A glance Back at Historical fires:

The Station fire, which started Aug. 26 and continues today to consume much of the vast Angeles National Forest, was not the first fire to threaten this town. There have been others, some of which left devastating marks here, all documented by newspapers including the La Cañada Valley Sun.

In November 1933 the San Gabriel Mountains behind La Cañada and La Crescenta were on fire, with the blaze at one point sweeping down along the east side of Pickens Canyon, as thousands of spectators lined Foothill Boulevard to watch the flames shooting hundreds of feet in the air.

The Gould Castle then sat prominently at the mouth of Pickens Canyon. Locals were relieved to learn the castle itself was saved from that fire, but its olive orchard was not.

According to reports in the Los Angeles Times, backfires were set between Pickens and Earl Canyon, above Alta Canyada, to try to stop it from hitting residential areas. But La Crescenta was particularly hard-hit, with the Harvey Bissell ranch grounds being devastated and the L’Hermitage Mountain Vineyards Winery on New York Drive losing the wine building, a garage, 20,000 gallons of wine and 1,500 gallons of brandy. A home on New York Drive was also lost, as were seven homes on Briggs Terrace.

With the fire still being battled (it was reported “under control, but not out,”) Flintridge attorney Frank Doherty urged the county Board of Supervisors to order the building of check dams and fire trails, tasks that could be done as civil works projects, he said. “The area as it lies now, with the mountain sides burned off, is a menace to Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena, La Crescenta and the Flintridge district, when the floods of winter come,” Doherty said at the time.

Apparently Doherty’s urging did not do the trick, at least not before the rains came. The infamous New Year’s flood two months later, which wiped out homes and took lives in La Crescenta and Montrose, was directly blamed on the fire of November 1933.