The back wall of a rebuilt house in the Altadena foothills now tells a story that starts in 1893 and hasn’t ended yet.
The wall belongs to the family of Waleed Delawari, an Altadena home builder and property developer with offices in Pasadena, whose house was destroyed in the Eaton Fire of January 2025. When the home went back up, the retaining wall facing the Altadena Crest Trail became something more than a property line: Delawari commissioned artist Austin Scott to paint an 85-foot mural across it, transforming a slab of concrete into a hand-painted narrative of Echo Mountain and the Mount Lowe Railway — the electric trolley line that once carried passengers from Altadena into the San Gabriel Mountains above Pasadena before fires and time erased it. The mural, which Scott and local media have described as Altadena’s largest at roughly 700 square feet, will be formally unveiled and dedicated on Sunday, May 31, from 4 to 6 p.m. on the trail east of Canon Boulevard. The event is free and open to the public.
Scott, an Altadena-based muralist and film editor, spent six days drawing the full design onto the wall before he and more than 80 community volunteers began painting, according to Hey SoCal and event organizers. The work took about 35 days. The result stretches the length of a basketball court: vivid colors, stylized animals, and landmarks including Cobb Estate, the ruins of Echo Mountain Resort, and Ye Alpine Tavern, which once served visitors near the top of the railway’s route.
The Mount Lowe Railway opened on July 4, 1893, fulfilling 19th-century Pasadenans’ ambition for a scenic mountain railroad. It ran nearly seven miles of track from a station in Altadena up to Echo Mountain, where a 70-room Victorian hotel, an observatory, and what was billed as the world’s largest searchlight awaited visitors. A series of fires, floods, and financial setbacks destroyed the resort buildings and ended service by 1938. Today hikers on the Sam Merrill Trail still encounter the ruins.
“A gift back to the community,” Scott told Pasadena Now in March, describing the mural’s purpose as the Delawari family frames it. The project is privately commissioned — painted on the family’s own rebuilt retaining wall in unincorporated Altadena — with no disclosed public funding, according to available records.
The mural is part of a broader wave of public art in Altadena following the Eaton Fire, which began on January 7, 2025, and destroyed more than 9,000 structures across Altadena and Pasadena. Scott became known locally after painting “Altadena Forever,” a mural at Unincorporated Coffee that celebrated businesses lost to the fire. He has since completed three additional public murals in Altadena, according to Hey SoCal.
Among the volunteers who helped paint the Echo Mountain mural was local realtor Teresa Fuller, according to Hey SoCal. The mural will remain permanently visible from the Altadena Crest Trail, a popular path that connects neighborhood streets to foothill trailheads above Pasadena.
The unveiling and dedication takes place Sunday, May 31, from 4 to 6 p.m. on the Altadena Crest Trail east of Canon Boulevard. Admission is free.
“Regrowth is beautiful,” Scott told Pasadena Now. On the wall behind him, a railway that vanished nearly a century ago is climbing back up the mountain.
