The San Gabriel Valley is immediately to the east of the City of Los Angeles. Before the rise in population during the years following World War II most of this area was farmland, namely citrus groves, as was the Pomona Valley. Today it looks like your average, everyday suburbia. To look back on photographs of the past, and then look at today, is something most people living in the area (Such as myself) can't quite imagine.
Now, it is quite interesting to note that for some reason CalTrans likes to put signs at random marking "San Gabriel Valley." First off, if you're going to have them, either put them on all the freeways entering the valley not just the 60, or the 57 otherwise drop them, and second the valley isn't really significant enough to put signs like that anywhere, I mean, the USGS doesn't even recognize the valley because the area is so awkward to define.
(Some) Useless Fact(s) about the SGV:
- There used to be an airport in Alhambra...guess what the name was. It was sold to build homes shortly after the war.
- In 1947, an Alhambra weedicide distributor flushed a few barrels of the poisonous substance down his floor drain. The weedicide passed through the sewage treatment plant without change, entered the Rio Hondo, and was carried to the coastal plain. There it sank into the underground water and poisoned six domestic water wells. The Montebello Incident, as it is called, resulted in California's first water pollution law.