A9R2359.tmp

LOS ANGELES

STATE HISTORIC PARK

Interpretive Master Plan

August 23, 2006

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

A state park vision statement describes the “desired future experience” for

visitors to the park. The Los Angeles State Historic Park (LASHP) vision helps direct

future development through illustration of its “once-in-a-century opportunity” to

create a verdant place in the heart of the city where visitors from all social,

economic and cultural backgrounds can discover and celebrate the rich

cultural connections to Los Angeles history.

For general information regarding this document, or to request additional copies,

please contact:

California State Parks

Southern Service Center

8885 Rio San Diego Drive, Suite 270

San Diego, CA 92108

This publication, including all of the text and photographs, is the intellectual property of

California State Parks and is protected by copyright.

Vision

Visitors to Los Angeles State Historic Park will enjoy a rejuvenating respite from

the urban landscape in an open space environment. Visitors will experience

the environment through interpretive media and landscape features that

recall the historical events of the region. Educational programs and activities

will appeal to the interests of many visitors – from the local to the global

community, will be varied in media and scope, and will emphasize the City of

Los Angeles’ cultural, historic, and commercial heritage.

~ Los Angeles State Historic Park General Plan, May 2005

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Table of Contents

1.Introduction 4

x Declaration of Purpose

x Purpose of Los Angeles State Historic Park

x Legislative Background

x Purpose of the Interpretive Master Plan

2.Interpretive Considerations 6

x Select Cultural/Historical Context

x Existing Conditions

x Environmental Influences

x Visitors, Their Needs and Expectations

x Special Concerns, Analysis, and Opportunities

3.Interpretive Direction 19

x Interpretive Mission Statement

x Interpretive Period

x Interpretive Themes

x Expanded Theme Statements

4. Interpretive Recommendations 49

x Educational and Interpretive Goals

x Interpretive Concepts

x Design Considerations

x Orientation Plazas

x Visitor Center

x River to City Trail

x Archeology Discovery Sites

x Storytelling Circles

x Cultural Gardens

x Multi-Purpose Outdoor Classroom / Amphitheater

x Workers’ Park – Celebration Areas

x Pedestrian Bridge

x Safety and Security

x Interpretive Connectivity Map

5.Interpretive Sustainability 79

x Volunteer Involvement

x Potential Job Descriptions for Volunteers

x Cooperating Associations and Other Partnerships

x Interpretive Concessions

x Research Needs

x Future Interpretive Planning

x Future Acquisitions

x Potential Plan Phasing

6. Acknowledgements 89

7. References 91

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

1. INTRODUCTION

If you were to have visited Los Angeles State Historic Park (LASHP) when

California State Parks purchased the property in 2001, you might have

wondered why it was being considered for inclusion in the venerable State Park

System. The former Southern Pacific Railroad yard was a flat, 32-acre

“brownfield”

in need of cleanup and remediation. A new light-railway line had

been built through it and it was surrounded by a somewhat dilapidated

industrial area. Yet the 32-acres held a hidden value both in the ground through

its unique and associated archaeological remains and in the stories associated

with this specific land use history and the historical context it represented. Here

the voices of Los Angeles’ past could be explored and the current city

experienced.

Those who understood its history and its strategic location adjacent to the Los

Angeles River and the core of the historic city, saw it becoming a distinctive

public space—“the veranda” to the heart of downtown Los Angeles. Within one

of the most populated cities in the world, visionaries dreamed of a park that

offered a place of tranquility, mystery, and discovery – a special destination that

would hold its place in history and evolve into a world class park for all to enjoy.

Visions for those experiences began to develop from the urbanized former

brownfield. Sounds of the “Gold Line” light rail and urban surroundings became

a gentle murmur, visitors could listen for the faint voices of neighbors on their

way home, sometimes speaking in unrecognizable but familiar languages, or for

birds chirping and squawking, and leaves rustling in a breeze. The park

represented a natural bridge to the river, the ocean, the mountains and the

flatlands. That urban setting, with its mirror-like buildings reflecting the muted

hues of sunset as evening lights slowly begin to fill the sky, help to illuminate the

urban/natural dichotomy.

Local citizens, historians, planners, and activists understood this value and

gathered together the resources and support over the last decade for its

creation as a park. State Parks quickly moved to understand this value after its

acquisition in 2001, and with the help of a legislatively mandated Advisory

Committee made up of local citizens, scholars, professionals, and activists,

received both direction and validation on a vision. This guidance directed park

staff toward the development of a General Plan which was approved by the

State Parks Commission in June 2005.

Brownfield: an area which may be contaminated by hazardous substances, pollutants or

contaminants.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Purpose of Los Angeles State Historic Park

The purpose of the park is to preserve the site’s primary cultural resource values

and provide opportunities for illuminating Los Angeles’ greater cultural history.

Los Angeles’ past is tied directly to the specific land uses and extant cultural

resources of LASHP. The associated historical trends and movements of Los

Angeles’ cultural history are reflected in the property’s land use history, from its

establishment and growth as a remote frontier community into the 21

century

megalopolis and international economic power that it is today. The Declaration

of Purpose for Los Angeles State Historic Park conveys the specific mission and

overarching considerations for establishing future management of the Park and

its programs.

Legislative Background

Since the closure of the Southern Pacific Railroad yard in 1992, many Los

Angeles community organizations and individuals have not only realized the

cultural value of the property (it was listed at City Historical Landmark in 1971 to

recognize the Southern Pacific’s historic River Station) but also the opportunity

for developing the land into a park to restore much needed open space – a

deficiency of the surrounding area. Various groups valued the property for its

link to the Los Angeles River and to the inner city. It was included in design

charrette products, and conceptual and local community plans throughout the

1990s.

In 2000, with a local developer moving forward with an industrial project for the

property, a coalition was formed called the Chinatown Yard Alliance to fight the

proposed industrial development. The coalition prevailed and stopped the

project, rallying around the site’s nickname, “Cornfield.” When California voters

passed the Park Bond Act of 2000, $33 million were allocated to acquire the site,

after a feasibility report identified its potential as a state park. On February 23,

2001, Governor Gray Davis signed legislation authored by State Senator Richard

Polanco (Senate Bill 1177) establishing the Cornfield Advisory Committee. The

Committee was charged with assisting California State Parks in planning for

interim and permanent land uses and facilities for the newly acquired property.

The Cornfield Advisory Committee consisted of thirty-six members, representing

the surrounding communities and property owners, environmental justice and

civil rights organizations, historians, business leaders, educators,

local/state/federal governmental agencies, and non-profit groups. The

Committee met numerous times over a two-year period, working together with

California State Parks staff in developing a park vision, reviewing Interim Public

Use plans, making recommendations on park name and classification,

participating in public meetings, and providing input for the site’s General Plan.

In February 2003, the Cornfield Advisory Committee submitted to the Director of

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

California State Parks a report recommending a park vision based upon four

concepts: connectivity; cultural/historical; recreation; and, transportation.

On June 10, 2005, the California State Parks and Recreation Commission

approved the General Plan and named and classified the property as Los

Angeles State Historic Park. The General Plan codified a vision and purpose,

identifying LASHP’s unique opportunity to complement existing regional state

historic parks and giving direction for partnering with other institutions and

organizations to interpret a more comprehensive history of the greater Los

Angeles area.

Purpose of the Interpretive Master Plan

Los Angeles State Historic Park provides California State Parks an opportunity to

represent not only the stories and history of this significant property but also to

use its unique history and location to provide interpretation of the greater trends,

movements, and events that shaped Los Angeles’ past and present. This

direction comes from the Park’s recently completed General Plan which

emphasizes that the entire Park is to be considered an interpretive site, and

should be designed to function as an interpretive and cultural facility, as well as

an inviting open space and gathering-place for the local community and

visitors from around the world. The General Plan also identifies necessary

management and project plans that will be needed to develop facilities and

programs appropriately.

The Interpretive Master Plan (IMP) is considered one of these essential

management plans. This IMP is based extensively on direction provided in the

LASHP General Plan--particularly Chapter 4: The Plan. A number of suggestions

and recommendations are included in this IMP to provide a conceptual

roadmap for developing and delivering interpretive programs and services.

Specific interpretive plans will be produced with recommendations for

interpretive facilities, structures, and sites, ensuring that historical research,

environmental reviews, thematic development, visitor studies and flow plans,

exhibit designs, curriculum standards, etc., are current, accurate, relevant and

consistent with the vision for LASHP as outlined in the General Plan.

This version of the IMP provides various recommendations for interpretive facilities and

programs (see Section 4). The park has yet to be opened for full public use (as of Spring 2006)

and no regular use patterns have been established, and the long-term Park Conceptual Design

project has yet to be completed, the facilities and use recommendations in this IMP should be

considered as conceptual, but not specific requirements. The Plan will be updated at the

conclusion of the Conceptual Design Project phase to incorporate the latest conceptual

planning.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

2. INTERPRETIVE CONSIDERATIONS

Select Cultural/Historical Context

Within one of Los Angeles’ oldest industrial zones are families and

neighborhoods whose roots tie directly to the city’s early history and growth.

Surrounding Los Angeles State Historic Park – beyond the concrete and asphalt,

cars and trucks, transmission lines and warehouses – one can find the

communities of the William Mead Homes, Chinatown, Solano Canyon, Elysian

Park, and Lincoln Heights. Working class residents of today are living in the same

places that the area’s earliest settlers and immigrants called home.

The cultural roots of Los Angeles go back to pre-historic times with the arrival of

the Tongva (Gabrielino) people, who were among the most populous, wealthy,

and successful California Indian groups. The Tongva culture was marked by an

extensive oral tradition and a distinctive set of rituals, games, artwork, myths,

songs, and stories. For several centuries it is believed the Tongva village of Yang-

na or Yabit, was located along the bench lands adjacent to the Los Angeles

River in the vicinity of the park property.

Although Euro-American contact had occurred two centuries before, Spanish

Colonial settlers first arrived in Alta California in 1769. The noted Portola

Expedition of that year traveled across the park property and camped along

the nearby river. They named it for the jubilee day of Nuestra Senora de los

Angeles de Porciuncula—also noting that the location would provide a good

site for a civilian agricultural settlement. As typical of the Spanish Colonial

frontier the soldiers, missionaries, and settlers of the time represented a mixture of

European, African, and Indian lineage. It is no surprise that in 1781, when the

Spanish Colonial government established El pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles

along the Rio de Porciuncula, many of its initial settlers reflected this diversity.

One of the first improvements made was

an irrigation ditch, the Zanja Madre. This

first Los Angeles “public works project”

provided a direct connection that

directed the river’s water to the pueblo

and its agricultural lands. The Zanja Madre

crossed along the bluffs that served as the

northwestern boundary of the current

park’s property and traveled at various

points through the park parcel. The ditch

reflected the initial and essential

Dillon 1994; McCawley 1996

Trautlein 1973; Kelsey 1976; Mason 1998; Crespi 2001

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

relationship of the water to Los Angeles’ development and its prosperity. Typical

of the pueblo lands north and east of the plaza, the authorities established the

property as common planting lots. The pueblo’s system of providing common

lands and water to individuals proved successful and by 1817, the pueblo

reportedly had over 53,000 grape vines under cultivation.

After Mexican Independence in 1821, the social, political, and economic

situation changed in isolated frontier Alta California. In contrast to the autocratic

direction of the centralized Spanish Colonial government and the church-led

mission system, the rise of Mexican Republicanism opened the country to the

ideals supportive of representative government and private property. The

Mexican government quickly legalized trade with foreign vessels, officially

opening ports to the hide and tallow trade, and identifying the need for more

and larger grazing lands to increase commerce. This eventually led to the

secularization of the Mission system and distribution of its lands through private

land grants to prominent Californios, including new immigrants from the United

States, Europe, and Mexico.

As the largest of the civilian pueblos in the territory, Los Angeles soon became a

powerful economic and political force. Large rancho land grants surrounded

the pueblo lands and provided great wealth to the upper, land-owning classes

(gente de razon). Such wealth and power put Los Angeles and its leaders in

regular conflict with the smaller territorial capitol at Monterey during the

revolutionary politics of the 1830s and 1840s. Occasional events such as the

discovery of gold in nearby Placerita Canyon in 1842 also drew new

immigrants.

At the time of the United States occupation during the War with Mexico, Los

Angeles was the largest and most prosperous of the Alta California pueblos. The

discovery of gold in Northern California in 1848 soon had its effect on the

Southern California town. Thousands of Argonauts traveling the Southern

Overland route traveled through Los Angeles in the early years of the Gold Rush.

Conversely, the City gained a fairly large permanent population when in the

1850s, close to 10,000 Sonoran miners, forced out of the northern gold fields by

anti-Mexican discrimination, settled in an area that became known as

“Sonoratown” (near present-day Main and North Broadway Streets just

southwest of the park). These “new immigrant” Mexicans helped keep Los

Angeles’ Hispanic population in the majority until after the Great Boom of the

1880s

Gumprecht 1999; Newland and Dallas 2006; Ord Map 1849; City Archives

Robinson 1948; Monroy 1990; Hackel 1997; Nunis 1997

Tays 1936; Monroy 1990; Poole and Ball 2002

Pitt 1966; Griswold del Castillo 1979

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Not as directly prosperous from the Gold Rush as was

San Francisco and Sacramento, Los Angeles did see

some economic benefit in the 1850s from the sale of

cattle and wine to its northern neighbors. The brief

prosperity of the cattle industry was decimated by

drought and floods and other environmental factors

by 1865. Los Angeles’ wine makers, however,

prospered during the 1850s and 1860s. The Spanish

Colonial winemaking pioneers such as the Abilas,

reportedly had vineyards on the park property. They

were bolstered by new winemakers in the 1820s and

1830s. American Joseph Chapman and Frenchmen

Jean Louis Vignes and nephews Pierre and Jean Louis

Sainsevain, among others, helped make wine Los Angeles’ chief product well

into the 1870s, when over 6 million vines were planted in the Los Angeles area.

Vignes also was the first to plant an orange grove in Los Angeles in 1834.

American immigrant William Wolfskill started the first commercial grove a few

years later near today’s Fourth and Alameda and by the mid-1850s it was

reportedly the largest in the United States and a “show place” for Los Angeles’

agricultural promise. Although Wolfskill and others would experiment with dozens

of potential agricultural products, it would be citrus that would provide the first

agricultural “gold rush” for the Los Angeles region with the arrival of the Southern

Pacific Railroad in the 1870s.

The sale and purchase (of the current park parcels) for development of

Southern Pacific’s first yards and depots proved to be a major catalyst for Los

Angeles’ exponential growth over the next century. First, the Southern Pacific

triggered the rapid rise from a small, remote agricultural area into a prototype

for industrial agricultural in the late 19

and early 20

centuries. Soon after, the

region would see the oil, manufacturing, motion pictures, and aircraft industries

take advantage of Los Angeles’ climate and developable real estate.

The civic victory in securing Los Angeles as the terminus of the Southern

transcontinental railroad at River Station resulted in more than the creation of a

regional agricultural center. Los Angeles, using its victory for the railroad

terminus, quickly leaped past its other regional rival, San Diego, in the

development of what is today the world’s third largest port, rail, and air transport

centers. The region’s leaders soon secured, with at times great environmental

and social costs, the water, power, and transportation infrastructure that served

and dominated not only the city but all of Southern California. It is this

Forbes 1932; McKee 1948; Kindall 1959; Gumprecht 1999

Gumprecht 1999; Wilson 1965

Starr 1985, 1990; Mullaly and Petty 2002; Orsi 2005

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

infrastructure that has helped allow Los Angeles to become the international

economic power it is today.

The current park property played a significant role in this meteoric

transformation. The original Southern Pacific Railroad yards and the River Station

as it was historically known, served as the core for Los Angeles’ burgeoning

agricultural and industrial development. Capitol Mill, Standard Oil, Baker Iron

Works, along with other industrial plants and warehouses, were located in

proximity to the railroad yards and facilities. The land became a microcosm for

what was happening in Los Angeles and its coming of age as an industrial

metropolis.

Socially and culturally the city grew and evolved as well. The exponential

population growth saw a succession of migration and immigration. The arrival of

the railroads triggered a “Boom” in the 1880s. Population growth continued

through the 1920s, when a large population of mostly Anglo-Americans moved

from the Midwest and East seeking the utopian visions promoted by the railroads

and citrus crate images. These, of course, were not the only existing or new

residents to Los Angeles. However, they soon came to dominate the civic

power, control the urban form and create the historical identity.

This

population growth pattern would continue through the interwar and post-World

War II eras, sparked by development friendly urban planning and the growth of

the automobile culture and landscape.

In the mid 20

century, the once active center of Los Angeles’ rail freighting

operations at River Station were relocated to more suburban locations and

facilities. However, during and after World War II, the River Station continued to

serve as an important early “inter-modal” facility where rail and truck freight

interacted. By the 1970s, the railroad and industrial landscape that once

dominated the River Station and surrounding neighborhoods had deteriorated.

Old industrial properties were abandoned and closed up and the once frantic

pace of activity slowed. On October 1, 1992 the Southern Pacific Railroad

ended its activities and closed the property that had brought them to Southern

California, and had served as the catalyst for the growth of industrial Los

Angeles.

This brief cultural/historical overview provides context for setting the historical

activities, events, and trends of the Los Angeles State Historic Park property into

the greater Los Angeles story. This should be considered a starting point for the

Erie 2004

Newland and Dallas 2006

Starr 1985; 1990; Deverall 2004

Fogelson 1967; Bottles 1990; Hise 1997

Mullaly and Petty 2002

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

examination and consideration of the storylines, themes, and topics that may

be addressed at the Park. Research and interaction with scholars, stakeholders,

and the public should be on-going to assess the interests and needs of those

visiting the Park.

Existing Conditions

Cultural Resources and Interpretive Collections

Interest in the historical importance of this property is not new. The property’s use

as Southern Pacific Railroad’s River Station and yards for over 100 years justified

the property’s listing as a City Historical Monument in 1971.

Recent

investigations and studies have identified the entire 32-acre park as an

archaeological site due to the presence of sub-surface remnants from over 120

years of use as a railroad facility. Other archaeological features from before the

railroad era may also exist and cannot be discounted.

The intense focus of

community members, planners, and scholars over the last decade has also

uncovered cultural and historical linkages to this small piece of land that offer

context to Los Angeles’ greater story.

The site’s historical significance and associations transcend its historic land uses,

and extant cultural resources, with its links to the origin of Los Angeles’ meteoric

rise from remote frontier community to 20

century urban megalopolis and

international economic power. Its association with the first documented public

works project (Zanja Madre) and early agriculture; the donation of land to the

Southern Pacific Railroad to bring the transcontinental connection to Los

Angeles in the 1870s; its role as a pioneer, hub and catalyst for the city and

region’s unprecedented commercial, industrial, and social growth; and its

ground-breaking role in the center of an environmental justice and

neighborhood empowerment struggle, all make it a unique place for tracing Los

Angeles’ cultural history from its origins to today

Nearby and adjacent historical resources like the recently uncovered portions of

the Zanja Madre on MTDB and private property, and associated buildings, such

as the Capitol Milling Company, Standard Oil, and N.Y. Suspender

Factory/California Ice Company buildings, can be considered potential

cultural/historical resources for interpretation and education purposes.

The interpretive collections currently associated with the park are

archaeological in nature and date exclusively to the site’s railroad era. This

material primarily consists of fragments, with a few whole pieces of bottles,

dishware, clay bricks, clay tiles, and animal bones. The collection contains

Mullaly and Petty 2002; River Station 1971

Newland and Dallas 2006

Aeschbacher et al. 2000; Deverell 2004

see Newland and Dallas 2006

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

evidence of the early use of the property. Two stoneware ink bottles, for

instance, were recovered near the “printing room” depicted on the 1888

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map as a part of the depot and hotel.

Physical Features

The 32-acre former brownfield was basically a flat parcel with little elevation

change when acquired in 2001. In 2003, State Parks began construction of

interim improvements for public use, including day use and interpretive features.

Clean fill soils were imported to provide the site’s underlying archaeological

features protection, as well as to offer topography for the park improvements.

This Interim Public Use project was put on hold in 2005 when the site underwent a

physical transformation for the ‘Not A Cornfield’ public art project. The features

of this project were temporary in nature and will be removed by early 2006.

However, a few features added by this project are anticipated to remain at the

site: a trail around the site’s perimeter (approximately one-mile of decomposed

granite); approximately 1500 truck loads of agricultural grade soil; four acres of

turf; and, a wooden deck with a canopy cover at the north end of the site.

These features will be incorporated back into the IPU as it is completed in

summer 2006.

At the south end of the Park is the only extant standing structure at the Park,

“Millie’s.” This small, former luncheonette stand had been in operation for close

to 50 years. It had been patronized by many who lived or worked in the

downtown area. This structure includes a semi-enclosed, metal shed-roofed

dining area. Other than Millie’s roofed dining area at the southern end and the

wooden deck canopy cover at the northern end, there are no trees or shade on

the park property.

The noise from the nearby Gold Line light rail is loud, as is the adjacent traffic

sounds from Interstate 5 and the Arroyo Seco Historic Parkway (SR 110), a

National Scenic Byway designated in 2002 as the first modern urban freeway in

America. The property is bordered by two busy streets (North Broadway and

Spring Street) which commuters use to by-pass congested freeways. North of

the property is the historic Buena Vista Bridge (commonly referred to as the

North Broadway Bridge). This architecturally distinctive bridge is bisected by the

double track Gold Line which runs through the framed arches.

Biological Features

Viewed from above, the site appears as an oblong parcel that has been

carved over time by the Los Angeles River. The northern-most portion of the site

is located approximately 150 feet from the western edge of the concrete river

channel. The Park is situated on a bench just above the former floodplain of the

Newland and Dallas 2006

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Los Angeles River and is bordered to the northwest by the Elysian Park Hills, which

rise to elevations over 700 feet above mean sea level.

Naturally occurring vegetation is sparse, limited to weedy growth dominated by

plants able to exist in an urban environment. Overall the existing vegetation on-

site can be classified as ruderal, generally defined as plants growing in waste

places that are not necessarily non-native species. Among the plants observed

on site during the General Plan study phase were mulefat, horseweed, prickly

lettuce, and bristly ox-tongue.

Much like the vegetation of the site, the wildlife observed during the General

Plan study phase generally included those species adapted to surviving in an

urban or disturbed environment. Among the wildlife species observed on-site

were: birds including killdeer, mourning dove, rock dove/pigeon, red-tailed

hawk, and American kestrel; mammals, such as Beechey’s ground squirrel; and,

invertebrates like the Pallid winged grasshopper and West Coast Lady. More

recent observations have included sparrows nesting under the North Broadway

Bridge.

Environmental Influences

Surrounding Land Uses and Community Characteristics

The area surrounding the Park is primarily dedicated to regional industrial use,

including warehouses and busy transportation thoroughfares. An active bus line

runs parallel to the Park, as does a new Metrolink commuter line. The surrounding

area contains a number of historic resources such as remnants of the city’s first

irrigation system, the Zanja Madre, and the nearby 1883 Capitol Mill building.

Within a few blocks of the site are several commercial establishments, schools, a

library, and a number of ethnically diverse neighborhoods.

The southern boundary of the Park is along North

Spring Street. The character of this area is

currently defined by industrial uses. Situated two

blocks to the south is the William Mead Housing

complex, the area’s first low income housing

project and home to approximately 2,500,

primarily Latino, residents. The Ann Street

Elementary School (K-6) is also nearby. The

Chinatown Transit Plaza is located just a few

yards from the southwestern end of the Park.

The northern edge of the Park is bordered by North Broadway Street. The

character of this area is defined by rolling hills, commercial areas, and

neighborhoods. Located in this area is the Solano Canyon neighborhood, a

residential community established in the 1880s. Solano Canyon is surrounded by

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Elysian Park and the Arroyo Seco Historic Parkway (SR 110), a recognized

National Scenic Byway built between 1935 and 1940 as the first modern

“freeway.” At the northwest end of the Park is the Chinatown community,

consisting of a mixture of commercial and residential uses with a relatively high

level of pedestrian traffic. The northeast end of the Park is defined by utility and

rail easements, the North Broadway Bridge, and the concrete channeled Los

Angeles River. To the east, across the river, is the neighborhood of Lincoln

Heights—the original East Los Angeles, which was also heavily impacted by the

railroad industry.

Restoration efforts focused on the Los Angeles River continue to gain

momentum, particularly with the acquisition of the Río de Los Angeles State Park

property two miles to the north. This state park is to become an important

element of the river greenway project, which will help to link the San Fernando

foothills to the Pacific Ocean. A future bike path connecting Río de Los Angeles

State Park to Los Angeles State Historic Park is being proposed.

There has been a revitalization trend over the past several years in the

downtown area. A number of redevelopment projects are proposed near the

Park. They include: adaptive reuse (housing and studio development) of the

historic Capitol Mill building complex; an intermodal facility that will provide

parking at the Blossom Plaza site; and, Homeboy Bakery, to be located across

from the Chinatown Transit Plaza. The Los Angeles Conservation Corps’ “Clean

and Green” program, which provides environmental service opportunities to

youth, ages 13 to 17, has recently moved into a building on North Spring Street,

directly across from the Park. Additional residential, office, and retail

developments are proposed in the civic center, which will contribute to an

emerging mixed-use urban neighborhood.

With all of these development and redevelopment activities, an integral

component of the expanding downtown community infrastructure is the area’s

cultural draws. Just four blocks south of LASHP is El Pueblo de Los Angeles

Historical Monument, commonly referred to as Olvera Street. Adjacent to the

Olvera Street historic site is a new project known as La Plaza de Cultura y Artes,

which will provide exhibit space and community programs in the historic

Vickery-Brunswig Building. All of the aforementioned development, commercial,

and cultural activities provide a dynamic template for which the programs at

LASHP can enhance, complement, and supplement.

Visitors, Their Needs and Expectations

Potential Park Visitor Profiles and Numbers

It is anticipated that park visitors will comprise two primary groups. The first will be

Angelenos, or residents of Los Angeles County. This group is projected to include

residents from the neighborhoods surrounding the Park, as well as students and

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

instructors from the area’s schools and colleges. It may also include residents,

employees, and visitors from the downtown area, who will use the bus service,

rail line, and bike trails to seek open space and activities offered at the Park.

The second group is comprised of visitors coming from out of the area, including

residents of Southern California and other areas of California, as well as travelers

from other states and countries.

Potential visitors from the surrounding communities include: a high population of

Asians and Latinos, many of whom live at or close to poverty levels and who are

newcomers to the State; a high number of residents who are not English

language proficient; people of various ages, from children to seniors; and a

rising influx of residents in the redeveloped areas of the downtown city center

who may be higher-income professionals. It is anticipated that once the Park is

open, many people from these neighborhoods, as well as a great diversity of

out-of-town visitors, will use the Park as a place to relax and recreate.

Nearby historic El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument offers an

educational and recreational-shopping experience with visitation estimated at

one million people annually. It is anticipated that approximately 300,000 visitors

may participate in Los Angeles State Historic Park’s interpretive tours and other

activities when the Park is completed.

Population Trends

The changing demographic patterns of Southern California cities, as well as

regions from outside this area, will affect visitor needs, the types of activities, and

demand for recreational open space. These factors will undoubtedly affect the

educational and interpretive services offered at the Park. Within easy traveling

distance are the communities of William Mead Homes, Solano Canyon,

Chinatown, Elysian Heights, Lincoln Heights, and downtown Los Angeles. The

current shift in zoning from less industry to mixed use housing, office space and

retail is changing the character of this area and will increase the desire for open

space, recreation, and free-choice or leisure learning.

Special Concerns, Analysis, and Opportunities

Meeting Multi-Lingual Needs

Identifying methods for removing barriers to language, educational, and

economic class differences is essential for the Park to provide meaningful

experiences that meet the unique needs of the community, as well as echo the

interpretive themes of the Park. State Parks’ staff and management have

identified meeting the multi-language needs of visitors to be among the key

considerations. The dense urban environment surrounding the Park is

characterized by a very diverse population that reflects the rich cultural

heritage of Los Angeles and much of California. California State Parks will be

responsive to the needs of this diverse population. The Park has an opportunity

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

to meet the challenge of multi-lingual needs when planning and developing

interpretive and educational programs and facilities. One approach to

meeting this challenge will be to utilize staff, volunteers, and community partners

with multi-lingual skills. Other opportunities include working with existing

volunteer/docent groups from local heritage sites who can provide support for

multi-lingual interpretive program presentations and for the development of

printed information in multiple languages.

Providing Meaningful Programs and Events

Developing relevant programs and events is essential for the Park to provide

meaningful experiences that reflect the Park’s vision and meet the unique

needs of the community. Park staff and management have identified as a

special consideration the need to create programs and events that are

consistent with the Park’s vision and interpretive themes. The significance of the

site as a State Historic Park and its unique role in providing connections between

park visitors and the greater Los Angeles story need to be considered as

programs and events are developed. One method for ensuring that meaningful

experiences are offered is by working with the community to gain input on

program and event goals, topics, and content development. Another is to link

to already established, as well as newly developing, programming in the

surrounding area (i.e. Chinese American Museum, El Pueblo de Los Angeles

Historical Monument, Inner-City Arts, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, and Río de Los

Angeles State Park).

The property’s significance to Los Angeles’ cultural history both past and present

has been described from the following statement of the Cornfield Advisory

Committee’s Cultural/Historical Work Group:

The Cornfield site is the conduit to understanding the story of Los Angeles. The

resources past, present and future reveal larger cultural, economic and

historical narratives reflective of the city at large through time. These resources

present a unique opportunity in Los Angeles to forge a connection of people,

history and place by opening a window to understanding the past and tracing

the present into the future.

The Cornfield site sits uniquely at a vital geographic nexus to Los Angeles’ history

from its beginnings to the present. It is a vehicle for a revelatory journey through

layers of history and culture, a slice through time exposing the dominant,

forgotten and ignored stories alike which make Los Angeles so rich and diverse.

The site embodies the culture and heritage of the pageantry of peoples in and

around the site, the values of a natural, riparian environment, the pre-history of

the region as embodied by the Native American village site, the region’s

agrarian past, the operation of the City’s original public water system, and the

historical site of a major Southern California railroad and transportation hub. It

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

expresses the story of struggle, of the conflict and cooperation that the historical

flow of peoples in its neighborhoods have encountered and endeavored to

resolve.

The value of the Cornfield lies in its potential to connect larger historical and

social patterns to the personal stories relevant to the contemporary experience

of Angelenos. It will serve as a touchstone through which Angelenos can come

to see how they fit into the greater Los Angeles story.

Angelenos have been notorious at obliterating, distorting and forgetting their

history. It is noteworthy, for example, that there is no museum devoted primarily

to the history of Los Angeles. Cornfield park project, with its clear-cut and innate

importance in Southern California’s story, provides a rare opportunity to reverse

that trend, by allowing an interpretive staff to revive aspects of local history and

to relate them to larger patterns of California and American history

Cornfield Advisory Cultural/Historical Subcommittee, 2003.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

3. INTERPRETIVE DIRECTION

“No other available 32 acres holds as much opportunity to enlighten us

about the history and culture of Los Angeles and this region…”

Dr. Leonard Pitt, Professor of History, CSUN

Cornfield Advisory Committee, 2002

Los Angeles today provides homes, employment, communities, and recreational

destinations for millions of people. The cultural story of Los Angeles – from its

origins some 10,000 plus years ago through the monumental growth and rapid

urbanization of the region in the last two centuries – provides a unique vehicle

for uncovering the underlying historical truths and myths of the current

megalopolis that is called Los Angeles.

The history of the Los Angeles SHP property lends itself as a venue for inquiry into,

and dialogue on, the rich heritage and on-going study of the region and its

people. Los Angeles has often filled a special niche for study of historical

subjects, such as social and ethnic studies, architecture and cultural landscape,

labor and economics, industry and commerce, housing and community,

environment and land use, and urban studies. A glance at but a few of the

more recent studies signal an invigoration in Los Angeles as a subject.

Los Angeles SHP is in a position to take advantage of recent history and

historiography, along with the heightened interest in Los Angeles as subject, to

encourage, sponsor, and undertake further research for planning and

implementing its interpretive programs. These programs should be not only for, or

by the academic or scholarly community but also should serve as a venue for

social dialogue. LASHP’s program content will be rooted in recent scholarship,

as well as strive to gather and use, primary source materials on the Los Angeles

cultural experience. Park staff should investigate primary records and sources for

incorporation into programs. The park should especially serve as an important

gathering point for collecting and sharing the first-person stories of the Los

Angeles experience in order to help provide a richer and more complete

historical narrative. Whenever possible, the park’s program should include strong

oral history and first person narrative components.

See Scott and Soja 1996; Salas and Roth 2001; Sitton and Deverill 2001; Monahan 2003; Wolch,

et al. 2004; Gottlieb et al. 2005; Deverill and Hise 2005.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Interpretive Mission Statement

The interpretive mission is to develop the 32-acre Los Angeles State Historic Park

to communicate the statewide significance of the cultural history of Los Angeles,

from its origins to today.

Interpretive Period

The interpretive period for Los Angeles State Historic Park is based on a “Flow of

History Concept” in order to address the 10,000 plus year history of the area. The

Park will provide opportunities to learn about the entire range of Los Angeles’

pre-history and history, from its natural resource foundations to its contemporary

urban context.

Interpretive Themes

Unifying Theme: Connectivity

Los Angeles State Historic Park’s resources reveal natural, cultural, economic,

and historical threads reflective of greater Los Angeles over time.

Primary Theme: Flow of History

Subtheme A: People’s History

Los Angeles’ story over the past 10,000 plus years embodies the struggles and

triumphs of its diverse residents and communities.

Subtheme B: History of Place

The movement of people and products has enabled Los Angeles to become

the megalopolis it is today.

Primary Theme: Environmental Justice

Subtheme A: Water

Water has played an integral role in the growth of Los Angeles from the Spanish

period to the present.

Subtheme B: Environmental Actions

By their actions, people have affected Los Angeles basin’s environment,

impacting the health of natural systems and communities.

Secondary Theme: Recreation

Los Angeles State Historic Park provides a unique place for reflection, relaxation,

recreation, rejuvenation, and inspiration.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Expanded Theme Statements

Primary Theme: Flow of History

Subtheme A: Peoples’ History

Los Angeles’ story over the past 10,000 plus years embodies the struggles and

triumphs of its diverse residents and communities.

Overview

Individual stories and personal experiences of the area’s native Californians and

immigrant communities have the power to resonate in a collective voice that

speaks to everyone. Stories associated with the long history of Los Angeles

include: the early Tongva/Gabrielino people and their village of Yang-Na;

Spanish colonization of the area; the transformation of the land into a Mexican

pueblo; the growth of diverse ethnic communities that have contributed to the

worldwide cultural influence of the city.

Background Information

Scholarship on the topic of Los Angeles’ prehistory and history uncovers a deep

and complex historiography that continues to evolve. The brief historiographic

essay below is meant to capture the broad ideas, concepts, and subject matter

related to the theme. This essay is not

intended to be an exhaustive listing of the

rich, diverse, and significant scholarship, themes, and/or stories of the people,

places, and events associated with Los Angeles’ cultural history. It should be

thought of as a starting point for the establishment of research and scholarship

for program development. Many hundreds of such works exist and listing, or

failure to be listed, in the following does not infer judgment on their value or

competence.

Ethnography and Indian History

The cultural story of the Los Angeles region dates far before Alta California’s

historical record of the last four hundred plus years. Archaeological evidence

indicates human occupation of the Los Angeles plain and coastal strip from at

least 10,000 years before present (B.P.) times. Some scholars have entertained

theories of much earlier arrivals in the area, although the exact time of human

arrival remains controversial. Over several thousand years the region saw a

progression of paleoindian and archaic culture groups that some believe may

have been the predecessors of the existing Indian populations.

McCawley 1996; Dillon 1994.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

The region directly surrounding the park is the known territory of the

Tongva/Gabrieleno peoples. The influence of

these prehistoric people was far reaching. They

held the territory of a large section of Southern

California that includes much of the Los

Angeles basin and several of the Channel

Islands. Previous scholarship believed that the

Tongva/Gabrieleno were recent entrants into

California, possibly only 1,500 or so years before

present. More recent research now proposes

that they may have been occupying the area

for well over 4,500 years. In either instance, archaeological and ethnographic

evidence indicate that the prehistoric Tongva/Gabrieleno were a prosperous,

adaptable, and creative people who along with their northwesterly neighbors,

the Chumash, were one of the most populous, wealthy, and prosperous

California Indian groups.

The study of the region’s prehistoric past has evolved significantly from the

mostly ethnocentric and often culturally insensitive interpretations of Native

American culture in the 19

and early 20

centuries,

into the pastoralist images

of missionaries and Indians

toward the scholarship of the last few decades

which has focused on more scientific interpretations of material culture remains,

ethnographic studies, and the direct input and participation of the Native

American peoples themselves.

This is also true of the cultural studies of the history of native peoples since the

Spanish Colonization and American conquest of the region in the historic period.

Social, ethnic, and cultural historians of the last few decades have offered more

comprehensive studies to reinterpret the historical narrative of the Native

peoples. These studies have helped uncover and understand the devastating

effects of the Euro-American conquest on the Tongva/Gabrieleno and other

native peoples. From the effects of the Spanish Colonial missionaries, soldiers,

and settlers

, to the effect of Mexican Republicanism on land use and

economy

and beyond to the American Period,

scholarship on Native

American historical narrative and experience continues to move toward a more

thorough and contemplative assessment of their heretofore hidden or

suppressed histories.

McCawley 1996; Dillon 1994.

See Reid 1888; Caughey 1952; Heizer 1974; Warner et al. 1877.

See James 1914; Englehardt 1927.

See Johnston 1962; McCawley 1996; Heizer 1978; Hurtado 1988; Fagan 2003.

Cook 1978; Castillo 1991; Jackson 1995.

Monroy 1990; Gonzalez 1997; Sandos 1997.

Heizer 1974; Haas 1995.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Historiography

The history of Los Angeles is in many ways typical of that of California as a whole.

The earliest documentation dates to that of the Spanish Colonial explorers,

missionaries and settlers.

Narratives of the Mexican Republic Period focused on

the internal struggles of the territory and Los Angeles’ unique role as leader of

secular power and ideals in the “revolutionary politics” of the time.

However, as with much of California’s historical narrative of this period, the

Anglo American sojourners of the Mexican Republic and early American Periods

dominated the early chronicles of the City and community’s history from their

viewpoint. Nineteenth century Hispanic narrators such as Antonio Maria Osio

and Francisco Ramirez

were often overshadowed by the works of Jonathan

Warner, Benjamin Hayes, and Harris Newmark to name but a few.

Even the

first person narratives of pioneering Hispanics gathered dutifully by Hubert Howe

Bancroft’s prolific “history company” in the 1870s and 1880s fell victim to

“sweetened,” biased, and sometimes patronizing idyllic visions of the City’s

origins and diverse ethnic residents.

This vision would be greedily swallowed by boosters and promoters who helped

craft what later scholar Carey McWilliams would tout as the “Spanish Fantasy

Heritage” of the city and region. It was “booster historians” at the turn-of-the-

twentieth century such as James Guinn (1901), Charles Fletcher Lummis (1909)

and John McGroarty (1923), who not only spun this fantasy heritage of its Native

and Hispanic roots to meet the needs of the new dominant Anglo American

society’s civic, business, and racial ideals, but used it to justify Los Angeles’

meteoric rise from frontier community to economic power in but two short

generations. As the self proclaimed “City of Destiny,” Los Angeles and the

Angelenos were bred, taught, and sold to believe that their City was the

trendsetter, the place where Americans came to find the American Dream.

And the majority of their historical narratives reflected the doctrine of unbridled

progress and prosperity that justified the unparalleled economic and

demographic growth Los Angeles experienced at the time.

As modern Los Angeles became the urban phenomenon of the 20

century,

pioneer scholars such as sociologist Emory Bogardus,

economist Rockwell Hunt,

anthropologist Manuel Gamio,

and lawyer, scholar, and social critic Carey

See Costanzo 1992; Nunis 2004.

Bancroft 1886; Tays 1943.

See Osio 1996; Pitt 1966.

Warner and Hayes 1877; Bell 1881; Newmark 1930.

Bancroft 1886.

See McWilliams 1948; Starr 1985; Kropp 1999; Deverell 2004).

Bogardus 1927; 1930

Gamio 1931

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

McWilliams,

searched for, and exposed the multi-ethnic stories and histories

that had paralleled the rise of the economic and cultural dominance of the

region. Most specifically they uncovered the narratives of the Mexican and

Mexican American populations of the region that as historian William Deverell

noted had been “whitewashed” from the record.

Such studies, aside from the

success and acclaim of McWilliams’ work, generally continued to be

overshadowed by the progress focused local histories produced from Professor

Owen Coy’s prolific local history program at USC or those from the halls of

venerable archival institutions such as the Southwest Museum and Huntington

Library.

And it was those early scholars of the “hidden” ethnic histories of Los Angeles

who in the 1960s and 1970s set the precedent for the opening of the “New

Social History” to examine those stories and narratives of the under-represented,

or misrepresented groups and individuals that still made up a large segment of

Los Angeles’ population.

Fueled also by the Civil Rights Movement of the times,

Chicano, African American, Asian American, Native American, and Women’s

Studies programs soon provided new, voluminous, sophisticated, and insightful

analyses and voices to the Los Angeles historical narrative.

These scholars have

been the inspiration of much of the recent study of the Los Angeles story that

provides innovative scholarship in the social, economic, political, and urban

history of the region, and subsequently the state and nation.

In the last two decades or so, Los Angeles has become a lightning rod for

students and scholars in urban planning, sociology, and history alike. Scholarly

programs at major universities such as UCLA, Cal State Northridge, Long Beach

State, UC Irvine, Occidental, and USC all now have active Los Angeles or

Southern California studies programs. Partnerships and dialogues between

longtime cultural institutions, universities, civic and local community groups are

growing as residents, visitors, and policy makers look to find common ground for

understanding and interacting as inspired by the so-called “LA School.”

For

most of these programs, the opportunity for civic dialogue, both to discuss the

individual, as well as the collective history and narrative, is a key to helping their

goals to provide Angelenos a better opportunity to understand and decipher

not only the past, but the present, and to hopefully guide the future.

McWilliams 1946, 1948, 1949

Deverell 2004

See Pitt 1966; Griswold del Castillo 1979; Romo 1983; Rios-Bustamonte 1993.

See De Graff 1970; Ruiz 1987; Haas 1995; Hayashi 1995; Monroy 1990; 1999; Hise 1997.

See Avila 2004; Orsi 2004; Erie 2004; Wild 2005; Flamming 2005; Sides 2005 and compilations

such as Salas and Roth 2001; Sitton and Deverell 2001; Wolch, et al. 2004; Gottlieb et al. 2005;

Deverell and Hise 2005.

See Monahan 2003; see also Davis 1990; 1998.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

With a similar mission, LASHP park programs need to tap into the current flow of

scholarship and partner with the numerous institutions and organizations to find

a niche for fostering, encouraging, and presenting the on-going study, dialogue,

and experience of Los Angeles’ cultural story.

Social Memory

Although perseverance, strength, and pride are among the enduring values for

the communities and neighborhoods surrounding LASHP, their histories of

struggle, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and injustice also reflect major

trends and events in Los Angeles’ history. The past vigilantism against Indians

and Hispanics of the 1850s and 1860s, the Chinatown Massacre of 1871, the

forced relocation of old Chinatown to old Sonoratown in 1933 to make way for

Union Station, the severing of Solano Canyon and Elysian Park for the Pasadena

Freeway in the 1940s, and the relocation of the Chavez Ravine community in

the 1950s for proposed public housing projects and later Dodger Stadium, all

had direct connections and/or impacts on the physical landscape, continuity,

and psyche of the people and communities surrounding the former River Station

yards.

Today, the people and communities of the local surrounding neighborhoods

recall these years. In their personal stories and memories, the feelings of

disenfranchisement in regard to their issues and concerns for the once active

and vibrant industrial and working class neighborhoods. Yet, the social and

personal histories of the area along with the less than pleasant tales of railroad

hobos and transients living in dugout caves beneath the Broadway Street

Bridge, the rounding up of poor vagrants to county work camps and the

repatriation of Mexican and Mexican-American workers from the freight docks

of River Station in the 1930s, along with the lost promises of playgrounds and

parks from the City and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1950s, all provide

narratives of Los Angeles’ history that have often been overshadowed or hidden

from the greater civic story.

Success stories are also often just as hidden. The story of New Chinatown re-

establishing itself near the park along North Broadway helps to provide context

for the greater history of the Angelenos. Although displaced in the bitter 1930s

battle over the Union Station site, Chinese community leaders took advantage

of opportunities to recreate their new neighborhood. Following the moniker to

“Cooperate So As To Achieve”, and taking advantage of new laws to recognize

Chinese-American veterans of World War I and Pro-Chinese sentiment during

World War II, New Chinatown became a solid and successful business and

residential community. Its population doubled in the 1950s, after the Communist

Pitt 1966; Dillon 1994; Greenwood 1996; Cuff 2000; Aeschbacher et al 2000

Aeschbacher et al 2000; Garcia and Flores 2005

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

takeover of China triggered a new wave of immigration. Additional immigrants

from Southeast Asia would also arrive and settle in the decades after the

Vietnam War.

Thus the communities around River Station continued to follow the patterns of

earlier immigrant groups in adding to the 20

century ethnic mix of Los Angeles.

In 1990 the population of Chinatown and the surrounding communities of Solano

Canyon and the William Mead Housing Project (established in 1943) continued

to hold onto their heavily ethnic majorities.

Perhaps one of the greatest success stories in Angelenos’ recent history is the

formation of the Chinatown Yard Alliance and its ultimate contribution in helping

to create Los Angeles State Historic Park. The Alliance brought together an

unprecedented group of over thirty-five community, civil rights, traditional

environmental, environmental justice, religious, business, and civic organizations

and leaders.

Under the moniker of the Chinatown Yard Alliance for the Cornfield (an old

railroad worker’s nickname for the lower yard used to help associate the historic

uses of the property as open, common public land)

, a heroic effort was made

to stop the Majestic Realty warehouse project. The Chinatown Alliance

challenged the determinations of the City of Los Angeles and Majestic Realty

that the property no longer had any historical significance since closing of the

River Station as a rail yard. Soon other concerns as to the economic viability of

the warehouse project also cast shadows over its success. In 2001 the

Chinatown Yard Alliance, with legal help from the Environmental Justice in Los

Angeles Project, successfully challenged the project’s environmental review

process and effectively “derailed” the project. Although still a recent event to

this planning document, the efforts of the Chinatown Yard Alliance and its

individual members and organizations, may prove over time to be one of the

most important environmental justice and “Quiet Revolution” community

empowerment stories in the City’s annals.

Community involvement continued after the acquisition of the property by

California State Parks in 2001. In order to ensure that the community continued

to be involved in the park planning process, Senate Bill 1177 was passed,

establishing a Cornfield Advisory Committee. This committee consisted of thirty-

six members representing the communities and property owners surrounding the

Park, environmental justice and civil rights organizations, historians, business

Dillon 1994; Aeschbacher et al 2000.

[1990 census numbers: 42% Asian; 17% AfrAm; 30% Hispanic; 11% White].

Garcia and Flores 2005.

Newland and Dallas 2006.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

leaders, educators, local/state/federal governmental agencies, and non-profit

groups.

A 2003 report completed by the Cornfield Advisory Committee identified

important historic events and significant stories of people’s struggles to be further

investigated for representation in the Park, including:

x Immigrants who first arrived and settled in this area

x The discrimination suffered by many ethnic groups in area

x The Chinese Massacre – the lynching of Chinese in nearby El Pueblo more

than 100 years ago

x Exploitation and deportation in the 1930s, and later, as thousands of Mexican

immigrants were sent back to Mexico out of Union Station

x Chinatown Yard Alliance – coalition of community groups that successfully

fought City of Los Angeles and developers to save land from warehouse

development.

Consideration of these and other historical themes, topics, events, and personal

stories will help us to better understand the people and place that is Los

Angeles. Interpretive programming at the Park will provide a broad approach

for reflecting Los Angeles’ “Many Histories and Many Voices.”

Primary Theme: Flow of History

Subtheme B: History of Place

The movement of people and products has enabled Los Angeles to become

the megalopolis it is today.

Overview

The park site has been a route of transportation and commerce throughout its

history. Located within bustling transportation and river corridors the Park

provides a place to reflect on the commercial and industrial activities that have

shaped the city.

The park’s specific land use history reveals its historical and cultural significance.

Its prominent location on shelf-land above the Los Angeles River provided a

physical nexus to this essential natural resource in the semi-arid region.

Prehistoric culture groups such as the Tongva/Gabrieleno utilized the area for

thousands of years prior to Euro-American contact. Documented commercial

activities date from the settlement of the area in the 18

Century through Los

Angeles’ growth from small frontier community to a 21st century urban

metropolis. The site’s role in early water development (Zanja Madre) and

Cornfield State Park Advisory Committee 2003.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

agriculture, and the Southern Pacific Railroad’s actions as a catalyst for industrial

and infrastructure development and population growth parallel Los Angeles’

urban, economic, and social histories

Background Information

From prehistoric to Spanish Colonial times, through over a century as a major

railyard, the Park property has been associated with numerous activities that

reflect the evolution of the transportation, infrastructure, and commercial

growth in Los Angeles.

Village of Yang-Na

The Tongva/Gabrieleno people, living in the village of Yang-Na located in the

general vicinity of the park property wielded influence over territory that

included much of the Los Angeles basin and several of the Channel Islands. The

Tongva/Gabrieleno, especially in the late prehistoric and protohistoric periods

had a complex social system and highly adaptive culture. They practiced a

hunting/gathering economy with a strong maritime influence. Trade and

intermarriage with neighbors and distant groups was typical. Technological

innovations and specialized skills such as canoe building and other crafts, as well

as healing, were organized and highly regarded. The Yang-Na area in the

vicinity of the park property would have been a part of this trade system.

In August 1769, when the Spanish Colonial expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá

arrived at, camped, and crossed the future park property, they found an active

Tongva/Gabrieleno village (Yang-Na). Fr. Juan Crespi and engineer Miguel

Costanzo documented the journey and from them comes the first descriptions

of the area around today’s Park. From these first Spanish descriptions and

recommendations came the idea to locate a civilian agricultural settlement

nearby.

El Pueblo

Governor de Neve ordered a new pueblo to be established to take advantage

of the river and fertile river valley to assure its success as an agricultural

community. Although all land was deemed the property of the King of Spain,

the pueblo was assigned one square league of land for its use. The Governor

directed that house lots (solares or sitios) be established around a public plaza

and assigned them to each settler family. The original plaza appears to have

been located somewhat northeast of the current plaza that is the center of El

See Newland and Dallas 2006 for detailed narrative and citations to the specific land use

history.

McCawley 1996; Dillon 1994.

Costanzo 1992; Crespi 2001; Estrada 2003.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. In addition, large planting lots

(suertes) were laid out between the plaza and river to the south and east and

also assigned to individual settlers. The remaining lands were either set aside for

future settlers or as common planting lands (propios). The land to the north of

the plaza up to the river (including the Park property) was originally established

as common planting lots (propios).

Early Commercial Enterprises: Agriculture

One of the first and most important tasks undertaken was the excavation of the

Zanja Madre, or main irrigation ditch to bring river water to the plaza and fields.

The settlers took advantage of local Indian labor to dig the ditch from the intake

at a brush and pole dam located on the river just north of the current North

Broadway or Buena Vista Bridge location. The presence of the Zanja Madre

through the lot of the future park property made it valuable to the new

community, although its location was considered “out of town” well into the

1870s.

The earliest record of documented agricultural use of the park property dates to

1804, although it may have seen some planting earlier. The prominent Avila

family was reported to have used the property. According to the testimony of

their great-grandson in 1914, the Avilas had been some of the first to plant

vineyards and had done so on the lands that became the Southern Pacific

Railroad’s rail yards (current park property). These vineyards may have been

some of the earliest in Los Angeles and the predecessors to Los Angeles’ first

important industry. By 1817 City records indicate a formal grant of the area to

Francisco Avila.

In that same year the Pueblo reportedly had over 53,000 vines

under cultivation and in the early 1820s was producing over 325 gallons of wine

annually. Viticulture continued as Los Angeles’ top agricultural activity into the

1860s.

Shortly thereafter change occurred in Los Angeles and Alta California. In 1821

Mexico won its independence from Spain and Alta California had become a

territory of the new Mexican Republic. The political and social control of the

military and religious leadership began to switch to the secular and private

sector—and also to native born Californios. Being the largest civil settlement in

the territory (over 650 residents by 1820), Los Angeles and Angelenos began to

have more and more economic and political influence. The Mexican

Government opened up trade with foreign ships and legalized immigration of

Poole and Ball 2002; Estrada 2003; Dillon 1994; Ord Map 1849.

Gumprecht 1999; Deverell 2004; Dillon 1994.

Avila Property File, Stearns Papers LACA

Bancroft 1886; Deverell 2004; Mason 1998; Poole and Ball 2002; Dillon 1994; Harlow 1976;

McKee 1948.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

foreigners. Many of these visitors, some from New England and Europe, found

Alta California to their liking, converted to Catholicism, and became Mexican

citizens.

One of the more well known of these immigrants, Abel Stearns, became the

next documented owner and user of the park

property. In 1843 Stearns appears to have purchased

the land including the lot directly south of the current

park property where he established a mill for grinding

local grains. The Stearns Mill, currently the site of

Capitol Mills, reportedly replaced an earlier mill built

by another early American immigrant, Joseph

Chapman, in the 1830s. Although Chapman had one

of the largest vineyard holdings in the pueblo in the

1820s and 1830s, it is uncertain if he used the current

park property. Stearns owned the mill and park

property until his death in 1871, when it transferred to

his wife, Arcadia Bandini de Stearns.

Southern Pacific Railroad’s River Station

It was at this time that the development of the property changed rapidly and

radically. Los Angeles had been considered a potential terminus or hub for a

southern transcontinental railroad since the federal railroad surveys of the early

1850s. Although San Diego appeared to have an advantage with its natural

harbor, local citizens and leaders continued to promote Los Angeles and its

agricultural prowess and river water supply as the logical choice to bring a

railroad. In 1872 the Southern Pacific Railroad Company offered to build a rail

connection north to San Francisco and Sacramento and then east to Yuma and

beyond. They requested payment in the value of 5% of the county’s total land

value, the existing Los Angeles and San Pedro railroad (built in 1869 from L.A. to

Wilmington), and land for use as a station and yard. Later that year the citizens

approved a bond issue for the funds and to comply with the other demands of

the railroad.

Monroy 1999; Nunis 1997.

Fedewa 1970; Wright 1977; Deverell 2004; City Clerks Records, LACA.

Mullaly and Petty 2002; R. Orsi 2005.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Construction of the rail line from both directions commenced the next year and

by 1876 had connected Los Angeles to the north and the transcontinental

railroad. The Southern Pacific (SP) quickly built a small freight house and depot

on the future park property facing San Fernando Street (North Spring) that

opened as Los Angeles Junction or the “River Station” in 1875. Over the next

decade Southern Pacific would purchase the north parcel, referred to on some

maps as the Bull Ring, and continued to expand its facilities. In 1879 the two-

story Pacific Hotel, with its featured “parlor sitting room” and 25-minute meal

service for through passengers was opened next to the depot.

Passenger traffic was such that a new depot and hotel with a restaurant had

replaced the original depot by 1883 to take advantage of the completion of

the southern transcontinental route to New Orleans. The SP then moved the

original depot building to the southern end of the property and incorporated it

into a newly expanded freight house. By the mid-1880s a 26-stall roundhouse

with turntable, coaling & wood house, full set of maintenance shops, and most

importantly for the citrus industry, a large icing facility, had been built on the

expanded property.

For the next decade the River Station served as the main

headquarters for SP’s operations and passenger and freight service. As early as

1880 the SP had become the town’s

largest employer with 300 employees

and over a hundred living in the new

residential and commercial

neighborhood surrounding the station

property.

The arrival of the Southern Pacific

Railroad caused a short boom in the

1870s. Los Angeles’ population more

than doubled during the decade

going from 5,728 to 11,170 by 1880.

What today appears to be modest

growth continued to reflect a diverse multi-ethnic population. By the 1870s, in

addition to the existing Hispanic, Indian and naturalized Mexican populations,

small but active French and Italian communities had established themselves in

areas to the north and west of the plaza near the Roman Catholic church and

cemetery on Buena Vista Street (North Broadway). Spurred by fishing, road, and

railroad construction a small Chinese community, numbering roughly 200, had

been established by 1870 in old “Negro Alley” southeast of the plaza and along

Mullaly and Petty 2002; Thompson and West 1880; Stevenson Map 1876; 1884.

Stevenson Map 1876; 1884; Sanborn Map 1888.

Mullaly and Petty 2002.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Alameda, where the Union Station sits today.

Such was the cosmopolitan

nature of the citizenry in the 1870s that visitor B. F. Taylor noted in 1878 that Los

Angeles was a place in which one could hear Spanish, German, Italian, French,

Chinese, and English spoken regularly.

The success of the Southern Pacific Railroad also helped sell Southern California

and Los Angeles to the rest of the country. When the Santa Fe Railroad

completed its transcontinental line to Southern California in 1885, a price war

was triggered, and the Great Land Boom of the 1880s began.

A year later, SP

made an agreement to allow the Santa Fe to use its River Station for passenger

service, and for a short while, it was noted on timetables as the “Union Depot.”

Within two years the population of Los Angeles grew to over 50,000. Streetcars,

paved streets, sewers, and a new water system were needed to deal with the

massive growth. Suburban neighborhoods soon spread out to the east across

the river and to the south and west of the old plaza and downtown. In 1889 the

Los Angeles Electric Railway Company built trolley lines down both Buena Vista

(North Broadway) and San Fernando (North Spring) in an effort to connect these

“streetcar suburbs” to downtown. The line on San Fernando Street required a

large viaduct to lift the line above the multiple SP tracks that crossed the street

adjacent to the Capitol Mill. Southern Pacific also built a raised catwalk across

the center of the rail yard to allow workers safe passage to and from North

Broadway.

With such an expansion in traffic, the new depot at River Station proved

inadequate to handle the volume. In May 1887, only a year after completing

new additions to the 1883 depot, SP announced plans to build a grand new

station two miles south on Alameda near 4

Street. In 1889 the ornate Arcade

Depot was opened and served as the main SP passenger terminal until 1915. The

River Station depot/hotel continued operations until it was demolished in 1902 to

make room for expanded freight service. Shortly after the turn of the century

the Southern Pacific purchased a brick storefront building on San Fernando

Street to serve as the yard office and as a commuter stop, until passenger

service at River Station ended in 1924.

With the Arcade Station handling the majority of passenger service, River Station

was expanded to handle the massive volume of freight, mostly from Southern

California’s burgeoning citrus industry. In 1897 the River Station freight yards were

extended another 1,500 feet down Alameda Street where several massive

shipping houses were built. It was about this time that the turntable,

Poole and Ball 2002; Estrada 2003.

Dillon 1994.

Dumke 1944.

Fogelson 1967; Mullaly and Petty 2002; LA Electric 198x; Sanborn Map 1906.

Mullaly and Petty 2002; River Station Files 1876-1920.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

roundhouse, and maintenance shops were dismantled and shop activities

moved to a new and larger Los Angeles General Shops across the river in Lincoln

Heights.

For the next twenty-five years River Station took on the role of nerve center for

Southern Pacific’s multi-million dollar freighting operations in Los Angeles. State

engineer’s noted at the time that “The present freight business is the backbone

of Los Angeles commerce, and upon it depends the growth and prosperity of

the city.”

Los Angeles’ sudden and massive transformation into an economic

and industrial power literally passed through the River Station. By the 1910s, River

Station employed four to five hundred workers on around-the-clock shifts. They

moved nearly 85,000 freight cars a month through the yard.

The intensive railroad activity also had its effect on the nature and development

of the area surrounding River Station. The former agricultural areas around River

Station quickly became surrounded with railroad and other industrial activities. In

1885 Herman Levi and Jacob Loews purchased the Capitol Mill and expanded it

into a five-story structure with its own railroad siding. Standard Oil built one of its

first refinery facilities on Aurora (now Baker) Street adjacent to the river and the

rail yard. The Baker Iron Works on North Broadway, along with numerous

foundries, manufacturers, and other shops soon found proximity to the rail yards

invaluable, filling the area east of the station with a mixture of industrial plants

and warehouses that mixed with the small bungalows and boarding houses of

the railroad workers.

At the same time the City’s new water department lined

the Zanja Madre with concrete and brick to improve efficiency and sanitary

concerns. By 1905 the old zanja system that had been the original water source

for the pueblo had been replaced with the new system, set to handle the influx

of Owens Valley water for the region.

By the turn of the twentieth century the rapid growth of the facilities and

activities at River Station were but a small microcosm of what was happening in

Los Angeles. In 1900, Los Angeles had doubled its population over the previous

decade and was now a city of over 100,000 residents. During the next several

decades the exponential demographic and economic growth of the region

would be unprecedented. Starting with the Great Boom of the 1880s, thousands

of new residents, mostly from the Midwest and Eastern United States,

transformed the city’s demographics into an Anglo-American majority who

came to fulfill the new Southern California version of the American Dream. Sold

Mullaly and Petty 2002; River Station Files 1876-1920; Sanborn Maps 1906; River Station Map

1913.

Mullaly and Petty 2002:51.

Mullaly and Petty 2002; LA Times 5/1/1901; River Station Files 1876-1920.

Census 1900; 1910; Sanborn Map 1906; River Station Map 1913; Mullaly and Petty 2002.

Layne 1952; Dillon 1994; Gumprecht 1999.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

on mass marketed visions of year-round sunshine in an Arcadian paradise, these

new residents quickly transformed the 19

century village into an urban and

suburban metropolis in less than a generation.

Economically, the success of the railroads triggered a financial boon for the

citrus industry that made it one of the most profitable industries in the country

and inspired local and federal leaders to build a free harbor at San Pedro. Soon

after the local petroleum industry and the invention of the gasoline-powered

automobile brought added industrial might, suburban sprawl, and individual

mobility, to the region. Los Angeles became a center for manufacturing

household and other goods. By the 1920s the motion picture and entertainment

industry would also settle its burgeoning economic and cultural force on the

region. Thus the city and county’s continued growth, into the millions during the

1920s, solidified it as not only a national demographic and economic power but

also as a purveyor of mass culture.

The suddenly older, industrial areas, such as River Station and its surrounding

ethnic and working class neighborhoods (Sonoratown, Solano Canyon, El

Pueblo, Old Chinatown, Lincoln Heights, and the riverfront), saw a different

version of Los Angeles’ industrial and economic growth. The ethnic Mexican,

Italian, German, Irish, and Chinese communities, who often provided the

workforce for the railroads and the rapidly growing industries along the riverfront,

continued to exist within the urban industrial landscape of the area. In 1908 the

city zoned these neighborhoods east of North Broadway within Industrial District

#1, although they still were home to thousands of poor and working class

residents. The idyllic visions of life in Southern California found on the sides of

citrus boxes, in promotional pamphlets, or in the new palm tree lined suburbs of

the burgeoning city were not the same experiences of those who were now

living in what many contemporaries deemed “the wrong side of the tracks.”

Rise of Metropolitan Los Angeles and Decline of River Station

The economic and industrial growth that had been literally passed through and

around River Station in the first quarter of the century had helped set the

foundation for Los Angeles’ coming of age as a metropolis. The economic

clout of the oil, film, citrus, manufacturing, rail and shipping industries suddenly

dominated West Coast business. The Great Boom of the 1920s cemented Los

Angeles as not only the new economic and industrial power but also as a

prominent financial center. In addition, the new motion picture industry and

subsequent entertainment machine, helped to create and promote Los Angeles

McWilliams 1946; Fogelson 1967; Starr 1985, 1990.

Starr 1990; Sitton and Deverell 2001; Bottles 1987.

Deverell 2004; Wild 2005; Monroy 1999.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

throughout the world as the land of the American, and subsequently California,

dream lifestyle.

With the population growing exponentially each decade, and the reliance on

the automobile, vast suburban sprawl soon occupied tracts of land throughout

the city and county, following the newly-paved boulevards, highways, and

eventually freeways to provide Angelenos with their suburban dream homes.

Although the Great Depression of the 1930s slowed Los Angeles’ growth rate,

the boom of World War II and the Post-War proved even more prosperous than

the inter-war years, adding the Aerospace Industry to the region’s economic

prowess. Post-war Los Angeles’ growth rate neared 50% and from the end of

World War II through 1970, more than 30 new cities would be incorporated as 4.5

million new residents migrated into the metropolitan region.

As Los Angeles spread out and decentralized so did the Southern Pacific

Railroad. The expansion of freight traffic was such that in 1925, SP transferred

supervision of its freight operations from River Station to its newer, much larger

facilities at Taylor Yard two miles north on the east side of the river. From this

point onward, River Station became an adjunct facility to Taylor Yard. In 1931,

SP also completed a new double-track line along the east bank of the river to

reduce the amount of freight routed through downtown. Although transformed

in status, River Station continued to be an important facility. In 1935, it became

the key station for SP’s “Overnight” Coast Merchandise Express freight trains to

San Francisco and Portland. During and after World War II, the River Station site

served as an important early “inter-modal” facility, where rail and truck freight

interacted. In 1953, SP initiated some of the first trailer-on-flat car (TOFC)

container service at River Station. By the 1960s, River Station still served the few

remaining industrial clients, although year by year businesses and factories also

Fogelson 1967; Hise 1997; Erie 2004.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

moved out to newer and larger industrial complexes away from the city

center.

By the 1970s, the railroad and industrial landscape that had dominated the River

Station and its surrounding neighborhoods was deteriorating. Old industrial

properties was abandoned and closed up and the once frantic pace of activity

slowed. The opening of newer, larger yards and facilities throughout the five

county metropolitan areas signaled the demise of the “downtown” Taylor Yard

and River Station as rail facilities. Although Southern Pacific renamed River

Station the “Spring Street Intermodal Center” in 1984, the formal closure of Taylor

Yard in September 1985 foretold the River Station’s fate. On October 1, 1992,

Southern Pacific ended formal rail activities and closed the property that had

brought them to Southern California, and had once been the hub of early

industrial Los Angeles.

Primary Theme: Environmental Justice

Subtheme A: Water

Water has played an integral role in the growth of Los Angeles from the Spanish

period to the present.

Background Information

On August 2, 1769, the Gaspar de Portolá Expedition arrived at the river and

valley that they would name in honor of the festival day of Nuestra Señora de

los Angeles de la Porciuncula (Our Lady of the Angels of Porciuncula), which

they celebrated the day prior. This description from Fr. Juan Crespi of the river

and valley comes from his original diaries:

This river flows on down nearly at ground level through a very green, lush,

wide-reaching valley of level soil some leagues in extent from north to

south; …which runs continually onward with a great amount of trees, lie

very large, very green bottomlands, looking from afar like nothing so

much as large cornfields… to my mind this spot can be given the

preference in everything, in soil, water, and trees, for the purpose of

becoming in time a very large plenteous mission… and so we have

proclaimed it The River and Valley of Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de la

Porciuncula.

Mullaly and Petty 2002.

Mullaly and Petty 2002; Cenzatti et al. 2000.

CrespÍ 2001:337-339.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Public Distribution of Water: Zanja Madre

The importance of the river in the siting, development, and early success of the

pueblo of Los Angeles is related in the previous background sections.

Specifically the Zanja Madre and irrigation system that connected the river to

the plaza traveled through the lots of the future park property. The Zanja

Madre, or main ditch, entered the north end of the current Park property and

was cut along the high bank that is now separated from the Park by the MTA

light rail line. This location’s higher elevation from the bottom lands to the east

and south of the plaza helped propel the water through the system. The zanja

system was the first, and most successful and essential, public works project for

the new pueblo.

This connection to the river and its subsequent distribution

system helped make the fledgling frontier settlement an agricultural success,

when many others in Alta California struggled. It also served as an important

symbol for the community, such as its regular use in the annual Baños de Las

Virgenes (Bath of the Virgins)

ceremony (it is believed that the

early name of North Broadway as

Bath Street was linked to this

association).

The area’s association with water

was further enhanced after the

Flood of 1815. From that event until

another flood in 1827 the main

channel of the river had shifted to

along the route of today’s Spring

Street. Pueblo residents were

forced to move the original plaza

to its current location. In the 1820s

the water table had saturated the

area along today’s “Spring Street”

due to springs, known as the “Avila

Springs,” flowing in the vicinity of

where College Street now meets Alameda Street .

After the establishment of the pueblo and the development of the Zanja Madre

on its western boundary, the future park property’s focus during the Spanish and

Mexican Republic periods continued to be associated with agriculture and

additional attempts to secure and distribute a consistent water supply. During

the 1850s and 1860s the zanja system, although scorned by the Americans as

Ord Map 1849; Moore Map 1868.

Gumprecht 1999; Deverell 2004; Dillon 1994.

Gumprect 1999; Estrada 2003

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

antiquated and unhealthy, was expanded and a city position of Zanjero

(ditchman) created to oversee the system.

Private Distribution of Water: Water Wheels

In addition to the public water distribution system, private water companies

were formed. One of the first was William Dryden’s purchase of the old Avila

Springs. Dryden formed the Los Angeles Water Works Company and in 1858

erected a 40-foot water wheel along the Zanja Madre, as well as a brick

reservoir in the plaza. A photograph and several maps of the 1858 water wheel

appears to locate it along the bluff to the west of the park property north of

Bishops Road’s intersection with North Broadway. The wheel lifted water from the

Zanja Madre, to the bluff along Broadway where it ran in wooden pipes, down

to the reservoir at the plaza. Storms and floods during the heavy winter of 1861

reportedly destroyed the water wheel, as well as the dam and intake for the

Zanja Madre, ending Dryden’s system. Another water wheel and dam would be

erected just north of the park property along the river in 1865 by Jean Louis

Sainsevain, nephew of pioneering French vintner Jean Louis Vignes. This wheel

lifted water to North Broadway and

stored it in a reservoir next to the

Roman Catholic cemetery (now site

of the catholic high school). This water

wheel would be damaged in the

Floods of 1867 and made obsolete in

1870 with the completion of a new

river intake and reservoir further

upstream.

Death of a River

The massive industrial development of

the Southern Pacific Railroad yards at River Station and the surrounding areas

soon changed the relationship of growing Los Angeles to the river. As many

recent historians have explained, this was linked to concerns that civic and

business leaders of the early 20

century had for the area’s most unpredictable

and destructive resident—the Los Angeles River. For the 19

century community,

the regular and destructive flooding episodes of the river were the price paid for

its supplying the small frontier community with a steady water source in the arid

region. Yet, after the railroad companies’ major capitol improvements – bridges

and miles of track – were regularly washed out during the major flood years of

1883-84, 1885-86, and 1889, the river became an enemy of the city’s economic

future. When the Floods of 1913-14 and 1916 caused damage in the millions of

Gumprecht 1999; Aeschbacher 2000.

Moore Map 1868; Dillon 1994; Gumprecht 1999; Aeschbacher 2000.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

dollars to not only railroad property but also industrial and residential areas that

now crowded the river in numbers not seen previously, the City Engineering

Department began major plans for installing flood control measures on the

river.

The “problem” with the river however, also triggered some early attempts at

dealing with the physical, social, economic, and aesthetic issues associated

with its taming. As early as 1907, Progressive era social reformer Rev. Dana

Bartlett had called for a “City Beautiful” plan that would have built a series of

decorative bridges over the river. Railroads and roadways would travel along a

reclaimed park-like esplanade paralleling the river that could be planted to

hide adjacent industrial buildings and warehouses. City Beautiful planning

expert Charles Mulford Robinson followed with a report calling for a parkway

system that radiated out from the city center. Businessman and civic leader

Joseph Mesmer followed Bartlett and Robinson’s plans with his own concept a

few years later. Mesmer’s plan had similar goals but a different aesthetic,

calling for the concreting of the channel to create miles of parapet walkways

with beautifully landscaped park lands adjacent to the river yet concreted to

provide some semblance of flood control.

The last and most notable of the landscape architects were Frederick Law

Olmstead Jr. and Harland Bartholomew and their plan developed in 1930.

Although Olmstead, son of the famed park builder and designer of Central Park,

and Bartholomew, designer of Westwood Village, had great credentials, their

plan for miles of riverfront parkways did not inspire City business and political

leaders to come forward with the funds or the leadership to implement it.

When the devastating Flood of 1934, which killed dozens of poor people living in

the “Frogtown” neighborhood along the river, and the larger Flood of 1938 killed

nearly one hundred and destroyed millions in property, the urgency for flood

control changed. Limited to a scope of Depression Era budgets and expensive

and time consuming acquisition of lands adjacent to the river, the Army Corps

of Engineers moved forward with a goal of controlling floods – not creating

parks. Armed with $70 million, the Army Corps was set loose and within a few

years had widened and deepened most of the River into a concrete flood

control channel. With little or no aesthetic value, the “new concrete river” of

the engineers did control destructive flooding, but also, as many critics, scholars,

and now historians have noted, created a physical and symbolic dividing line

between the industrial landscape of Los Angeles and some of its most

disenfranchised residents and neighborhoods.

Gumprecht 1999; Deverell 2004; Orsi 2004.

Gumprecht 1999; Deverell 2004.

Hise and Deverell 2000.

Gumprecht 1999; Deverell 2004; Orsi 2004.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

At the turn of the 20

century, the Los Angeles region experienced several

devastating floods that caused enormous amounts of property damage and

significant loss of human life. To ‘control’ the river, the Army Corps of Engineers

began to channelize the 52-mile stretch of the main channel and the river’s

major tributaries. Today, over 95% of the region’s historic wetlands have been

destroyed.

Saving the Los Angeles River

When in the 1990s the Southern Pacific Railroad, and its new owners, the Union

Pacific Railroad, looked to divest itself of the River Station property, the

community and other interested parties, took advantage of the opportunity and

the changes in local government empowerment to address their needs and

concerns. By the late 1990s, the civic landscape had changed from the days

when government, civic, and business leaders removed whole communities with

little or no voice from those directly affected.

The Environmental Movement of the 1950s and 1960s had had a great effect on

the role of citizens and communities in land use planning and development. In

California, passage of laws such as the California Environmental Quality Act

(CEQA) in 1970 now required public input to be considered during development

projects. The movement also brought the issues of environmental health, clean

water, and public open space and parklands into the mainstream. By the

1990s, the public input process had matured in order to provide “environmental

justice” support for underrepresented and disenfranchised individuals and

communities. The opening of a voice for civic dialogue to these people and

communities also helped ignite the political empowerment of local

neighborhood councils and community groups in what is becoming known to

planners and urban scholars as the “Quiet Revolution.”

In Los Angeles, which had experienced unprecedented urban development

and sprawl, one of the environmental issues that caught the attention of many

Angelenos during this period was the Los Angeles River. Leading the fight for the

river was the grassroots organization, Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR).

Formed in 1986, this non-profit group of concerned citizens worked to rally

support for the reclamation and restoration of the Los Angeles River and its

surrounding neighborhoods “through inclusive planning, education, and wise

stewardship.” Starting in 1991, FoLAR, joined by scholars, design professionals,

citizens, and politicians, focused efforts toward the closed rail yards at Taylor

Yard and River Station in furthering river restoration plans and subsequent

neighborhood revitalization.

California State Coastal Conservancy 2000; Orsi 2004.

Pincetl 1999; Gumprect 1999; Cenzatti et al 2000; Monahan 2003; Orsi 2004; Pitt 2000.

Gumprecht 1999; Cenzatti et al. 2000.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

In 1998, in a joint planning effort with USC School of Architecture, FoLAR

organized four planning sessions in the surrounding neighborhoods. These

sessions spawned the “River Through Downtown” Conference that gathered

elected officials, community members and activists, design professionals, and

environmental groups. From this, FoLAR created a design for the property that

would have included mixed-use housing, commercial and retail space, park,

recreation, and open space, a school, and a “canal” to represent and interpret

the historic Zanja Madre.

FoLAR’s ability to bring these diverse groups together

resulted in the partnering of community and business groups in and around

Chinatown and the site in an effort to reconnect the surrounding communities

and the site to the river.

In 2001, California State Parks sponsored a feasibility study to consider the

significance of the property and its possibilities for becoming a state park. When

State Park’s feasibility study identified the property’s potential for contributing to

a Los Angeles River parkway and its potential historical significance to the

greater story of the City and its people, California State Proposition 12 Park Bond

Funds were used to purchase the property for State Parks.

Concurrently, in response to the efforts, needs, and demands of the Chinatown

Yard Alliance and neighborhood residents, local and state politicians

established a mandated Cornfield Advisory Committee to ensure public input to

a vision for the new state park. The Advisory Committee completed their report

in Spring 2003.

The public input and parks planning process continued, resulting

in the State Parks Commission’s approval of the classification and naming of the

property as Los Angeles State Historic Park in June 2005. In addition, State Parks

quickly obtained capitol outlay funds for interim public use (IPU) improvements

at the site. These plans also received Advisory Committee and public review

and facilities should be available for public use in Summer 2006.

Primary Theme: Environmental Justice

Subtheme B: Environmental Actions

By their actions, people have affected Los Angeles basin’s environment,

impacting the health of natural systems and communities.

Overview

The Park is a laboratory that enables the study of the choices humans have

made and their consequent impacts on the environment.

Gumprecht 1999; Cenzatti et al. 2000.

Los Angeles State Historic Park General Plan 2005.

Cornfield State Park Advisory Committee 2003; Flores and Garcia 2005

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Background Information

Human Impacts on the Los Angeles River Watershed

Los Angeles State Historic Park lies adjacent to the historic floodplain of the Los

Angeles River. The 52-mile river once meandered freely over the coastal plain,

through broad valleys shaded by sycamore, cottonwood, and alder

interspersed with marshes, ponds, lakes, and impenetrable thickets of willow and

wild grape.

100

The watershed had a vast system of freshwater and brackish

wetland habitats, riparian woodlands, and coastal dunes.

101

The people, who

are now called Tongva/Gabrieleno, lived in at least 40 permanent villages within

the Los Angeles River Watershed taking advantage of the abundant wetlands

and riparian areas that provided game, seafood, and a variety of seeds, fruit,

and root vegetables for their sustenance.

102

In 1769, the Spanish expedition arrived in search of suitable locations for mission,

military, and civilian settlements. Attracted by the ample water supply and

fertile soil of the region along the newly named Rio de Porciuncula, the Portola

expedition recommended establishment of a civil settlement along the river.

Spanish Colonial authorities established El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles in

1781, with its main plaza not far from the location of Los Angeles State Historic

Park. The establishment of the Spanish Colonial institutions (Mission San Gabriel

in 1771 and El pueblo de Los Angeles in 1781) in the region had a profound

effect on the region’s wetlands and native habitat. The early Spanish and

Mexican settlers built dams and dug canals, known as zanjas, to divert water

from the main channel of the river to irrigate fields and supply the community

with domestic water. The system drained marshes and riparian forests

throughout the watershed, and overcultivation of the land eroded the rich

floodplain alluvium, reducing much of the coastal plain to barren wash and

gravel.

103

The explosive growth of Los Angeles at the turn of the 20

century also put an

enormous strain on an already overtaxed Los Angeles River watershed.

Throughout the region, water was siphoned from the river and groundwater for

agriculture and municipal use. The construction of the Owens Valley Aqueduct

in 1913 reinvigorated the region with a plentiful supply of water but also sealed

the fate of the Los Angeles River. The river had been reduced in some areas to a

sewage drain by the industries that lined its banks.

104

100

Josselyn 1994.

101

Garrett 1993.

102

California State Coastal Conservancy 2000.

103

Josselyn and Chamberlain 1993.

104

Gumprecht 1999; Orsi 2004.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

With the city no longer dependent on the river for water, there was no need for

residents and businesses to be closely located near the river. Development

expanded outward from the river’s banks onto the coastal floodplain. Prior to

development, the valley floors had served as immense settling basins for the

infrequent but copious amounts of rainfall from winter storms. Now, large areas

were paved over for industry and residential communities, substantially reducing

the amount of permeable land and putting more humans and industry in the

path of the unpredictable and destructive river floods.

105

Los Angeles is a biodiversity and endangered species “hot spot”

Despite rampant urbanization, Los Angeles is still surrounded by significant tracts

of open space. There are few places in the country that are as rich and diverse

in habitat and plant and animal communities.

106

In particular, the Los Angeles

River and its tributaries continue to harbor a rich biota in its soft-bottomed and

channelized sections. The Audubon Society has documented over 200 bird

species that use the Los Angeles River for foraging, nesting or as a stopover on

the Pacific Flyway migratory path.

107

Ironically, the clash of development with

Los Angeles’ rich biodiversity has also made the region the endangered species

“hotspot” of the continental United States.

108

Turning a Brownfield into a Greenfield

Brownfields are industrial properties that range from old gas stations and

abandoned rural dumps, to urban petrochemical complexes and abandoned

railyards. The expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of these properties may be

complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance,

pollutant, or contaminant. It is estimated that there are between 450,000-

600,000 brownfields in the United States. Fueled by the environmental justice

movement and the need to provide inner city communities with much-needed

open space and the adoption of “smart growth” policies that seek to limit urban

sprawl, the conversion of brownfields into greenfields became more rather

commonplace in our cities.

109

The conversion of the abandoned Southern Pacific Railroad yard into Los

Angeles State Historic Park is a once-in-a-century opportunity to create a park in

one of the most park-poor communities in Los Angeles. LASHP will also serve as

a catalyst for the long-term vision of a Los Angeles Greenway along the

maligned and neglected 51-mile corridor of the Los Angeles River.

105

California State Coastal Conservancy 2000; Gumprecht 1999; Orsi 2004

106

Clarke and Fisher 1997.

107

Garrett 1993.

108

Wolch, Pastor, and Dreier 2004.

109

Trust for Public Land; Environmental Justice book 2005.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Secondary Theme: Recreation

Los Angeles State Historic Park provides a unique place for reflection, relaxation,

recreation, rejuvenation, and inspiration.

Overview

From vast areas of open space to smaller pockets of intimate space, recreation

in the Park can represent an expression of – and connection to – cultural identity

and heritage. Public spaces such as parks have provided generations of

Angelinos with an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors while maintaining family

and community traditions.

Background Information

Recreation as a Window to LA’s Land Use Past

Angelinos’ need for recreational open space has been constant, ever since the

beginning of Los Angeles’ urbanization. For the neighborhoods surrounding Los

Angeles State Historic Park and the Los Angeles River, a historical legacy of

unfulfilled visions and opportunities exists.

From the early 20th century a number of visionary plans centered around

providing recreational opportunities along the Los Angeles River. As noted

earlier, Progressive era social reformer Rev. Dana Bartlett, “City Beautiful”

planning expert Charles Mulford Robinson, and businessman and civic leader

Joseph Mesmer all had unfulfilled plans for beautifully landscaped park lands

adjacent to the river in the first few decades of the last century.

110

The most notable, but also unfulfilled plans for adding open space and parks to

the rapidly urbanizing region was from famed landscape architects Frederick

Law Olmstead Jr. and Harland Bartholomew. Although Olmstead, son of the

famed park builder and original planner of the California State Park System, and

Bartholomew, designer of Westwood Village, had great credentials, their plan

for miles of riverfront parkways did not inspire City business and political leaders

to come forward with the funds or leadership to implement.

111

Therefore engineers moved forward with a goal of controlling floods--not

creating parks. Armed with $70 million the Army Corps was set loose and within

a few years had widened and deepened most of the River into a concrete

flood control channel. With little or no aesthetic value the “new concrete river”

not only did not control the destructive flooding but also, as many critics,

scholars, and historians have noted, created a physical and symbolic division

110

Deverell 2004; Gumprecht 1999.

111

García and Flores 2005; Deverell and Hise 2003.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

between the industrial landscape of Los Angeles and some of its most

disenfranchised residents and park-poor neighborhoods.

112

Even the area’s most established recreational open space resource, Elysian

Park, has endured constant threats. Created in 1886, the park originally had 550

acres, ultimately growing to over 600 acres. Over the years the park boundaries

have shifted and been chopped away: portions slid in 1937; another was turned

over to the Police Department for a training academy; in 1940, 30 acres were

severed by the Pasadena Freeway; and, in 1959,

another 30-acre parcel was ceded to the Dodgers

baseball franchise, in

exchange for an equal

segment located

between Rose Hill and

the Arroyo Seco.

113

In the past twenty years, a shift in attitudes towards

the development of Los Angeles’ urban parks has come from those who argue

against a view of the city and humans as separate from nature.

114

As noted in

the multi-disciplinary UCLA study, “Cornfield of Dreams,” the now named Los

Angeles State Historic Park has the opportunity to help connect people with

their natural environment. This connection is summarized from the report:

This environmental turn in the conception of the park sees the park not as

an oasis of greenery in the urban world, but rather as a manifestation of

the ecosystem which supports the entire urban area. Similarly, there is

some realization that the “park as nature” is inseparable from the “park as

recreation” and that therefore a more inclusive way of creating parks

needs to be developed.

115

Recreation as Cultural Identity and Heritage

The cultural roots of recreation in the Los Angeles area reach beyond the

creation of urban parks and outdoor spaces during the past few centuries.

For the Tongva/Gabrielino, their settlements included large cleared areas which

were used as playing fields for races and games.

116

The people enjoyed a

variety of games and contests, such as dice, hoop and pole games, and races.

112

Deverell 2004; Gumprecht 1999; Orsi 2004.

113

Pitt 1997; Cuff 2000.

114

García and Flores 2005; Louv 2005; Aeschbacher et al 2000.

115

Aeschbacher 2000.

116

McCawley 1996.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

These games were not only fun but also mentally and physically challenging.

Traditional games included: hoop and pole, played with reed poles and four-

inch hoops of willow wrapped with buckskin; chaawchawkel, a dice game

played by two contestants; chuurchorke (peón), a guessing game played by

two teams of four players each; and shinny, a field game in which the ball or

puck is moved with a stick.

117

In the midst of all this healthy competition, people were aware of the dangers of

excess, as demonstrated in the Tongva story of Coyote and Water.

Coyote came to the edge of a small river one day. Looking over the

bank, he saw that the water ran very slowly. “How about a race?” he

asked, looking sly. “All right,” the water answered, very calmly. Coyote ran

along the bank at full speed until he was so tired he could hardly stand.

Then he looked over the bank, only to see the water running smoothly

on.

118

Recreation for Latinos in Los Angeles often involved fiestas. Activities included

bull and bear fights, bullfighting, horseracing, carrera del gallo, rodeos, cock

fights, games of chance (like Monte), music, dancing, special foods, and

pageantry.

119

Many fiestas were associated with holy days of the Catholic

Church.

Within the decades following statehood, however, such recreational and social

activities became less associated with religious activities and more associated

Mexican nationalism and cultural identity.

120

Before the Anglo-American period, community celebrations had religious

overtones. But as the city became more and more an Anglo-controlled

center, Mexicans found it less important to publicize their religion and

more important to emphasize their political ideology and ethnic origin.

Fundamental loyalties shifted away from the Church and landlords and

toward idealistic sentiment of Mexican nationalism.

121

Other ethnic, national, and regional groups in Los Angeles also found ways to

celebrate and promote their cultural identities within their new home. In addition

to the tokenistic participation in larger municipally created events as “La Fiesta”

or the “Mission Play,” the local Mexican, Italian, Chinese, and French

117

Gendar 1995; McCawley 1996.

118

Gendar 1995.

119

Pitt 1966; Monroy 1990.

120

Monroy 1999.

121

Rios-Bustamante 1982.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

communities in the vicinity of the current park integrated their cultural traditions

through music, theater, festivals, and social gatherings.

122

Recreational festivals and celebrations continue to expand in scope as Los

Angeles’ ethnic diversity grows. Vibrant activities that display the area’s

complex cultural heritage, include: African American Heritage Celebration;

Chinatown Golden Dragon Parade; LA Greek Fest; Los Angeles Korean Festival;

Nisei Week Japanese Festival; Polish Film Festival; Reel Rasquache – Festival of

the U.S. Latino Experience in Film and Art; Senior Talent Show; and, Thai Cultural

Day to name but a few.

123

Recreation as a Means of Connecting Cultures

The diverse ethnic festivals and community events in Los Angeles provide

important venues for enhancing cultural identity and preserving cultural

heritage. Yet, these types of recreational activities also allow various people with

other ethnic traditions to better understand and appreciate the area’s broader

cultural heritage. In general, recreation has the ability to promote positive

contact between different ethnic groups, opening communication in a non-

threatening atmosphere. During recreation and leisure time, people are less

concerned with differences and more concerned with having fun.

124

Recreational activities like gardening can help to activate social and cultural

memories. For instance, a garden could be created by growing medicinal herbs

used by the area’s former Tongva residents and by the current Latino and

Chinese residents. In this way, residents could combine knowledge and

traditions to create a garden that connects cultures and communities.

125

Other forms of recreation such as games are deeply rooted in cultures around

the world. One such universal game is cat’s cradle, known in Africa, Asia,

Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and the Pacific. String games, as well as

board/table games, street/playground games, field games, and party/festival

games have been adapted by diverse ethnic groups yet retain similar traditions

that have stood the test of time.

126

Recreation and Cultural Connections as a Source of Discovery

For over 100 years, the area around Los Angeles State Historic Park has served as

the city’s backyard – a conglomeration of railroad tracks, warehouses, and

122

Poole and Ball 2002; Deverell 2004; Pitt 1997.

123

City of Los Angeles 2005.

124

California State Parks 2005.

125

Aeschbacher 2000.

126

Grunfeld 1975.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

factories, heaps of scrap metal, pallets, and other materials and equipment

needed to keep the industrial corridor operating from day to day. This area at

the same time held mystery – places where only the owners and workers had

access, where varieties of goods and products came and went at all hours.

They were places of discovery and yet familiar, like our own backyards, tool

sheds, carports, and garages.

Nearby are some of the city’s oldest neighborhoods and communities. William

Mead Homes, Solano Canyon, and Chinatown, among others, each containin

an assortment of commercial buildings and markets, playgrounds and schools,

homes and libraries. Neighborhoods like many others, yet each with its own

cultural and historic identity, ethnic ties, and common language. Like the streets

of industrial activity, these neighborhoods and communities can seem like

foreign worlds unto themselves. Indeed, many are home to people who have

recently traveled hundreds or thousands of miles just to live here, sacrificing

family, friends, and their own familiar surroundings in hopes of a better life.

For those who take time to explore

these surroundings, a world of discovery

awaits. For the casual walker or

bicyclist, the details become much

more apparent. Becoming aware of

everyday places and ordinary things

like power lines, railroad right-of-ways,

alleys, fences, even highway

interchanges can open up larger ideas that invigorate the mind and entice

understanding. Awareness can build to mindfulness and the enduring pleasure

of seeing and thinking about what one notices.

127

Unfortunately, the outdoor experiences that older generations enjoyed are

hardly a reality for today’s youth. Increasingly, nature is becoming more of an

abstraction than reality – something to watch, to consume, to wear, and to

ignore. A child today can tell you about the Amazon rain forest – but not about

the last time he or she explored the woods in solitude, or lay in a field listening to

the wind and watching the clouds move.

128

In his groundbreaking book, Last Child in the Woods, child advocacy expert

Richard Louv identifies the lack of children’s connections with the natural world

as “nature-deficit disorder.” Yet, Louv encourages readers that the solution is in

our own backyards.

129

For hundreds of thousands of children that live in the

area, Los Angeles State Historic Park will hopefully become their backyard.

127

Stilgoe, 1998.

128

Louv 2005.

129

Louv 2005.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

4. INTERPRETIVE RECOMMENDATIONS

This section has been developed to identify the types of facilities, programs, and

services that could enhance visitor experiences at Los Angeles State Historic

Park. These recommendations are created more in the spirit of interpretive

opportunities rather than as definitive concrete projects. Suggested interpretive

facilities include:

130

x Orientation Plazas

x Visitor Center

x River to City Trail

x Archeology Discovery Sites

x Storytelling Circles

x Cultural Gardens

x Multi-purpose Outdoor Classroom/Amphitheater

x Workers’ Park – Celebration Areas

x Pedestrian Bridge

Educational and Interpretive Goals

California State Parks’ envisions considerable usage of the Park by school groups

from the greater Los Angeles area. The California Department of Education’s

Frameworks and Content Standards will be utilized when planning and

developing interpretive facilities and programs for the park, to support and

sustain relationships with the educational community. The Park’s General Plan

identifies seven Educational/Interpretive Goals in Chapter 4: The Plan. These

goals and their respective guidelines – combined with suggestions generated at

interpretive planning workshops with many communities surrounding the park,

form the basis for the interpretive recommendations. These Educational and

Interpretive Goals are:

x Develop interpretive facilities and programs that encourage the public to

share Los Angeles’ cultures, experiences, perspectives, and histories.

x Assist the Department in meeting its goal of increased diversity by reducing

barriers, strengthening partnerships, and providing interpretive facilities and

programs that encourage public participation.

130

The current version of the Los Angeles SHP IMP will be updated upon completion of the

Conceptual Design Competition in 2007. Many of the specific land use and facility

recommendations in this draft are to be considered conceptual and will be subject to change

within the overall vision, mission, and guidelines of the General Plan.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

x Maximize the use of interpretive facilities to enhance visitor experiences with

the park’s resources, the surrounding environment, and the region’s year-

round temperate climate.

x Explore traditional, new, and innovative technologies and techniques for

developing the park’s interpretive and educational programs and facilities.

x Create meaningful educational and interpretive opportunities to promote

lifelong learning.

x Create a comprehensive strategy for supporting ongoing interpretation and

educational programs for the Park.

x Strive to achieve park management goals through interpretation, including

public safety, land use, critical resources, human impacts, resource

management strategies, and other issues.

Interpretive Concepts

Los Angeles State Historic Park is a blank slate that is full of potential as a cultural

landscape. The following concepts are reference points for park development

to ensure that the Interpretive Recommendations are incorporated to protect,

enhance, and perpetuate the historical significance of the property.

Portals

Los Angeles State Historic Park is a portal to Los Angeles. The idea of “portals” or

“gateways” is intrinsic to the sense of place for this Park, linking cultural, natural,

and recreational heritage to people, places, and events. As one travels through

the Park, portals provide a constant reminder of the significance of the many

stories of Los Angeles.

Flow of History/Cultural Layers

The Los Angeles State Historic Park General Plan discusses a Preferred Park

Concept entitled “Los Angeles Flow of History.” The concept emphasizes the

transformation of the site from a former rail yard and brownfield to a verdant

park and gathering place to examine, experience, and celebrate more than

10,000 years of the history and culture of Los Angeles.

The Flow of History is not linear and finite, but is layered and growing. As

knowledge of the history of the property and the surrounding communities is

gained and documented from multiple perspectives, the search for more

information should always be pursued and act as a place holder for the future

to ensure the story is never ending.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Connectivity

Los Angeles State Historic Park is centered in the heart of the City and is viewed

as a cultural tapestry woven over time, stitching the varied historic events into

one dynamic story. This story is directly connected to the nearby Los Angeles

River. Over the years, this area has been severely disturbed as railroads have

been built, the river has been channelized, and highway development has

bisected neighborhoods. Reuniting Angelinos and visitors with the river and with

the historic evolution of the site is an essential component of the connectivity

concept.

Circulation throughout the park should connect visitors with thematic stories that

resonate with the hopes, struggles and triumphs of the people of Los Angeles

and inspire visitors to investigate meanings and relationships that helped shape

the area historically. Regional connectivity using informal or formal media to

historic neighborhoods, historic parks, museums, trails, and other points of interest

outside the park boundaries is an essential component of the connectivity

concept. They offer a microcosm of the evolving human landscape that is the

distinct phenomenon of Los Angeles.

Design Considerations

As the park is designed, the following should be considered to meet the Park’s

Interpretive Direction and Themes addressed in the previous section, as well as

the Interpretive Concepts discussed above:

Multiple Historic Perspectives

x Include the lesser known, untold stories of Los Angeles

x Leave room for unfinished and evolving stories

x Capture the many layers of history

x Address issues such as cultural identity, social justice, and displacement of

communities

Educational/learning landscapes

x Promote experiential learning

x Optimize the surrounding environment as an effective setting for learning

x Accommodate diverse learning styles for formal and leisure learning

Surrounding Communities

x Recognize the cultural significance of neighborhoods, historic sites,

structures, and objects

x Provide interpretive connections between the park and the surrounding

communities

Additional design considerations should include: flexibility of spaces;

operations/maintenance; storage needs; and, visitor safety.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Orientation Plazas

Points of entry into a park can provide both a transition into a park and a

connection with a park’s surroundings. Orientation plazas at Los Angeles State

Historic Park will serve as welcoming gateways that lead visitors on their journey

through the park. These spaces will reinforce the concept that the Park is a

portal to the broader stories of Los Angeles.

Recommendation for orientation plazas at Los Angeles State Historic Park is

based on the following Guidelines from Chapter 4 of the Park’s General Plan.

Guidelines for Interpretation:

x Establish access points into the Park and develop design standards for these

“gateway” areas that will create a sense of arrival and establish an initial

identity and sense of place for the Park. Design standards and guidelines for

access points should distinguish primary and secondary gateways.

(Aesthetics 4)

x Create a sense of entry and arrival at the Park. Provide easily accessible

orientation and information that will permit visitors to choose from a range of

available park experiences. (Access 1)

x Explore opportunities to provide convenient and safe pedestrian and cycling

access throughout the Park, with connections from communities along North

Broadway. Coordinate with the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to

consider pedestrian bridge possibilities over the Gold Line right of way.

(Access 4)

x Use the area’s natural and cultural features as design references for

developing the interpretive facilities, integrating a variety of public art media

to enhance the visitor experience. Consider incorporating elements, such as

simple, shade-producing roofing structures, grass, and trails, to delineate the

former location of the park’s significant natural and cultural resources.

(Interpretation 18)

x Create spaces throughout the Park that foster personal reflection, civic

engagement, and a variety of modes of public storytelling – from plays and

poetry readings to musical performances and movies as well as educational

and interpretive programming, cooking, festivals and parades,

demonstrations (music, dance, living history, theatre, etc.), cultural events,

workshops, farmer’s markets, contests, nature-viewing, and gardening.

Maximize the use of the city skyline as a backdrop while creating these

spaces to enhance the visitor’s connection with the broader Los Angeles

story. (Interpretation 8)

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

x Develop visitor use facilities to accommodate changing visitor uses and

accessibility needs, population demographics, and increases in visitation.

(Facilities 4)

Interpretive Objective(s):

Visitors will

x Be interested to learn about the history of Los Angeles during their visit to this

historic park.

x Understand why Los Angeles is recognized as a magnet for immigration.

Interpretive Theme: Peoples’ History

Los Angeles’ story over the past 10,000 plus years embodies the struggles and

triumphs of its diverse residents and communities.

Interpretive Period: Flow of history.

Interpretive Methods and Media:

x Portals, exhibits, signage, art, and hardscape features will direct park visitors

into the interpretive flow of the park.

x Incorporate the existing “Millie’s” structure into a visitor contact station.

Visitor Activities:

x Gateway and initial orientation to the Park.

x Meeting place for groups and visitors.

x A place for posting public announcements.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Visitor Center

Within a state park, a visitor center is among the first places where visitors will go

to obtain a general orientation to the park’s resources. Interpretive exhibits and

other media can be included to enhance visitor understanding of the park’s key

messages.

The recommendation for a visitor center at Los Angeles State Historic Park is

based on the following Guidelines from Chapter 4 of the Park’s General Plan.

Guidelines for Interpretation:

x Determine if a statewide and regional need exists for an interpretive facility

that could provide expanded opportunities for interpretive media and

educational programs, and evaluate the feasibility and benefits of providing

such a facility. A structure could be located within, or in close proximity to the

park. (Interpretation 7)

x Coordinate interpretive programming with other California State Parks in the

Los Angeles region, enhancing significant stories associated with the area’s

cultural heritage, such as Pío Pico State Historic Park, Los Encinos State

Historic Park, and the Taylor Yard Site (Río de Los Angeles State Park).

(Interpretation 5)

x Consider the development of an interpretive feature in or preferable nearby

to the Park that provides permanent and temporary exhibits interpreting the

cultural history of Los Angeles. A facility could also provide park orientation

and visitor information services. The design should be integrated with the

surrounding open space and outdoor interpretive exhibits and activity areas.

(Interpretation 6)

x Use a holistic interpretive planning approach for the site that connects the

interpretive themes and messages of the Park with the creative use of open

space. Develop outdoor interpretive facilities that can serve as multi-use

areas to reduce development of the Park’s open space. Determine the

specific needs for the park’s interpretive services that require indoor space.

General needs may include space for: exhibits, exhibit fabrication and

storage; museum collections, offices, meetings, workshops, conferences,

lectures, and training; library and research areas; interpretive program

supplies and equipment and an alternative location for outdoor interpretive

programs during inclement weather. (Interpretation 15)

x Create accessible interpretive facilities and programs, which include a well-

trained staff, which can effectively provide educational and interpretive

services that meet visitors’ diverse needs. Employ guidelines, such as All

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Visitors Welcome: Accessibility in State Park Interpretive Programs and

Facilities and California State Parks Accessibility Guidelines. (Interpretation 3)

x Offer park programs that meet the diverse needs of students, parents,

instructors, and schools. This includes programs such as, in-school programs,

after-school programs, remote learning programs, student internships,

professional mentoring, and student service projects. (Interpretation 21)

x Establish a program to preserve and interpret the personal stories and

experiences of the people associated with the area’s multi-faceted history.

Use methods such as oral history, written first person narratives, and

photographs, maintaining a current contact list. (Interpretation 24)

x Partner with educational institutions using the latest technology to create

virtual learning opportunities for long distance visitors. (Partnerships 7)

Interpretive Objectives:

Visitors will

x Become aware of the people, places, and events that have shaped Los

Angeles over time.

x Be motivated to continue their visit in the Park’s outdoor exhibits.

x Understand that Los Angeles SHP is a portal to other sites in Los Angeles.

x Engage in virtual experiences of the Park and of other sites within Los Angeles

and the California State Park system.

x Learn more about using their five senses in the park.

Interpretive Themes:

Unifying Theme: Connectivity

Los Angeles State Historic Park’s resources reveal natural, cultural, economic

and historical threads reflective of greater Los Angeles over time.

Primary Theme: Flow of History

Peoples’ History

Los Angeles’ story over the past 10,000 plus years embodies the struggles and

triumphs of its diverse residents and communities.

History of Place

The movement of people and products has enabled Los Angeles to become

the megalopolis it is today.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Primary Theme: Environmental Justice

Water

Water has played an integral role in the growth of Los Angeles from the Spanish

period to the present.

Environmental Actions:

By their actions, people have affected Los Angeles basin’s environment,

impacting the health of natural systems and communities.

Secondary Theme: Recreation

Los Angeles State Historic Park provides a unique place for reflection, relaxation,

recreation, rejuvenation, and inspiration.

Interpretive Period: Flow of history

Interpretive Methods and Media:

x Permanent exhibitions: 3-dimensional, tactile and/or computerized

interactive map for visitors to experience the layers of history and specific

land use changes over time; interactive stations depicting the local history of

the various ethnic communities and neighborhoods of the area; exhibits with

objects and text interpreting the people, places, and events that have

shaped Los Angeles and its global influence; diorama(s) or model(s)

depicting the evolution of the site, including the railroad era and displays of

the site’s archaeological materials.

x Temporary exhibitions: displays of materials/collections from other State Parks,

museum institutions, groups, or individuals related to the Park’s interpretive

themes.

x Discovery room: “Friends and Families of Los Angeles” – a “living” exhibit that

allows visitors of every age to create and share their personal experiences

connected to Los Angeles through various media (audio, visual, written,

artistic, etc.)

x Classroom/studio: record oral histories; document cultural

demonstrations/techniques; generate live broadcasts of interpretive

programs to educational groups [i.e. Parks On-line Resources for Students

and Teachers (PORTS) distance learning programs]. Workshops,

demonstrations, and lectures: related to the area’s arts, culture, and history.

x Auditorium/performance space: lectures, conferences, and presentations

related to the Park’s interpretive themes.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

x Demonstrative kitchen for preparing and interpreting foods prepared by

different cultures.

x Interpretive sales/food service area: publications and souvenirs related to the

Park’s interpretive themes such as crafts made by local artisans of various

cultural groups. Refreshments that represent the foods of the diverse ethnic

communities of Los Angeles.

x Boardwalk/Interpretive overlook: a physical connection between the Visitor

Center and the significant vistas of the site, such as the view of the

downtown Los Angeles skyline and the Broadway Bridge with hills and

mountains in the distance. This may also serve as a type of “trailhead” for

visitors to continue their journey throughout the Park.

Space for Other Activities:

x Information counter with space for visitor-staff contacts, park brochures and

a resource kit check-out and storage areas.

x Visitor comfort areas including coat/package check, restrooms, seating

areas, water fountains.

x Research / Archive Center with workspace, library, and secure storage.

x Workroom/Classroom and supplies/equipment storage area to support

programs for school group visits, Junior Rangers, and outreach (include

space for 2-4 portable interpretive “discovery” carts and portable audio-

visual equipment)

x Collections storage having temperature and humidity controls with security.

x Staff offices and related storage

x Interpretive sales area with secure storage and office space

x Food service and storage space with eating areas.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

River to City Trail

Trails in parks provide pathways to discovery. A trail at Los Angeles State Historic

Park can provide a physical link throughout the site’s 32 acres with interpretive

connections to the multi-layered history reflected in the surrounding area.

The recommendation for an interpretive trail at Los Angeles State Historic Park is

based on the following Guidelines from Chapter 4 of the Park’s General Plan.

Guidelines for Interpretation:

x Provide meaningful interpretation that incorporates multiple perspectives,

including those of the park visitor. (Interpretation 2)

x Consider incorporating an interpretive trail throughout the Park that acts as a

spine or thread to unify site development and interpretive themes. This trail

could be a symbolic timeline that allows for the chronological/sequential

presentation of important elements of the history and culture of Los Angeles.

(Access 6)

x Create spaces throughout the Park that foster personal reflection, civic

engagement, and a variety of modes of public storytelling – from plays and

poetry readings to musical performances and movies, as well as educational

and interpretive programming, cooking, festivals and parades,

demonstrations (music, dance, living history, theatre, etc.), cultural events,

workshops, farmer’s markets, contests, nature-viewing, and gardening.

Maximize the use of the city skyline as a backdrop while creating these

spaces to enhance the visitor’s connection with the broader Los Angeles

story. (Interpretation 8)

x Provide learning experiences that engage one or more of the senses to

enhance the intellectual understanding of park messages. (Interpretation 17)

x Create a variety of visitor experiences by providing visitors with positive

natural fragrances and sounds, such as the scent of landscape plantings and

the sounds of birds and water. Consider buffering traffic and transit line noise

with appropriate materials. (Aesthetics 5)

x Parkwide vegetation management should establish a native vegetation

framework that enables it to become part of the regional Los Angeles River

natural open space network and supports the Park’s connectivity goals. The

framework should use naturalistic native plant associations that will emulate

the historic landscape of the Los Angeles Basin and provide a visual identity

to the Park. This framework should allow specific landscape treatments for

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

specific areas of the Park that would be compatible with the overall

vegetation concept. (Natural 5)

x Develop interpretation for park visitors explaining how nonnative species can

alter all types of vegetation communities. In addition, interpretation should

address how non-native plants become established in the absence of a

native ecosystem in an urban environment. (Natural 15)

x Explore opportunities to link pedestrian and cycling trails within the Park with

neighborhood and regional transportation systems, including regional trails.

(Access 3)

x Explore opportunities to provide convenient and safe pedestrian and cycling

access throughout the Park, with connections from communities along North

Broadway. Coordinate with the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to

consider pedestrian bridge possibilities over the Gold Line right of way.

(Access 4)

Interpretive Objectives:

Visitors will

x Understand that the Los Angeles River has supported families and

communities - migrants and immigrants - for thousands of years.

x Remember that the development of the City of Los Angeles depended on

the Los Angeles River.

x Appreciate the engineering and labor it took to create and maintain the

Zanja Madre and the water wheel in order to divert water from the Los

Angeles River.

x Gain a better understanding of the importance of the area’s industrial

history.

x Discover the variety of individuals, communities, and events that are

associated with Los Angeles’ past.

x Find out how the world has impacted Los Angeles, and how Los Angeles has

impacted the world.

x Develop connections to the pre-history flora and fauna found in wetland or

riparian habitats indicative of the Los Angeles River.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Interpretive Themes:

Peoples’ History

Los Angeles’ story over the past 10,000 plus years embodies the struggles and

triumphs of its diverse residents and communities.

History of Place

The movement of people and products has enabled Los Angeles to become

the megalopolis it is today.

Water

Water has played an integral role in the growth of Los Angeles from the Spanish

period to the present.

Interpretive Period: Flow of history

Interpretive Methods and Media:

x Create a timeline that captures the varied stories of individuals, communities,

places, and events that represent the ethnic, cultural, labor, and social

history of Los Angeles (i.e. Peoples’ History).

x Create physical connections to serve as portals from the park to surrounding

community and other Los Angeles cultural and natural sites (i.e. linkages to

other museums and parks).

x Construct a viewing platform with a clear line of sight to the original Zanja

Madre located near the park’s perimeter.

x Develop a realistic or artistic representation of the original Zanja Madre and

waterwheel.

x Create a multi-sensory experience with a variety of native plants.

x Produce publications in a variety of formats (self-guiding brochure, trail

guide, activity booklets, and souvenir booklet) in multiple languages.

x Develop interactive video and audio guides using portable devices (i.e. cell

phones, iPods)

Visitor Activities:

Self-guided and guided walking tours.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Archaeology Discovery Sites

Archaeology provides a physical link to the past. A few artifacts and features

have been located at Los Angeles State Historic Park, reflecting the site's use as

a railroad station and yard. However, many other artifacts and features have

yet to be discovered and await future investigations, including those from the

pre-railroad era of the California Indian, Spanish and Mexican periods. Nearby

archaeological finds include remnants of the historic Zanja Madre lying a few

yards outside of the current park boundaries.

The recommendation for Archaeology Discovery Sites at Los Angeles State

Historic Park is based on the following Guidelines from Chapter 4 of the Park’s

General Plan.

Guidelines for Interpretation:

x Explore the possibilities for interpreting the sub-surface cultural resources of

the site’s transportation-era past, through excavation and exposure, as well

as publications, public programs, and identification markers. (Interpretation

x Conduct archaeological surveys, site recordation, testing, and evaluation for

cultural resources within the Park. Nominate those resources that may be

eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places and/or the

California Register of Historical Resources. (Cultural 1)

x Establish academic and scholarly partnerships and enable volunteers to assist

in conducting historical research, archaeological fieldwork, site monitoring,

and interpretive programs. (Cultural 4)

x Develop criteria for determining which

archaeological sites and features are

appropriate for on-site public

interpretation through excavation and

exposure. Assure that such interpretive

programs balance site interpretation

with protection and preservation as

directed in Departmental and

professional guidelines for the treatment

of cultural resources. (Cultural 10)

x Integrate potential recreational uses with other operational facilities to ensure

that the planning, design and construction preserve and emphasize key

elements of the natural and cultural environment. (Recreation 2)

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Interpretive Objectives:

Visitors will

x Understand how water played an vital role in the development of the area.

x Gain a broader understanding of how the railroad contributed to the growth

of Los Angeles.

x Become familiar with the general lay-out of the land during the railroad era

(location of various structures and track) and the types of activities that

occurred there.

x Learn how the River Station served as a vital transportation center for over a

century.

x Remember that the railroad yard became so developed that part of it had

to be moved to what is now Río de Los Angeles State Park (Taylor Yard).

x Appreciate the amount of manual labor it took to keep the railroad yard

functioning.

x Understand the importance of preserving the Park’s cultural resources.

Interpretive Themes:

History of Place:

The movement of people and products has enabled Los Angeles to become

the megalopolis it is today.

Water:

Water has played an integral role in the growth of Los Angeles from the Spanish

period to the present.

Interpretive Period: 1869-1991

Interpretive Methods and Media:

x Simulate the original railroad turntable, allowing a single person to turn the

table with a pole.

x Create replica archaeological discovery sites, including some of the key

features still preserved underground, like the Zanja Madre, as well as

associated objects that have been excavated. Locate these discovery sites

as close to their original sites as is feasible.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

x Provide interpretive panels that incorporate historic photographs depicting

the workers, passengers, freight, rail cars, structures, and the overall rail yard.

x Produce printed materials to engage visitors: self-guiding brochure; “treasure

hunt” type hand-out for children; reprint of Sanborn map(s).

x Publish an overview of the cultural resources at Los Angeles State Historic Park

directed toward an adult audience.

Visitor Activities:

x Self-guided discovery areas.

x School curriculum incorporated within Park programs and activities.

x Programs for visitors linked to annual “Archaeology Month” in May.

Los Angeles SHP Interpretive Master Plan August 23, 2006

Storytelling Circles

Storytelling is a powerful method of communication. For many cultures, it is the

vital link in preserving traditions and significant memories. Storytelling can be

used at Los Angeles State Historic Park to enhance and preserve the diverse

stories of the city’s rich, complex, and sometimes controversial heritage and to

provide physical and visual connections with the surrounding area that reflect

these unique stories.

The recommendation for storytelling circles at Los Angeles State Historic Park is