Clairemont Public Library Today

The North Clairemont Branch Library today. (Yes, this is how they spell “Claremont” in these here parts–It’s the spawn of England’s Claremont with the first name of one of the developer’s family members, Claire Burgener.)

Clairemont Public Library 50 Years Ago

The North Clairemont Branch Library at its opening, in 1958. I’ve always like the simple, modern lines of the library, and the clerestory windows admit gentle, diffused light for reading. The building has hardly changed, but the neighborhood around it certainly has.

Community outreach table

One of the tables had a representative from the Tecolote Canyon Nature Center that’s located nearby. They had posterboard displays of some of the local wildlife, a listing of some invasive plant species of concern, a small live snake and a little stuffed fox.

Slow brown fox

The kids were of course most taken with the critters, and I’ll have to admit I was taken with the fox myself. Twenty years of living near the canyon and this was the first fox I’d seen. Unfortunately this brown fox wasn’t exactly moving very quickly in its taxidermied state.

At least I hope some of the adults took the plant information seriously. I’ll have to admit, however, that the vegetable rogue’s gallery on the sign hadn’t been updated much in recent years. The “most wanted” plant on the list seemed to be Argentine pampas grass, a position it’s held for most of the years I’ve looked at these lists. It’s still a problem, but we have a number of other escapees roaming the hillsides.

Life magazines

Inside, for almost no money you could pick up Life and Saturday Evening Post issues from the 1950s, 50-year-old publications to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the library. (What proper library event would be complete without a book sale?) As you might expect, there were lots of Cold War-related articles. And then this stack that caught my eye, including an issue with the article, “So you want to hunt uranium.”

Library literature

If the table outside didn’t get the attention of the parents, a rack of literature inside might have. Almost all of the top row was dedicated to invasive plants, water conservation or drought-tolerant landscaping. Things don’t get much more Southern California than that.