Duarte High School, 1969
Chase’s Avocado Hut, East Duarte, 1937
Thanks to Calisphere for the above photo.
This is a westbound look at Huntington Drive. The picture above is from 1937. So address numbering is different today than it was in 1937. These roadside fruit & produce stands were a fixture up until the late 1970s, even until the 1980s, about the time when the real estate boom began in Southern California.
Wikipedia explains that
Foothill Boulevard remains parallel to Interstate 210 until entering the Arcadia city limits, where it heads due east and the freeway heads southeast. This section of Foothill Boulevard, which ends at Mountain Avenue in Monrovia, was also a part of US 66 until the late 1930s. Before Huntington Drive was built through Duarte, Foothill Boulevard ran along the current routing of Royal Oaks Drive between Shamrock Avenue in Monrovia just past Highland Avenue in Duarte, meeting the current end of Foothill Boulevard at the San Gabriel River bridge. Most of the old route in eastern Duarte was removed during the housing boom in the 1940s. The third section of Foothill Boulevard is accessed by going south on Mountain and going east on Huntington Drive through the Los Angeles County cities of Monrovia and Duarte. Upon crossing the San Gabriel River into Irwindale, Huntington turns into Foothill Boulevard. Foothill passes through the city of Azusa, where it jogs north at Citrus Avenue. It continues through Glendora one block north of the old U.S. Route 66 to Amelia Avenue. In Azusa, east of Cerritos Avenue, Alosta Avenue (the old U.S. Route 66) forks southeast (the city of Glendora renamed Alosta Avenue “Route 66”), and at Amelia Avenue, it turns back into Foothill Boulevard. At the interchange with SR 210 near the San Dimas/La Verne city limits, Foothill Boulevard is defined as State Route 66, although it is unsigned in Los Angeles County.
Duarte Library, Recessed in Bank of America Parking Lot, 1955
This is not the library on Buena Vista Avenue. This is the smaller library recessed in the Bank of America parking lot, located at 1430 East Huntington Drive, Duarte at the corner of Huntington and Brycedale. I’d only been in here a handful of times.
Duarte Library, circa 1955. Duarte Library began service on an established basis in 1950. In 1954, a storefront building in Bank of America Square was made available. Since the location was more central, more patrons came and circulation increased.
Duarte Medical Building, 1230 Huntington Drive, 2013
I posted this because this medical building has been razed the last time I was in Duarte. I always loved the ranch-style building itself. It was built in 1954 and was still in good condition when I shot this. But maybe the new owner is using it for higher rents, like condos or a multiple-level medical building. Who knows?
Michael Chapman found the video on YouTube and wrote,
There was a Restaurant close by owned by musician/entertainer, ‘Brook Brown who use to entertain at His Restaurant on Fri & Sat evenings on the N side of Huntington Dr. some may recall…
I never knew Brook Brown, but I do recall a fellow Duartean, Lance Miller, mentioning him in a comment back in 2020. Back on December 8, 2020, he wrote,
Hi Mike, I sure enjoy reading your recollections. I’ve inquired about the Van Halen/Duarte connection many times on the net. They played several times in Duarte at the casino and Barnacles, I remember the slightly older kids from Third St- Donald Ross, Jeff Goldsmith, Debbie & Donna Parker- all went to see them at the Casino but I was too timid. Oh well. Barnacle Bills became ‘Brooke Brown’s Cabaret Club’ [located @ 1846 Huntington Drive] which apparently became a fixture of the late ’70s-early ’80s country-rock scene…Dwight Yoakum has talked about that place on his SiriusXM radio shows. It’s funny to read your recollections and it sure brings back memories…I occasionally drive through Duarte but can hardly find any remnants from my memories so it’s nice to have your blog.
Bair Home Fire in Maddock Canyon, 1952
Duarte fire, 1952
Duarte fire, 25 August 1952. General views of fire.;Caption slip reads: ‘Photographer: Milligan. Date: 1952-08-25. Assignment: Duarte fire. Los Angeles County firemen under direction of Assistant Chief R.W Percey douses still smoking ruins of the Bair home on Royal Oaks Drive in Duarte, near the opening of Maddock Canyon. Brush and forest fire started after home caught fire about 2 p.m. yesterday. Firemen nearly had the house fire extinguished when water pressure failed and flames swept up the canyon to burn more than 2,000 acres of brush and scrub trees. Fire traveled over San Bernardino mountains two miles from Bair home and was reported out of control at 10 p.m. last night.Duarte; Los Angeles; California; USA. (Photo by Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries/Corbis via Getty Images)
Duarte Garage @ Bradbourne at Huntington Drive
It’s funny. There are a handful of structures and scenes that form my earliest memories of Duarte, CA, that tiny hollow where we moved to in 1960 from San Gabriel. I was born at St. Luke’s Hospital in Pasadena, CA, which was the major hospital for most of the San Gabriel Valley back in the 50’s and 60’s. The structures in Duarte that I will never forget are the Bear Frame & Wheel on Huntington Drive just west of Las Lomas, the Boulevard Café on the north side of Huntington just west of Buena Vista, Aqualand, the Duarte Market up on Highland and Royal Oaks, and this Duarte Garage, Rock Town, the avocado groves west and northwest of Greenbank Avenue, the enduring San Gabriel Riverbed, the “Bowl,” the mobile home park on Bradbourne Avenue where I used to deliver the Herald Examiner on my first paper route, the VFW pub on Huntington Drive, and others.
Elsa Moreno has it posted on her FB page along with a few other images of Duarte. On her FB page, I wrote on Wednesday, December 30, 2020, at 3:44pm,
Great pic. I do remember that garage and the field to its west, where a lone tax office used to sit recessed from Huntington Dr. There was a footpath worn by residents & kids that cut diagonally through that field. On the other side of that corner, on the northeast corner of Huntington & Bradbourne, was the old Lerner gas station where the great Rich Molyneux used to work.
Mayfair Market, Azusa, CA
I want to continue with the Azusa theme since my dad took us out to Azusa so often to attend mass at St. Frances and to McDonald’s, the Foothill Drive-thru, Penny’s in the Foothill Shopping Center, and other places.
Here is a more resolute, up-close shot of some of the stores. I remember the Windsor, the JC Penny’s, but I don’t recall the Woolworths, one of my Dad’s favorite stores.
There was a shot I found at The Life & Times of Azusa of a couple sitting on a display in the JC Penny’s store. And what struck me about that shot was that it reminded me of how we used to go to that Penny’s and enter sometimes through the front of the store or through the rear near where the models occupying that display. You can see the rear sectioned parking lot. 
The building seen through the windows and out in the parking lot is the old Mayfair Market where we’d stop frequently after mass. I love this scene because it reminded me of how we would frequently enter this JC Penny’s from this rear parking lot. At the Mayfair Market, Dad would let us buy candy or some treat. As kids when we entered the Mayfair Market, we went directly to the candy/cookie aisle where we scooped up a handful of Tootsie Rolls along with those colorful and convenient boxes of Animal Crackers. Remember those? They came with a shoe-string for eas And I was no kid, but apparently, I had kid tastes yet.
It’s funny because just last week, February 8, 2021, I was sharing a memory with my brother, Tom, about having leafed through the Sports section of the Herald-Examiner to learn the details of the 1972 AFC Divisional football game between the Pittsburgh Steelers (led by Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Rocky Bleier, “Mean” Joe Greene, Terry Hanratty, and others) and the Oakland Raiders. The game took place at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh on December 23, 1972, and was famous for “The Immaculate Reception” catch made by fullback, Franco Harris. As Dad headed slowly through the shopping center parking lot, I scanned the lede, the photo, and took in the smell of the Sports section.
Lucky Lager Brewing Company, 1955
Well, these photos don’t copy well . . . for a reason, of course. So open this link to get a fuller view of this shot. It is terrific.
The caption reads
The General Brewing Company first commercially introduced Lucky Lager in 1934. General Brewing became Lucky Lager Brewing Company in 1948, and the Azusa plant opened in 1949. The plant was sold to the Miller Brewing Corp in 1966. In 1971, millionaire beer baron Paul Kalmanovitz bought Lucky Lager Brewing and again changed the name back to General Brewing Company. The Azusa, California brewery was eventually closed soon after.
Azusa Foothill Drive-In Theater, 1963
This pic looks like a decent shot of what remains of the Foothill Drive-In.
A few aerial views of the lot where the drive-in used to be.
View #1: This picture doesn’t do it justice but it is a start. Open this link for a fuller shot. It’s an aerial shot of the Foothill Drive-In Theater in Azusa.
The caption reads
Aerial view of Azusa Foothill Drive-In Theater, located at 675 Foothill Blvd. in Azusa; [the] view is looking north. Foothill Blvd. is horizontally at [the] forefront; Alosta Ave. curves from Foothill Blvd. to bottom right. The AT & SF RR [or Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railroads] runs horizontally at [the] middle; Rockvale Ave. is vertically at [the] center-right, stopping at the railroad tracks. Azusa Pacific University is at [the] bottom right and a McDonald’s two arch building (later demolished) is on left. Photograph dated January 20, 1963.
View #2: This shot, also dated 1963, shows Foothill Blvd. facing east.
View #3: Expand it here.
Check out this one [Grateful to Life & Times in Azusa for the following shots]:
And this one . . . 
What I like about this shot is that it includes so many other landmarks of Azusa that I, and my family, used to enjoy. For example, it contains the shopping center to the left of the drive-in theater, where my parents and sisters used to shop occasionally on Saturdays. Recessed farther back in that lot, to the northeast, was a bowling alley where we used to bowl. In fact, I actually took a bowling class at Citrus, where I learned how to spin the ball, place it on the lane, and so forth. It was great fun. My highest score ever was 275, not a perfect score but not a terrible mark either.
At the Foothill Drive-In, I saw the 1967 biopic Bonnie & Clyde, starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. My cousin, Chuck Pullman and his wife, Sally, took me. With them, I also saw the 1973 romantic drama, The Way We Were at the Foothill Drive-In, starring Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford. I loved the sounds of the trains and locomotive as it moved behind the theater during the movie. It gave those times an idyllic history for me.
A couple of school mates, Scott Nelson from Ontario, Canada, and Jacques from the Netherlands, shared an apartment on Alosta in Glendora. These young men didn’t have much. Scott came to Azusa on a baseball scholarship, but then got hurt and was sidelined for months. They didn’t even have a refrigerator to store their food when I first met them, so they ate out a lot. But one memory was that 6 to 8 of us crammed into my 1970s Volkswagen bug, my 8-track player playing Supertramp’s 1974 album, Crime of the Century while driving through an empty parking lot to that Azusa Bowl recessed off of Foothill and went bowling late one night. It was great fun.
I loved Foothill Blvd growing up. My dad would take us to the church at St. Francis of Rome.
One of my great memories was running cross country in a mini-invitational, called The Citrus Invitational, through and around the Monrovia Nursery there in Azusa. Was always fascinated with the fact that something named Monrovia was located smack dab in the center of Azusa.
We only drove past but never stopped to see what was behind the walls at the Lindley-Scott House. Built in 1911, the Lindley-Scott House has been providing personalized weddings, wedding receptions, Banquet Facilities and Catering since 1978.
Duarte, CA 