When it snowed in Downey

Things You Didn’t Know About Downey

With the past few weeks of heat, it’s hard to believe that Downey has had a history of snow.

In looking at some notes from Ethel Donaldson, she stated that the first time she remembered it snowing in Downey was 1920, shortly after her family moved to the area. She stated the white stuff came floating down and lay on the ground, and there was enough of it that it lasted well into the next day. There was enough remaining in the most shadowed, sheltered spots till the second day after.

Ethel lived on Crawford Street, in the block between 2nd and 3rd streets, and on the day it snowed the road crew was repairing the street. Men stopped work and took shelter at first and then they reverted to their younger age and began pelting each other with snowballs, washing each other’s faces, and doing all the things that go along with having fun in the snow.

That is until a hard-thrown snowball went astray and hit the windshield of a lone parked car. Sudden stillness, and the men simply melted. Not a soul was to be seen anywhere.

Snow on La Brea Boulevard in Hollywood in 1921. L.A. Public Library photo

The owner of the car never found out what happened, as nobody was around and he found no rocks to blame the damage of the cracked windshield.

Ethel remembered making candy and putting the pan out in the snow to cool. She tasted no better candy ever made.

Ethel also stated it snowed once in 1930 and 1940’s. We have in the yearbook of 1949 a picture of some students making a snowman on campus that year.

ADOBE HOUSE — An article dated December 1970 titled “Warren High Discovery” told the story of Warren High School California history teacher Bill Boyd and his four students who he sent to find the old Jose Manuel Nieto adobe.

The students, Rick Larson, Mike Lapp, Walter Lawrence and Mike Pilling, did considerable research and leg work to locate the site of the old adobe house, which was built by Nieto in 1790 and destroyed in the flood of 1867.

According to their research, they pinpointed the site as being where the 605 Freeway and the San Gabriel River meet in Santa Fe Springs. No remains of the adobe could be located, having been all washed away by the flood. The area where it would have been is under the freeway.

The students presented the notebook to the Historical Society along with two maps of the area.

TRIVIA QUESTION — What major motion picture star appeared in her first “talkie” at the Meralta Theatre on Christmas Day, 1929?

Joan Crawford. Her first all-talkie film was called “Untamed.”