Montebello Hills

I lived in Montebello from about 1946 to 1956, ages 4 to 14. I have fond memories of a small town just before and during the massive sprawl that took place after WW2.

Montebello Hills February 2011

by Richard Nichols

In 1946, when I was a young boy, my family moved to Montebello (beautiful hills) in Los Angeles County. I remember the small town feel, before freeways and malls, where the main street was lined with every kind of shop, a cherry coke could be found at the corner drug store fountain counter for 5 cents, and the art deco movie house showed Flash Gordon and Superman on Saturday, and the city park and plunge was a short walk from home, and you got a haircut from Jack the Barber. 

The high school football players were heroes, and the neighborhood kids played hide and seek or capture the flag in the streets until called in to dinner. We walked home from school through tree lined streets, along the main street, past the fire station, and you knew the Captains family and played with his son. The Rio Hondo River was still free flowing, and a place of mystery to explore, full of willow thickets, and dirt cliffs, and not the concrete channel it became. My friend Jerry, a few years older, made up mythic tales about gangs fighting in the riverbed for domination, and secret coded notes. 

On weekends my dad took me up into the Montebello Hills overlooking town. The 1200 acres of hills was then a productive oil field. Except for the oil rigs, it was a laced with pepper trees, cactus, rocky gullies, and desert sages. We went to a place shaded by pepper trees next to a gully full of rocky outcroppings. We'd spend many a quiet Sunday after church at that spot, my dad resting under the trees while I roamed about looking for lizards and horned toads. One year I got a BB gun for Christmas, and took it on one of our forays into the hills. Down in the rocks I spotted a lizard, and taking careful aim, took a shot. I came closer to the lizard and saw the BB embedded in the back, blood oozing out around the edge. This profoundly shocked me, to see the result of my action, the lizard suffering a terrible wound. That was the last time I ever shot at anything.

Friends and I often explored the hills on our own. One time we were determined to pick "cactus apples" (also called "prickly pear"), the bright red fruit of the prominent cactus in the hills. We'd heard they were good to eat, so we wanted to try them. Unfortunately, I didn't know that the fruit needed special handling, so with the first attempt, my hands were pierced with tiny, painful spines. When I arrived home after an uncomfortable walk, hands stinging, and tearful, my mother carefully removed the spines.

When I was given a used bicycle, after pining for one for so long, I rode the bike up into the hills, and started a thrill ride back down the steep, rough asphalt road. Speeding down, the front wheel started to wobble. Over I went, skidding on the asphalt on the side of my face and arm. I sat there in the road, and asked my friend to go tell my Dad I was injured. He came for me, and everything was intact except my pride and a wide swath of skin on my arm and face.

Over the last 60 years Montebello has changed. The open space in the hills is down to 488 acres, the hills are ringed by malls, freeways and housing tracts, and the oil company wants to develop what is left. The Montebello Hills Task Force of the Sierra Club is determined to save the only open space left in Montebello. I hope they do, so that little boys can have adventures, learn about cactus apples and lizards, and learn to love the land.