“Are great writers, painters and sculptors drawn to certain localities without realizing the attraction?” asked L.A. Times columnist Ed Ainsworth in 1961, in an article about Sierra Madre.

Whatever the attraction was, Sierra Madre was once “a retreat for writers, artists, composers and singers” according to Pasadena area historian Harold D. Carew. “Many noted writers have visited or lived and worked within this village in the foothills,” wrote Carew in his History of Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley (S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1930).

While also home to other creative types, such as Mount Rushmore's sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, Sierra Madre seems to have attracted writers in particular--especially poets, who have found inspiration over the years in the city's proximity to the majestic San Gabriels.

California poet Edwin Markham visited Sierra Madre, as did children’s poet Eugene Field; while Canadian poet Bliss Carman, who visited frequently, composed his poem “To a Chickadee” in Sierra Madre in 1906.

Robert Van Carr, a poet who published two volumes of Western-themed poetry, Black Hills Ballads (1902) and Cowboy Lyrics (1908), lived in the city from 1912 until his death in 1931; while John Russell McCarthy, once described by naturalist John Burroughs as the best nature poet in America, also lived in the city for many years.

Surprisingly, Burroughs himself lived briefly in Pasadena Glen during his later years, and his last journal entry makes reference to the Sierra Madre post office.

English novelist Hugh Walpole, an acquaintance of Sierra Madre columnist Lee Shippey, also came to the city on occasion, as did Earl Derr Biggers, creator of Charlie Chan.

Among others who passed through—California poet George Sterling; playwright Montague Glass; Pasadena botanist and writer Charles Francis Saunders, who enjoyed hiking Sturtevant’s Trail; and Dallas Lore Sharp, who wrote part of his book on bees, Spirit of the Hive, in Sierra Madre.

According the Los Angeles Times, novelist and screenwriter Harlan Ware lived in Sierra Madre until he “saw Mt. Wilson disappear in the smog" and moved to Carmel; while beloved L.A. Times columnist Lee Shippey was a resident from 1927 until 1957.

In the 1950s, Sierra Madre's biggest literary claim to fame (although virtually unknown at the time) was erotic diarist Anaïs Nin, who lived at 341 Sturtevant Drive from 1951-1956, with her lover Rupert Pole, a forest ranger.

Here she was visited by several fellow writers from the bohemian circles of Los Angeles, including novelist Christopher Isherwood, and Midnight Cowboy author James Leo Herlihy, who trekked out to see her. (According to Nin's diaries, Herlihy remarked “you live in the sticks” when he arrived.)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who lived in Pasadena in the 1880s, 1890s, and 1930s, probably visited Sierra Madre once or twice. Her story "Dr. Clair's Place" (1915) takes place in the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley, and describes sanitarium that could well have been modeled after Sierra Madre's own El Reposo. After her death in 1935, her daughter Katharine scattered Gilman's ashes in the mountains above Sierra Madre.

"Do some cities have built-in literary and artistic magnets?" asked Ed Ainsworth 50 years ago. With Sierra Madre, the answer seems obvious.