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Slowly fading with the city's ever-changing landscape, the places and people of Burbank's past tell a vibrant story. Before the arrival of Warner Bros. and Walt Disney, First National Pictures built its original studio lot on Olive Avenue in 1926. For over sixty years, Lockheed Aircraft Company produced some of the nation's best airplanes where the massive Empire Shopping Center now stands. Heavyweight champion James Jeffries turned his Burbank ranch home and barn into a beloved landmark and boxing venue. And inventor Joseph Wesley Fawkes's scheme to build a monorail to Los Angeles became a local laughingstock. Die-hard Burbankers Wes Clark and Michael McDaniel collect these and many more forgotten local stories where they can finally be found.

In the early 1890s, farmers Albert Maulhardt and John Edward Borchard discovered Ventura County's favorable conditions for a highly profitable new cash crop: the sugar beet. Not long after inviting sugar mogul Henry T. Oxnard to the area, construction began on a $2 million sugar factory capable of processing two thousand tons of beets daily. The facility brought jobs, wealth and the Southern Pacific rail line. It became one of the country's largest producers of sugar, and just like that, a town was born. Despite the industry's demise, the city of Oxnard still owes its name to the man who delivered prosperity. A fifth-generation descendant, local author and historian Jeffrey Wayne Maulhardt details the rise and fall of a powerful enterprise and the entrepreneurial laborers who helped create a city.