Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and the Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home of many leading scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (the leading robotics and spacecraft design and manufacturing NASA center), Art Center College of Design, the Pasadena Playhouse, California School of Culinary Arts Pasadena and the Norton Simon Museum of Art. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 133,936, making it the 160th largest city in the United States. The California Finance Department estimated the Pasadena population to be 146,166 in 2005. Pasadena is the 6th largest city in Los Angeles County, and the main cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Pasadena is located at 34° 9' 22"N 118° 7' 55"W / (34.156098, -118.131808).
The original inhabitants of Pasadena and surrounding areas was the Native American Hahamog-na tribe, a branch of the Tongva (part of the Shoshone language group). Pasadena is a part of the original Spanish land grant named Rancho del Rincon de San Pascual, so named because it was deeded on Easter Sunday to Eulalia Perez de Guillén Mariné of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. The Rancho comprised the lands of today's communities of Pasadena, Altadena and South Pasadena.
Prior to the annexation of California in 1848, the last of the Spanish owners was Manuel Garfias who was allowed to retain title to the property after statehood in 1850. Garfias sold sections of the property to the first Anglo settlers to come into the area, Dr. Benjamin Eaton, and Dr. S. Griffin. Much of the property was purchased by the honorable Benjamin Wilson who established his Lake Vineyard property in the vicinity. Wilson, known as Don Benito to the local Indians, was also owner of the Rancho Jurupa (Riverside, California) and went on to become the first Anglo mayor of Los Angeles. He is the grandfather of WWII General George S. Patton, Jr. and would have Mount Wilson named for him.
In 1873 Wilson was visited by one Dr. Daniel M. Berry of Indiana who was looking for a place in the country that could offer better climate to his patients, most of whom suffered from respiratory ailments. Berry was an asthmatic and claimed that he had his best three nights sleep at Rancho San Pascual. To keep the find a secret, Berry code-named the area "Muscat" after the grape that Wilson grew. To raise funds to bring the company of people to San Pascual, Berry formed the Southern California Orange and Citrus Growers Association for which he sold stock. The newcomers were able to purchase a large portion of the property along the Arroyo Seco and on January 31, 1874 they incorporated the Indiana Colony. As a gesture of good will, Wilson added 2,000 acres (8 km²) of then useless highland property, part of which would become Altadena.
The mail came to the Indiana Colony via Los Angeles so marked. In an attempt to obtain their own Post Office, the Colony needed to change the name to something the Postmaster General would consider more fitting. The town fathers put three names up to a vote. The first was Indianola. The second was Granada, in keeping with the area's Spanish heritage. The third was proposed by Dr. Thomas Elliott, who had contacted an Indian missionary friend in Michigan who had worked with the Minnesota Chippewa Indians. He submitted four names for translation: "Crown of the Valley," "Key of the Valley," "Valley of the Valley," and "Hill of the Valley." The names came back starting with "Weo-quan pa-sa-de-na," "Hat of the Valley." All the names ended in "pa-sa-de-na (of the valley)." The name was put to a vote, and due to its euphonious nature, it was accepted as Pasadena. Pasadena was incorporated, the second incorporated municipality of Los Angeles County after Los Angeles, in March 1886. In 1892, John H. Burnett of Galveston, Texas had visited Pasadena and when returned to his home near Houston, Texas he plotted a town along two bayous and named it Pasadena, Texas after the California city for its lush vegetation.
The popularity of the region drew people from across the country, and Pasadena eventually became a stop on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, which led to an explosion in growth. From the real estate boom of the 1880s until the Great Depression, as great tourist hotels were developed in the city, Pasadena became a winter resort for wealthy Easterners. The first of the great hotels to be established in Pasadena was the Raymond (1886) atop Bacon Hill, renamed Raymond Hill after construction. The original Mansard Victorian 200 room facility burned down on Easter morning of 1895 and was not rebuilt until 1903. It was razed during the Great Depression to make way for residential development. The Maryland Hotel existed from the early 1900s and was demolished in 1934.
Two hotel structures have survived, the Green Hotel (a co-op since 1926) and the Vista Del Arroyo (now used as a Federal courthouse).
The Hotel Green started construction on South Raymond Avenue at Kansas Street in 1887 by Mr. Webster who was unable to finish it. Colonel George Gill Green, a wealthy patent medicine distributor from New Jersey, finished the six story edifice in 1888. In 1898, he finished construction on a second edifice on the other side of Raymond and connected the two buildings with a bridge and a tunnel. The patrons arrived by train at the adjacent station. In 1902, the hotel was extended to the P.G. Wooster building at the corner of Fair Oaks Avenue and Green Street. In 1924, the hotel became a private residence. The annex was razed to its first story and sold, today known as Stat's Floral Supply. In 1970, the two wings of the hotel were partitioned creating two separate buildings. The 1898 section remained the private residence now called the Castle Green. The 1902 portion was taken over by the government's HUD program for senior residents and disabled persons, and is called the Green Hotel. In 1929, Kansas Street was widened and renamed Green Street.
The Vista Del Arroyo Hotel on Grand Avenue, commandeered by the Navy as a hospital during World War II, now houses the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Pasadena's role as a regional hub was cemented by other events, among them the Tournament of Roses Parade, which began in 1889, the opening of the Colorado Street Bridge (also known as "Suicide Bridge" from the Great Depression), the Arroyo Parkway, now Pasadena Freeway (State Route 110), opened as the first freeway in the state in 1940, and completion of the Los Angeles Metro Gold Line in 2003.