Glendora, CA

Rail has twice reset Glendora's place in the eastern San Gabriel Valley. In September 2025, Metro opened the A Line extension through Glendora, restoring passenger rail after the Pacific Electric Monrovia-Glendora Red Cars ended service in 1951. The new station puts the city on a light-rail route to Pasadena, downtown Los Angeles, South Los Angeles, and Long Beach. It is a modern counterpart to the Santa Fe tracks that helped establish Glendora in the nineteenth century. Today, regional rail meets a foothill street pattern and commercial center that grew from the earlier line. Chicago manufacturer George D. Whitcomb set that first rail relationship in motion. He bought 200 acres in 1885 for $40 an acre and persuaded the Santa Fe to shift its planned route north of the South Hills, closer to his townsite.

ATTRInSapphoWeTrust from Los Angeles, California, USA / CC BY-SA 2.0

Whitcomb formed the name Glendora from "glen," describing the narrow valley on his property, and part of his wife Leadora's name. The town was founded in 1887, the year its Santa Fe station was built, and incorporated in 1911 with 700 residents. Citrus later dominated the surrounding land. At peak production, the Glendora Citrus Association packed over two million 78-pound boxes of fruit each year. Large residential projects began replacing groves in the late 1950s, though citrus survives in institutional and local names. Citrus College makes that legacy part of present-day educational life. Founded in 1915 with a class of 27, it is the oldest community college in Los Angeles County and the fifth oldest in California.

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Its 104-acre Glendora campus serves the Azusa, Claremont, Duarte, Glendora, and Monrovia districts, supporting university transfer, career training, certificates, and continuing education. Emanate Health Foothill Presbyterian Hospital is another lasting local institution. Across the rest of the city, Glendora's 2024-2025 economic plan counted over 1,500 licensed businesses: about 1,000 with storefronts and 500 based at home, spanning contractors, manufacturing, retail, and other services. Citrus College and Foothill Presbyterian Hospital share the local economy with contractors, storefronts, and home-based enterprises. Glendora Village concentrates the city's street life. Its three blocks of Glendora Avenue have clipped ficus trees, small shops and services, a plaza, and parklets used for outdoor dining and events. The same district hosts the annual Homecoming Parade, Wine Walk, and Classic Car Flashback, moving recurring civic events directly onto downtown streets.

ATTRNewman Post Card Company / Public domain

In 2026, a certified farmers market occupied the avenue between Foothill Boulevard and Bennett Avenue every Wednesday evening with produce, local artisans, and live music. Finkbiner Park, one block north of Foothill Boulevard, adds a bandshell, youth center, skate park, and playing fields. Farther south, Big Tree Park preserves a Moreton Bay fig planted by early resident Edgar J. Owens in the late 1880s. The city has maintained the surrounding block as a public park since the 1970s. Now roughly 99 feet tall and 47 feet in diameter, the tree relies on steel cables to support its heaviest limbs above the park and surrounding streets.