About the Author

Author Rick Thomas is the former museum curator and vicechair of education for the South Pasadena Preservation Foundation. He served on the South Pasadena Natural Resources Commission, helping to maintain a strict policy protecting the city's great oldgrowth trees. Using touchstone photographs from his own collection--one of the San Gabriel Valley's largest accumulations of historical images and artifacts--as well as national, state, and local historical archives, Thomas provides a window to his city's past and an understanding of why its preservation is so important.