PASADENA  , a

city in the San Gabriel valley of Los Angeles county, in southern California, U.S.A., about 9 M . N.E. of Los Angeles and about 20 M. from the Pacific Ocean . Pop . (188o) 391; (1890) 4882; (1900) 9117, of whom 1278 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 30,291 . Area about 11 sq. m . It is served by the Southern Pacific, the Santa Fe, and the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake railway systems, and by inter-urban electric lines . The city lies at an altitude of 750-1000 ft., about 5 M. from the base of the Sierra Madre range . Some half-dozen mountain peaks in the immediate environs rise to heights of 3200 to more than 6000 ft., notably Mt Wilson (6666 ft.), whose base is about 5 M. north-east of Pasadena, Echo mountain (4or6 ft.), and Mt Lowe (6100 ft) . From Rubio canyon, near Pasadena, to the summit of Echo mountain, runs a steep cable railway, r000 yds. long . On Echo mountain is the Lowe Observatory (35do ft.), with a 16-in. equatorial telescope, and on Mt Wilson is the Solar Observatory (5886 ft.) of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, equipped with a 6o-in. reflecting telescope and other instruments for stellar photography, a horizontal telescope for solar photography, a 6o-ft. tower telescope (completed in 1907), and a second tower telescope of 150 ft. focal length (under construction in 1910) . At this observatory important researches in solar and stellar spectroscopy have been carried on under the direction of George Ellery Hale (b . 1868), the inventor of the spectroheliograph .

The

physical laboratory, computers' offices and instrument construction shops of the Solar Observatory are in Pasadena . About 5 M. south-east of Pasadena, in the township of San Gabriel (pop . 2501 in 1900), is the Mission (monastery) de San Gabriel Arcangel, founded in 1771 . Pasadena is one of the most beautiful places in southern California . Fruits and flowers and sub-tropical trees and small plants grow and bloom the year round in its gardens . On the first of January of every year a flower carnival, known as the " Tournament of Roses," is held . Among the principal public buildings are a handsome Romanesque public library, which in 1909 contained about 28,500 volumes, an opera house of considerable architectural merit, high school, and several fine churches . The surrounding country was given over to sheep ranges until 1874, when a fruit-growing colony, organized in 1873, was established, from which the city was developed . The sale of town lots began in 1882 . Pasadena was first chartered as a city in 1886; by a clause in the present special free-holders' charter, adopted in 1901, saloons are prohibited in the city .