Patch Blog: Arboretum in Monrovia? Almost!

It all began in 1873 in Kansas when George Phillip Lux was born. George was born to immigrant parents and continued to live with them in Topeka through 1900 according to the 1900 Federal Census. Lux became a dentist and apparently a very successful one since in 1920 he retired! In 1910 George showed up in Los Angeles with his wife Anna E. Lux and daughter Rugosa and is listed as the President of a Resort in the census.

That resort was the Clover Crest Resort Company Inc. and out of this Camp Clover Crest was born. Camp Clover Crest was a typical tent cabin camp that proliferated throughout the San Gabriel Mountains after the turn of the century; one could stay in a tent cabin for a week for five bucks--not bad at all. The tent cabin included all of the amenities one might expect: beds, linens, dishes and a stove; it also promised that a supply wagon would go to Monrovia with a population of 5,000, every day.

Camp Clover Crest was owned by C. B. Mason and H. F. Batchelor with Hal Slemons as the resident Director, Hal lived at 133 N. Myrtle.

No one seems to know what happened to Anna. We do know that daughter Rugosa passed away in 1918, a year after Dr. Lux married his second wife, Mary Seegar. George is in the 1920 Federal Census as living in Monrovia with his wife Mary C. Lux and is listed as a retired Dentist. At some point Dr. Lux acquired the Clover Crest Property. We aren’t sure when but continued to run the camp and planned for a personal residence that was to be built in 1927.

Sadness came upon the Lux family as Mary passed away in 1928 and was buried in the . The home that is called the Dr. Lux home is still there today, some two miles or so up on the dirt road we call Clamshell Truck Trail, sitting on 4.21 acres of what is left of the Lux Property.

Dr. Lux spent the years after Mary’s passing working with plants that were sensitive to frost, as the property he had was higher in elevation and was above the frost line. Along the same time line, some enterprising people started The Arboretum Committee of the Southern California Horticultural Institute. In 1947 this committee convinced the state and county to purchase 111 acres of what is now known as the Arboretum.

Dr. Lux eventually teamed up with some folks from the Arboretum and worked on frost-sensitive plants in the area of what was Camp Clover Crest. As you walk the property today, you can still see some of the unique plants on the property.

At the same time as the Arboretum was being planned in Arcadia, plans were being drawn for the Lux Arboretum in Monrovia. They were drawn by none other than Edward Huntsman-Trout, respected landscape architect who also did much of the work on the Los Angeles County Arboretum. This would have incorporated all of the Lux Property except the residence built in 1927 which Dr. Lux had planned for his home, surrounded by the Lux Arboretum!

About the time that the Arboretum in Arcadia was opening to the public and the plans for the Lux Arboretum in Monrovia were moving along, Dr. Lux married for a third time to Marie H. Hall, who was living at 417 N. Alta Vista in Monrovia. That marriage would prove to be short-lived as Dr. Lux passed away in 1955, never to see his dream of the Lux Arboretum in Monrovia come to fruition.

Most of the property then known as the Lux Arboretum was deeded to the state in 1957 by the Lux Estate, and then transferred to Los Angeles County in 1989. In 1997 Los Angeles County deeded what was left to the city of Monrovia with instructions that the “city maintain (the) area as a public park or recreation area for the benefit and use of all county residents”.

The house known as Dr. Lux’s house is still there today and overlooks what would have been, what could have been the Lux Arboretum in Monrovia. Who knew?

Sources:

, Carol Kampe of the , theState of California list of Divested properties July 1, 2002, County of Los Angeles state of proceedings for 03/04/1997