Local city information for Glendale, CA

For the community in Humboldt County, see Glendale, Humboldt County, California.

Glendale () is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It lies at the eastern end of the San Fernando Valley, is bisected by the Verdugo Mountains, and is a suburb in the Greater Los Angeles Area. The city is bordered to the northwest by the Tujunga neighborhood of Los Angeles; to the northeast by La Cañada Flintridge and the unincorporated area of La Crescenta; to the west by Burbank; to the east by Pasadena; to the southwest by the Atwater Village neighborhood of East Los Angeles; and to the southeast by the Eagle Rock and Glassell Park neighborhoods of East Los Angeles. The Golden State, Ventura, Glendale, and Foothill freeways run through the city. The city is policed by the Glendale Police Department.

As of the 2000 census, the city population was 194,973. Since then, there have been estimates of 201,326 by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2004, 207,007 by the California State government in 2005, and 207,303 as listed by the California Department of Finance in 2009 , making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the seventeenth largest city in the state of California.

Glendale is famous for having helped -- in conjunction with Burbank -- father the emerging age of aviation, with its now defunct Grand Central Airport.

Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery contains the remains of many celebrities and local residents. It is famous as the pioneer of a new style of cemetery.


The area was long inhabited by the Tongva people.

José María Verdugo, a corporal in the Spanish army from Baja California, received a grant of the Rancho San Rafael in 1798, an area he had been farming since 1784. In 1860 His grandson Teodoro Verdugo built the Verdugo Adobe, which is the oldest building in Glendale. The property is the location of the Oak of Peace where early Californio leaders including Jesus Pico met in 1847 and decided to surrender to Lieutenant Colonel John C. Frémont.

Verdugo's descendants sold the ranch in various parcels, some of which are included in present-day Atwater Village, Eagle Rock, and Highland Park neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

In 1884, residents gathered to form a town and chose the name "Glendale". Residents to the southwest formed "Tropico" in 1887. The Pacific Electric Railroad brought streetcar service in 1904.

Glendale incorporated in 1906, and annexed Tropico 12 years later. An important civic booster of the era was Leslie Coombs Brand (1859-1925), who built an estate in 1904 called El Miradero featuring an eye-catching mansion whose architecture combined characteristics of Spanish, Moorish, and Indian styles, copied from the East Indian Pavilion at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition (World's Fair) held in Chicago, which he visited. Brand loved to fly, and built a private airstrip in 1919 and hosted "fly-in" parties, providing a direct link to the soon-to-be-built nearby Grand Central Airport. The grounds of El Miradero are now city-owned Brand Park and the mansion is the Brand Library, according to the terms of his will. . Brand partnered with Henry E. Huntington to bring the Pacific Electric Railway, or the "Red Cars," to the area. Today, he is memorialized by one of the city's main thoroughfares, Brand Boulevard.

The city's population rose from 13,756 in 1920 to 62,736 in 1930. The Forest Lawn Memorial Park opened in 1917. Pioneering endocrinologist and entrepreneur Dr. Henry R. Harrower opened his clinic in Glendale in 1920, which for many years was the largest business in the city. The American Green Cross, an early conservation and tree preservation society, was formed in 1926 (it disbanded three years later and the current organization of that name is unrelated). In 1964, Glendale was selected by George Lincoln Rockwell to be the West Coast headquarters of the American Nazi Party. Its offices, on Colorado Street in the downtown section of the city, remained open until the early 1980s.

List your home on the MLS in Glendale, California

Copyright © Owners.com 2012. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy • Terms & Conditions • Site Map

Equal Housing Opportunity