LAKE AVENUE'S LOST WOODBURY CREEK AND LONE PINE RANCH TODAY.

As promised, I recently took some photographs of Woodbury Creek and the former Lone Pine Ranch, all near the intersection of North El Molino Avenue and Atchinson Street, just west of North Lake Avenue.

The first photo shows the entrance pillar to Lone Pine Ranch on the northwest corner of El Molino and Atchinson, and this is apparently the location that one person remembers having a corral back in the 1950's still, which had smelly runoff into the creek. The original house appears to still be on the lot nearest to the intersection with the rest of the lot having apparently been subdivided for other homes starting in the 1950's and later. Atchinson wasn't put through to El Molino until sometime around 1907 and and the original ranch home in Craftsman style was built around 1903, so originally the ranch had a large area with Woodbury Creek running northwest to southeast through its parcel, where the corral would have been, most likely behind the house to the west on Atchinson, making a slope into the creek.

The next photos show the storm drain which passes under Atchinson just west of Madison, and then the natural creek is visible, although channelized, as it passes further south. A Craftsman era home is built on the lot directly to the west and the lot slopes down to the creek, allowing this seemingly one story bungalow actually to have a substory with windows below the street level. Sorry the pictures don't show the situation too well, but there is a lot of shrubbery and if you look closely you'll see the substory in a couple of the photos. All of the creek photos are looking south off of Atchinson towards the house located on the southside of Atchinson just west of Madison.

If you're in the area, take a look at this in person. It is truly amazing and can't be covered over by the city since the house has a substory below the street level!

If you have any stories about our lost Woodbury Creek, please comment.

LAKE AVENUE'S LOST CREEK ... WAS KNOWN AS WOODBURY CREEK IN THE NORTH, WILSON'S OR MILL CREEK IN THE SOUTH

Amazing how so many natural features of our landscape can be rendered invisible over time and pass from memory as generations live and die or move away. Waterways, streams, creeks, springs, lagoons, ponds, lakes were always a part of our natural landscape, even in the arid San Pascual Rancho. As the area became ever more settled, these water features were either depleted or in the way. Also, many water features appeared to be less permanent, since in the summer they may have withered away with seemingly little trace, but in winter and spring reappear with a vengance which sometime resulted in death and destruction of those who built too close or in the way of nature.

Lake Avenue's own water course, known as Woodbury Creek in the north and Wilson's Creek or Mill Creek in the south, has been known since the 1920's as the East Side Storm Drain. Beginning in the alluvial soil of the western edge of the Woodbury Ranch in Altadena and coursing down Santa Rosa, traveling through the Washington Park Arroyo, crossing from west to east of Lake Avenue at Orange Grove Boulevard, forming a lagoon behind Charles Francis Saunders' home and continuing south between Lake and Wilson, finally emerging from El Molino Canyon just north of the El Molino Viejo, flowing through the Old Mill, and finally filling Kewen Lake , also known as Wilson's Lake, the flowing stream of Lake Avenue still flows, now channelized in concrete as the East Side Storm Drain, but suffering the decapitation of its southward flow south of Maple by the intrusion of the Foothill Freeway ditch, a veritable Grand Canyon of the present age.

Hopefully, we can restore this scenic lost waterway for future generations of Pasadenans and its wildlife to enjoy. More unlikely things have happened. Woodbury ... Wilson's ... Mill Creek , the flow from the mountains to the lake. These are dreams of nature restored and appreciation of paradise lost, with hope for its rediscovery and reinstatement.