From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The San Gabriel Valley is a valley comprised of most of the eastern portion of Los Angeles County, California south of the San Gabriel Mountains. The eastern part of the San Gabriel Valley is in close proximity to the Inland Empire. At one time predominantly agricultural, the San Gabriel Valley is today almost entirely urbanized and is a part of the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Brief San Gabriel Valley timeline
People
The majority of people residing in the San Gabriel Valley are Hispanics and Asian Americans. The white population is smaller due to a mass exodus that occured during much of the 1980s and 1990s; i.e., "white flight." Many whites have resettled in southern Orange County (e.g., Dana Point, Mission Viejo, and San Juan Capistrano), San Diego County, and in other regions of the United States. The remaining white population in the San Gabriel Valley resides primarily in the communities of Pasadena, Glendora, Sierra Madre, Charter Oak, and in the northern part of Covina (the southern part is increasingly Hispanic). The population of African Americans is relatively low in the San Gabriel Valley compared to Los Angeles and some of its closer-in suburbs such as Inglewood.
Hispanics, mainly Mexican Americans or Chicanos, are especially dominant in Azusa, Baldwin Park, City of Industry, El Monte, La Puente, Montebello, the southwestern part of Monterey Park (near East Los Angeles and the Belvedere district of Los Angeles), Rosemead, South El Monte, and West Covina.
The San Gabriel Valley has the largest concentration of Chinese American communities in Southern California. Taiwanese Americans are the most dominant subgroup. Communities with a high percentage of Asian Americans include Alhambra, Arcadia, Diamond Bar, Hacienda Heights, Monterey Park, Rosemead, Rowland Heights, San Gabriel, San Marino, Temple City, and Walnut. According to a 2004 report by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Walnut, Rowland Heights, San Gabriel, San Marino, Rosemead and Monterey Park are majority Asian American.
Other Asian American groups include smaller pockets of Filipino Americans, many of whom reside in West Covina - especially around the Little Manila enclave - and Walnut, and Vietnamese Americans in San Gabriel and Rosemead.
Many parts of the San Gabriel Valley are working-class areas although, like many other regions, some cities in the valley have middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods as well. Predominantly working-class communities include Azusa, El Monte and La Puente. Middle-class communities include Alhambra, Pasadena, and West Covina. Wealthier communities include Bradbury, Diamond Bar and San Marino. Social problems such as crime, drug abuse, vandalism by graffiti and other means, failing schools, poverty, and youth gangss are steadily on the rise throughout the San Gabriel Valley. Like other suburban areas, traffic congestion is worsening.
Local area
The San Gabriel Valley is home to the annual Tournament of Roses Parade, which is broadcast live on television on New Year's Day from Pasadena. After the parade, the Rose Bowl game between two competing rival college football teams is also live from Pasadena.
The city of Pasadena serves somewhat of a cultural center for the San Gabriel Valley. Several art-house film and play theatres are located in Pasadena, including the renowned Pasadena Playhouse. In addition, the local National Public Radio station KPCC 89.3 FM broadcasts from Pasadena City College.
Old Town Pasadena, which has been restored and rejuvenated, remains highly popular. Old Town has an active nightlife, a shopping mall, chic boutiques, outdoor cafés, nightclubs, comedy clubs, and fancy restaurants. It is also pedestrian friendly. The area is envied by many other communities which hope to emulate its successes through commercial redevelopment and reviving their own downtown areas or "Main Streetss". For example, the city of Azusa has attempted to encourage redevelopment of its once-dilapidated downtown section by using a Route 66 theme. Covina has had moderate success with its nostalgic Downtown Covina, with emphasis placed on a small-town America atmosphere and mom-and-pop merchants rather than big-box retail chains.
The city of Baldwin Park is the birthplace of the popular hamburger fast food chain In-N-Out Burger. Its first location opened in the city in 1948.
The Caltech and Cal Poly Pomona are located in the San Gabriel Valley. Caltech is famed for its Richter scale, which measures the magnitude of earthquakes of California. Caltech seismologistss also conduct research on earthquakes in the field. The university is also responsible for the well-known Jet Propulsion Laboratory (located in nearby La Cañada Flintridge), which designs and engineers many of NASA's spacecraft. Cal Poly Pomona is located on the site where breakfast cereal magnate Will Keith Kellogg once owned acres of farmland; Kellogg Hill (near the intersection of the 10 and 210 freeways) is named after him. The primary programs of Cal Poly Pomona are agriculture and livestock although they are diminishing as the area becomes increasingly urban.
In 2003, voters in the unincorporated community of Hacienda Heights defeated a proposal to incorporate as a city. It remains an unincorporated district governed by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors rather than by a locally-elected mayor and city council. Hacienda Heights is home to Hsi Lai Temple, the largest Buddhist monastery and temple in the United States.
Urban development
The cities of Covina and Pasadena were formerly the sites of the citrus industry. Nowadays, the San Gabriel Valley has lost much of its rustic flavor. Many equestrian trails in the San Gabriel Valley have disappeared or in disuse. Several remaining rural countryside-like areas include the area between eastern West Covina and Cal Poly Pomona and in Walnut and Diamond Bar, although they are encroached upon by heavy urban expansion.
Asian American communities
Given the San Gabriel Valley's large population of Asian Americans, several business districts were developed to serve their needs. Hence, there are four major de facto "Chinatowns" in the Valley. This trend began in the city of Monterey Park during the late 1970s when many affluent Chinese professionals, mostly from Taiwan (formally the Republic of China), began settling in the area. At the time, Monterey Park was marketed by realtors in Taiwan as the "Chinese Beverly Hills" to encourage future investors. Other Mandarin Chinese-speaking immigrants of the middle and working classes from Taiwan and Mainland China later followed. Settlement in the city picked up the pace in the 1980s and in turn replaced white-owned businesses whose owners either resettled elsewhere or passed away. Soon, Chinese shopping centers with supermarkets serving as anchors were developed.
The city was also the site of xenophobia, as Chinese businesses were replacing others and Chinese-language materials began filling the local library. Initially, many Chinese restauranteurs and business owners at the time used Chinese script and not use English or Romanized names on their business signs. This changed in 1986, however, as the city council of Monterey Park enacted an ordinance forcibly requiring the Chinese businesses to translate and describe their businesses and nature in English as well.
Monterey Park, dubbed "Little Taipei" (after the capital of the Taiwan or the ROC) by some people in the community, is widely regarded as the premier suburban Chinese American community outside of the old Cantonese Chinese-dominated Chinatown in Downtown Los Angeles. In the late 1980s and 1990s, other Chinese American communities followed suit and many businesses and modern and impressive shopping centers were then developed throughout the San Gabriel Valley. For instance, in Alhambra, an old 1950s-era carhop diner was purchased and converted into a Chinese restaurant in the late 1980s. In San Gabriel, a Chinese hypermarket and strip mall replaced a shuttered Target store.
Numerous Chinese (mainly Taiwanese and some Cantonese) and Vietnamese American businesses line the streets of:
- Monterey Park - Atlantic Boulevard, Garfield Avenue, Garvey Avenue
- San Gabriel - Valley Boulevard, San Gabriel Boulevard, Las Tunas Drive
- Alhambra - Valley Boulevard (usually closed off for the annual Chinese New Year street festival)
- Rowland Heights - Colima Road, Nogales Avenue
In Rowland Heights, a handful of Korean American strip malls co-exist with Chinese American businesses.
Another ethnic enclave is the Filipino American business district of Little Manila, which consists of a few strip malls and two supermarkets. It is located on Azusa Avenue and Amar Road in West Covina.
Institutions of higher learning
Local sites of interest
Transportation
Foothill Transit and the MTA provide bus transit services throughout the San Gabriel Valley. The main MTA Bus Terminal is located in El Monte. In addition, the Metrolink (operated by the MTA) commuter train runs west towards Downtown Los Angeles and east to San Bernardino through the Valley.
The San Gabriel Valley is served by several major freeways, including the San Bernardino Freeway (Interstate 10), Foothill Freeway (I-210), San Gabriel River Freeway (I-605), and the Long Beach Freeway (I-710). State highways include the Orange Freeway (California 57), the Pomona Freeway (California 60), Ventura Freeway (California 134), and the Pasadena Freeway (California 110).
The 710 Freeway ends abruptly (or begins, depending on one's perspective) on the western border of Alhambra, near California State University, Los Angeles. For several years, the extension of the 710 Freeway to the 110 Freeway in Pasadena has generated a long, controversial, and contentious debate. Many residents in South Pasadena fear losing their homes and businesses to clear the way for construction. The MTA, an ardent proponent of the extension, has proposed the idea of constructing an underground tunnel connecting the two freeways.
In 2002, the Foothill Freeway was extended beginning from the San Dimas and La Verne, just outside of the San Gabriel Valley area. It replaced the California 30 and it reaches into San Bernardino County.
Calfornia State Highway 39 (Azusa Avenue and San Gabriel Canyon Road) leads north into the San Gabriel Mountains to the Crystal Lake Recreation Area. The portion connecting to the Angeles Crest Highway (California 2) is inaccessible and has been closed off since the early 1970s due to rockslides.
Several large newspaper companies serve the large Chinese American readership in the Los Angeles area and they have offices in the San Gabriel Valley. The local daily Chinese-language newspapers Chinese Daily News (Los Angeles edition of the World Journal newspaper) and International Daily News are both printed in Monterey Park and circulated and distributed throughout Chinese American communities in the San Gabriel Valley, the Los Angeles Chinatown, San Diego, and in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Los Angeles edition of Sing Tao is printed in Alhambra.
Area codes
Most of the San Gabriel Valley lies within the 626 telephone area code although some cities in the eastern portion are in the 909 area code.Local media originating in the Valley
Newspapers
The local daily English-language newspapers are the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Pasadena Star-News, printed in West Covina and Pasadena, respectively. Radio stations
The local NPR member station is KPCC 89.3 FM, which originates from Pasadena City College. KSAK 90.1 FM is aired from Mt. San Antonio College and has limited reception - it can only be heard in the city of Walnut. Several ethnic radio stations in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese languages are broadcasted from Pasadena.Filming locations
Several blockbuster Hollywood films have been filmed on location in the San Gabriel Valley. Pasadena served as the gloomy background of a fictional Illinois town of Haddonfield in John Carpenter's 1978 horror flick Halloween. In the Robert Zemeckis' time travel adventure Back to the Future (1985, 1989), Michael J. Fox's character traveled back in time on the huge parking lot of Puente Hills Mall in the City of Industry that served the location of the fictitious Twin Pines Mall. In the movie, Pasadena was the backdrop of the 1950s Hill Valley neighborhood and El Monte served as a futuristic but dilapidated neighborhood. Forrest Gump (1994), starring Tom Hanks, was filmed at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park. Wal-Martization of the San Gabriel Valley
Wal-Mart is currently undergoing construction in Baldwin Park. In January 22, 2004, the city council of West Covina - in a 3-2 vote - rejected the proposal of the development of Wal-Mart in the city.Cities and Communities
The incorporated cities and unincorporated neighborhoods of the San Gabriel Valley include: Alhambra, Arcadia, Azusa, Baldwin Park, Bassett, Bradbury, Charter Oak, City of Industry, Covina, Diamond Bar, Duarte, East Pasadena, El Monte, Glendora, Hacienda Heights, Irwindale, La Puente, Monrovia, Montebello, Monterey Park, Otterbein, Pasadena, Rosemead, Pomona, Rowland Heights, San Dimas, San Gabriel, San Marino, Sierra Madre, South El Monte, South Pasadena, Temple City, Valinda, Walnut and West Covina.
