El Rio Perdido

Until very recently, I had never seen the Los Angeles River up close. In the 55 years I have lived here, I have driven over the river at various points along its course thousands of times, barely glancing at the hardened channels, giving the river very little thought. I’m hardly unique. In fact, I’m a cliché -- for the vast majority of Angelenos, our city’s namesake river is largely invisible, a concrete wash barely distinguishable from the decaying industrial landscape that surrounds it.

Last month, after the last heavy rains ended, I went “down to the river” for the first time. I’m not sure what possessed me – perhaps it was coming across some L.A. River pictures on a Web site the night before. It was early morning. I had dropped my wife off at her job in Los Feliz and was driving across the bridge to Atwater on my way to my own job downtown, when I decided to turn down the side streets to look for a vantage point.

I found a cul de sac a little south of the bridge. There were no signs, but there was a gap in the fence and a pathway that appeared to lead through the brush. I braved the barking dogs in a nearby back yard, and was soon standing on a worn asphalt embankment looking out over the Glendale Narrows.

The river begins in the western San Fernando Valley and parallels the Ventura Freeway much of the way. It turns south at Griffith Park, then skirts Silver Lake, Echo Park, the Elysian Hills and Chinatown. It curves between downtown and Boyle Heights, before cutting through the industrial areas southeast of Los Angeles to Long Beach and the sea.

The Glendale Narrows is a length of channel below the turn at Griffith Park. It is one of the few places where the sides of the river are armored in concrete, but the river bottom is not. The Narrows are flanked by the Hollywood Hills extension of the Santa Monica Mountains on the west and the Verdugo Mountains on the east. This geological state of affairs results in pressure on subterranean flows in the slender gap between the two sets of mountains and forces groundwater to the surface. Paving the river bed in the Narrows simply wouldn’t work.

With an earthen bottom, the Glendale Narrows is home to considerable riparian growth, including cottonwoods and willows. There is enough habitat for wildlife, especially birds. Written accounts frequently describe it as one of the more beautiful portions of the river.

My own sensation at my first up-close glimpse, however, was one of profound disappointment. The concrete seemed massive. High-tension transmission towers dominated the skyline. The boulders were graffiti-scarred and the bent cottonwoods and willows were covered with plastic bags and other trash and debris, much of it washed into the river by the recent rains.











A man was walking two dogs a few hundred feet ahead of me, alongside a greenway that bordered the asphalt banks. I watched him and his companions slowly recede into a bleak and dispirited landscape.

Nearly everyone who writes about the Los Angeles River cites Fr. Juan Crespi, the Franciscan priest whose diary chronicled the Portola expedition of 1769 as it blazed the trail for the California Spanish missions. His entry from August 2 of that year provides the first European glimpse of El Rio de Los Angeles de Porciuncula. His vantage point was almost certainly at a spot near present-day Elysian Park:

After traveling about a league and a half through a pass between low hills, we entered a very spacious valley, well grown with cottonwoods and alders, among which ran a beautiful river from the north-northwest, and then, doubling the point of a steep hill, it went on afterwards to the south… This plain where the river runs is very extensive. It has good land for planting all kinds of grain and seeds, and is the most suitable site of all we have seen for a mission, for it has all the requisites of a large settlement. As soon as we arrived about eight heathen from a good village came to visit us; they live in this delightful place among the trees on the river.

For Angelenos who feel like the hapless heirs of a paradise lost, the river is the supreme symbol of the region’s degradation, a powerful testament to its fall from grace. A beautiful river…this delightful place among the trees-- the pristine river Fr. Crespi saw is gone forever.

In the distance, I saw that the man and his dogs had descended to the lower bank, right next to the river, and were walking back in a northerly direction. He had unleashed the dogs and they were cavorting. I watched them absently, as the dull roar of distant traffic filled my ears. They were big dogs -- there was plenty of retriever in the mix. They had a loping kind of grace. They took off after a pair of geese dozing at the river's edge. The geese honked and flapped their wings, skidding against the current as they took refuge deeper in the channel. They floated along the currents having made their escape, their avian dignity restored. This place among the trees is their place, their seasonal home, trash bags and all.

The dogs didn't follow. They stayed close to the edge and barked until new quarry came into view. They took off again, running hard in the morning sun.

La Gran Limpieza -- Friends of the Los Angeles River (FOLAR) is conducting its 17th annual river clean-up today and Saturday. Click for further details.