Hidden Pasadena: Prologue

More than 50 million viewers begin each new year looking to Pasadena, tuning into the Rose Parade to see flower and seed-coated floats cruise slowly down Colorado Boulevard.  But to nearly 140,000 of those viewers, the “City of Roses” is home, a complex suburb of downtown Los Angeles with a deep history. 

Internationally known for the Rose Bowl, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena Playhouse, the Arts and Crafts Movement, Jackie Robinson, Julia Child, Octavia Butler, Mildred Pierce, its little old ladies, the Arroyo Seco, and so much more, Pasadena has played a greater role in American and Pacific histories than most of its residents even know.

The fourth season of Western Edition — the podcast from the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW) — digs deep into the “Crown City” of the San Gabriel Valley. Western Edition: Hidden Pasadena shares six little-known Pasadena stories, from Simons brickyard to Vroman’s bookstore, St. Barnabas church to the Shoya House at The Huntington. It also considers Pasadenans from the past, from John Brown’s children to John Birch’s followers.