Town of Eagle
Rock: Yesterday and Today
Early Indian
settlers, Spanish explorers and missionaries, and Mexican rancho landowners
preceded the beginnings of the town of Eagle Rock, a pastoral suburb
of the City of Los Angeles in the first years of the 20th century. Surrounded
by hills, the Eagle Rock Valley was a rural respite far removed from
the bustling city. At the time, the Gates Strawberry Ranch, worked by
Chinese laborers, covered much of the area, replacing the grazing pastures
of the great Rancho San Rafael once owned by the Verdugo family.
Eagle Rock became more than bucolic ranchland with the arrival of the
Los Angeles Railway streetcar system in 1906. The tracks came from downtown
Los Angeles along Central Avenue, which is now Eagle Rock Boulevard,
and they extended to the intersection of Townsend Avenue and Colorado
Street, the heart of town at the time. Another route came into Eagle
Rock from Glendale and featured the "Dinkey" trolley car.
The later single-track "toonerville trolley" was known locally
as the "galloping goose" for its swaying movement and occasional
precarious track-jumping. A round waiting-station shelter dubbed "the
merry-go-round" was built in the center of the Colorado-and-Central
intersection and became the social center of town.
