Of particular interest to me us a presentation by Homestead Museum Director Paul Spitzzeri entitled "The Hanging Gardens of Babylon in Southern California: Edwin G. Hart and the Avocado Tracts of Hacienda Heights and La Habra Heights, 1910-1930," which will be presented online on Wednesday, June 10th from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm.
As greater Los Angeles experienced waves of growth and development booms in the first few decades of 1900s, a figure, little known today, played a pivotal role in developing the “avocado subdivision.” Edwin G. Hart, a real estate developer and avocado pioneer and promoter, created the communities of North Whittier Heights, renamed Hacienda Heights in the early 1960s, and La Habra Heights, with avocado growing as a major element of both. Paul R. Spitzzeri, director of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry, will give a PowerPoint-illustrated presentation on Hart and these subdivisions during a twenty-year period when the avocado began to become a household name in the region.
Paul has worked at the Homestead Museum since 1988. He has a B. A. and M. A. in History from California State University, Fullerton and has written on California history for such journals as California History, Southern California Quarterly, California Legal History and Journal of the West, and in the anthologies Law in the Western United States, Encyclopedia of Immigration and Migration in the American West, and Icons of the American West. His biography on the Workman and Temple families is an Award of Merit winner from the American Association for State and Local History.
Please register at: http://ucanr.edu/survey/survey.cfm?surveynumber=30245
I hope I can get my friend to share his memories again. He grew up in La Habra and his parents worked the avocados.
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