When the town was incorporated nearly 40...

By CECILIA RASMUSSEN

Nov. 22, 1996 12 AM PT

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When the town was incorporated nearly 40 years ago, its 930 residents borrowed $10,000 to get their city started.

They staged council meetings in a one-car garage and did Walnut city business through a small garage window.

Today, although the walnut trees have disappeared, the city that is now defined by horses and oranges--and two landfills--still prides itself on its scaled-down way of doing things.

From the late 1880s until 1912, the town was known as Lemon, because the railroad station was located on Lemon Road. In 1912 the first commercial walnut grove was introduced, and the townsfolk formally christened their community after the area’s original Rancho de los Nogales, or Ranch of the Walnuts, for the trees that had spread randomly across the rolling hills.

Walnuts became the major crop until pests and disease virtually eliminated the trees by 1940. Today, there is one remaining grove of California black walnuts along Grand Avenue.

Another import--an enterprising Canadian immigrant and retailer--gave the town its other boost.

Percy G. Winnett, who in the 1920s joined John G. Bullock in opening the Bullocks Wilshire store in Los Angeles, bought 80 acres of the pioneering Sentous family’s 3,500-acre ranch in Walnut in the 1930s for use as a weekend retreat. Winnett turned the hay and grain farm into a showplace, with a 3,000-square-foot ranch house and elaborate stables and barns.

Winnett raised cattle and later began breeding Thoroughbred racehorses; he also threw parties, barbecues and fox hunts. Today, most of the property once shaded by towering eucalyptus and pepper trees has been carved up for luxury, ranch-style homes that reflect a rustic lifestyle still often centered on equestrian pursuits. The Brookside Equestrian Center, where Winnett’s ranch house and stables once stood, is an essential part of the city’s rural ambience and a reminder of its past.

More than three decades ago, the farmers and ranchers and horse-lovers won their first civic fight and incorporated in 1959. Today, this town in the rolling San Jose Hills has had to deal with ethnic tensions between Walnut’s growing Asian and Latino communities and its white residents.

Last year, Linda Holmes quit her 10-year post as city manager of Walnut, defying a City Council member’s order that she mute her criticisms of a “white pride” group calling itself the Walnut Anglo American Club.

The middle-class, quickly growing suburb had a population of 29,105 in 1990, with Asian Americans accounting for 36% of the population and Latinos 24%--an increase of 133% in the two minority populations since 1980. It is the second-fastest-growing city in Los Angeles County.

The multiethnic community--bordered on the west by the BKK landfill and on the east by the Spadra landfill--is known today for its serenity and status quo in resisting expansion and development efforts. It has an enviable $9.6-million budget (which includes capital and restricted funds) and a $9.9-million reserve.

LANDMARK: The historic Sheriff William R. Rowland Adobe-Ranch House in Lemon Creek Park has been restored and is furnished as it was in 1883, when the Los Angeles County sheriff built it for the foreman of his cattle ranch.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

By the Numbers

CITY BUSINESS

Incorporated: January 19, 1959

Square miles: 9

Number of city parks: 9

City employees: 34 fulltime, 7 part time

1996-97 operating budget: 6 million (capital and restricted funds not included)

ETHNIC MAKEUP

Latino: 24%

White: 34%

Asian: 36%