Thursday, January 15, 2026

Looking Back: A Forum About What Altadena Lost

The Altadena Community Center survived the Eaton Fire. The town around it did not.

Eight days after the one-year anniversary of the blaze that killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 structures, the Altadena Historical Society will use the same community center where its archives are housed to host a public examination of what burned and what remains. The program, titled “Altadena After the Fire: What is Lost and What Remains,” is free and open to the public.

The event is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday, January 15, at the Altadena Community Center, 730 E. Altadena Dr. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. The Historical Society’s contact number is 626-797-8016.

The fire that swept through Altadena on January 7 erased landmarks that had defined the community for generations. The Andrew McNally House, an 1887 mansion built for the Rand McNally map company co-founder, burned. So did the Zane Grey Estate, the Little Red Hen Coffee Shop—the oldest Black-owned business in Altadena since 1972—and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The LA Conservancy documented more than 50 historic sites destroyed.

For the Historical Society, the losses are both professional and personal. More than half of its 17 volunteers lost their own homes.

“Before we kind of worked at our own pace,” Veronica Jones, president of the Historical Society and a 60-year Altadena resident, said in an interview last year about the fire’s impact on their work. “Now there’s an urgency to document everything, to get the history of the fire, to get the history that we didn’t have before, to find ways to capture those photographs that may have burned.”

The Historical Society, founded in 1935, has maintained archives in the community center for decades. That building survived. Since the fire, the organization has launched an oral history project to record the experiences of survivors.

The January 15 program is part of the society’s quarterly series of free public programs on Altadena history. The organization’s website states that full program details are still forthcoming.

A tip provided to this newspaper indicates that historian Paul Ayers, a retired attorney and San Gabriel Mountains historian who has presented multiple programs for the society, may be the featured speaker. Ayers has given talks on topics including the lost trails of the Altadena foothills, the cabin culture of the Arroyo Seco, and the history of the Mount Lowe Railway. The Historical Society could not be reached to confirm the speaker before publication.

The program takes place eight days after a community commemoration on January 7, when residents gathered in the Grocery Outlet parking lot to mark the anniversary.

“We pause to remember the lives lost, homes destroyed, and resilience of our community,” Jones said in a statement for that event. “Let this anniversary serve as a reminder of the courage and strength of Altadena’s residents and our shared commitment to recovery and rebuilding together.”

Altadena Community Center, 730 E. Altadena Dr., Altadena. For more call 626-797-8016 or visit altadenahistoricalsociety.org. Tickets: Free.