The backbone, and infrastructure of cities is often disguised from those of us who live within them. Sometimes it’s infrastructure that the city or big business wants to hide from the public, or at least disguise. Other times, it is infrastructure or places that time has simply passed by. It might just be that simply the act of passing by something every day, we no longer notice it. Or because it’s always been there, we never question its presence.
Here’s a list of a few of Los Angeles’ “secrets.”
- If you’ve ever driven along La Cienega in the Baldwin Hills area, you’ve surely noticed the oil fields that dot the area around the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. But there is hidden (and some not so hidden) oil extraction going on all across the city of Los Angeles. It’s just been cleverly disguised within buildings and hidden on campuses, including that of Beverly Hills High School.
- Los Angeles has a number of underground tunnels dating back to Prohibition leading from City Hall and former LAPD headquarters, to speakeasies in downtown. A bar I was rather fond of in downtown Los Angeles known as the King Eddy Saloon, and the owner of the longest running liquor license in Los Angeles, features prominently in stories of these underground tunnels due to the speakeasy in its basement. That particular underground speakeasy is currently being renovated and will probably be open as some super trendy bar within the year.
- All across Los Angeles, you can still find World War II and Cold War-era air raid sirens. Whether or not they are still in working condition is up for debate, but the sirens are a fascinating glimpse into a different time.
- If you’ve ever been to the hillier, older Los Angeles neighborhoods, you may have noticed the “secret” staircases. Pre-dating the automobile age, they helped residents in neighborhoods like Silver Lake and Echo Park take more direct routes from their hillside homes to transit.
- The Zanja Madre was the original aqueduct that brought water to Los Angeles, water from the LA River that traveled through the burgeoning settlement in an open air ditch. Water in Los Angeles has always been a necessity, and a bringer of both wealth and tremendous controversy, but the original zanja madre was replaced by modern water infrastructure in the early 20th century. If you want to catch a glimpse of the original zanja, visit the Los Angeles State Historical Park. It was there that a section of the zanja madre was uncovered during the construction of the Gold Line, and is displayed on the western edge of the park on the other side of the light rail tracks.
- If you’ve ever driven through Los Angeles and wondered why Silver Lake Blvd, for example, is so curvy and Sunset Blvd is a bridge above it, the answer is it used to be a creek. Hidden from view throughout the city, you can find evidence of underground creeks and streams. Only fairly recently is it becoming vogue to talk about “daylighting” the creeks and rivers of Los Angeles. In fact, the most infamous of covered-up Los Angeles waterways, the LA River, is the focal point for a slew of projects to daylight the concreted portions, develop parks with water access and even features kayakers.
Can you think of any examples in your city?
Image: Flickr
