Secret Walks #26: Peanut Lake & Debs Park, 3.5 miles. 

You can drive the LA freeways for years, seeing bursts of green hills in the distance, and never realize how cool the LA parks are until you explore them by foot. In another "where are we going?" hike, Barbara and I drove to the small district of Hermon between South Pasadena and Monterey Hills to find Peanut Lake. We began our ascent on foot into Debs Park, a hilly, open space nature reserve and regional park off Via Marisol. The history of the area dates back centuries to the Chumash tribe, and experienced an affluent housing boom at the turn of the 20th century, squashed by the '29 crash as evidenced by deserted stairways we passed. But today was all about hiking to little Peanut Lake, situated at the top of a series of trails littered with snails and lined by eucalyptus, pine, birch, CA walnut, and CA oak woods. The lake, too small to find on a map, is home to turtles, a pair of ducks, and two very vocal bullfrogs. We were gifted with views of downtown, from City Hall to Elysian Park to the west, and the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in Mt. Washington, across the Arroyo Seco to the north. A hilly puffer of a hike, but we found a real treasure tucked in the heart of old Los Angeles.