Skip to main content

Glory Days of the Los Angeles River

Los Angeles River - Griffith Park
Support Provided By

In observance of the 1938 flood, this is the first in a four-part series explaining why and how the Los Angeles River was channelized. Don't miss part two, part three, and part four of the series. Explore the history and current issues of the river in Departures: L.A. River.

Prior to its channelization the Los Angeles River was once lush with trees brimming with wildlife. The river provided food, shelter, transportation, and recreation for the indigenous population, and later the settlement of the Spanish empire. It provided inspiration for a generation of artists who migrated West at the turn of the century.

Following a seemingly typical storm beginning Sunday evening, February 27, 1938, the river would illustrate more than its beauty through its power for destruction. The severity of the storm and the resulting flood, would lead a demand for its channelization, drastically changing the river and Los Angeles.

As a collective voice on the history and issues of the Los Angeles River, we've recorded many personal testimonies and anecdotes of the river's glory days, including stories that take place before its channelization. To illustrate the joys Angelenos experienced before and after the river's transformation, we've provided a few of these stories below:

yangna_gabrielenotongvamissionindians

The first thing we would have noticed if we were to go back in time to what this river once looked like was the great willow forest that spread from the openings of the river which begins up north all the way down to Long Beach...then reeds--miles upon miles, upon miles of reeds. Great reed forests so thick that the Spanish said it would take days to cross them.

   - An interview with Tongva tribal council member Mark Acuna (via Departures: L.A. River)

You are history, fill my cup with your laughter and good times, please stay close to me, sing me the hymns of olden times and you'll float on forever.

   - Lyla Matar, L.A. River Day of Service StoryShare

At the age of seven, a few of my friends got together and got some pallets and made a raft for a pool provided to us by rain a few days before. We as a group of kids always played along the river. We looked for tadpoles, we looked for frogs, we looked for horny toads. We used to tie strings around the horny toads as a leash to carry them around the neighborhood.

   - Reymundo Dominguez, Elysian Valley resident

...I was probably 10, alone, unsupervised and perfectly safe wading in knee-high water, again before the basin was cemented in, gathering tadpoles for a pond in our rock garden. One evening that summer we were entertained by dozens of young frogs who had matured out of that pond.

   - Yvonne Bartlebaugh, Elysian Valley resident

Arthur Langdon on the Los Angeles River, ca 1940s.

I'm told my first two spoken words were "big rock" from one of our trips, a very short distance from our home to the river bed near the Tujunga Avenue bridge. We really didn't know much about local wildlife in those days, but the river was always a good source to find some critter to scare our second grade teacher at Carpenter school.

   - Arthur Langdonvia, Elysian Valley StoryShare

As a child, I would collect a large bucket full of frogs, bring them home, stroke their little throats one at a time and line them up on the curb to see how many I could keep asleep in one stroke.

   - Patricia Perez, Elysian Valley resident

This stream once had trout and steelhead in it. The steelhead would migrate from the San Garbiel Mountains and come down through the Arroyo Seco and go out all the way to the Pacific Ocean where they would spend most of their life and then before they died they would go back and spawn in the San Grabiel Mountains.

   - Timothy Brick, Departures: Highland Park

Support Provided By
Read More
Looking west over the Heart Mountain Relocation Center with its sentry name sake, Heart Mountain, on the horizon.

How Japanese American Incarceration Was Entangled With Indigenous Dispossession

Indigenous land dispossession was bolstered by the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II — and vice versa.
Chiqui Diaz at work advocating to end social isolation | Courtesy of Chiqui Diaz

Youth Leaders Making a Difference Honored by The California Endowment

The Youth Awards was created in 2018 to recognize the impact youth voices have in creating change throughout California. Learn more about the positive work they're accomplishing throughout the state.
A 2011 crime scene in Tulare County, where one of Jose Martinez's victims was found. | Courtesy of Marion County Sherff’s Office via FOIA/Buzzfeed

California's Unincorporated Places Can Be Poor, Powerless — and the Perfect Place to Commit Murder

It's time to do better by communities that don’t even have local police to call, let alone defund.