Discount Car Rental Glendale

Glendale Attractions and Things to See

Glendale, California, is a suburb of the Greater Los Angeles Area, situated at the eastern end of the San Fernando Valley, and bisected by the Verdugo Mountains, bordered on the northwest by Sun Valley and the Tujunga neighborhoods of LA, on its northeast by the La Canada Flintridge, to its west by Burbank and Griffith Park, on its east by Eagle Rock and Pasadena, on its south by the Atwater Village neighborhood of LA and on the southeast by the Glassell Park neighborhood of LA. The Foothill, Golden State, Glendale and Ventura freeways flow through the city, and its well known Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery hold the remains of many famous celebrities and local citizens, as well as housing the biggest community of African Americans in the nation, along with one in four residents being of Armenian American descent.
The area that is known as Glendale today, was first inhabited by the Tongva people, a Native American people that lived in the LA county area before the arrival of the Europeans, with Tongva meaning, "people of the earth", and were part of the Uto-Aztecan group. The Spanish missionaries would come here and call them "Gabrielinos", and in 1798, Jose Maria Verdugo, a Spanish army corporal from Baja, would get a land grant of the Rancho San Rafael, although he had been farming the land since 1784. His grandson, Teodoro Verdugo would construct the Verdugo adobe, in 1860, and that structure is the oldest structure in the city, today. as well as the location of the Oak of Peace sits, that the early California leaders would meet, including Pio Pico, in 1847, to surrender to Lt. Col. John C. Fremont.
The rancho would eventually be sold off in parcels, and are today included in the neighborhoods of LA, but in 1884, the area citizens would gather to name their town, Glendale, with those to its south, chose Tropico, in 1887, and in 1904, the Pacific Electric Railway would install streetcar service to the small town. It would be incorporated in 1906, and then annex Tropico in 1918, with a significant civic booster named Leslie Coombs Brand, building a large estate in 1904 called, "El Miradero" that showcased a magnificent mansion that has architecture mixing Indian, Spanish and Moorish styles that had been copied from an East Indian Pavilion that had been seen at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago. Brand loved the city, and flying, so he had an airport constructed in 1919, that hosted fly-in parties that would become a direct connection with the Grand Central Airport, located close by. Brand would partner with Henry E. Huntington to bring the Pacific Electric Railway, or better known as the Red Cars to the region, and now he is memorialized with one of the city's major thoroughfares, Brand Boulevard. His airfield would become the first official terminal for the Los Angeles area, along with the departure point for the first commercial west to east transcontinental flight that was flown by Charles Lindbergh.
Bob's Big Boy chain of hamburger joints would begin here, in 1936, as well as Baskins-Robbins 31 flavors of ice cream parlors that began here in 1945. The Glendale Public Library contains a special collections department that contains the original documents and records about the city's history, as well as one of the biggest collections of books on cats in the world, containing more than 20,000, and donated to the library in the 1950s by the Jewel City Cat Fanciers Club.
The city has many great shopping centers, malls and boutiques that provide excellent shopping opportunities, and has been the site of many famous peoples' birth. A few of these include; Robert Englund, Pat Flaherty, Mario Lopez, the Madden brothers of the band Good Charlotte, Tim Matheson, Eva Mendes, Ken Osmond, Paul Peterson, Nicole Richie, Stirling Silliphant, Rick Springfield, Casey Stengel, Shia LaBeouf, Paul Walker, John Wayne and many, many others.
While the region has over 10,000 restaurants, the city of Glendale has more than 3000 itself, with the others spread around the LA Metro area. Out of those 3000, there are about 478 "best restaurants", that span the range of cuisine and excellent eating establishments, with all of the foreign places, fast food joints, international dining options and the home of many new and exciting types of fusion restaurants that blend and mix various types of cuisine. It would almost impossible to not be able to find a place to eat that didn't satisfy your particular palate tastes, so be sure to try.