Flashback Fridays – Early 20th Century Echo Park Lake
Panoramic view of Echo Park, looking north toward Mount Hollywood, December 1911
We recently found some photos in the University of Southern California’s Digital Library of Echo Park in the very beginning of the 20th century.
We’ve posted some of the pictures here for your enjoyment. The photo above was accompanied by a lovely account of the beginnings Echo Park Lake written by Jose Rivera.
Initially, the area we now know as the park was a natural arroyo that filled with water from a spring-fed stream that originated at Baxter Street and flowed down what is now Echo Park Avenue. In 1868 the Los Angeles Canal and Reservoir Co. dammed the arroyo to make a reservoir that aided in powering a woolen mill at what is now 6th and Figueroa (then known as Pearl St.) and was to eventually serve local residents, walnut orchards and vineyards to the south along Alvarado. The immigrants that worked these orchards and vineyards settled here and began to build small homes along Sunset Boulevard, between Echo Park Avenue and Lemoyne Street.
In 1875, the woolen mill closed and the reservoir land (then known as the Montana Tract) was sold off. Eventually, Thomas J. Kelley and Dr. W. Lemoyne Wills purchased the land for a business venture. In 1888, Mr. Kelley and Dr. Wills donated the land to the city for the expressed purpose of creating a public park for the enjoyment of the people of Los Angeles.
The first Superintendent of Parks for the city was an English immigrant named Joseph Tomlinson who was assigned the task of creating the park. One day, while overseeing the work, Mr. Tomlinson thought he heard his workers talking during a break, but he knew they were across the park from him. The park had an echo! He knew what the name of the park would be! The park was dedicated and opened to the public in 1895. The famous bed of lotuses that grow in the lake at the northwest end of the park, the largest stand of lotuses outside Asia, is a mystery yet to be solved. One legend says that evangelical Chinese missionaries planted them for use as food, but no one knows the real story. They appeared some time in 1923 or 1924.
Click below to view more photos.
View across the Echo Park Lake, showing the boat house, 1924
Boys launching boats on a lake in Echo Park during the Echo Park Boat Tournament in Los Angeles, ca.1930
Awesome. That is almost the exact view from my apartment.
Following are some excerpts about childhood days at Echo Park Lake from notes my dad’s first cousin wrote in 1995, a few years before his death at age 91:
“My cousin, Ralph … , lived with his mother about two miles west (on Westerly Terrace, while the author’s parents were living in a duplex three miles north of Echo Park, circa 1923] on another steep loose-shale lot. Neither of us having siblings, we became like brothers, two years apart. We were together all weekends and both summers, Ralph being very adept at hitching rides along Hollywood Blvd. from his area to mine. To be brief, our escapades included “earning” most of our spending money by pillaging long, white pampas grass fronds from Echo Park Lake. Nearby homemakers asked no questions, but bought them readily. Sometimes we dipped them in purple dye. Park maintenance men often chased us, as they did also whenever we fished for goldfish with a line, hook, and bread. Nearby ladies bought them readily, also for their fish bowls.
“For exercise, we used the park’s long row of suspended rings, swinging like apes from one “tree” to another……
“There were two or three sun eclipses while I was about eight [is this possible?] and Ralph and I smoked broken pieces of flat glass, selling them where people gathered in open spaces to see the eclipse of the sun. I at eight and Ralph at ten, we “hawked” the smoked glass pieces, proclaiming eye medical hazards to those without them, which of course was true. We always sold all our merchandise.”
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Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.”
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