Pasadena (/ˌpæsəˈdiːnə/ PAS-ə-DEE-nə) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, 11 miles (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley.[17] With its substantial downtown area, observers consider it as either a suburb of nearby Los Angeles, or as a significant urban center in its own right.[18][19]
Its population was 138,699 at the 2020 census[13] making it the 44th largest city in California[13] and the ninth-largest city in Los Angeles County. Pasadena was incorporated on June 19, 1886, becoming one of the first cities to be incorporated in what is now Los Angeles County, following the city of Los Angeles (April 4, 1850).[20]
Pasadena is known for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade. It is also home to many scientific, educational, and cultural institutions, including Caltech, Pasadena City College, Fuller Theological Seminary, ArtCenter College of Design, the Pasadena Playhouse, the Ambassador Auditorium, the Norton Simon Museum, and the USC Pacific Asia Museum, with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in nearby La Cañada Flintridge.
The original inhabitants of Pasadena (a Chippewa word meaning "Crown of the Valley")[21] and surrounding areas were members of the Native American Hahamog-na tribe, a branch of the Tongva Nation. They spoke the Tongva language (part of the Uto-Aztecan languages group). Native Americans had lived in the Los Angeles Basin for thousands of years.[22] Tongva dwellings lined the Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County) in present day Pasadena and south to where it joins the Los Angeles River and along other natural waterways in the city.
The native people lived in thatched, dome-shape lodges and lived on a diet of acorn meal, seeds and herbs, venison, and other small animals as well as trading for ocean fish with the coastal Tongva. They made cooking vessels from steatite soapstone from Catalina Island. The oldest transportation route still in existence in Pasadena is the old Tongva foot trail, also known as the Gabrielino Trail, that follows the west side of the Rose Bowl and the Arroyo Seco past the Jet Propulsion Laboratory into the San Gabriel Mountains. The trail has been in continuous use for thousands of years. An arm of the trail is also still in use in what is now known as Salvia Canyon.
The Spanish first colonized the Los Angeles Basin in the 1770s as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain and built the San Gabriel Mission and renamed the local Tongva people "Gabrielino Indians," after the name of the mission. Today, several bands of Tongva people live in the Los Angeles area.[23]