The ridges and ranchlands that once covered the expanse between Burbank and Pasadena became the 16th city in Los Angeles County to incorporate. This 1906 act formalized the Township of Glendale, which had grown from the Rancho San Rafael of the Verdugo family through the Spanish, Mexican, and American colonial eras. In the 20th century, some of the oldest film studios called Glendale home. Seven movie theaters operated in the city in the 1920s and so did the first airport offering cross-country flight, Grand Central. In this book, nearly 200 vintage photographs provide a window to the city's bygone days, focusing on the era up to the Second World War, when Glendale's pleasant neighborhoods were evolving together to form one of the county's most populous and ethnically diverse cities.--From publisher description.

Glendale is one of the oldest towns in Southern California, getting its start during the rail boom of the 1880s. In 1904, it was one of the earliest communities to be served by the vast electric streetcar system consolidated throughout the Los Angeles region by tycoon Henry Huntington. In the postwar era, Glendale became a model of suburban growth and today is the third largest city in Los Angeles County. Glendale's diverse neighborhoods and commercial districts have offered pleasant living and a gamut of goods and services to residents, workers, and visitors alike. These vintage postcards spanning generations showed them a vision of Glendale at its most attractive.

Established in 1892, nine miles northwest of Phoenix in the Salt River Valley of Arizona, Glendale at first attracted farmers with strong Protestant religious convictions. Soon, however, others began to settle in the town and on the rich farmlands of the area. Although predominantly Anglos, the settlers that came in the latter 1890s and early decades of the 1900s included various ethnic minorities. Each group had a significant role in the city's development into an important agricultural center that shipped produce all over the country. World War II and its influx of servicemen to train at Glendale's Luke and Thunderbird airfields brought permanent changes to Glendale. The population doubled and doubled again and again. Today the city-Arizona's fourth largest-is a metropolitan area of 59 square miles and close to 250,000 people. This volume offers windows to understanding the growth and development of Glendale over the years.

More than a century ago, the building of a canal allowed a barren and dry area to flourish. Soon settlers were drawn to the canal, and they created a thriving community. From those early beginnings, Glendale has become one of the fastest growing cities in the country.

A piece of land handed over to pay a debt becomes a vibrant corner of Queens! Glendale, New York, lies just six miles from the center of the bustling metropolis of New York City but has always managed to retain its rural charm since its beginning. Taking its name from Glendale, Ohio, the town began with the unlikely occurrence of a piece of land changing hands in payment of a debt in the mid-1800s. Development of the land was slow in comparison to the surrounding communities, and many of the unoccupied parcels were bought up by people interested in building picnic parks and other types of recreational areas. Around that same time, a New York state law banned the construction of any more cemeteries in Manhattan, so Glendale's available land became equally attractive for this type of development. Glendale takes a journey back in time to the picnic parks, German biergartens, and early industries that took this community far from its origins as a farming town.