Glendale is located at the junction of the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys. Several large earthquake faults also meet in the city including the Sierra Madre, Hollywood Verdugo and Raymond faults. It’s comprised of 31 square miles. The area was long inhabited by Tongva Native Americans.
José María Verdugo, a corporal in the Spanish army, was granted Rancho San Rafael in 1798 by the Spanish crown. He had been farming the rancho for 12 years. In 1860 his grandson, Teodoro Verdugo built the Verdugo Adobe, the oldest building in Glendale.
California became part of the United States in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which marked the end of the Mexican-American War. The Republic of California was admitted as a U.S. state on September 9, 1850.
Verdugo’s descendents parceled out and sold off Rancho San Rafael.
In 1884 locals got together to form a town, naming it Glendale. Three years later the neighboring town of Tropico was established. In 1904 Pacific Electric Railway brought streetcar from Glendale to downtown Los Angeles. Glendale incorporated in 1906 annexing Tropico in 1918.
The Forest Lawn Memorial Park opened in 1917.
The city is between Sun Valley and Tujunga to the northwest, La Cañada Flintridge and La Crescenta to the northeast, Burbank and Griffith Park to the west. It’s bounded to the east by Eagle Rock and Pasadena; to the south and southeast by Atwater Village and Glassell Park.
Glendale has a population of 195,000 people that are 54% White, 20% Latino, 16% Asian, 1% Black. The most common ethnic ancestry is Armenian, 29% of the population, one of the largest populations of Armenians in the United States. Most of Glendale’s residents, 54%, are foreign born. Only one out of three speak English at home. Only 27% speak English well. As you might suspect, Glendale is a great place for Armenian food at many small ethnic restaurants througout the city.
Glendale is renown for its shopping including the Glendale Galleria with Nordstrom, Macy’s, Target and J. C. Penney; The Americana at Brand, an upscale outdoor urban village style mall feauturing A/X Armani Exchange, Lacoste and Urban Outfitters, as well as the Glendale Fashion Center. The Americana at Brand is home for Pacific Theatres 18 screen cinemas which can accommodate 3000 movie viewers.
Glendale’s median household income is $57,000. 32% of the residents 4 years and older have a four year degree. The median age is 38. There are more than 27,000 people over 65 in the city.
The median number of rooms in apartments is 2.8. Most of the housing stock was built between 1950 and 1989, although more than 14,000 dwellings were built before 1939. The median rent is $1263 although the most common rent paid is between $1000 and $1500 a month. Most rent one or two bedroom apartments in the city. There is no rent control.
One place worth visiting in Glendale is the Deukmejian Wilderness Park named after the Republican California Governor of Armenian Heritage. It’s a 709 acre rugged site on the northern edge of the city that brushes against the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains It’s mostly chaparral and scrub, but also includes secluded streamside woodlands in Dunsmore and Cook’s Canyons. Some trails provide dramatic vistas of the Los Angeles basin. It is bordered on the north, west, and east sides by the Angeles National Forest.
