IMAGERY – The Mighty LA River, 1895-1920

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Two men standing near a water ditch at the bank of Los Angeles River, north side of Griffith Park.

I’m happy to say that our sold out Los Angeles River tour is this Sunday and there are actually upwards of 30 people on the waiting list for another one! Wow. There’s been a lot of discussion on our Facebook page about the revitalization of the river and its reputation as a drainage ditch this week, so I decided to make another dip into the ol’ USC Digital Archive to see what kind of imagery I could find. This 51 mile river that explorer Gaspar de Portolá named El Río de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Ángeles de Porciúncula in the year 1769 didn’t always look the way you might imagine. Although it changed course many times over history, the river shown below was the reason that the 44 Los Pobladores chose to stop and create a settlement here… The LA River is the reason that Los Angeles exists.

Photograph of a man standing near a water ditch at the bank of Los Angeles River, north side of Griffith Park, ca.1900.

Prior to the arrival of Los Pobladores from New Spain,

“The River and its rich plant and animal habitat provided a livelihood for the Gabrielino Indians, one of the largest group of Indians in North America. Although it is unclear today what this group called themselves, they are referred to as the Tongva. Over 1000 years ago, the Tongva established a settlement on the banks of the River near where Los Angeles City Hall stands today.” (SOURCE)

Photograph of hundreds of pigeons bathing in the Los Angeles River on a pigeon ranch just past the Riverside bridge at the junction of Verdugo Road and San Fernando Boulevard, ca.1900.

Father Juan Crespi was a member of the Portola expedition and documented the river in its first written description:

“Wednesday, August 2. ~ We set out from the valley in the morning and followed the same plain in the westerly direction. After traveling about a league and a half through a pass between low hills, we entered a very spacious valley, well grown with cottonwoods and alders, among which ran a beautiful river (yep, the LA River) from the north-northwest, and then doubling the point of a steep hill, it went on aftwards to the south. Toward the north-northeast there is another river bed (the Arroyo Seco) which forms a spacious water-course, but we found it dry. This bed unites with that of the river, giving a clear indication of great floods in the rainy season, for we saw that it had many trunks of trees on the banks. We halted not very far from the river, which we named Porciuncula (meaning “small portion of land”). Here we felt three consecutive earthquakes in the afternoon and night. We must have traveled about three leagues today. This plain where the river runs is very extensive. It has good land for planting all kinds of grain and seeds, and is the most suitable site of all that we have seen for a mission, for it has all the requisites for a large settlement.”

Below is visual documentation of the main reason that the concrete drainage ditch system was originally conceived… containing the river and flowing it as quickly as possible to the ocean was the Army Corp of Engineer’s chosen solution for flooding like what’s depicted in the photo below. Potential flooding is something everyone working on the revitalization plan is very aware of, though.

Fingers crossed, technology has come a long way since 1930.

Photograph of a flooded Los Angeles River flowing under a Pacific Electric Railway bridge, 1916. Looking north from a wagon bridge on Anaheim Street in Wilmington, the water fills the foreground, stretching towards the bridge in the background, which crosses from left to right.

Photograph of the Los Angeles River in Griffith Park, ca.1920.