Barbara is great at identifying trees and I like studying architecture in different parts of LA, so this urban walk through South Pasadena and parts of San Marino appealed to us for our final June Gloom hike. Being our first trek through the south side of South Pasadena, we weren't aware of its reputation as the "City of Trees," a real and serious historical factor about Pasadena's 1888 spin-off town. The original residents of now one of the oldest municipalities in L.A., were conservative, middle-class, midwest farmers mainly from Indiana. Six years post establishment, one citizen wrote a 1893 op-ed appeal for shade trees to make their new town look inviting. On April 24, 1894, volunteers gathered and planted 1,000 shade trees, including 800 ficus in one day, all donated by a family-run nursery. Today the town has 21,000 trees and over 100 acres of parks. The best example of the varieties of trees came at our starting point: the South Pasadena Public Library. We parked on the east side of the library on Fairview, and circled Library Park, an entire block filled with 75 trees in 21 different species from carrotwood to magnolia, fruitless olive, liquidambar, London plane, strawberry, ash, jacaranda, and more, including the historic, South Pasadena landmark Moreton Bay Fig Tree (above), an import from Australia, planted as a small potted sapling in 1930 by a city street department worker. The tree allegedly has magical powers that boost the imaginations of those who come in contact and benefit your life in magical ways. My only regret was not giving the tree a hug. The buttress roots alone are worth a close look. The rest of the hike led us down Diamond to Monterey, and crossing Fair Oaks into San Marino toward the second of our three park visits, was like walking into a very wealthy and architecturally stunning Mayberry. Calm, beautiful, well kept. Many streets were lined with a single species like the jacaranda on Morengo Ave or the palms on Stratford. The streets we walked in San Marino, incorporated in 1913 (its first mayor was General Patton's father) were a standing architectural showcase without a rundown yard in sight. Every block reflected the 1920s-30s Golden era of architecture including Craftsman, Spanish Colonial, Andalusian, Mission Revival, American Colonial Revival...if you love architecture, tour the impressive streets of San Marino. And, of course, the trees lining the streets were perfection. We walked down Milan Ave and east over Edgewood Drive to the sycamores and oaks of pocket-sized Eddie Park for our turnaround snack. Back up Chelton Way then over to Mission, Mission Alley, and Stratford to Garfield Park, filled with crawling babies, partying toddlers, and morning walkers among the old, beautiful sycamores. Back down to Mission Street, we passed the Fair Oaks Pharmacy (closed on weekends) on our way back to the car. Looking back 106 years at the tree-planting midwesterners establishing roots in the US, this hike gave us a small town feel, just right going into the USA's semiquincentennial week. Fun walk!

   

   

   

An email from Weekend Sherpa intrigued Barbara and me enough to change our focus from trails to sidewalks for today's hike through the Historic Preservation Overlay Zone of Lincoln Heights, NE of DTLA, and east of Dodger Stadium and Chinatown. We imagined art, we got loads of LA history dating back to the 1870s and the Industrial Revolution. Back then, Los Angeles was in the midst of a population boom that grew from 5,728 in 1870 to 50,935 in 1890. Lincoln Park (originally Eastlake Park), was part of the 2000-acre parcel of ranch land east of the LA River that John Strother Griffin bought for $1000 in 1870, a portion of the original Spanish El Pueblo de Los Angeles land grant. Griffin gifted the 50-acre land that became the park to the City of Los Angeles. He divided the remaining land into the lots that became East Los Angeles—"LA's first suburb" or the "bedroom of the Pueblo," carved out as the city's first industrial corridor east of the river, with middle-class Fold Victorian homes built by the owners or by Native American slaves from the San Gabriel Mission. East Los Angeles (renamed Lincoln Heights in 1917) featured LA's first horse-drawn streetcar for commuters to cross the river to get to work. In 1874, Los Angeles gave the parkland (pretty much just dirt) and $600K to the Southern Pacific RR when the RR threatened to bypass LA unless the city paid them a ransom. SoPac built their tracks across the street, but did nothing with the land and gave it back to LA in 1886. By 1892, Eastlake Park had grown into a garden-like resort "the crown jewel of the LA park system," with an artificial lake and LA's first city zoo complete with an ostrich farm. Barbara and I parked at Eastlake Park (renamed Lincoln Park in 1917) and started to hike N around the small lake, passing a multi-species blend of geese, ducks, herons, herring gulls, egrets, Egyptian geese, and turtles—all pretty much bored by our presence. Across the lake, the original 1912 boat house now houses Plaza de la Raza, founded in 1970 by actress Margo Albert and trade union activist Frank Lopez as a cultural enrichment space with after school programs in arts education and theater. On the west side of the park, we circled through the 2004 Wall Las Memorias—eight wall panels, six murals, and granite panels with names of individuals who died from AIDS. This gorgeous memorial was the first publicly funded AIDS monument in the US. The signature Lincoln Park Gateway, constructed in Classical Moderne/Art Deco style was completed in 1933 during the Depression and borders Mission Road on the west end of the park. Still in the park, we headed to the SW end and came to an incredible display of sculptures. The first two, Florence Nightingale and Abraham Lincoln were installed in 1937 as part of the Depression-era WPA Federal Art Project. At the SW corner of the park, we came upon El Parque de Mexico, a 1981 civic shrine to the greatness, history, and culture of the Mexican people to promote the cultural heritage of the Mexican American community of LA to demonstrate good will between the US and Mexico. A great reminder that California and Los Angeles were part of Spain then Mexico long before the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and 1850 California statehood. Check the photos below for just some of the statues! Barbara and I left the park to find the second "art" project in Weekend Sherpa's article, but instead of walking down Main Street, we walked south on Mission, passing the very cool building that houses the LA County Coroner's Office that backs to the LAC & USC Medical Center. We found our way to the Brewery Artist Lofts, the "world's largest art complex" that opened in 1982 on the grounds of the former Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewery. We hoped we could get in and maybe catch an open restaurant or art installation early on a Sunday morning, but, alas, the 16-acre, 310 loft complex was guarded and gated. Apparently the painters, performance artists, sculptors, tattoo artists, taxidermists, et al. who live there exist in a protected environment, with no dogs, no musical instruments, and no random hikers. Whatever. The photos looked amazing and we're sorry we missed a view. On the way back to Lincoln Park we passed another installation, the prancing "Caballo Diablo" and a marker for CA Historic Rte 99, the "main street of California," important thought the 1930s as a paved route for Dust Bowl immigrant farm workers to journey through the state. One last trek through Lincoln Park got us back to the car—filled with more history than we had expected! The park itself, a reminder of where LA has been and where it has gone in over 150 years, is worth a tour.

   

   

   

   

   

Glorious ocean views, magnificent trees, and challenging trails were only part of the fascination Barbara and I found on Weekend Sherpa's November 2020 park-to-park hike in a fairly small corner of San Pedro. Point Fermin was named by a British explorer to honor a priest at the Carmel Mission who was nice to him. The hike starts at the gate to the Sunken City ruins at the southern end of Paseo del Mar off S. Gaffey St. Nothing to see here—a 1920s landslide literally sunk the Sunken City into the ocean and the fenced-in ruins are barely visible. But our starting point gave us a chance to wander among the 20 glorious, regal, Moreton Bay figs planted here in the 1930s, Next, the Point Fermin Lighthouse honored on the National Register of Historic Places. Built in 1874, the lighthouse was the first navigational light to guide ships into the San Pedro Bay harbor. Continuing north along the bluffs, we passed photographers with lenses pointed down and out, hoping to catch a shot of peregrine falcons dive-bombing the marine life refuge below. At the north end of Point Fermin Park we crossed Paseo del Mar to the entrance to Angels Gate Park, home of the Fort MacArthur Museum, Battery Osgood-Farley, and the Korean Friendship Bell. That's when the history behind the hike got really interesting. A steep trail took us up to a small rickety staircase to a pair of battery ruins. Each looked like leftovers from a construction site and faced a circle of dirt—yet, both are on the National Register of Historical Places. Why? The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 immediately made the Port of Los Angeles a favored shipping location in CA...days after the start of WWI in Europe. So, in 1914, this slope on San Pedro Hill became part of the US Army's Fort MacArthur, a permanent harbor defense installation that guarded the LA Harbor from 1914–1974. From 1919 to the attack on Pearl Harbor to the end of WWII, the concrete rubble and dirt circles that Barbara and I stared at today were fortified emplacements for heavy guns. And I mean heavy. Each mounted on one of the dirt circles, the two 48-foot guns weighed 10,000 lbs. and could fire a 1,560 lb. projectile 14 miles out into the ocean! Above the batteries at the top of the hill, a beautiful Los Angeles Historical-Cultural monument overlooks the ocean. The Korean Friendship Bell, a picture of grace and strength modeled after the bronze bell of King Songduk (c.771AD), was presented to the US by South Korea to commemorate our bicentennial and represent the friendship between the two nations. Our heads filled with history, Barbara and I trekked back down the hill and across the street to our last park of the day: Wilders Addition Park, 6.9 acres donated in 1926 to the city of Los Angeles by the Wilder family in lieu of back taxes. A sweet little park, dirt trail to a bluff path below; palm-tree-lined manicured park on street level. We hiked both, then followed Paseo del Mar south back to the car. Even if you don't care about history, the views out to the ocean and down the sides of the bluff are spectacular. If you do like history, the defensive significance of the area is fascinating. Glad we went.