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From Native-Americans to the Mission era, from the birth of Arroyo Culture to the Chicano Art Movement, Highland Park has always been a nexus of ideas, build or imagined. Come explore Los Angeles; first bohemian neighborhood with Departures.

From the Tongva people called the Hahamog'na, to years later the Spaniards, we explore the shifts of power over land in Los Angeles leading to the land divisions, or ranchos, that create Highland Park.

The efforts of Charles Lummis, William Lee Judson and Clyde Browne combined with those inspired by life “on the arroyo,” such as plein air painter Franz Bischoff and block print maker Frances Gearhart, came together to pioneer one of the first artistic and cultural movements to come out of Los Angeles.

When the Arroyo Seco Parkway was finished in 1940, it was a cause for celebration in Los Angeles. But the arrival of one of the nation’s first freeways would have unexpected consequences for Highland Park and its residents.

In the 1950s, Mexican immigrants and descendants began owning, renting and claiming Highland Park as home. This was the pre-civil rights era, where school segregation and manifestations began articulating a vocabulary of resistance and pride within the Latino and Mexican communities of L.A.

For many, the late 1960s through the early 1970s was the high-water mark of both community and social justice organizing in East Los Angeles. But the period immediately following would witness the emergence of novel responses to the most pressing questions of the era, particularly in the form of arts organizations and collectives aimed at bringing politically-minded public art to the larger community.

The failed promises of the civil-rights era coupled with the economic disparities of the 1980s created a dual deterioration in Highland Park seen both in the built and the social environment. The concept of the inner city created a disenfranchised youth that found alternative ways of organizing and engaging with their “turf.”

As we settle into the new millennium, the Highland Park post-urban landscape is embracing all the twists, turns and contradictions that history has presented to the neighborhood.

New Stories

Land of Sunshine | Neighborhood Notes

Filipinos are the Minority in Historic Filipinotown and L.A.'s Japanese Population in Steady Decline

by Yosuke Kitazawa

May 15, 2012 4:42 PM

Many of L.A.'s ethnic enclaves now exist more as symbolic and cultural centers with populations not necessarily reflecting their historic characteristics.

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Land of Sunshine | Murals

Mural Curatorship Gets Crazy on Gideon's Wall

by Ed Fuentes

May 15, 2012 11:00 AM

A mural was painted over. Street artists are outraged. It's a wake-up call that proves the delayed mural ordinance need to be passed through City Hall quickly.

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Land of Sunshine | Production Notes

Departures Heads to South Robertson

by Kelly Simpson

May 14, 2012 2:40 PM

We're excited to announce the next installment of our L.A. neighborhood explorations -- Departures: South Robertson.

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Land of Sunshine | Laws That Shaped LA

How Prop 84 Helped the Homeless and Added Affordable Housing

by Jeremy Rosenberg

May 14, 2012 10:10 AM

State legislator David A. Roberti is most proud of his work on providing housing for "every strata of people," including 33,000 new emergency shelter beds for the homeless.

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