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Featured Major Street
Amar Road
The Amar name arrived in the SGV in the late 1870s when Auguste Amar (1846-1888), who hailed from the French Alps, came to La Puente to raise sheep. He reportedly bought 1,836 acres in 1880 – the same year he married fellow French immigrant Alphonsine Gaucher (1860-1932). The Amars had five kids, three of whom survived childhood: Constance (later Mrs. Abel Garnier, 1882-1973), Auguste C. (1883-1913), and Fidele (1888-1936), who was born mere weeks before his father died of undisclosed causes. A year later, Alphonsine married Louis Didier and had four additional children with him, but it was Fidele and Constance who would develop the Amar ranch. (August C. died of tuberculosis at 29.) Fidele established a tract on the property in 1916, and in fact the earliest mention I found of Amar Road was in his 1936 obituary: he lived on the street, near its intersection with Lark Ellen Avenue. In 1947, Constance worked with her son Camille Garnier to subdivide the ranch as Valinda Village.