West Covina History

West Covina is now a city of approximately 110,000 people. It rests in the middle of the San Gabriel Valley some twenty miles East of Los Angeles. It emerged from a Mexican Land Grant known as Rancho La Puente in the late 1800s. In about 1902, it started to develop as an agriculture center since water wells were discovered. In the first part of the 20th Century, it flourished with a variety of crops including walnuts, citrus, and flowers. After World War II, thousands of veterans settled in West Covina and converted the community to a bedroom community. This first Volume of West Covina history provides a pictorial history of the city as well as over fifty essays and letters written about the city between 1910 and 2010. This book also provides data on the city over the first century of its existence. The intent of the book is to provide knowledge for generations, to not only know the facts of the city’s history, but to also grasp some flavor of how it developed and became home to thousands of people.