Mike Lawler Boeken

The Crescenta Valley is an upper middle-class suburb of Los Angeles. It enjoys a low crime rate and high property values. But like any community, it has a distasteful side to its history. These are the stories you won't hear from the local Chamber of Commerce--mildly amusing gossip and cringe-worthy history; racial hatred; a town close enough to Hollywood to provide quiet homes to not-so-quiet Hollywood stars, including the gossip that goes with them. And all of this in a valley between two mountain ranges that offer natural disasters on a seeming regular schedule. Like someone's dirty laundry, this history book reveals some embarrassing stains.

The Crescenta Valley is a typical suburb of the metropolis of Los Angeles, containing residential neighborhoods nestled in chaparral-covered hills. But hidden in these typical neighborhoods are remnants of an atypical past, a past made up of Hollywood legends, Prohibition-era bootleggers, and pioneers in women's rights. Crescenta Valley History: Hidden in Plain Sight tells the stories behind six places in the community that residents pass by every day, with no idea of the amazing events that took place there--six innocuous locations with impressive histories. A little shack behind an apartment that was once the home of John Steinbeck; the overgrown ruins of a former speakeasy; an abandoned sanitarium that once housed aging Hollywood stars, and now houses their ghosts; a mystical religious sanctuary run entirely by women; a former resort and Olympic training site buried deep under a suburban shopping mall; and a park created by professional baseball players and movie stars. All these sites are right here in your neighborhood! You'll never look at the Crescenta Valley the same way again.--Publisher.