The caption on this photo says that the carpet of sparkling lights is Pasadena as seen from Mt Wilson in 1929, which surprised me because I wouldn’t have thought Pasadena would have been that big back then. Mt Wilson is northeast of Pasadena in the San Gabriel Mountains, and is where the Mt. Wilson Observatory stands. I’m assuming the photographer was standing there when he took this striking shot.
According to the 1930 census, the population of Pasadena around this times 76,000 residents.
Jeff Hamblin on Facebook supplied these two comparison images to help us orient ourselves to the original:
I was looking at views like this about a week ago wondering what they were looking at. If this is generally west-by-southwest, then that might be all the way over toward the San Fernando Road line below the hills which form the dark zone along the top. If so, then we’re getting all the way from Glendale on the right, past Eagle Rock and all center, to the downtown gateway at the Broadway Bridge on the left where it’s very bright. Then again, I may just be delusional. You could see quite a distance from these hills when the haze was lifted.