by Paul R. Spitzzeri The massive gift of just over 3,000 acres of land, formerly part of the Rancho Los Feliz and much of it the rugged eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, to the City of Los Angeles by Griffith J. Griffith overnight established one of the largest city parks in the United States. The native of Wales made a fortune by consulting on mines and acquired the land in the early 1880s when land was cheap compared to what prices became during the major boom that came later in the decade. The 1896 donation did not yield the immediate creation of what we know as the highly diverse ..read more

by Paul R. Spitzzeri Continuing with this post on the 6 April 1929 edition of The Open Forum, the weekly publication of the Southern California Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which was formed nine years earlier during the height of the Red Scare that followed World War I and during an era of concerted crackdowns against suspected far left-wing organizations and individuals, we turn to the third page. This section, titled “From Varied Viewpoints” included a letter to the editor from W.H. Kindig under the heading of “On Drys and Drinking” and addressed a piece written by f ..read more

by Paul R. Spitzzeri Several prior posts here have featured, from the Homestead’s holdings, issues of The Open Forum, the newsletter of the Southern California Branch of The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU,) which was formed in 1920 during the Red Scare period involving government crackdowns of left-wing groups, including Communists and Socialists. The ACLU in those formative years was clearly in the Socialist camp, though vehemently opposed to Communists, and it, as it has done in the century and more since, emphasized free speech rights as embodied in the 1st Amendment of the Constitut ..read more

by Paul R. Spitzzeri Controversial as it was, especially for those living near its source in the Owens Valley in eastern California, the 234-mile long Los Angeles Aqueduct was an imperative as the metropolis grew by leaps and bounds at the end of the 19th century and into the first decades of the 20th. It was an engineering feat of its era, with water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains region mostly sent in excess of 200 miles and almost entirely with gravity (some lifting by pumps was necessary) to its thirsty destination. The featured artifact from the Museum’s holdings for this post is an ar ..read more

by Paul R. Spitzzeri As has been oft-stated here, one of the best ways to understand what was happening in Los Angeles during its first period of major growth, occurring in the late 1860s and into the mid 1870s, is through what was reported and editorialized in the city’s newspapers. Most of the “Read All About It” series of posts features issues from the Express, Herald and Star from the years 1873-1875 when the boom, though small compared to later ones still being important as a harbinger of much to come, was at its peak. Today, we look at the pages of the 31 March 1874 edition of the Expre ..read more

by Paul R. Spitzzeri On this St. Patrick’s Day and its celebration of all things Irish, we turn in our latest “Read All About It” post featuring historic greater Los Angeles newspapers in the Homestead’s collection, to the pages of the 17 March 1875 edition of the Los Angeles Herald, in which there are some notable items relating to the holiday. There is much more of interest, however, so we’ll look at these first. In the editorial section on page two, a piece titled “Immigration” observed that, with the incipient arrival of spring and the melting away of winter, “the number of passengers on ..read more

by Paul R. Spitzzeri On Wednesday evening, I had the privilege of being able to share the history of F.P.F. Temple with the Los Angeles Corral (Chapter) of The Westerners, a group of which I’ve been a member for twenty-five years including serving as Sheriff, or president, in 2011. Though I haven’t been very active since, it’s always great to go back and be among those who love local and Western American history. The talk was an overview of the remarkable story of “Templito,” the much-younger and shorter brother of Jonathan Temple (1796-1866), who, after leaving the family’s long-time home in ..read more

by Paul R. Spitzzeri Wrapping up our look into the 1926 annual report of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners concerning the Port of Los Angeles, we turn to the statement of the engineer, George F. Nicholson, who noted the amount of lineal feet added to wharves and transit sheds, miles of railroad tracks installed and the square footage of streets paved. Nicholson added that The projects mentioned above have satisfied all of the current needs of the port and have paved the way for future developments, that when completed will place the Port of Los Angeles second to none of the world ..read more

by Paul R. Spitzzeri Continuing with our look into the pages of the 1926 annual report of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners and the Port of Los Angeles, when it was going through a tremendous period of growth commensurate with that of the Angel City and its environs, the section on railroads noted several lines operating at the facility. A Municipal Terminal Railroad, with nearly sixty miles of lines, had two areas of operation. On the west at San Pedro was the Pacific Electric Railway, while at the east at Wilmington was the Union Pacific. Both served as contracting agents for th ..read more

by Paul R. Spitzzeri One of the most important elements of Los Angeles’ remarkable rise as a major metropolis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the development of the port that had to be manufactured, with enormous resources dedicated to it, in a locale that did not otherwise have the natural features and contours such as at such California harbors as San Diego and San Francisco. Encompassing the old port location, dating to pre-American times, of San Pedro at the base of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Wilmington, established by Phineas Banning as New San Pedro on the cusp of what ..read more