History
In 1901, Henry E. Huntington (nephew and heir to the fortune of Southern Pacific Railroad founder Collis P. Huntington) began the Pacific Electric Railway as a way to develop the lands surrounding Los Angeles. The main trunk line eastwards into the San Gabriel Valley passed to the south of Pasadena (with branch lines peeling off), skirting the line of hills just south of the San Gabriel Mountains. Huntington chose for himself a large tract of land on one of these hills (which on a clear day has a view of the ocean, 22 miles (35 km) distant). When automobile ownership rose in Southern California, this main line was converted into a wide divided highway, with four tracks running down the median. In 1925, Pacific Electric began converting its train lines into bus routes, a process that culminated in 1953, when the bulk of its routes were closed.
Read more about this topic: Huntington Drive
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (17371809)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not history which uses men as a means of achievingas if it were an individual personits own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (18181883)