy, and whether they can stay.
Asian and Pacific Islander communities layered in through early Chinese railroad labor (despite exclusion laws), Japanese farmers and gardeners (followed by wartime incarceration and return), and, after 1965, significant immigration from Taiwan, China, Korea, the Philippines, India, and Vietnam. The broader San Gabriel Valley became an “ethnoburb” case study; professional and small-business ecosystems linked to firms, hospitals, and universities in and around Pasadena. Other diasporas—Armenian, Iranian, Lebanese, Syrian, Afghan—tied Pasadena/Altadena to Glendale and the wider SGV through faith institutions, retail corridors, and entrepreneurial networks. Each community navigated the same mix of opportunity and constraint: where the rails and roads ran, where the pipes could reach, how zoning wrote the rules of belonging, and how lenders decided who was “creditworthy.”
This is the part of the story that still does the most work. Infrastructure didn’t just serve growth; it created it. Rules like minimum lot sizes, parking mandates, design review, and financing standards decided who could access what created value. And narrative …the garden suburb, the mountain railway, the green foothill brand… translated infrastructure into demand. After the Fair Housing Act (1968) outlawed explicit discrimination, the legacy of earlier rules persisted in appraisal gaps, down payment barriers, and the wealth that accrues (or doesn’t) across generations. Who bought when land was cheap still echoes in who can afford to stay when insurance spikes or a disaster strikes.
What This Suggests for Housing Policy, Now
We need 21st-century “rails” for homes: factory-built modular and panelized housing, paired with pre-approved plan catalogs and ministerial approvals that cut months from schedules. But delivery speed alone isn’t equity. California has passed a suite of recent state tools with real equity potential, and Los Angeles County can deploy them in ways that protect legacy owners and deter displacement:
- SB 9 (lot splits/duplexes), SB 684 + SB 1123 (small-scale subdivisions and streamlined parcels), and Gov’t Code §65915 (Density Bonus Law) can widen the circle, if paired with anti-flipping deed restrictions, right-to-return, and preference for owner-occupants.
- The County can adopt SB 10 (local option up-zoning up to 10 units on transit-rich parcels) and AB 1033 (allow ADUs to be sold as condos/TICs where locally approved) with a legacy-owner lens:
Enable these tools for Altadenans who owned their property before the Eaton Fire, while restricting their use by post-fire purchasers—especially non-natural persons (LLCs, corporations, funds) that may accelerate speculation. - In disaster recovery, legacy-owner carve-outs should be the norm, not the exception. Families who were here before the flames need pathways to rebuild, subdivide, condo-ize an ADU, or add gentle density—the very moves that restore equity and keep them rooted in place.
Finally, we should tell a bigger story about foothill living now: resilient homes with wildfire-wise design, shaded streets that cool summer heat, and credible paths to ownership that don’t require a trust fund. The same narrative muscle that once sold the foothills as a refuge can welcome teachers, tradespeople, caregivers, and retirees to make belonging a policy, not a slogan.
Altadena’s past isn’t a museum; it’s a manual. The Woodburys, the colonists, the railroad men, the water companies, the Brown brothers, the realtors like Vernice Roberts, and the communities who came in waves all left us a playbook: infrastructure + rules + narrative = place. If we update those levers with modern delivery, fairer financing, and protections that keep long-time neighbors in place, we can honor the best of our history without repeating its exclusions. That’s the balance to strike …and the work ahead.
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Dr. Brent Musson is a public policy specialist and modern‐methods advocate focused on industrialized housing solutions for multifamily development.