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.

International Casino Club, Duarte, CA

Well, it is funny how reconstruction works. I found this video and saw the caption that reads

These soundboard excerpts of Van Halen playing ‘Superstition’ and ‘La Grange’ were recorded in 1975 at the International Casino in Duarte, CA.

But for the life of me, I could not recall the International Casino in Duarte. So I checked in with my brother, Joe, who recalled that it was located where the old Columbia Bowl was located.

Joe explained that the International Casino was THE building of the former Columbia Bowl.  He wrote,

Yeah . . . before Columbia Bowl there was the International Casino, maybe just for a year or two.  Before International Casino, it was called Royal Oaks Lanes, I believe.

Here is a matchbook from the Royal Oaks Lanes.

Here is a concert bill for Van Halen at the International Casino.

Joe added that

Barnacle Bill’s was next to the Crystal’s Cafe, I believe.

Joe said that

Yeah, Tom washed dishes there.  It might have been a different name when Tom worked there.

Ah, the Good Ol’ Days. Duarte, ca. 1895

from the California State Library.

For folks living today, this photo might almost be meaningless, for there is nothing in it that really marks Duarte proper except for Beatty Canyon in the distance.  There are no homes, no parks, no buildings to even orient oneself to.  But if you were a mountain man, one who was familiar with every inch of the San Gabriels up behind Duarte, then that would be a different story.  To folks like myself, I would find this setting just perfect.

Alright, the scene above looks like it was taken from the incline and bend on Mt. Olive Drive just south of Woodlyn Lane.

This scene is harder to tell.  I can’t even guarantee that is a photograph of any sector of Duarte.  There are no distinct Duarte landmarks and the terrain is not flat the way that section east of Mt. Olive, for example, is going up into Fish Canyon.  Hard for me to identify.  But knowing the little that I do know about how Duarte was all orange groves long, long ago I would venture a guess that this was somewhere near Mountain Avenue in Monrovia looking east toward Duarte.  

Irrigation ditch, 1924.  Man is standing at the sluice.  But that looks like Van Tassel Canyon behind him over his right shoulder.  Directly behind him might be where the old San Gabriel Valley Gun Club was where two of my brothers worked, Chuck and Joe.   

Columbia Bowl, 1977-19__?

January 31, 1977 to ____________?

If you like that matchbook, you can buy them here.

One of the more heartbreaking changes that occurred in Duarte besides the demolition of the Trails Restaurant and Swiss Park and the removal of the Bear Frame and Wheel on the north side of Huntington Drive about a thousand feet west of Las Lomas was the demolition of Columbia Bowl at the corner of Mt. Olive and Huntington Drive.

You can find a few more pictures of it and its demolition here.

Everyone had their own, different experiences at the Bowl.  I played a lot of $.25 video games and pool and bowling. Boy did I drop a lot of quarters there.  I loved the burgers that were grilled by Ms. French actually, who lived just up the street from us.  She was always so graceful and competent.  Loved her presence there.  The last time I was there was with Steve Hardy.  We shot pool in the bar.  We didn’t have any alcohol but we got a few beverages.  I ran into Pat Moore there and saw Mike Goldsmith.  There were a few fights at the bowl toward the end that always brought the cops until cops were then assigned to the Bowl, conducting patrol in the parking lot.  It got weird and perhaps unprofitable to the owners.  Not sure.  But anyway, they sold it.

210 Foothill Freeway

The Foothill Freeway or 210 was begun in 1958 and opened from Glendora to Pasadena in 1966.

210, Foothill Freeway in Monrovia, 2007.