​Maynard Best.  That’s the common thread.

Jim Wigton and Pam Barkas’ home at 231 N. Myrtle is Monrovia Landmark 13.  Built for Maynard H. Best in 1908, it was the first house built in the Oaks Tract after it was subdivided in 1907.  This large house was originally planned as a home for Maynard, his wife (Briana or Bryana), her daughter Eleanor, his widowed mother Jennie, and Maynard’s sister Florence.  Interestingly, the family resided at 250 N. Primrose (the house of Monrovia founder William Monroe) until the home on Myrtle was completed.  

Maynard was born in Pennsylvania in 1868.  An odd fact is that Maynard was sometimes listed as May or Mae and as a female in the census!  Eventually the Bests moved to Monrovia around 1907, although the impetus for the move is not known.  As of 1908, Maynard was working with Herbert J. Evans in the real estate firm, Best & Evans, with an office at 611 S. Myrtle Avenue.  Maynard became ill and passed away in 1911.  His wife lived in the house until 1919.  

Jim and Pam bought the home in 1986 and are the fifth owners.  They restored the home over the years and it is a beautiful example of a Craftsman home.

​Oh, and that grave?  Many of the Bests are buried at Live Oak and they have a large grave marker with the name Best visible as you drive past on Duarte Road.

And now you know about the Best House and Best Grave in Monrovia!

Many thanks to Pam Barkas for her work on the history of 231 N. Myrtle and the photograph of the home.

If you want to know more about Monrovia’s historic homes – you could Google it –but we suggest you visit the Monrovia Historical Museum.  We have a fantastic exhibit completed in 2025 featuring the historic architecture that makes Monrovia the special place it is.  The exhibit even features a large-scale Craftsman home façade and an interactive touchscreen monitor and map showing the locations of Monrovia’s landmarked homes.   The museum, located at 742 E. Lemon in Recreation Park, is open Thursdays and Sundays from 1-4 and docents are on hand to inform and delight!  The “best” part?  Admission is free!

Actually, the children are no longer eternally sleeping in Canyon Park. It’s a sad, tale, though. Let’s read how the late Monrovia City Historian Steve Baker laid it out: 

“Hibbard and Polly Rankins came to California from Lafayette County, Wisconsin, and discovered Monrovia Canyon in 1874. Monrovia would not come into being for another twelve years, so the canyon was probably known to the Rankins as Sawpit Canyon. Pasadena had just been established as the Indiana Colony. The closest settlement was on the Duarte, where several hundred people had taken up residence beginning in 1872. The Rankins made their home at Emerson Flat [in what would become Canyon Park], taking advantage of the space that had already been cleared. They planted fruit trees, a garden, and several ornamental shrubs. For protection against the elements, they constructed two cabins under the sheltering oaks. Accounts vary as to the size of the Rankins family. One account says that there were eight children in the family; another states that there were five. While the size of the family is uncertain, one thing is clear--they were sturdy pioneers and they had to work hard to earn a living. Their principal source of income was from the sale of wood, which they gathered in the foothills and then laboriously hauled into Los Angeles by wagon to sell as fuel. The trip into Los Angeles and return took the better part of two days. The Rankins supplemented that income by establishing
an apiary that generated many hundreds of pounds of sumac honey. 

It is said that Hibbard and Polly Rankins were spiritualists, part of a movement that was prominent in their time. Their oldest daughter was a would-be medium, and the Rankins hosted frequent gatherings of like-minded people in their rustic mountain setting.

Tragedy struck the family in the spring of 1877. Nineteen-year-old Albert Rankins was apprenticed to a blacksmith in San Gabriel. He returned home one Sunday to visit his family, and shortly afterward became violently ill. His illness was diagnosed as typhoid fever, and he died despite the efforts of a young doctor who had taken up residence nearby, hoping the mountain air would help cure his tuberculosis. Albert's sisters, sixteen-year-old Polly and thirteen-year-old Estella, contracted the disease from Albert and also died. The sorrowing parents buried their three children in an area of rising ground at the west end of Emerson Flat. Soon afterward the solitary setting and the ever-present reminder of their loss was more than Hibbard and Polly Rankins could bear; they left the canyon and returned to Wisconsin. The following year Ernest Rankins, the oldest son in the family, arranged for a triple gravestone to  mark the resting place of his three siblings. He, too, then left the canyon. A fire in the canyon several years later destroyed the cabins, and the flood of 1882 further obliterated the site of the Rankins' home. Only the graves remained.” (Monrovia Canyon Park, Steve Baker, December 1, 2000; as of June 13, 2026.)

So are the three children still buried in Canyon Park? No.

Live Oak Cemetery began holding burials in December, 1877.. At some point after the cemetery was opened, Ernest Rankins (who had escaped typhoid but was killed in 1914 when hit by a street car in Los Angeles) had his two sisters and brother exhumed and buried in Live Oak Cemetery. In 1917, the remains of the children were moved to Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena.

Their gravestone remains in canyon park, located above the amphitheater. 

A lot more information, including a story by 1913 Monrovia High school graduate Stella Nelson, is available here as of June 13, 2026. ​