Curiosity drew Barbara and me to this urban hike through a section of North Hollywood/Burbank that we each have driven hundreds of times. Though Barbara grew up in Burbank, neither one of us knew the exact history of the diagonal green strip of giant, double transmission towers between Oxnard Street and Chandler Blvd. So wide, it looks like it might have been planned for a highway, but what happened? The answer, and the rest of our hike, included the planning, transportation, housing, and industrial history of Burbank. We started at the top of Whitnall Highway at Oxnard and headed SE along its path. Its namesake, George Gordon Whitnall, came to L.A. in 1913 and quickly became interested in organizing the haphazard growth of the city (L.A. population was booming in the early 20th-century). Whitnall worked his way up to Director of City & County Planning, oversaw the growth of big streets like Beverly Blvd., and began to plan a highway from Newhall through the SF Valley to a 2-mile tunnel under Griffith Park, then on to DTLA. The first section of Whitnall Highway was built at Cahuenga Blvd. in 1927, complete with the massive power lines. Residents didn't like the power lines or the idea of a highway at all. Whitnall left his city-planning job in 1930, yet the second section, to Oxnard Blvd., was built in 1931. In 1934, the highway idea just disappeared and Whitnall Highway became one of L.A.'s "phantom highways." Couldn't move the towers. Can't build under them. In the 1990s the city created Whitnall Parks North and South, the path we followed today. We stopped to say-hey to dog owners and happy pets at the Off-Leash Dog Park who didn't seem to mind the mud—better that than a freeway through your neighborhood—then walked on past the art deco, DWP Receiving Station-E built in 1937. Whitnall Highway Park North ends at Chandler, so we hiked the Chandler Bikeway, the boulevard pathway for walking and hiking that, in 2004, replaced RR tracks for the "Big Red Cars," a 19-mile light rail, street car line from 1906–1930. Along our way, we passed hundreds of small, post-WWII, single-family homes built for aerospace workers when nearby Lockheed was a key component of the US aerospace and defense industry during the war and beyond. At Hollywood Way we headed south past Porto's Bakery (jammed at 9:30a) and remnants of a quaint old commercial district. At Clark Avenue, we reconnected to Whitnall Highway Park South with a parkour series of exercise stations that we had to try out for fun. Hah! Whitnall Hwy ends at Verdugo, and a quick residential trek led us back to the Chandler Bikeway. Walking west on the path past the Iliad Book Shop at Cahuenga, we found one of the most delightful features of this hike: a series of murals that "symbolically covers events on Chandler Corridor spanning the late 1800s to the present" painted by CSUN and Hollywood High students. So very cool, I included the legend in the photos below. Past the student mural, local businesses continued the artistic string, making this section of Chandler amazingly colorful and creative. An inspiring close to an interesting hike.