At one time, Monterey Park was to...

At one time, Monterey Park was to potato chips what Ft. Knox is to gold. It was here that Laura Scudder first began serving up crisp, sliced, mildly salted tubers.

Before Scudder started creating her multimillion-dollar snack food empire, Monterey Park played host to other local heroes. Spanish rancher Jose Lugo built the city’s first adobe home in 1840 near what is now South Garfield Avenue, and Irish Pony Express rider Richard Garvey, known as the “father of Monterey Park” and the namesake of one of the city’s main thoroughfares, subdivided his property and sold the parcels to pay his debts.

Monterey Park was initially called Ramona Acres and advertised as a “fog-and-frost-free” neighborhood.

As the town grew, so did surrounding cities, and by 1916 Ramona residents decided that it was time to incorporate to stop Alhambra, South Pasadena and Pasadena from dumping their sewage in Ramona. About the same time, residents decided that a more verdant-sounding name would enhance the town’s image by shifting the focus away from another sewage-related problem: the town stank.

So when it incorporated in 1916, the city became known as Monterey Park, after the nearby Monterey Hills.

A decade later, Laura Scudder and her husband, Charles, built a brick building next to their home on the northwest corner of Atlantic Boulevard and Garvey Avenue, where they parlayed a home-grown potato chip and peanut butter business into a food empire.

Although she sold her business in 1957, this matriarch of munchies continued to run its operations until her death two years later.

Over the next few decades, after the Laura Scudder Co. moved to Santa Ana in 1960, Asian emigrants started to trickle into the mostly white bedroom community.

By the 1980s, racial tension between longtime residents and new immigrants catapulted Monterey Park into the national spotlight. The controversies were over a law requiring English on business signs, Chinese books in the public library and attempts to make English the city’s official language, which triggered a recall campaign against three City Council members.

Today, many of the racial problems have faded and Monterey Park has emerged as the “new Chinatown,” the only city in the San Gabriel Valley with an Asian majority.

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Monterey Park Inside Out

STAR WATCH: Professional and amateur stargazers gather to marvel at the heavens at the Garvey Ranch Observatory, one of Monterey Park’s best-kept secrets. In the 1940s, Richard Garvey Jr., son of the ranch’s founder, started building a private observatory but died before it was finished. In 1966, after the city turned the land into a park and a former bunkhouse into a museum, the observatory opened and is run today by the Los Angeles Astronomical Society.

POTATO STORY: The Garvey Ranch Park Historical Museum boasts a Laura Scudder Room, which plays a one-hour film about the “Potato Chip Queen of the West.” Scudder developed the idea of stuffing the chips into wax bags to keep them fresh. Before that, customers had to scoop them out of a can.

OBSCURE CHIEF EXECUTIVES: Travelers never find rush-hour traffic in the tiny Monterey Park section that features Polk and Adams ways, Harrison Road, Buchanan and Pierce places and Van Buren, Tyler, Taylor and Fillmore drives.

NINE LIVES: Jardin el Encanto, a 1928 Spanish-style landmark featuring a waterfall cascading down a hillside, was once the centerpiece of a planned Beverly Hills-type development. Developer Peter N. Snyder envisioned luxury homes in the proposed Midwick View Estates, but the ambitious project flopped during the Depression. Over the years, before the city bought the building in 1980, it served as a real estate office, military academy, wedding chapel, cafe, apartment house and private home.

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By The Numbers

City Business

Date founded: May 29, 1916

Area in square miles: 7.7

Number of parks: 13

Number of city employees: 389

1995-96 budget: $48 million

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People

Population: 60,738

Households: 19,664

Average household size: 3.08

Median age: 34.2

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Ethnic Breakdown

Asian: 56%

Black: 0.5%

Latino: 31%

White: 12%

Other: 0.4%

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Money and Work Median household income: $32,605

Median household income / L.A. County: $34,965

Median home value: $235,400

Employed workers (16 and older): 27,020

Percentage of women employed: 50%

Percentage of men employed: 69%

Self-employed: 2,170

Car- poolers: 4,183

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Number of Cars Per Household

One: 31%

Two: 35%

Three or more: 24%

None: 10%

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Retail Stores

Number of stores: 393

Number of employees: 3,698

Annual sales: $365 million

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Ages

65 and older: 14%

50- 64: 15%

35- 49: 19%

18- 34: 29%

17 and younger: 23%

Source: Claritas Inc. Household expenses are averages for 1994. All other figures are for 1990. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number.