Woodlands Area Has Century-Old Appeal : Verdugo Canyon: Area of northeast Glendale offers wildlife encounters, sense of history.

Doris McKently recalls the day in the late 1950s when she was in front of her Verdugo Woodlands home in northeast Glendale and a Buick crept around the corner, its occupants peering out in search of something. “Dad’s a relative of the Verdugo family,” the driver explained, “and he said there used to be an adobe around here.”

McKently--whose parents, Ernest and Jane Bashor, had purchased the circa-1860 Verdugo Adobe and surrounding lots in 1946--offered the visitors a tour of the nearby historical landmark. Out of the car stepped an elderly man named Frank Urquidez, whose family had owned vineyards in the Verdugo foothills in the early 1900s. Although Urquidez was ailing, he had requested to visit the adobe, a place of happy childhood memories. He and McKently walked slowly through the grounds, taking in the adobe and Oak of Peace, where Lt. Col. John C. Fremont and Mexican Gen. Andres Pico made plans for a peace treaty between the United States and Mexico in 1847.

Urquidez brightened when he gazed up at the hill behind the adobe and said, “That’s where my father and uncle caught the bear,” McKently recalled. The bear, Urquidez explained, was later used as an attraction at bullfights.

McKently was thrilled to hear the tale, because as a teacher and lecturer on Glendale history, she had often related the legend of the bears that once inhabited the Verdugo Mountains. “There were supposedly so many bears in the canyon that if you were going in the early days to a fiesta up in La Canada, you’d be met down about where Glendale College is now by a horseman who would wave his serape and rattle his spurs to scare the bears away,” McKently said.

*

About a month after her meeting with Urquidez, McKently saw his obituary in the local newspaper. “This had been his sentimental pilgrimage,” she said.

You’ll find many longtime residents with tales of wildlife encounters and other colorful reminiscences in Verdugo Canyon in northeast Glendale.

Encompassing the neighborhoods of Verdugo Woodlands, Oakmont and Montecito Park, Verdugo Canyon is rife with early Southern California history. The area, along with the rest of Glendale and other neighboring cities, was part of the 36,403 acres known as Rancho San Rafael that were granted to retired Spanish corporal Jose Maria Verdugo by Spanish Gov. Pedro Fages. The Verdugo Woodlands is where Catalina Verdugo, the blind daughter of Don Jose Verdugo, lived in the adobe, which is the oldest house in Glendale.

What brought residents to the area when developer F.P. Newport lured them to the Woodlands in the 1910s still is the attraction today: safe and quiet neighborhoods; a highly vegetated, sylvan setting; wildlife, and proximity to downtown Glendale, Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.

The wooded region is bounded on the west by the Verdugo Mountains, on the south by Mountain Street, on the east by the Glendale Freeway and San Rafael Hills, and on the north by the Oakmont Country Club and Verdugo Boulevard. There are about 5,000 single-family and multiple-unit dwellings in Verdugo Canyon, according to Glendale city planner Jim Glaser.

Although most of the houses were built in the 1920s to 1960s, it is not unusual to find a modest 1915-era cottage a couple of doors away from a large, remodeled Mediterranean. House sizes and architectural styles are as varied as the canyon’s $189,000 to $700,000-plus price range, with the average selling price at $349,000, said Bonnye LaPenotiere Sirk, owner of Rossmoyne Realty in Glendale.

The lower figure may get you a 75-year-old, one-time weekend cabin nestled in the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains, while a higher price might buy a 1980s 5,500-square-foot house in the Oakmont Country Club area.

Styles are a mix: besides the adobe and a Rudolph M. Schindler historical landmark built in 1941, the canyon offers everything from Spanish Colonial Revivals to English Tudors; cottages to big old clapboards to remodels and multiple-unit dwellings. With the exception of the tracts built in the 1970s and 1980s, most of the houses were custom-built and have large, deep lots, according to Sirk.

Jean Gilbertson, a medical anthropologist who commutes 15 minutes to Kaiser Permanente in Pasadena, lived on the Westside and in Glendale’s San Rafael Hills before opting for a 1951 house in the canyon’s Oakmont neighborhood last July.

For $275,000, Gilbertson, who is single and lives with her grown daughter, got a 1,700-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath ranch-style home. Besides her quest for privacy and safety, Gilbertson wanted “an older, interesting house and that’s what I found--all windows, decking, ivy and large oak trees. It’s also kind of nice to hear the coyotes howl at night.”

Ruth Moore--whose mother bought a half-acre lot in the Verdugo Woodlands for $1,100 in 1911 and later built a couple of houses on the property--has childhood memories of playing with frogs and turtles in streams that used to run through the neighborhoods. “Just the other morning I had a doe and two fawns in my back yard--chewing on my tomato plants.”

A drive through the neighborhood reveals dense vegetation. All of those trees and flowers are one of the reasons Mark Norley, a retired art teacher, has stayed in the Woodlands since 1957. “From one point in my back yard I can count 43 different kinds of trees, like redwoods, California live oak, eucalyptus, sycamore, date and Washingtonian palms, orange and lemon,” he said. “There’s even a rare Irish yew tree.”

Hedy Murman, 80, is another longtime resident who never saw reason to live elsewhere. Murman and her husband, Edwin, built a house next door to her girlhood home in 1960, where they raised three daughters. Her Swiss-immigrant father, Eugene Mader, forked over $3,000 for an acre in the Woodlands in 1915 and built a weekend cabin and two other houses on the property. On the advice of late Theodore Payne, a well-known Los Angeles area landscaper, Mader planted oak trees and California lilac shrubs; several of the oaks remain. Wine was made with grapes from the nearby Urquidez vineyards and honey from the hives on the family’s hill.

“That was what you did, of course, in Southern California,” Murman said. “You had olives from your olive trees and honey from your honey bees.”

For newer residents, like Texas transplants David and Raeanna Williams, both 33, and daughter Lauren, 2, the canyon’s appeal is a bit less romantic but no less important: they wanted a safe, clean area with good schools.

The couple moved to Glendale in 1991 to open a State Farm Insurance office. They rented a house in the city’s Rossmoyne neighborhood for a year, and when housing prices dropped, they started house hunting.

After looking at about 30 homes in Glendale, the couple decided on a 1,360-square-foot cottage-style house for $265,000. Built in 1941, the house has two bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths and a detached garage. “Everything out here’s much smaller than where we came from,” David said. “Our house in Arlington was twice as big and a third the price. But it’s a nice lot and offers plenty of room in the back yard for a dog and little girl to run around and play.”

Nearby Fremont Elementary School got a good recommendation from neighbors, Raeanna said. That, along with the nearby shopping village of picturesque Montrose and the house’s move-in condition were what sold them on Montecito Park. “We were starting a new business and wanted to put all our time and energy into that--not into redoing a house.”

Verdugo Woodlands resident Fern Shochat and her late husband, George, were expecting their first child when they moved in 1940 from a rental house on Alvarado Street in Los Angeles to the canyon after he landed a teaching job in Glendale. The wooded setting with its many squirrels and deer was and always will be home, Fern said. “Now I’m alone, but I have big wonderful parties on my back patio,” she said. “And I always have a view of my own wild hill.”

Shochat said she is embarrassed to reveal--especially to real estate agents--what she paid 53 years ago for her 1917-built, foothill home: $3,500. The three-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath house has been appraised at about $300,000.

“The other day when the house across the street sold, a young man who had hoped to get it for his family was so disappointed that he knocked on my door and asked me if I wanted to sell mine,” Shochat said. “He said it was where he wanted to raise his children. And that’s the way we felt too.”

At a Glance

Population

1993 estimate: 12,563

1980-90 change: 14.8%

Annual income

Per capita: 36,328

Median household: 60,845

Household distribution

Less than $30,000: 13.5%

$30,000 - $60,000: 26.5%

$60,000 - $100,000: 28.4%

$100,000 - $150,000: 17.5%

$150,000 + 14.1%