Hermon, Los Angeles

Hermon is a small district in the city of Los Angeles, California. It is situated in a half square-mile valley bordered by the Arroyo Seco and the historic 110 freeway to the west, Monterey Hills to the south, and South Pasadena to the north and east. The community has been part of Los Angeles since 1912, but has retained its own unique identity. It is primarily a residential community, with a small business district in the center, one elementary school, a charter high school, two city parks, and an off-leash dog park opened in 2005.HistoryHermon was established in 1903, when the Free Methodists church group obtained the isolated valley from owner Ralph Rogers to establish a school. The school grew to become Los Angeles Pacific College in 1934, then merged with Azusa College in the mid-1960s to become Azusa Pacific University. Up until 2003, the school campus held a private college prep high school, Pacific Christian. It is now under lease to Los Angeles International Charter High School (LAICHS), a secondary school chartered by the Los Angeles County Office of Education (www.laicharter.org).Better links were established between Hermon and the rest of Los Angeles with the construction of a bridge across the Arroyo Seco at Avenue 60 in 1926, the Monterey Road pass through Walnut Hill to the south in 1930, and the Hermon Avenue bridge (renamed Via Marisol, over the objections of many community members, by the late Los Angeles City Council member Art Snyder in 1978 to honor his young daughter, Erin Marisol Snyder) to the west in 1939.