in the year 1940 the Los Angeles Basin was dotted with a scattering of communities, each one maintaining its own pride of identity. Each town cherished memories of its Spanish heritage, as well as the more recent Middle Western origins of many of its citizens. Most of the communities had developed a citrus culture, even while loosely tied to the industrial hub of the Basin - the City of Los Angeles.
The next twenty-five years, however, brought profound changes to the area. More than three million people poured into the Basin, changing it quickly into a vast urban complex. The citizens of the new metropolitan area travelled on wheels, freed from stifling space limitations by a marvelous freeway system. They enjoyed the superlatives of the whole region. Its mild climate offered a year-long invitation to play. Its natural wonders of the sea, mountains and desert beckoned one and all. Citrus groves disappeared - swallowed up by subdivisions. Rapid change became the rule. The five-county area around Los Angeles held half the people of California and more automobiles than Asia and South America combined.
How did the hundred little towns and communities in the Basis fare during this dramatic period? Did they simply disappear as separate entities, swallowed up by the bast urban tide? Did they manage to maintain their identity even as they doubled and tripled and quadrupled in population?
This book speaks to these questions for at leas one of those cities - the beautiful community of Glendora, "Pride of the Foothills." It seeks to glimpse the spirit and direction of the history of Glendora. It is a heartening story. From the Rancho era to a small citrus-centered town to a bedroom city of 38,000, Glendora managed to maintain a unity and identity that it cherished. Its story is similar to that of other cities in the basin, yet in many ways it is unique. It is a story worth telling.