Glendora Bougainvillea

Reuben and Helen Hamlin put these in beside their orange grove in 1901, and Helen is the one credited with wanting them. The vines climbed about twenty-five palms, using the dead fronds as a ladder, and stood seventy feet up by the 1930s. They run six hundred feet along Bennett and as far again down Minnesota. What keeps them alive is warm air draining out of Dalton Canyon on cold nights, through a slot less than half a mile wide, with the vines in the middle of it. The state listed them as advertising.

What the plaque says

Planted in 1901 by the R.W. Hamlins, early citrus growers, the Glendora bougainvillea is the largest growth of this exotic plant in the United States. The parent stock was brought to California by a whaling ship about 1870, and the vines survive as one of the best examples remaining of the early 20th century promotional image of California as paradise. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 912 Plaque placed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the L.J. Pittman family, January 7, 1978.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mission San Gabriel Arcangel — 14 mi
  The fourth Alta California mission, built on Tongva land with Tongva labor, rebuilt after arson and now telling that story straight.
• Colorado Street Bridge — 17 mi
  Beaux-Arts concrete arches curving 150 feet above the Arroyo Seco, opened in 1913 and later a link in Route 66.
• Cajon Pass — 28 mi
  The gap the San Andreas tore between two mountain ranges, and the doorway every westbound traveler has used for two centuries.

More markers nearby

• La Casa de Carrión — 5.1 mi
• Temporary Detention Camp for Japanese Americans, Pomona — 6.8 mi
• Adobe de Palomares — 7.6 mi
• First Home of Pomona College — 8.3 mi