Links to pages about LJ Rose, for whom Rosemead is named.
It seems fitting that a man who made his fortune from wine and brandy, and lost it to business speculation, heavily leveraged in real estate, would end his life with a fistful of morphine — an opioid, one might say “a natural version of fentanyl.” Even as people tsk-tsk about decisions to not establish ever more stores to vend intoxicants in the city, it’s sobering to know that this city was named after a producer of intoxicants, who bought land here to train racehorses, for gambling. By the time of his death, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union had already formed, and was growing power that would eventually lead to prohibition in 1920, only 21 years later.