Departures is KCET's hyper-local web documentary, community engagement tool and digital literacy program about the cultural history of Los Angeles' neighborhoods.
Browse the mural by clicking on a thumbnail above. Then, click on the Departures "D" in the mural to view its related content below.
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departures@kcet.org
YouTube.com/Webstories The Highlands Mural
Once upon a time, in what is now Highland Park, a band of Tongva people called the Hahamog'na fished now-extinct steelhead trout on the banks of a dry, dusty stream. Years later the Spaniards, under the guidance of Gaspar de Portola, camped beside that stream while searching for Monterey Bay and gave it the name we now use for it: Arroyo Seco.
Between 1667 and 1770 a dramatic process of evangelization began: the Hahamog’na were re-named, re-religioned and re-settled by the Spanish explorers into one of the 21 missions created along the coast. The Hahamog'na’s land changed hands and the Spanish crown dispersed it among its criollo elite, creating—among other things—the Rancho San Rafael.
After the end of the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, California became a territory of the new Republic of Mexico. The newly appointed—but broke and inexperienced—Mexican government could not manage the flood of Anglos being lured west by the gold rush and expansionist fervor. After the two-year Mexican-American War, California was ceded to the U.S.
The Rancho San Rafael was then bought and subdivided by two men named Chapman and Glassell (yes, from Glassell Park), among a few other entrepreneurial transplants, and Highland Park, as we know it, was born.
Between 1667 and 1770 a dramatic process of evangelization began: the Hahamog’na were re-named, re-religioned and re-settled by the Spanish explorers into one of the 21 missions created along the coast. The Hahamog'na’s land changed hands and the Spanish crown dispersed it among its criollo elite, creating—among other things—the Rancho San Rafael.
After the end of the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, California became a territory of the new Republic of Mexico. The newly appointed—but broke and inexperienced—Mexican government could not manage the flood of Anglos being lured west by the gold rush and expansionist fervor. After the two-year Mexican-American War, California was ceded to the U.S.
The Rancho San Rafael was then bought and subdivided by two men named Chapman and Glassell (yes, from Glassell Park), among a few other entrepreneurial transplants, and Highland Park, as we know it, was born.
Index
California's history has consistently been one of re-invention and simulacra--an environmental space where meaning and geography are replaced or proceeded by symbols of what it was or should be. This paradoxical relationship to history began early in Los Angeles, as exemplified by the Casa de Adobe.
When Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona was published in November 1884, the effects of the Mexican-American war were clearly palpable in the cobblestone streets of the pueblo. Native American and Mexican residents, treated as second class citizens, were seen as artifacts of a faded Californio past by the newly arrived residents from the East Coast.
In 1895, with difficult access to water and need for police presence in an increasingly rowdy red light district, Highland Park was annexed to the city of Los Angeles, creating one of its first suburbs.
Just as the Los Angeles land boom of the late 1880's created an increased demand for water, new arrivals to the region needed expanded transportation arteries and options.
By the turn of the century, city officials had recognized that the underground water reserves of the L.A. River system, including the Arroyo, would not be able to sustain the growth and demand of the city.
The success of Portola's mission to colonize California launched an inexorable Spanish expansion driven by land grants and gifts that re-distributed Native American lands among the criollo elite. This created a vast, privately-owned Rancho system in California.
Fear of British encroachment along the Pacific coast of California led the Spanish crown to expand its empire north in the late 1760s and begin colonizing an area previously documented a century and a half earlier by the Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaino.
The Hahamog'na, a band of native Tongva people, settled alongside the Arroyo Seco from the confluence of the Los Angeles River through Elysian Valley, Highland Park, South Pasadena, and Glendale, to Pasadena and Altadena. The decision to settle along the river by Millard Canyon was strategic, as it offered the Hahamog'na control over trade and access to a basin that offered an easy entry point to regions across the San Gabriel Mountains.
For several hundred years, the hills surrounding this small tributary of the Los Angeles River were home to the Hahamog'na people, the river's banks a rich source of both steelhead trout - now extinct in the area - and medicinal flora.
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Support for the Departures is provided through these funders as well as local community partners and viewers like you.
