1960s Canyon Culture Has Been Preserved in

Amber in a Little Foothills Spot

BY TONY MOSTROM

SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2016 AT 9:48 A.M.

The Canyon's charm remains intact.

Photo by Tony Mostrom

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A Canyon person grooves on nature. These people are not flower children and theyre not
hippies. Theyre Canyon people. The Canyon scene ... will be the big thing in 1968. You can
trap your own food here, you can fish Music promoter Kim Fowley, quoted on KNX
News Radio, Summer 1968
The quiet, secluded town of Sierra Madre, over a century old and nestled near the foothills of the San Gabriel
Mountains just east of Pasadena, is largely a suburb, its streets lined with houses built, in ascending order of

charmingness, from the ornate and gingerbread-y 1880s all the way up to the angular and bland 1950s.
Driving north toward the mountains, past the suburban monotony of the citys southern edge, your inner
compass (assisted by discreet, 1930s-vintage municipal signs) guides you to the actual town of Sierra Madre:
its small, charming and isolated commercial center. Here it feels so remote from anything L.A.-ish that
thoughts of the nearby megalopolis almost vanish; the excellent bars, high-toned, burger-centric restaurants
and cozy ice cream shops complete the picture very nicely.
This, the historic hub of Sierra Madre, so serene in its isolation, has actually been here forever, in California
terms; the town was ofcially founded in 1907, and the one, single intersection that dominates the town
Sierra Madre Boulevard and Baldwin Avenue retains many of the same wild-westy wooden buildings you
can see in photos taken here back in the early 1900s. The place feels just like what it is: one of those rare,
neatly preserved western frontier towns that hung on because, well, who would want to leave this bucolic
little spot?
If Sierra Madre is a well-kept secret, then Marys Market, a century-old caf hiding up in the maze-like
foothills of the San Gabriels, surely qualies as a secret-within-a-secret. No signs point your way here; you
have to know about this 94-year-old oasis, an old clapboard building standing underneath a shady sycamore
tree in Sierra Madre Canyon, known informally for decades simply as the Canyon (once you get there, youll
nd the caf hawking T-shirts that say: MARYS MARKET Find Us if You Can). Since the early 1920s, this
caf-slash-market has served the general store needs of the Canyon, a long-established, rustic-bohemian
neighborhood with a genuine 60s counterculture pedigree.
The store rst opened back in 1922 as Spartan Meats & Groceries, but todays older Canyonites still remember
Mary Perkins, a chain-smoking Irish immigrant who took over the store in 1966 and renamed it The Cottage
Market. Mary dispensed coffee and sandwiches and shared gossip and smoked with customers all through
the hippy era and after. Over time, canyon residents simply referred to the place as Marys, even after she
retired and moved up north in 1991. Three years later a new owner, Tom Hammond, renamed the place Marys
Market (Perkins, the mother of the canyon, a non-judgmental empath to the end, died in 2002).

The view from inside Mary's Market

Photo by Tony Mostrom

According to Sierra Madre historian Michele Zack, in her book Southern California Story: Seeking the Better Life
in Sierra Madre, the Canyon was already a shaggy, non-conformist enclave of Bohemians and freethinkers as
early as the 1950s, but during the hippy era the Canyon was a countercultural epicenter that saw many drug
overdoses. She quotes one policeman who remembers, If you were driving a VW bug with a ower painted
on it, you probably got our attention. One real estate agent was already telling folks back in 1963, dont
bother looking in Sierra Madre Canyon. Its all oddballs and beatniks in old shacks.
And what goes around comes around: when teenage runaways started to ock to the Canyon in the late 60s
and people like Kim Fowley were telling reporters, Canyon people [are] the true elite of the ower and love
movement, it wasnt that much of a stretch from Sierra Madres olden days, during the so-called Great
Hiking Era of the 20s, when a wacky assortment of prospectors, hermits, hunters, cabin-dwellers and other
eccentrics who preferred a life of solitude-in-nature rst populated this area.
From a distance the San Gabriel Mountains sometimes appear drab and uninviting,
writes John W. Robinson, the author of several fascinating books about the mountain range and its history.
But enter one of the canyons that crease the face of the mountains and a whole new world appears. As you
approach the hills and start to ascend (I wont give the street names here, thats your homework), you can feel
it: this place, with these impossibly narrow winding old roads snaking their way upward past the suburbs to a
higher elevation, breathe history. A true mountain and canyon environment, proclaimed one real estate ad
back in 1913, within walking distance of the streetcars and yet absolutely removed from noisy, dusty city
conditions. No cookie-cutter houses up here, only cabins (expensive cabins, mind you), and the lots are tiny.
As our mystery road swings sharply to the left and narrows, trees close in overhead. Driving over a small
bridge, you are now almost in the Canyon. And the Canyon is uncanny.
Over the years, numerous attempts to describe the neighborhood have appeared in the L.A. Times: the
Canyon has a kind of haphazard kinetic charm narrow streets veer off at odd angles, houses perch in
unlikely locations Narrow, winding stairways of river rock climb steeply up to houses hidden in thick
vegetation

Photo by Tony Mostrom

Imagine a slab of rustic Topanga Canyon crossed with a narrow, steep pie slice of Laurel Canyon at its most
crafty and bohemian, with generous tree coverage and sitting on a south-facing slope backed by tall
mountains with a nice rushing creek running all the way through it. (Yep, Id love to live here.) The unruly
green foliage everywhere is lled this time of year with the chirping of birds and strong mountain breezes.
Carolyn French, the current proprietress of Mary's Market, has been helped to stories about the Canyon's
famous visitors and residents. There are stories of Charles Manson sightings; and apparently Anais Nin was
once a resident. As for musicians, she says, "Oh my God, everybody. Theres a story that Jimi Hendrix came
into the market. Back then, eventually everybody made it out here as far as names, well, we need older

people to come in here and tell us! But I can tell you it was a big hippy scene here. Runaways. It was Southern
Californias [version of] the Haight."
The screen door jingles when a customer walks into Marys Market; very often theyre locals, but surprisingly
a lot of out-of-towners here for the rst time too. A low white countertop with 50s bar stools greets you
inside, an inviting place to sit and chat over coffee with the friendly waitresses, or you can take a table; the
menus above, in colored chalk featuring breakfast and lunch (Marys closes at 3 PM) also warn you, the
customer, against whining, which I guess is only right. Some appropriate Beach Boys music is playing on
the radio and I see a guy in his 70s with long gray hair, wearing a funky pink vest plunking accompaniment
on the cafs standup piano. A collection of knickknacks lines the western half of the interior (for sale, I think)
but every wall in this sunny room has framed, fascinating original photos of this canyon during the Great
Hiking Era, circa 1905-1930; apparently, during the 20s there was a swimming pool where my car is parked.
Near the cash register (cash only), old wooden and tin signs invite you to "BE NICE." (Again, who can argue?)
Books and paintings and CDs by local creatives (I bought a Janet Klein CD here) are all for sale. Its a folksy,
relaxed juju worth paying for.

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