Eaton then tried to sell the land for the partners, and in late 1873 helped broker a deal with Daniel Berry, who represented a group of investors from Indiana to purchase 4,000 acres (16 km²) of the rancho. Although this included the land of present day Altadena, they developed the 2,500 section further south into Pasadena. In 1881, the land that became Altadena was sold to the Woodbury brothers, John and Fred, who launched the subdivision of Altadena in 1887 just as Southern California’s great land boom busted. The land remained mostly agricultural. However, several millionaires (mainly from Chicago) built mansions along Mariposa Street, and a small community slowly developed through the 1890s and into the new century.

 

Home of Capt. John Woodbury, built 1882, still standing and occupied.

In 1880, Capt. Frederick Woodbury and his brother John Woodbury of Marshalltown, Iowa, purchased 937 acres (3.79 km²) known as the Woodbury Ranch. John Woodbury established the Pasadena Improvement Company in 1887 with a plot plan of residential development referred to as the Woodbury Subdivision. They contacted Byron O. Clark who established a nursery in the foothills in 1875 and had since moved away. He called his nursery “Altadena Nursery”, a name he coined from the Spanish “alta” meaning “upper” and “dena” from Pasadena. Woodbury asked if he could use the name “Altadena” for his subdivision and Clark agreed.

The newly sprouted community of Altadena immediately began to attract millionaires from the East. In 1887 Andrew McNally, the printing magnate from Chicago and his good friend Col. G. G. Green had built mansions on what was to become Millionaire’s Row, Mariposa Street near Santa Rosa. Newspaper moguls William Armiger Scripps and William Kellogg built side by side just east of Fair Oaks Avenue. The grandson of Andrew McNally, Wallace Neff, became a famous Southern California architect. He started his career in Altadena with the design and construction of St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church ( parish est.1918) which was dedicated in October 1926.

Over the years Altadena has been subject to attempted annexation by Pasadena. Annexation was stopped in 1956 by community campaigns though it has been resurrected several times since by Pasadena without success. Had the annexation succeeded, Pasadena would be the 108th largest city in the United States.

While Altadena long refused wholesale annexation by neighboring Pasadena, the larger community nibbled at its edges in several small annexations of neighborhoods through the 1940s. With early 1960s redevelopment in Pasadena, the routing of extensions of 134 and 210 freeways, and lawsuits over the desegregation of Pasadena Unified School District, there was white flight and convulsive racial change in Altadena. In 1960, its black population was under four percent; over the next 15 years, half the Caucasian population left and was replaced by people of color — many of whom settled on the west side of town after being displaced by Pasadena’s redevelopment and freeway projects.

The name Altadena derives from the Spanish alta, meaning “upper”, and dena from Pasadena; the area is adjacent to, but at a higher elevation than, Pasadena.

Source: Wikipedia