West Covina

West Covina is a city in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County, California, east of downtown Los Angeles. The city and the valley around it are the setting of the television series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

The Tongva were the first inhabitants of the San Gabriel Valley. In 1845 Governor Pío Pico sold much of the land to John Rowland and William Workman, whose ranch covered the eastern valley. Settlers arrived in the early 20th century, cleared the sagebrush and cactus and planted the first walnut groves of the area. West Covina became a city in 1923, chiefly so that the neighboring city of Covina could not build a sewage farm on its land, and Benjamin Franklin Maxson Jr. served as its first mayor. Walnut and orange groves gave way to tract houses after the 1940s, and the city grew many times over in a single decade.

Plaza West Covina, a shopping mall beside the San Bernardino Freeway, draws shoppers from the valley. The Eastland Tower, an office tower of the 1980s, rises over the shopping district of the same name. The Nickelodeon film Good Burger was mostly filmed in West Covina in the late 1990s.

Galster Wilderness Park keeps oak woodland and hiking trails in the hills of the south of the city. The Shoehorn Museum, a private collection of shoehorns of all ages and materials, is a curiosity of West Covina. Big League Dreams, a sports park with replicas of famous ballparks, hosts softball games on the east side.