The Last Condors of Eaton Canyon

By John McCormack

On New Year's Eve 1908 in Eaton Canyon, a rogue Pasadena lawman shot the last California Condor that ever hatched so close to the city.

Blending true-crime and natural history, The Last Condors of Eaton Canyon tells the captivating story of a nest of endangered condors, a rogue Pasadena lawman, and the ensuing drama that would entangle Pasadena's first woman of letters and her son, who would go on to become one of California's most consequential naturalists.

Entangling one of Pasadena's first women of letters, Elizabeth Grinnell, and her son Joseph--a nature savant who would become one of California's most consequential naturalists, The Last Condors of Eaton Canyon traces this forgotten episode through archival letters and a trove of images--including a stunning series of hand-colored slides from 1906 that have never been seen in print--to reveal an untold side of L.A. as an early locus for the study of nature.

The Last Condors of Eaton Canyon blends biography, Pasadena history, true crime, and environmental reckoning, showing how Joseph and Elizabeth Grinnell helped seed California's scientific legacy amid the moral and ecological contradictions of the early 1900s, where protection and profit often overlapped. The story blends archival research, narrative nonfiction, cameos by John Muir and Chief Red Cloud, and contemporary reflections on condors, the Eaton Fire, and cultural forgetting from the perspective of a local ornithologist.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1626401381
• ISBN13: 9781626401389
• Release Date: August 2027
• Publisher: Angel City Press
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.06 lbs.