On February 22, 1913, the Holmes-Walton real estate agency hosted a huge barbecue to promote its new community of Montrose. It had purchased 250 acres of mostly sage brush in the foothills north of Glendale and held a contest to name the development. Or was this contest just a stunt? No matter where the name Montrose came from, Holmes-Walton thoroughly embraced the mountain rose theme, laying out the streets in the fanciful pattern of a rose with the planned town center at the heart of the flower. The construction of the 210 freeway in the 1960s pruned off the top of the rose, but the...