Guest Post by MN Gordon
Nowhere City California
There are places in Southern California where, although the sun always shines, they haven’t seen a ray of light for over 50-years. There’s a no man’s land of urban blight along Interstate 10, from East Los Angeles through the San Gabriel Valley, where cities you’ve never heard of and would never go to, are jumbled together like shipping containers on Terminal Island. El Monte, California, is one of those places.
Advice dispensed on Interstate 10. We agree with it. Better don’t.
Photo credit: Rob Hann
How El Monte came to be is a story shared with many of its adjoining San Gabriel Valley cities. Boom, bust, and rapid transformation from an agricultural area to working class artery of a burgeoning megalopolis, vomited out a multitude of enduring mistakes. Many of them will never be rectified.
When El Monte was incorporated as a municipality in 1912, the prospects for the place must have seemed limitless. Here was open and fertile land, ideally situated in a low valley between the San Gabriel and Rio Hondo Rivers. Equally important, it was ideally situated just several miles from the budding City of Los Angeles.
Continue reading “The Great El Monte Public Pension Swindle”
