Vista Bonita Avenue may sound like your standard suburban California street – vista bonita means “pretty view” in Spanish – but the name dates back to 1885! That’s when George D. Whitcomb and his Chicago family purchased 295 acres (some say 200) here in the San Gabriel foothills and established a citrus grove, a small livestock ranch, and a thirteen-room house, dubbing the whole thing Vista Bonita. Whitcomb liked the name so much that in 1886 he gave it to a church he was financing (today’s Glendora United Methodist Church) and, in 1887, to Vista Bonita Avenue. The Whitcomb residence was at the top of the street; daughter Leadora Whitcomb Dalzell (1871-1939) turned it into a private elementary school in 1916 and it burned down on Thanksgiving Day 1924.
Find it on the map:
